It’s been a year and a week that we’ve been married, and I still can’t believe it.  I mean, I’m married. I have a husband.  And I love it.

We have a pretty regular life, we wake up with the same routines, adjusted for weekday/weekend mornings.  He takes care of the alarm, I am the first one up.  In between the two alarms (weekday, 5:50 and 6 respectively) I roll onto my side and scoot backwards into him.  He wraps his arms around me, and the cat hops off the bed, because the sequence means that I am soon to get up, and when I get up, food is nigh for the cat.  We groan about having to get up, we never, ever want to, but I finally pull away, swing both legs over the side of the bed, and pad off to the bathroom for a shower. 

He’s usually in the shower when I leave, so I pull back the fabric curtain and make smoochy faces through the clear vinyl curtain. "Bye babe, I love you, see you tonight!" I go to school, he goes to work. We might email each other during the day, but usually only out of necessity. "Remind me! Kitty Litter!" or "Paul has hockey tix, do we want them?"  I get home first, usually, and when he gets home I greet him at the door with a kiss, and the usual how was your day/ what’s for dinner/ we need to do laundry conversation is had while he feeds the cat her second scoop of the day.

Dinner, television, a cup of hot green tea or cocoa, and we’re in bed by 11. I go up first, brush, pee, and rearrange the feather blankets.  We spoon before he falls asleep, and I slide over, onto my belly, left knee hitched up and both arms under my pillow.  The cat will wedge herself between us, if she can.

And that’s a usual day.  Weekends, there are usually no alarms, we make coffee in the morning instead of tea, we often shower together.  We run errands, we do stuff around the house.  Regular stuff.

But then, there are days like yesterday, when he comes in at 8 from working the football game.  His nose and cheeks are still red from being suspended 30 feet in the air on a scissor lift for several hours, and it makes his eyes look bluer than normal.  The way his smile pokes through his winter beard, and the way he looks all bundled up in a heavy Carhartt jacket and knit hat.  It just hits me.

This is my husband. And I am so in love with him.

I love him on all the regular days, I do, but then there are those days when you realize how in love you are, and how perfectly happy your life is.  When you come around the corner and see your house lit up, and walk in to the warmth of honey-oak floors and oil heat, and a husband with an arm outstretched, smiling, "hey, baby!" and life is just. right.

Yes, I am married. I have a husband. I have a mortgage and an oil company and a front loading washer.  And all the things I once thought would hold me back, would keep me from being ME, I now realize are the things that made me more me than anything else.

Marriage works for me.  Everyday isn’t filled with those huge epiphanies, but lots of small ones.  The days when it feels like the first time I knew I loved him, are great days.  The days in between are pretty damn good, too.  I love the routines for the security, and I love the wow moments for the spontaneity. I love it all, and I wish everyone could know happiness like this.