One Year Later

One year ago today, an entire day completely saturated with love, support, family, community, laughter (no seriously, the laughter), the very best music, amazing food, no-holds-barred dancing frenzy and plenty of happy tears as well, I married the best man I know. I'd say the best man in the world, but people tend to want to debate this point, and that's not what I'm saying. I know what I know. I know he is the best, my best, and makes me better as well.

It's been a year of limited drama since the madness of May 2010. We went to Ireland, it was glorious. We spent Thanksgiving in Los Alamos with my family, it was an (exhausting) delight. We journeyed to a cabin in East TN for New Years Eve. I got a new position at Emma; Austin has won some impressive awards for his work. Our pets have kept us busy and laughing and occasionally baffled. We've discovered The Wire and powered through the first three seasons in the last month. Today, we're cozied up in a condo directly on the beach in Navarre, FL. It is perfect. Tonight we'll grill pizzas and drink Pimm's cups on our balcony.

Everyone keeps commenting, "I can't believe it's been a year! It doesn't seem like that long ago." I was sharing this discussion with a friend whose wedding was a few weeks before ours. He says, "I sure wasn't expecting this first year to be so hard." I nodded and didn't argue, but I couldn't feel less in agreement. For one thing, he's really referring to how hard the first year of cohabitation is, and we got that out of the way many moons ago. And I'm always glad that we did. In the weeks after the wedding, we were often asked, "Does it feel any different?," and I'm sure if we hadn't already lived together, no one would have asked that. But my answer was always, "Sure, it does, a bit. We just feel like more of a team now." When I think back to May 22, 2010, and all the beauty I described in the first paragraph here, the truest memory of that entire day for me is just the peace. The peace in my heart and in my mind and in my hands when he was holding them, saying "I do." This peace wrapped me up and has not departed. Every day, our marriage is my peace.

We were standing in the front entranceway of Houston Station, sometime late in the evening in a break between photos and dancing and catching up with wedding guests. Austin's cousin Jason had brought his whole family, and his little daughter Sophie grabbed my hand and wanted to talk to me. I knelt down and she asked, "When you were up there, why were you crying?" She was referring to when I nearly sobbed my way through my vows. I said, "I was crying because I love him so much." She considered this, head tilted, then put both her hands on either side of my face and said, "I know you do."

Luddites Unite!

Okay, so I dropped off the daily blogging train right at the homestretch. I forgive myself. The combination of sick and busy does not lend itself to interesting self-reporting.

This mystery illness, which may or may not exist, has manifested itself thusly: tired all the time, but unable to sleep in all weekend or get to bed before midnight on a school night. Baffling lack of appetite, which is a sad reality on Emma Bake Sale Day. Occasional bouts of phlegmishness, coughing, sniffling, sneezing, then periods of total calm. And the inability to concentrate on anything for more than ten minutes. Even wedding talk.

Speaking of, pretty much as soon as everyone left the house on Friday (well, really when I woke up Saturday), I realized, we've got a wedding to plan. Thanksgiving was the last big thing in between. Now it's December and that means Goals to be Accomplished. Clayton sent us the engagement pictures he took when we visited his family in Colorado in October; I put some of the best up here. I'm so completely thrilled with these photos and amazed by Clayton's talent. Austin's going to use these shots for our Save the Date cards, which we'll mail this month. I've been keeping myself busy tracking down addresses and updating the guest list with the wedding tools on Martha Stewart Weddings. I always say, that Martha, she's crazy, but she keeps me organized.

I've got Thanksgiving photos to share too, but the engagement pictures maxed out my Flickr account for this month already and I'm having trouble figuring the damn thing out. I even tried to pay to upgrade to a Pro account and it appears to have timed out or failed somehow. Flickr seems to be the prevalent choice for photo sharing, and I like the ease of linking directly from iPhoto, but I don't understand why it keeps directing me to my (nonexistent) Yahoo inbox. Annoying. I'll figure this out tomorrow and share photos of the feasting from Friday.

never been better

Tonight I'm knocking around the house, solo for a little while. Austin's playing FIFA Soccer with JB. I had planned to spend the alone time working on the filing drawers in the desk in the office I excavated yesterday. Instead I poked around online, played a game, read some educational wedding-related articles. Then I straightened up the house, put away the remnants of our crackers-and-soda snack from this afternoon, and got out the ingredients for tonight's Mexican pineapple salad. And I realized, while I was moving around the house, going through mindless motions, I was smiling the whole time.

