This morning I woke up to the musical sound of my wife humming while she prepared a cooked breakfast for me and the unmistakable aroma of brewing coffee. It took me only a second to guess that something was horribly wrong.
I approached her with caution, expecting her to unzip her skin and for a green, tentacled being to spring from her hiding place and wrap those greasy suckers around my still dozing head.
"One day overdue." She said as she turned and smiled.
It took me a moment to realise what she was getting at before I scooped up my coffee and breakfast and found a quiet corner to devour them in before she changed her mind.
Could this really be happening?
Today - I had to send out a pack of information to the US Citizenship and Immigration Service. Being a UK Citizen, I have to go through a long and complicated process to keep my green card and eventually gain my US Citizenship.
This has been made doubly difficult because of the timing of my sabbatical. We moved to Puerto Rico, moved in with her parents and I took a break from work. All this means that we have very little on paper that would be considered 'proof' of our marriage. We reached out to friends for affidavits and photos and they have all been wonderful.
Some other part of this process has been a source of depression for us, however. We compiled a photo-gallery of pictures from events and vacations. We put it all in chronological order and readied it to send. My wife's mother was flicking through them with a big grin on her face - my wife asked her what was so funny - she said that,
"It looks likes the transition from normal screen to wide-screen!"
She was right. Flick them quickly and you can almost count the pounds going on. I see a period of dieting in our future.