A few weeks ago Blue Eyes and I celebrated our fourth wedding anniversary by unloading a moving truck and hauling boxes to all the appropriate rooms in our Arizona house. We didn’t have a fancy dinner, or share a dessert, there were no flowers or cards or presents exchanged. I’m pretty sure we both collapsed from exhaustion and snored like elephants all night and woke up complaining of our aches and pains. Clearly, we’re super romantic and stuff.

(These are not the kinds of anniversary blog posts that win followers and earn sponsorships; just keeping it real over here. )

Mr. Blue Eyes and I have been together for almost five years, married for four, and when I do the math, my calculations tell me that we have lived in the same state for only 9 months.

Nine. Months.

To recap: Blue Eyes is a civil engineer, the kind who is in charge of building roads and bridges, pipelines and dams. He knows how to accurately use dynamite to blow up a mountain, he knows how to set up a power plant sub-station and manage the building of a power line hundreds of miles long. He is a Manly Man in every possible way. (He also lets me paint his toenails and routinely wins Dance Dance Revolution battles with his 11-year old daughter. So, there’s that.) These Manly Man work projects do not often exist within a medium-size established city. They exist in the far flung corners of the deserted West. So, that is where he has worked–for years. I’d see him most weekends (work schedule and time with his kids, depending), and we’d talk, text, and gchat constantly throughout the week. The last 14 months while he’s been in Arizona it has just been to expensive to fly back and forth that often and at over 700 miles the drive takes all dang day, and then some. For the most part, we’ve seen each other twice a month, sometimes more, a few times less.

Is it ideal?  No. Is it something I’d recommend? Not particularly. Did we make it work? Yeah. Mostly.

We have been long distance for so much of our relationship it’s hard to even imagine what it will be like living together. After years of living apart we will finally share the same house. I’m going to see my sweetheart every day, and we will eat dinner together. We’ll be able to watch our favorite shows curled up together instead of watch an episode and then have a phone conversation about it. We’ll share chores and a million little moments throughout the week that just cannot happen when you live several hundred miles apart for years at a time. We’ll be able to support each other better through our individual struggles and, and celebrate the accomplishments and milestones face-to-face. Every. Day.

Image created for me by Ashley Collett Design.

You guys, the long-distance thing is almost over. I hardly even know what to say about that, words do not suffice.