You know, that annoying place where your friends go and are suddenly rendered unable to return phone calls, make lunch dates without checking her boyfriend’s schedule, or stay in a conversation for more than five minutes before saying the words “We” and “Oh that reminds me of this one time with Boy, when” (proceeds to share something completely irrelevant that makes her smile at the end of her story and stare off into space while you stare at her and resume eating your chicken tenders).

So my friend says “Boyfriend world.” And I said, “No! I totally haven’t been consumed by my relationship, which by the way reminds me that it’s just 11 days away from being two years since I walked int0 Starbucks at 8:45 a.m. before my first-day-of-the-internship-HR-meeting and got myself a grande nonfat latte and a big ‘ol crush on the barista. So anyway… wait what were we talking about?”

(No but really it’s almost been two years!)

So am I in boyfriend world, and that’s why I’m not blogging? Sure, a little. But also:

Because it’s hard to blog at home when you blog all day at work.

I write, all the time. All day, everyday. And I don’t even mean I write e-mails all day, because that’s what people do when they have desk jobs that require sitting at desks communicating via e-mail and IMs 8 hours a day. I’m required to write sentences and taglines and paragraphs and posts and scripts and entire websites that read well, are grammatically accurate, are engaging and innovative and make people want to come back for more.

And I love every minute of it.

But at the end of the day, I cannot write for myself. There’s rarely a time when I get home and think, “Man that was a great day in front of my laptop. This day could only get better if I voluntarily spent two more hours in front of it.”

That said, the best writing still comes on my couch in pjs while eating ice cream. Luckily, I’m nearly positive I could tell my bosses, “Hey, I’m going to spend the day writing all the words while sitting on my couch in my pjs eating ice cream,” and they’d say okay.

Because I don’t want to be the girl in boyfriend world who writes about how *awesome* boyfriend world is.

Because nobody likes that girl. Also because that girl will only write about the *perfect* parts of their relationship and is unlikely to blog about the bad, or less good, days. It’s like these blogs need disclaimers: “I am only going to tell you the good stuff. You can assume I have snapped at, argued with, debated with, been frustrated with or otherwise had a not-perfect day with my boyfriend. But I’m only going to blog about the sunshine, glitter, roses and knight in shining armor that rescued me on his unicorn.”

Because I’m less inclined now to feel the need to take a day-trip to Cooperstown, and then come home and write about our day-trip to Cooperstown.

Though I’m not above posting an Instagram selfie of myself in the sweet hat I borrowed.

Because I’ve gotten past the point where I need feedback on my every move.

There was this day junior year of college. Before any internships or relevant job experience or any understanding of what I wanted to do. There was this career fair that I went to completely panicked because I was sure I’d never find a job (I hadn’t even officially declared my major yet – PR and Political Science) ever.

And I made eye contact with this girl with a blonde ponytail, who offered me an interview the next day to be an insurance saleswoman.

And I called my dad, “And they LET YOU BORROW THE COMPANY CAR!”

Now, this is absolutely nothing against insurance agents. It’s a great way to make a living. But it was also a sign that I had no idea what I wanted.

So I did the interview (it made me almost miss the sign-up for the Habitat for Humanity trip to Jacksonville, Florida that would impact my life more than this interview ever would). And then I came home and wrote all about it, so someone might pipe in on the comments section and give me all the answers as to what I should do if they offered me a second interview.

I have less questions now. Right now, at least. I’m sure I will in the future.

Because I’m trying less to over-think everything.

Because I do that a lot. And for years, that’s what my blogs were – lots of over-thinking written and shared. A good outlet for it then, but I’m doing it less. Because I used to panic and write and publish. And now, when I’m over-thinking and emotionally spiraling because a lovely lunch with Ryan’s grandma or his cousin’s baby shower makes me go “OUR CROSS-COUNTRY GRANDMAS ARE NEVER GOING TO BE AT THE SAME THANKSGIVING DINNER TABLE and IM NEVER GOING TO SEE ALL MY CALIFORNIA COUSINS’ BABIES UNTIL THEY’RE TOO OLD TO BE BABIES” – it’s not healthy. There are real forums now like living rooms where I can work that out without putting it online.

