** 106 Days

YAY! We have our first Guest Blogger of 2011! Read along and provide your input. But most of all- enjoy! And if you'd like to submit your own guest blog, email us at nomzaran@yahoo.com. -Sazaran and Nomz

So, can I just take a second to gush about married life? Because I love it. Adore it. Would MARRY married life, it's that good.

Even though I'm still effing up my signature, making the "i" and "t" in my last name nearly the same height; and the first time I verbally introduced myself with my married last name, I literally had to stop for a second to think about what my last name was— there's not much to complain about.

You'd think after dating 11 years and living in sin for more than half of that, not a lot would change post-I-do's, but I swear to the stars—there's this completely different glow to everything, like it's all been made new because we're married now. We're legitimately our own little family, writing the newest chapter of our lives with every red-light kiss and mid-week date night, and the mornings we send each other off to work with, "Love you, husband!" "Love you, my wife!"

Our life is this— we burned a CD full of Simon & Garfunkel ("Song for the Aski," "The Only Living Boy in New York," "The Boxer," "America") as our soundtrack to a winter-lit weekend afternoon in Colorado; and our fridge is topped with Fruity Pebbles, a basket full of tea, the lidded glass jar that holds treats for the Faces (our cats), and the empty alcohol bottle from my husband’s bachelor party with the colorful owl print on the back.

The mornings start with iPod serenades, and he randomly calls me in the middle of the day at work just to tell me a story about a customer, or how—Wednesday, actually—he had 200°F+ oil shoot out at him from a truck he was working on, and (I quote) I missed him "screaming like a little girl, then turning around and running face-first into the tire of a truck on the lift next to me. Yeah. I fell. And then screamed some more."

Yesterday morning, he bit my neck, and as I watched the telltale red mark appear in the mirror, he waved it away with, "If anyone asks? Just tell them I went all Team Edward on you."

It's just—married life is comfortable, in the best and truest sense.
It fits us so well. It's pure, and beautiful and exciting, and I'm fully loving every second of it.

106 days I've been married, and since the moment I began to take on the world as a Mrs., I've been asked, "So, how's the married life?" about as many times as there have been days of it.
& every time, I get my glow on, happily replying with some variation of, "It's amazing, I love it!"—only to get a knowing chuckle or Look in response, followed by, "I'll ask you again in a year!"

Is that really the magic, unspoken timeline? A year?

Does this newlywed glow—the sparkle I feel when I see my Facebook relationship status as “Married to,” or the cozy feeling of looking at my husband (!!!) snuggled next to me and the Faces tucked in between us, thinking, "This is our family"—does it come with an expiration date?

Are we doomed, 365 pages in, to shed our happiness & joy in favor of matrimonial monotony?

I hear "I'll ask you again in a year," and wonder why it's such a feat to imagine that, a year from now or even 50, we—not to mention any other pair of newly-minted newlyweds—won't still be just as thrilled to be married.

Why would be any less in love, just because "that's what happens," or because it happened to someone else?

I look at these people who ask about my marriage (which, for the record? makes me feel oddly adult to say; "my marriage")—these people nearly always being well-meaning, long-married people—and in the space between The Question and their humorless chuckles that follow, I wonder what their marriage is like; what makes them assume I'm just cresting the top of this mountain in my life, admiring the view, so blinded by the glow of my sparkler that I fail to notice a bottomless pit of despair around the next bend?

I saw the same thing when I was planning our wedding, and even now when I talk to newly-sparkled friends; it's so rare to find a former bride who doesn't immediately default to, "GOD, it was so stressful; I'm just glad it's over," when dispensing advice about wedding planning.
On the opposite end, there's me, this radiating ball of joy that wants to know all about people's wedding colors & invitation designs, asking about how the bride-to-be's feeling (because seriously? no one does this—it's always, "How's the planning going?", never, "How are you doing?") and what style of dress she's dreaming about.

To each their own; I just never understand why, rather than chiming in with something positive, people always go straight for the dark & twisty.

Rationally, it all boils down to the fact that people only can speak to their particular experience, but it begs the question— is everyone really in such a lackluster state that they can't share any enthusiasm, rather than passive-aggressive caution, about being forever entwined with their one, only and always?

It's these people—the ones who tell me, "I'll ask you again in a year," that I honestly do hope we run into again in the next 365— because a year from now, I know I'm going to have even more of a glow when I tell them how amazing it is that marriage just keeps getting better.
I know now, just like I did at 14, when people "knew" we'd break up as soon as we got to high school; just like I did at 18, when my sociology teacher informed me that "there's no way we could last after graduation, no matter how happy we were," because he & I were just "too different"; just like I did at 22, when everyone "knew" we could never work things out— I know that our love isn't their love.

They don't know what it's like to live this life of ours; one we've built of barefoot kitchen dances, big dreams about Southern porches & sprawling garages, and the intricacies of having literally grown up together.

One we've peppered with our own vocabulary of words that don't make sense to anyone but us, and spun through with "Wish You Were Here," lakeside ice cream, dusty roads in the middle of summer and I-love-you's every night.

So, yes— ask me again in a year.