I married Surgeon less than a month ago.

It was on a quiet, bright spring morning, a Monday, the first full day off for Surgeon after a hectic, call-filled two weeks. It was him and me, our hedgehog, an officiant and a hired photographer. I asked Surgeon to dress it up a little, and to my pleasant surprise, he didn’t argue. He wore the awkwardly tight, legging-like trousers I handed him, his face set in an annoyed scrunch until I pulled on the delicately bedazzled top coat of his outfit.

“Well, this looks fine.”

Yes, we did look fine.

It took me about two weeks to piece everything together. My mother mailed me my dress, I went and got henna done, I rented garden space, and I found a little boutique in the basement of a townhouse in the middle of a small town tucked into the woods to help me complete my ensemble with quaint jewelry. Oh, and a visit to the courthouse for papers.

Two weeks. $1167. That’s it.

It couldn’t have been more perfect.

Right afterwards, we went and saw Mad Max Fury Road. It was the best just-married activity I could’ve envisioned. Note: the last movie we saw in theaters together was the Lego Movie, over a year ago. Yes, he’s that busy/exhausted/fed-up.

But on that day, and for the two weeks of vacation that followed, it was as if we were a normal couple: sleeping in, taking a hike, staying up late, watching Clueless in bed, having a picnic dinner OUTSIDE, attending a friend’s wedding and keeping ours a secret until their day was over, and “not talking about that place unless absolutely necessary.” His words, not mine. Surgeon cannot stand that place most times: that place doesn’t give time back.

And so when I waved goodbye to him at the airport as he headed back to that place two weeks earlier than I would, the real normality settled in. His normality. My normality.

Our normality.