Happy Valentines Day!

Today is Valentine’s Day, our fourth Valentine’s together as a couple, our second Valentine's that we actually get to spend together, and I was washing off the kitchen counters and I finally got it; for the first time, I got it.

Valentine’s Day is a day of love. Romantic love. Every year I would ponder what it was about Nate I liked best– the twinkle in his eyes, his generosity, the way he wears that one pair of jeans (HELLO!). I hoped that I’d wake up to find a trail of roses to the kitchen, and an orchestra playing ‘It Had to Be You’ and doves holding a pair of tickets to the Bahamas with a note that said: YOU AND ME, BABY.

Valentine’s Day today was waking up at 6:15 to Gavin whimpering inside his kennel because he needed to go pee, and Nate reaching across the bed to tap me on the shoulder: “I got it. You sleep.”

It was him running to the store last night before bed so I had some Diet Mt. Dew, him going to work and promising to meet me for lunch later. It was me going to work, coming home, making dinner, picking up the house, vacuuming, doing laundry.

But isn’t that love? Like, real, deep-seated considerate and forever love? It’s making sure his favorite shirt is clean and pressed, that I always have Macaroni Cheese in the house for dinner.  I look around the house, and it’s love everywhere. It’s pictures of our wedding day on the night stand. It’s the bedspread that we picked out together, the doggy gate that took us forever to install, our bed that we got splinters from moving. It’s our kitchen island, where we make dinner for each other every night. It’s the bills that I leave out because when I put them away, Nate can’t find them. It’s me, trying to keep our home clean and safe and warm so he has a sanctuary at the end of the day, and it’s him, driving to the store to pick up my favorite treat. It’s not having a set date night. It’s Mondays with ’The King of Queens′ and our laptops, where we twine our legs together and announce,  Do you want to play Call of Duty Zombies? Tonight is the night we make it to level 6! It’s 6:15 in the morning where we tap each other on the shoulder and say, “I got it. You sleep.”

Happy Valentines Day, Nate. Love is, today, waking up next to you and not caring about roses and doves and the Bahamas. Love is, today, waking up next to you and being glad to see you first.

8 Months Old.

We just love this little dog so much.

68 Years!

This weekend Nate and I went to Charleston to celebrate Nana and Granddaddy's 68th wedding anniversary.  It's so refreshing to see a couple still together after so many years.  They're still in love and holding hands.  I love it.  We took a few photos, but I don't have them right now.  I'll upload them later.

Saturday we all went out to eat at a restaurant in Johns Island called the Wild Olive.  It was SO good.  Connie and I just loved it.  The atmosphere was so adorable and the food was great.  We had a lot of fun and a lot of wine.  Connie and I were gigging constantly.  Haah.

Everyone enjoyed Gavin's company and he was pretty pooped after all the excitement so he took a nap on my shoulder.

Nate and I made it home in time to watch the Super Bowl.  We ordered some chicken wings and then cuddled on the couch.

Nate and I are both feeling somewhat better.  I think our household is finally virus free!

Nate came home early Saturday morning.  When I say early, I mean I had to go pick him up from work at 2:30am.  I think the Military Police thought I was a drunken slob when I was driving through the gate.  Haha.  It's so nice to have him back home. We spent our entire weekend laying on the couch doing absolutely nothing.  We watched a ton of shows we had on the DVR and ordered take out.  It was pretty much amazing.

We've both been sick.  Nate came home with something and then infected me.  It's been terrible.  He's feeling better and I'm just now getting worse which only means one thing - it can only get better from here, right?  I woke up this morning and couldn't breathe.  My throat was hurting, ears hurting, headache.  I wanted to die.

Here's the thing.  I'm all about doing anything for anyone at anytime EXCEPT:
1. When I'm sick.
2. It's my birthday.
Those are the two times in my life that I expect to be babied and everything be about me.

