puppy power

About a week ago, we experienced this rush of beautiful weather, just gorgeous. So Will and I took Molly for a walk down by the banks of the river, just blocks from our house. It was sunny and warm and people were outside and smiling. It felt like summer--i do believe it was 81 degrees at some point during the day. We walked and talked, in a way that we don't when we're just sitting on the couch or fighting over whether it's a big deal to put the sugar away.
As we were walking back, a little winded and tired, we got to a corner where I noticed out of the corner of my eye a frantic waving from a car window.
When I made eye contact with the driver of this hot little red sports car--I can't remember what it was and Will's not here to remind me--the driver put his dog up to the window, a teeny Bichon Friese--a tiny white fluffball (adorable of course). And made it look really excited to see another dog, practically waving its paw like it was saying hello.
I busted out laughing and giggled the whole way home, waving at the driver. We tried to get Molly to notice the little woof-woof. She was more interested in sniffing the sidewalk like a bloodhound.
I don't know -- maybe it was the weather that made people crave some fun, silly contact. But it just made a nice early evening a great story.
Thanks for making our day, red sports car driver. Nice puppy. Nice car!

i'm super balanced!

Katie's brain results from a very reliable internet test (you can always trust internet):

Brain Lateralization Test Results

Right Brain (52%) The right hemisphere is the visual, figurative, artistic, and intuitive side of the brain. Left Brain (52%) The left hemisphere is the logical, articulate, assertive, and practical side of the brain

Are You Right or Left Brained?
personality tests by similarminds.com

sun is shining in the deep blue sky

i'm working from home today, post-Molly-emergency. two days ago we came home to a very sick puppy. full of doggie doo, puking, shaking, clearly in pain.
off to the emergency room we go, in fear of the bill. several hours later, the vet gives us some scary news...it could be serious but they won't know more until they have her overnight and run $800 worth of tests....um, no.
we declined, they gave her fluids and painkillers, and we took her home. all the while, i worried. the next morning she was still sluggish. william stayed home with her and took her out every half hour or so. slowly but surely, she started to come around. she wagged her tail and ran to the door when i came home.
at the vet appointment, she stood up on her hind legs and threw her "arms" around my neck and nuzzled my face in while they examined her (two rectal exams in two days--and she was a champ). it felt like the most tender moment we've ever had, and my heart melted on the spot. she is our little furbaby.
she is seeming to get stronger and more like herself by the hour. but she is still refusing to drink water. this makes me worry.
the vet called and said that she has a UTI but that her blood levels are all normal, so that is great news. no serious condition! disaster averted!
so right now i'm sitting here, feeling her furry body on my feet, and i can actually hear birds singing outside. i kid you not. it's like the coziest moment... i love her so much it makes my heart hurt. and birds are singing like on frickin' snow white.
it's sunny, it's partway through march, my dog is ok, my boy is ok, our house is ok, our friends and families are ok. it's so nice to emerge, even momentarily, from winter and feel like sunshine and puppies are ahead.

