Long long distance....

Husband and I have spent more

of relationship long distance than together.

and I think sometimes people ask us

why are you apart?

How can you do it?

Why would you do it?

and it can be tough at times,

but with modern technology he is only ever 

a text message away, 

literally at a click of a button.

and he is in my thoughts 24/7.

The other day i accidently left my phone at home and

the whole day i felt like i was missing something...

and no it wasnt my phone,

it was my husband.

Normally everytime a thought pops into my

 head i send him a message about it.

It can be anything to annoying man on the tube

to, 'i'm thirsty.

he's in on everything.

It makes me one of those terrible people addicted

to their smart phones.

But i can assure when he is around

the phone goes off.

The main thing you have to have to make 

a long distance relationship work

is TRUST.

and future goals.

Both husband and i have seen our separations 

as important steps to future goals,

gotta think big and focus on the bigger picture.

oh dear...

another mushy post....

Being Married

The other day someone made the comment to me 

that they didnt feel like they were married even though they

had been married a year.

And i defended it saying that being married to me has made such a huge

difference in our relationship.

Somehow i feel like a different person.

I feel like Mrs Reid.

not Miss anything.

It didnt happen over night,

i didnt wake up the morning after wedding and feel 

everything had changed.

I guess its a bit like birthdays,

you change age over night,

but gradually over the year you realise that you have developed

and changed and no longer are the person you were a year ago.

Everything just feels more solid now.

Before if he annoyed me

i always had the option to say,

actually you bug me, 'goodbye'

but now i have to think to myself,

this is forever,

is this something that i'm going to give on

or is this something that is too important and i need to take on.

give and take,

it started out a bit like that,

but at the moment it feels like

we're on the same path,

sometimes i feel i know him better than he knows himself,

sometimes i realise he knows me better than i know myself,

little things still surprise me,

things i didn't know about him

(he says i didnt ask....

i say why would i out and out ask you 

if you worked in a cowboy rodeo before?)

some people think that marriage is just a piece of paper,

something legal incase at one point you need to divide up your assets.

its so much more.

i cry a lot more at movies,

especially war films,

i think to myself,

imagine if that were husband...

in Saving Private Ryan one of the guys in the background

got blown up and i noticed he was wearing a wedding ring....

oh dear....

i didnt stop.

i love it when we are around other people

and i get to show him off.

'this is my husband'

and if i can see that they dont quite

see how fabulous he is

i pity them 

and secretly smile at what i know i have

and they are missing out on.

hmmmm....

where did this mushy post come from.

Dont worry,

i've got loads of actual interesting stuff to write about at some point.

like my trip to the Caribbean,

trekking through bat poo,

fooling some poor real estate agent into 

taking us around as we were considering buying our own private desert island....

Banjo Baby....

Before husband left he bought me an early birthday present.... 

Very early my birthday is in November!

A banjo!!!!

I've wanting one for a while and dragged him around

 enough banjo shops to let him realise I was serious...

It's so big in comparison to my tiny wee uke...

Now all I've got to do is figure out how to play it.... 

Hmmmmm

Husband in London....

Husband came to visit at the weekend.

The last time he's going to make it out here as today he started sailing across the ocean.  ( he'd probably correct me for saying that it's probably a biscay or sea or something)

Having him so close by has been amazing. Seeing him every couple of weeks has been a short enough time to keep me going on inbetween, but from mow on visits are going to be far and few... I hope I can make it....

Back to school....

I'm on the fourth day of my course.

I'm attending the 

Royal Academy of Dance Professional Teaching Diploma course.

There's lots of lovely people on the course and

lots of information to take in.

Its good to have fellow students who you can talk to,

i cant tell you how many times we've said to each other

at certain times,

'Oh my Goodness i'm glad that you feel that way too'

(mainly when we are lost and dont have a clue whats going on)

Its quite a broad variety of people too,

all from different backgrounds with different strengths and weaknesses.

For me i think its going to be hard to transition from 

think about how i would do a step as a dancer

to changing my thoughts to how would i teach that step as a teacher.

its a long day and busy schedule

and London is so big

i spend half my time commuting.....

Luckily some of my favouritest people live in London too

(two of my bridesmaids)

i've been trying to squeeze in some social time with them too.

Turns out before i came to London 

my husband emailed my friends and ask them to look

after me as he is worried about me being here without him.

What a sweetie....

good to know that he is taking care of me from a distance

He's my Hercules. 

Goodbye Mallorca, Goodbye husband...

we're heading back to the uk today,

Husbands cousin is getting married at the weekend

and after that he's taking me to London to settle me in at my new house.

(haha settle me in....i'm living with my sisters,

its not like its going to be all that scary!)

This will be the first time i've lived in the UK for nearly 8 years.

