Another Anniversary

Today was the 1st anniversary of the closing on our first house.

House hunting. This wound up being *the one*.

I know a lot of folks disapprove of living together before marriage, but I have absolutely no regrets about our living arrangement. [Mom, skip this next sentence, or pretend like you did, por favor.] I started staying with Opie at his (our) apartment during the week quite a bit my second semester of my freshman year, and commuting to school, although I was *supposed* to be living in my dorm room. Then when school ended that April, I moved into our apartment full time. We closed on our house on July 31st. It's been a fun and hectic ride full of home improvement project after home improvement project ever since.

In the year and a half or so that we've lived together, we've learned so much about each other. We've learned how to happily coexist (and this occurred quite smoothly, I might add), and we know there won't be any sort of nasty surprises we never learned about prior to tying the knot. He knows I leave socks and shoes scattered all over the house. I know he can easily spend 2 full minutes making sure the towels line up perfectly evenly on the towel rack. He knows I procrastinate and have terrible anxiety about placing phone calls. I know he could happily exist on just field peas, edamame, frozen cauliflower, canned chicken and nectarines if I let him. I also know he's an excellent cook. He knows it drives me bonkers when he tries to help me improve my mediocre cooking. We also know we both have very particular (conflicting) ways we like to organize the dishwasher. And yes, we both know we're the one that's right about this matter.

I also know that he's an incredibly devoted, talented hard worker who's very good at what he does for a living, and I know the (predominate) ups and (minimal) downs of his working from home. I know that he's responsible and determined to preserve and increase our financial well-being. I know that our decorating styles mesh together very well (though I do still really want to girlify our guest bedroom a little more. Please?). I know that I can belch with the best of the frat boys, and he'll applaud my efforts while saying, "Damn, baby. Good job!", rather than being grossed out. I know he's completely supportive of my entrepreneurial ideas, as I am of his.

We know we're different in many ways, but in ways that help us keep each other sane. We balance each other. He encourages me to be more organized (err.. just don't open my desk drawers or look in my "craft closet", mkay?) and to put my myriad belongings away. I razz him when he's carefully arranging the items on the coffee table so that they line up just so, and help him lay off the OCD a bit. :) He's the problem solver. The engineer. I'm the artist. The go-to gal for questions of aesthetics, design, spelling, and wording. He rocks at Chess. I kick butt at Scrabble (hush, sister. I beat you sometimes). I happily browse the internet or putter around on The Sims, laughing maniacally at one thing or another. He's over there killing the undead, or submarines, or guerrilla fighers, or wolves or something. I don't know. He pushes me to pursue my goals despite my fears of failure, and I push him to take a break and get some well-earned sleep.

Our latest project, though we paid someone else to do this 'un.

I suppose this largely seems irrelevant to the anniversary of our closing. Suffice it to say that we've come a long way in this last year. We've made ourselves a home, and brought ourselves together even closer in so doing.