I not only am one of the worlds most anally careful drivers I also am a paranoid passenger. I am usually the SeaMonkeys passenger. I wouldn't say the SeaMonkey is a bad driver. He isn't one of these people who speeds and weaves in and out of traffic, cuts people off and and runs red lights. He does have a tendency to get distracted though. He is one of those drivers that will be driving over a bridge and be looking over the side the whole time, pointing out to me, "Hey look at that!", while I clutch the door handle and keep my eyes glued to the road, because Somebody Has To! He also fidgets in the car, looking for stuff, digging in the glove compartments, while he weaves just a tiny bit back and forth and I keep a sharp lookout in the side mirror for possible traffic disasters. Sometimes he does this while stopped at lights and asks me to tell him when it turns green. He also waits till the last minute to hit his brakes when he's coming to a stop, while I squinch my eyes closed and brace my feet on the floor mats preparing for impact. He Does Not, Drive and Text! for which I am very proud of him...even though he doesn't text at all. He does sometimes play with his phone, turning on the GPS, but I yell at him to 'give me that-you drive!'..ok sometimes I might close my eyes and think, "the Seamonkey is a bad driver."
I also am ever at the ready to yelp, Look Out! They're Stopping! There's Someone Coming! STOP! Which displeases him greatly. I know I'm not the only one who does this because I earned my backseat drivers license from my mother. She was a great teacher. And whenever I use those skills my husband echoes my father exactly.
"I Saw It!""Don't do that! You startled me! "YOU"RE going to make me have an accident.
So I began saying it very calmly and quietly. "that car is coming over." " they are slowing down."
But that didn't help either. The Seamonkey always told me; If you want to drive that's fine. Otherwise, don't say anything. If I get in a wreck it will be my problem.
Except...I'm in this car too...but ok....I'll keep quiet. And for some time now I have. I just tense up in my seat and look at my lap and pretend I don't know what's going on and think the words in my head, "we're gonna die.". Every now and then an OH! escapes me at a close call but I don't give directions. I zip my lip. Most of the time...sometimes...
So. Last week we were working out of town. We left our hotel on the drive to our destination and stopped at the end of a long line of cars at a red light. The Seamonkey suffers from terrible allergies at this time of year. He gets hives when he cuts the grass. So his eyes were bothering him and he started digging for his eye drops. And he put them in. He didn't ask me to tell him when the light turned green, so I didn't. Besides, we were very far back in line and he was way to close to that guys bumper and he hadn't started moving yet and I would probably startle the SeaMonkey and he would hit the gas too quick and end up hitting that car because he would get angry if I pointed out they weren't moving. The cars near the front were beginning to move forward and I just looked down at my lap and pretended I didn't know what was going on.
You know what happened next right?
The Seamonkey looked up, saw green and hit the gas-and went straight into the bumper of the car in front of us. yep.
Kaboom.
Luckily, this was an very kindly older man and it was low speed, so hopefully he won't wake up with whiplash just when we thought it was over.
As for the SeaMonkey he told me; "You can't say anything today. Just give me today and then you can harass me all you want. I know I have it coming. You can laugh at me tomorrow.
I said, I'm not going to harass you. I won't laugh about it.
He asked, You aren't going to harass me or say anything about this?
No, I replied, I really only have one thing to say:
SEE!
The first time I don't warn you , you have an accident.
mmmhmmm.
I didn't say I wouldn't say I wouldn't harass him on my blog ; )
P.S. Sorry about the annoying word verification but Anonymous finally got on my last nerve. Like they really think I get enough views to make their Spam worthwhile. The only consolation is knowing that they're wasting their time. I didn't want to block Anonymous comments because that's how my family comments (I like family Spam : ) and occasionally someone randomly finds me and actually takes the time to read and comment. That's lovely.
So please do put on your readers and try to decipher that mess.
Next week will be My and the SeaMonkey's Silver Wedding Anniversary.
Back when we were first married 25 years seemed like A LONG TIME. Now I look at it and think, where did it go? That was fast. I could get all mushy and write a post about how much we still love each other. Because we do.