Funny isnt it,

where does the time go?

I've really enjoyed all my travels and really am only heading back for

practicality reasons. I could just keep on going to see you new places.

Husband will still be travelling,

to even more exciting places 

(the caribean, brazil...)

I'm desperately praying and

crossing my fingers that

i will be able to go and meet him

somewhere during the year

but to be honest his schedule changes with the wind

(literally!)

i know it sounds soppy 

but without him i'm only half of who i really am.

Valentines

So i realised i never put up the awesome pictures from when we got engaged...

(click on them to make them bigger...

i really need to change this blog so you can see pictures better,

but i dont know how)

you can read

our engagement story here

The View

The Proposal

The Engaged

Happy Valentines!

Wedding Fever.....

It turns out i'm not the only one who has caught the wedding bug in this relationship.

Whilst on skype with my  Husband-To-Be last night

 he told me he had taken a newly wed couple out 

sailing that morning and had 'spent the whole day talking about weddings'.

So i said,

'thats nice. What was their wedding like?'

To which he replied,

'I don't know, i didnt ask.'

hehe...

which translates as he spent the whole morning 

talking about his wedding....

he wont admit it but he's hooked....

My fiance is better than your fiance.....

Oh yes he is,

He is the shiz!

the Bees Knees,

and All That Jazz.

Yesterday he sat on a bus for 6 hours to take  me half-made 

wedding dress to London to the Wedding Dress Doctor.

He listens to my frequent melt downs 

(wedding related and non-wedding related)

and doesnt treat me like the crazy lady i really am.

He does lots of 'wedding duties' that he probably couldn't care less

about, but knows are important to me

He reminds me to say nice things to people 

when i'm feeling grumpy and want to said rude-in-your-face-things

to people who deserve it.

He plays daily online scrabble with me even though it 

may be his least favourite game in the world.

and i know that even know we are a million miles away,

next time we go into a shop together he will secretly buy me a Kinder-Egg 

because he knows it will make me smile.

Dress Stress.....

So, mostly i've been enjoying my wedding planning.

The internet seems to help, it requires very little human being contact,

and i hate to say it but cutting out having to deal with human beings is very pleasurable.

Give me a robot any day!

But, the last couple of days has seen some serious Dress Stress.

I'm not joking, Bridezilla appeared and she was not a pretty sight.

i'm that literally,

 i actually broke out into rash at one point yesterday whilst dealing with my dress maker.

As i mentioned before i decided to have my dress made.

i asked the Head of the Costume Department of the Opera House if she would make it,

and my big sister designed it from a collage of pictures that i sent her.

It didnt start off too well, when i couldn't get the dressmaker to actually come to any appointments that i had made with her. i and seriously re-considered and did a lot of looking at dresses on the internet and what not, but in the long run it was going to be cheaper making it here, and also, after having the option of designing my own dress, the thought of buying one of a rack seemed so disappointing.

So eventually the dressmaker started working.

But let it please be known that my dressmaker only speaks Russian.

This has made the whole process even more difficult as it means i have had to entirely rely on a friend of mine to come to every fitting with me....poor girl....

Although it has been handy that i can just pop in and check the progress of the dress between rehearsals.

The dress was meant to be finished 5 days ago 

because i will fly home this week and plan to take the dress with me.

Knowing the dressmaker and her typical way of working is to finish everything at last minute (its not uncommon to be handed costumes the day of performance), i gave her a deadline a couple of days before i actually needed it.

So on thursday , they day it was meant to be finished, it was not remotely finished.

I told her she could extend it to Sunday.

So on Saturday i went for a fitting and it was beginning to look like an actual dress (beginning)

and yesterday when i went to pick it up.....

well lets just say it wasnt finished.

Bridezilla appeared.

Things were sewn in angry haste.

The dress is unfiitting and unprofessional looking.

In fact i've booked an appointment with another dressmaker to undo some of the botch ups.

I had to go in this morning and buy extra material and wait whilst she made another part of the dress,

now 6 days after the initial deadline

I fly out tomorrow and i thought i would have a finished dress, 

i currently have pieces of dresses, 

some that need to be refitted, some that still need to be attached....

ect ect...

I'm mainly sad because i think picking up my dress should be a happy exciting experience,

and the moment it makes me so upset and angry that i cant even look at it.

its in the suitcase and i dont want to see it again until i've calmed down,

and then i hope that i will like it again,

as currently all the excitement has been drained out of me.

I havent paid her the full amount of money that we agreed on,

but she doesnt know that yet, 

and thats something i'm going to have to deal with later....

tomorrow....

after all tomorrow is another day....

(although i must say, through out it all and all my stresses, 

real ones or over-exaggerated ones my fiancee has been amazing.

