Saturday, October 15, 2016

Is 31 the new 21?

All right, after taking several months off--which I said I wasn't going to do--I'm back. Since my last post, I've moved to Shreveport and started a new job that I'm really enjoying. In the coming weeks, I'm sure there will be posts about what I am doing now. For now, I'm going to talk about today. There's no time like the present.

As much as I resisted the change and worried about the transition from LSMSA, I have found the new location, pace, and lifestyle to be extremely rewarding. The update in my professional life has been exciting but is somewhat zeroed out by the fact that I do miss my former coworkers and students. What has made the difference has been getting to enjoy married life...which is actually perfectly sensible when I consider that we got married in part because we wanted to experience life together.

Today, Richard turned 31. There isn't much that's exciting about being 31, except perhaps that it's a prime number. (I reminded him of that when he came home from night shift at the ICU this morning, but he found that to be mundane.) Another part of being 31 is being a decade removed from the legal drinking age of 21. Over dinner tonight, we discussed the many events that have occurred in the last decade, including several graduations, medical school, and the entirety of our relationship. He commented that they had probably been the best ten years of his life; even when I mentioned that he learned to walk and was potty trained in the first ten years--which are useful in his life--he said the last decade was the best. (Awww.)

While I could not isolate one aspect of our relationship as my favorite, lately I have been particularly appreciative of how Richard tolerates my silliness and the ridiculous conversations we have. (See: that time I tried to get him pumped up for being an age that is a prime number.) When I find something in life to be overly excited about, Richard indulges me, even if that comes at some degree of self sacrifice. Last weekend, he let me pull him into a photo booth at a wedding, then he let me drag him onto the dance floor to dance to Michael Buble.

For his birthday, I lovingly baked him a chocolate cake and made way too much frosting for it. I somehow managed to make the cake look like it had been through a natural disaster, so I attempted to make it look nice by adding more icing to the imperfect areas. By the end, the cake still looked a mess, but Richard was gracious. It was like we were in that Brad Paisley song, "Little Moments," except that I didn't lose all track of time and burn the cake. Small victories.

In general, our life together is fun, and being around him each day--even for just a little while--has added volumes of joy and meaning to my life and our marriage. As far as I'm concerned, 31 could very well be the new 21; with the energy and happiness I have gained from this leap in lifestyle, I've aged backward at least a few years.