So the alarm goes off and I wake up feeling like crap.  I instantly start to whine, "babyyyy....I'm sicccckkk!"  Nate pulls me close to him and says, "oh no!  My poor sweet baby!"  And starts giving me little kisses.  He knows I like to be babied when I feel bad so he does it.  He's the best at babying me.  He starts to rub my back and I don't want to get out of bed.  After a few minutes I wanted medicine and I said to Nate, "I'm getting up now.  I want to go to work."  He was surprised that I felt like crap and WANTED to work but the truth is the only reason I wanted to come in was for one thing.  The drug closet.  We have drugs here.  Lots of them.  Prescription drugs.  For free.  And I want everything I can possibly take at once without dying.

I'm writing this while at work, by the way.  Fully medicated and I'm feeling much better.  Nate isn't particularly busy at work today so he's coming here to hang out with me for awhile and then we're going to go on a sushi lunch date.  I love our little lunch dates.

We're planning a trip to Charleston this weekend to visit Nate's family.  We LOVE going to Charleston.  Gavin gets pretty excited about it, too.  I can't wait to see everyone.

I'm totally not going to proof read this before I post it.  Sorry for any misspellings and horrible grammar.

Blind sighted.

Yesterday morning, I lost my last contact lens somewhere in the bathroom. This is not an interesting story, really. I was just legally blind for all yesterday. I mean, I don’t technically know if I was legally blind, but I told everybody that because it’s close enough and I had a dinner date with some friends and then they’d offer to drive. I know I shouldn’t be behind a wheel without optical help, let’s put it like that. I spent all day complaining that I couldn’t see and milking the experience– an experience that was totally my fault, since I must’ve completely missed the little contact lens holder and put a lens on the counter or the sink or the toilet or something, but I enjoy a good gripe.


I need to go to the eye doctor and get new contacts.  I'm a horrible contacts wearer.  I'm the type of person that will buy two boxes of lenses and wear my contacts for months until they start to hurt my eyes.  I know - I need to make an appointment to get my eyes checked.  I know I need new glasses.  I've had the same pair of glasses since I was in the 4th grade that my brother bought for me and my eyes have changed since then, but I can half see with my old glasses.  (I love you, Brad.  You always took care of me when I was little because no one else did.)  Last year when I went to the eye doctor it was so expensive! I’ll sum it up: eye exam is free, contact exam not free, lenses not free, some other deductible, and I had to pay for them to take photographs of my eye. My total bill was a little over $200, which was $200 more than I thought I was paying. Initially, I was told insurance covered everything, then it turned out they only covered everything I didn’t care about having done. I’m sure I still made out well in the deal– without the vision coverage, it probably would have been around $500. Still, though. Man. $200. I keep feeling like we have some extra money, and then I go and drop my contacts in the toilet.  Man.


In other news, Nate should be home on Saturday. Yay!

Letter on Sunday.

Dear Friends,

I feel sad, discouraged, overwhelmed, and lonely.
Rough week.
This time of night never helps.
I feel it's going to be forever until Nate is home again.
Sigh.
Come visit me and play Monopoly. I don’t cheat.
–Anymore.

Love,

Jennifer

PS: The only thing I'm looking forward to is watching Desperate Housewives tonight. If you come visit, we can watch it together. I’ll make popcorn. Or, once I burn the popcorn, I’ll order a pizza to make up for it. I’m good at ordering.

Spring, where are you?

I'm so annoyed with the IRS right now.  I can't even believe how much we owe in taxes this year.  Boo.  I guess Nate and I need to have four kids so we can actually get a refund for a change! Ha!  I'll pass on that though.  I'm pretty certain the amount of money it takes to raise four children would astronomically outweigh the amount of any refund we would get at the end of a year!

It's snowing.  Again.  Gavin is outside running around in it.  He loves snow.  Me on the other hand, I like warm weather, flip flops, flowers and sunshine!  I was hoping to go shopping today to get some groceries and a few other things we need.  I guess it's going to be a pajama movie day instead!