Stuck With U

February 20, 2022

I realized I haven’t had a lot of time with the hubby in a while. Like just us together time. We went on the cutest Valentine’s date this past week, a glow up version of us back in the day, better phones now and all so no more potato pics quality. It made me miss dates like this back when we were just two young, dumb, broke college kids. Ah, to be young and in love in New York City.

Back in college, he would always come up to visit me and we would try to go on city dates when we had weekends off together. I was looking through old photos and even found pics from freshmen year when he brought me pink roses and took me to see the French exhibit for Valentine's day. We were young, broke college kids looking for inexpensive things to do in the city and I always loved the Met. Well, this spring is going to mark 10 years since I graduated pharmacy school and some things never change because I still love the Met and city dates with the boy. I was looking forward to this date all last week when he told me we could go. We finally got to go see the Disney exhibit and I really enjoyed seeing all the history, art, blueprints and inspiration behind one man's imagination brought to life. Walt Disney really had a talent to make note of every little detail. Unfortunately no photos are allowed inside so I definitely recommend stopping by to check it out before it's gone by March 6. We went to the Loeb Boathouse for lunch afterwards which is truly a step up from back in the day when we picked a restaurant based on budget. I don’t think the Loeb Boathouse was that expensive but it’s nice to be grown up now and just pick a cute place for the view or whatever and worry about the bill later. Although don’t worry, I’m still the same girl who still loves fries and chicken nuggets and honestly that’s all I wanted for Valentine’s day instead of chocolates and this boy delivered, hahaha. He even turned off the cameras in the front yard at our house so I couldn’t see him sneak in my gift. Who says romance is dead?

I’m leaving for a girls trip in a few days and he was so cute. He took off work this weekend just to spend some extra time with me before I leave.

There’s a lot of different factors though why we don’t have a lot of time to spend together; like how we have totally opposite schedules in terms of shift times and days we work. So our schedules only align for us to have two days off a month together. Despite seeing each other everyday because we live with each other, it doesn’t really count saying good morning and good night. And then there’s the whole my sister lives with us thing, so we’re rarely alone-alone. In the summer it was nice because we would go on dates just the two of us, but in the winter it’s hard because there’s honestly not that much to do on Long Island.

I’m trying to come up with new date ideas that we can do together so we’re not sitting around half the time wasting time wondering what to do, like when you sit there so long picking a Netflix movie, you could’ve watched two movies in that time, lol.

Being that we’ve been to the new Star Wars land in Disney World and rode the rides, he suggested we watch the movies so it makes more sense when we go, similar to how we watched all the Harry Potter movies after we started going to Universal often. I was never crazy into space sci-fi movies but I said we could give it a shot. I looked up mini golf but unfortunately a lot of places are outdoors and it’s been absolutely too cold for that nonsense. Hopefully it’s something we can try when the weather warms up again. I also suggested hiking upstate and around the island but I have to look into trails and such, but I’m also wary because last year’s tick season was pretty bad for all of the Northeast region. I did find a decent amount in my yard so he had to end up bombing the whole yard to get rid of them since he’s out there often doing yardwork anyway. We did get a badminton set and I would love to get into that again as well when the weather warms up and that would be an easy activity to do at home. I do miss kayaking as well and would love to find new sites this year to kayak at. He was actually wondering if we should get our own instead of renting them all the time but that’s a different discussion for another day. I looked into video games for us to play together but he likes shooters and ugly games while I like easy simple games with pretty colors like Mario. LOL, we have to find something we both can enjoy. This is where it’s hard being total opposites sometimes. Everyone always asks what do we have in common that we ended up together and honestly, I still don’t know. All I know is somehow it worked and we’re still crazy about each other to this day. He always wants to be with me and do the things I want to do, simply to spend time with me and be with me. And shit like that is what drives me wild for this boy. The love that he has for someone weird like me. I wish I could explain it but it just works. I guess we’re just stuck with each other.

Even when we’re in the same room doing totally different things sitting in different spots, we still just simply enjoy each other’s company. He’s over there shooting headshots in some video game, while I’m sitting here click-clacking away on my blog and organizing photos. We don’t even dress anything alike! Our styles are totally different. He’s very laidback and dressed down most of the time, while I’m always extra, girly and done up. But every so often he cleans up and matches me and surprises me because he knows how much I love it. It’s those little things that drive me wild and make me fall in love with him more even if he drives me crazy.