Or I could write about what it takes to make a marriage last, but....the fact is, that marriage can be hard and having arrived at this milestone I have no easy, simple or anything not approaching endless, answers as to why we've made it this far.
Except we still love each other. Because we do.
So I thought it would be easiest to tell the story of my wedding. It had it's ups and downs and could be a vignette representing how things go in our lives.
One evening we were planning on going out and I was ironing the Seamonkey's shirt because I was being all "wifely" and stuff as a*hint *hint, when the SeaMonkey came in and set a box on the ironing board and said, "Will you marry me?" and kind of walked off a few feet like he thought I would throw it at him. I said, yes, of course, why else would I be doing all that ironing and called my mom and best friend and then we went out. We met in December, moved in together around February and this was around April, I think. You see we had already talked about getting married so even though the moment was a surprise the concept wasn't. After much thought we settled on the following February. Valentines day of course.
Ok, disorganised young people with no money plan a wedding.
My parents were of the "You've been living together and you want a what" old school of parents who were not going to pay a huge amount for a wedding for people who already lived together. I think they were still paying for my oldest sisters wedding 15 years earlier. Anyway, they would pitch in but it would be small. One day at work my mom called and said there was an antique show at the mall and she saw the cutest dress. After work she and I went to see it. Now my fantasy wedding dress would have been Maria's in Sound of Music. This was a WW2 era dress but the resemblance stopped there. It was hand made. Custom sewn for someone. It was beautifully made. Top to bottom cream lace. Princess style. It wasn't what I envisioned but it was lovely. And the price was right. We shlumped across the mall with it to the food court restrooms where I tried it on. With an audience of about 10 other young women in the restroom, it was packed! By some miracle it fit like it was sewn for me. "Are you getting married?" "Oh, that's so pretty." "You should get it!" All sweet comments from my new friends. I had a helpful peanut gallery of people I'd never seen before. So I bought it. For $150.00.
We would have one attendant each. I went to JC Penney to get a veil and let my Maid of Honor/BFF/Otherwise known as 57ChevyBug/ pick out a red dress. I bought it for her because her budget was even tighter than mine. This gave me the go ahead to harrass her that I was dressing her as a scarlet woman to offset my virginal purity. Then the bridal shop lady let me know she had a side thing going on and could make my veil, the cake, topper and silk flowers really cheap! Now BFF the Bridesmaid worked for a florist but we didn't need very much and being me I liked the idea of keeping them forever, so silk it was!!
Now I won't get into the long story of church but it was yet another miracle when I found out my husbands family were members of a Lutheran church that I had often attended with friends as a child and had always loved even though my family were Catholics. We both loved the pastor. That was easy : )
My favorite color at the time was red. A large portion of my clothing and my car were red and we thought Valentines day would be perfect because we were so romantic and stuff, right? And I already bought a red bridesmaid dress and found cream tuxes with red cummerbunds to rent! Except we really didn't know what we were doing and by the time we got to it, February 14th was booked up at church. So we moved it back a couple weeks to March. Thank God we realized we needed to do this before invitations, which we also barely did in time. We splurged on those. Because my parents paid for it. I still have half a box of them because I messed up and counted how many people were coming instead of couples or families.
My bachelorette party was me, my BFF/Bridesmaid/57ChevyBug and my mom and two aunts and my moms friend who was like an aunt, drinking hot tea and talking. It was Perfect : )
Oh yeah, My family gave me a shower. A family shower where I was given a lovely negligee and my brother N remarked ;
"Oh yeah, wrap it in a pretty package and make him think he's getting something new."
Sweet, Huh?
Finally it was The Day.
We lived in a very warm climate. I woke early that morning just before light and peeked out the window to witness the dawn of my wedding day and:
It Was Snowing! Amazing and Beautiful. What could be a more perfect sign!
