Hesitant, Hopeful

Well this year has been a shitstorm, eh? We started off with a bang and we're going out with a whimper, what a brutal piece of shit this year turned out to be. And you know, I have not a single fuck left about hurting this piece of crap year's feelings, or trying not to jinx the rest of the year with bad vibes (yeah, I'm a little superstitious). But here's the thing, I got into writing this post, bitching for two paragraphs about how bad it is, and discovered something... on a personal level, we had more high points than low points, if you look at it from a certain perspective. So, I deleted all that shit and am trying something else.

This year has had a few good spots. We celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary in February, I took a very short but rewarding business trip in March, we went to GenCon Online in July, and we got new furniture in October. We had a roof over our heads, good food to eat, and neither of us have gotten COVID, even though Matt has to work outside the house in an environment where a lot of people have turned up COVID+. 

More than that, we've been able to afford to be vegan (that shit ain't cheap) and I've been blessed to be able to take up a new, fairly expensive hobby (diamond painting). We're both healthy and, stressed, but happy. Our political candidate won, thank the good lord, and we're personally ending the year no worse for the wear than when it began... mostly. 

This year did start with both of us being turned down for promotions at our respective work-places that we interviewed for in the same week. So, we're both doing the same damn jobs we were when this dumpster fire of a year started, but at least we still have jobs. We're making good money and can afford to meet our needs. We have insurance and a 401k, or two. We're sort of just stuck right now, but we're grateful to have jobs to be stuck in and complain about when so many others don't. After I wrote this, some things happened with my job that caused me to quit. So, we're not both employed anymore, but we are fortunate that Matt has a good job that supports our needs, even if it's a bit tighter than it was a week ago. More about this later, because the reason I quit that job is really long winded.

The only thing I can say about this shit year that has absolutely no silver lining for us on a personal level was that we lost our sweet baby, Chewbi, in August. The pain from losing him has been real and, 4 months later, I'm still trying to cope. That dog was seriously my soulmate (don't tell Matt). And, we're probably going to have to put Ani down in the coming year, so that fucking sucks.

Everything else has been okay for us. As the world goes to shit, we're doing alright. We're sympathetic and filled with anxiety about the state of the world, but we're surviving and even doing alright. But, looking back on my NYE post from last year, I didn't accomplish even a single one of my new years resolutions. So this year, I'm not going to set any resolutions...other than just to make it through another year without more failures than successes. 

We got our new furniture around the end of last month! I mentioned in a previous post we were getting a new sofa and chairs. Well, we also decided to splurge get a new bed. But man, what a fiasco getting new furniture and getting rid of the old furniture turned out to be. I'm not the most logistically minded person, so the anxiety of organizing all of that was real. But, thankfully, it's done and we're enjoying it, even if it was seriously work.

I ordered our new sofa on September 4th and it was delivered October 26th, about 7 weeks wait. But, it's custom and so beautifully built that I was more than willing to wait. I'm not patient, I've never been good at waiting for what I want, so this is a feat for me. It turns out I'm okay waiting for those things worth waiting for. This sofa has been on my radar for 10 years, I've always wanted it but never been able to bring myself to pay so much for a sofa, especially with dogs. Now that it's here, I could not be happier.

I ordered new recliners from Ashley around about the same time. When I ordered, they told me the wait was about 6 weeks. Okay, our new couch wasn't coming right away, so there was wiggle room. But, I needed them within that window because I needed to get all of this stuff hauled away at the same time. The day my chairs were set to be delivered, they left me a very rude message about delays. When I reached out to them, they told me the wait was another month at least and they couldn't guarantee when I would actually get the chairs. Okay, no. This was not going to work for me, I told them that, and they told me to deal with it. I cancelled that order.

After that, I ordered from another company and had a similar experience. In the end, I got so fed up, I ordered Ashley Brand chairs from Big Lots. They were here within two days. This was a good thing and a bad thing. They're nice chairs, very comfy and they look great, but they're not exactly what I had planned to order. They also cost me about half what the other chairs had been going to cost, which is actually a good thing. We've never been that easy on furniture, so the likelihood that these chairs will start to look awful in the next five or so years is high. We only paid $500 for both chairs. That makes them very affordably replaceable.

