Sunday, September 12, 2010
Wish we could have just frozen this weekend in St. Louis and made it last forever. These days were about as close to perfect as any have ever been in my life. We went to all of our favorite places, laughed until our sides ached, and I’ve got to be the luckiest man who has ever lived.
Friday, September 10, 2010
We played hooky from work and went to St. Louis this weekend. That’s a little tricky to do, since we both work at the same place. We can’t really just both call in sick, so I put “out of town appointment” as the reason to be gone. I figured they’ll assume it’s a doctor’s appointment and I won’t tell them any different.
Ceecee and I are going through this amazing awakening in our marriage and it just keeps growing. Everything seems new and we are experiencing things we never knew were possible. I don’t how long it can stay like this, but I’m pretty much living the dream right now.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Got my wedding ring back from the jeweler today. He did a great job. My Mother gave me some of her really old gold jewelry that she doesn’t wear anymore, and I gave it to the jeweler, so it hardly cost any money to get my ring done. I also got to introduce my wife to him, which was extremely cool, since he repaired both of our rings, one before we split up, and one after we got back together.
Monday, September 6, 2010
Labor day, indeed. So glad this weekend is finally over. I’m still working at Macy’s, as well as teaching, and we just finished our Labor Day sale. It’s one of the two biggest sales of the year in the furniture and mattress department where I work.
I had to work all three days and it was insane. I’ve never been nearly that busy and we had a major system crash with our computers right in the middle of it. Ceecee and I don’t really need the extra income now, and I’ll probably only stay until right before the holidays. We usually travel over Thanksgiving, so this will help pay for all that, but I’m not willing to get stuck having to work and not be able to go anywhere.
Ceecee ran 20 miles in her training for the marathon over the weekend. I don’t know how she does it.
Saturday, September 4, 2010
I took my wedding ring in to the same jeweler that fixed Ceecee’s before we separated. Mine has been through a lot, and it’s developed a small crack on the bottom and is somewhat out of round.
He said that it wasn’t made very well and simply doesn’t have enough gold in it to repair the crack. He said he would need to add more gold to it and then it could be made stronger. I agreed, but told him I didn’t like the thought of being without my ring while the work was being done. I asked him if there was any chance that he had a plain wedding band that I could use as a loaner, so my finger wouldn’t be “naked.”
He didn’t, but he took a piece of white gold and went in the back and I could hear him tinkering around. When he came back out, he had actually made me a plain band to wear. He said he understood and that I could keep it.
I got a chance to share some of our story with him and he loved it. I hope that Ceecee will come with me when the ring is ready, because I’d really like to be able introduce her to him.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Rather hilarious place we found ourselves this evening. Let’s just say that lately, our physical relationship has been off the charts and we were “otherwise engaged” when the tornado sirens went off. I was hearing them in the back of my mind, but not enough to comprehend what they meant.
When we finally realized that the sirens were sounding, and had been for some time, we jumped out of bed and frantically began trying to figure out what to do. We were in the loft building on the second floor and had no idea where to go, or even if there was any kind of shelter.
You’d think we would have been scared because of our past and my PTSD, but I had been getting treatment in therapy to overcome my fears of tornadoes and we found ourselves laughing and treating it like a silly adventure. Of course, it helped that the radar showed us to not be in any real danger.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
We’ve been having some silliness to offset last evening. Not that it was that bad, but we had to go back to the old apartment in Republic to get the rest of our stuff out, since the end of the month is here. It was just weird and awkward to go back there (Ceecee hadn’t been back since she left) and face all those memories. We also had to pick through stuff and decide what was worth keeping, what we wanted to get rid of, and what we could sell.
As we were leaving, I spotted this ceramic turtle that we had bought as a garden ornament in the gravel bed by the front door and I picked it up. Ceecee set it up on the dashboard in the car and took a picture of it as we were driving away. She captioned her photo, “Mr. Turtle and I are ditching this place.”
Now today, she’s setting “Mr. Turtle” up all over the loft and taking pics of him.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Ceecee wrote, “I’m a 10 cow wife!” on her Facebook today. It goes back to a story we read years ago, and we even watched a cheesy movie about it on DVD once. It’s about a guy named Johnny Lingo and he lives on an island in the tropics. He is legendary for being able to make deals for just about anything, but the people from his home town say he moved away after he married a poor, ugly girl and that he gave 8 cows for her, which is a crazy amount of cows to give for a wife.
Anyway, the person telling the story decides to go find Johnny Lingo, and when he does, his wife is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. It turns out that him valuing her that much changed the way she saw herself, and she transformed into an entirely new woman.
I can never express how much this means to me. For years, when I was frustrated with our marriage, my main source was that my love for Ceecee didn’t seem to make any difference for her. She came with a lot of baggage from her past, which is fine, but I always believed that being my wife would eventually heal her and set her free from all that.
When years went by and nothing changed, it made me feel useless and like a complete failure. Of course I realize now that I wasn’t loving her properly, and that most of my motivations were selfish, so to read that this morning on her status really made my heart leap with joy!
Thursday, August 26, 2010
A really cool step on the restoration tour today. We each got new tattoos. Well, I got my first, and Ceecee got a new one. I had told Angie and a few others my idea for a tat back when we were separated, but I had never told Ceecee until after we were back together.
I got the verse from Song of Solomon in a circle with her name inside, and we decided that two wedding rings linked together was the missing piece. We went to the same artist who had done Ceecee’s first tattoo last Spring and he wrote it up in this really amazing script. I got it on my upper left arm just below the shoulder and it looks great!
Ceecee got a Champagne glass on the inside of her left wrist with bubbles coming up. It’s really cool. When I think of that bottle of Champagne the night she moved into her loft, and of sitting with her when she got her earlier tattoo and of how much I wanted to be able to love her and have her love me back, I’m overwhelmed. This is what the restoration tour is all about. It’s about revisiting the times and places where we got hurt, let each other down, or just missed out on what was meant to be. Now, we can heal those hurts, replace those disappointing memories, and create new ones that are the way they should be.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Ceecee fell on her bike on the way home today. It was right in town, and just a fluke thing. She wasn’t hurt, just embarrassed, and I’m glad it wasn’t like when I cracked a rib last Spring.
The Restoration Tour 