Nine years

Today is our nine year anniversary. Yes it does follow closely on the heels of our dating anniversary. I did that on purpose. It would have been the same date if the 22 hadn't been a Friday. While I won't say every year is better than the last, I will say that every year has been something new; a new challenge, a new baby, a new way to live our life together. I am extraordinarily proud of what he has accomplished in the past year with finishing school while caring for our baby girl while working full time. It's amazing what he can do when he sets his mind. I am thankful to be married to a man who works hard to provide for his family and betters himself not only for himself but for the good of that family as well. And the fact that he cooks and does the laundry doesn't hurt either. I'm looking forward to seeing what the next year brings us. But I know no matter what we will face it together.

Fifteen years

Today is the anniversary of the day my husband and I got together. I wish I had a really cute first date story but the truth is our first day was about a week or so later. We went miniature golfing and he let me win (so he says). But 15 years ago at the beginning of October we first met and I thought he was cute but short and that was about it really. His best friend was roommates with my best friend and we had gone the whole summer without seeing each other. Partly because he was home for the summer, partly because he was scared of my friend (different story). Anyway, we hung out as a group a few more times and then October 22 we went out for a friend's birthday and we ended sitting across from each other in a booth at a bar talking and flirting and that was about it. I knew then. That was it. Sometimes you just find that person, the person, my person. So I still celebrate this day. 15 years is a long time and the six years we had together before we got married were pretty important in shaping who we are as individuals and who we are as a couple. Sometimes I look at him and I'm not sure where that time has gone. But we've done pretty well for ourselves in those years, especially with our lovely children. And in five years we'll have been together for longer than we were apart. It's crazy how that happens.

Introspection on love

I read a book about three teenaged sisters the other day and in it one of the sisters says about their parents that they love each other more than they love their children.  I've been thinking about that.  I remember a few years ago a big deal being made about a journalist who said she loved her husband more than her children and then everyone freaked the hell out.  I think, in the end, no one wants to think that their own parents love someone else more than them.  Because then what does that really mean?  How can you birth someone and not love them best? But children are always expected to go out and find someone else to love and who they will no doubt love more than their parents and it is not only acceptable but encouraged.   Spouses are meant to be with you for the rest of your life.  I can see how someone would feel the way the journalist felt.

But down this line of though lay this: can I really say I love one more than the other?  No.  I can't say I love them equally, my husband and my child.  I can't really quantify the amount of love I have for them.  I love them differently and I love them hugely.  But one I expect to spend almost everyday of the rest of my life with, the other is eventually going to leave me and who I will only see for visits.  It is just that way.  At some point long ago I heard an expression: you're either a mother who is a wife or a wife who is a mother.  The idea of "wife who is a mother" horrified me and I decided to never be one.  But the truth is I am always both at the same time.  I cannot express how it is to love someone that you helped create, that is truly part of you.  But I have also chosen someone to love and that is something else altogether.

Love ya like a biscuit *

Today my husband and I are celebrating our sixth wedding anniversary.  We have been together for 12 years total which is a pretty long time.  I thought that I'd celebrate with some of my favorite quotes on love.

*blog title comes from a restaurant in my town that serves the best biscuits ever

"If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more."

— Jane Austen (Emma)

I know this love is passing time
Passing through like liquid
I am drunk in my desire...
But I love the way you smile at me
I love the way your hands reach out and hold me near...
I believe...

I believe
This is heaven to no one else but me
And I'll defend it as long as
I can be left here to linger in silence
If I choose to

-Sarah McLachlan ("Elsewhere")

"Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction."

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (The Little Prince)

"Always throw spilled salt over your left shoulder. Keep rosemary by your garden gate. Add pepper to your mashed potatoes. Plant roses and lavender, for luck. Fall in love whenever you can."

— Alice Hoffman (Practical Magic) 

"Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won't adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words "make" and "stay" become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free."

— Tom Robbins (Still Life with Woodpecker)

"We are all a little weird and life's a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love."

— Dr. Seuss

Love Story...

Ever wonder how I met my wonderful husband? No.  Well, I'm gonna tell you anyway.

I became friends with a girl, Britt, in the summer of 1999 when we were both on the orientation staff together and started hanging out with her a lot.  One of BT's best friends from high school, Lou Lou, was Britt's roommate.  We were friends and I was at their apartment all summer long, but it wasn't until the end of the summer that I met him.  We managed to miss each other all summer.
One day Britt and I were getting ready to go take yearbook pics and I was ironing our shirts when BT came over to hang out with Lou Lou.  We talked a little and then went our separate ways, then later Britt and I were hanging out with some other friends and BT and Lou Lou were about to go out and BT came to talk to us while she got dressed.  We had been drinking a little (a lot) and we were very giddy and though it was hilarious that he was wearing overalls and that he was so short (he is only 5'3" while I'm 5'1").  I remember standing next to him to measure heights.

The next time I saw him was at a Greek event (Britt and Lou Lou were in the same society) called "Yell like Hell" a spirit event.  And he was trying to be funny and it was cute and I kept saying later that night to Britt that it was a shame because obviously he and Lou Lou were destined to get married but that he was so cute.

And then the next time I saw him was on a friend's birthday on October 22.   We all went out to a club and we were both a little bored and I was sitting across from him and I kicked him under the table.  So we started flirting and that was that.  We were an unofficial couple and then we were just a couple.  And six years later almost to the day, we got married.  So here we are, 11 years after the kick, married with one son and two dogs and there is very little I would change about any of it.