While we waited for all of that living room furniture, Matt decided he also wanted to get a new bed. But this time he wanted to get a really good bed. We bought Purple Harmony pillows a few months ago and we absolutely love them, so when we were trying to choose a bed we decided on the Queen size Purple Hybrid Premier with 4" gel grid. This bed was pricy, we got the Purple bed foundation, and they gave us free sheets.

We got Queen, rather than King, because all our bedding is Queen and because we don't feel like we need that much space. We're comfortable in a Queen. Let me tell you, this bed is absolutely amazing. When we first got it, I wasn't completely sure because it's much more springy than our previous bed had been. It's also a little softer. But, this bed is heavenly. We're both getting better nights sleep and let me just say, the stretch sheets they make for that bed are so soft and perfect. We're very pleased with this thing. 

But, it comes rolled up in a log and that bed is crazy heavy. It took both of us to lift it into the house and even then we only barely got it done. It was 200+ lbs of dead weight. When it came, I was working, but Matt was so excided that he moved the old bed into the garage by himself, put the new bed frame together, and with my help we got the new mattress out of the packaging and on to the frame... barely. It is one seriously heavy bed. 

When all the new furniture was set to be delivered, we took all the old furniture into the garage along with some other things we had around, like two broken oscillating fans, a set of plastic dog stairs Ani was always scared to use, stuff like that. Our plan had been to take it all to the curb for bulk pick up. But, just getting it into the garage was a fiasco. We actually had to take some of the legs off the old sofa to get it out of here. So, we ended up paying a local company to haul it all away. That guy was so nice and did such an amazing job getting all that stuff out of the garage within 30 minutes of giving me the quote. I was floored by how fast his crew worked and how polite he was.

Okay!! Let me show you our new sofa. The color is Key Largo Ruby, the style is mid-century modern. I got the "I love you/I Know" pillows from Amazon a couple of years ago when my in-laws were coming to visit. Don't mind the mess on the entertainment center, I had to move a book shelf out of the way so they could bring the sofa in, so all the stuff from that shelf is stacked up there. On the other side of the sofa is my diamond painting work station. 😊

At the end of the day, we have a house full of new furniture and we couldn't be happier about our decision to give our house a little makeover!

Thank fuck...😅

Matt and I have been vegan for just about 10 months now!! How crazy is that? When I say it like that, it doesn't sound like much, but man it feels like I have learned so much about food and myself in that short 10 months, it's been wild. The most surprising part, I think, is how completely good we are being vegan. We generally don't miss the foods we gave up to go vegan and it's been kind of shocking to me that we actually feel that way. And Matt has absolutely been a rockstar this last 10 months, very unapologetic even though working in a cheese processing plant means he's entrenched by the enemy... *eh hem* I mean, um, even though he's surrounded by temptation.

I won't lie, though, and say there haven't been moments I've been less enthusiastic. They're so rare, but I would be a liar if I said I wasn't super salty about not being able to be basic this year and have my Pumpkin Spice Latte like everyone else. Even more so since Starbucks has introduced a dairy-free pumpkin spice syrup in Europe, so they can have their vegan PSLs and I can't. Boo-fucking-whoo!! I told Matt I was breaking out the full Victorian widow's weeds, complete with lace veil and gloves, to mourn the loss of my pumpkins spice lattes days. He wasn't really amused. 

So, instead of breaking out the black garb, I've found a way to make up for the fact that most pumpkin spice products aren't vegan by finding some that are and kinda sorta buying all of them. I'm a little obsessed with fall, which has only gotten worse since we've moved somewhere with all the lovely seasons. Fall in Northern Utah is a sight to behold, for sure. Sooooo, I'm in the mood for pumpkin food! And, that rhymes. Great... yeah, I've found myself some vegan pumpkin spice goodness and so far I haven't been disappointed.

