This Is Marriage: Day 628

Our greatest strengths can at times be our greatest weaknesses. The things we love can at times irritate the hell out of us. But we persist. We challenge, we struggle, we grow. We learn better and we do better. Sometimes we break. If we're lucky, someone pours love and understanding into the cracks. And those annoyances transform into assets.

Pete and I are very independent people. It's one of the reason we get along so well but it's also the underlying source of our conflicts. We are two people used to having our own houses and our own lives who now have to figure out how to co-captain the same ship. Sometimes we're running around lakes and eating ice cream. Sometimes we're in the middle of an emotionally charged conversation and Pete farts on the counter and I am horrified (and also trying not to laugh at how someone could think plates belong on the couch and butts belong on the countertop) and I'm all like Oh my god, no one will ever want to come eat at our ever house again! and Pete is all It's fine, see? I'm cleaning it with 409. Some days we will argue about staying in a treehouse rental on vacation because Pete has no interest in treehouses and thinks it's out of the way and I cannot for the life of me fathom how anyone could doubt the awesomeness of a fancy treehouse. Most days I would rather mow the lawn than cook (Because outside chores are way more fun than inside chores. And screw you, stereotypical gender-based divisions of labor). Most days Pete will think floor piles are a good storage system. All the days we will agree on the necessity of cheese and crackers (and jokes about cutting the cheese).

Sometimes love is a cheese plate

Sometimes I will feel like I am failing at marriage and I just cannot even with this wife thing. One day someone will leave a note on my car accusing me of parking selfishly and the next day I will leave work to find a chocolate bar on my windshield and a card from Pete addressed to: The World's Best Parker. Some days I will be upset at Pete's habit of taking pictures of me when I'm not paying attention because they are THE WORST and MOST UNFLATTERING pictures ever. And he will say "they're so cute" and I will hate them until he is scrolling through them one day and I see a picture he surreptitiously took of me at my Valentine's Day party a few years ago. And I won't even care how terrible I look because my heart is too busy exploding in feels for MOZZIE!!

Wherever this ship is headed, I am the luckiest for having been invited aboard.

Marriage is a ship you build to weather any storm (and to take you to all the fancy treehouses, obvi!)

Lyric of the moment: "Someone swears their true love until the end of time. Another runs away. Separate or united? Healthy or insane? And be yourself is all that you can do..." ~Audioslave "Be Yourself"