Juxtapose

One week later, I'm still at home sick with some dreaded bug that has migrated to everywhere possible in my face - my left ear throbs, my sinuses scream in horror, my voice is a becoming squeak, and my eyeballs look as if I could have easily have spent a week smoking the ganja. Sadly, I'm starting a second job on Monday, and so far I've called out of work sick twice this week. Having never called out of work sick before since I started working at age 16, I've finally caved and made myself an appointment with the doctor to see if I'm doomed to suffer out the last throes of a virus, or if all these "extras" (the earache, the sinusitis, the gunky eyeballs) are secondary stuff that I can get treated for. This is a grave "give in" for me, as I usually wait out my ailments and they usually go away, but this is getting unbearable and I'd rather not get drug-tested on my first day of work.

Completely unrelated, I've been reading up on blogs with all this spare time, and I read a funny little post by my dear friend Pham on life before Web 2.0. I really do feel as if I've grown up in the internet age, moreso than most people I know. My parents have always been very progressive in terms of technology and internet connectivity, and in a way it's been very integral in my life and a lot of the circumstances that have occurred in it over time.

Looking back, I've been posting weblog entries since before they were called that. Back in 1997-98 I had a little net zine that was a pet project (mostly to give voice to the trials and tribulations of being thirteen, Christian, and homeschooled all at once), and that immediately transitioned into a weblog in 1998, as well as a web presence on a thread-based bulletin board where I met many of my close friends who I still keep in contact with today, and many of whom I've visited and vacationed with multiple times, despite separate time zones and states in between. I have, in fact, shared many of my life's best moments with them, and it was they who introduced me to the person who is now my husband.

I get very shocked when I think about these things because life now seems so mundane, in a sense. I am very married, very settled in a small town with my best friend and half of my family, and go about my life very normally. Sometimes I forget to think of myself as nerdy as I probably truly am. I forget until I have to explain to unsuspecting Small Talkers the multiple convoluted twists and turns of the story when they ask that old, boring question, "How did you guys meet?" They never expect that I'll have to go back to middle school to explain that we didn't meet on Match.com and we weren't "online dating" and that nine months of official dating and nine months of engagement were enough to produce a solid marriage. I have to frequently reduce myself to the half-truth, "We were like.. sorta.. pen pals... for a long time." This answer always garners a, "How! Sweet! Is That! You two are adoooooraable!" My real explanation - "We met in middle school on an online bulletin board and I didn't like him but then we started talking when we were older and we visited each other for months' worth of time and then started dating and then he moved up here to be near me and lived in my parents' porch for six months and we got engaged and got married and we are soooo happppy!" - this one, all people hear is, "ONLINE!!! THEY MET OOOONLINE!!" So they ask, "WHAT?!! Did you meet on that MySpaces??" And nothing else registers after that.

So it's funny where life takes us. Pham's been a friend of mine for years now as well, and over time he's been out to the East coast a few times where he and Christine and I have gotten together to visit. His post took me back to that question, "How *did* this all happen?"

Mark's going away soon on a business trip out to the Adobe MAX conference in San Francisco for almost a week and I've been getting bummed about him being gone because I do just love having him around. I always liked being my own person and doing my own thing before we got married, even when we were dating it was long distance so we pretty much did our own separate thing anyhow.. But now, I guess after having a ready-made buddy around all the time, it gets me bummed out to think he'll be gone for a while. I forget all those years we were apart, I forget all that time that our whole hope was just to spend a weekend visiting after six months of time apart. I forget all the things that happened and twists and turns and missing that happened over all that time that leads me up to where I am now. Thank you, Lord.