#[ He also asked for a special dance with Nickie just to prove that he can dance better than his big brother ]

[excellentexecution]

Anonymous asked: Tell us a bit about your wedding to Niccola. I can only imagine it was a bit chaotic to plan given she would have been heavily pregnant with Logan and you still on the road with the company or is it a really well kept secret that you and Niccola didn't have the chance to marry before your oldest came into the world? I know you pride yourself on tradition even though your family is a nontraditional by most standards.

Molded and modeled to always have decorous conduct, ancestorial influence at work, Bret considered his marriage with Niccola to be as conventual as any could be. Good in morals and even greater in foundation - strong and built upon sacred love and trust - honorable in how husband and wife respected one another. Cared for each other so tenderly, their children the beneficiaries to all that could possibly be given, warm embraces and kisses so sweet. There was nothing strange about them. Niccola and his union truly a perfect match, two alike souls who found their missing piece, the marriage was not at all bizarre, either, but even the Hitman could recognize that himself and his beloved had forsaken the traditional route, somewhat. Steered well into the uncharted pathways and never looked back. Skipped over a step in the courtship process, explored affections of the flesh before they had even announced an engagement, bodies connected as one, their precious Logan conceived during a night of fulfilled passion and devotion. A moment that could never be forgotten; would never be asked to be replaced, never changed. 

Catching sight of the mentioned boy just then, more so a man now, for Bret, it felt as if it was only yesterday when Niccola had told him the news. Pregnant and having every right to feel scared, nervous and unsure, he was just as so, too. Worried for her and her wellbeing - the baby would change everything - beyond excited and overjoyed all the same. Niccola was to be the mother of his child. A child who would be nurtured by the woman that the Hitman loved most, created from part of her and part of he, half of each of them, there was no care to the break of tradition. They would be married and have their baby together. Just as they were always destined to, just as Bret had promised they would, perhaps with sequence of events rearranged but still seen through, nonetheless. He couldn’t imagine a world without either of them. His darling woman and beloved son gone from him - a broken heart would’ve destroyed his very life - it was then that Bret did as he dreamed, desired. Proposed to his greatest love, married her and began a slice of forever with her, raised their Logan with all the love that could be offered. There was no sense of limit. Not back then, not in the present, and not in all the eternities that awaited. 

Bret said, unable to take his eyes away from Logan, his son who chatted with friends around, the latest of Hart family house parties a small one but a fun one. “Well, that’s part of the reason why we got married when we did. Myself and Nickie, we didn’t want there to be any secrets. I didn’t want my intentions to be taken out of context, misconstrued for something that they weren’t. As I told her when I proposed to her during our vacation trip to Fiji, as I made certain to mention to her father once I properly got to meet him and Nickie’s mother shortly thereafter, I was ready to marry her. I had no doubts about it, y’know. I loved her and I wanted to be with her. Her being pregnant with Logan at the time, it didn’t bother me. Truthfully, I didn’t care all that much to wait till after he was born for us to be wed. Sure, it might’ve saved us some stress, but I was ready right then and there. She was, too. It just felt like the right time. If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t have even considered it for a second. We would have waited.”

“Y’know, I won’t lie to you, it was damn hard planning everything. Like you mentioned, I was on the road over 200 days out of the year, every year. My schedule didn’t change just because I had fallen in love and was expecting a baby with my fiancee. My wife’s didn’t, either, and she had to deal with her own career plus pregnancy symptoms. For those first few weeks of planning, we communicated over phone. But, I will say, having had discussed such things beforehand while we were dating, our general wants and wishes, did help a little. We knew what our gameplan was, least some of it. So, that’s how we got everything together. After that, I tried to be home as often as possible to help with the rest of the preparations, much to McMahon’s and President Jack Tunney’s chagrin.”

“We’re both introverted people. We wanted a small wedding. No more than 100 guests at most, mostly family and close friends, the people who loved us and who we loved being with. In honor of my mother, I wanted our ceremony to be in a church. I know Nickie’s mother appreciated it, too. Our reception, that was Nickie’s doing. She knows good food when she sees it, smells it. She chose a mix of Irish and Greek cuisines. Something from my family and something from hers, but nothing too fancy, mostly hearty and delicious comfort foods. Meals you would actually enjoy eating. It was some of the best food I ever had. I couldn’t have chosen better.” He smiled, finally locking eyes with Niccola who stood across the room, as pretty as ever, the keeper to his heart.

“The venue was wonderful, too. Nickie found this beautiful ballroom. It was a renovated space from the 1920s, had a large dancefloor and high ceilings. A very rustic yet classic sort of design about it. But nothing was more beautiful than Nickie that day. Y’know, she was several months pregnant by then, but she couldn’t have looked any more gorgeous. Her hair, her makeup, it just made her look so stunning. She’s always been a natural beauty, very light on the cosmetics and such, but she glowed that night. I’m not an openly emotional person, I don’t like crying in front of people, but I couldn’t help myself once I saw her walk down the aisle in her wedding dress. She was an angel. How an ugly mutt like me got so lucky as to be her husband, I’ll never come to know. She’s just too pretty for me. She could’ve had anybody else, but now, we’re stuck together, and I don’t plan on letting her go. I might not be as fast as I used to, but I still have one good knuckle sandwich in me yet if some slimeball tries to steal her away. I got my boy Logan as backup, too, and he’s a better wrestler than I ever could’ve dreamed to be. He’s the best.”