In my need to not over-think, I’ve taken up painting. Because since I’ll never do it for money, even if I screw it up, I can just paint another layer. And it’s really relaxing, especially when I’m not attempting to paint anything all that realistic.

Like here, with a bunch of blotches.

Which became a bunch of other color blotches.

And then I started to paint this blue background and realized that you can’t paint a background after you paint the foreground, so I covered it with a bunch of white blotches. And then I made a tree.

And at 10:30 p.m., in the time it takes to write a blog post, I was done.

So that’s why I haven’t been blogging.

There will be more posts. Some time from now, if I’m lucky, I’ll write a crazy pre-wedding series about how I have NO idea what flowers to pick or music to play and I’ll have the best Mommy Blog ever, written by myself, the mom afraid of cooking bacon for her kids because grease splatters terrify me. And I’ll write the “How I FINALLY got my children’s books published” post. Someday.

But for now, it’s a little less.

That’s what’s going on. Off to dinner while the sun’s still up!

I got home from work today to find he’d left the office, gone to the grocery store and was already halfway through prepping dinner. A really pretty, colorful dinner.

Tonight – jambalaya. That’s rice, chicken, sausage, shrimp, peppers, celery, tomato, onion, garlic, lots of spices, broth… other ingredients?

Yum.

New record – I haven’t eaten a frozen dinner in more than four months. And he made shelves this week, so now I have to figure out how we’re going to decorate all of them. Eeyore and The Christmas Story lamp make me laugh.

(Thank you paperballpotluck for sharing your artwork with me!)

Dinner tonight (and lunch tomorrow) – shrimp scampi with blackened scallops…

So now, we just need some friends to join us in eating all this food all the time. Come on over!

Note on painting, round 2 –  this didn’t go as well as last weekend’s first attempt. New rules for round 3 – don’t try to paint people, or ferris wheels (which you will make three attempts at before deciding sky is good enough).

Hope everybody had a great weekend!

It’s been awhile. I’ve had trouble writing on this blog lately – no new photo albums to share, no terribly crazy stories to tell (which sometimes is a good thing!), and not much at all to complain about. Also, I find the more I write at work, the less I’ve been writing at home. Not necessarily a bad thing, since I love what I write at work, but it is a big change.

I’ve been busy – good busy – taking on new tasks at work and loving it. Coming up with commercial concepts and writing them. Casting them. Working with our motion department – crazy talented guys. I heard a radio ad I wrote the other day, and as its as close as I’ll ever be to being on the radio, rockstar I am not, it filled me with glee to hear my little commercial. Silly, but it was a good moment.

At home, I got a few of my favorite photos from Europe printed on canvas this month – it’s been more than a year since I started planning on doing this, and I finally could get it done. Excuse the iPhone photos – like I said, I’ve been lazy with my photo taking recently. The original photos, from September – December 2011 are below, too.

And my new addiction to canvas doesn’t stop there. Though I haven’t painted since high school art class (and wasn’t all that good then), I figured since I’m not really writing or taking photos in my free time lately, why not try a new hobby. It’ll be fun.

Round one, last Saturday night, based off my photo from Mondsee, Austria.

I felt pretty good about round one. Even though painting while sitting crisscross on the floor left me terribly sore, and the four hours of concentration left me with the worst headache I’d had in a long time. I laughed when I woke up the other morning because Ryan had already hung it up on display in our hallway while I was sleeping. Geez.

That said, round two I can’t post because I only had one big fat blunt brush to do these two paintings (I wasn’t making that big of an investment in my painting career my first trip to the store), and my people in this new painting currently look like big, puffy, furry Bigfoots going to the park. Also, painting is really hard. We’ll see how that one turns out.

And finally, when I’m not painting, we’re unpainting. Here’s a peek at the massive project we started this weekend. Our 150-year-old mantel has at least six layers of paint on it, shaky sloppy black stripes and a really pretty natural wood that takes hours to reach.