And, since winter is coming soon, we also found vegan nogs. Seems a little early for that, but we're getting a head start by trying all of those, too. I wonder if they make a vegan pumpkin spice nog?! That would be amazing!! Um, what was I saying... Oh yeah, we bought three different ones: Silk Nog, Almond Breeze Nog, and So Delicious Coconut Nog. We're having a nog-off and, despite Matt's rooting for the Coconut Nog, the Almond Nog is the clear standout. It's leagues ahead of it's competitors. It's smooth and thick, and tastes exactly like egg nog.

I suppose the moral of this particular story is that we can still eat anything damn thing we want!! The few moments I spent feeling deprived when I couldn't have my PSL have now been filled up by so much good vegan food that it completely passed without much more thought. I got silk pumpkin spice creamer and pumpkin spice ground coffee and made my own pumpkin spice goodness. It's just so amazing to me how easy it is to choose an alternative to the standard American diet these days. You want something that's not vegan? Find it somewhere or make it vegan, easy as that. Want pumpkin spice foods, go get some!! Want egg nog, there're three vegan varieties and those are just the ones we were able to find at Smiths (Kroger) one Saturday afternoon in October. 

Most of all, we're so proud of the choice we've made for ourselves. Matt's health has dramatically improved and I would imagine mine has too, because I feel better, but I haven't gone to the doctor in like 7 years so I have no proof. Best of all, nothing is truly off limits, you just have to figure out how to make it happen which, it turns out, is easier than it sounds. ♥

This year, amid the chaos, Matt and I celebrated our 20th anniversary. I guess, technically, we celebrated it in February with a nice daytrip to Salt Lake before all hell broke loose. But, it had been our plan to take an actual anniversary trip to Indianapolis at the end of July/beginning of August for GenCon. While this isn't exactly the usual anniversary trip destination, it would have been perfect for us. Clearly, though, that didn't happen. Much to our disappointment, so many things went wrong. 

First, due to the coronavirus, the in-person convention was cancelled. Despite our disappointment, we were actually completely fine with this. Putting 70,000 people in the same place at the same time, amid a pandemic, would have just been irresponsible. Instead, they decided to do the convention virtually. Which, let me say right now, was still so much fun! 

But, even if it hadn't been cancelled, we wouldn't have been able to go to Indy. Two and a half weeks before we would have left for this trip, Chewbi got extremely sick. No way, no matter how much money we would have been out, would we have even for one second considered leaving him at that point. The hotel we were going to book would have been about $5,000 for 4 nights and completely non-refundable, so I was glad I'd not ended up booking it before learning the convention was getting a whole change of venue.

Matt and I both still took the week of the convention off work so we could attend all the virtual sessions. Chewbi was stable and improving at this point, so while we were worried about him we still tried to settle in in to enjoy the convention. But, instead of being in a packed convention center, we got to enjoy it from the comfort of our living room. We got to order overpriced Doordash and eat our own vegan junk food, rather than paying for overpriced food trucks. I know we would have had a hell of a lot of fun if we went in-person (and still might if we go another year), but it's really no overstatement to say we had a great time at home. We're both pretty introverted, so that's valuable to us.

We both packed our schedules with a ton of seminars, I joined the discord server so I could see announcements and mingle with other virtual convention-goers. I actually didn't mingle, I just sort of watched them mingle, but that was fine too. The seminar sessions were held on Twitch, through Zoom, and occasionally on YouTube or Facebook live.

My schedule was packed for the full four days, but  would occasionally change here and there as I'd try a different session than originally planned. I learned about Game Mastering from a guy who has been doing so for almost 40 years and about worldbuilding from a Brigadier General--which is not only useful for gamers, but also as a writer. I went to two sessions about the history of TSR, the company that started Dungeons & Dragons, and how they wound up being owned by Wizards of the Coast. Both super interesting. I took a session about dice statistic that was so far over my head, I really had no idea what they were talking about. I won a beta invite to a fantastic world building platform and had so much fun!

Sometimes Matt and I would attend the same session, sometimes we wouldn't, but overall we both really enjoyed our week. We came away from the event with more knowledge, a whole host of new ideas, and some great swag... just like we would have if we'd gone in person! 

