tabai-love-llioux

When I was 10 years old we were living in France. After being there since age 3, I was so good at passing for a little French girl that no one ever thought I was American unless they had a conversation with one of my parents (whose American accents were obvious despite their hardest efforts at language school) or heard my last name. Somehow, parents and last names don't come up much in the classroom, playground, or gymnastic lessons when you're 10, so I rarely had to out myself as a foreigner. And that was a good thing for me.

I wasn't a very talented gymnast, but I liked to try. I can still stand and touch the floor without bending my knees, so I'd say the lessons were a win in the greater scheme of my life.

I have two lasting memories from my gymnast days. One of them is standing in line with the other girls waiting our turns to practice the balance beam. We were talking about how we couldn't wait to see Titanic in the theatre. Only one girl had seen the movie already and she announced to the whole group that Leonardo DiCaprio died at the end after having sex in a car. We were all confused and crushed.

My other memory is of my last competition. I wore my team leotard, half white, half purple with long sleeves. After completing every part of my routine, the forlorn French judge looked down at his paper and wrote down my score. At the end, we all sat on the floor of the huge gym and our coaches called our names over a poor quality speaker and read our scores for everyone to hear.

I didn't know when my name would be called, and I couldn't wait to find out how I had measured up. I listened and listened to the names and numbers but never heard my own. Coach was almost at the end of the list and I was straining to hear every word he said when he spoke a jargon name and started trailing numbers. Suddenly I realized that those string of scores were mine and he had just publicly read my name as "Brittany Bo-Ah-Trig-T".

I burned with embarrassment that my name had been so butchered by my coach. He should have known me! Now everyone would know that I had an American last name with the offensive "ight" ending that the French simply cannot pronounce. I was so thrown off that I didn't catch my scores and I was about to go up and ask for them again.

I thought a lot about my name then, and how I liked it for myself and how American "Boatwright" sounds, but I hated that it set me apart and made me different from my friends. And I'm sitting here now, 14 years later, and I cannot believe the irony that I have one month left to have this name before it changes to the most incredibly French last name that ever existed. Tabailloux. Ta-ba-you.

If I ever have a little girl, I'm going to teach her to be proud to stand apart from her peers and then take her to France just so I can introduce her to other little girls and marvel that when I speak her name over them, no one will even blink.

month 1

I moved to Wheaton a month ago yesterday. Would you like to know how my life has changed? Of course you would. Why else would you read this blog.

I now sit only on black leather. My (almost) husband can't get enough of black leather and he outfits most of his seating arrangements in the stuff. Couch, car seats, office chairs. It's all black leather. And it also happens to be summer right now, so I have grown quite used to peeling myself off of every surface in which I sit.

This leads me to the other thing that's my new thing, because I wouldn't need to do any peeling if I weren't wearing shorts. I have been a shorts-hater since high school in Florida. Shorts were practically my only option for surviving life and I loathed baring my short stubby legs which I inherited from my mother which she inherited from her grandmother. I wanted the legs my sister proudly walked on because her growth spurted by more than a foot in less than a year during her unforgivably un-awkward awkward stage. I just knew I would get a growth spurt too someday and have beautifully long legs, but then when I was 14 the orthodontist smacked my x-rays on the lightbox and happily announced that I had finished growing. I wanted to cry. And since then, I have never worn shorts.
Tim had a problem with this. He would start sympathy sweating the moment I arrived at his house wearing jeans on a 90+ degree day and cry "ENOUGH! WITH! THE! PANTS! It's summer!!" I would then inform him that there was a reason I moved away from Florida to the snow-packed midwest one January many moons ago, and that reason had much to do with my hate for shorts. And bathing suits. We all know what happens to me with the bathing suits.
But even I had to admit that I was really uncomfortable, and one day when I went on a post-office run I noticed that Old Navy lived across the parking lot. So I went. And I bought shorts. And Tim assures me all the time that he is not ashamed to be seen with my legs like I am and he actually likes them. The angel. So now I own two pairs of shorts and do laundry every other day so I can keep wearing them all the time. That was a lie. Of course I don't do laundry that often. You don't either.

Thing # 3: I'm drinking soda again. Goshdarnit, Tim, why'd you have to do this to me? One tiny sip of his Dr. Pepper one day and I was hooked again. I've been drinking diet...but still. I have to kill that one.

