This weekend Greg's best friend, Eric, got married.
I really love going to weddings. You can always feels so much love and hope and peace. It certainly didn't hurt that I had the best steak of my life, so good that instead of getting chocolate cake for dessert, I got another steak. It was smothered in mango chutney sauce and the meat melted in my mouth as soon as it touched my tongue, as if chewing were completely optional. And I have finally figured out that the only thting that matters in planning a wedding is good food.
It was really fun to be with Eric and Jess on their big day and naturally it reminded me of my own wedding getting on three years ago. There's a lot of things I have learned since being married. Truth be told the first year of marriage was nowhere close to easy for Greg and me. We are both stubborn and passionate and insanely sensitive and a little bit crazy. Soon I will write a very real post about how Greg and I made it through our first year and the lessons we learned along the way. In short, it was a lot of fun, but also a lot of work. (And even to write about it sounds like more work than I am willing to tackle right now. So I will save it for later. Most likely I will write about it after my little sis gets married at the end of the month.)
For now it sufficeth to say that I am so happy for Eric and Jess. Marriage rocks.
Also sufficeth is the coolest word.
Tonight feels so peaceful. I absolutely love this time of year. Minimal Christmas decorations are up at our apartment, (I stole whatever decorations my mom wasn't using. I'm still not grown up enough to invest in my own.) and a huge snow storm is supposed to moving in tonight and there is a brown puppy lying at my feet. The house is warm, the countertops are clean, there is a half done puzzle on our kitchen table. I am filled with an overwhelming satisfaction and contentment in my life. I spend so much time worrying about little things and it feels good to just try to enjoy this moment right here. There is so much that Greg and I don't have figured out yet, so many question marks in our future but right this second all I need is to just sit in this apartment on a December night and feel peace.
I am trying to live a more simple life. Less busy. For the longest time I felt like whenever anyone asked me how I was doing I replied, "busy!" As if that was some kind of status symbol. "Look how important I am! I'm busy!" I feel like "busy" is a terrible way to describe your condition- I'd so much rather say "happy" or "healthy" or "blessed" than "busy." I don't want to say busy and truth be told, I don't want to be busy. I want to have time to chat if a friend calls unexpectedly. I want to be able to rearrange my schedule without too much hassle. If Greg gets his rehearsal off on a Wednesday night and wants to hit up a 5:00 movie I want to be able to say yes. Mostly, I want time with loved ones. I want time for relationships and for my mom and my sisters and my puppy. Some of this, I suppose, has been inspired by Henry David Thoreau, who I have been studying with my junior class. Two quotes that stick with me:
"As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness." I especially love the line about poverty not being poverty. I often think that Greg and I are "poor" because we live on fairly low salaries, and don't have a ton of money to spare, and what we do earn often seems to be spent before it's even in our hands. But poverty is not poverty. It's not sadness or sickness or loneliness. Poverty is not poverty. I'm having a hard time putting the flying thoughts in my head on paper, but basically, I love this quote.
And my all time favorite, one I can't get out of my head:
"Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify, simplify!"
Frittered away. What a description.
Also Matt Walsh said something on his blog a few weeks ago (two days in a row referencing this guy!) that I wrote down on a sticky note and stuck next to my computer: "We are never as busy as we think we are, and however busy we actually are, it is more than we need to be." I am busier than I need to be.
So yah. I'm been trying to simple it up around these parts and it has made me so so so happy. I'm leaving time and space for the essentials, but trying to weed out all the little things. Amazing how many little things there are.
In other completely unrelated news, I have a canker sore on my tongue. It is about the most painful sore I have ever had and I can't bend my tongue right to talk without it causing me an immense amount of pain. The only way I can speak without sending jolts of pain through my body is to let the left side of my tongue just sit there. Consequently, it sounds like I have a lisp. My students could not get enough of it today, and I'm afraid they didn't take any of my instructions too seriously as it sounded like they were being taught by a third grader. About 2:00 this afternoon I was eating some pea pods (Give me a break! I eat lunch at 10:50! 2:00 hits and I'm starved!) and a kid looked at me dead serious, rolled his eyes good and hard into the back of his head and exclaimed, "Well no wonder you have a canker sore if you are eating those!" As if it all made perfect sense now.
Now you know. Pea pods = canker sores.
That's it for Monday. Simplify!
