A Wedding Week

Any week of mine that ends with a wedding Friday, Saturday or Sunday is a wedding week. These weeks start on Wednesday. Well, they start on Sunday like everyone else's week but the physical labor starts Wednesday. Monday and Tuesday are for sorting out what little bits and pieces you need for the wedding, answering emails, making a timeline for the wedding day, and when your sister is out of town, working 9-5 at your Dad's property management office. At this office, you get yelled at and chastised for things you didn't do by people that have never met you. Usually, you're being scolded for another person's inability to control their life. And they don't believe you when you sympathize. 

On Wednesday morning, you wander into your flower workshop and fill big plastic buckets with water and scoops of flower food. Ideally, you clean the shop ahead of time but if you didn't, now is the time to sweep up old leaves and put away lingering vases and lanterns. Then you drive all the way to North Charleston to your wonderful floral wholesalers who like you in particular because you never scold them when you have no ability to control your life. And sometimes you bring them cupcakes because you see other florists be very mean to them when flowers don't come in just right. The wholesalers also mistook you for a comedian early on in your courtship so they expect to be entertained when you come in and the cupcakes help distract them from this. Because your flowers probably didn't come in just right, you'll spend a few minutes rummaging around in the coolers looking for a good substitute for your missing blooms. Then you pack things up, say your goodbyes, and drive those blooms back to your workshop. 

It's afternoon by now and you want lunch but those flowers haven't been in water for weeks so you work alongside your hunger pangs and unpack each bloom, giving it's stem a fresh cut and popping off thorns, leaves, and headless stalks. This always takes more time than you think it will and by the end you just throw things into buckets and vow to come back later to process them. You will only half of the time. 

If you're really feeling motivated, you may even go ahead and pull flowers into the groups they'll be working with. The bridal bouquet gets the biggest and most perfect blooms, so you'll refer back to the recipe you created a few weeks ago when you worked out which flowers to order, and you'll collect all the ingredients for the bridal bouquet and put them together in a bucket. Then you do that again with the bridesmaids bouquets, boutonnieres, centerpieces, cake flowers, cocktail hour arrangements, etc. This is a good job to do because it shows you what you have leftover. Roses come in bunches of 25 so even if you just need 6, you have to buy the whole bunch. Once you pull and sort your blooms, you can use the extra 19 elsewhere or as a backup, because inevitably some rose's heads will fall off before the wedding day. 

On Thursday, you start making arrangements. You can start Wednesday if you need to but it's best to let those dehydrated, jet-lagged flowers have a good night's drink. If you haven't yet, you pull all the best blooms for the bridal bouquet, set those aside, and start building your centerpieces. This involves floral foam or chicken wire and lots of waterproof tape. You've got to make a solid foundation for your blooms or else they'll turn on you on the wedding day. Sometimes you start with your base greenery and sometimes you start with the biggest flowers and work your way down to the smallest ones and then fill in with greens. It depends on the "style" of arrangement you're making. This will take 10-25 minutes. Then you fill that little vase up with clean, cold water and repeat that process 6-14 times depending on table count and contractual agreement. But be careful not to make each centerpiece look exactly like the last one. They're supposed to look natural and not like you put the exact number of each bloom into each one in the exact same place. Maybe throw in one of your extra roses in case someone catches onto your recipe. That'll throw them off.

This will usually take all day. You'll listen to music and podcasts while you work and sometimes you'll laugh out loud and it will echo and then you remember that you're alone. If it's hot out, and you have the air on in the shop, your dogs will whine to come in and cool down. One of them will threaten to eat your flowers while the other drinks the chemical water from the buckets. Then they whine to go out again and at least 30 minutes of your day is spent letting them in and out because the whining clashes with the podcast. If you have any particularly obnoxious decorative items to make, you do that on this day as well. Big n' tall arrangements, garlands, flower crowns, etc. It's best to start these early so that you'll have time for troubleshooting or a total overhaul if things go awry.