I don't talk about religion, on here or anywhere. I'm not a subscriber of any specific doctrine. We don't go to church, and we don't follow any scriptures. I don't have astral convictions, and I don't miss them. But the only word I can find to describe this feeling, this day, this place I'm at in my life, is blessed. I am saturated by blessings. It washes over me, so many times a day, and I wish there was a better way to express my gratitude.

I love our home. We cleaned it yesterday, got the office near to full function, and made some decorating progress. It is safe and warm and comfortable when it's filled with girls, sprawled on the couch with popcorn and ice cream, or when it's just us and our pets, on quiet tv afternoons, or when it's just me and my iTunes. There literally isn't a day that goes by that I don't think how utterly lucky we are that we found *this* house. It felt like an arduous search, and it turned out exactly right.

I love my job. One of the bigger wedding-related dilemmas I've faced (as with every bride in the history of the world, I know) has been the size of the guest list. And this is complicated by the fact that I have 70+ coworkers who are also friends who I can't imagine not celebrating with. It's probably not going to be realistic to invite every Emma staffer plus one, but right now I'm doing my best to find a way to include as many as we can. I think about the very best days at Hatch, when we all felt like a productive family full of friends, and that's how Emma is too. I love it when I make a breakthrough on a collaborative project, I love it when I've finished processing the daily check run, I love it when the power goes out and I wind up laying on the carpet of the second floor lounge doing half-assed pilates with Brooks and Rami and Rachael's puppy. I think I've said this before, but you don't realize how much of your self-esteem is caught up in the work week until you find a job that fulfills you.

I love our pets. We both do, equally, with an unreasonable fervor. We're those crazy pet people and aren't remotely ashamed. Digby is getting closer and closer to being a good dog, and Bridgette is such a sweet girl. We had a brushing session on the back patio last weekend (shedding time is definitely here) and they were both just inhaling the affection and attention. Mackenzie is completely back to her old self, running the house with her larger-than-life attitude and making sure she gets quality time with us before bed every night. Corvinius is, well, an oddball, but a loveable one, and spent a large portion of this afternoon rubbing his face on the corner of my computer screen over. and over. and over again. Oh buddy. And look, we don't like to play favorites with our pets. But every single day, Mischa and Charlie Murphy fill us up with love. Mischa got a new toy today, and she's currently sacked out on her spot at the end of the couch with this new red stuffy wrapped in her arms like a woobie. I just want to hold her so tight. Charlie Murphy loves weekends, particularly couch weekends like today, and the absolute peace and joy he spreads when he's sleeping leaned up against my lap... it's just the best.

I love my friends. Book club friends, work friends, people who don't fall in either category (there aren't many...), I can't get over the support network that surrounds me. I spent a lot of my adolescence thinking of myself as not a "girlfriend" kind of girl, and I'm so happy that I was totally wrong about that. We threw a surprise bachelorette party for Agnes last night, and the house was about to burst from all the girlie love. Lisa and Jenny were missed, but otherwise it couldn't have gone better and I was so glad we could all spend sweet time with Agnes before she takes off for the Great Alaskan Wedding Adventure.

I love my family. The reason I didn't think of myself as a "girlfriend" kind of girl was, obviously, because I have the best built-in girlfriends on the planet, my sisters. We talk every day and nothing feels complete unless it is shared with them. I'm so glad that we live close enough to my dad that we can just have low-key evenings of ceiling fan installation and (really good) chicken wings with him and Lynn. We're so lucky to have them both nearby. I miss my big crazy California family so badly, and one of my absolute favorite things to imagine about our wedding is having them all here together again. And I am just chomping at the bit to get to Seattle (next weekend!) and give my Mom one gigantic hug, followed by a series of smaller ones. It's been almost a year since we've seen her and I can't wait to spend a week on the lake with her and Kam (and Casey and Trent and a deck of cards!).

