The experience of being married to a law student

I wrote this post in November last year at the end of Ryan's 3rd semester of law school. I didn't post it for fear that people would think I was ungrateful or speaking rudely about my marriage. But we're at the end of the 4th semester of law school and I still feel all these feels. So I took a deep breath and decided to hit "publish". The end of this semester has been wearing on us both, so I thought I'd share a bit about what that's like. Hugs are welcome :)

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I remember a time back in 2010 when I was in the trenches of my marriage and family therapy internship and master's program and kind of hating life. I was thisclose to graduating and on the verge of many exciting things (engagement, getting my first big girl job, living in a new apartment with my fiance) but all I could think about was how burnt out I felt. I seriously barely scraped out of graduate school with the required  internship hours (300.5 when I needed 300!). If you'd like to relive the horrors of that nonsense, my school archive can be found here. It was a tough time. (Ed. note: I'm SO thankful for my education and the skills it gave me - I'm working full time in my field and loving it. Almost 3 years strong.) 

Ryan got accepted to law school and started attending Phoenix School of Law in 2011. I am so proud of his drive, ambition, hard work and passion for his chosen career - he is truly kicking ass and taking names. You don't even wanna see the list of his extracurricular involvement - it makes me tired just thinking about it. But you know what I've learned over the past two years?

Being married to a law student is HARD.

When I was in school full time, we were just dating. He moved in with me and my roommate about 6 months before the end of my master's program. We didn't share money, hadn't gotten engaged yet and still teetered on the edge of "fully committed forever and ever". I think it was challenging for him while I was deep in my graduate experience, but he was still finishing school and had other things to occupy his mind.

Ryan and I got married during his first semester of law school. This means that we spent our first year of marriage trying to navigate Married Life (which is awesome, btw) and Law School Life. I've never been afraid of the doomsday stories others have shared about graduate school "making or breaking a relationship" - my relationship has never felt threatened by law school because it had been so solid prior to starting law school, and also because our relationship had already survived my entire master's program. But you know what law school threatens, strangely enough? MY social life!

Being married to a law student means:

-I want to hang out with you because my husband is/will probably be studying.
-But if he ends up not studying for whatever reason and wants to hang out, I might flake out on you in favor of hanging out with him, or feel guilty if he had free time I didn't share with him.

-I grocery shop, meal plan and cook alone. Always. (That sounds real pouty in writing but we used to always shop and cook together - it is sometimes even more special to me than going on a date.)

-Our plans are never firm. They could be firm, even days in advance, but if an assignment isn't done or there's reading that needs to happen, they won't stay firm. School will always be the excuse.

-We suck at balance. School takes priority over social life, but marriage takes priority over school. Sometimes between school and marriage, social life suffers.

-There is no "coming over for football Sunday" or "double dating" or "spending a day BBQing in the backyard" or "drinking your face off and paying for it with a hangover the next day". If Ryan can afford free time, it's in few-hour chunks. Almost never a whole day. I'll come by myself, though!

-Sometimes I sleep alone. All nighters are a bitch.

-I pick up the slack. Even if Ryan is studying and I can go out, I still have to cook, clean, do laundry, remember family members' birthdays, RSVP to things and pay bills. (This is less out of a desire to do my wifely duties, because we are pretty egalitarian, and more an understanding that stuff just has to get done. I mean seriously, the man would eat McDonald's for every meal if he could get away with it.)

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This is not meant to be a gripe post by any means, but more of a reflection on how I know exactly how Ryan feels right now because I was in his shoes 3 short years ago, and how it's interesting to now experience that very hard work from the other side. I apologized profusely to my friends in the link at the beginning of this post and begged them to keep inviting me places because it would be over soon. 

I feel thankful for our life together and our happy marriage. I feel thankful that I have a career that makes me satisfied and fulfilled and I feel thankful that Ryan is learning to do what he loves. I'm usually happy to pick up slack and turn down social engagements if necessary and be a supportive partner. I'm thankful for my friends who sympathize when I'm wiped out or complainy and fill my evenings and weekends with fun. We WILL get through law school together! 

And please, keep inviting us to things. We can sometimes come to them together if the planets align and Mercury is in retrograde and assignments and extracurriculars are done :)

xoxo

It's another cabin weekend!

We last visited the family cabin over New Year's Eve weekend. It was very cold. Thumbs down.

I very much prefer the cabin in the spring, when it looks like this!!

(From a trip in 2010)

Sam, Robert, Adam and I are going for the weekend. We are taking the dog and leaving Ryan at home to focus on finishing his last few finals. Lest you should think I cruelly plan all the fun things without Ryan, the two of us (and ding dings) are planning a day trip after Shosh's wedding at the end of May. 

