Wedding bells for Mark & Gypsy Raven!

@postaday 209; #postaday2011.

Another well-grounded and settled couple I believe to be in their 30s, has announced their engagement. I have met them through social media, and  once In Real Life (IRL) when I couldn’t make it to a Twitter tweetup here in Honolulu. The lovely couple, @MarkMizuno and @GypsyRaven, brought to my house a coveted prize made by @surfchick4jesus, a marvelous collecition of Happy Hearts Mochi. Congratulations to them, and may your marriage last forever!

I have a lot of friends that live in my computer, and real time or slightly delayed responses to each other’s posts are as close as we get most of the time. If you check Mark and Gypsy’s Twitter streams and Facebook pages today, you’ll see that many of their friends are congratulating them. And might I just add, IT’S ABOUT TIME!!! LOL!

Here’s some unsolicited advice: Marriage takes work, so make it fun. Put in the work, side by side, and admire your progress together. Remember all those fun talks while on dates? Why in the world would you stop that? Keep being friends, keep being desirable, keep desiring. Be proud of who you are, because that makes your partner proud of you, too. Be smart, be healthy, exercise, stay sexy. Enjoy wine and good food, but get out of the singles scene. You are no longer trolling for that wow encounter. The wow encounter is about to say I Do to you.

Have children. Please do not tell me that you don’t want to bring children into this gawd-forsaken world. Why not? Children are our personal stake in the future. They are our hope. They are the personification of our dreams. Just as you make a mark in this world, your children will take that and add to it. Swell with pride as your children make the world a better place. 

I do not know what it is like to adopt a child, and I certainly think people who do so are selfless beyond measure. But I do know what it is like to give birth to a child. At first when you get pregnant, you’re quite excited. You cannot read enough about what to expect, you think you want the latest electronic breast pump, you think you want the most amazing stroller, complete with USB port. You do not. You want a stroller that pops open and closed with one hand because you are holding that kid in the other. You do not want complications, you want ease. You do not want a breast pump that plugs into the car lighter so you can let some machine pull milk out of you. You want one of those low-tech pumps that you squeeze with your own hands. Better yet, you want the baby, which is the best breast pump EVER! I know, you can’t always be together, but if it’s possible, be there for your baby.

Marriage should be the cul de sac of life. It should be the end of a journey and should involve a plan that means settling down in a home that you love, building a family, building college and retirement funds, having an ice maker in the refrigerator, never running out of diapers, toilet paper or wine. It also means sometimes the laundry and the dishes pile up, that sometimes you just have to say no to cooking, no to vacuuming, and yes to a brief escape to a favorite restaurant, a pull-out parking area along the ocean to watch the sunset and to share challenges and set goals.

We have pictures of me with my babies, the residuals of Bell’s Palsy still affecting my face, the obvious baby weight, my obvious despair at being fat and ugly. I see it, but I think John would never say he saw it. He’s diplomatic like that. But I know he remembers having a talk with me about getting myself back to that place where we were the young and happy couple who gardened together, took hikes, traveled on various adventures. It could still be our future, but I had to work myself back to that happy place.

The best husbands and wives remain boyfriends and girlfriends. IMHO.