On Friday you're a bit uninterested in spending another day in solitary confinement but it's bouquet day and those are the most fun to make. First you must survey yesterday's work because some flowers will spontaneously die overnight or shrivel up because their stem wasn't fully submerged or maybe the whole bucket is empty because the flowers gulped up everything and have been waiting for a refill all night. Some flowers, like dahlias and ranunculus, will spontaneously combust. Now is the time to redo any of yesterday's disasters.
Bouquet day means that you will do everything with one hand because the other will be holding an in-progress bouquet and it's all quite precariously gathered so you can't put it down or relocate your fingers once you've gotten them to hold a flower just right. Usually lots of things will happen when you're holding a bouquet. Your phone will ring, the dogs will want in, your neighbor invites himself into your yard and sashays through the garage to come find you. This usually startles you and then makes you mad. Most often, you'll realize that you didn't get all of the leaves and stubs off of a flower when you were processing things back on Wednesday and you have to do this using the one good hand and a clamp made from your elbow and your ribcage. Once that stem is clean, you can slide it into place in the bouquet. When you get things how you want them, you wrap that bad boy with floral tape and put it back into water so that it won't explode. Then you do the same for the bridesmaids. These are less exciting to make because all of the particularly lush blooms went into the bridal bouquet and you have to make 8 or 9 of these and they do need to be relatively identical or else they can start to look too much like the bridal bouquet or more grandiose than the others, etc. If you have more than 5 bridesmaids, I'm annoyed by you. It's quite difficult to keep all of these the same size.

Later that day you must begin to consider how you will pack everything into your cars and what other items you need. Most weddings require about 50 candles and cylinders of various sizes, so now is the time to pull those and make sure they are clean and that the candles don't look too much like you've used them for the last 6 weddings. Consider whether or not you will need any ladders, cable ties, wires, nails, draping, and other hard goods for installations. On Friday night you will fall asleep to this packing list.

Saturday morning is the worst part of the whole deal. You need to wake up early to make boutonnieres and corsages. You can't make those ahead of time because they won't be in water ever again. So while you wake up and scamper straight out to the garage, your husband always makes you some breakfast and sometimes packs you a lunch because he knows that you will be much too busy on this day to worry about feeding yourself. Boutonnieres take about 5-7 minuets each and they're the worst because in addition to the 12 bro's the Groom has named as groomsmen, lots of Dad's and grandpas and officiants, and nephews, and people of note get them so you usually have to make 20 in a hurry. Wrist corsages for the mothers are my least favorite thing to make. I hate everything about them and would gladly never make one again. When this is finished, you need to change out the water in the bouquet vases because that water always goes brown overnight and you can't hand in dirty water with the bouquets. The bouquets must also be wrapped in ribbon at this time so you've got to get scissors and pins and try to be slow and precise even though you're in a hurry.

When it's time to load up the cars, you remember to go put on a professional, black outfit. Then you make your husband stop what he's doing and pull the cars around back and start loading in the heavy candle boxes. He happily obliges but sometimes you find him elsewhere digging a hole or inspecting the roof and you wonder what it's like in his brain.
About 10 minutes before take off, your sweet mama arrives to help load the cars, but you've done that already and she is relieved. Your husband hands you a lunch box and a water bottle and you go survey the flower-shop and your mental packing list. With much relief and nervous energy, you hop into your car and set off for the venue. Mom drives carefully behind you. She does not like to drive the car that has been packed with the clinking glassware.
In some awful cases, you have to deliver the bouquets to where the girls are getting ready, and the boutonnieres to where the guys are getting ready and only then can you go to the venue to set up. Mom will follow you into the different houses just to see what's going on in there.

At the venue you take everything out of the cars again. Sometimes there is no convenient place to park the car when you unload and you get yelled at by venue staff. The heavy candle boxes get put into a corner for now and the buckets of loose flowers and the precariously packed arrangements come inside and get lined up along a back wall, away from the band's equipment and caterer's crates and the lighting guy's ladders. Mom usually looses focus here and wanders off to survey the scene. You use this time to work out an order of operations. Sometimes the rental companies have not delivered the tables yet so you have to stand around and wait for them or find something else to do. Installations like arbors, floral chandeliers, and wrapping tent poles with greenery can be done at this time. This is usually hot work because the arbors are always out in the sun and the wedding is still hours from now and you know that your flowers will wilt long before the first guest arrives. Sometimes you water-tube things, but sometime that isn't practical. You'll spend some time affixing greenery and flowers to welcome signs and picture frames. This is never easy because signs don't have hooks and things for flowers. You consider glueing things in place. 

It is now lunchtime and Mom has lost interest. You are both hungry and Mom's standards are lower than yours. She suggests that we're basically done and should go have lunch. You tell her we just have to set the tables and drape the mantle with garland and then we can go. Once the tables have their linens, we set the centerpieces and candles out in an attractive fashion. While Mom chooses the best candles, you drape the mantle with garland and dot it with loose blooms. These will also shrivel before the photographer arrives. Mom begins packing the car but you didn't tell her about the few other things you sill need to do so you try to do those secretly and quickly. Inevitably, a caterer or photographer wants loose blooms to scatter about for various reasons so you have to go back to the car and scrounge up some things for them. These are the dregs of society (the flowers I mean). They didn't make the cut for bouquets or arrangements. They have discolorations or missing petals and that's all you have to hand to the photographer. You are mildly embarrassed. Mom is in the car with the AC on. You do a final walk-through, touch up a few things, and then you make a mad dash out of that place before the planner finds something for you to do. 

