Sunrise, Sunset

We are fortunate enough to live in a very cool apartment. It's in a building that was erected in 1925, and it has a wood-burning fireplace and 11' ceilings. It has hardwood floors and those tiny hexagonal tiles in the bathroom. The kitchen cabinets are glass-fronted and the backyard is lined with trees and has a birdbath. If I were to imagine my dream house, it would look a lot like this one.

We live in a very small town in Northeast Tennessee, where hubs has a pretty stellar job working for a factory. It's a factory town, and the recession is killing off the factories one by one. Just like a lot of America, there is a pretty big problem with prescription drug abuse here. More than most places. When we first got here, I soon learned that every person I met had a family member or close friend who was addicted to Oxycontin. While the town is full of parks and trees and is just a 20-minute drive from the Smoky Mountains, there are some drawbacks.

Hubs has switched from second shift (3-11pm) to first shift (7-3pm), which is no small task. As 20-somethings, we had always relished our sleep... sometimes sleeping till 2pm. He switched to first shift right before the wedding, so it was like he fast-tracked his adult life all at once. The transition came with a bit of grumpiness, but who can blame him? I'd be grumpy if I had to wake up at 6 every morning too.

He's gotten fairly adjusted to the schedule, and I'm very proud of him for it. The new hours mean that we can have time together during the day, when stores are open, and we can actually go to dinner and do things that normal people do. I feel pretty terrible admitting this, but I've had a more difficult time than he had adjusting to our new hours. I still stay up after he's asleep, and I wonder if this is a problem that most married people have. I feel like it's a great opportunity to have time to myself, to read and watch bad tv shows and things like that.

But I still feel guilty for some reason.

Being married comes with its own gigantic set of preconceived notions that I don't know how to navigate. Do we have to go to bed at the same time? Do I have to make dinner 7 nights a week? Do we have to go on double dates with other married people? Is it okay if I don't chase kids off my lawn with a broom? Is it weird that I don't care if my husband plays xBox 360 for 12 hours straight on a Saturday?

I guess the answers will come with time. Right now, the best thing I can do for this marriage is to try to stay calm and pleasant when he wakes me up early to have breakfast on the weekends. We don't really have any married friends to ask, which is okay with me. Married people are boring anyway.