My favorite souvenir has to be the plushie. Genevieve is GenCon's dragon mascot and she is adorable!! Her wings are even wired so they're shapeable and she has the two d20s on the side to represent GenCon 2020. 

Of course, of all the great things you can do at GenCon, the one I was most looking forward to had to be shopping for dice. I'm a huge dice collector, running somewhere around 500 sets, so finding something to add to my collection was a big priority for me. When the in-person convention was cancelled, this was the thing I was most disappointed about. Not being about to have the experience of shopping the exhibitor's hall. Turns out, they had that covered, too. I got my dice! 

After the convention was over, we talked about hoping they do a sort of hybrid convention going forward. Maybe they'll do the in person convention, but have a virtual element for the seminars. That would be amazing. So many people were able to attend this year that cannot otherwise afford a trip to Indy. Something that would have cost us $6,000-$7,000, cost us only what we paid for our own snacks and swag. I think we may have come out around a few hundred dollars. And, best of all, we enjoyed ourselves sharing in our mutual hobby in a way that was meaningful. Even though we didn't make it to Indy, Happy 20th Anniversary to us! ♥

After 10 years of web-stalking, the Joybird Hughes Sofa is about to be mine. When we moved to Utah, we bought new living room furniture from Ashley; A red sofa and two grey recliners. Our living room has a bit of a Star Wars theme, so the pieces were perfect, and I absolutely loved the red sofa. But over the last 5 years, that furniture has been wrecked. All pieces are a faux leather material that has just pealed away, leaving the furniture uncomfortable and looking awful.

I learned pretty early on that my father deals with grief through sweat. He suffers a loss and rather than wallowing or folding in on himself, he gets busy doing whatever home/work projects needs doing. He goes into high gear hustling the pain away. I never understood this. When I suffer a loss, I tend to go the other way. I climb into my bed, pull the covers over my head, and cry the pain away. As an aside, this doesn't actually work, it just represents an inability to emotionally handle it. Being manic depressive affects the way I'm able to process emotional pain, I'm self-aware enough to know this. 

When I lost my pup one awful Friday in August, I did exactly that. I folded up and sobbed. For a long time, I just shut down and gave in to it. Then, I pulled myself up, picked up all his toys, labeled the box, and put them in the garage. I can clearly see this was denial. I couldn't look at them. I cleaned up all the messes he had made, because he was a messy little guy. Then I went back to being completely disabled by grief. 

The next day, Saturday, I considered staying in bed. Instead, I got up and did the only thing I could think to mitigate the gaping hole in my heart. I cleaned the bedroom and the kitchen, I cleaned out closets, did all the laundry, and gathered up all the trash from every waste basket. I de-cluttered and my house looked better than it had in a very long time. I took my dad's approach to dealing with the pain and worked it off. And, strangely, it helped a little bit. I still cried myself to sleep, but I felt like I had managed it in the healthiest way I knew how and that brought me a little bit of comfort. Every day went like this, cleaning, working, or both.

Yesterday was a month since we lost Chewbi. I spent the morning acknowledging our loss, our house has been so much emptier without him. If I had to say where I am now, I'd say I've come around to acceptance. I know our sweet boy isn't coming back. Still, I sort of sense his presence, in a way, and while I know that sounds crazy I don't mean in a ghost dog sort of supernatural way. I'm starting to bearably remember the happy times we had together, the sweet things he would do, and occasionally I'll think I hear him or feel his presence.

The truth is, I don't know how best to process grief or if there's even one healthy way. What I do know is that this time I worked pretty hard to try to do something other than just let it crush me and that has to be healthier than sinking into the depression and letting it swallow me. That's not to say there weren't moments the depression kept me in bed and others when I couldn't swallow the tears. But, I pushed back and I feel okay about that. ♥

I made a joke at the beginning of the quarantine that I was feeling self-conscious because, unlike everyone else, I hadn't taken up a new hobby during the lock-down. A few of my friends took up, or went back to, painting. Others took up gardening. I didn't really have anything new, unless you count diamond painting, but that's not a real hobby... right? Um, I'm an idiot.