You take Mom to a late lunch. She always orders unsweet tea. When you get home, you're very tired but you need to get the leftover things out of your car because a few times you didn't and your car took on a musky, earthy aroma. (You like the smell but everyone else thinks its gross.) Usually you will shower and nap and then your happy husband will tell you that he signed us up to go to someone's dinner party. Now you must find an outfit you can convert back into work clothes and your back is a little sore.

At the dinner party, you compulsively check your phone to see if the planner has called with a disaster and also to not loose track of time. The wedding ends at 11:00 and you have to be there to clean up and collect your candles and vases and take down the arbor. You like to get there before the newlyweds make their exit so that you can swoop in immediately and corral your things to one corner. Guests tend to take vases and candles home with them. On a few occasions you have opened car doors and taken your things out of stranger's backseats. It's easy. You distract them with a pretty flower and make the switch when they reach out for that fluffy bloom. They are usually drunk. 

Your husband does not like to wait for the official end time and will sometimes sneak in the back of a space and begin collecting. Your are torn between encouraging and scolding him. 

When the bright lights turn on, the wedding is over and it's a manic dash to clean. Caterers strip tables, lighting guys drop chandeliers and the band wheels equipment briskly through the halls. You must stay out of the way while also holding your ground. You carefully pack things while your husband carries things out to your car. You jockeyed for a good parking place with the other vendors before teardown began. Even though you've told him not to at every teardown for the last three years, your husband likes to carry as many glass things to the car at once. He does this partially out of athletic curiosity and partially out of stubbornness. As the florist, you are held responsible if there is any greenery or flower bits strewn about the venue so you must go around and pick up leaves and petals or risk being blacklisted. Your husband is ready to go but he packed the car so fast that you didn't get to take inventory so you do a few walk-throughs checking for rogue vases and candles. You finally climb into the car and breathe a sigh of relief. 

"Fooled 'em again" we say. 

On Sunday, you have to clean the flowershop because the dirty water and twiggy stumps will start to smell. You want nothing to do with the flowershop on this day and this becomes a laborious task. 

Last week, I had a Saturday and a Sunday wedding. These two bouquets are from these two celebrations. We got back from the Sunday wedding at 10:30 and I fell straight to sleep. 

A double wedding weekend is a whole different beast. 

A Real Time Update

Big Guy Eisenhauer (Gueisenhauer) is sitting at a little desk taking his licensing exam right now as I type this. He drove to Columbia yesterday and spent the night pretending to try to study one last time. I'm sure the Big Guy feels a lot of pressure to pass the test but he mostly seemed calm and was certainly ready to take the test and stop thinking about it. I don't think there's been an evening in the last two months where he didn't spend at least two hours studying. I've decided the three months of time consuming studying is much worse than three month of compulsive garage tinkering. What will be his next fixation? Maybe he'll take up canning.

Ellen and Lee got married yesterday but she won't let me share any photos just yet. It sure looked beautiful though. They get their official pictures back in one month. I spoke with them afterwards and they said it was chilly out and all the French wedding day helpers were late. "But ze Franch are alwayz late. Do not worieee." one of them told Ellen. Also, Lee bought a coat that looks particularly European so he added a beanie and an espresso and has been in character since.

Last I checked, Margie was back manning the office like this:

I've got two weddings this weekend and a ton to do today before the first one tomorrow afternoon. After this weekend I'll be halfway through my Fall season. Isn't that nuts? It takes so long to get here and then it just flies by.

Big Lu's Big Business Blunder

I made a bad business blunder. A blunder more awful but slightly less embarrassing than the time I forgot to blind copy the hundreds of people I sent a "personalized" marketing email to. Worse than the bride who told me her Groom's boutonnière broke before the wedding and they couldn't use it. (That's never happened before or since so I'm certain they were roughhousing the thing and then were shocked when it behaved like a delicate piece of perishable nature.) And worse than the bride who sent me a plywood arbor as her inspiration picture and then was disappointed on her wedding day that her arbor looked like plywood. Those three things are the saddest days in Lux history.