So that’s what I’m up to. Off to eat some Ben & Jerry’s peanut butter cup ice cream. Now, what are you all up to?

And I start crying.

But just how did a day trip to Boston get so emotional?

Let’s go back.

It’s a milestone birthday for Ryan, and I wanted to do something big. Of course, my original idea of two nights in a hotel in Boston with meals and touring and the museum of science (note: astronomy is big in this household) was too expensive and not something we had time for now. So it was scaled down to a day trip – the museum and a nice seafood dinner.

We’d been to the science museum in Schenectady and had a blast. This little, fun educational space that we’d been to twice – and on quiet days. Meaning us grown-ups could play all the games and do all the hands-on science exhibits like play with giant magnets and peer inside MRI machines and look through all the microscopes and be dorks.

So when you go to the Museum of Science in Boston? On a Saturday? It’s not quiet. Actually, it’s crazy busy with hundreds of small children. Who make you feel old. And their parents, who are looking at you like, “Where’d you lose your child?”

You don’t end up standing in line for the little hands-on exhibits where you can compare your hand size to a gorilla’s or hold onto something and make your hair static-y or close one eye to see the optical illusion. Because there’s a 5-year-old in line in front of you and a 7-year-old in line behind you. And their mom is holding their crying 2-year-old sister who is in need of a diaper change.

And you feel old. And dorky. And like you should probably not be in line.

No big deal – two awesome planetarium shows and a seafood dinner, right? It’s a great day!

Except between leaving the planetarium and the gift shop and losing my debit card (in my own car), it’s getting late. And my cell phone battery is getting low, and I need it to guide us home. So I pull up directions to the restaurant 1.5 miles away – but don’t turn the navigator on.

And then I miss so many turns and dodge so many near-accidents I create over the next 20 minutes that I end up stuck driving in a one-mile-long one-way tunnel toward an airport.

And I start crying. I’m stuck in this tunnel to Not Seafood Dinner, and I’m crying.

And it’s getting too late to do a nice dinner in Boston (also, I’ve been crying and am thus a mess), and it’s time to just set the navigator home.

And I’m crying.

Note that Ryan hasn’t complained, this entire time.

It’s just me, and I’m still flipping crying.

For the next two-and-a-half hours, because I cannot pull myself together. Basically because we aren’t getting crab cakes and clam chowder.

Also because my perfect birthday plans didn’t quite go as planned.

See, I freaked out because it shouldn’t have been that hard to make fancy dinner happen. Ryan makes dinner every night. That salad above? Tonight’s dinner. It was ready when I got home.

I didn’t even have to make that Boston dinner. I just had to get us there.

And instead, I’m in a one-way one-mile-long tunnel to the airport/Not Dinner.

“I’m-just-(sniff)-setting-the-(shudder)-navig-(sniff)-ator-home-to-Troy.”

In his good boyfriend way, Ryan said how he was just happy to spend the day with me, dinner wherever was fine. My internal crazy girl reaction to that? “YEAH BUT SOMEDAY THAT’S GOING TO GET OLD AND THAT’S NOT GOING TO BE ENOUGH AND SOMEDAY YOU’RE GOING TO BE MAD BECAUSE I COULDN’T GET YOU TO THE RESTAURANT FOR CLAM CHOWDER AND CRAB CAKES.”

Internal reaction. External? You’re right, I’m still just crying.

Now it’s 8:30 p.m. on the following Thursday. The world didn’t end when we didn’t get crab cakes and clam chowder. Neither did the relationship. Even after I spent 2.5 hours unable to talk as I drove in snow from Boston, only able to wipe the tears from my eyes because I felt like the day was ruined, thus the birthday was ruined, thus EVERYTHING EVER IS RUINED FOREVER.

Actually, it’s 8:30 p.m. on the following Thursday and everything’s fine. Because things don’t always go as planned and life goes on. And the biggest bummer about the science museum day isn’t the clam chowder (which would have made us get home hours later and we were already zombies) or that we didn’t “play” at all the exhibits (because kids are cute to watch love science) but that our new solar power lamp that lights up and makes a stick-figure biker pedal… doesn’t actually work.