And of course you knew this was where I was going, but I love Austin. I'm not going to detail all the reasons that he's the man I'm going to marry (I've done that before and certainly will again) but the place where we are in our life together is just especially good right now. I am excited to see him EVERY DAY. How silly is that? I start to feel restless and shifty if it's been more than a couple of hours since I've checked in with him (thanks to IM and texting for completely spoiling me by having my fiance´ available to me at all times). We're on the same page about all these major decisions we've made in the past year and will be making in the next year. We're not exactly wealthy, but it's been a long while since we've had to look at anything and say, from a financial standpoint, "How are we going to make this work?" We carpool almost every day and talk about the stories we hear on NPR. If it sounds idyllic, it is. I can't think of an aspect of my life that isn't made better by just having him with me. We don't have to do everything together (see: FIFA Soccer) but when I'm walking around our house by myself, smiling, it's mostly because of him.

partial self-portrait

Delaney: Honey, what should I blog about tonight?

Austin: Susan Boyle.

Delaney: Babe. I don't even know enough about her to make it interesting, and I'm not going to be the billionth person to blog about her.

Austin: You should look up who performed AFTER Susan Boyle and write about that.

Delaney: This is not helpful.

Austin: I think that would be hilarious.

officially...

I don't remember when I became a wedding fanatic. It was certainly before I turned ten. My favorite game was dressing Barbie in a white gown and veil and inventing a ceremony. When I started doing the grocery shopping for my family, as soon as I turned sixteen, I would buy myself one bridal magazine per market run. Jonda, the nosy cashier at Food Lion, would say, "Who's getting married?!" when she ran the magazine across the scanner, and I'd just bluff it out and say I just liked the pictures. I have every issue of Martha Stewart Weddings since its inception in 1994. In college, I started keeping notes about my (fictional) future wedding in a book called Brides's All New Book of Etiquette. Some of my winner ideas from that time period include "non ruboff lipstick" and "bubble machine for dancing." I watched A Wedding Story obsessively and often planned my career as a wedding planner, which included watching the Jennifer Lopez movie at least once a month.

At some point when I was still very young, I got it in my head that I wanted to be married on May 15, the Ides of May. I apparently thought it was a lucky Irish day, although a quick google search tells me it is no such thing. But I fancied the way it sounded, the Ides of May, and looked far ahead on a perpetual calendar for a time when I was grownup enough to marry and May 15 fell on a Saturday. I decided May 15, 1999, was when I would be wed. I was confident that all minor details, including a groom, would fall into place in plenty of time.

I was 22 when 1999 rolled around, and, it turned out, way too young to get married. May 15 fell on a Saturday again in 2004, only a couple of months after Austin and I started dating, and I don't think I even noticed. Since college I've helped with and coordinated at least a dozen weddings for friends and family, and even one paying customer. Surely one of the happiest times of my life was two summers ago, when both my sisters were married in the same gorgeous, crazy weekend and I had a major hand in overseeing both events. I still collect MSW magazine and I still file away things that I love as being possible features for future wedding events. But realistically, I toned down my own expectations. I'm 31. I don't expect as much romance and passion out of everyday life as I might have when I was fifteen. Of course I had once invented a million fascinating ways in which my betrothed would surprise me with a proposal, but these fantasies, as with many of the other digressions of youth, have faded with maturity.

Five years ago on Friday was Austin's and my first kiss. January 30. It's the day we always celebrate as our anniversary. At lunch on Thursday, a coworker teased me, "Five year anniversary... sounds like proposal time to me..." I efficiently laid out all the reasons why I did not think this was likely. For one thing, Austin and I share finances now, so I would certainly know if he'd bought a ring. For another, he's not much into surprises. Additionally, both of my sisters were engaged on their five year anniversaries, and I didn't think Austin even knew that, but if he did, that was way too much pressure. No, I said, while I do think it's something that will come up soon, I think when it does we'll just talk about it, and maybe go ring shopping. I'm not expecting a grand gesture.

And I wasn't even lying to myself, I swear. These were all reasonable, logical truths, and Austin is a reasonable, logical man. It's certainly one of the things I love most about him. We had planned a sushi date for Friday night at Samurai, and I was just inordinately excited about dynamite and crispy rolls. In the afternoon, Casey asked if we'd want to go out for a drink with them after dinner, and I thought that sounded like a good plan. I picked Austin up after work and we headed to Elliston Place. When we got out of the car I pulled out his anniversary gift (the newest Shepard Fairey book), and he made an embarrassed face like he'd forgotten mine. I didn't think of it again.

