Hey Y'all! Jewel, here. I'm elbow-deep in last-minute wedding details. We are just 10 DAYS away from the wedding and I'm still checking off items on my checklist. While I'm gettin things done, Ben has graciously agreed to bless us with another guest post on the blog today. Enjoy!
Note to self: don't write a blog post when you are riding a roller coaster of emotions. My first post out of the gate is a smattering of stress-filled cliches and overreactions. Sure, it accurately depicts what happens to a man when he overdoses on emotion and under-doses on sleep, but not the first impression I was hoping to present.
My name is Ben. I love football, I work with computers and I'm usually not very excitable (Jewel has enough of that trait for both of us). In fact, Jewel and I have almost nothing in common outside of both being carbon-based life forms. It stems way beyond just the obvious white guy/black girl conversation. At the risk of sounding corny, we really are each others missing puzzle pieces; yin and yang (how appropriately color coded).
So consider the trials that awaited me about a year ago when the hardcore wedding planning started. How was the mild-mannered procrastinating IT nerd going to cooperate with a sassy, calls-no-man-mister, planning machine? Not well, apparently.
Forget about all the doctors appointments and fretting over transplants, finding common ground on wedding details has been quite difficult. Don't get me wrong: for small stuff we make a great team.
What couch should we buy? "The grey one", you say? Cool lets do it.
Need a new TV? "I yield to your expertise."
What shade of yellow should we use for the wedding day napkins?
World War Frickin' III.
If I say Mustard Yellow, its gotta be Goldenrod. If I come around and say, "You're right, Goldenrod works," then suddenly its hideous and Sunbeam Yellow is the new hotness.
At first it bugged me. Why were all my ideas instantly paralleled with bad ideas? Did I really have a bad sense of what looked good or what song would be good for an entrance or when certain events should take place? In the end were these attacks against my personality? Was our marriage doomed to fail before it began?!
But then I realized something: why was I suddenly deciding that it was a bad thing for Jewel and I to be different? We are, in fact, opposites. Jewel has the uncanny ability to stay awake during meetings with the florist, something I will never have. Jewel also doesn't forget important dates and times. In fact, Jewel was BUILT for this kind of work.
But you want to know what Jewel can't do? She can't do arithmatic. She can't lift heavy objects. And she certainly can't handle a mouse in the apartment. So I've decided that in some cases compromising can actually be a bad thing. Sometimes you just have to let the pros do what pros do.
I'm glad to know that the weaknesses in my own life are mitigated by the presence of an awesome gal and at the same time I feel happy that I can be there for her when she falls short. Like when she downloads a virus on the computer...again...for the 3rd time.
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