It’s 8:30 p.m. and Family Feud is on television. The dishes are washed, the coffee is in the coffee maker ready to brew tomorrow morning. When Family Feud is over, I’ll turn on James Taylor’s Greatest Hits on the record player and celebrate the fact that the world didn’t end when we didn’t get crab cakes for dinner. That instead, the Italian food we picked up on the way home and ate while chatting and watching Hoarders… was a good dinner.

Now, the whole story kinda gives me the giggles. Because really – it was okay.

Even if I broke down – in tears – in the middle of the Lieutenant William F. Callahan Tunnel.

We all have those days, right?

Please, share your unnecessary freakout story. I want to know.

So I’m thinking. And thinking quick, because quite honestly, I convinced myself until 2p.m. today this talk was tomorrow night.

It’s all about stories, right? I used to be embarrassed when I said I blogged because that – even to me – sounded like “Yeah, I go home and write about what I did that day, sometimes what I ate that day, and I hit publish and hope people will read it because I think I’m important, or at least mildly interesting.”

But no one wants to read that – maybe your parents, grandma, exes checking the blog to see who’s winning the breakup. No one else.

It’s all telling stories. I’ve tried it in various ways for years, through writing, through photos, through a mix… four years ago on my way home from college, it was taking a Flip Camera on the airplane and editing together my first iMovie project.

You want to create something that inspires some reaction – a laugh, a smile, self reflection, a moment of distraction for someone having a bad day. A call to action.

To me, that’s the most important part of creating something people would want to share. The story. That reaction I talked about last night. And then after that, maybe you slightly up the amount of people who will click on it/share it because you made a photo you took of a crazy cat the featured image.

These caught my attention today. Both made me react – with tears, no less. If you have the time, take it to watch. Don’t stop either after two minutes – they start good and they both get better.

Awesome storytelling. One happy, one serious. Both make you think.

It’s 2013, and it’s February 19, and I’ve posted 3 times.

And I go into a slight panic about where it all went, the posts I’m not writing, the photographs I’m not taking – the readership I’m surely losing as you all forget about me, moving on to bigger and better and more loyal bloggers… I panic about all that writing logged by 23 and at 23.5 and a day, where have all my words gone?

And then I relax. Because it’s February 19, 2013, it’s 7:21 p.m, Jeopardy is set to be DVR’d in the other room, and I am relaxed. It’s after a busy work day I’m sure to continue after I post, but for now I am back at my blog, rambling as the posts have always all have been and more so tonight because I’m rusty, and I’m sitting at my desk.

The apartment’s desk, on the day it was built.

Never one to be a neat freak, organizer or decorator, I’d spent my college dorm years allowing my roommates to do the decorating or equally falling into messiness with me. In my previously apartment, lightly decorated with items from TJMaxx and Marshalls, my cousin and I shared pleasant, comfortable common areas devoid of anything too personal or of any important memorable items.

It’s 7:28 p.m. and I have the apartment to myself for a few hours. I look around at two worlds combined oddly well. A painting from my grandmother’s home hung next to the printed article he got published in 2005. My travel journal filled with treasured receipts and handwritten notes next to his row of his treasured first edition, signed antique books. In more unintentional packing, my childhood teddy bears rest on the window sill next to his Christmas Story leg lamp.

I remember when I started blogging in 2008, it was to seek attention – not in an annoying, look at me, look at me way – the first posts came at times of insecurity. Where questions were asked and I just wanted to know if my friends were going through the same thing. While travels posts from times abroad were documented for family, friends, my own memory, much of the personal at home writing was asking questions to see who answered, how they answered, what they answered with. How many answered. Blogging was the public diary filled with raw emotions about (lack of) dating, panic about what we’d become when we grow up, curiosity of knowing – I’m thinking this, what is your reaction? I’m worried about this, what is your reaction?

Now I look at the map of my backpacking travels framed and hung over his record players, and I think about how much more of 2012, and 2013 almost entirely, has been spent without asking for reactions from the public on every step. Without that need to share what I did, without a hunger for feedback to know what I did was right, interesting, worth commenting.