My husbands friends said it was a sign Hell froze over because he was getting married ; )
My BFF and I had spent the night at my moms even though she was already married. We needed one more night of giggle on the couch before we were both officially grown ups. We began our day by driving into town to the JC Penny Side Job Ladies house to get the supplies. She actually did an incredible job. My stuff was truly beautiful! My BFF did the driving. She was the worst driver in the world. We had a huge shared copy of East of Eden we passed back and forth for years, that I stole from the library when we were 14. (Hey, at least my juvenile delinquent self was limited to stealing good literature from the library. I paid for it later, truly, I swear! With overdue library fines. ) Anyway, the book was on her dashboard and she took a corner like Richard Petty and I watched as it slid all the way across the dash and plummeted toward the cake. Which was in my lap. I let go with one hand a caught it just in the nick of time. Well almost. Just in time for it to only nick a tiny spot on the cake. That Was Close!
Ok, later at my moms we were fixing our hair. I had very long straight hair. My mom just wouldn't have that . My long hair had been driving her crazy for years. She was so upset that I had gone all fashiony for a few years and wore it styled and then regressed, when I met my surfer dude, into Malibu Barbie again so she sent the BFF and I to a salon. As I sat down I realized the chick in the next chair was the bar waitress who constantly flirted with my future husband and would bring him drinks without being asked and pointedly did not bring them to me. We made sure we loudly discussed what we were getting dolled up for. I didn't scratch her eyes out because I had just done my nails and besides I was getting Married-LOUDLY. The stylist then turned my hair into a wild mass of cork screw curls that stuck out from my head kind of like a fair haired Roseanne Roseannadanna. Maybe she was friends with the other chick. Who knows! The SeaMonkey said he liked it later. Maybe it made him feel like he was getting something new...; )
Finally the BFF and I arrive at Church and are directed to the children's Sunday School room to get ready. We dressed in our gowns and realized we were still early so we sat at the piano and banged out Heart and Soul together repeatedly. Which is something we had been doing since we were thirteen and it really is one of my favorite memories of my wedding. Then everyone else showed up.
My dress was old. My shoes were new. My garter was blue. Something borrowed? Well, close enough. My mom came in and started screwing with my hair because, just think, she didn't like it. Then almost at the last minute we realized the comb from my veil was missing. At that moment the Pastor came by to say "Hi, are we ready to start" saw our panic and then ran all over the church, wearing his surplice, lobbying for bobby pins. Something borrowed. There you go.
What was the SeaMonkey up too? Well. As I mentioned, my wedding was cream colored with red accents. The Seamonkey had a cream colored tux. The Seamonkey was known for going commando and didn't think ahead. He put on the cream tux and realized Uh Oh! But his brother came to the rescue so he was wearing something borrowed too ; )
The rest is a huge blur that cleared momentarily at the reception but then fogged over again near the punch bowl ; )
According to the photo's everything was lovely and we had a wonderful time.
The next day we set off on our honeymoon. We didn't have reservations because part of our plan revolved around how much cash was in our wedding cards so we counted it the next morning. We took all our wedding gift money and what we had been able to save and thought we'd be able to travel a little bit and check out the night life in Atlanta and maybe continue on to the mountains for a couple days. That was all the time we had and all we could afford. We hopped in our pick-up truck with the giant mud tires and were off. Just my new husband and I and.....the dog because we didn't have anyone to take care of him. It was also freezing out so let me phrase that as: Just me, my new husband and a doberman squeezed into the cab of the truck.
(Customary Digression to say that if you think it's weird to bring a dog on your honeymoon, when my BFF 57 ChevyBug got married I bought her honeymoon. Not much, just a cabin in the woods for a weekend because they wouldn't have had one otherwise. At the time another friend (a girl) was living with them and ChevyBug kept complaining about her always being around. So I rented them a cabin so they could have some time alone and then when they went on their honeymoon they Brought the Girlfriend With Them! Now that was weird. But maybe that's why we were BFF's for so long. We didn't ask personal questions, like, " if I spent money to send you somewhere why the hell did you bring Debbie? " Girl wore bright red nail polish and earrings with a pale pink floral dress to my wedding. Clashed up several snapshots.)
Anyway....
