Throughout our blissful head-over-heels-in-love romance that I've often thought to be too good to be true because it has always been so easy and fun, I have wondered from time to time how we as a couple will survive when things aren't all roses and butterflies and kisses. Because we are both well aware that this awesome streak of pure joy/never having a fight/no tragedy to navigate through will sooner or later (hopefully much later) come to an end.
The questions in my mind about how we will respond to such trials were vast; How will we argue? Will there be yelling? Will I cry a lot? What if we're poor someday and the lack of money stresses us out? How will we treat each other when stressed? What if he eats the last piece of cheesecake that was SUPPOSED to be mine? What if he does it twice?!
In the last 72 hours, all of those questions have been answered. And yes, the wedding is still on. Let's start with the cheesecake. Friday afternoon, Ryan very sweetly brought home a small 4 slice cheesecake for us to share, as he knows that it is my very favorite sweet treat. I ate one piece and he ate 2, leaving my second slice in the fridge for me to enjoy the next day. On Saturday, when I went to get said piece of cheesecake out and devour it, it was nowhere to be found. I had fallen asleep Friday night and while I was snoozing away, he ate my slice of cheesecake! Never one to let this stuff go, I promptly brought it up to him when he came over that afternoon and made it very clear that I was sad about not having my promised slice of dessert waiting for me. He apologized and promised to buy a new one that night. A man of his word, he returned to my house that evening with another 4 slice cheesecake, and again I ate 1 piece and he ate 2, leaving the 4th and last slice for me. And then it happened again. Just like the night before, I fell asleep, and just like the night before, HE ATE MY CHEESECAKE!!
How do you eat a person's cheesecake, apologize for eating their cheesecake, buy them a new cheesecake to replace the one you ate, and then eat their cheesecake again?!! I have some married friends who had shared years ago that they label their food and use a ruler when splitting a candy bar to avoid such sugar-fueled spats. I used to think they were crazy, but now I understand. And if a third cheesecake ever makes its way into my home, I can promise you that I will be writing my name all over that container so there is no question about whether I am willing to share or not. For the record, I'm not.
After (barely) surviving Dessert-ageddon 2012, we went about our normal routines on Monday and again convened at my apartment to spend the evening together. As a natural born planner, I have spent the last 3.5 months using nearly every spare moment to plan and stress out over our upcoming wedding, which is a mere 25 days day away. And as a natural born non-planner, Ryan has not been stressing out about the details, making lists, or color coding anything. He has been a WONDERFUL helper and will complete (almost) any task that I assign to his column of "to do" items, but he does not dream them up himself, nor does he work himself into a frenzy when the tiniest detail doesn't go according to plan.
In a perfect example of our differing personalities, he came over expecting to relax together and I insisted that the moment he walk through the door he jump into planning with me and make the final decisions about everything from table linens to barbecue sauce for the pulled pork, and that we decide it right now! Oh, the barbecue sauce...
Being a vegetarian and therefore never having anything to put barbecue sauce on, I failed to respect the importance of the sauce and in a gesture that I thought to be helpful, told my St. Louis area native sauce loving fiance that I had just ordered a gallon of "whatever the restaurant we ordered the pork from serves." Turns out this was not the right answer. I'll spare you the details, but what ensued was a 15 minute debate about what flavors/bases of sauce we needed to order, how much of each, buying in bulk gallons and bottling our own or shelling out more money to get individual bottles, where we would be displaying the bottles at the reception, how many ounces per gallon and per bottle (there were hand written math equations using fractions on scratch paper that I still don't understand this morning), and how much money we would or would not spend on barbecue sauce since we have already spent an ungodly amount of money for this one day of our lives.
While it wasn't the most fun 15 minutes of our lives together, I am proud to say that we worked through it together. Nobody yelled, nobody cried, nobody blamed, and nobody lost. We talked over the options, weighed the money against the perks (and agreed that in 20 years when we are still paying this wedding off, we will explain to our kids that we think they should pay their own way through college as part of them learning a good work ethic), and put the other one first by both ending the conversation saying, "I want what you want, whatever that is." This was no easy feat for an only child and a youngest child who are both used to being the boss, but we did it, and we love each other just the same if not more than we did before the gallons-into-ounces-and-you-didn't-carry-the-one fiasco, and yes for those of you wondering, there will be barbecue sauce at the wedding reception. Two different kinds and way too much of both. No word on the cheesecake yet...
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