Why Blog? Why label?

I've been reading Julie and Julia, the book that inspired the movie with Meryl Streep. You probably already know this, but the beginning of said tale is when the heroine of the story starts writes a blog chronicling her journey cooking her way through the famous Julia Child cook book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The book spends a good deal of time discussing the authors motivations in going forward, stories and things that can be boiled down to the predictable stuff like finding yourself. 

So it got me wondering, since I view myself as mostly found, but growing, what is our reason for blogging? 

It has been a particularly tumultuous weekend in my marriage. The potential arrival of a potential pregnancy is nipping at our heels. It is indeed almost entirely a bundle of the possibility of joy, which is a lot like going to sleep every day having no idea when Christmas is and hoping you wake up to Christmas morning. You can see how this would grate on the nerves. Unlike any other relationship we know, in our house we can tend to be our worst selves when stressed and angry and disappointed. We're terrible people. 

With this fresh in my mind, I contemplate why on earth I'd write a blog about the adventures of two clearly dysfunctional people. I've come to this I guess: 

The Crunchy Marriage is about our desire to be two places at once. We are adults, officially. We have titles at our jobs, they both offer health insurance, we're buying a house, we have curtains in almost every window. And yet, we don't quite fit in adulthood as it comes, standard issue. We got married in our early twenties after a dating span that could most effectively be counted in weeks. We're still young, and even when we aren't young anymore, we just don't particularly want our life to be a recipe from a Martha Stewart publication. 

The other day Mark held my pilates workout ball and we ran at each other full speed across the living room into each other on purpose. Then repeated it. Over and over.  In so many ways, we often feel like we just don't do "adult" very well. So we considered a blog about all our different adventures. But who could choose? Also, who reads a blog about only cheese making attempts? Or only owning a record player? 

We felt on some level that we were doing something unique and interesting by approaching adulthood and attempting to maintain our values. We felt like we were doing something truly authentic by committing to one another in spite of coming out of social scenes where this was not necessarily the norm. And we feel, every day, like staying together and being ourselves is a difficult journey worth chronicling. 

We struggled with a name, but what else can you call an indie-music-obsessed-fixie-riding-tofu-making-candle-dipping-granola-baking-yoga-doing couple but crunchy? And how else to categorize all those activities so that you know what you're getting into by checking us out? Anyway, it's what we came to. And like all things "us" it is imperfect, too slow, too fast, ultimately incomplete yet overdone, and I hope you like it. 

It begins.

The Crunchy Marriage was once the crunchy dating couple And before that, we were once two semi-adults about to drop out of our institutions of higher learning. Back then, who could have foreseen that New York Nikki would have picked up what Muscatine (that's in Iowa) Mark was putting down?

It began with two blogs.

Mark cyber-stalked Nikki for over a month before posting on her blog. Under the guise of wanting to find out about her alma mater, as a possible transfer, he approached undetected. "I'm like.... in love with her brain!", he told his friends. Which was cute.

Kind of a floosy, Nikki was dating a few guys at that point, but thought Mark's blog seemed interesting and liked that he was kind of always showing up in her Xanga's (remember Xanga?) foot prints. It all began with a blog.

And here they are... back to their roots.

After a month or so of emailing, which turned into calling, which turned into late night weepy phone calls, they decided to meet. Except that he was in Oklahoma, and she was in New York. Mark, who had a huge map of the US on his wall, did an approximate and determined, aha! Lexington, KY is the exactly middle between their two cities.

Traveling 716 miles each, they met in a Starbucks after discovering not much else existed in Lexington. Six hours later they finally left the Starbucks. Six weeks after that they were engaged.

Four years later, we find ourselves at the beginning of an interesting story. What began with making popcorn in a pot just to see if we could, has become a level of engagedness with all that we consume that neither of us could have participated.

Our city-dwelling crunchiness still suprises us, but we've learned a lot, and we're excited to be a part of the blog-o-sphere, in dialogue with you.