Posts Tagged ‘marriage’
Requiem for a Date Night
Well! Date Night was a great success after a patchy launch.
Possibly I should have not invited other people along at the last minute, that’s true, but without their presence we would not have ended up watching “So, you think you can strip?” (The first amateur male stripping competition in Perth) at the end of the night.
Details huh?
Okay, here’s a quick synopsis of the night:
Ben and Emma race home from work early, but traffic is insane and it takes Emma 1.5 hours to make it back (three times the usual). Ben tells Emma that they will be joined at dinner by a work mate and her “man bag” friend, who is gay, but that’s okay. Emma is secretly upset by this but gets ready anyway. Ben thinks things are going great. It’s time to leave (+5 minutes) and Ben is made aware that Dates don’t involve other people, but he recovers gracefully and our intrepid couple makes it to the restaurant before the other pair.
Dinner goes swimmingly, largely helped along by two bottles of very nice wine and a single glass of real, actually french, champagne. The food was fantastic as well, but they run out of time to try dessert. Dessert is reprised at another establishment, to great applause and general frivolity, until finally the group moves on to the nightclub. Almost. There is a quick dash back home to get a passport because a wallet was left at work, during which the young married couple discusses marriage and how much fun it is to be leaving early while the single folk stay on at the (probably) raging club.
They make it back in time to catch the judging of the first round of stripper hopefuls, drinks are appropriated and the show continues. There are terrible, terrible strip shows and some good ones, but generally it was great fun. Especially the part where one of the contestants, desperate for applause and probably drunk on all the screaming females, “accidentally” get’s his junk out and prances about the stage like he’s hung like a horse. He is not. No matter though, the crowd goes nuts anyway, possibly to make up for his.
The professional strippers who are promoting the show put on one of their own on. They are, of course, significantly better than any of the contestants. Judges announce the winner and our married couple, having had a nice dinner; fun conversations; and oddball (literally) entertainment, call it a night.
Perhaps we aren’t so “old” after all.
Well the wedding has been and gone, so has the honeymoon and it seems the next logical step in this thing we call marriage is building a home together. Ben and I have been living together for some time at Ben’s house, I own a house too but mine is currently rented to help us out with the bills. Ben has made space for me in his home, giving me shelves in the cupboard and some space in the kitchen for some of my stuff but on the whole it has still felt like I am living at Ben’s house rather than us having a home together.
One thing we have done to help rectify this situation was to buy a wardrobe big enough for us both to fit our clothes into and Ben allowing me to change the downstairs room into a sort of ‘playroom’ for me, housing my TV, DVDs and Wii. What this has actually meant though was four trips to IKEA to buy not only the wardrobe, but doors for the wardrobe (once we could afford them) and a sofa bed for downstairs. The last week has been a slow transformation of the house.
IKEA furniture is notoriously tricky to build. The instructions seem simple but for some reason we always manage to skip a step or think we know a shortcut only to find ourselves having to dismantle the whole thing and start again. Ben and I managed to survive the ordeal with only one real argument, a feat which I am quite proud of.
Ben was holding the incredibly heavy door up off the ground while I attempted to manoeuvre it into the slot on the hanging rail. It seemed like a good idea at the time but a boy under that much strain can only last for so long and the the cry of “Quick! Put the quilt under the door before I drop it on the floor!” was met by me panicking. I realised that the quilt was stuck under the other door where it wouldn’t budge, I grabbed the next thing I could find which was a cardigan. I mistook Ben saying “Yes! That will work!” for sarcasm and promptly threw the cardigans back on the bed and then freaked out when he yelled at me to put them back. I started crying at being yelled at, Ben got frustrated at me thinking he was being sarcastic and the door wasn’t even in place! Ten minutes later and after seeing the situation from both sides we talked it out and got the door on properly this time. Our marriage had survived IKEA furniture!
So the transformation is slow but I am starting to feel more at home. It is the little things that make it for me, like furniture we have purchased and built together. Next week we will have new bed sheets too, some that we both like! Even silly little things like being shown how to use Ben’s super fancy vacuum cleaner, the dishwasher or the washing machine. Being helpful around the house had made me feel more like I belong and that it is my home too.
It may seem trivial for some but it is important to me and I think Ben is starting to understand that too.
Image by Listen Missy! (Flikr)
So the honeymoon is over and Ben and I are on the plane on our way home. It has been quite a trip and we have both had a lot of time to unwind, relax and ask the question “Well, what next?”
We have both been looking to the future in one way or another, I don’t think it is any secret that we are both pretty restless in our lives at the moment occupation wise, but we can’t seem to figure out the next step.
I thought coming to Singapore would help me to put that part of my life behind me (I used to study performing arts in Singapore but dropped out rather unceremoniously after a month and a terrible bout of homesickness) but instead I am just as confused as ever. I have too many options and no direction.
So the honeymoon is over, now for the rest of my life to happen, if only I knew where to begin!
It’s all done and dusted. We’re hitched. We’ve flown the coup. We, the undersigned, are in this together.
The wedding, photos and reception were fantastic fun – you should have been there. The conversation; the speeches; the dancing; the bride; the groom; the guests; all perfect.
And now, sitting in a donut shop under a staircase in a shopping mall in Singapore, we are falling asleep.
Perfect :-)
This is my Now. What’s yours?
It feels a little weird writing “Weekly Review” without putting the number of weeks in brackets after it, but it’s time to move on and get back to living our lives!
So this week we have been back to King Edward Memorial Hospital to have the second ultra-sound scan for the second load of Misoprostol tablets. Just about everything is gone now, only a little bit of dark grey .. on a grey screen .. of grey dots could be seen.
I do have to mention that after being told that it’s not all over, we were pretty disappointed. Yeah, 50% of the women who take it the first time have complete success, and then 50% of those who take it again will not have to come back. Which leaves 25% of the original number of women wondering if they should have just gone for the surgery in the first place or, like us, looking at option two, just let it be for a while. It seems like months ago since New Year’s Eve, it really does. I expect it’s my brains method of healing, but it’s only been two and a half weeks.
On a side note, coming out of the second ultra-sound we learnt two things:
- If you’re making an appointment at the K.E.M.H. E.R. department (and I feel for you if you are) make it for 8:50am
- Ultra-sounds have to be completed by competent technicians (or at least people who are aware of the general structure/location of all the bits they are ultra-sounding) or you might end up with an ultra-sound of your rectum.
Yes. In the words of many women out there: That’s the wrong hole, darlin’.
Thankfully, Emma was saved by a savvy technician who, in exasperation, leapt in at the last moment to make a vital correction. (I wonder if she was a lesbian? I’m a boy, we think these things. Yes, all of us.)
That was the high-light and low-light of the week.
Oh! We’re getting married, but that was last weeks announcement, so I can’t make it again.
So; We’re STILL getting married.