“Our wedding, though, it wasn’t just about us. That was another big reason why we had it before Logan was born.” Bret concluded, winking to his wife whom he flirted with in boyish silliness, also did he wink to his son who he was so impressed by. “It was a celebration of his life, too. Maybe it wasn’t how we would’ve done things normally, but that’s the facts of the matter. When Nickie became pregnant, our lives were no longer just our own. We had our son to think about now. We wanted to include him in everything we did. He was, and is, on our minds all the time, every day. We were celebrating his upcoming birth just as much as his mother and father were celebrating their love. Niccola might not have been your typical bride, in the classical sense, but she didn’t care. She loved our son right from the beginning. She did all she had to in order to prove that. She cared for him. She considered him while putting the finishing touches on our wedding. She even chose her dress just so that he wouldn’t be compromised - the style and the cut, even the color. Back then, there weren’t any shops that carried maternity wedding gowns, so she had to make an extra effort with alterations, in finding a seamstress. Everything she did was for him, for me, too.”

“But I was the same way. All my choices, all the decisions that I made while going over the details with my wife, were based upon what would make her and Logan happy. That day, our wedding, it wasn’t just my story. It wasn’t about me. It was the story of our family, our love for each other. Maybe things would’ve been different had we waited until after Lo was born, less chaotic at times, but, y’know, I wouldn’t change a thing. It was perfect. Exactly how I always hoped my wedding day would’ve been. I got to marry my soulmate and got to be with my baby son all on the same day. There’s nothing better than that for me.”

___

[mykindofbig-blog]

My first year in New York

After about two weeks of eating a healthier diet and getting about 10,000 steps per day, I have not lost much size, and I am feeling much better physically than I have in awhile.

Now, the question is: do I ride this momentum to get back into weightlifting? Or do I go back to chubbing up, but with a bit more moderation this time? Or both? I’m honestly on the fence about it.

I also recently realized that I haven’t actually explored my own encourager side very much. I honestly think that I fell into the gainer role when I was with civilian partners, because it was much more appropriate for me to ask to be teased about my own belly than to play with and tease them about theirs. Since then, I’ve been a gainer searching for an encourager or a mutual gainer, but I also think I could be satisfied as an encourager myself.

I think that I’ve been taking dating too seriously. My whole life, but also especially right now. I’ve been in New York for about a year now, and I definitely moved here so that I could have a reasonable chance at meeting a gainer/encourager who I am actually romantically compatible with. Before this, I live a pretty comfortable life in Portland Oregon, where I had lots of friends, enjoyed the lower cost of living, and spent much more time outdoors. I would go dancing every Friday, and in the summer, I would go to the beach almost every weekend. I had a leisurely lifestyle that I’m sure I’m glorifying in retrospect to some degree... but I rowed on the crew team. Gliding across the smooth Willamette river first thing in the morning, while the sun rose over the perpetual morning fog. It really was a special era of my life.

But I had met most of the guys there who were active on grommr, and there were seemingly no long term matches. I knew that I wanted to give myself a chance in a larger grommr dating pool, which I think was a good decision for me. As much as I loved Portland, I would have regretted it if I never tried to make this work.

I actually ended up talking to a grommr dude basically everyday in the months leading up to my move. He was intelligent, about my size and also growing (which always gives me more motivation to grow myself), and he made me laugh more by text message than anyone I can remember. It seemed like everything was going swimmingly, until he stopped responding to me the weekend before my flight... which was also the weekend of my graduation from my master’s program. It turned out that he was still too hung up on his ex to really invest in seeing me in real life. Of course.

It wasn’t the worst thing -- if you haven’t been flaked on on grommr, then you clearly have never used the site. And I certainly wasn’t moving to NYC to be with him or anything, he was just the first in the newfound pool of dating options that I was supposed to have in my new life here. After I arrived, I actually talked him into seeing me anyway -- note to readers, don’t ever do this -- and he half-heartedly strung me along all summer. 

I would provide more juicy details about this here, but there’s a reasonable chance that he, or people that know him, will end up reading this, so I will refrain. He seems like he knows how to smack a bitch.

Finally, I broke up with him, over the plea that he was really over his ex this time, and he was finally ready to treat me right. I had already heard this plea from him several times, and thankfully I was not born yesterday / have watched enough tv shows featuring women who make this mistake to not make this mistake myself.

I’ve met a few good guys since then, but nothing that’s completely clicked in terms of both of us being on the same page, romantically compatible, and ready for a relationship. I get kind of sassy, I don’t want to let motherfuckers waste my time, so if I don’t see it going anywhere, I usually end it. I listen to too much Nicki Minaj, and I’ve had enough bad experiences with men that my eye roll and active resting bitch face are deeply ingrained in my instincts and reflexes.

I’ve also been very work oriented the past year or so. I retrained for a completely new career in software engineering / web development, which was a longer and trickier road than I initially thought, though it has been totally worth it in the end. I think that I felt an exaggerated need to prove that I had my shit together after moving to New York, and wanting to be in a relationship was part of that. I wanted to be able to justify to myself that this was all worth it, the move, the career change, the extra weight that I’ve gained being around many more encouragers than usual... when I could have been chilling in Portland OR, drinking craft beers for the price of Budweisers in NYC, and able to pay my rent from my low key and pleasant job teaching college composition.

To be honest, it hasn’t been worth it, yet. But I still think that it will be later. I just need to keep the faith, go with the flow, and give myself permission to have fun, to fool around with other gainers even if I don’t think I’m in love with them, and to not feel the need to second guess my life decisions with some really bizarre life accounting system based on how happy my imagined self would be in Portland right now.