Coffee and Tea

A simple joy that Kyreen and I have recently been enjoying is the consumption of coffee and tea, mostly due to our newest acquisition. Welcome to the family, Keurig.

A lot of what we do is, in some shape or form, a task that needs to be completed for the well-being of someone else. Things like work, cooking, laundry, even vacations (for their safety and our sanity, we need an occasional escape!). Then there's hot showers, vigorous exercise, or dressing up, which can be enjoyable to most, but are all a necessity in life.

The preparation of coffee or tea is, from start to finish, purely elective and solely for the sake of our enjoyment. The act is peaceful and relaxing, and can be enjoyed by ourselves or in each other's company. And since coffee or tea is in no way a necessity, it's viewed to be a sign of affection when asked "coffee or tea, my dear?".

Like any other form of recreation, as soon as it becomes a task or necessity (I'm looking at you, coffee addicts), the act loses all charm. So, cheers to a new-found joy in our life.

 And may it forever remain a joy.

Turtle Costume

 We rarely put clothing on Napoleon. He hates it. Even as a puppy, he was always miserable in anything but his own fur. He has a ton of clothes, but they just sit in a box in some remote corner of the house.

Kyreen's little brother found his turtle costume. Either that, or the turtle costume came to life and tried to eat him.

Napz does not appreciate our sense of humor.

A Blog of Sorts

Kyreen finally agreed to start a blog with me. It took a little bit of persuasion on my part, but she agreed to contribute. We used to own www.kyreenandglen.com back in 2007 when we were engaged. She was very diligent about updating and maintaining our site, which was devoted to our journey into becoming a married couple (the site and domain came as part of a wedding package). Sadly, we decided not to buy the domain and gave up the site. It’s one of the things in life that I regret.
Now that we’re starting this together, I have to give credit to a friend of mine, Lehua Cortez (Ruble). I was inspired by her personal blog at www.thegirlandboy.com but was hesitant because I was convinced I had nothing interesting worth posting about. I didn’t want a glorified Facebook/Myspace page. She told me that she started her blog that way and that it was like having a digital scrapbook of your life. Good point.
She went on to talk about how Facebook will eventually die out, like Xanga or the almost-dead Myspace. People have been blogging for longer, before it was even called “blogging”. Before blogging, people have been scrapbooking. It’s another medium to paint a picture of our life together. And it’s hard to call a Facebook page a digital scrapbook with all of your own posts getting buried under everyone else’s timeline updates. It’s just not the same.
Some things to look forward to:

• Updates on our recent travels
• Recollections of past travels
• Random things we like
• Pictures of our beagle, Napoleon

Welcome to our digital scrapbook. 

"Why start a blog?"

"Why start a blog?", I asked my husband. I'm not an expert on anything, nor do I think anything that happens in my everyday life is worth sharing with people outside my personal circle. We already have Facebook and Twitter to share/tweet things that we think are worth sharing with people. Starting another social "network" seemed repetitive and arduous. Hubby says that blogging isn't necessarily about having something to say that's supposed to be mind-blowing or innovative, it's about self expression and sharing your life and insights with others. He says to think of blogging as snapshots of our everyday life-- a place for people we care about to "check-in" with us once in a while without having to post a ridiculously long post on Facebook or the all annoying and impersonal "poke" feature.

Giving some thought to this whole blogging thing, I realize that after nearly 13 years together, all we have to document our life together are just random pictures here and there and our memory of those times. Nothing written down or recorded to show a comprehensive picture of all the events that has taken place since we met so many years ago. Facebook, as great as it is to keep in touch with friends we've made over the years, just doesn't document the important events or even just the small everyday moments we experience. So it seems, that blogging then would become our electronic scrapbook sort of speak-- pages of experiences big and small, significant or insignificant, of things that matter to us and what makes us who we are as a couple and as individuals. Blogging becomes a canvas for us in our journey together through life's many twists and turns. So here it is, page one of our digital scrapbook.