I'm excited for Eva to enjoy a weekend in nature, I'm excited for a long hike, I'm excited for homemade fudge from the general store, I'm excited for basking in the sun amidst the pines. It's just such a rejuvenating place in the spring. 

Happy trails!

Fitness and such

I've changed my whole attitude about fitness this year. In the past I've had gym memberships and slogged through workouts on treadmills and elliptical machines, boring myself or stressing myself out at best, spending money I didn't have at worst.

I started jogging in March for the 5k. And of course, as predicted, I haven't felt like jogging much since the 5k. I've never been much for self motivation and I have an incredibly short attention span. When Ryan and I lived right downtown, I walked a ton. In college, I biked everywhere. But things are more stagnant now. 

2009 at Tempe Town Lake

To make a long story short, I've discovered the great value of working out at home. Jump roping in the backyard, doing jumping jacks everywhere, and YOUTUBE VIDEOS. Omg. All the workouts ever. For free. And there are tons of high intensity interval workouts that are short! I discovered Melissa Bender's feed and I love it. She's cute, spunky, totally ripped and has tons and tons of cardio and toning videos.

I wanna try this one next:



How do you get your fitness in?

A secret garden

When I was little, I was always borderline obsessed with the movie The Secret Garden and the idea that a hidden, beautifully vegetated area existed somewhere. I ask Ryan all the time if he will build me my own secret garden one day when we have our own home and he always says "yes dear" like a good husband should. I tell him he has to put a hammock in there and the entry has to be an arch. I'm not sure what I'd do in there, though. Read books? Pet Eva? Eat snacks? I guess that's not the point.

You know what though? Our backyard at our current rental is kind of already a secret garden.

It's got a ton of mature plants thanks to our location in a historic neighborhood, and the neighbors have mature plants also which means we are actually and truly surrounded by vegetation. Around one side of the house, there are even two little nooks covered by trees that would be a perfect spot for my secret garden.

I don't know if I've mentioned it on here yet, but our landlord realllllly wants us to buy this house. And we realllllly don't know if we want to. We signed a lease through September of next year and will hopefully have a better idea of what in the hell we will do with our lives by then. But for now? I'm gonna put Ryan to work on making my temporary secret garden a reality.

My first 5k

It's fitting that after a weekend of indulging in pizza (twice), I'm here to talk about my experience at my first 5k!

  
I ran the Rock N Glow run on May 4 in downtown Phoenix at Alice Cooperstown. It was an awesome experience. I didn't particularly enjoy the crazy pre-race party and I didn't care to stay for the afterparty, but running alongside so many other people was so exhilarating!

The race was set to start at 7:00 PM but was pushed back to 8:00 due to some sort of city police related issues. Because it was my first 5k ever, I was pretty nervous and only able to eat a serious meal at 1:00 PM that day. I thought I could eat another small meal around 4:00 or 5:00 but then worried that by racetime I'd be burping up whatever I ate (I mostly trained 5-6 hours after eating). So I didn't have a snack. But since it was pushed back an hour later than I thought, and I was anxious, I think this ultimately made me a lot slower than I usually was in training. I was stinkin' hungry!

At any rate, I loved the experience of running next to so many others. It was really motivating to run most of the race with the pack of the same several people near me. I separated from my two girlfriends at first but we caught up towards the end and finished close together. 

I used my MapMyRun app to provide updates when I hit each mile. It announced that I reached mile 3 and I thought to myself, "Oh sweet! I'm super close!". I was really really losing steam at this point and almost cried when I crossed the finish line and it said 45 minutes. FORTY FIVE MINUTES?! I trained for 3.1 miles in around 33 minutes usually, how could it have taken me FORTY FIVE MINUTES this time??? But then when I looked down at my app, it said 3.76 miles. I was simultaneously relieved that I wasn't as slow as I thought, pissed that they called it a "5k" when it was really more like a 6k, and thrilled that I'd survived almost 4 miles, which I had never done in my life!



The best part, no joke, and I'm sorry if this makes you wanna gag a little, was seeing Ryan at the finish line with the camera. I was so, so stupidly happy to see him. It was an awesome feeling to accomplish this personal goal with my husband just as happy as I was to be at the finish line. 



I can't lie and say I've been addicted to running since then - I took a week off from running entirely - but I'm going to continue doing a 2 or 3 mile run 3-4 nights a week because it felt awesome and it's fun to do with friends. 

Will I do another 5k? I'm not sure - they're pretty expensive and I'm not out to become the world's fastest 5ker. But I'm very pleased to be able to cross one off the list :)