About two weeks ago I realized that I've been in business for a few years now without any major disasters and I wondered what it would be that I would ruin someday and how far into the future it was. No one gets through unscathed. You can't properly run a business without messing something up once or twice to figure out how to do it. And sure, when I look back at my first few Lux weddings, I cringe a bit and curl my toes because I could do much better now and I feel guilty that I charged money for what is now sub-par work. But there's a difference between growing and learning. Or something like that.

This past weekend I messed up big time and am suspicious that I summoned my own blunder with my reasonable but perhaps big-headed observation of my spot-free record.
But I can't tell you what I did. Out of my fear of the off chance the wrong person would stumble upon this post, I knew I couldn't amuse a crowd with my blunder while I update you on my family's latest antics, as though everything is funny and normal, because it's certainly not funny to the folks I let down. (And for the record, was not funny to me until a few hours passed. It's not funny at all actually, but you know I can't tell a story without noting the humanity and that's where I get tickled.) (It's tragic.) (Which is usually funny.)
My point is, I feel bad not writing about my big mistake because it might convince the six of you that read this blog that I wouldn't highlight my wrongdoings in favor for portraying myself as poised and coiffed and all that. My life is lovely and funny and full of fluffy blooms. And I have dogs and a car and a long-legged husband and I work from home and take extensive vacations and afternoon naps and visit my Mom and boy this girl is the worst. Won't she shut up already? We get it.

Once I got out of college I had notably fewer things to complain about and then Brett showed up and after while life went grand and I forgot to be broody and burdened. Woe to me.
I'd like to really highlight what I did wrong and how easily it didn't have to happen if I was just a better business person, really throw myself under the bus, you know. I'd like to point out that I'm only pretending to be a business person. (Which I also find funny.) I really feel awful about my blunder even though it all worked out and the bride was sweet about it. That sort of thing keeps you from relaxing behind your little pine desk and thinking that you know what you're doing. Didn't I just write a post proclaiming my floral business know-how? Boy I'm just the worst.

My second point is, it's important to acknowledge when you're a loser. A Lu-ser.

Cincinnati

Two Saturdays ago, Big Mama and I ventured up to Ohio to go to Parvaneh's wedding. Parvaneh is my college bully friend and her new husband is from Ohio. If I wasn't living in Charleston, I might think nothing of one marring someone from that particular state. But I do live in Charleston and it's become overrun by Ohioans. So I'm required to be a bit annoyed by that state. Mom and I felt a bit funny about going to... to... Ohio.

As Brett prepares for his test, Mama came as my plus one and we stayed in an exciting hotel, visited the zoo, and quietly mused and giggled. Like we do. As it turns out, Cincinnati is a nice place and I really tried to hate it. Sure, it's a city and I don't love cities but they get an A+ for parks and green space as well as a lovely mixture of grassland and forest. You can see little mountains in the distance. We were also treated with the perfect mid-70's weather which only served to confuse us about the state's ongoing mass exodus.
"I don't get it." Mom said. "It's nice here." We concluded that it must be the cold, grey winters that send folks south with all their worldly goods. Forever.

On Friday morning we set out for the Cincinnati Zoo and I tell you what, that's a great place. There were happy critters and plants everywhere you turned. We also encountered more babies than we've ever seen in one place. Hundreds of tikes, the under 3 crowd mostly, which would explain why none of them were in school that day. Shrieks and wails and meltdowns filled the zoo. Mom even gave an intentional glare of disgust to a couple that was egging on their obnoxious child. I like when she does that. We spent four or five hours wandering the zoo and came back to our tightly tucked hotel beds for naps before the Welcome Reception.

On this trip, I was pleased with my professional packing job. I frequently brag about my ability to pack a suitcase but I really outdid myself. I made Mom watch me convert my zoo outfit into my evening wear. Having learned directly from her, Mom performed a similar feat and we were ready to go in two minutes. "Watch this." we both said to each other and then we tucked and shimmied our clothes, struck the same pose, and laughed at each other. Isn't she a jewel?
At the welcome reception we ran into Jared right away. He bounded over and gave us tight, painful hugs and then asked all about the family. Sean stood next to Jared confirming or denying the many exaggerations in Jared's tales. Sean has wonderful manners and tries his hardest not to laugh when one should not laugh but if he catches you enjoying it, hiccupy gasps escape his lips and he hides his face in his hands. Jared is an endless chasm of inappropriate laughter and I wonder how Sean makes it through a day.
Parvaneh eventually made her rounds over to us and just as she always has when she sees me, Parv skips the pleasantries of a formal greeting and launched righted into the mid-point of her current woes.
"Laura! My sister said it again! About the dresses?!"
"Hello Parv! It's so nice to see you? How are you feeling?"
"I can't believe it! You know she said that to get a final shot in."
"Good good. Yep. Married life is great, thanks! Brett is sorry he couldn't make it."
"You remember Corey? Guess who he is dating?"

