stay (far away, so close)

I recognize that my marriage situation is atypical and not traditionally ideal.  Whenever I tell someone "My husband lives in Quad Cities, where he's a college professor", I get raised eyebrows and inevitable comments about "how hard that is for the first year of marriage" and "it takes a lot of work to pull off a long distance marriage".  Well intentioned, and empathic for the most part.  Sweet, advice-giving, honest.  And correct.  And by all accounts, I, too, expected that living in a different city from my new husband would SUCK.

It does, sort of.  But in other ways, we're really just side-stepped a lot of things that it sounds like many newlymarrieds argue about.  Like dishes and laundry and cleaning and money and stuff.  For now, we each take care of that stuff ourselves.  Seperate households and all that.  So REALLY, it will probably be the summer and coming years that will be a really tricky renegotiation.  Because for two people who have lived pretty independently for several years now, living on our own isn't particularly problematic.  It will be the delayed melding of our money and chores and time that could be veeerrrry interesting.

We talk at least 4 times a day, and we can just talk about personal stuff.  Because we don't need to talk about who is going to get the groceries, or wrangle over whether or not to accept a dinner invitation, or chit-chat about other chore-type stuff.  We talk about our days, our dreams, our ideas, a cool flower he saw in someone's garden, a funny picture I took of AugDog.  It feels close and sweet and funny and good. 

He's so busy and swamped with his work and his writing, I think it is probably easier for me that he is working so diligently on the other side of the state.  I would go nutso if he were here, at our table, working 15 hour days.  It would be harder for him to get work done, and he would be more stressed out.  Which would make ME more stressed out.  So we get to enjoy our weekends.  And we DO enjoy our weekends.

I'm looking forward to his fall break, and hopefully going on a mini road trip.  And I'm really REALLY looking forward to this year of crazy work paying off for him, so that he can get a permanent job somewhere.  Somewhere we can live together.  Sooner or later, I know we'll have to figure out that money stuff, laundry, groceries, and mutual plans together.  But for now, I'm just very thankful that everything is going as well as it it. 

Yeah, it does stink to STILL be the "single married girl" 3rd or 5th wheel sometimes. And I hate going to things like shows and parties and birthday dinners without him, but all in all we have very little to complain about. He loves his job, we love each other, and we have AugDog.  The Lord has been very very good to us, and we are superthankful.