L-O-V-E

TGIF! I'm sitting at Starbucks finishing up some last minute A/P reading (aka blogging? Shame on me) having just had my weekly Friday coffee with Mer. In a few minutes I will be headed to the dance studio where the inundation of love and craziness with the preschoolers will begin. The insanity will last until about 11 pm tonight so I'm embracing the quiet while I can. Moving right along...it's been a great week of work, school, revelations and AHEM, engagements??? YAY JON AND SHANNON!!!!!!!!!!! :) :) :) I am so happy for them! They are an incredible model of love. Couldn't be more delighted by this news! Interestingly, the fact that they have me thinking about "models of love" is sort of spurring my post today. Sometimes I feel like I grew up watching too many Disney movies and was quickly disillusioned with relationships as a teenager and college student. Where was the knight in shining armor with the flowers and dazzling smile? I thought for a long time that I wasn't the relationship "type" since no one could meet those expectations. BUT, I am slowly learning that you can't judge love by Cinderella. What you CAN take from those cheesy classics are core virtues: not judging a book by its cover, perseverance, sacrifice, inner beauty, doing what's right, standing up for what you believe in, etc. After all, I'm no damsel crying over a lost shoe. I am not a sweet songbird who cooks and cleans for 7 little men with a smile. I'm a hotheaded, passionate, sensitive, at times pain in the ass kind of girl. Not that I don't love a good slow dance or the smell of freshly baked cookies. It's just in my fairytale the 7 little men do the cooking while I'm at work and we salsa instead of waltz. I digress. Part of being in my "big girl relationship" with Chris has taught me lots about the age old adage "for better or worse." I used to date people, bottle up my frustrations and then finally reach a breaking point which usually ended in some explosive phone conversation and break up. But now I'm trying to take a new approach. Allowing myself to be frustrated, talking about things instead of exploding five weeks after the fact and working through the hard times. And I would say, given the roller coaster ride of this last year, Chris and I have done a stellar job with our "sticktoitiveness." We laugh and fight and talk, but we never give up on what we have and that is the part of my fairytale that I love. I am learning that my dream man may get more excited about a basketball game than an art exhibit but that he also gives the best head rubs when I can't fall asleep. He may not have ridden in on a white horse, but he does hilarious impersonations. And though neither of us are Emeril, we have mastered the art of mac n cheese together. :) And really, who wouldn't take a head rub, good laugh, and some home cooking over all the rest of that stuff?? I think movies and books give us the building blocks for what love looks like but it's up to us to make it our own. And even though we still get horribly frustrated with each other about how slow he packs or how the dishes I wash inevitably need to be rewashed, there is still a whole lot of mismatched, unexplainble, butterfly-inducing love. And I mean, don't be jealous, but here's a great example of this man I found :
May you all find this sort of hilarious love that can puzzle, humor, and make you smile all at once. Lots of love from the girl from New England/the Midwest/soon to be Southwest.