At the party, I'd meet someone new and then introduce them to Mom. "This is my sweet Mama!" I'd say with pride and folks would chuckle. Mom easily won over the crowd and fired shots back at Jared and kept up with the juicy gossip. She maintained her popular girl status that next day at the wedding and was the only "old person" on the dance floor long after the music went from the classic, romantic melodies to the synthetic sounds of today's vacuous club music. We mingled and met some new friends and Mom asked one young fella if she could feel his hair. It was so thick and dark. He politely obliged so I felt his hair too.

On wedding day, Mom and I slept in, ate a hearty breakfast and wandered downtown Cincinnati. Mom was dismayed to find no crap or trinket shops, though we noticed a lack of shopping options all together which made Mom take points away. We wandered to the waterfront, did some people watching, and then came back for naps. While I slept, she watched Animal Planet and ate a salad in bed. Isn't she a jewel? We impressed each other again with our wedding-wear transformations and headed down to the lobby to catch the bus to the wedding.

Once onsite, Mom and I and Sean and the guy with good hair all sat in a row in the ceremony chairs while everyone else milled around making small talk. I became fixated on a touch of wedding decor that wasn't sitting right but Sean wouldn't let me go fix it. The wedding began with Matt and his Mom walking out to Darth Vader's Theme song and from there, an extremely creative and personalized wedding ceremony took place. I appreciated Parv and Matt's use of humor throughout their vows and felt a bit like I was also at a show.

Parv and Jared killing time pre-ceremony.

It was as the crowd moved from the ceremony site to the cocktail hour that I noticed this guest and her outfit of choice and I just couldn't get enough of her the whole night. 

I know it's mean. I hope it's unlike me. But that's hilarious. Mom and I chuckled imagining the Honbarrier reaction to her.

Moving on, we shared a tasty meal, heard some sweet speeches, and watched as guests enjoyed the mini-putt putt course that had been installed in the reception space. (Parv and Matt played putt-putt on their first date.) As usual, Mom stalked the wedding cake and demanded a slice as soon as she finished her meal.
"When are they cutting the cake?" she asked with distain. When she noticed a vendor enjoying a slice, she sent me and Jared to find out "what was going on". We found the cake, grabbed several plates of it and before we could even get back to the table, Mom had set out in search of us in search of cake. While every wedding guest gathered to watch the first dance, Mom chose instead to sit in the abandoned dining room and eat cake.

Mom and Jared dazzle the crowd.

Once the good tunes began, Mom pushed back her cake plate and headed to the dance floor. She bent her arms at the elbows, bit her bottom lip, and the rest of the night is a blur of toe-tapping and neon lights. The collections of aunts and grandparents long left the dance floor but not Nanny U. Hours into the celebration when Matt's Ultimate-Frisbee team took to the dance floor with violent, spastic movements, Mom could still be found bobbing energetically to songs she's never heard. 

When the party was over, the remaining out of town guests gathered again on our shuttle bus for the ride back to the hotel. Moments before climbing onto the bus, I met a tall, 26 year old Asian fella named Tristan who was struggling to tie his necktie. I intervened and he yapped at me about trees while I worked his tie around my neck. I handed it back to him and he followed me to the bus talking so earnestly about the things he enjoys. I climbed aboard, saw Mom and said, "That's my Mama." and as I prepared to sit down, Tristan said, "That's your Mom? Can I sit with her?"

Mom and I exchanged a confused and amused glance and I sat behind Big Mama while Tristan settled in next to her.

"Hi, I'm Tristan."

"My name is Nancy."

"Hi Nancy. Your daughter helped me tie my tie. She's very kind."

"Yes. She's very sweet."

"Nancy, how do I live a full life?"

For the next twenty minutes, Tristan asked Mom lots of deep questions. It was as if he'd never had the chance to ask a real adult about life and didn't want to miss an opportunity to gain wisdom. The amusing part was his use of the word "Nancy" throughout the conversation. 

"That's a great point, Nancy."

"Nancy, do you believe there's a God?"

"What was it like for you Nancy, to raise two daughters?"

