A little catch up.

My memory was jogged the other day about this blog, that I even used to be so wrapped up in it as I was only 18 months ago. A commenter said I couldn't leave everyone hanging, but I don't know that so much is happening in my life any more, well, not in comparison to how it was in the lead up to my wedding.

As I said in my last post over four months ago, Julian was over in England for six months. I won't lie -- it totally sucked. And I also won't lie and say it didn't feel a little like being abandoned as soon as we got everything sorted out with AOS. I mean, it's not like I actually had it so bad, since we didn't have to scrimp and save to pay for it, but Julian was just so disengaged from the whole process. I was in charge of filling out all the forms, and getting all the documents together, and basically Julian just signed his name. He was irritated that he had to do biometrics AGAIN, and then that we had to go to an interview. ("Like I'm a criminal, Melissa. All these illegals out here and they drag me in to defend our marriage?") I thought he was going to blow everything when he snapped at the interviewer, "Do you realize I could have saved a lot of money and just had my wife join me? I'm here because I want to be with her, not be living in... Pasadena of all places."

Ugh.

So I guess in some ways things haven't changed so much. But Julian's been back since just before Christmas -- our first real Christmas without all the extra relatives and friends that were around us last year because of the wedding. It was so wonderful -- just the two of us on Christmas Eve (well, Tibbs was there) and we trimmed the tree, and listened to carols on the radio, made spiced (and spiked!) rum and had all these special cheeses and charcuterie I'd picked up at Bristol Farms in South Pas earlier in the day. We went to my parents' house on Christmas Day after we did our private gift-giving (GORGEOUS Tiffany necklace from him and a trip to the Turks and Caicos, which we took last month and it was AMAZING, plus a few other little things).

Rachel was there at Christmas, of course. Things still aren't great between us, but they have gotten better. While Julian was away. I was SO lonely in the house alone, and I asked her to come stay with me for a little while, which turned into about four months. Away from my parents and Julian we got along better than I can ever remember in the past 15 years. Like real sisters! We stayed up late and watched movies, cooked for each other and got to know each other as adults. It wasn't all perfect though -- she used to invite her "special friends" over without telling me, and I'd come home from work and they'd be fooling around in the living room as if I were the guest and they lived here!

Also, I saw a lot of Sean while Julian was away. Yeah, I know. But I always let Julian know when we were hanging out, and Sean never made a pass as far as I was concerned. I mean, there were times when he touched my arm a little too long, or this one time when he was trying to make a point about how rough some guys can be with women, and he grabbed my head and pulled it back by the hair (so weird -- but we were a little drunk). But after thinking about it for a while I told him that he was being a little too physical, and that it was just not appropriate with me being married and my husband away. He didn't think anything was wrong about what he'd done, but whatever.

So Julian's been back for a while, and mostly what he does is from home, though he does go downtown for meetings some times and down to Long Beach (I can never really figure out what it is that he does, except that it's in import/export). I'm still working part-time, and I spend my "free" time finishing the decorating of the house, and working on my cooking skills. I'm looking into going to culinary school, since I really CAN cook and Julian's very proud of it.

I guess I get bored a lot too. I re-read all of Charles Dickens' books while Julian was away, and then started plowing through Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy. I spent a lot of time at LACMA. Mostly I kept thinking about whether or not being a part-time worker was what I really wanted to do with my life. I'm not sure that it is. I'm not ready to have a baby and I want to do something but I just don't know what it is.

So that's about it for now, though I'll try to write more frequently. Oh, I guess there's all that stuff about Alex and my sister, but I've written enough for this post. The next one. I promise.