Everything is Going to be Okay

Today I got the best gift anyone has ever given to me. Satu revealed the project that she has been working on for me for the last few months and it is better than I could have imagined. She found a book called "Everything is Going to be Okay," and has spent months adding to it little hand drawn, clever pictures and cutouts that make it about me and to me. There are too many wonderful bits in this book to cover in one post, so I plan to take it a page at a time and write about where these wonderful characters came from and how she worked to make it truly a piece of art.

Here is one of the pages she made just for me.

This is a map of my native wetlands. She knows my heart so well that she can map it from memory. Satu says that she says good night to me even when I am not home. I feel like she is the only one in the world who could know my heart like this, and wherever she is is the only home I want. 

Today is April 13, 2015 and it is now the day that should be our anniversary. I think that no ceremony or day or occasion of any kind could be more of a testament to love than the gift that she gave me this afternoon.

Everything is going to be okay.

I put this bullshit here.

Hey, hey you, what are you doing? I put this bullshit here. Right here.

I SAID, I PUT THIS BULLSHIT HERE!

So much sunshine per square inch

Last night I came home to a wonderful surprise. My sweet girl got me a bottle of fancy jasmine bath salts and with it I found this card.

She has started to leave special six hour tea lights on for me when she goes to bed so that I can come home to a warmly lit, safe feeling bedroom. It helps me if I wake up with a light on, but it also helps me feel loved to go to sleep that way, surrounded by slowly dancing amber shadows.

Last week we had a visit from her family which was fun, I like them, but I much prefer to have her all to myself. It really made me feel thankful for our quiet little nest and the happy times that we spend around each other. 

Our little home is my favorite place on earth. Satu fills it with delicious smells and laughter. I can not imagine a better life for us. 

Just wait. It will be okay.

I have plenty of things that I need to write about right now. Satu is pulling out all of the girlfriend stops. She is looking adorable and fierce all of the time.

I mean seriously!! I can't even bring myself to filter this one because she is just BOMB AS HELL!

Also, she has been working almost non-stop on the art project that is for me to wear or eat or put on the wall/ bookshelf. Who knows. It is really exciting, but sometimes it means that I am not allowed in the room. I want to post all of the picture hints about this project, but I am going to wait until I can scrutinize them for new information. The nature of this thing is very mysterious. The only thing I can really be sure about is that it is probably everything.

Saturday at work I had a panic attack. It is pretty rare for me to have one during the day, but I was pretty far behind with school work and it has been really busy and stressful there, plus there are projects coming up that require money that I haven't made yet. All of this balls up in my head and turns into a panic attack with teeth and grey hair in the center. Satu came to the rescue immediately in her little grey ambulance. I imagine her speeding through traffic, cursing grandmothers and "handicrappers" on the way for driving the speed limit. "Move it nanna! My baby needs me!" She scooped me up and got me home. She just kept pushing my shoulders down from my ears and patting me on the leg until I finally started acting like a human again. 

I want to sit and write a little more about the mystery thing, the cat's crooked fuck you face and the wonderful person that my girlfriend is, but right now the hairy, toothy panic ball is a little too big. I have to divert my time to school and work, but it is not because I prefer to think about those things. I just don't want my sweet girlfriend to have to come scoop me up and drug me because I can't get my shit together. 

Just hang on baby, Better days and better posts are just around the corner. 

Before midnight

Writing down the little things in our daily lives is a way for me to remember some of the little things that keep surprising me about Satu. She likes to check in to see what has tickled me recently. I think it is her way of understanding how I see her. She is constantly surprising. For example, Saturday I brought home some Chinese food. It is not the first time I have ever done this, but it was the first time I have gotten a chance to see her collection of fortune cookie fortunes. She has a little box for them. God only knows where that lives. Inside the box are a bunch of little snack baggies full of fortunes labeled things like Huh?, doom and happy. I think the thing that strikes me most about this new thing that I have learned is not that she has been saving fortunes, but that she is able to make categories of these fairly random and disembodied phrases.
Who does this kind of thing? Only the most perfect woman in the world.

