Every once in a while, things slow down to a snail's pace, which allows me to blog, watch TV, read a book, cook, or just be totally lazy -- or even a really funny combination of all of this, which just happens to be what I'm doing right now. Usually, this tends to happen when I am just getting over a migraine (like the one I had last night), but more often it comes just from having the day off and nothing to do. Because Todd is a neat freak, the house is already clean (he being the one that does most, if not all, of the housework, LOL), so that leaves nothing else to do other than just wait for him to get off work (can we say, BORING????)

It's been so long that I've had the chance to just blog about life in general that I hardly know where to begin. I guess for starters, my hair is growing back like crazy! I am trying my hardest not to really get my hopes up that it will fully grow in, but Todd is very happy about it -- the only drawback is that my head and scalp are so tender these days I can barely stand to put anything on it! Todd is very good about massaging my scalp, which helps a lot, but of course I'm impatient for the tenderness to go away like yesterday!!!

I've been back in Nashville for two months now, and I didn't realize how much change the city has gone through until just a couple of weeks ago. Being gone for nearly 3 years, I thought that coming back every other weekend would help me to keep up with all the changes -- but change has a habit of sneaking up on you whether you're ready for it or not. Prime example: My favorite gyros restaurant is literally right around the corner from my job, right? I got a huge craving for one of their gyros plates with extra rice, extra bread, and extra cucumber sauce with tabbouleh salad on the side a couple of Sundays ago, and I drove right on over there to get a plate -- only to find out that the place was closed on Sundays!! Talk about a major disappointment!!! This place had been open on Sundays for as long as they have been open, but it seems like overnight everything changed!!! Now when I want to go somewhere, I make extra sure that I call and find out what their hours are, lest I find myself in the same situation as the gyros place.

As more time passes, I find myself getting more and more used to living with Todd, and by that I don't just mean sharing the same living space with him. As time passes, we find out so much more about each other than we ever did in 5 years of a long-distance relationship. Because until very recently he was overseas or stationed halfway across the country, we only allowed our best parts to show. Now that we are in the same room most of the time, we can let our true colors show to each other -- and isn't it refreshing to find out that the person you only saw once or twice a year is the same person day in and day out??? But too, because of the hurts of past relationships and the mirages our exes put in front of us, we both find we need reassurance that we really DO want to be with each other. I can tell Todd as much as I want until I turn blue in the face that he is the one I want to spend the rest of my life with, and vice versa, but I think that neither one of us will truly believe it until our wedding day when we're making our vows to each other.

Much like opening my heart and soul to my Alopecia World family, being with Todd again after all the hurt we have put each other through over the years is an incredible leap of faith that I have no regrets in taking -- and as the days pass, I find that our love for each other has matured into something neither one of us expected it to become -- and something that we both cherish and treasure above all things. Thanks to Todd, I have a new-found acceptance of many things that affect my life, especially my AA.

As I sit and reflect upon how Todd's acceptance of my AA has changed me so dramatically, I can't help but marvel at how important having his acceptance of it above everything else actually was. It's one thing to have your family and friends accept and understand how you must be feeling about not having any hair, but to have the love of your life tell you that he loves you regardless of what's on your head or not is liberating in a funny way -- like as long as they don't care, why should you care about whoever does care???

Anyway, enough rambling for now -- I'm making vegetable soup for dinner and I need to get started -- feel free to chime in on this one!!!