 He calms me down and doesnt make me feel like i'm crazy nuts 

and i'm so happy i'm not scaring him away!!!!!)

The Captain and Me.....Chocolate Cake

Somewhere in the next few weeks that followed 

our unofficial first date i started to fancy Captain Tim

I dont remember how many times we met inbetween 

but i still remember that day that turned it around for me.

And that day had a lot to do with chocolate cake.

i cant remember why, 

but for some reason we had decided at some point that we had to go eat cake.

 it was definitely my idea.

oh i remember now,

 it was because he had never been to Svezda....

only the best cake shop in Ljubljana.

so one Saturday he texted me and reminded me that we had a 'cake date'

 i remember asking him if he was taking me for cake or we were baking a cake, 

as i couldnt remember the agreement.

 He said we could do both.

Well let me tell you for starters that was a good answer to begin to muzzle your way into my heart.

Anyhows, 

i remember the moment.

 we were sitting in the cafe, 

and we had both ordered slices of different chocolate cakes

 and his cake was way better than mine...

and so i proceeded pretty much to eat all of his cake after whilst simultaneously devouring mine...

and he didnt mind a bit.

And i distinctly remember thinking to myself,

'Wow, i could actually really like this guy'

Oh yes, i am that easy.

the secret to the enigma of dating Rebekah is out there,

let me eat your slice of chocolate cake along with my own and i'm all yours.

Then we went shopping for ingredients to make chocolate brownies.

But let me warn you, 

this was back before i had any real interest in baking or cooking,

in fact if i recall rightly i went into the supermarket 

and guessed what ingredients might be in a Brownie 

and then we went back to his place and i mixed up the ingredients by the ratio

 of what were my favourite ingredients (sugar and chocolate) 

against what i didnt like so much (flour).

Oh yes they were a disaster.

And yet.....

he kindly told me that the plate of cooked chocolate sugar was great, 

and proceeded to eat the whole thing.

And yet again, 

i thought....

'hmmmmm....he's quite nice'

Enigma no.2-

Eat my crappy cooking with genuine enough 

zeal and i'm yours.

The Captain and Me....First Date....

After the new years party i didnt see Captain Tim again for a long time....

like 5 months.

Honestly i didnt even give him so much as a thought.

I was preoccupied.

And then one afternoon I called up My French Friend and met him for lunch,

it had been a while since i had seen him too.

Over lunch i tried to persuade told him to climb Smarna Gora,

a local hill/mountain with me. in Slovenian there is a word that describes something between a hill and a mountain, its a whole other entity, i think we need that word

but okay okay, its more of a hill than a mountain, but for a girl who never hikes it was a mountain.

He told me that Captain Tim often went there to climb maybe i should go with him.

i forgot about it afterwards....

until a few weeks later the new Star Trek movie was coming out and i wanted to go see it.

i'm the kind of gal who goes to the movies alone, i enjoy it, i dont feel the need to go in a group or with someone.....but sometimes there are movies that if you went to see alone then you would feel like a proper looser, Star Trek for me falls into that category.

Having recently just watched some of the old movies i had really gotten into

 it and was looking forward to seeing it but new i couldnt go alone. 

i also new that i would have to find the right person to ask to go with me....

i mean i recognise that Star Trek is an acquired taste, 

but then i remembered that Captain Tim on his wall in his apartment 

had a framed picture of Star Wars...

anyone who has  a framed Star Wars picture is a good bet right?

i was right.

i texted him and asked if he wanted to go.

So technically i asked him out on our first date, although at the time it was a completely unromantical invite....if i actually fancied a guy i would never in a million years ask him out.

He said yes and also said that My French Friend had mentioned to him that him that i wanted to climb Smarna Gora so why didnt we do that before hand.

So we did.

It was quite funny, about 6months into dating we re-climbed Smarna Gora,

 and  we climbed it in double the time we climbed it in on that first date.

 Both of us had been rushing up to the top, trying to impress the other that we were fit and healthy, 

both of us actually wanting to slow down and gasp for air, we laughed about it in hindsight.

We climbed the mountain (ok, mini-mountain)

Went to the movies.

Went for Mexican food 

and ate ice cream on a stolen boat

and still at the end of it i didnt fancy him,

but i did have a great time.

And i guess thats good, because when i fancy a guy, i normally do and say stupid things. 

i screw it up.

i crack under the pressure.

it took me a little bit longer to realise that being this happy and relaxed around a person so quickly and easily  is a good thing, and maybe i should pursue it further....

i'm glad we did!

(photos from our first date...sometimes i'm glad i carry my picture everywhere with me...you never know what memories you might inadvertently capture)

The Captain and Me...The Inbetweeners....

It was 5 months after our first meeting and before our first date....

i guess it wasnt love at first sight.

There were two Inbetweeners.