Mystery thing

Satu has a project. This is not unusual, she is usually in the process of becoming an expert on something new and creating wonderful things in our lives. She knows a lot about cigars, magic playing cards and coins among other interests that pop up daily. But right now she is full steam creating a present for me. I am excited beyond belief. It reminds me a lot of when I was a kid and I would stay up all night with my sister on Christmas eve, except Christmas eve is lasting forever and the suspense is just continuing to build.

Two nights ago, Satu thankfully was willing to answer some questions so that I could relieve some of this excitement by having a few hints about the mystery thing. She told me that she was just going to say yes to everything. I realize that this means that all the answers were meaningless, but still I FEEL like I now know some things.
Here is what I know based on the questions that I got right.
There is an involvement of glitter.
It is the size of yellow and also half the size of yellow and much smaller.
It is made of cloth, at least partially.
It is also made of paper, at least partially.
There is string, glue, paint, markers, printed things and cardboard letters.
It can be hung on the wall or from the ceiling.
It is a book.
It can fit on a bookshelf.
You can wear it.
One person can hold it in one hand or two, or two people can hold it with three hands. Mutants can also hold it with three hands.
It is portable.
If I saw it in the world, I would know what to call it.
It has a category.
It has something to do with ship flags.
It involves very tiny pixels.
It is a candle.
I want it. I inspired it.
It is everything.
It could be eaten.
It is VERY, VERY exciting.

Later when I have it either on my wall or I am wearing it or holding it with my three hands, I will post a picture of it and compare all of the things that I know about it with its real world self.

The gigantic 1%

I am not a careless person, but it is true that I don't notice much of my surroundings. I do one thing at a time, and that means that I only notice and think about one thing at a time. This is one of the things that makes me a good girlfriend and one of the things that makes me a bad girlfriend.
I only have room in my imagination to envision my life with Satu. None of the other fish in the sea matter at all. In fact, if Satu hadn't told me there was a sea, I probably would have forgotten.
Up side: Loyalty.
Down side: I only see about 1% of what goes on in my surroundings, and Satu is responsible for almost everything in my surroundings.
There are days when she has to take me by the hand and re-introduce me to the house I live in. Every few weeks I will notice something that I have seen for seven years and think that it is a new thing in our lives.
I say all of this because when I say that Satu has been busy, what I know about is probably only the tip of the iceberg. I am a hard person to live with. I don't close things, I don't notice when my shoes leak mud onto the floor and I usually just put things wherever I am when I happen to need a free hand for something else. Satu deals with all this and continuously pulls our home back from the event horizon that surrounds me.
Today, as I was burning up my brain cells on school work, Satu was getting the house ready for company (see exhibit 1.)

Exibit 1: Perfect hairball found at the event horizon
During the week Satu usually waits up for me and still gets up to feed our battle ax of a cat several times a night. She takes the recycling, picks up groceries and makes sure the dogs get out. When they get frozen paw syndrome and can't move anymore, she carries them back inside. She shovels snow like it is her superpower (see exhibit 2.)

Exhibit 2: snow ninja

Yesterday when I came home from work, Satu was so tired from shoveling that she just sat down in the road to let me into the driveway. I think that this may have been due less to the shoveling and more to the weight of clothing that she was wearing. Later in the evening when she peeled off the layers, the pile of clothes was bigger than she was. She is the most determined person that I know. Satu works beyond her abilities almost every day. She told me that in college she hurt her arms to the point where she had to use both hands to write. Did she ever consider not writing? Nope. Did she ever consider saying that she just couldn't finish the project? Nope, not her. Did she even slow down? Nope, she just used the power of pain to accelerate. 

I sometimes say that Satu has the heart of a lion, but in truth, the king of beasts bows to her quiet strength, I see it, and I only know about 1% of the story.