We feasted on sushi (Dynamite, Crispy, Sunday Morning, Jane and Sushi Burrito) and Austin opened his gift and really, it was a perfect dinner date. We took a self-portrait while sitting at the sushi bar. The waitress offered to bring our check. Austin turned to me, looked me in the eye, and said, "Will you marry me?" He held out his hand with a ring box, opened to reveal a diamond solitaire on a slender silver band.

I just stared at the ring for a full moment. Wait, what? A diamond? This is happening right now? I looked back at Austin and squealed, "REALLY?!" and burst into tears. I was laughing and crying and kissing him and said, "YES!" The waitress brought our check, looked at me like I was crazy and hustled off. I just kept crying and holding Austin's face. I had this overwhelming feeling like I'd missed something, or that I didn't understand what was happening. The sushi chefs, and then our baffled waitress, congratulated us. Once I calmed down (a bit), Austin explained that he'd told Trent on Thursday, and Trent was scheduled to tell Casey right before we went to dinner, so by then they were both going to be dying to hear from us. I texted Casey and told her we were going to come by, was that ok, and she wrote back, "Yes!"

We drove to South Street and I just kept staring alternately at my hand and then at Austin in a total state of shock and awe. When we got to Casey and Trent's house, they were both overcome with excitement. There was much hugging and tears, and a bottle of champagne. I called Jenny to tell her, and then Mom (more squealing, more tears, etc). The four of us went to Rumours together, and I got to show Shannon the ring (more squealing, some jumping up and down, and free banana cake). I called Dad (Austin had already called him Friday afternoon) and Agnes (again, the squeals) and kept trying to track down Leia. We got sleepy, and were ready to be alone, and headed home to make a list of all the people we needed to tell the next day. Before we went to bed I called Amy and Aunt Paula. I couldn't believe this was finally the time that I could start talking about our own wedding without feeling like I was fooling myself.

But really, I just kept looking at Austin, and thinking, I'm going to marry this man. It's not like any of this (other than the proposal) is a surprise. We bought a home together, we share lives and family, I've never been so sure of anything. Literally. I would marry him tomorrow at the Wildhorse Saloon if that was the requirement to ensure that I get this man, only this one, for the rest of my life.

Already, people started asking if we'd set a date. When I'd begun to think about it, as early as when we bought the house, I'd thought fall of 2010 would be reasonable. That would give us plenty of time to plan and save, and it would be far enough after my sisters' weddings to not be too much of a financial burden, too soon, for my family who traveled here in 2007. Plus we've got an important wedding coming up this summer, which will require all of my creative resources, plus some financial ones as well, so I figured we could cruise on "engaged" until June, and then start making some decisions. But Saturday morning, we talked a bit about when we'd want to have a wedding, and Austin said he didn't want to wait until the fall. He suggested May of next year. I thought, "May? Hmm." And then I said, "I wonder which day of the week the 15th is on next year." And believe it or not, it's a Saturday.

So guess what? We're engaged. And we appear to have set a date.

lurb story

Four years, three weeks and four days ago, I drove to Hatch, running late as usual. It was a Monday, our first day back after the New Year holiday. Five new interns were starting that day, and we'd scheduled a training session for the morning. The new blood consisted of four girls and a boy. Two of the girls were from Harpeth Hall, a January tradition, the other two from different colleges up north. The boy was more of a mystery. In classic Hatch nepotism, which I both regularly protested and participated in, one day in the fall Jim had called up to the front of the shop, "One of my friends from high school is sending his kid down to intern with us sometime this winter!" I picked this as an opportune time to be a pain in the ass, and objected. "What do we know about him? Have we seen a resume or a portfolio? Do we even know his start date?" Jim, to his credit, at least obtained that last vital bit of information for me. There was a post-it left on my desk with the words, "Austin Gray. Salina. Jan 5."

The training session was already in full swing by the time I got into the shop. I made name tags when I got to my desk, and tried to distribute them by instinct, instead of asking who each new intern was. Austin was easy enough to pick out, the only new boy, so I slapped a name tag on his chest and thought, "Oh, he looks fine."