And this one is only temporary I PROMISE because the box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch is almost gone. I will not keep eating it. I can't keep eating it because I just have to eat it all until it's totally gone and then I won't ever eat sugary cereal again, Mom, because it won't exist in Tim's house. His guest from last month bought it and left nearly the whole box and it just calls my name from the pantry every day. It even uses my middle name. Bethany Lennnnnn...I'm waiting for you...please come pick me up! Like a sad little baby or something. One more bowl and it will all be over. Really.

Also, Tim and I are farting around each other now. So there's some great news. At first I was only farting the non-smelly farts around him, you know, because I'm a lady and I don't poop either, but last night he caught a whiff of a really bad one and cried "Oh, babe! Gross!", which was quickly followed by: "Praise God she's human! It finally happened!"
And really, that's just love.

In other news: I have easily grown accustomed to seeings beautiful pictures every day as Tim edits on his gargantuan 24-inch computer screen right next to me. My eyes are no longer amused by sub-average photography. I am a now a picture brat.

Side note: I also really enjoy it when Tim hollers at grooms on his screen who kiss with their eyes open (the brides never do this). But if you're a client reading this, he doesn't do that to you. Promise.

Speaking of which, I've been going with Tim to shoot weddings. After he uploads the memory cards and wanders away to do something else, I sneak onto his computer and delete all of my bad pictures so he won't ever see them and think I'm a bad photographer and I hope that then he'll decide that this whole working together thing is really wonderful for his business right from the start. I had great confidence in this secret system of mine until he told me that he found a bunch of terrible pictures in his trash and went through all of them before he realized what I had been doing. Oh, the humility. Why did I not think to empty the trash too?

In the general sense of life, I am learning that I am not right all the time. I spill things and break things and fart and take bad pictures and make spelling mistake and now there is always someone with me to notice and look the other way after I've noticed that he's noticed but is pretending like he didn't because he's sweet like that.

In short: it's going unbelievably well. We are definitely catching up on lost time by spending a minimum of 13 hours together daily. We are loving each other more all the time, and we've heard that's what it's all about. So that's great.

job 1:21

Keith died this morning after a long battle with cancer. Josh wrote this in the afternoon:

life with this guy

this fantastic portrait was taken by one of the Don't Give Up Project photographers

I've been living in the same town as my fiance for 20 days now. The transition been mostly wonderful and a little bit hard. The hard part was largely due to me packing out my first week with camp and then going right back to Kansas City for a wedding. On the night after I got back to Wheaton, Tim's shirt was soaking up my tears as I stressed about not having enough time to spend with him and plan our wedding. My fault, I know. I just really needed to do all that stuff before settling into his routine.
We've both been a lot more cheerful and optimistic this last week. Everyday, I go to his house and we simultaneously work on his business and plan our wedding and future life together. This is usually a seamless process, except when I accidentally make him work for 5 hours on a Sunday. Then I find him pulling me out the door by the wrist, insisting I leave the emails and airplane tickets and brochure layouts for another time so we can enjoy the sun while it's still shining.
I really love learning his quirks. The guy eats breakfast at noon, lunch at 4pm, and dinner at 8pm. I'm still perplexed about what to do with that schedule.
He loves awkward people the most. Especially new ones.
He is so generous.  I feel reproached by my own fear-driven attitudes of self-preservation every time I see him open up his attention, time, and possessions to those around him.
His open heart is easily touched by others, but never swayed in any direction other than the path he was already walking before they came along. That impresses me to no end.
He teaches me new things everyday, like how important it is to linger over a cup of good coffee in the morning before starting to work, and go for a swim in the evening before it gets dark. He says it's not healthy to stay inside when it's summer.
He is a master Googler.  Whenever he discovers something that he doesn't already know, he researches it until he understands it; like which weight of paper to use for our wedding invitations (that he designed) or what anodizing does to pots and pans (and whether or not we should register for them).
I teach him new things too, like how to shop for healthy groceries and what a table runner is.
He has the best magazine subscriptions. Always marry someone who comes with good reading material.

We're having so much fun being together every day.
We're doing everything we can to prepare for marriage. So many people have warned us that it is hard, so much harder than we could possibly know from the outset. I keep waiting for a hidden pitfall to take us by surprise, so we have frank and honest conversations about our hopes and expectations, trying to communicate them to each other and find the deeper need and history that created them in the first place.
My pessimistic side is still waiting for some marriage Boogey Man to jump out at me and burst my happy bubble. But when I search our story and ourselves for that ruiner, all I find is the man I love sitting in front of me watching me chew on my lip in deep thought, and he's smiling for the simple joy of being in the same room as me even though I worry about things I don't know and can't control.
Wherever the pain is, it's not here yet, so I'll stop looking for it.
We are merry and almost married.