I've been a bad bad girl

In case you haven't noticed, I fell off the blogging bandwagon for the last six months or so. I just stopped logging in and recapping, and for those of you following my story I am sorry to have disappeared so abruptly. I will get back to my recaps soon, but sadly I no longer have pictures because our computer crashed AGAIN and we lost everything on it-again. You would think I would have learned due to the loss of wedding documents and information several months earlier, but no, I had to go and think that it wouldn't happen again and that I didn't need to back anything up. Luckily there weren't that many pictures I haven't shared already because my camera died pretty early into the trip. I thought I had packed an extra battery pack that was charged, however, it was dead too. But that is for a different post.

What has caused my long term absenteeism? Well, I would love to tell you life has been perfect since that day we said, "I do," but I think you all know by now that nothing is perfect and the course doesn't often run smooth.

Don't take it the wrong way--Married life has been wonderful. The man and I are in love and doing great. But life-life has been challenging since before I last left you.


Shortly after the honeymoon, and by shortly I mean 3 days after we returned from the honeymoon and came home to a house filled with: wedding clutter, wedding gifts,wedding attire, vacation laundry and absolute chaos; we did something stupid. We drove an hour away to "look" at German Shepherd puppies. The man convinced me to go and I should have known that looking at puppies would lead to a lifetime commitment I wasn't so sure I was quite ready to make, but I went there believing we were only looking. Little did I know we would see the cutest little puppy ever. She was full of spunk, playful with her own personality and she came right up to me and licked my leg. I fell in love with her face. The man fell in love with her willingness to bite all the other puppies.
And that was all it took. Remmi was leaving with us and was to become the newest member of our family!
I quickly found out that puppies are cute for a reason. If they weren't cute, no one would put up with them. Life after puppy ("LAP") certainly changed. The man started working longer days away from home which meant puppy watching was left up to me. LAP was not a fun time for me. Having the added stress of a new puppy, going back to my dreaded job after such an amazing vacation and the mounting chaos that was piled in our house and a feeling of no time to do anything, I began having panic attacks.

If you've never had a panic attack, it is not a fun time at all. I had had anxiety before, but never in my life felt anything like this. It kind of feels like you are having a heart attack and all the while you are convinced you are dying. I found out later that I had bursitis in my shoulder, which was causing me to have pain and numbness radiating down my left arm. Which in turn was raising my blood pressure and causing my heart to race and bringing on the panic attack. After the first one and spending hours in the ER convinced I was having a heart malfunction, I knew what they were and what they felt like, but they = not so much fun.

Not to worry, my mom went to my house and rescued our newly adopted puppy for the night that I was in ER. Puppy returned to me addicted to stealing my socks. I blame my mother.

LAP then became very routine. Go to work, come home, deal with puppy biting me with her needle like teeth all night and play with puppy all night because all she wanted to do was play. I couldn't stop anywhere after work because I had to go home and let her out of her crate, I couldn't meet up with my friends for coffee because she was waiting for me to get home. I couldn't even cook dinner because she was attacking me wanting to play. My life now revolved around the little life that we decided to adopt. I kept reminding myself how cute she was and somehow that got my through the puppy stage.

She's a pretty good dog now. We have trained her to do a lot of things and she's super smart so she picks up on things really quickly. She has brought some joy into my life---

--except the day I came home to find she had ate my coach umbrella..... but I have since forgiven her for that.

Have you added any new members to your family after tying the knot?