Why My Hubby Deserves a Medal

Let the record state that I am the worst person in the world to travel with. Every crazy bone in my body decides to leak out of the woodwork and multiply by large quantities. I am very lucky Nate has already married me because there is no turning back now. ;)

Questions
My first form of crazy to show its lovely face is all of the questions that come spewing out of my mouth like a busted water pipe. Some of the questions are valid, most of them are redundant and unnecessary. They range from, "Did you pack enough underwear?" to "For the hundredth time, did you print off the directions?" It got so bad last night that he actually had to stop and tell me my questioning grenades were driving him mad. This is where I appreciate the open communication we share. When he is able to tell me his feelings I am able to pit a cork in my oxygen hole.

Neurotic List Making/Checking
I love lists! I love them so much I will make them even when I don't really need a hard copy of one just for the pure satisfaction of the feeling I get when I put a fresh ink line through an item. Oooo it's like a drug. Now take this love of list making and apply it to international travel... Yeah you get a crazy Kayleen writing down anything and everything she can think of to pack.

Now with travel it isn't enough for me to merely cross the items off my list this time. No! We are traveling out of the country!! Not only did I check everything off my list once, twice, and a third time, but I also proceeded to take everything out of my bags and physically look at it all again. You can never be too careful. I finally had to tell myself this morning, "If you don't have it packed by now, then it is a lost cause."

Time
I am rarely on time for any occasion. Yes, this is a fault of mine that I really need to work a lot on. I am falsely under the impression that I have all the time in the world to complete tasks. I have a horrible sense of time keeping in my head. When I thought I was awesome and took a ten minute shower it ended up being a 22 minute shower. We had a goal to leave the house by 5:00 and we made it out by 5:13. In my books I would consider that pretty good. We even had time to stop at good old Micky D's and get some sustenance and caffeine. Side note: the coffee there is pathetic and only filled halfway! We made it to our flight on time with 15 minutes to sit and wait to board.

We are now soaring above the clouds headed for Dallas. I'm casually trying to ignore the minute amount of turbulence that is vibrating through my body and attempting to relax and enjoy a nice airplane cup of coffee.

And to my husband I say, thanks for loving me in my good times and my freaking crazy times. ;)

Mrs. Imparato

How Do You Keep a Level Head???

It's been six months since I walked across that stage, shook hands with the Dean of my department, and took the empty cover that housed a letter talking about when I would get my diploma. It has been a wonderful six months of wedding planning, relaxing, working my part time retail job, and of course applying for any elementary teaching job within a 20-30 mile radius of Topeka. I have made jokes about how I can now put "Professional Application Filler" on my resume now, but now the joke seems to be over as I am seeing firework tents starting to go up marking the downhill slide that is summer slipping away, and with that, my chance at seeing "Mrs. Imparato" on a door frame outside a classroom.

I have watched numerous of my K-State colleges post their excitement of receiving their first job offers, pictures of their classroom keys, and pictures of their new classrooms. I am very happy for them, don't get me wrong, they have earned this. Trust me, an elementary education degree isn't all "Finger Painting 101," it is hard work. I am glad to see others able to use their degree, but at the same time I am thinking to myself, "Where is my phone call?" When will I get the phone call that will get me excited for this upcoming school year? When will I get the phone call that will take all this pressure off my shoulders? When will I get the phone call that will make me a teacher?

Yesterday I had to do complete a rather difficult task. I had to go to the apartment complex where Nate and I had applied to live, and put a stop to our application. They were all ready to give us a deal and get us moved into our first home town home together. This is a big deal for newly weds: "Our First Place!" This will not be the case for a while now, because even after some interviews, I still have not received my phone call that will give us the green light. Instead we have just lost $80 in nonrefundable application fees. Miss Sallie Mae has also come knocking on our door, reminding me that my degree cost me $450 a month for the next ten years.

So how am I keeping a cool relatively cool head while all of this is piling up? My family, my friends, and... my husband. He is remaining optimistic for me. He reminds me that I am qualified as anyone else seeking a teaching position in this area, there are just so many teachers looking for employment, which is true. I applied at a district which had two openings and received over 200 applications for those two openings. He also assures me that we will be okay and will figure out our living arrangements when the time is right. He reminds me what I already know but a lot of the time forget: whatever is going to happen, will happen. He truly is my support system. So in the words of Mr. Imparato last night, "Let's not worry about all of this right now, let's figure out what we are doing next week and when we get back we can form a plan of action." He is correct. So we will prepare for our Friday morning departure to Playa Del Carmen, Mexico, and spend a week together without a care in the world, and when we return, we will conquer our future plans... together.

