When is it Time to Let Go? (Of Wedding Stuff)

Tom and I celebrated our first anniversary a week ago, and if you look around our apartment, it is very clear that we are newlyweds. Maybe a little too clear? The vast majority of the pictures hanging on the wall are wedding pictures, two shelves of my curio cabinet are full of our serving set, flutes, unity candle, and ring bearer pillow. The sailboat that greeted everyone at the reception lives in my dining room, I have one of our candle centerpieces in there as well. We also have artificial starfish, artificial coral, and seashells scattered around, and our tablecloths are sitting in my closet, waiting for me to make something with them.

Even though we live near the ocean, the decor of our place is definitely not going in the beachy/cottage-y direction, so a lot of the stuff from our wedding really feels out of place. At the same time, it's from our wedding, and I'm a bit emotionally attached. Now, I know that there are certain pieces that will be displayed for the long term, such as our wedding portrait and the items in my curio cabinet. This question pertains to the rest of the stuff:

At what point is it time to put away the wedding decor and move on? 

I think this question goes along with another question that Tom and I are trying to figure out the answer to, what exactly is a newlywed? I always thought that a couple was considered to be newlywed during their first year of marriage, but my grandmother seems to think that it is for the first five years.

Is it a subjective thing? Kind of like how a high school student thinks they are an adult, but and adult still views them as a child? If Tom and I have indeed lost our newlywed status by celebrating our first anniversary, then what exactly are we now? I feel as though we are stuck in sort of an awkward phase between being newlyweds and being parents, perhaps this is why we still have most of our wedding stuff hanging around? Part of me says I should just leave everything as is, and once Tom and I become parents, the pictures on the wall will gradually change from pictures of our wedding to pictures of our children. Part of me says the same thing about the seashells and the starfish, that as we purchase furniture and start to decorate each room, the excess wedding stuff will filter itself out and the new will replace it. On the other hand, I cannot help but question how many friends and family visit our apartment and think, "Oh my goodness people, your wedding was over a year ago, get over it!" Any input on my little dilemma would be greatly appreciated.

Our First Anniversary, or How the Hubby Makes Everything Right

Let's see, where were we? That's right, it was almost 8pm, vacuum exploded, hubby on crutches, and our first anniversary seemed to be going completely down the drain. As you can probably tell from this week's Friday's Letters, things turned around rather quickly. Tom told me to jump into the shower, once I got out I found Tom in our room with a dressed up in his black dress pants and burgundy dress shirt. He had a matching burgundy and black dress hanging on the door waiting for me. Once dressed up, we went out for dinner. By this point, it was almost nine, so we ended up at Texas Roadhouse, where we feasted on ribs and rib eye steaks. We mentioned it was our anniversary, and they spoiled us rotten, as always. Tom managed to finish his dinner, I had a second night of steak and ribs the next day. After dinner, we went across the street to Walmart to get a bottle of champagne. We were all dressed up, and Tom road around on one of those motorized shopping carts. Definitely not the classiest of wine establishments, but at about 10pm, it got the job done.

Once we got home, we pulled our cake out of it's freezer box. The cake topper fit right in. While I was setting up the cake, Tom pulled our champagne flutes, server set, and unity candle out of our curio cabinet. We toasted our first anniversary, and cautiously tried the year old cake. The buttercream frosting was fine, the cake a little dried out, and the lemon curd... well it tasted okay, but definitely a different texture. All in all, I ate my slice for the sake of tradition, but I do not think I would go about saving cakes for a year again in the future. At the same time, I now have TONS of extra space in my freezer.

Before we cut into the cake, Tom reminded me of something I saw on Pinterest that I wanted to do (he's totally a keeper). Someone posted the idea on Pinterest of taking a picture each year on your anniversary holding last year's anniversary picture. I had almost forgotten, but as we were taking pictures of the cake and everything, Tom asked me to get one of our wedding pictures. I'm so happy he reminded me, because that is definitely a tradition I want to continue in the future.

So the lesson learned from this whole experience? As cheesy as it sounds, life really is a roller coaster. There will be ups and there will be downs. In marriage, the best way to weather the downs is to rely on each other. Our first anniversary was far from perfect, but we still got to do all of the little traditions. We also got to spend the entire day together, which originally was not in the plan.

In other news, we went to see the bone specialist on Friday. Tom and I were both expecting the worst: surgery with weeks of recovery. As it turns out, while the screw in Tom's ankle has definitely moved, it looks like it has moved slowly over time. In other words, the bone and the joint look perfectly healthy and the pain Tom is experiencing is likely related to inflamed muscles and ligaments. The doctor prescribed Tom a month of physical therapy, and we both breathed a huge sigh of relief.

Our First Anniversary, Not Quite as Planned

So Monday, September 10, was our first anniversary. Our plans were relatively simple, Tom was going to go to work, as usual, and I was going to spend my usual Monday off cleaning the apartment and doing laundry. We were going to get dressed up and go out to dinner, and then we were going to spend the weekend camping at Acadia National Park. Like I said, simple and low key. Our wedding day was perfect, so why expect anything less of our anniversary. As you can see from the picture to your left, things did not exactly go as planned.

To back things up a bit, back when Tom was about fifteen, he was involved with wrestling. While at practice one night, he attempted a pivot. Well, his body pivoted, but his foot did not, resulting in a broken bone right above the growth plate. He was taken to the hospital, and a screw was put in to hold the bone back together. Over the course of a couple of months, everything healed up, and he was good to go. Except for one little detail, they never took the screw out.

Fast forward to this past Sunday. Tom had been having ankle pain for the last week, which we did not think much of. Broken bones tend to lead to arthritis, and he tends to experience some discomfort whenever the seasons change. This past Sunday, his ankle hurt a lot more than usual. Just laying in bed, he said it was at about a 7 or an 8. When he stood up, on a scale of 10, he gave it a 12. I parked him on the couch with ibuprofen, wrapped his ankle, propped it up with some pillows and added some ice. After about six hours, we saw no improvement, so off to first care we went. The first thing they did was an x-ray, which you can see above. Then they gave Tom some pain killers, an air cast, a prescription for crutches, and advised him to contact an orthopedist. I'm not a doctor by any sense of the word, but this sounded pretty serious. We went home, went to bed, and woke up to a completely different anniversary than planned.

Tom stayed home from work, we got his crutches, and he met with his regular doctor for "pain management" aka Vicodin. Then we attempted to find an orthopedist. The cool thing about doctors up here is that everything is electronic, so the first orthopedist we called was able to pull up Tom's x-rays and check them out. They then promptly called us and said that they could not do anything, and referred us to a bone specialist. The bone specialist was unable to get Tom in for an appointment until Friday 9/13. At this point I realized if my husband is hobbling around on crutches, on pain killers, with an appointment to see a bone surgeon, he is likely not going to be so comfortable camping that weekend, let alone hike around Acadia National Park. So, with a tear in my eye, I cancelled our anniversary trip. The campground we were planning on visiting has been very gracious and granted us a rain check to use at any point next year. By the time we got home from doctor's appointments and picking up prescriptions, it was late into the afternoon and I had not even started cleaning. Not a problem, it does not usually take long to straighten up the place, that is, unless the vacuum explodes all over the living room floor. Two hours later, we have the vacuum unclogged. By this point, I was in tears. It was 8pm, I was covered in vacuum dust, restaurants were closing, and I was ready to throw in the towel. What happened next? I'll post about that in a little bit. ;) Don't you just hate cliff hangers?