The first time we met inbetween was when MFF

 had a dinner party and we were both invited.

This was only a couple of weeks after our initial meet.

let's just say things had gotten a bit awkward between me and MFF.

i think he had invited me to the dinner party not really expecting me to come 

(in fact he planned it when i was working but then i got injured and 

had some free time at the last minute)

but i wanted to go to try and resume our 'normal friendship level'.

needless to say it was all a bit awkward, 

but what i do remember was when Captain Tim arrived

i sat up on the couch i had been lounging around on 

and was exceedingly happy that he had arrived.

it felt like a breath of fresh air in the stagnated room.

I dont remember many other details about the night

(other than i had to tell MFF that i didnt eat fish which 

of course the only thing he had cooked...

cue more awkwardness)

But i do remember at one point someone saying to me and Captain tim,

'you two are made for each other'

Which of course produced an awkward silence in the room,

and me thinking....really?

Captain Tim drove me home that night.

Apparently (he told me at a later date) he thought he was going to get a goodnight kiss as i left the car.

Which i scoff at him for because the thought didnt even cross my mind....

not once....

The second time we met was again just a couple of weeks later

Captain Tim called me up to know if i knew of any hip 

New Year Parties to go to...

it was the day before New Years Eve and i had pretty much decided that that year my New Years plans would be to go to bed early

(I'm not a fan of the New Year celebrations, it just doesnt resonate in me)

Telling him no,

he then decided to throw a mini-party at his 

house as he had some fellow Brits in town for a visit he needed to entertain and invited me along.

Having already declared that i was plannless 

i didnt have any excuses to turn him down,

so i went along,

i had my friend call me at half past midnight to 'invite' me to a party at her house if 

i needed an escape route.

Turns out i didnt.

( i just found pictures from the New Years Party on fbook)

The Captain and Me....the day we met...

i thought its about time i catalogued some of me and my finance's

 (still cant get used to that) important moments.

I'm a terrible diary keeper and have never actually written any of it down, and i have a feeling i better do so before my memory paints its even more different than it already has.

whenever i write down things about the two of us and send it to Captain Tim, he always disagrees with my 'versions' of things. But he does have an appalling memory that i would never trust in a million years....

THE DAY WE MET

It was December. 

It was raining.

A lot.

I remember i had left an activity at my church a bit early to go to My French Friends (MFF) birthday party.

I didnt really know where the bar was where i was meant to be heading and i remember walking through the rain, it was a dark evening. I came across the old roman wall which i had heard existed in Ljubljana but had yet to see.

Finally i found my destination.

I didnt know anyone at the party other than The Birthday Boy.

We had met in a Beginners Slovene class about 9 months earlier.

Not knowing anyone meant a lot of introductory small talk all night long, i hate that, dont you?

After having been there a while i heard an English accent. Having live in slovenia now for nigh on 4 years this was the first British sounding voice i had ever really heard there. I honed in on it and made conversation.

Also rather happy at finding a fellow Brit he excitedly asked me the question, 'Don't you just miss salt and vinegar crisps?' 

i dont particularly like salt and vinegar crisps so the answer was no.

He had a girl with him, a tiny little girl who was writing a dissertation on the lingustics of translating Harry Potter into Russian, or something like that She tried to get me to join her choir.

To this day i've never been able to get any solid information out of Tim as to who this girl was when asked....hmmmmm....

I remember i was wearing my brown long sweater. I know this because i was nervously playing with my amber beads which i only ever wear with that sweater. i know this because i remember him making fun of me for playing with them.

It ended up just the four of us with everybody else having headed home.

Me, MFF, Captain Tim and the Harry Potter girl.

We stood outside in the rain under two umbrellas to wait for the taxi.

Me and MFF under one umbrella. Captain Tim and Harry Potter girl under the other.

In the taxi Captain Tim sat in the front.

The mood was jolly and happy with the others being jovial and a little bit tipsy.

We dropped off the Harry Potter girl.

I remember Captain Tim jestily ripping into the taxi driver who at one point Captain Tim congratulated on 'making an excellent 24 point turn'.

Tim got out next.

MFF started flirting with me in the back of the taxi as we headed towards my house.

I thought it was a little strange as he had never shown me any hints of being interested in me before,

and i really hadnt thought about him in that way at all, but what the heck, 

i put it down to his slight intoxication.

I got out and went home happy having met a fellow Brit in Slovenia. 

Seeing as neither of can remember when we actually had our first date (sometime in May)

 we hold that day as our 'anniversary' mainly because 

facebook reminds us its our French Friends birthday.

Love.....

Excerpt from The Velveteen Rabbit

BY MARGERY WILLIAMS

“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but Really loves you, then you become Real.”

“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.

“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”

“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get all loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”