living in sin

when william and i moved in together, i had no idea what my parents were going to say.
actually, back up. before that happened, william mentioned to me that he would like to buy a place. we were both living with our parents—we had both moved back home to save some money to figure out our next move after college. he talked of buying a loft, which, at the time, i had never considered that i would be living there. i said, "go for it!"
william says he never questioned asking me to move in with him. he calls it a "weird sense of security. i just knew." so a couple weeks later, he 'asked' me to move in with him. i believe the wording was "i want to buy a place and i need a roommate and that roommate should be you." it wasn't a big question, and it wasn't a demand. it was somewhere in between, not unlike him asking me out on our first date. ("And when you get back from your cabin, we will have dinner.")
this is one in a series of big decisions where, I, usually a more decisive type, and he, less so--reversed roles. i said yes, but i did have my worries. i would lose my privacy. were we ready? it hadn't been that long that we'd been dating. we'd only been together about six months or so. i had always imagined i'd date longer than that before making such a commitment. because i knew that was what it was—a pretty serious commitment. i knew enough to know that william was a pretty serious guy about these types of situations, and i knew how i felt (see previous entry if you have questions on that.) but still... was it right? and what were my parents going to say? i had a feeling they would not be happy. and then, what about giving up living with my girlfriends? sure, we hadn't lived together for a couple years, but I had always thought we'd move back in together eventually, once we got our bearings in the real world.
william and i started hunting for places. i was pretty dead set against a loft when we started, specifically because i wanted a separate bedroom. i could not understand how people lived like that. i always had my own room, could always shut the door. what if we just needed time alone or wanted to make a private phone call? they seemed kind of cold, too.
but i was soon sucked into the romance of the loft. after seeing a few places all decked out, i relented happily. we bought a place in March of 2006.
then i found out my dad had lung cancer. how could i jump ship now? i'd been living at home for so long, maybe i should just stay. or maybe william should move in to the loft and i could eventually follow. what if my dad got really sick? what if my mom needed help? what if they just needed emotional support?
before i found out my dad was sick, i asked my mom if she'd mind that i moved in with william. we were in my hyundai, i believe driving north on 35E, headed to rosedale. i didn't look at her, partially becuase i was afraid of her reaction, partially since i was driving.
"i don't care," she said, simply.
I was shocked. my mother went to catholic school and made us go to church until we were confirmed, where i then promptly divorced myself from the whole church thing. just wasn't for me. although my parents are liberal in many ways, i had automatically assumed they would hold a rather traditional view of this. "really?" i managed to squeak.
"really. if you're talking morally, i think it would be stupid to hide behind the religious thing. people use that to front for what they just personoally think. id on't have a personal problem with you moving in with him." she did caution that maybe it would prolong a proposal, but i really felt strongly at the time that if we moved in together it wouldn't be one of those seven-year live-in situations...william's too straightforward.
as all my dad's surgery/healing/appointments went on, they assured me they didn't see it as jumping ship that i'd be moving out. i still felt guilty. call it the leftovers of the catholic education.
in any case, there was some remodeling to do when we moved in together, so it wasn't until april that we actually unpacked boxes and unwrapped our new tan suede couch. my brother had some time off since my dad was in the hospital, so as a housewarming present, he painted.
my friends either said they all expected it, or at least their reactions to us moving in were nonchalant enough to suggest that. most expected us to also get engaged quickly. i don't know how i remained so in the dark about it for so long...
in any case, the only person who may have possibly suggested our "taboo" living arrangements--and even that may be unfair to say--was william's darling grandma, Betty.
right around christmas time, she was making out her cards, and she called william's mom (who was the one to relate this story to me later).
"I'm making Christmas cards and wanted to know if I should put Katie's name on the envelope," she says.
william's mom replies, "Sure, why wouldn't you?"
Grandma Betty replies, "Because then THEY WILL KNOW that I KNOW that they live together!"
when william's mom told me this, I burst into laughter, not knowing if that was an appropriate reaction or not.
I managed to sputter, "It's not a secret!'
and luckily, william's mom said, giggling, "That's what I told her!"
a week or so later, there was a card in our mailbox, addressed to both me and william.
inside it said something along the lines of "merry christmas"....etc., etc.... "love you. God bless you".
so I guess we're even OK with Grandma Betty—we even got a blessing. and she's up on her catholic education.
all doubts were definitely erased after that.

"just knowing"