As it turns out, it is absolutely a real hobby and I am completely hooked! No exaggeration here. I have become a diamond painting junkie almost over night. I bought a few kits from Paint Gems and reluctantly sat down to see if I had the patience to lift and stick thousands of tiny square "drills" down onto the sticky canvas. I thought I would hate it--or lose patience--and put it away. Yeah, no. Not only did that not happen, I actually completed both kits I'd ordered from Paint Gems and ordered a few more from other sources. I may have gone a little crazy... 

Then I realized I didn't have anywhere to actually do the diamond painting. I don't have a kitchen table (or even anywhere to put one) and the desk in my office isn't really enough space for me to both work and do a hobby. Soooo... I bought myself a drafting-style desk, the kind that has the tilt top. But, then I also needed a chair. Since I wanted to be able to do this hobby in the same space where Matt is, I found a little corner of my living room to set it up. Matt helped me put the table together and I put the chair together.

Well, it's been a hell of a couple of weeks. August has turned out to be a level of awful that's surpassed this whole goddamn year of bad. Losing my pup, Chewbi, on August 14th was a level of pain I can't even describe. I miss him and every time I think I'm getting past it, I feel awful all over again. Do you think it's okay to say that I'm looking forward to the end of this burning dumpster-fire of a year?

We got Chewbi's ashes back yesterday and the vet also had paw prints made for us in plaster. It was such a lovely gesture, but seeing the little wooden urn really hit me. I knew he was gone, but taking him home that way was brutal. I have some more upbeat things to talk about soon, but I'm gonna have to put them off for a bit while I continue to try to recover. Maybe when September comes and I can put August behind me. 

On Friday, August 14th at about 3:35pm, we lost our sweet Chewbi. He would have been 9 years old in November. The vet said that although his blood work for the Immune Mediated Hemolytic Anemia was worse, he believes our boy had a stroke. There was no struggle, he just laid down and closed his eyes. It happened so fast that we couldn't be with him.

He's gone over the rainbow bridge to be with Galileo and Chummer. We miss you, sweet boy. We love you. ♥

Good god, the last two months have been kind of awful. Summer is downright nightmare-inducing at my job, so I barely made it through June with my wits about me. July has been a little tiny bit better at work, but has been gross on a personal level. August just got here, so nothing to say about that yet except that I hope it's better than July was. 

According to Facebook memories, today is the 5th anniversary of our Texas exodus. They rarely share anything that really makes me feel anything, or maybe I just don't look at them enough. Today, though, I happened to see it and, well... I'm pretty bummed. Matt and I were just talking last night about how much we miss Texas. For me, this is an every day event. I want to go back, but we haven't really got any reason to do so. We have to be where work is, but I've made sure he understands that when we retire, we're going home to Texas.

In a fit of practicality, I thought this last week about trading my sporty hatchback for a small SUV. I went so far as to look for one that would be the right fit, check the trade value on my car, and talk with Matt about what he thought. For the record, he thought it was an awful idea and he talked me out of it. Thank fuck he knows me well enough to know when I'm being insane and call me out on it... nicely. I just wanted him to play devil's advocate. I already knew all the reasons I shouldn't trade my car, I just needed someone willing to let me bounce all the reasons it might be a good idea and then tell me why not. He's amazing at this, by the way. 

Soapy - 5/8/2020

I decided that even though most people in Cache Valley, and in Utah in general, aren't really taking this whole pandemic thing seriously, I'm still going to try to do so. The grim facts are that as of today, 28,000 American's have died from this thing; more than any other country in the world. We're in a bad place, but I'm trying to do my part for the health of my community. So, I ordered a cloth mask online (actually, I ordered three, but two haven't come yet). The CDC recommends wearing them, so I'm going to wear one. I know it's not going to keep me from getting it, but if everyone would wear a mask, the spread would slow. I'll wear a mask for you, you do the same for me, and together we protect one another. That sounds like a great plan... if only people would actually do it.

