spending time with bretty j.

bretty j is my husband of four months, eighteen days, sixteen hours and forty-seven minutes. exactly that length of time ago brett jeremy nelson gave me a gold ring and kissed me on the lips in front of about one hundred and forty-seven people. he is my best friend. nobody makes me laugh as much as him. one time he walked past me sitting quietly on the couch. without a word he turned on one of his favorite radio-head songs and proceeded to dance like a robot through the entire five or six minute song. sometimes he pretends that he is being punched in the face in slow motion. his fist comes up real slow, it hits his chin, and he turns his chin ever so slowly as it catches the blow. then finally, out comes his tongue like he's blowing out that mixture of blood and teeth that only exists in rocky movies. he wears these big aviator glasses like he's just walked out of the television show "chips." he recently bought some old black cowboy boots from the local thrift shop that he proudly wears with trouser socks and jeans from old navy. and he often says funny things in his sleep, including things about princesses. there are times when i think my face may just crack in half when i am around him.

my favorite thing to do with brett is...everything. i think that anything with him is pretty fun if not a downright big fat riot. when we were dating every monday night was "bs" night. that's brett and sara night for those of you with fowl mouths. our greatest 'bs' night achievment was getting our dirty little paws on the master key of Calvin College. that night we snuck into the pool, past campus security, for a 2am dip. it probably felt more exciting and dangerous than it really was, but i swear i could hear mission impossible music pounding in my ears as we "hit the deck," and padded through the complete darkness to the pool. that is until i rammed my face into a locker room wall and everything went black and the music stopped.

bretty is a do-er. where i could sit and read contently for hours upon hours, brett needs to be fiddling with something with his fingers, bouncing his knees, or feeling the wind in his face. he gets me up off the couch and out of narnia. in the summer we hike and bike and swim and sleep in tents. in the winter we sled down hills on couches, walk on frozen lakes, and make snow-angles on midnight walks. if it weren't for brett i think i might be a hermit.

i started school right after brett offered me his hand. school has made me quite busy. it's hard for me to find time for everything sometimes. it feels as if once i dig my way out from under a pile of DNA, i discover i don't have any clean underwear. and once i have psuedo washed my underwear in the filthy washing machines at the Fulton mat, i realize i haven't eatten in five days. and once i make myself some din-din, i'm slapped with a quiz about zygotes. and once i've studied about the mysterious ways of sex cells, i find that my bretty j. and i haven't felt each others' faces, haven't seen each others' pearly whites, haven't stretched in silly yoga poses, haven't made plans and dreamed dreams together in a long long time. and once i see this truth, i see that brett has learned to fill his time in his own ways. suddenly it seems as if we're strangers that share the same alarm clock.

life is hard to balance sometimes isn't it? it's hard to do the right thing at all times. it's hard to look past my own nose into the eyes of another. but more and more i'm realizing that i am not the sun. the world does not revolve around me. even when i have needs they should not come before the needs of another. to change means to change myself first. it's like that creepy could-be child molester once said, "i'm starting with the man in the mirror." so, tomorrow morning when the alarm goes off I'm going to touch brett's face. I'm going to spread his lips apart so i can see his pearly whites. Then I'm going to tell him my dream of looking for orion with him in the nigerian sky. does orion exist over there? then we will begin climbing to new hieghts. literally, we're going to a climbing gym --SN

*thank you sdk for finally writing in your blog :)