And all these years later of being each other’s Valentine’s for 21 years, we’d still have it no other way.

It's just you and me
And there's nothing I, nothing I'd rather do
I'm stuck with you, stuck with you, stuck with you

Summer Lovin'

July 16, 2021

It’s funny because during high school and college years, we were trying to squeeze every minute we could out of the time we had to see each other, even for mere seconds. In between classes, on weekends, during Christmas and spring breaks. And the moments we went without seeing each other, we were constantly scrambling to get home on AIM (God, remember instant messenger days?), google chat, whatever, just to talk to each other. And then when we got cell phones, we were constantly texting til we ran out of texts for the month.

Now that we’re married, we see each other every day and yet still don’t see each other every day. What I mean is we work opposite schedules. By the time he gets home from work, I’m gone and getting ready to start my shift. And when I get home, we’re getting ready for bed to lather, rinse and repeat the next day. We see each other in the minutes in between but we really don’t have time with each other. It’s not to say we take being able to fall asleep and wake up with each other for granted - which is funny, because I remember in high school, this is what we talked about that we wanted in the future; simply being able to fall asleep and wake up with each other instead of saying goodbye through AIM message and racing to be the first to log on and say good morning, lol, how lame of us - but that we don’t meaningful enough time to actually spend with each other. We don’t share the same days off together; in fact we only align days off together twice a month nowadays.

But with quarantine pandemic times and reduced traveling comes with it increased PTO. And since we have to “use it or lose it,” I figured I’d start using it more often this summer to spend more time with the boy. Last week, was the start of our summer days off together.

We didn’t do anything crazy, we just went on local dates trying some new restaurants and visited some old venues but still had a great time. It reminded me of how much I used to love doing stupid, mindless stuff like this when we were younger. Just discovering new things and places or even just a quick trip to the mall. It’s the little things he does that I really love. Like holding my bag for me, just holding hands, reaching for me when he’s driving, running to me and lifting me up to the sky and kissing me. Taking me to all the places I want to explore. It reminds me of the summer of Pokemon Go when I wanted to go to every hotspot to catch Pokemon in hopes of finding a Pikachu or a Charizard. And he would. He would huff and puff sometimes but eventually, he’d do everything I wanted to do on my list. I really miss this. I miss it being just the two of us doing stupid stuff together. So I took off even more time later this summer to spend with the hubby. And I’m hoping I can continue it in the fall.

There’s something about it that I really can’t explain. There’s a magic that happens when you spend time with your other. Quality time. Fun time. Even if it’s doing nothing crazy or spectacular. I need to make more time for it because it is definitely important. It’s crucial. It’s necessary and it’s healthy.

Make time for your other. Make the time for you.

List of the places we visited in case you’re interested for your own date nights:

Lavender by the Bay
- If you’re interested in visiting, hurry. The bloom is lasting up til July 22 at this time. There are two locations but I recommend the East Marion one even though it’s a farther drive. You won’t be disappointed, that is, unless you wait too long and miss the bloom.
Pindar Vineyards
- They currently have a big field of sunflowers in bloom and costs nothing to visit and view. And if wineries are your thing, that's available too. I'm not a wine drinker so I can't attest to this since I've never tried their wine experience here but on weekends I always see big parties here with live music having a great time. They have a giant chair to take cute pics in as well as the vineyards you can walk through. I believe the sunflowers are available too to be cut at $2 a stem and they provide shears inside the building.
The Big Duck
- A quick stop alongside the road on the way to Lavender by the Bay with very limited parking hence the “quick” stop part. Plus there’s not really much to do other than take a quick pic with the duck, shop for souvenirs inside the teeny tiny shop inside, and sit at the picnic tables behind it if you need an area to just chill and eat your lunch for a minute. It’s just a cute quick stop for the gram.
Montauk Lighthouse
- Lavender marks the North side of the Long Island fishtail, while Montauk marks the Southern tip of the fishtail. It’s funny how I traveled to both ends on these dates. I didn’t do it purposely, it just ended up that way when we decided to venture out on separate days as we made our plans up the day of. Parking is $8, while access to the lighthouse is an additional ticket. But walking around the beach area is not so that’s what we did. You used to be able to climb the rocks surrounding the lighthouse but currently the area is fenced up and closed due to construction. It IS a long drive out to here and traffic is insane because one lane road and well, it’s the Hamptons, so be forewarned if you choose to head out this way. There’s a lot of cute shops along the way on the Main streets you pass through though so if you have time, park and take a walk around them.
Central Park
- You’ll never explore all of Central Park in a day. But that’s what’s so great about it. There’s always a new area to explore and uncover. There’s running trails, walking paths, meadows, ponds, lakes, a boathouse with rental boats, a zoo, a small castle, gardens, fountains, beautiful bridges, everything. There are beautiful views to be seen from every angle and perspective. It’s also nearby two of my favorite museums. The Met on the East side and the Museum of Natural History on the West side. Just go explore!