Mermaid mask from @Mertailor on Instagram

I don't know how this post is going to turn out. I feel like I want to write about the pandemic, but I'm so crippled with anxiety about the whole thing, it's hard to get the words out in an organized way without devolving into negativity and near-hysterics. I tend to catastrophize when things are good. When things are bad, and in this case they are very bad, that tendency to catastropize becomes uncontrollable. I don't know how to handle my fear about this without immediately going straight to the most awful possible outcome. 

We had an earthquake around 7:15 a.m. last Wednesday morning. It's been so long since I was in a substantial earthquake, it took me a minute to figure out what was happening. My desk is a little wobbly, because it's cheap, and I had just spun to the side in my chair. It took me a bit to figure out that it wasn't me who was moving anymore, it was the earth. And this earthquake went on for what felt like forever. It shook for a long time.

I am salty, y'all. I ventured outside my bubble on Saturday to get groceries. I got up and went out at 6:30am, just a half an hour after Smith's opened, hoping I would find the supplies I needed. Nope. Total waste of an early morning. No toilet paper, hand sanitizer, Lysol, hand soap, rice, beans, or pasta to be found anywhere. I could have slept in. I was on a 2pm-10pm work shift last week, so a few more hours of sleep would not have been unwelcome.

I went to Walmart and Natural Grocer, too. So many things out of stock, though I did manage to find Kleenex at Walmart, so that was something. I know everyone's worried about being locked down and running out of supplies, but this is long-past ridiculous; even more so because we live in Utah. Most people here are LDS and those folks already stash a ton of supplies. So, I had a glimmer of a hope that due to their prepping, they would have what they need for this disaster and not run out and buy up all the shit on all the store shelves. I mean, isn't this sort of thing the very reason they do that? Yeah, I looked into it, it is.

The thing is, I have no issue with prepping for bad situations. I have no problem with stockpiling a moderate amount of basic supplies for hard times. We have about a month worth of food hanging around in our cabinets. Buy yourself a few extra supplies, that's fine, but why the actual fuck are you waiting until the emergency is here to do that? Shouldn't you be doing that all along. Of course, we all should. This is a problem for me because right now, so many people who have so many months of supplies already stockpiled, are still going out and buying everything.

I have a problem with the way people forget about others in times of crisis. This isn't the first time I've see something like this happen. In January 2011, when we lived in Stephenville, there was a deep freeze and our pipes froze. We went to Walmart to get water and there wasn't any, not even one bottle. It was awful, because right then, it was the one thing we needed more than anything. People, many of whom had running water in their houses, had bought up all the damn bottled water. That was bad, this is so much worse. That hard freeze only lasted one week. This thing is going to go on for weeks, maybe even months.

When you rush out and buy up all of the supplies on the shelves, you prepare you own family for a hard time, but you leave others without. Your kids will have macaroni and cheese every day for the next 7 years, but someone else's kids will have to go without. You'll have more food and toilet paper, and Lysol, than you can possibly use in a year, while others will have to figure out how they're going to scratch together a meal for their kids in the same situation. And worst of all, it creates an even deeper panic that causes others to have to do the same thing, to buy up all the supplies they can find, because the tide is rising and they're afraid they won't be able to get anything if they don't.

These situations are generally temporary. Buying enough supplies for a month or two is fine. Buying every single thing the store has when you already have 6 months worth of food stockpiled in your basement, that's not okay. Panicking is not okay. Forgetting that you are a part of a community, that's also not okay. It's pretty pitiful, in times where everyone is struggling to get basic supplies, people don't care enough about one another to take stock of what they have before they buy everything in the whole goddamn store. It's okay to prep, it's not okay to sacrifice your neighbors in the process to add to your already abundant stockpiles.

I went to Walmart again this afternoon, because as much as I wanted to stay home and hide from COVID-19, I had to get meds for Matt. I didn't want to, but I sucked it up, and there were a ton of people in there. Many of them were just standing around, chatting with people they knew, like it was any other day and we weren't having a pandemic. Hasn't anyone told these people to stay the hell at home? I managed to get one 12 roll pack of toilet paper, one 12 oz. bottle of hand sanitizer, and two small packs of linguine because it was the only pasta they had left. It was pushed all the way to the very back of a bottom shelf.

