Reminicent of that first year... Livin' on Love

The first year I was married, all I could see was Jess. My sun rose and fell around that 6 foot 3" freckled boy. When we moved to Huntington and got real adult jobs I was just shocked that we were expected to spend 9 and 10 hours away from each other everyday, year after year, all in the name of: Work. I could hardly stand it. Night after night we'd lay on our popped air mattress in our one room studio apartment and wonder if anyone else was really this happy and this lucky.

We moved to Huntington Beach the summer of 2002 with $30.00 to our name. No jobs, no food, no electricity. However we did have running water, an apartment paid up for the month, a 1970's Crown Victoria, and a surf board, what more did we need.
"Livin' on Love" was more than a song to us that first year of life.

But, we thought it was fabulous! With no frig, and no money, we ate a lot of .99 cent hamburgers, and I happily gained the newlywed 19 in just under 90 days. This sticks out in my mind because our California wedding reception was three months after we got married, and no, I did not fit that pretty white dress!



But, life was grand. We ate a lot of hamburgers, .25 Homerun Pies, and cereal by candle light, we bought ice for the foam cooler every morning, played at the beach and surfed everyday. Our bed was a $20.00 blow mattress that popped soon after we moved in.


After that first month, this cute young girl living above us came and dropped off a grocery gift card for $150.00. We were so thankful. With tears in my eyes I asked her how she knew, and she casually said, "Oh, I saw your car." What! Who says that? It still makes me chuckle. Where I come from, if you are rollin in something with 4 wheels, you are stoked! So, it made me laugh every time people giggled or pointed at our awesome car in Orange County, it's a strange place all it's own.

After a few weeks Jess was hired by Yakaty Yak in Newport, we got electricity, internet and I finally found a job on the 23 floor of Deutsche Bank. Life began.

That year was: magical, that's the only way I can describe it. We were so charmed and delighted by everything that came our way, especially each other.