Happy days.

[same_sky]

I'm liking this vacation time with the boy at home. We haven't done a whole lot today except eat junk food and do exactly what we want to do. Well, actually, that's not true. I've been very productive with Mosaic Minds stuff and I've written my required Nano words. I just haven't done a whole lot of stuff that doesn't involve a keyboard and mouse. :) We were up very late last night and expect to be so again tonight. I even had a mini-nap. In short, it's the kind of day we had for about a year when we first got married.

M arrived here in late October of 2000 and we were married in mid-November. We had haggled with Sven the Travel Guy until M's flight came in at the Atlanta airport, which is the only one that regularly gives the correct authorization for fiance visa holders to begin working immediately. This permit is valid for three months, but by then,ideally you've gotten more permanent (one year) authorization. So this temporary permit expired at the end of January. What we had not expected was that he would still be without a job. Turned out to be okay, really, since his semi-permanent work authorization was late in arriving.

By then, I was in my last semester of college. The money was actually not really an issue. M sold a house and two cars, as well as some of his stock in Dell, before he moved. It was over a year before he started working at a profitable job. (I'm not counting his stint selling life insurance, because we actually lost money on that in the long run.) We lived pretty frugally, but we still spent money that we could have put towards a house. If I think about that too much, it sounds horribly irresponsible.

Do I regret it? Not a chance. The only thing I regret, actually, is that we didn't know at the time how and when it would end, so we were beginning to get a little stressed out. But for over a year, we had an extended honeymoon. We stayed up late, we played network games, we got involved in small home-improvement projects. We learned what it was really like to live together. We played house. We made midnight runs to the 24-hour WalMart in Mt. Sterling, because ours closes at 10 and we suddenly remembered that we could not live another moment without a new printer. We went shopping in Lexington and didn't buy a single thing. We spent time with my family. We spent a week reading Anne Rice and listening to Garbage much too loudly. We jaunted off on weekend trips to Gatlinburg, where we spent two nights, bought very little, and spent the entire time in the pool. We went into the concession business and hawked shake-up lemonade and ice cream at Poppy Mountain. We ate a lot of corn dogs while I learned to cook.

It was absolutely fantastic.

So we spent the better part of a small house. So what? We spent the first year of our marriage in love and deliriously happy. It's only money, right? We discussed once how things might be different if we both worked right away. Maybe we would have learned what fighting is like, maybe our marriage wouldn't be as strong now. It's hard to say how things might have been different.

I do know one thing, though. I wouldn't trade all the money for a single one of the memories.

Comments

[tallefjant.livejournal.com]

I offer 5 dollars. :)

[same-sky.livejournal.com]

Right. For five dollars, you can have the memory of constantly changing the alternator in the dinky little cavalier we had, crawling under the thing on a hot and humid summer day, dirt falling in your eyes. Enjoy! (Don't worry, you can pay up later.)

[tallefjant.livejournal.com]

That's a dirty memory! Do you accept PayPal? :))

[same-sky.livejournal.com]

Hehe. :) Good answer. ;)