my year: a ramble

I just realized ... 2008 was huge.

Last year at this time, I was still working the 6 a.m. shift in the Cougareat and I barely knew how to Photoshop. Andy gave me a crash tutorial so that I could have something mildly digital in my portfolio when I applied for my first Graphic Design job with Creative Marketing. Miraculously and life-changingly, I got the job (and $1.25 more an hour). I had just dropped out of the BFA so that I could graduate in April and start to feel like school/painting was fun again. Gave myself a light courseload for my last semester in college. Married my best friend during the Christmas of my life, moved into Bountiful Court, and became much less social. I worked hard and learned quickly at my new job, soon handling one of the toughest regular clients they had. Coasted through my last semester (English was my hardest and most valuable class. I loved that class) and graduated unspectacularly - spent the day covering the office hours at Bountiful Court for Lindsay the manager, who was also graduating. Was jobless for two weeks while I applied for every clerical and graphic design job I could find, including a job with that Tough Client, who, devastatingly but fortunately, didn't hire me. But thanks entirely to my experience with Creative Marketing, I landed a Craigslist-advertised Design position with a reputable, well-known real estate company amidst a bunch of goofy people. Found out on the Fourth of July just before we left for the airport that we're pregnant. Didn't tell anyone but my sister until the next day, because we wanted my sister to help us get another test and make sure it was real. It sure was - we told our family in Alabama, there were tears, called the families across the states. Filmed a beautiful interview with my grandparents, came home and worked some more and all of my memories of the swimming, babysitting, concert-going, and friend-seeing at the end of the summer are colored with a slight feeling of first-trimester sickness. We moved into a new place with the same landlord in August after a frantic housing search. Andy had been going to school the whole time, but our schedules always aligned nicely until this last semester when he had class until 9 p.m. three days a week. I was only truly alone on Wednesday nights, as I've been a pseudo watercolor teacher to my peers on Tuesdays and would often go to class (to watch movies) with Andy on Thursdays. I spent most of my Wednesday evenings feeling tired, attempting to keep up with dishes/laundry/oddjobs, reading, and playing Zelda or watching Food Network. Odd not to have homework during the fall. Fridays we go on dates, and Mondays we try to have a little FHE of varying degrees of formality. We read the scriptures and pray together every night, and have gone to the temple every month but one. Live a few blocks from my brother and his wife and baby, so we see them often. Take Andy's sister and her roommates to the grocery store once a week. My sister and her family live in Saratoga Springs now, and we see them a few times a month, which is always nice because we used to visit them a lot when Andy and I were dating freshman year and it brings back that feeling. Reminded of how much I like my friends every time I see them.

Now I've been working with this real estate company for just over seven months and I'm a couple weeks shy of seven months pregnant. When the baby comes, we'll be walking out of this nice, cushy job I've got and into the scary world of paying for grad school, insurance for three people, and life in general on little to no income. Through the generosity of family members, scholarship givers, God, and Mr. Pell, we're starting this scary step with a little bit of savings and no debt (aside from the kind, interest free money we owe my parents for our car, the driver's side mirror of which, by the way, had a fatal run-in with another car's driver's side mirror on Friday night. While we were stopped. And they were not. Nor did they ever.)

Money and cars and driving and insurance and such grown-up things have always scared me. But I'm not afraid of this next step. I've been praying for more faith. I have no idea how it will work, but it's worked before. I love my husband, we love our baby, and we pay our tithing. That sounds pretty good.

It's been a beautiful year. And I got Andy socks for Christmas. (yes...he already knows)

(this is what I'm grateful for)