I have 10 Minutes to tell you

I have ten minutes to write and a great desire to do so. I'm a slow writer, so let's cut right to the chase.

I got this in my e-mail the other day.

Good question, David's Bridal. I've been wondering that myself. So much of my last year has been propelling me towards my wedding, but now what? Deciding on a centerpiece was hard enough, but now I have a whole life to plan.

The good news is I'm not alone. I've got a partner in my confusion. His name is Daniel and he looks like this.

I married him. We live in an apartment with a sun-dried tomato accent wall in the living room. Our wireless network is called "Hootenanny" and we have a corner behind our kitchen table with nostalgic stuff we can't bear to part with (plus a few wedding gifts we still need to return). 

We have been applying to jobs like crazy, but in our free time, we've been hanging out with some new friends.

They really hit it off.

We've also been spending some time with family. 

On a scale of 1 - 10, how related do we look?

My mom's birthday. Note the ShamWow and the Alumawallet. Obviously she has never seen such technology.

It's been happy, great, beautiful, fun, BUT I still feel like I'm waiting to get started. I don't know, David's Bridal, I guess I just thought I would have an answer to your question by now. IS this real life? If it is, I'm happy to embrace it because it is like a party every single day, but if there's more (and David's Bridal, feel free to tell me), I think I'd like to know.

ON A FRIVOLOUS NOTE: 

This is a wall in the bedroom of our apartment that is a real puzzler. I just can't figure out what to do with it. Any ideas? I would love your thoughts in the comment section of this post.

Okay, times up. It was longer than 10 minutes. On my way to Reagan's. Sorry to keep you waiting, girl. 

10 Things Daniel and I have been up to

1. We graduated from Baylor University

 

Who wore it best?

2. We worked our fourth summer at Camp Lone Star

What must people who have never been to camp think of pictures like this?

3. Got married on August 19

Daniel carrying my train like a champ

4. Honeymooned in Playa Mujeres, Mexico

It was the most gluttonous time of our life.

5. Moved into our new apartment

Not stressed at all

6. Spent some valuable time on various websites

 

some occupied more of our time than others

7. Prayed for jobs

much like this baby

8. Watched a ton of Battlestar Galactica 

How the frak did Daniel get me into this?

9. I got a job at Anthropologie.

I get to touch beautiful things like this almost every day. 

10. Daniel started whittling 

No joke. This is not a drill. Daniel is a whittler. Here, he is carving a bear.

There. Now you are mostly caught up. Obviously I left a few things out such as hanging out with people, eating food, going to church, and...other stuff...but you get the point. So far, marriage has far exceeded my expectations. Let's keep it up. 

A Defense for Cowboys & Aliens

A few weeks ago, I saw the film Cowboys & Aliens. If you have not seen it, I suppose you should not read any further as I am bound to give away critical information regarding the plot, however, I'm pretty sure you don't want to see it. You've heard it's crap. You were jazzed by the trailer, hellbent on picking a side before it came out (cowboys?aliens? some hybrid of the two?), but your best friend saw it, hated it, and now you're dead inside.

Sound about right?

Well, I have news. Great news. Cowboys & Aliens was good. So good, in fact, that I'm still talking about it a month later.

For your reference.

There is this part in the film where Daniel Craig wakes up in a desert with no memory of where he is, how he got there, and worst of all, he's got this fierce bracelet on and he can't remember who gave it to him. Oh, and also, he doesn't know who he is.

He meets an array of colorful characters including Han Solo and 13 from House. Some of these people even seem to recognize him, but Daniel Craig, with his unchanging facial expression, can only access the faintest memory which is of some lady in a field. Not very helpful.

This concept legitimately scares me. A similar thing happens in Muppets Take Manhattan when Kermit is hit by a bus or something and all of a sudden he thinks he's some flashy executive. It also happens in the series finale of the hit television show Full House when Michelle falls off a horse and then wakes up with no memory of her three dads or her rigid Tanner duties. Also, Men in Black. Memory-erasing happens all over the place in Men in Black.

For Daniel Craig, Kermit, and whichever Olsen twin happened to be sober that day, memory loss brings about a slew of emotions. There is fear of being in an unfamiliar place, sadness for a loss of self, and frustration with an inability to emotionally connect to integral aspects of life.

This is a clip from the Full House episode "Michelle Rides Again". Note her anguish and despair.

This same emotional recipe has existed in my life. I have not suffered memory loss (at least not to my knowledge), but one day I experienced the same confusion that Michelle seems to feel in the above clip. I woke up and I was a college graduate living in Austin, Texas with a man next to me calling himself my husband. In what seemed like an instant, I went from a sweaty college freshman on my first day of Welcome Week to a Sadie Sadie Married Lady with a legitimate Bachelor's degree.

Everyone knows this is an interesting transition. I'm not the first to write about it and I won't be the last. Many of the people I know are in this exact same boat, and let me tell you, it is weird. This is the first time where we truly could sink or swim. We could choose to pursue this new life with a boldness and determination that we always dreamed we would or we could sit, lie, wait, and let our muscles atrophy until we don't even resemble human.

For me, I choose the former. That's just me though. And this blog is to hold me accountable to that. I will write about my life, my marriage, my faith, and my pursuit of joy. Maybe in doing so, I will identify myself as the woman I see every day in the mirror with a ring on her finger and a super hot husband. I still just can't believe it.