two.

can you believe its been two whole years since i married this hunk?  

i hardly can. when i try to think about it, my brain usually follows one of two trains of thought: either 1) wow, two whole years! thats forever! can you even remember not being married?! or 2) well, we're still learning and trying to figure this all out. after all, we've only been married for two years. its like time has done that weird scrunching thing it does sometimes when an event can somehow seem forever ago but not that long ago all at the same time. does that make any sense at all?

i guess its like this: when i look back over the last two years, i am kind of amazed and impressed at where we were then, and how we have changed as we have navigated through adventures and projects and decisions and plans. but even so, there are some changes that i still have a little bit of trouble with. the most embarrasing? i am still not used to signing my new last name. am i even allowed to call it my "new" last name at this point?

i had my old signature down to a science. it was the perfect blend of speed, aesthetics, and illegibility. i spent years perfecting that capital H followed by the non-descript scribble that upon closer inspection  miraculously incorporated all the right bumps to represent all the right letters.

but getting married changed all that. my "new" last name broke up the smooth flow of my signature, forcing me to slow down and think hard about the mechanics of forming these foreign, tall letters, leaving me frustrated with the elementary, non-cohesive look of the final product. and when i didnt take that time to slow down, that pesky new last name got even worse: it wound up looking less like the last name of my husband, which i willingly and lovingly assumed as my own, and more like a four-letter expletive. awesome.

i've gotten used to a number of things in the past two years of being married (living with a boy, fighting fair, cooking for two, etc) so why can i not get a handle on something as simple, not to mention important, as my own last name?

happy SECOND anniversary, Mark. i love you and i love sharing your last name (and maybe eventually i'll get used to signing it as my own) (hows that for romance?)