2009 Year in Review

Welcome to the 2009 Year in Review. Relive the spills, chills and thrills of WordNerd, IP, Scorpie and Snakey (our latest addition to the family). Oooh over the pretty wedding dress, roll your eyes as you recall the guest list drama, and breathe a sigh of relief when I finally announce that IP and I are married. Makes for a good post, no? Well, we’ll see.

January 2009: IP and I start off the year heading out west to Arizona in order to avoid Inauguration Madness as Barack Obama is sworn in as the nation’s 44th president. The vacation we take during that week is wonderful and much needed; although I wasn’t as impressed with this area of the southwest, I still enjoy wearing shorts for nearly a week in January. I continue to marvel at Metro D.C.’s inability to brave the cold without going to extremes (snow pants? really?) and guffaw when my mom’s demand that we publish an engagement announcement bites her in the butt. I have weird wedding dreams and throw myself into the wedding details way too much.

February 2009: IP and I head to the Birchmere once again to see Jonathan Coulton and Paul and Storm perform. What’s this, the fourth time overall? I can’t remember, but we do have fun even if the jokes are starting to get a teensy worn and it seems like Paul and Storm are just out of it. Coulton is in good form, though, and cracks us up with “Fancy Pants Machine.” I publish my book awards and this gets cited by DCBlogs, which strikes me as odd (but welcome) for this reason: they usually go for the snippets, not the drawn out posts. I buy margarita fixins’ in order to watch Obama’s first address to a joint session of Congress and marvel at my co-worker’s delusional ways. I travel to Michigan to help my bridesmaids select the dresses and try to find something for the mothers.

March 2009: Wedding fatigue hits me like a ton of bricks. Not able to withstand the stupidity and narrowness on the Detroit Knot board, I avoid it for two months in order to keep my sanity in check. I also stop doing anything wedding-related; I instead start to read; I run a race with a friend, then have brunch at Teaism with her; I revisit my crush on Alan Grant and chuckle at the fact that I’m actually marrying an honest-to-god paleontologist; I openly advertise to the DCBlogs community that IP and I will babysit for free, but no one takes us up on the offer. Wonder why?

April 2009: A quiet month in which I run the 2009 Cherry Blossom 10-Miler, anxiously await news of my wedding dress’s arrival, and guffaw over the Red Wings’ playoff slogan. “The Beard Is Back”. Really, Wings? I’m still baffled. I’m also highly irritated by my cousins in California deciding that they want invitations to my wedding even though they’ve not talked to me in about 20 years. I finalize the month by giving IP the side-eye for bringing Pet Sematary back into our house. Creepy-ass book.

May 2009: I turn a sprightly 31, go to see Jonathan Coulton again with my then-fiancé, and then we get back into wedding mode. I pick up my dress and look fabulous in it; my extended family causes some guest list drama this is quickly resolved, but could’ve been avoided had someone left me a goddamn voicemail! I’m also highly irritated by people spell the word” definitely” as “defiantly”.

June 2009: Wedding planning chugs along. IP and I are distracted, though, when we realize that our beloved gym might be closed and all our memberships shuffled over to L.A. Fitness. The gym as a while rallies, guaranteeing L.A. Fitness that we will discontinue our memberships if the sale is completed without bids from other entities. The original owners, with the weight of the membership behind them, triumph. They’ve now added new equipment and updated the facility (which hadn’t happened in the years that Crunch owned the gym). Anyway, we’re all very proud of our efforts! In the meantime, I’m traumatized by the Wings’ seven-game loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins. I sadly have to take down my 2008 Stanley Cup Champions picture on my laptop and work desktop. I challenge IP to try Vernors ginger ale, clean out my closet to make room for my beautiful Maggie Sottero wedding dress, and prepare to finish up the summer married to a wonderful man.

July 2009: Most of July is taken up with traveling—I am once again sent to the South Pacific for a goodly amount of time, traveling like crazy and racking up enough frequent flyer miles to become elite on the airline I fly. Woohoo! During travels, I have to divert to Michigan, meet up with IP, and we file for our marriage license. We finalize last-minute details while in Michigan, including a tasting with our venue. The piles and piles of boxes in my little brother’s room convince me that we are, indeed, getting married.

August 2009: IP and I become husband and wife. Our wedding is absolutely beautiful and while it was very stressful, I think IP and I created a lovely day and made sure our guests enjoyed themselves. Walking down the aisle to IP, surrounded by my parents, was a moment I’ll never forget. I don’t know that I’ve ever smiled so much in my life! Marriage hasn’t changed much for us, but that’s not to say there aren’t any challenges ahead: I know we’ll have plenty, but having taken the long way to marriage in the first place (in order to settle our minds, strengthen our commitment, and enter into the estate with clear minds), I believe that, if we work together, we’ll be celebrating together for many years to come. I love IP, he is my family, and I know we will work like crazy to continue to understand each other even if we’re not always in agreement. Also in this month, my new husband turns 35 years old even if he insists he’s a decade younger. I don’t agree with it, but I understand his determination to believe it! ;)

September 2009: IP and I get back into the swing of life after the wedding. I complain about people who talk about their kids way too much. My reading picks up and I become Barnes & Noble’s #1 customer again. I become my photographer’s cover girl (and continue to be a cover girl—hell, a logo was designed around a picture from our wedding. Love it!).

October 2009: I read and review books. I accidentally end up at Arlington Cemetery, and my older brother suggests that IP needs to pin a note to my sweater every morning before my commute explaining who I am and where I should be should I get lost. IP and I plan our annual summer hiking trip—yes, a bit late, but we need to get away!

November 2009: IP and I head to the California desert parks and have a blast. If you haven’t been to Joshua Tree National Park, go you must! My brother visits for Thanksgiving and helps us have a relaxing weekend at home. I muse on the annoyance of being asked if married life is any different from simple cohabitation. The answer: nyet. IP and I stumble across our twins in a Macy’s ad. Très cute!

December 2009: And here we are! IP and I buy a Christmas tree, oohing and ahhing over it when we’re finally able to get replacement lights for the top third of the tree that refused to light up when we first put the tree together. Shopping is done, gifts are received, and they are opened with glee on Christmas morning. I run a 10K with a friend, enjoying a flat course (even if it was a little crowded). A happy hour with some friends leads to a wacky white elephant gift exchange. D.C. is buried in a blizzard of snowpocalytic proportions—the federal government closes and anyone who works with them rejoices (if you bosses follow the feds’ lead, that is). I bake once again on Christmas day, delighted with the results that my new KitchenAid hand mixer gives me. To round out the year, my brother-in-law visited. For a few days, we wined and dined him around D.C., had interesting conversations, and asked him to eat as many encanelados as possible. After he left, IP and I played everything low-key, spending a quiet evening together before the clock turned over and we kissed at midnight on the first day of 2010.

There’s 2009 in abbreviated form. Up next, 2010: the year we make contact with a counselor to figure out why we’re finding the idea of kids so freaking odd. And go on our honeymoon. And run the Cherry Blossom 10-Miler again. And perhaps go to a wedding out west. And read a lot more than I did this year. And write a lot more than I’ve done any other year since I was in college. And probably sundry other things that I can’t anticipate at the moment!