Restaurants/Ice Cream Stops

Lunch
- The hot lobster roll comes with the lobster and bread separate so you can put it together yourself with the cole slaw in a separate cup. Everything comes hot and fresh. It’s a cute little spot on the way to and from Montauk. Our waiter was cute and friendly.
Jerry & The Mermaid
- I’m clearly still on a journey to try every lobster roll on Long Island, and this one was pretty decent. I’d recommend the straight cut fries over the waffle fries. I find them more plentiful portion wise, as well as perfectly crispy. It’s also next to a pier, which is nice to walk alongside after you finish your meal. Also next to an aquarium if you’re looking for more things to do.
Puglia
- Second time here and the portions and prices are great. Dinner comes with entertainment if that’s your sort of thing, but be foreworned, they come begging table to table afterwards and if you don’t have cash to tip, they peddle their venmo, lol. Not that I didn’t want to tip but it felt very awkward as you were trying to finish your dinner. It felt like when you’re at church and they come around collecting money towards the end of the service, except pushier.
Olive Branch
- A cute little spot in Greenport with the most adorable outdoor seating covered in umbrellas above you to help shade you from the sun. It reminds me of the cute little spots I see in people’s international travels. Oh how I miss traveling. Anyways, the food was fresh and the chef came out to check on us which I thought was nice.
Snowflake
- Famous ice cream spot in Riverhead with tons of flavors. This was my second time stopping here.
Magic Fountain
- Cute little ice cream shop on the North Fork with cute ice cream murals. I had the Summer Sunset which was mango with a strawberry ribbon and it was absolutely amazing. Would love to come back and get a quart of this if I could keep it cold long enough to get home.
Taiyaki NYC
- They’re currently doing a collaboration with Rilakkuma and it’s the freaking cutest thing. Totally grammable and the mango strawberry swirl is delicious. Currently that flavor is found at the NYC location only, not the Queens location.

I can’t wait to explore some more new places the next time we have off together soon for date days. ^_^

P.S. I Still Love You

February 15, 2020

I just finished watching the latest installment of the To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before series and while I do agree with the general consensus that the first movie was better, I still found it cute and a good continuation of the story. It struck a chord with me because I could see a lot of myself in the ways Lara Jean navigated her relationships, friendships, emotions and general confusion in the world of boys and love. In the first movie, to wrap it all up, Lara Jean accidentally falls in love with the boy she’s fake dating to help him make his ex-girlfriend jealous, as well as cover up her real crush until she realizes she no longer has a crush on him anymore but rather wants to be with the guy she’s fake dating. In the second movie, she ends up meeting another old crush and feels like those strong feelings she used to have for him are rekindled, but dilemma, she’s already in a real relationship with the boy she was previously fake dating. The question ends up being, how do you which is the one you really want to be with?

It’s funny because I found myself in a similar situation when I was 12. Yes, I know, it sounds really dumb but at a very young and naive age, I entered a very tricky world of navigating relationships and how manipulative people can be. Especially when you’ve never dated before. There’s no guidebook on how to be a girlfriend or how to handle relationships or what the protocol or proper procedure is for certain situations if you’ve never been in them before. When you’re new, everything can be very confusing and I could relate to Lara Jean in a lot of those ways, remembering how I was when I first entered the dating world of relationships.

