I hope these nights make up for lost time.

When I got home from work tonight, I glanced at my running shoes and was suddenly struck with a realization: as of Monday, May 12, I will have a running partner. Someone to eat dinner with every day. Someone to watch movies with late into the night on weekends. A plus-one to work happy hours and housewarming parties. Someone to take mini road trips with and to visit Wilkes-Barre with.

And his name is Matthew! =D =D =D

An opportunity has presented itself that will allow him to work during the day, Monday through Friday (still cooking!). This will mean he can go home and see his family more... and see me more! And I'm a fan of all of this, of course. It's not a permanent thing, and we both know it, but we do plan on taking advantage of the time we're going to get to spend together as much as possible.

It's going to be SO weird to be a nine-to-five couple for a few months. I can't even really wrap my head around what this will mean or how we'll go about getting used to having each other around. He's gaining free time; I'm losing alone time. And it's... odd.

The first six or so years of our relationship, all I wanted was to be around him constantly. I wanted every second of our spare time to be spent together. I wanted to go everywhere together, I wanted to share friends, I wanted to just strap myself to his side and never leave him. Alone was never a state I wanted to visit.

And then I was alone. All the time. And it was horrible. But after I moved out and really found myself and my independence (as cheesy as that sounds), being alone wasn't so bad. I realized how much I could do for myself with all that time and I made a lot of improvements to myself mentally, physically, and emotionally. (An agent I met with for drinks recently told me I had an extremely positive outlook on things; no one would've said that three years ago.)

Then we moved out of state, and our opposite schedules allowed time together and time apart. And we fell into that lifestyle: him constantly working outside the apartment, me half in and half out (though, 85 percent of the time, also working). I've grown so used to my nights alone; I know when my "shows" are on, I can come home and nap and then wake up and get to work, and I can spend my time with whomever I want without worrying about him being here by himself or plans we made or anything like that.

It's going to be so weird to see him sitting here, watching television or playing video games, while I work a few hours each night. It's going to be even weirder to be in his presence on the weekends, from morning to night. He's going to have to get used to my attachment to my laptop, reruns of Castle and Modern Family, and my tendency to fall asleep sitting up. And I think I'm going to have to learn to tune out South Park, Spongebob, and Adventure Time, in addition to a mixture of shooting games and all of his other... noises. (If you know Matt, you know what I mean.)

We've already agreed that just because we're going to have all this time together now, doesn't mean we have to spend it all together. I'm going to keep up with my networking (I've gone to two events in the past month and met a lot of great people, and I'd love to keep making those connections), my freelancing, my overtime, and spending time with my friends on the weekends and after work. I'm going to continue to go to the gym with Andrew (in addition to trying to start a workout routine with Matt) and I hope our typical Saturday nights at B&N don't become too few and far between.

But now Matt actually gets to come to some of these things. He can join the gym if he wants, he can browse B&N while Andrew and I gossip, he can join happy hours and dinners and whatever he wants. Or he can sit home and relax. His schedule is still going to be difficult, so it'll take some getting used to, and I think a lot of the first couple weeks are going to be spent with my working and him sleeping. But that's okay. Just the fact that these possibilities exist is blowing my mind.

There are so many things we haven't done that the average nine-to-five couple could do whenever they want. We want to clean out the fridge and reorganize the kitchen. We want to spend a day at the laundromat and get our winter blankets nice and clean so we can put them away. We've lived in New York City almost two full years now and we've been to Battery Park once, never seen the Statue of Liberty up close, and have never gone to a museum (though that's not on the top of my list). We want to go to flea markets and farmers' markets and make tons and tons of food. We want to find live music and go to as many shows as possible. And in the coming months, we're finally going to have the time to do so!

My friends (from home and here) have done a great job keeping me company over the last several years, and I can't be more appreciative of the efforts they've made to be my dates to awkward dinners, let me be the third wheel for Super Bowl parties, and celebrate my birthdays and anniversaries with me so I wasn't alone, stuffing my face with frozen pizza and instant pudding. I don't want to abandon them just because I'm going to have a "real" boyfriend again. I'm going to make a better effort going forward than I did in high school and college. I know some pretty kick-ass ladies (and one particular gentleman) these days and I would like to keep them close.

So yeah... tonight when I got home, I realized this would be my last weekend alone for a little while. So I said eff the gym and the low-carb diet we've been on for the past few months and I ordered a pint of lo mien and some dumplings. I put my pajama pants on, spread my work out in front of me, and chowed down. I cleaned a bit (we had like, fifty pieces of silverware in the sink), but I mostly spent the night with Claire, Phil, Mitch, and the gang and my computer. Which is totally fine. (I'm actually proud of myself for staying awake all night!)

So, after Sunday night, I will no longer be living the life of a relatively single lady. Guess it's time to break up with all those boyfriends I've accumulated... Bye, Phil!

In other news...
(How can there even be other news? Everything above is the only the best news ever.)

I have decided/discovered (not sure which word is quite right) that I don't really want to be a runner. I haven't really been running at all lately (see: busy, lazy, tired, weather sucks, good at finding excuses) and I can't say that I really miss it. I'm not, nor was I ever really, determined to run an extremely far distance. I mean, it'd be cool to say, "Oh, I ran eight miles this morning," like it's no big deal but... I can barely run one mile right now so. Yeah.

What I really want to do is just lose weight and get in shape. I'll keep running as part of the fitness plan, and I've already promised a 5k to the ladies at work in July (though it's more a social event than a real run) and an 8k sometime next year (we'll see about that one), but I've found that, among my life goals, running a 10k or a half marathon (and certainly not a marathon), is just not something I ever need to cross off my bucket list. I want to publish a novel, I want to have a successful career, I want to have tons of babies (or maybe just three or four), I want to be in love forever (or at least most of the time), and I want to live a long, healthy life.

I'm not a runner, and I would not define myself as one. Running can, as I said, be part of my fitness plan, but, at the end of the day, it's not going to kill me if I don't run long distances or have best times or achieve a better pace or any of that. I'm not putting the activity down; I've just figured out that it's not something that I need to do.

However, again, as I've said (I'm getting tired and repetitive), now that I actually have a running partner, I'll keep at it. But I'm not going to get mad at myself if I can't go farther or faster on any given day. Which will take an enormous amount of stress off me and possibly even make the activity more enjoyable.

So, I'm going to stop talking about it. Which should make everyone else happy. Instead, you can suffer the wrath of my low-carb chatter, rants about how much I work, and all the talk that will be coming that will start with "Matt and I," "Me and Matt," and "We."

I think that's it for tonight. There was other stuff I wanted to post about but I've already been at this an hour and it's suddenly 1:30 and Matt's on his way home! Two more shifts and he's moving on.

Oh, sorry.

Two more shifts and we're moving on.

Hehehe

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Side note:
Extremely surprised that this blog has been viewed almost 2,400 times. I guess that's not really a huge number for a normal blog, but considering I only update once every other month... I'm impressed. And you're curious. ;) And about 500 of those are probably me anyway.