beloved victory

I am going to San Antonio this weekend.  I have about 2 more hours of work today and all day tomorrow.  All I want to do is pack and get ready for my trip.  Friday can’t get here fast enough.

This is a test

The Boyfriend has been gone for 3 weeks now at Army Reserves training in San Antonio.  And it’s been the longest 3 weeks of my life.  I have a whole new respect for people in long distance relationships.  This is really hard and frustrating.  We don’t get to communicate that often and it’s super frustrating. He says that if we can make it through this we can make it through anything.  I believe him.

The upside is I am going to visit him this coming weekend and I can’t wait.  This has been the longest amount of time that we haven’t seen each other.

I know that this is a test.  We’ve had a few “quizzes” in our relationship, but this is such a hard test.  I have 60 more days of this and I hope to pass with flying colors.

Big Changes

A lot has happened this past week.  I will try to make this post brief. The Boyfriend has been in the Army Reserves for the past year, and as part of that, he has to attend a 12-week Officers’ Training in San Antonio.  The Army has changed the date of this training three times in the past month but now the most recent date is sticking.  He leaves in 3 weeks.  If that wasn’t enough, his apartment lease is up while he will be gone.  The apartment office will extend his lease until he returns because he is active military but doesn’t want to have to look for a new apartment while in San Antonio.  So we are taking the big step.  We will be moving his stuff in before he leaves and when he gets back from San Antonio, we will be living together.

I think that we were heading that direction anyway, but I don’t think either of us thought it would be this soon.  I am excited about it but also feeling pretty stressed.  It is stressful thinking that we need to get my house in order to move all of his things in.  It’s stressful thinking about packing up his apartment.  And it’s stressful thinking about adjusting my life to living with another person.  I have lived alone for the past 10 years.  Well, I’ll have 12 weeks to get used to the idea…

Age Difference

Today is the Boyfriend’s birthday.  He is 6 1/2 years younger than me but it doesn’t really bother me.  Age differences more than, say four years, used to bother me when I was younger.  But now, I look at it more than how old do I feel and do I feel I am in the same place emotionally with someone else?  Are we in the same stage of our lives?  Do we want the same things?  At the same times?  And with him, the answers seem to be yes.

Now, he takes every chance he can to give me a hard time about “robbing the cradle.”  And I don’t really feel that much older than him until a song or something comes on the radio and it reminds me of high school and him of elementary school. 

Facebooking

Facebook is a very interesting place sometimes.  When I first got on it a number of years ago, I was posting witty status updates, posting my pictures immediately after they were taken, writing on friends’ walls and searching out those long lost friends.

Now I hardly post anything on Facebook anymore.  I look at it on my phone just to see what others are up to.  The curiosity factor is still there for me, but nothing else.  My “About Me” page is virtually blank.  I have no work information there, hardly any activities and interests and my relationship status is blank.  Not single, not in a relationship, just blank.  It’s not because I don’t want people to know I have a boyfriend.  My closest friends and family know I am in a relationship.  Why does the rest of the world need to know?  The Boyfriend feels the same way about Facebook as I do.

At his sister’s wedding, some of his extended family members told me they recognized me from Facebook.  I never really thought about it like that.  In a way, it felt nice to be recognized as someone significant in his life.  But in another way, it’s a little weird that social media lets us peek into people’s lives like this.

Weekend Thoughts

This past weekend was so much fun.  The Boyfriend’s younger sister got married and we went to Ohio for the celebration.  Generally I really enjoy going to weddings.  I’ve been a bridesmaid in seven weddings in my lifetime.  This time was different though.  I was going to an important family event for the first time with The Boyfriend.  I met his extended family and his family’s friends.  I got to bond with his sisters and parents.  All in all, it was a really excellent weekend.

In the past I used to like weddings for the free booze and dinner.  I usually attended solo because going to an event like a wedding usually signified something serious, and I haven’t had many serious relationships in the past.  I didn’t want to put a guy I was casually dating through the agony of a wedding.  Heck, I didn’t want to put myself through the agony of explaining who the guy was to a lot of people.

Now that I am in a serious relationship, and attending a wedding, I can’t help but wonder what lies ahead.  His family would say the normal standard things to him like, “You’re next!” and “The next wedding we’ll be at is yours.”  And we’d politely laugh and smile but give no definitive response.  By no means am I saying I am ready to get married right now.  I am saying that if things continue to go as well as they are right now, I could see something happening in six months to a year.  And these thoughts are kind of exciting to me.  But they are also terrifying.

As the weekend starts to wear off and these thoughts fade, I’m sure I’ll stop thinking like this in a week.  But for now, it’s kind of fun…