konfessions of the Koog

So the holidays have arrived. This is the first christmas the Girlfriend and I are celebrating together. I'm an only child and I only have my Mom left in my immediate family. Growing up in a large Italian family, I've been blessed with many cousins (most named Anthony and Marie), but as close as we are, we're not sibs. Blending into a family is hard and being an only child makes sibling issues foreign to me. The Girlfriend, however is the eldest of three. Not 3 mixed siblings, 3 girls. Over the past nine months, I've been immersed in sibling relationships. Going to visit the Middle and her family outside of NY, going to visit the Youngest in PA. It's nice to be part of a family. Youngest and family came to our house for Thanksgiving and it was one of the best holidays of my life. Every family seems to have it's idiosynchratic ways and traditions outsiders don't understand, or will never be a full part of. My new family is not the Waltons, but their no

Coming to terms with my life as a couple has been a little hard for me. I was a card-carrying single. No ties, no conscience, no problems. I was a field player and boy, did I play the heck out of that field. Now I find myself inextricably bound to someone else and feeling happy about it, but still holding on to that last bit of the single life: living alone. Since I last blogged, so much has happened. I left my old job, started my new one and the girl and I are living together. The first two, while jarring in their own right, were easy to acclimate to, the whole living together thing took more time. So, my new job is in consulting, (of course), and my client is 1.1 miles from the girlfriend’s house. We decided it would be a good idea for me to stay at her place during the week and we would stay at my house in the country on the weekends. To me, this was just “staying over.” One night we are talking about our situation and she blurts out the “we’re living together” comment and I