I feel fortunate to have gotten a few supplies, what I feel shitty about is that Walmart has to restrict how many of these things can be purchased because people can't have an ounce of common decency. There were actually managers walking around Walmart trying to make sure no one purchased too many of these in-demand items. That's bullshit, it's crap they should have to do that. We could all be doing better.

I've been watching Love is Blind on Netflix. I actually binged the whole thing last week and then this morning watched the reunion show. Have you seen this? It's a social experiment where they try to determine if love is actually blind by a sort of blind speed dating where the contestants walk away engaged, take a short vacation, move in together, and then potentially get married... all within a month.

Have you ever seen someone from your past, years later, and felt absolutely nothing? Let me back up, this requires a little bit of explanation to make sense.

I woke up this morning feeling energized. This is either really good or really bad, depending on how you look at it, because it might mean I'm entering manic territory. Over the past few weeks, depression and anxiety have completely taken over. Everything has been hard and too many changes all at one time have made me unable to cope with them. I'm lucky I have the will to climb out of my bed, stuff something in my mouth here and there, and work (because I have no other choice). I'm in a bad place and almost everything in my life has suffered. 

Sitting in the car in Lindon like a weirdo, trying to talk myself into going inside.

It's our 20th Anniversary! That seems like a crazy long time. I was only 21 when we got married, so one more year and I'll be married as long as I wasn't. It feels like a huge accomplishment. In a world where a heck of a lot of marriages end in divorce (including my first one), staying together through thick and thin, for 20 years, is amazing. I'm proud of us.

For our anniversary this year, we went to Salt Lake City. It's local to us, but we're home bodies and don't really have the time to travel right now. So no fancy trips to Turks and Caicos, or wherever. But, we had a really good, low-key anniversary. More on that another day.

Today, I thought it would be fun to share 20 things about us on our 20th year. I did this once before, I think for our 14th anniversary. So here goes...

1. We were only together 8 months when we got married. We had know one another about a year and a half, but we had only been a couple for 8 months.
2. We met online, through ICQ random chat, back before there were internet dating sites.
3. We got married at the courthouse in Waco, TX. There aren't any pictures, we just dressed up, got married, and went out to dinner. Then, life resumed as normal. It was perfect. 
4. In the last 20 years we've lived in three different cities (Waco, Stephenville, & Logan) in two states (Texas & Utah).
5. Between us, we've earned five degrees -- We both hold master's degrees.
6. Matt has a job in his degree field (management and leadership), I don't. 
7. We are blessedly childfree and you would not believe the crazy looks we get when we tell people it's just been us for the last 20 years.
8. We've always been able to have long, in-depth conversations about everything from the actual to the philosophical. That hasn't changed one bit. Matt is a pretty deep thinker, he loves meaningful conversation but is absolute garbage at small talk. 
9. Our #1 shared hobby is gaming. We play role playing games (ie. Dungeons & Dragons)
10. Our #1 shared collectible is dice. We're sitting somewhere around 400 sets each. 
11. We're vegan! In December 2019 we went Vegan, almost two months now and going strong!!
12. We're both introverts and home-bodies. 
13. We bought our first house in 2015. Before that, we had always rented. 
14. We've had four pets: Chummer (1999-2005), Galileo (2004-2019), Anakin (2005-) and Chewbacca (2011-)
15. We're huge Star Wars fans. So much so that our house is decorated in a Star Wars theme, which is subtle and not as tacky as it sounds. 
16. Fun fact: When we got together, I hadn't really seen Star Wars. My ex loved it, so I rejected it to spite him. When Matt convinced me to watch it, I was hooked. 
17. We've had six cars in the last 20 years: Ford Taurus (Matt's car when we got together), a fully loaded Crown Victoria (Matt's granddads car), Pontiac Sunfire (we bought this car outright with the insurance money from totaling the Crown Vic), 2014 Hyundai Veloster, 2016 Jeep Renegade, and 2019 Hyundai Veloster N.
18. We have totally incompatible ideas about aging--Matt is in total denial about how old he is, while I'm completely comfortable with getting older. 
19. We both write, but don't share what we've written.
20. I would be completely and totally lost without him and he feels the same way about me. 

