Houston, we have a problem...

There is this thing called 'nesting' to which I have been recently introduced.  Nesting is usually defined as something a pregnant lady does ("Baby is coming. Must clean!!!"), but it is not uncommon for newlywed wives to also have this urge to build a home.

Feminists would absolutely balk at this.  That would mean that women are instinctually mothers.  I wonder how they explain their sudden needs to clean and decorate.  I believe that women are generally hardwired to lean toward certain tendencies that define what is feminine.  Nesting is certainly one of those things.

Nesting is a LOT of fun if you can do it.  You clean and de-clutter and rearrange and decorate.  You make the space that is yours much more your own.  You get this sudden urge to make it better.  Make it perfect.  Scrubbing, painting, moving, selling, giving away, buying.  Revamping!

Just this past weekend, my hubby and I made the move from his grandmother's basement to his parents' house.  We are switching places with them.  I use the term 'switching' in the present participle because we are still in the process.  To give you an indication, my man and I agreed at lunch that moving into an empty house is much easier.  That's why I'm calling Houston about a problem.  My nester is jammed!

Part of my problem is that I've had a long time to imagine (fantasize?) about what I could do with the space once we decided we had made the trade.  I think I have arrived at many unrealistic visions for not only our current monetary situation but also the shape of the space.  Not to mention, my vision is not like my husbands.  We had a funny moment the other day about his posters.  Michael has quite a collection of posters.  We moved the TV into place and looked at the blank wall space above it.  Michael wanted something there, and he said he had something in mind but I wouldn't like it.  He was right!  It was a Simpsons poster that looked like the Soprano's logo.  I'm ok with that in the computer room, I said, but not the living room.

Yet, my husband is the best thing for me during this.  My jammed nester is both frustrating and overwhelming to me.  There is so much left to do!  Michael calmly tells me to take it one room at a time, assures me we will get it done, and instructs me not to take on the whole house at once or I will breakdown (like I did today at lunch!).  His logic is good for my emotions.  :)

Tonight, we go home to unpack some more and make room for our wedding gifts which have been sitting unopened in my parents' basement since the wedding.  At some point, we'll un-bury our boxes of kitchen stuff and we'll buy groceries so I can start cooking and baking.  SO EXCITED for that.

Until next time, I'll be nesting and packing and unpacking and trying my best to keep my nester unjammed.

Transition

So the wedding is over.

The honeymoon is over.

Real life is back.

And it's not 'normal.'

When I was little, I was the Queen of Homesick at slumber parties.  We'd get ready for bed, lay down, and I'd listen to all of the unfamiliar sounds and just panic.  Not much later, I would be on the phone with my mom or dad begging them to come pick me up.  It was the unfamiliar that set me on edge.  The sounds.  The smells.  The routine.  It wasn't like 'at home.'

I finally grew mostly out of my homesickness by middle school.  I was able to cope a little bit better with the unfamiliar.  Then, I moved to college.  I went through a whole new kind of homesickness: the kind where there is no calling home and getting picked up and escaping the unfamiliar.  I had a few breakdowns within the first month, but then school became the new normal.  The new familiar.  It was still hard for the next 3 years whenever I left my family and home, but it got better because school was my second home.  Then later, the house I rented at school was a second home.

In each of these stages in my life, though, I knew that eventually I would be going home.  Home to the house I grew up in.  Home to the people I grew up with.  Now I am in a new stage of life.  A new state of life transition.  In this stage, I am making a new permanent home.  My new permanent home is with my Husband.  This stage is so much harder than I ever imagined.  It's hard to grasp the gravity of the event when while you're dating and engaged, the only thought you have is that you're tired of saying goodbye and you simply want to spend all of your time with your loved one.  After that thought though, you return to the familiar and you're robbed of the impact.

Well, that impact has hit full force now.  It is compounded by the fact that we currently do not have our new permanent home.  My nesting impulse is completely confounded.  I want to clean and decorate and rearrange and make a space ours.  But today, we're still in limbo, waiting for some sense of stability.  We are in a holding pattern for the next 2 weeks (we decided together).  I feel lost as to how to make this work.  It is so unlike anything else I've experienced.  I find it hard not to withdraw.  So, I need to reach out.

I reached out to my mother for help, and this was her advice to me:  It's all about attitude.  Pray for help with your attitude.  When I was 14, I went on a mission trip to Ukraine as a spoiled American brat.  I came back different.  I went again 2 more times, the last during college.  Right before I went on that trip, my attitude about life was awful.  I was fighting with everyone and downright depressed and miserable.  After going on the trip, my perspective was changed again.  My mom's advice continued:

At this point, tell yourself I can withstand anything for 2 weeks. Then think of all you saw in the Ukraine . . . it might help put things in perspective. It is not what you envisioned for yourself, but maybe it is right where you should be . . .

Thank you, Mom.  I guess I need to just breathe, rearrange and clean what space I have left, and pray desperately for God's help to help me see past the discomfort, the unfamiliar and the unstable.  All the while, I need to enjoy every second I have with my husband.  Find the joy in the moment.

And make new peace with the new 'normal.'

Matrimonious Decisions Pt. 1

This woulda helped. (borrowed from www.ecw-weddings.co.uk)

"So, honey, which ones?"

I stared at my list ... well, listlessly.  I didn't want to decide.  

Decisions have never been easy for me. Even the unimportant, stupid ones.  I kept staring. I had to answer my fiance eventually. 


A few weeks ago we started our wedding planning process. If you have any inclination as to what goes into wedding planning, you'll know that it involves COUNTLESS decisions on the part of the bride:

Venue. Budget. Reception. Flowers. Dresses. Tuxes. Decor. Vows. Ceremony. Wedding party. Guests. Food. *

(*Not necessarily in that order)

That Sunday afternoon, we decided to tackle the guest list.  I figured once we had that, we could have a better idea of what venues to look at which would help us guesstimate a budget.  We were kind of hoping to see roughly 200, if that.  My love opened a spreadsheet and made 3 columns:  Invite, Announcement, and Maybe.  I told him to start with his list.  He almost effortlessly stuck names in slots under the columns he desired.  Bam, bam, bam. They were all there.  Then it was my turn.

"Where should we start?"

Of course, my family went under "Invite" but they weren't the hard part (though knowing which of them will come is kind of a gamble).  Everyone else was.  Do I really need all of these people?  Old friends. College friends. Neighbors.

To give you a little insight into how I processed this, I will tell you I'm the kind of person who is a people-pleaser.  I don't like confrontation.  I have a hard time saying no to people.  Put simply, I'm a wuss.  There, I said it.  Now that you know that, to say trying to decide where to categorize my guests was frustrating would be accurate.  I didn't want to decide, but I knew I had to.

Eventually, we found a place for everyone (I'd be willing to say more than 3/4ths of my guests ended up in the "Invite" column still).  My fiance totaled it all up.

*Drumroll*

Tadaa! More than 400 people total in the columns! OMG. Really. So much for me being decisive. "Just throw them all in the 'Invite' column. We'll be fine."

This wedding planning is going to be ... an experience.