I was reading my usual daily fix of blogs the other day when I stumbled upon this beauty of an entry: http://www.sundrymourning.com/2007/02/22/the-gamble-and-the-guess/
I read her every day. She's amazing. But beyond that, it really made me think about my recently engaged self. How did I know?
When William and I "met," we had already been acquainted with each other since high school...our lockers were five lockers apart. We never spoke a word to each other. He remembers me being loud and "gossipy"--meaning, talky--and I remember him as silent and standoffish.
Fast forward about six years. Here we are. Getting married. To someone who I would consider "out of my league"--but damned if I'm not going to hang on and pretend I'm in this league, too. I was just the other day thinking about how we've lived together almost a year--this is the month he bought the loft we now live in--and how it's flown. We're engaged. We got a dog. We painted the living room wall twice. We just are finishing the bathroom. We grocery shop together. We discuss decorating and daily schedules and dreams with equal time.
On his birthday, I wrote him a short story about how I fell in love. And that's something you can just feel, you just know. You don't know if it's going to last, if you're going to discover some awful thing that breaks the deal, you don't know if yuo will be one of those darling old couples in line at the pharmacy that still holds hands fifty years down the road.
I'm not a religious person, but I liken this to blind faith. The unshakeable belief that it might not always be a fairy tale, but that you know you will try to make it work with all your might, because this is the best person for you that you can imagine. That this is what is meant to be.
Our second "date" wasn't much of a date, but it is where I fell head over heels, in a way that I have never ever felt in my life, even when I was in wonderful relationships with wonderful people. it was so hot outside that air conditioning was barely working. I don't remember what I was wearing, but I remember what he was wearing: cargo shorts and this light-blue T-shirt that I will forever think of as my favorite. We went to the MOA for some massive air conditioning, and we got lost in Barnes and Noble, poring over photography books and talking about art. We headed back to my house, and I was trying to convince him to go swimming at Fort Snelling. We got back to get my swimsuit, and while I was packing up my stuff, he sat on my bed with his iPod. Then he told me he had some music he wanted me to hear, so we shared his headphones and lay back on the bed, listening to some dreamy hip-hop mashup stuff that I completely fell in love with. I can remember the sun, I can remember the bed, I can remember the song--the one that still makes my heart race when I hear it--I remember being thisclose to him while we listened since we both had an earphone and we held hands. Its was the most indie rock silly little moment where I was so unspeakably happy. It was like he knew exactly what would make me fall in love--and it worked.
I finished the story to him--talking about how I felt like swimming still when he left, how I felt like I was standing on the edge of a diving board as he walked out the door...and I held my breath, and I jumped. And I'm still falling.
That was over a year and a half ago, and I still feel that way, that there are still things I'm discovering about him, he still does things that make me fall deeper and deeper in.
I can't say that I know where we will end up forever. I can't say that I know our future will be perfect with each other. But I know that this is the best gamble I can make. That is the one with the best odds--I feel like it's a sure bet.
In some ways, I was relieved to hear that other people just guess--that they never have an aha! moment where an answer to a huge life question comes clear. I don't think those exist for every decision I will have to make. I think as children we think that as we become adults, we have all the answers, to only find out that the questions get bigger, the risks bigger. And we only have some past experiences to rely upon, or secondhand stories, to help us decide what's best.
But over this past year, which has definitely been a roller-coaster for me, one thing that has been rock solid has been William and I.
And when he asked me to marry him, and I just kept saying "When did you have time to do this?" on some level, I was stalling the moment, there on Ka'anapali Beach, in the dark, with the breeze blowing, in paradise. But when I really, really think about that moment, I can still recreate it in my mind. I still sometimes get distracted by my ring, hardly believing that this moment has happened to me.
And that's what tells me that this is the best, the closest I'm ever goign to get to experience the you just know feeling. No divine interventionist will come and tell me, "Katie, this is the right decision."
Everyone who knows me well knows I like to poll people on things: what to buy, what color to put in my hair, what's going on in pop culture. But this was one time, more than buying a pair of skinny jeans, more than going red, that I understood this was the right thing to do. And, ironically, after telling everyone about it, they have all enthusiastically agreed. I didn't need it beforehand.
I'm not all-knowing, I'm not perfect, and I've definitely made bad decisions that I thought I was initially right about. But when I think about all the times that we have weathered, even in a short less-than-two-years---cancer, joblessness, moving in together, sickness--we've been there for each other. And every day feels just as important and exciting and supportive as the last.
I'm still falling. I hope--and I feel that I'm probably right--that we'll be holding hands in the pharmacy line when we're 70. I just love him that much. And if I love him that much now, it can only get bigger as time goes on. That's the great side of the affairs of the heart: with love, your heart knows no capacity.