As I read Roger Ebert’s Life Itself, I wonder if I’d ever be able to sit down and write 400 pages about life, start to finish as a single project over the span of a few months or years. 100 pages on my childhood. 100 on my adolescence. 100 on my adulthood. 100 on what I’ve learned. I wonder if I could do it, but I worry less about the number of people and who would read it, I worry more about doing everything to make those 400 pages interesting.

Every day, I find there’s so much more to learn out there. Working at Overit, my job has changed from public relations to branding and content. And every day, for a different client, a different industry to learn. Different statistics, facts and FAQs, different demographics and tips and how-to’s and don’t to this and this is why that industry does what it does. It’s understanding here is what our audience is thinking, how can we get them to react? Here is our message, what is their reaction?

And for me, a large part of every day is writing those messages. For print, for web, for social, for blogs, for television, for radio. For grandpas and sons and grandsons, for grandmas and daughters and granddaughters.

It’s a shift in what I’m writing, but it’s still writing – and it’s fun.

And on days when it’s 7:57 p.m. and I have the house to myself and I haven’t written here in awhile, I’ll reconnect to share a goofy story. Or a thought. Maybe the random question. Or I’ll jump on to tell the world I bought a salsa colored couch over the holiday weekend and I’m excited about it, even though the furniture store won’t tell us until the day of delivery what three hour window they’ll be dropping it off, making that a nightmare of a work schedule that day. Maybe I’ll have a giggle at every time Ryan and I pull out two debit cards to split our purchase and the cashier looks at us in disgust before stomping back to their manager’s office to dig up a calculator to divide our $47 total in two. Maybe I’ll share how cleaning out my car this weekend made me react as gleefully as people at the end of Hoarders episodes do, when they realize they had forgotten how clean and organized life really could be.

I don’t know. But at 8:03 p.m. on Tuesday, February 19, I’m twenty three point five and a day old and I’m a way worse blogger than I was at twenty two, but I’ve got to go, because I’ve got some reading and learning and writing to do… off the blog.

The apartment is nearly done – as done as it can be until spring when we can open the windows and paint the walls, which leads to new curtains and photos hung. It’s hard to believe we’ve been here for a month already. I haven’t blogged a lot recently for a number of reasons – 1) I lost my camera charger in the move and it’s been a traumatic photo-less couple of weeks, 2) I’ve had a lot of writer’s block lately when it comes to this blog, 3) When I spend 8 hours writing on my laptop at work, I avoid it when I get home, and 4) Ryan and I had this bright idea of chipping all the crappy white paint off the metal radiator in the bathroom bit by bit with a screwdriver and until that tedious project’s done, my schedule’s pretty booked.

We’ve been at our apartment a month. I left the keys at my old apartment yesterday – goodbye for good to my first post-college New York home. And as of tomorrow, I’ll have officially been back in New York an entire year. And in a week, an “official” girlfriend for a year.

Good decision on the move, past self.

So living with the boy, one month in. We have come to grips that every single work day, he will wake me up before I intend to be up. And that every single weekend day, I will wake him up because I can’t sleep in any longer and I have a headache.

And you’re thinking to yourself, you wake up on the weekends with headaches? Why so many hangovers? Take it easy.

When really - 

Headaches. For some people prone to headaches, sleeping longer than usual on a weekend or vacation can cause head pain. Researchers believe this is due to the effect oversleeping has on certain neurotransmitters in the brain, including serotonin. – WebMD

Another total bummer Internet diagnosis –

The way one doctor explained this to me years ago, was that your stress level is at a certain level during the week and once you relax for the weekend it triggers the migraine.

I’d so much rather it be a hangover – “You had too much fun last night.”

But no. “You got too much sleep last night.”

We’ve also come to figure out what shows we’ll mutually enjoy, since I, who apparently lacks interest in life’s miracles, don’t relax to documentaries about dinosaur mummies and Ryan’s idea of a good time does not always involve Friends and Sex and the City.

