marriage is a papa murphy's pizza

In the 3 weeks that our blog sat dormant, we've had plenty to write about—most importantly, our anniversary. We've been married for 730+ days, which simultaneously seems like no time at all and our whole lives.

Time does weird stuff. I've tried to reflect on the previous year, to bring images and moments together into some sort of conclusive statement about what the 2nd year of marriage is like. But I can only think of rather current moments. Most of them involve food. I don't know if I should go with food as a 2nd-year-of-marriage metaphor or not.

Here are a few happy, recent, marriage-defining moments that stand out in my mind (which should not stand in for a mushier and more endearing post, but will anyway):

• My husband has boosted Papa Murphy's profits this quarter because he buys me their gourmet chicken garlic pizza nearly once a week. He hopes not to maintain this habit. But for now, he values the pizza for its unique property of remaining in my queasy tummy after eating.

• He told me to buy the maternity dress of my dreams, even though it was full price (which I am opposed to) and I haven't started sporting a poochy tummy yet.
  

• When our car was in the shop, he walked to the grocery store to buy milk, which I just HAD to have. And when I insisted on going with him, he stopped to hug me for ages when I cried on the side of the road, because I imagined that our children might like him more and think I was the boring, ugly parent of the pair. What a trip to the store THAT was.
  

Another anniversary from now, some of our most important moments these days (preparing for our last semester of school, hearing our baby's heartbeat at the midwife's office, picking out names, looking for real-person jobs) won't be quite so present, and we'll be on to different projects and seasons of life.

Something tells me that, while the scenery might change and some additional children will pop in for a visit, we'll still do what we always do: read lots of books, work on projects, spend time together. He'll consistently take out the garbage and water the plants. I'll be as erratic as ever with laundry and vacuuming (though I'll continue to claim that keeping up dependably on both are important to me).

And we'll eat. Maybe I'll cook up something better for us than Papa Murphy's.

God smote me today

Last night our car broke down on the Provo exit. We called our amazing neighbor who came and towed our car home with his truck.

When we got home our neighbor found out that I had to get to work by 8 am. He helped me fix my bike so that I could ride it in the next day. He fixed the brakes, the tires, and the handlebars, then he greased the chain and wiped it down. I kept on expecting him to say "That will be $29.99," but he apparently works for saint points.

The next morning I woke up an hour and a half late because my alarm didn't go off (or didn't wake me). I dressed and hopped on the bike, and tucked my pant leg into my sock so it wouldn't get stuck in the bike chain.

it didn't take me quite an hour and a half to get here

I got to work and didn't notice, until I had walked down two hallways, that my pant leg was still tucked into my sock and my fly was down.

So it's been an amazing day.

On the bright side, we found out that our neighbors are still awesome. And I got to ride my bike to work - which I've planned on doing for a while - to get into shape, save on gas, help the environment, and prevent foreign wars.

two thoughts on billions of people

1. HOW does the world contain SO MANY people? The number of people driving around my little city or walking around in the grocery store blows me away. How many women had to throw up for months at a time just to make enough people to populate this single town? And how many of those women volunteered for this process multiple times? That's a lot of barf, people.

2. Why on EARTH does war even exist? If all those women had to barf up their guts and then go through labor and spend years and years putting care and love into little people until those people got big enough to defend themselves, doesn't it seem an immense waste to blow said people up?

If women ruled the world (and in order to become president or queen of any country, a woman was required to bear at least one child), I'm pretty sure we'd get rid of war altogether. The women in charge would know what sort of energy (and endless nausea) their population required to create and bear. And if anyone so much as whispered war from the other side of an ocean, the rest of the presidents would say, "No way, sister. We know what your women went through to make those people. We've been there. We're not about to blow anybody up."