"Ch-ch-ch-ch- changes...

...come face these strange ch-ch-changes." Changes by Butterfly Boucher and David Bowie

Hello, my lovelies! Sorry for the somewhat prolonged absence! As you know, the wedding happened, and it was absolutely perfect in every way (as far as I could tell) and seriously, I can't think of anything that would've made the day more perfect for me. Going into it I was freaking out about everything...and then the day of it was all peace and wonderful friends and incandescent happiness. :D And frankly, I don't remember a lot...but what I do remember was PERFECT. Thanks to all of you!

Then the honeymoon happened. We road-tripped to our new home in Lexington, and I promptly made Ryan clean out all my cabinets and closets and we scraped about six inches of dust and dead-bugs off everything and bleached it all into submission and now we have a lovely clean little house, which I am putting the finishing touches on this week as Ryan starts academy.

Ooh, and in between the making-Ryan-scrub and the me-doing-finishing-touches, we got to go on our marvelous 6-day trip the Caribbean. It was...perfect. We were on Nevis Island (near St. Kitts) and we simply lazed about blissfully the whole time, and I even got a little bit of a tan. Ryan WOULD have tanned, I'm sure, but he got sun poisoning first, so we had to put a little bit of a stop to the lying in the sun thing. And we were wearing simply gallons of sunscreen, but that's the way it goes sometimes...

THEN we came back and Ryan started academy and I started finishing touches. That's how it happened.

And we don't have internet yet, so it will be a someone sporadic blogging time of life for me, I fear. But don't worry--once I get my act together I will post wedding pictures (some of which can be seen on my darling photographer's blog here. And here. And here.) and I will also post some pictures of Nevis, and I will entertain you with our adventures--which we certainly did have!

Please pray for Ryan as he's in Police Academy. He only got one phone call this week (5 minutes) and he sounded good, but tired.

And if you want to know the truth, I am struggling to be positive about the new town and the house (which seems to be a local party spot for some very original-looking insects) and not knowing anyone and such. Though I've already made friends with a family here who had me to dinner (and they are wonderful) plus I'll see Gus tomorrow (we're going dress shopping! It's very cool to live near her for the first time since Freshman year!) and my very sweet landlord ("Brother Tom"--and that's not a name I made up!) has come by and checked on me every day so far, and he took out all my cardboard boxes to be recycled and my trash. And mowed my lawn. What a sweetie--I already feel like he's a relative. A great-uncle, perhaps.

There have been three particularly hard moments so far since Ryan left. First was when I saw my first Kentucky-unique bug. I will describe it to you:

It is slightly large than a quarter, but more oblong with one pointy end. The body is wormlike, and it has a bout a billion legs, of varying sizes. It is yellowish brown. My first encounter consisted of me screaming my head off for Ryan to come kill the monster (perched on the molding in my kitchen) but then I realized, about a minute-and-a-half of solid screaming later that he wasn't there and I'd have to kill it myself. I cried, I shivered, I whined (out loud, to anyone who could hear, which was no-one) and finally I sucked up my socks (as my mother would say) and I took my flip-flop and I beat that thing into dust. Literally. I hit it and pounded it till all that was left was a little pile of bug-dust and legs. I later learned that is the way these bugs pass on--kind of like when a Jedi master dies, he goes ::poof:: just like this, only this has more legs.

My second encounter with a bug was in the bathroom, I emptied a mop bucket into the toilet, turned to refill it in the bathtub and saw another one of these monstrous creatures on the side of the tub. There was much less screaming this time, just a jump and an immediate use of the flip-flop. This bug also disintegrated.

My third encounter was in my bedroom. I was putting on earrings, and I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. I thought it was a mouse, because it skittered--and it was LARGE. And it ran under my dresser. I hopped on the bed (off the floor! I don't mind mice so much but I would DIE if it ran across my foot) and soon, out the other side of the dresser ran A BUG even BIGGER and running WAY TOO FAST. I couldn't run that fast. "Ew ew ew ew ew!" I screamed, I groveled, I howled, and it ran under my bed where I couldn't get it. I jumped off the bed, ran into the living room and hopped on our window-seat-type-thing and jumped and screamed and howled until I realized there was no one to rescue me. Since I couldn't get at it under the bed I just put on some especially tall flip-flops and walked on tiptoe everytime I went in the bedroom. If it is in my bed I swear I will just...I don't know. DIE. Then Nae-nae called and told me they have these same bugs in Indiana and they are not poisonous or attack people or bite or anything. They just look ugly. "Think of it like a grasshopper" she said. Ew ew ew ew ew.

So that's the first bad moment without Ryan. Sort of a three-part moment.

The second was in Wal-Mart, as I was buying shelf-liner and hangers. It was right after he'd talked to me on the phone. I suddenly got overwhelmed with being so alone, and I got dizzy and everything went black. I think it must have looked like I tripped, because a nice Wal-Mart man came over and said, "Are you ok?" and picked me up off the floor and hooked me back onto my cart. I told him I was fine and finished and went home. My closet has coordinating blue shelf-liner and blue hangers now, by the way. It is very interesting. More on that in a future post.

The final bad moment was when I did laundry this morning. I was putting away Ryan's clothes, and I folded everything in the special academy way, and then I hung up a few shirts and I could smell him...and I just started crying and crying. And then that freaking bug ran out from under the bed, did a loop around the room and ran back under the bed and I ran out and jumped back onto the window seat and started screaming again and flapping my arms and saying "EW EW EW EW EW I HATE KENTUCKY I HATE IT EW EW EW." But once I got over it, I rescinded the part about hating Kentucky. It was a lovely nice warm day today, and we have sweet wild violets in our front lawn, which is nice.

So yes.

But thanks to my precious friends, near and far, I've been on the phone almost constantly, it seems, with everyone praying for me and visiting and cheering me up immensely. It is so good of all of you to spend time on me, I appreciate it more than you know. And once I get plugged in to some community here, I can already tell I'll like Lexington, and our little house, and even Kentucky as a whole. Every single person I've met has been charming and friendly, and I love how even the heater-and-air-conditioner repairmen talk about candy as "sweeties" and call me "darlin" and "hon" in a non-creepy way. :)

My repairmen on Monday (did I mention our heater and a/c died?) were Tony and Skippy. (I kid you not.) Tony was a grinning, grey-haired fifty-something who Brother Tom referred to as a "nice young feller." Skippy was probably also fifty-something, and very friendly; but mostly all I could see of him were acres and acres of patched overalls. He was quite tall and...sort of shaped like the goodyear blimp, bless his heart. They were both very nice, though Skippy had a mild diabetic low and at his request I supplied him with "sweeties." Teehee, I can't even say that word without giggling. Sweeties! And they fixed our heater, and we got a lovely new thermostat (which is good, because the old one was so antiquated and complex I couldn't operate it!) and I know they squished at least four bugs of varying species, which is four bugs I won't have to squish. Yay.

So yes, as you can see, I'm keeping busy and staying out of trouble. If I get everything done on the house this week, I'll start job hunting next week. I hear Great Harvest Bread Co. is hiring, which sounds somewhat interesting...I've never worked in a bakery. Not sure I want to, but it's an option...

As a whole, I love being married. I hate not being with Ryan. I like Lexington. I hate bugs. I love my friends and family. I loathe not having internet. That is a good synopsis. :) Oh, and did I mention I hate bugs?

And as I said, don't give up on me, I promise I'll post pictures from everything as soon as I get my act together and get to a wireless hotspot at the same time. :)

Love!