Mrs. Imparato

The Things You Don't Get Told...

I am sitting in bed on day three of married bliss and I am still EXHAUSTED after this weekend's festivities blur. While trying to think of a good enough reason that will get my tired bum out of bed I started thinking about the wedding weekend and about all of the things nobody thought to tell me about having a wedding.

YOU WILL NOT EAT ANYTHING!
It's true... nothing will go into your mouth unless forced upon you by your nagging mother and bridesmaids saying, "You need to eat something so you don't pass out!" I think regardless of eating half a container of yogurt or not, if I am going to pass out, I will pass out. Luckily I did not do any fainting, except for when staged by my photographer.

So it was the Friday before the wedding, and it was hot, miserable, and super busy. I had stupidly scheduled my annual physical that morning at 8:30 am. Wasn't that a smart idea on my part? While our families are running around making sure everything is ready to go 30 miles away for the weekend, I gallivant off to my appointment. Two hours later I return to the house of packing madness and get swooped into the chaos immediately. Do you see where I'm going? It was busy! By the time we get packed up and ready to go it is 11:15 am.  We still have to drive to the venue and unload everything and decorate all before rehearsal at 6 pm. I am stressing a bit lot. Believe it or not, with the wonderful help of my bridal party, we actually pulled off getting all of the decorating finished in time to rehearse. As soon as we sit down for the dinner I happened to realize I hadn't eaten anything all day. This same sort of thing happened on the wedding day, I did not willingly eat because I felt sick to my stomach with stress, anxiety, and of course excitement. (Hello! I'm getting married!!!) I didn't really get to eat the wedding meal we were so ecstatic for because I was busy listening to toasts and smiling for the camera dozens of cameras. The only cake I ate was the overabundance of fondant that was shoved in my mouth by my loving husband and the crumb of cake that fell down in the front of my dress. Don't get me wrong, I sliced myself a nice piece to enjoy, but was pulled away by more pictures and mingling. So needless to say, the day after the wedding I was able to chow on delicious leftovers.

YOU WILL BE EXHAUSTED!
When it was all over and the last guest departed, we had work to do. Remember all of that decorating it took us hours to do the day before? It all had to come down that night, courtesy of the bride and groom and the awesome wedding party. That is the price you pay when booking at a venue that books numerous weddings in a weekend. You have to help clean up your mess so they can prepare for the next happy couple. It was all worth it though, because that day could not have been anymore wonderful if I wanted it to be. So after we struck our wedding set to the ground I retreated to the bedroom with my new husband and oh my gosh... it felt soooo good to just sit down. We had been running around and on our feet for probably a combined 24 hours that weekend. I slept like I hadn't slept in years that night, uncomfy hard bed and all. Sunday came and I thought that would be my big break when I could just sit and relax all day. I. Was. WRONG! You see the thing that happens when you have a wedding is that you have family that comes for that wedding, and your family wants to visit. Plus you need extra stomachs to help rid you of excess leftover wedding food. So all day Sunday we were back to mingling with family. I was so happy to get to see everyone and spend more time with them, but I was just so tired I probably couldn't recite the alphabet if someone asked me to. So when bedtime came Sunday night, I was so thrilled!

ALL OF THE STUFF!
There is stuff all around you when you plan a wedding: stuff that you buy to decorate with, stuff you buy and intend to decorate with, stuff to feed people, stuff you receive in the mail from other people, just all kinds of stuff. It gets to the point where you can't open doors or navigate through dark hallways without stubbing your toe on something. You have to travel up and down the stairs more times that you have in a month to bring all of the stuff up to get loaded. You will need at least 6 vehicles to transport everything. And when the wedding finally is over you think to yourself, "Hey! I don't need this stuff anymore, I can pawn it off on someone else, donate it, or just toss it!" Yes, we did all of those things, but somehow it still felt like we were leaving with more stuff than we came with! HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN??? We still had to make numerous trips to load up vehicles. We had to use a new vehicle to store things in too. And I still cannot see our living room floor because it is covered in leftover wedding stuff. And because of the exhaustion you don't really have a care to give about cleaning it up right away. You just look at it and shrug because now you have to worry about packing up stuff for your honeymoon in three days.

All of these newly learned experiences aside, at the end of the day we had a more beautiful wedding than I could have dreamed and I was able to FINALLY marry the man of my dreams, and that is what matters most!

Mrs. Imparato