Catching Up

The honeymoon was beyond survivable and more like epic, tumultuous, thrilling, tiring, spur-of-the-moment, and at certain times of sundown and sunup, at least partially magical.

Tonight I finally got around to writing a few thank-you cards —postcards created from friends' wedding photos which I'm more than a little proud of — and the good memories of the day return. Frankly, I didn't really enjoy the wedding day. It was perfect in execution (or at least as close as I had dared to hope) but I was too caught up in micromanagement and trying to make sure the gathered had a good time; what I hear was that it was quite a good little party, though so much of it I missed. All that aside it was the greatest thing that's happened in my life thus far, so I suppose I can't really complain.

Married life, as I am guessing most newlyweds write, is wonderful. There's plenty to fight about but an unfair amount of those moments where we look at each other, finally together in the same country on a reasonably permanent basis, and say "Wow. We are so lucky." We've been riding together (job status changed dramatically; I'm the equestrian director at a camp just a little way up the road from La Junta and so far it's a great reason to wake up every morning) and training for a beginners' adventure race at Camp Eagle in Rocksprings, Texas, along with the two other young directors working here at camp. The only thing I'm passably good at is trail running, but the swimming (we swam our first ever 500m last week: momentous), mountain biking, high ropes and rock climbing will at least give me a kick in the face and some good stories to tell.

Bandit loves his new job with all the prissy mares in the pasture, and Hopalong has two new buddies to go chase / wallow in stuff with. My parents are well (dad's birthday was yesterday and we absolutely nailed the task of baking The Birthday Cake) and our new house is slathered in simple Ikea furniture and every color that caught my eye. Richard indulges me by keeping it pretty darn tidy, volunteers his free time (pre-green card, which may come as early as January) for our new camp, and plays copious amounts of Call of Duty on the xBox. Did I mention he's started riding with me fairly often? I love it, and he's surprisingly really good. But then he tends to be one of those annoying people that's good at any physical thing he tries.

I'll do my best to keep tabs on this blog and update frequently, though it saddens me that I have no friends who write regularly anymore! (Hint, hint.)