Various & Random Reasons I'll Make a Great Wife

Growing up as the oldest of three girls, I didn't really have a lot of contact with boys my age until about high school.  By that time, I was mostly awkward around them.  Don't get me wrong, I had a few guy friends, but most of them were guys I had crushes on but wasn't really sure how to handle it.  I'd send them a note or have some mutual friend mention it to them and the rejection would inevitably happen, I'd cry for a few days, then we'd bounce right back into the friendship that we had before I let the cat out of the bag.  Honestly, looking back, I was a bit silly.  I hardly knew the ones that I was professing my "love" to in the first place, but that's probably par for the course in high school.  Anyway, by the time I got through college, I had some pretty stable and serious male friendships that didn't include closeted lust/love/adoration.  But, I was still a little behind the curve when it came to male/female domestic interaction.

Well, boy, did I take a crash course.  Most of you are probably aware that I've had a male roommate for the last three years.  We've been friends for over ten years and were spending so much time together that we figured we could cut our living expenses in half if we both had the same address.  I take great pains to clarify that we are, in fact, living...together.  There is a massive difference between "living...together" and "living together."  That pause implies that we just happen to be two, platonic friends who live under the same roof.  Without the pause, and you're on rung above marriage vows.  I'm nowhere close to even on the ladder towards such vows.

So, now that we have that established...  These last few years have been enjoyable and educational.  Remembering my prior lack of male interaction on a regular basis beyond college parties and semi-regular professions of romantic inclinations, living with a member of the opposite sex has provided me with a unique and (dare I say) advantageous perspective on domestic life.  Ergo making me the perfect candidate for future wife-dom.  Overly confident?  Just wait.

Reasons I'll Make a Great Wife:

1. I can pick my battles like a true warrior.  As I'm sure is the case with most roommate relationships, battle-picking is a must when living with a member of the opposite sex.  Realizing that his shoes on the floor is completely insignificant in the grand scheme of things makes life so much easier (especially when I want to call attention to something a bit more monumental later on).
2. Men don't respond to subtlety.  Lord, this has been a tough lesson for me to learn.  I always thought that any human being who isn't drooling and rocking back and forth in the corner would realize that the giant stack of glasses on the counter at eye-level would indicate a desire for the kitchen to be cleaned.  Or that the six trash bags piled up so high next to the door that you have to push them out of the way to exit would somehow imply that it was not my turn to take it outside.  Nah.  They get nothing from that. They get "Hmm... the trash is by the door."  That's as far as that line of thought goes.  So, after a few years of this kind of behavior leaving me as the only one frustrated (and taking out the trash), I realized that I had to communicate this is actual words.  
3. Sharing is great, but respect is key.  Living in various small apartments and now a not-so-giant house, understanding that each of us has boundaries and expectations of privacy is paramount.  Although we've been inseparable friends for over a decade, we understand that if one of us goes into our room to have a phone conversation, that's private.  We share certain elements of our lives (who needs two sets of dishes in their kitchen?!) and keep other ones separate.  And we respect that about each other.  
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I Remember the Tenth of September

Author's Note:  Consciously straying from my usual ranting and raving about all things dating, I felt compelled to draft something retrospective during this time of reflection upon the tenth anniversary (we need to come up with a more sorrowful word than "anniversary," it has such a celebratory tone) of September 11, 2001.  Fear not, I'll be back to social shenanigans in no time.

I remember the tenth of September.  I was rapidly approaching my twenty-first birthday and had recently returned to college for my third year.  I was two-hundred miles away from home, but was reveling in the freedom of distance while secretly fearing the upcoming realities of adulthood around the corner. 

I had spent my first twenty years paying little attention to things outside of our nation's borders, hell, even inside them.  Probably like most teenagers, I had haphazardly voted in my first presidential election a year or so before, feeling a small internal victory that my candidate of choice had succeeded with little more to offer for rationale for why he'd received my vote other than his party affiliation and name recognition.  I had a brief memory of sitting in my parents' Chevette waiting for gas in a ridiculously long line in 1991 and my father mentioning something about Iraq, a country I'd never heard of, Saddam Hussein and Operation Desert Storm.  The connection to the line at the gas station was not made by that ten-year-old version of me, and all I knew was that I had to use the bathroom.  By twenty, I knew that evil existed in the world; I remembered my grandfather sharing stories about Pearl Harbor and how the entire country mourned the losses there and during World War II, but that seemed so distant, both historically and geographically, that it had never entered my realm of consciousness.  On September 10, 2001, had it ever crossed my mind, I considered myself and all of my fellow Americans protected by the bubble of the Atlantic and Pacific.   

So, after some rather lengthy chat messages overflowing with wedding planning commentary and a look of sheer delight from my fiance upon mention of the possibility of relieving some of the endless stream of wedding details I share on a constant basis, I have decided that the best use of my blog right now is to allow you some insights as I navigate my way through planning our nuptials.  I have successfully navigated myself out of Singledom, through Coupledom and Relationship-ville.  Surely navigating wedding planning shouldn't be too difficult.

Ha.

My fiance proposed a little over a month ago while we were in Disney World.  It was crazy romantic.  One day I'll share the story with you.  This blog post, however, is more of a rant.  I'll save that story for a day that I'm feeling overly sentimental and I'll fill it with all kinds of eloquence and sweetness and light.  Today, I'm venting.  During our trip back from Disney World, we had plenty of time (prolonged even more by the unusual presence of cattle in the road in the middle of Florida) to do the "dreaming" stage of wedding planning... plotting out exactly what we've always dreamed we wanted long before we got into any of the real-world, budget-limited reality of things.  It was fun.

Being the bride, obviously, the bulk of wedding planning falls in my lap.  And I'm happy to do it.  I've got some event planning experience from previous jobs and watched my sister plan a pretty spectacular wedding of her own with the amount of money that most women on shows like "Say 'Yes' to the Dress" spend on their gown alone.  So, I was feeling pretty confident.  However, I've never planned an event with my own money.  Or with my own opinion and tastes taken into consideration.  My fiance and I are, thankfully, on the same page with just about every element of the decision-making process (or at least he's allowing me to think that way if there are things that he's not overly keen about).