1 Month!

Forgive the lameness of this post, but today is our 1 month wedding anniversary!

Before mocking me for getting excited about it, I have to admit, I didn't even remember until my mom mentioned it on Facebook. Yes, I did say "mom" and "facebook" in the same sentence, ha ha.

My coworkers are always asking me how I enjoy married life. Before I can say anything, they always answer the question for me: "well it must be hard because you've only been married for a month and you still have to work out a routine since you didn't live together very long before getting married, BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH"

Sigh.

I know they mean well most of the time. It's just that they're very very nosy and opinionated. I wouldn't have the balls to say have the crap they say to me back to them. Oh it would be glorious if I could be as snarkalicious to them....."the reason you are anxious about your son is because he has a warrant out for his arrest and is a deadbeat dad" or "the reason your daughter isn't looking for jobs close to home is because she doesn't want to move home with you after college." Then again, it's kind of not worth it and I try to be a nice person....but I digress.

So we've been married a month. It's been pretty good, I think. I mean, the only person who has really legit freaked out about sh*t has been me. Last night I had this moment where I basically decided that we didn't have enough money. You know, two twenty- and thirty-something fully-employed people with benefits, suddenly in my mind don't have *enough* money. Money for what you ask? Oh I don't know. I told this to Jam when he asked why I needed money - I said "FOR THINGS!!!!!" I clarified later with "a house, for kids, do you know how expensive it is to have a baby? And what about my car? My car won't last more than another two years!!!" Then I proceeded to imagine us living in our apartment forever, beholden to our pudgy, balding, and very whiny landlord...depression sets in...I imagine fitting small children and a dog into our apartment....momentary uplift as I imagine children and a dog, replaced by devastation as I realize they won't be able to run around and play in our miniscule yard (nevermind the fact that husbando grew up in a city, in an apartment, had plenty of space to run around and play, spent hours and hour playing outside with friends, etc...oh hell no, rational thoughts are long gone).....so then I go on to think of us in our apartment, which has, in my head, shrunk in size by about 80% to the point where suddenly we're living in a tenement heated by a woodstove and sans electricity, the only thing that thrives in the darkness and heat are germs (think NYC at the turn of the 19th century) ....then in my head, we're scrabbling in the streets for a crust of bread, dressed in nothing but gray rags....wait....that's Les Miserables.....

I hint at these fantasies to Jam and he looks at me and sighs and says "WHY are you thinking like this. Why are you about 25 steps ahead of where we need to be right now."
"I HAVE TO PLAN," I wail, "BECAUSE NO ONE ELSE WILL."
Jam (mildly offended) "Uh, I plan. I plan all the time, but on a more reasonable level...like I plan the next 2 or 3 years. We're not at a point in our lives where we need to be planning 5 or 10 years from now."
I let his words sink in. Damn. They make sense. So I come back with this:
I NEED TO WORRY BECAUSE YOU DON'T.
Seriously, Jam needs one of those dart guns you see on Animal Planet that subdues the angry elephants. I am irrational and crazy sometimes. Last night was one of those times. I think I looked insane. I was ranting and gesticulating wildly and running around the house simultaneously yelling, crying, and cleaning. Of course thinking back on this now is hilarious. I'm actually laughing as I type this, that's how ridiculous it is, but at the time it was all so sad and tragic. I totally needed to be darted.

I guess one of the huge bonuses of being married is that you're there for your spouse when they really need something: comfort, reassurance, a valium with a shot of coconut rum....you're there for them. Jam was there for me. He gave me a big hug. He told me to calm down. He wrote out our finances on a pad of paper to tell me that we would not have to scrabble all 18th-century-style in the shadow of the Bastille. Oh relief.

Of course later we were talking about benefits and whether J should jump on my health insurance. He admitted that he's hesitant not only because my plan is a bit pricey, but because that would make me the primary insurance holder and what would that mean for him if I went out on maternity leave, etc. I looked at him and said "well I honestly do NOT know why you'd worry about something like that now, since we're years away from having a child and your benefit situation might completely change in that period of time. I don't get why you're so worried." His jaw dropped and his eyes got wide as if to say "woman, are you INSANE? I just spent an hour talking you from the ledge and now you're telling me to calm down?"

Marriage is all about equity, no?
ha ha ha

Luckily after that we mutually agreed to stop stressing and watched "I Shouldn't Be Alive" and "The Big C" to put our issues in perspective. It worked. As for tonight, I'm shelving the histrionics for a little quiet celebration time. We survived a month! Here's to many more years worth of months!