So, to find the happy medium, we’ve somehow calculated that Dinosaur Mummy Show plus Friends divided by two equals…

Hoarders. Every episode of Hoarders that comes on television. We went out to dinner Friday night and had a 3-episode marathon being DVR’d at home for our return.

We also like Jeopardy, even when I yell at the Teen Jeopardy contestants for being stupid. I’m just saying, if three genius teenagers’ answers to “This flavor of Cap’n Crunch…” is “Oops All Berries” (a one-year promo kind), “Cinnamon Toast Crunch” and (no answer), you’re going to get me yelling “PEANUT BUTTER” at the television. Because everybody knows that Peanut Butter Crunch has been around forever, just six years less than the original.

Living together’s fun. Even if it means sometimes I have someone staring at me intensely while I brush my teeth just to make me self-conscious about any possible stray toothpaste situation. And now I have someone around who might grab the Tylenol for my Saturday morning sleep-in headaches and I have to get over my inability to swallow a pill gracefully.

And sometimes you forget there’s another person in the other room, so you’re doing the dishes in the kitchen and in your own little world, and you hear, “Babe, were you just singing in there?”

And you go, “Um, no, nope I definitely wasn’t. Maybe I was humming to myself and didn’t notice?”

Because I’m certainly not going to get caught singing to myself. Especially by The Boyfriend Who Sings.

So maybe I’ll admit to humming unknowingly maybe, admitting to that with a side dose of causing the boy to think he was hearing things. Because I’m definitely not going to admit singing to myself while I do the dishes. Maybe if I was good. Or the song was good. But I’m not a good singer. And especially not if the song is something lame and cheesy, you know, like on the lines of Celine Dion and Andrea Bocelli’s The Prayer.

Which it was.

No, I’d much rather just let the boy feel like he was hearing things.

Reading the stats on what gets read – or what leads you to this blog – cracks me up. Because, if this blog in some way, shape or form, represents or shares the happenings going on in my life, maybe the search results leading to it might summarize my life, as well.

Or – maybe not at all. 

January search terms leading to my blog include:

• “Bulgarian webcam girls”
• “Math Powerpuff girls” 
• “I love a good Facebook fight” 
• Sad pictures of boys and girls in love” 
• “Man embraces a girl in Lisbon” 
• “I’m not in the mood to socialize”
  
• “I need to get towed but my car is parallel parked between two others” 
• “Was I about to get robbed but then they backed out?” 
• “Eleven more years eleven more beers”
  
• “Children having babies”
• “A love poem to no one in particular”
• “Rival crock-pots”

Welcome, Googlers. Sorry you never found what you were looking for.

January 2013 is a blur. We’ve already been in our apartment for more than two weeks. I’ve relearned how to make a pot of coffee, conditioned myself to always put the cap back on our the toothpaste and watched Back to the Future for the first time. I now make breakfast at home, bring a bag lunch to work and eat home cooked dinners – and there isn’t a single Stouffer’s/Lean Cuisine/Healthy Choice frozen meal in the freezer.

I met a neighbor the other night. I was waiting outside to meet someone for a ride, and unintentionally was a bystander watching a scene unfold as a firetruck, ambulance and cop cars attended to a situation at the building next door. Not wanting to be that nosy person, I faced the other way and tried to appear oblivious to the situation I did not intend to be spying on.

Two guys walking down the street come up to me – “Hey, is everything okay???”

Apparently I’d made myself oblivious enough to the situation unfolding, because the words out of my mouth were, “Yeah, everything’s great! … OH you mean that. Yeah… yeah no, I don’t know. I don’t know them. I don’t know if everything’s great.”

(What the hell, Janae?)

So one of them says, “Oh okay, well I just wanted to check. I just moved into the neighborhood.”

And I say, “No kidding, yeah me too.”

And then he says, “Well – if you ever need anything… I’m like Batman.”

To which I said – “You’re… you’re like Batman?”

“Yeah – except without all the cool things. But I’m like, really good in a fight.“

And then they walked away!

And I stood there in a fit of giggles.

People make me laugh.

