First anniversary

"It feels like a lifetime--no, I don't mean that. I mean it feels as if we'd always been married."
"So we have--from the foundation of the world--"
--Dorothy Sayers, Busman's Honeymoon

In the spirit of countless What I Did Over Summer Break school essays, here is What I Have Learned In One Year Of Marriage:
--You can strew any amount of yarn around the house and even leave needles on the bed and get nothing harsher than a fond smile, as long as you maintain an attitude of cheerful mischief
--Ditto for housework and not doing it
--Once the boy gets into the habit of eating homecooked lunch and dinner, though, they're sacred. Ignore the lunchbox at your peril. He will eat canned tuna and give you puppy eyes.
--If any flat surface in the house (coffee table, futon, dresser top...) is absolutely clean and unbesmirched by the presence of any object whatsoever, it will remain so indefinitely. But twenty seconds after you place so much as a single envelope atop that surface, it will be totally buried in clutter
--Only girls think bathrooms need to be cleaned or towels washed regularly
--But socks worn to bed are icky, even if you need them because it's winter and you're too stingy/green to turn on the heat
--If, when faced with a job of housework half-done by your husband and waiting pathetically to be finished (by you), you merely smile, do the other half and thank him profusely...he will eventually learn how to do the other half of his own accord. And he will swear to his friends and family that you are a very sweet girl with no temper at all (ha!)
--A boy (my boy anyway) will actually watch wildly romantic movies with you, and like them, as long as they are disguised as mysteries.
--Organic veggies and fruits are too expensive to consider at the supermarket, but if you take your husband to the farmer's market, he will happily buy them for you. And swear they're ten times better than the normal kind. Furthermore, he will sign you up for a CSA.
--Ditto strawberries, especially if you make jam.
--The more earnestly he protests that you don't need to learn how to cook his favorite foods because he can have them when he's visiting his folks, the happier he'll be when you manage to produce them.
--If you manage to break your (gold) mangalsutra on your anniversary after wearing it faithfully every day for a year, he'll tell you not to worry, you're sure to break lots more of them before you're through, he'll get it fixed next time he goes home, and maybe he should get you a couple of inexpensive gold-plated ones to wear for everyday so you don't have to get upset if you break one and can't find all the pieces. Oh, you found them all? Then it'll be easy to fix.
--Even if he only wears handknit socks around the house on winter evenings, he still wants a goodly portion of your sockknitting efforts. It's a measure of how much you love him (or something).
--A button sewn back on a shirt will count almost as much as a pair of socks, though. Especially if you iron the shirt afterwards.
--All your ideas about what sort of clothes are most attractive on you are probably wrong. That black dress your mom says makes you look slug-belly white? Perfect. And the folk dress with twenty yards of fabric that you wore for the dance performance? Sexiest outfit ever!
--The correct answer to "Am I going bald/gaining weight/snoring?" is "What?! Are you crazy?" :)
--He will politely admire each and every beanlet and baby tomato and pepper and squash growing in your little box on the balcony, but he'll only get excited when he gets to eat them. Pointing out the prices for organic cherry tomatoes will also produce enthusiasm, particularly if you can manage to get your plant to produce a pint of them at once (try forgetting to water it).
--No matter how mushy and sentimental you can get, an Indian boy can out-mush and out-sentiment you any day. It's in their blood or something.
--Once you're married, he won't bring you flowers anymore.
--But he will spoil you like crazy from day to day, and tell you that he loves you at the oddest moments, like when he's about to go to work and you're still curled under the covers with only your nose sticking out.
--If you don't formally declare that a trip is your honeymoon, then it doesn't count. Therefore, never declare that you're going on your honeymoon, and it doesn't have to end. :)

Vacation

Pictures at last! (Well, non-crafty pictures anyhow. MIL is still here and I still have qualms about snapping photos of crafty things in front of her, though I don't know why since she & FIL found the craft photo file on my computer and insisted on looking through the whole thing. And they didn't disown me for being crazy. :) )


Tejas is OFFICIALLY DONE!! Wahoo!! (I graduated too, but it was just my master's. Not nearly as cool. I prefer to bask in the reflected glory of his degree. :) )


The view driving into Yosemite valley. I swear we stopped every five feet to go "oooooh!" and pile out of the car and take pictures.


The bottom of Lower Yosemite Falls. We had a great time scrambling up the rocks to get closer (and the mist felt lovely on the 97 degree day!)


We particularly liked the lush green water meadows! At 4 pm on Saturday there was a big thunderstorm, and the temperature dropped more than 40 degrees in half an hour as the rain poured. It was lovely to watch the rain sheeting off the rocks and trickling into the meadows. I love how green things almost glow in the rain! (Picture from later, in the sunlight, alas.)


The picture postcard view of the valley.

In other news, Tejas' mom taught me to make bakri! (Little flatbreads made from millet flour. They tell me bakris are "farmer food," but I like them best of all the flatbreads I've had. Tejas likes them too.) Now it's my job to make them every night till I go home to Portland, to make sure the lesson sticks. :) I'm happy about this because I really need to learn to make rotis (flatbreads they usually eat, made from wheat) but Tejas has told me horror stories about how hard they are to make. I'm hoping bakris will be a good midway thing to learn so that I won't burn down the kitchen attempting my first batch of rotis!

Also: I so need a vacation. I'm really looking forward to going home for a few days, though I'll miss Tejas a lot. Travels to Yosemite etc. do not really count as vacation when one travels on a single weekend without missing a day of work. In fact, they kind of make things worse, because one still has to clean the bathroom/cook stuff for lunches/get groceries/do laundry/whatever, and the weekend is gone...it'll be really nice to go home and NOT BE RESPONSIBLE for anything. I'll do dishes or whatever my mom likes, but it will be completely voluntary and NOT MY JOB. (!) I'm also pretty fed up with labby stuff right now (hello, defrost of every freezer known to mankind, holding all our most precious irreplaceable research tools)--am hoping a couple days off will help me regain the will to work. (Productivity this week = not so much. Sigh.)