I had an epiphany a thoughtful realization a little bit ago. I gathered up the will to ride the Peloton after I had a pretty rough day at work today. I wanted to sit on my ass and watch rom-coms, but instead did some dishes and jumped on the bike. After a 15 minute class, during which I listened to a tiny little woman tell me how easy it was while I huffed and struggled, I settled in to do a "Zen in 10" meditation. 

It turns out being vegan is a whole new world of judgy. I mean, it has it's obvious benefits. I've lost 13 lbs in less than a month (part exercise, but mostly just what I'm eating), I feel better emotionally, my skin looks better. I could probably go on, but you get the point. It's also not as hard as I thought it would be, even though it involves a lot more cooking than I was previously doing. Both good things.

Chickpea Salad Sandwich

Today is my our one month Peloversary! Is that a thing? We've had our Peloton bike for one month today and so far it's been... surprising. I started to say great, but that's not quite right. Surprising is much more accurate. I thought, in light of that, that I'd share a bit about my experience so far. If you have one of these things or have questions about the bike, please let me know.

We're not getting any younger, ya know? We're in our early 40s and we're looking back on our unhealthy adult years thinking we could have taken better care of ourselves. We're overweight, neither of us sleep very well, and we're not all that active. Okay, I'm not. The hubs works a job where he's on his feet a lot, like 15,000+ steps a night 3-4 days a week. We could have been doing better for ourselves all these years but we've always had a convenience foods lifestyle.

We've always eaten more than our share of fast foods, eaten in restaurants a lot, and when I cook it's generally been a sort of southern, soaked in oil, meat-forward type of diet. We've lived to eat and what we've been eating has tasted good (really, really good), but hasn't been good for us (really, really not good).

So, it would be impossible to overstate my complete and utter shock when my meat eating, cheese loving, dairyaholic husband decided he wanted to be a vegan. He did some research, watched some documentaries (The Game Changers & Forks over Knives), and made a thoughtful, conscious choice to do this thing. One of the many impressive things about him is that when puts his mind to anything, he usually succeeds. He's got great willpower, with some notable exceptions (smoking, boo).

I never thought I'd see the day, honestly. We've been together for 20 years and in that time I've never seen him consider anything even remotely similar to this. It's pretty remarkable how the people you spend every day with can change and grow, right under your nose, without you noticing. In fact, he's usually been completely derisive about vegetarian and veganism.

Since he's made this decision, I'm trying to change my eating habits, too. We're doing this together, but I have to say, so far he's succeeding much more than I am. It turns out I'm struggling to give up "normal foods," like chicken nuggets and mac & cheese. Something many people don't know about me, I was a vegetarian for a while as a teen. I could not stomach the idea of eating meat, most specifically red meat, so I cut it out of my diet. I still ate animal byproducts, like eggs and cheese, but not animals.

You would think, then, that I'd be doing better about this. If we were working toward being vegetarians, I would be crushing this. But, despite what any food documentaries or vegan food blog says, it is not as easy as it sounds to cut all animal byproducts out of your diet. There are things lurking in your food that you may not even know are animal byproducts!

So far, I've made some pretty tasty vegan recipes and, though he's not always been a vegetable fan, the hubs has enjoyed them. I haven't made anything he's turned his nose up at, so that's a good start. Granted, the foods I've been making are pretty basic--black bean enchiladas, veggie stir fry with rice noodles, that sort of thing. It's pretty hard to find some vegan foods around here, so that's not really helping. You would think in a community where everyone is sort of health conscious we could find more vegan foods, but you would be wrong.

Dispute the early struggles, which I am happy to say I have completely overcome now, we're doing okay at this. I've focused my energy on learning, which is really important because I do all the grocery shopping and cooking. If he's going to eat something, I've generally made it. So, it's fallen to me to tell him if he's eating something that might not be vegan and that's been a little bit challenging. Overall, we're doing better than I would have expected and are excited about how this will change our health!

Green Minestrone (Pintrest recipe) -- It was delicious!!