Happy Monday! My Monday was going to be
really happy thanks to a groupon for a fabulous massage. Until I got a phone call at 4 PM canceling said massage. Now it's just another Monday.
Which is when I thought, thank goodness for miscellany monday!
UNOSomething I am learning about long distance is that it is a lot of pressure. Last weekend (as in, not yesterday) I went to Small Town to see the Boyfriend. He said we would be ice fishing. I was stoked. I liked ice fishing.
Then, he kind of warned me, kind of threw on me that we would be camping. For two nights. I said "we'll see about night 2." We left the house Friday morning for the hour and a half trek to the wilderness. I proceeded to stall his brand new truck out on the highway with a trailer attached. It did not begin well.
DOSApparently to the Boyfriend, "we'll see" means "I know she'll love it and can tough it out, so I will make her." The first night an unexpected storm blew in with 60 MPH winds and whiteout conditions. Shortly after taking the above picture the guys had to tie the tent to the four wheelers to keep it on the ground.
Then we ate dinner like cowboys, cooking out of the cans they came in.
I am a light sleeper. A billowing tent, supposedly sturdy or not - that continually rips the stove pipe out of the stove while shooting flames everywhere - is not an ideal sleeping condition for me. If I had not been so worried about it burning down I would have taken a lunesta. (lest you think I'm exaggerating, the man who camped with us brought his own tent. The wind snapped one of the poles in half and he slept with us.)Long story short, it did not end well.
I lasted until Saturday afternoon. And then, I threw a temper tantrum. As in, a full on tear-fest while exclaiming:
"I want to go home. Why can't we just go home. I don't CARE that if we leave no one else will have a tent. I don't CARE that it will ruin everyone else's New Years Eve. No one is catching any fish. There probably aren't any freaking fish in this entire freaking lake.* I.want.to.go.home."
Not my proudest moment. (*The only person who caught a single fish was the Boyfriend. In two days. He had already caught them when I made this irrational and incorrect argument. But, like the theme of my melt down, I.did.not.care.)TRESNeedless to say, the rest of the weekend was less than ideal. Thankfully, "the rest of the weekend" was only one day.
Morning 1:After my first request to not camp two nights. Before my melt down.
That half-smile is totally fake.
It was the first time in 15 months that we really learned there are days that you just can't get it right. No matter what we said or did on Sunday we upset the other. If we didn't feel so much pressure to treasure our every second together perfectly, we probably would have spent a few hours apart until we calmed down. Then we would have gone back to normal.
Instead, we weren't back to normal until Monday morning when he went to work and I began my drive to Big City. Such is life I suppose.QUATROI considered not sharing any of this. But post-fight and our first-bad-weekend-doing-long-distance I started to feel self conscious. I wondered if other people in long distance relationships ever fought. So I started asking around.
Apparently it's a long-distance secret that not every (sparing) moment together is perfect. So I wanted to put that out there. Don't be discouraged. One rough weekend does not mean we have some fatal flaw in our relationship. It means we're in a relationship. Period. Being long distance has its own set of challenges, but it doesn't erase the possibility of us disappointing each other or spending 1 1/2 of our 5 days this month fighting.
We are fine now. In fact, I think we are better than ever. It's funny how a few bad days can remind you how much you love a person and are willing to rough any waters to be with them.
Even if those waters mean sleeping on the floor, and sharing a bedroll, which sounded nice until he rolled it out and it was covered in bugs. Real, live, moving bugs. It still makes me shudder.
It did get a bit better on NYE - a few hours after my tantrum. These are real smiles.
Make-up-less, shower-less, no-toothbrush-all-weekend smiles.
CINCOOn a less dramatic note, I am starting to revise my NaNoWriMo novel. I went to Panera Bread on Saturday night and edited the first 10 pages. I didn't realize it would take so long. Then I set up a plan to edit 8 pages a day. If I did, the entire first draft would be edited by February 1st.
As for Sunday and today.... nothing. nada. zilch. No editing at all. I almost didn't do miscellany because I needed to edit. I was hoping this would get my creative juices flowing. So far: no go. Although I have edited this post several times, as well as the pictures from that weekend. So maybe that's a start.
SEISI wish I remembered more Spanish. The end.