It was the most wholesome and confusing exchange. Meanwhile, behind them, I became nauseated by the winding road and was seated next to another frisbee player who was helping build an insulting chant to yell to the folks in the back of the bus. It went like this:

We are the front of the bus, the front of the bus, the front of the bus.

We are the front of the bus, the back of the bus sucks!

He and his three surrounding friends (and occasionally Tristan) would spontaneously stand up and chant this. The back of the bus would later respond with the same chant, edited to make the front of the bus suck. 

This went on far longer than it needed to because the bus driver got lost. Behind me and the frisbee dude was an angry bridesmaid that couldn't believe how long it was taking to get back to the hotel. 

"Nancy, do you feel like you missed out on anything?"

While I clutched my stomach, Mom gave Tristan life advice and he'd occasionally turn around in his seat to tell me how wise my mother is. 

"Laura, your Mom is so wise. Do you listen to her advice?"

"Oh yes. She always knows what to say."

"Laura, I think you have the prettiest smile and I see you got it from Nancy."

Mom and I couldn't decide which one of us Tristan had fallen in love with and when we finally made it back to the hotel, we gathered in the lobby with Matt & Parv and the frisbee friends and they all decided to walk down the street to O'Malleys, an Irish pub. Mom and I politely declined, bid farewell to our new friends, and ascended the lobby stairs. Tristan stood at the bottom of the staircase, just watching us go with a warmhearted look on his face.

Mom and I held onto our confusion as we packed up our things and got ready for bed. 

The next morning we ran into Parv and Matt in the lobby on our way out and heard all about the wild time at O'Malleys. We were surprised to see them awake and moving around.

We rode to the airport, breezed through security, and Mom finally got a chance to wander through some crap shops. We arrived home just in time for me to have a nap before Brett and I headed out to celebrate one year of marriage with some standup comedy by my beloved Craig Ferguson.

T'was a wild weekend indeed. Here's to the witty and creative Parv & Matt!

One Year

Yesterday marked one year of being married. A few times in the last few months when I had down time and my thoughts drifted to Brett and it made my heart giggle, I thought I should use that giddiness to write the mushy bits of our one year anniversary blog post, because when I think about Brett I usually laugh out loud and then feel like I might pop. Who could describe those feelings better than a newlywed? I should get that down on digital paper.
But I never did this, mostly out of laziness (months 'til that deadline) but also because I hadn't made it a full year yet and maybe we'd get into a horrendous fight that would alter my wholesome view of Big Guy Eisenhauer. Admittedly, our hurricane spat, which did come after I elected not to write the blog post in case of any impending marital woes, is the one and only time this year that I was mad at Brett with any conviction. We've mostly spent the last year making each other laugh, be it by wit or outrage.

The ole trope of marriage on tv is a mutual eye-roll from either party and then episodes worth of resentment, annoyance, and unfulfillment - for comedic effect of course. And while I love Big Guy Eisenhauer and married him full of faith that we are much more kind and patient than the angry married couples on tv, I am quite aware that most folks go into marriage thinking they are above the place where marriages settle into their dusty routines. So I waited. Anytime in the last twelve months when I felt annoyed by one of Brett habits or he seemed bored with the weekday routine, I assumed "that was it". The honeymoon period had ended. Brett's bored. I'm annoying. We're married people now. The boring, eye-roll kind. One time, as we discussed something serious and I danced around nervously, Brett asked me why I was dancing around and I told him I was waiting for our marriage to go bad and he told me that was an unproductive thing to do.
"But that's what we've been told!" I retorted, full of bubbling love.

In an effort to ward off the negative long term effects of marriage, I'm having to imagine that the good times will last forever and only be punctuated by fits of rage and intolerance. I am certain that Brett's sheen will wear off someday and I don't expect he'll be enamored with my theories and observations forever (I may have already lost him there). I think somedays he'll be precisely what I don't need in that moment - someone talking sense and morals when I'd much prefer to wallow and consider violence. Or his crappin' endless capacity for improvement.
I think, and I've only been married a year, that kindness is the key to a marriage that thrives. But I also don't really know what a thriving marriage is supposed to entail so that ends my thoughts on life lessons about marriage. What I do know or rather, what I've learned from a year living with my best friend, is that helping him through a day gives me a bit of purpose and motivation to be an aid or a soothing balm or whatever it is that helps him be the optimistic, giggling giant that keeps me going when I'd much rather wallow and consider violence. See that vicious cycle of loving gentleness?

We're a team of kind people with good intentions. That's all I've got so far but I feel particularly sure and great about it.