The irony is that I wasn’t really looking for a relationship to begin with. My family had just moved into a new house, and around the corner from me lived this boy who started talking to me now that we were at the same bus stop every morning. We rode the bus to school every morning together, along with my best friend at the time. I guess you can say we were flirting, although I didn’t know what flirting was back then, being young and dumb. Towards the beginning of Christmas break, my best friend beat me to it and asked him out. It sounds a little bit like that Mean Girls scene where Regina gets back with Aaron Samuels even though she knows Cady liked him, now that I think about it. I guess you could say I was a little crushed because I was waiting for him to ask me out the entire time. I didn’t know girls could ask too, but at the same time, I’ll be honest, I wasn’t exactly a confident enough girl yet to go out there and get what I want in a direct manner. I was very traditional in the chivalrous sense, living through Disney colored glasses of fairy tales and what to expect in traditional men and women roles. But the funny thing was, as crushed as I was, I wasn’t really mad at either of them. I honestly had no hard feelings about it, but I did feel left out. And I expressed that to them. It’s funny how civilized we all were about this weird love triangle that was happening about it. Probably because we were 12 and honestly had no real emotions invested in relationships just yet. When you’re 12, the world of ‘dating,’ is simply having someone walk you to your class, hold your books, make out with in between periods to make other girls jealous and to nauseate the faculty. It’s all very superficial. Their solution to my feeling left out was a simple one. This boy offered to set me up with his best friend while he dated my best friend. It sounds really comical now looking back on it, but it would actually turn out to be a pivotal moment in my life. I agreed to this set up and come January, when school was back in session, I met this boy and come January 14th-ish, we were officially ‘dating.’

We dated for about a month. We stayed after school almost every day in the library to hang out and get to know each other, he’d walk me to my bus, he’d always kiss me goodbye, he’d always come walk me to class if his was near mine, and we would exchange notes in between classes (some of which I still have). He took me to the Valentine’s dance and even got me a teddy bear and roses. We talked on the phone several times a week (back when talking on the phone was still a thing). We both got yelled at for how often and how long we were always on the phone together (cell phones weren’t a thing yet, so we were on the house landline).

The funny thing is, during this month, I had no idea what was happening before my very eyes. But that original boy did. And he got very jealous. He broke up with my best friend, and then proceeded to lie to me and tell me that my boyfriend didn’t really like me. That it was all pretend and that he really just found me annoying. As a 12 year old, if anyone tells you this, you just immediately are crushed and embarrassed as all hell. He even manipulated me into believing it by having me stay silent on a 3 way phone call, while he baited my boyfriend into ‘boy talk’ about me. Looking back, I do realize how stupid and easily gullible I was about the entire thing. But hey, you’re stupid at 12. So the next day, I wrote a letter ending it and passed it to him after he dropped me off at my class in between 3rd and 4th period. One period I had a boyfriend and then the next I was single again.

What I was surprised about was how I felt. Being new at this relationship thing, I didn’t really expect this wave of emotions and for me to miss him so bad. I mean, I lived life just fine before him, right? So why did I feel like this. Was I supposed to feel like this? I broke up with him, so why was I sad? It was a really confusing time.

The next week, I started dating the original boy. But don’t worry, that stint was truly short lived. I don’t even remember how long it lasted because I ended up realizing I didn’t really care for it that much. I think it lasted all of 2 weeks if not less. Whatever feelings I had for him before, were no longer there. In that time, it only amplified how much I really felt about my original boyfriend. I realized I really missed him. I missed him being by my side, walking me to class, talking to him everyday after school. As Stormy says, “Sometimes you have to kiss the wrong man to know what’s right.” It’s weird how you just wake up and realize you really do have feelings for someone. It’s also hard when you’re a teenager because the teenage mind warps every emotion and amplifies it by 10. That’s why every teenager thinks they know everything and feels like the world is ending for them and when their heart breaks, it’s like your soul is being crushed. Dramatic, I know. But unfortunately hormones are an unavoidable part of adolescence.

I’ll save you the longer version of this already drawn out dumb love story and tell you it has a happy ending. It took us over a year to get back together, but we did it. And the second time around, we both took it more seriously. We learned a lot about each other in the year we were ‘apart’ but not really apart. We stayed friends the entire time and still talked almost every day. I guess you could say we were still dating, we just couldn’t say out loud for some reason, in fear of looking vulnerable to the other party again. Because honestly, if you’re wrong about the other party sharing the same feelings, it really does hurt like hell.

My husband is my high school sweetheart and my first boyfriend. Our relationship is very weird in the sense that neither of us were really looking for anything permanent or meaningful but we serendipitously ended up falling for each other and ending up together in the end.

What I learned from this very young experience was not only could I feel this way about someone else even at a young age, but in my confusion about my feelings for two different boys, I learned how to differentiate between the two. Like the end of P.S. I Still Love You, I learned that my feelings for my husband were real and weren’t going away anytime soon. And nearly 20 years later, they still haven’t. A LOT of things have changed since then but my feelings for him only grow stronger.

P.S. I still love you. <3