Then we got an apartment (and he got a new job). Welcome to 2013. Hello blog, it’s been busy. We’ve been unpacking, and I’ve been making my way through the 1200 vinyl records I now live with.

Both our names are on the same mailbox. We co-own estate sale-located furniture. When we get home from a date night, either one of us can unlock the door with our identical keys. We split the grocery bill. Not only did he give me space on his bookshelves, our books are all mixed up and alphabetized together! My Tom Brokaw next to his Charles Bukowski! (My nerdy heart skips beats – “He likes me! He really likes me!)

We moved into our new apartment last week – two bedrooms, kitchen, bathroom, living room – which we’ll quickly convert to one bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, two living rooms. Thus someone always has an escape den to write their blog/music while the other watches the Mets/The Bachelor.

The funny thing about living with the boy every day? You totally see him like, every day. Even on your sick days after stuffed-up nights spent snoring and sleeping sitting up.

This weekend, I had a major head cold. I spent time Saturday evening cleaning my old apartment, and in the ensuing hours, sneezing every 75 seconds spent awake.

So, it’s late, I’ve taken cold medicine. I’m tired. I’m sneezy and snotty and hazy.

And as I reach down to throw away a tissue in the trash can, I realize there’s no bag in it. But there’s bubble wrap and an empty paper towel roll inside already. So can I throw something away in it? Or should I get a bag. I mean, I don’t really care. But is that messy? I don’t want to be the messy girlfriend, throwing away a tissue in a trash can without a bag. But I can always get a bag later…

It’s quite the riveting internal monologue.

Except, unknown to me, it wasn’t entirely internal.

No, he was watching me mutter half sentences while stooped over a trash can.

Inducing a panic that his unceasingly sneezing, possibly feverish girlfriend was having some sort of medicine/flu-induced episode.

You know what’s really lame? Explaining to your boyfriend that you were having an internal monologue out loud about whether or not you should put your tissue in the trash can that doesn’t have a garbage bag but already has trash in it.

When you have a same-area-code-otherwise-long-distance relationship, you’re pretty ecstatic every time you see your significant other because you have made it to your date destination with the knowledge “We both made the date commute without getting a flat tire/pulled over/rear-ended/and it’s not even past dinner time yet!”

Now, we see each other every day (I think we’re still pretty ecstatic about it – I’ll let you know after week two). He makes the coffee, I make the bed. Actually, he makes the coffee before I’m even out of bed, and I wake up to a mug on my nightstand… and then I get up and make the bed.

And at the end of every day, we talk about our days. Not on the phone anymore.

And the thing about talking about your day at the end of every day? Not every day is a great day. Sometimes, it’s really stressful. Sometimes it’s something family-related, friend-related, work-related, health-related, your sports team lost, your errand didn’t go as planned, you’re sleepy, you’re cranky, you’re frustrated.

Some days, you have a bad day and your boyfriend goes to heat up leftovers to make you dinner. Your kitchen counter still isn’t installed so there’s a lot of clutter. And he goes to heat up your spaghetti and meatballs in the microwave but the kitchen fuse blows because he was toasting you Italian bread in the toaster oven. So he replaces the fuse, removes the bread from the oven, and on the way back to the microwave, the plate of spaghetti falls meatball-down into the clutter.

And you enter the kitchen (and you the cranky girl can’t suppress a giggle because there’s a meatball on the kitchen floor with a bunch of squiggly macaroni), you make eye contact, you let out a mutual “aghhh!” because what else are you going to do when you’re both already frustrated and fuses are blowing and meatballs are on the floor. It’s no use crying over spilt meatballs.

And then you spend your post workday relaxing night together going to Wal-Mart to buy extra fuses because it’s already 9 p.m. and that’s the only place open, and by the time you’re back, it’s time to drink Sleepytime Tea and call it a day.

But the fun part about this new every day situation, even for the cranky days, is that after today comes tomorrow. And tomorrow will start with a new mug of coffee and a “Have a great day!” on our way out the door. It might not be a perfect day – one of us might have something really frustrating happen or spill a meatball again.

But it’s a new adventure. Which we all know means new stories.