Being married, a year on...

Whoa!  How fast time flies.  I know I always say that.  Last year on the perfect day of Saturday 29th June, I got married to an amazing man.  Everything to me was perfect.  The loved ones who celebrated with us, the beautiful weather, the decor, the ceremony, the peacock lounge, the peacocks roaming about, the balloons, the flowers, the cake, everything.  THE GROOM.  Ok maybe except the sky lanterns.  That day is still vivid in my mind and I secretly wish I could live through that day again.

Like how my giggly conversations with my girl friends before about boys, it's one thing to know boys and another to live with them.  I think I shall blog about how living with K has been.

1) The love-hate thing with laundry.  I love to go home on Friday nights to quickly finish doing the week's laundry.
Me thinks: if I clear through that pile of dirty clothes on Friday night, I have the whole weekend to relax - woohoo!  I like to "suffer first and enjoy later".
K thinks: Relax la, why so gan cheong wash clothes?  It's only Friday night after all.  After dinner I just want to lie on the sofa and do channel surfing.. even better if I fall asleep on the sofa.
What happens?  I will still insist on doing the washing on Friday nights and K's excuse is I always get to the laundry basket faster than him so he has given up now.

2) Boys don't mind being dirty.  Like how God made Adam out of dust, I think there is some biblical truth here with man and dust.  I don't know how he can get his clothes dirty, with food stains, etc (thankfully not all the time).  K thinks I am a cleanliness freak.  Yes I am.  Which is why he doesn't think too much if we don't clean the house on weekends.  He thinks we have better things to do than to clean the house.  Our agreement now is to have a cleaner come to do a proper clean every 2-3 weeks and in between we do minor cleaning.  He cannot stand doing housework and always love a good moan about it.

3) Being tidy.  You might be surprised to hear that I am not a very tidy person.  I love cleanliness yes, but tidy?  Oh I could close one eye.  The only time you see me pottering around the house clearing up piles of unopened letters, magazines, etc is when we are expecting guests.  And K would always roll his eyes and tease me "see la, so diligent in clearing up your stuff cos your friends are coming!"  He, on the other hand, cannot stand untidiness.  He nags me for leaving my stuff here and there… and he feels very strongly about me buying stuff and my (mild) hoarding behaviour.  He hates clutters.  I guess this is where we complement each other.  I ensure the place is clean whereas he ensures the place is tidy.  *high five*

4) Cooking.  I choose to think I cook with love (ahem), and so I would lovingly (i.e. slowly) chop up ingredients, place them nicely on a plate and then start cooking.  K can whip up a proper 2 course meal within 30min.  He loves to heat up the wok and then in quick succession chopping motions, chops up whatever that needs to be chopped, and quickly throws them into the hot sizzling pan.  As a result, the aftermath of a cooking session for each of us differs quite a bit.

Yes yes I get it

5) Bright lights.  This one caught me by surprise.  So every night after dinner I love to dim the lights in the living room because maybe it's the romantic in me, or maybe because I want to wind down and go to bed and I don't need glaring bright lights.  I have been influenced by Gabby and have stocked up the house with loads of candles and guess what?  K is the least amused.  He hates it when I dim the lights insisting they are bad for the eyes.  And he tried to talk me out of it by googling "how dim lights are bad for the eyes" and he could not find any hard evidence to support his claim.  Ha!  Till today this is an ongoing battle.

6) Furnishing the house.  Boy this one is tough.  We have never got into any serious squabbles until we had to decide on the furniture for the house.  As you probably know I am big on shabby chic and have attempted to have a grey-white theme throughout the house.  He loves practical stuff and there were so many items which I had to sulk and forgo because he thinks they are not practical enough.  Take the Eames chair for example.  It fits in perfectly with my theme.  My vision.  He insists it is not comfortable and hence a big fat no.  Boo.

Would you not agree that this is beautiful?

I even tempted him with the rocking Eames version and it is still a no.  At some point out of exasperation he actually told me he wants to save up money to buy the house next door so he can design the way he wants it!  lol.  Our friend JX gave him a piece of fab advice: he told him there is no point fighting it.  How he and his wife resolved it was that she would pick the soft furnishings and he would decide on the techie stuff in the house.  He says it is a win-win situation.  I couldn't agree more.

Not looking impressed by my first shabby chic cupboard purchase

7) After a stressful day at work… I.just.want.to.go.home.and.have.a.rant.  "You know my manager?  He did this and that today!  Grr.. and the guy from the other team?"  blah blah
K?  Just wants to keep quiet and channel surf the stress away.  The first few times he was so quiet, I thought he was upset with me or something.

8) Surfing the internet.  Sometimes I do chuckle when we sit side by side and surf the net on our own laptops.  90% of the time I am browsing online stores like ASOS, H&M, Oasis… and 90% of the time he is reading up on money, finance, etc.  Can you visualise this: the money that he potentially is making for the family?  I am sitting beside him trying to spend it away.  Lol.

9) Gardening.  This one we are both trying to learn and I suspect I have no green fingers.  The few rose plants in front of our house are barely sprouting any roses.  The few that have come up have been beautiful but somehow it has stopped.  And our neighbour's rose plants are just so… powerful.  The roses seem to bloom non stop.  We would both stop in front of our rose plants every morning and try to spot new buds.  And always joke about stealing our neighbour's powerful rose bush.  And mowing the lawn is… just let's say good exercise.  K hates doing it but I think it's pretty therapeutic.

Not that we did anything to the plant but we felt incredibly proud when we spotted this giant rose 

10) Exercise.  Oh gosh this is tough.  I am not the exercise type of person and although K isn't much of a fan, he knows it is good and especially now that its summer, he would often drag me every weekend to go jogging round our neighbourhood.  We always jog up this road with loads of huge houses and we would stop and gawk into their homes.  We spotted a garage the other week and the owner had a fire engine red Ferrari and an Aston Martin in his garage!  As we are situated near Eltham Palace, we would try to imagine that the king's advisors used to stay in these huge houses due to the close proximity.  There is even a huge mansion named Wuthering Heights!  And then we would wonder about our house.. hmm realistically, most likely they were homes for the servants of the palace!  Since we are further away, the house is much smaller and it would make sense we think.  And then finally when we reach the grounds of Eltham Palace, we would pause and see the horses that are owned by the estate.  We try waving and catch their attention.  As you can imagine, we don't end up doing much jogging, not to say running.

There you go, a little glimpse into our lives here!