A week later, I had determined that he was, in fact, more than fine. He was funny. I was organizing some intern/staff bonding, and asked him what his plans were for the evening. He responded by saying he was probably going to wank it a few times, in this incredibly casual way that made me laugh before I even realized he was joking. I recruited him for a sushi and board game night, where we played a game called Kokology, from a book of quizzes I'd received for Christmas. Our quiz responses were supposed to give us insight into our psychology. The quiz we all took was about an imaginary amusement park, how we pictured our own experiences there. One of the questions was how long we expected to stand in line before getting on a roller coaster. My optimistic sisters, who obviously haven't spent time at Cedar Point, said there would be no line, no wait, just walk right up to the ride. Edan said, "Maybe five minutes?" I pragmatically predicted 45 minutes. Austin's response: "EONS." At the end of the quiz, it was revealed that our responses were supposed to be indicative of our attitudes toward sex, and specifically, our wait time for the roller coaster represented foreplay. Much giggling ensued...

Another week passed. Everyone at Hatch made plans to attend the Guilty Pleasures show at 12th and Porter, and I was frothing at the mouth with excitement. Austin left the show after the second song, and I was troubled by how mad this made me. Why should it matter? I knew he had a girlfriend at home in Kansas, although he occasionally exhibited an apathy about that situation that gave me a mean flare of happiness that I didn't want to examine. I was in a long-distance Thing with San Francisco. I wasn't supposed to care.

By the next week, Austin and I were either talking on the phone every night after work, or making plans together. Mostly still group activities, dinner, movie nights. He came to Jenny's birthday dinner with my sisters and their (now) husbands, but it Wasn't a Date. The next week he helped me make my famous chocolate and almond tart, and was joking around with the whisk, which was covered with ganache. He had chocolate all over his face and in his beard, and I remember thinking, for just one second, that I wanted to kiss it off his face. Uh oh.

January 30th was a Friday night. We had talked about going to the opening at Cheekwood with Casey and Trent, but it was too cold. We met a visiting friend of Austin's for a beer at Bosco's, and a couple of times I didn't move my leg away when it rested next to his under the bar. We took the friend back to his hotel and then picked up sushi from Ken's. We watched The Italian Job at my house while we ate. I had a blanket spread out over both of our knees. At one point I realized that his hand was on top of the blanket, on my knee, which was under the blanket, and I wasn't sure if he realized it, but didn't want to move my knee so as to not make a point out of it. Trent was in the living room talking to us, and Austin didn't move his hand. We were sort of snuggling without really discussing it. We sat on that couch and talked late into the night after the movie. We were reading Calvin and Hobbes books out loud to each other by the time the snuggling had become more overt, and then, eventually, turned into kissing.

And, I suppose, you know the rest. Or, to skim over the next two months, Austin went home to Kansas with the intent of returning to Nashville as soon as he found an apartment and a job. I visited and then sort of lost touch with San Francisco. Austin and I talked on the phone and IMed every day he was gone. I was becoming addicted to the sound of his voice. He came back the first weekend of March to sign a lease on an apartment, and we went out in public as a couple, and I got to meet most of the Jenkins family, with whom Austin had grown up and also stayed with during his internship. I suppose the clincher was the middle of March, when I went to Texas for South by Southwest with Jenny and Shannon. This trip also coincided with my birthday. I spent the entire trip either on the phone with Austin or seeing things that reminded me of him and I wanted to tell him about. I stayed back from a shopping excursion to talk to him for two hours. He had made me a beautiful birthday card and sent an incredibly thoughtful box of gifts. He was winning.

He moved to Nashville the last week of March and we have, literally, never looked back. Four years of inside jokes and amassing an embarrassingly large zoo of spoiled pets. Four years of ridiculous dances in the kitchen, and planting tomatoes, and holding hands thistight on airplanes. Four years of baseball games and guilty cheeseburgers and washing dishes. Four years of always having something to talk about, but also not always having to say anything. Four years of sharing family and history, and saying, "Sweet dreams," before we fall asleep, and slowly building this future that I'm so honored to be a part of.

Happy anniversary, my Boo. I love you the most of all.