We roared along the freeway until we hit the outskirts of Macon Georgia. Quite the Metropolis in 1986. I think they had 2 stop lights ; ) Which is when we heard the loud bang....of one of the tires popping. The SeaMonkey put on the spare and we hobbled along on a tilt and just hit town before another tire blew out. So we went directly to a tire shop. Where they took most of our money. Big mud tires cost a lot more than normal tires. Then again, it's lucky we were in that truck because otherwise we would have stood out like sore thumbs and someone may have noticed when we snuck the dog into the Holiday Inn. (All we were missing was a gun rack but the truck was pretty new and it wasn't hunting season so they probably figured we hadn't put it up yet) Luckily we still had enough money for a Holiday Inn and that they actually had a Holiday Inn and there was a Steak and Ale within walking distance. We could have a nice meal and A Drink for sure. Except it was Sunday and a dry county so we had a soda instead. Then we went back to the room and hung out with the dog. And came home Monday.
For years I thought I would like to throw a party for our 25th Anniversary. Invite all the people that were at our wedding. Most of them are still around with the exception of my parents and my husbands best friend from that time who have passed away and sadly my BFF/57ChevyBug who now belongs to a religious cult in another state and thinks I'm Satan. Seriously. So some important people are missing and we don't see the others socially anymore. And. Despite our fuzzy beginnings we aren't much for the parties these days. Having thrown another wedding just over a year ago that kind of fills my party tolerance quota for a good while. Though I sometimes joke, we actually rarely drink and don't go out much. We are simple folk. And Luckily, we had the chance to sneak in some fun on our recent trip because, How WILL We Be Spending Our Silver Anniversary?
Well, I will be spending it at the hospital with my sister while she has bi-pass surgery on her femoral artery. I really don't mind at all. You see, one thing we did learn in 25 years is that the things that seem to be constant are US and Family. Being there for each other is what really matters. (besides, who wouldn't be there for a woman who says, "I don't know about the surgery. Maybe if I lose my leg Paul McCartney will marry me after all!" ; ) I need to make sure she gets on that table. Plus, we are also in the middle of a big project and wouldn't have had time for a "Ta Do".
We have had many Wonderful and Blessed times. We have had Troubles and Heartaches to spare. I guess you could say this silver has some tarnish. In the corners and crevices it has settled in but it makes the shiny bits gleam more brightly. I find it so much more beautiful that way. More depth. More character. This 25 years has been used and used well. It has withstood everyday use as well as fancy, formal and solemn occasions. Taken it's bumps and falls and scratches and it's glow still shows through. I wouldn't want it back shiny new and polished for anything in the world.
I think it has a Wonderful Patina. One that makes it More Valuable in my eyes.
When I was about fifteen I heard a song. I would sometimes get tears in my eyes when I heard it. It was a simple little song but I remember thinking it was one of the sweetest songs I ever heard and really described all I ever wanted. To be loved and needed in a way that was lasting and strong. I hoped that someday someone would feel that way about me. And that I would feel the same way about him.
I didn't imagine as far as being middle aged and driving down the road and having the song come on the radio and that he would still turn to me and say, "this makes me think of you." Or that I would still get tears in my eyes because it was all I ever wanted.
But you know what?
I got that. All I ever wanted.
And he still treats me like he's getting something new ; )
We had a very nice Christmas. When the children are small the holidays seem a lot more eventful. It takes some adjusting as they get older and things calm down a bit. One of the nice trade offs I have found with my daughters as they grow up is the subtle change from being more concerned with what they are giving than what they are receiving. I find this a delightful transition that makes it easier to leave behind the magical Santa and reindeer stage. I especially enjoy watching as they bicker with each other one day and busily set about looking for just the right gift for each other the next. We spent some time with family. My son-in-law DecentGuy has a difficult relationship with his mother. They had originally planned to travel to spend Christmas with them but the when the plans were canceled I tried not to be too gleeful that I got them. But I was. To make it up to him, this might seem strange but it was perfect, we asked if he would like to cook dinner one of the nights. He was thrilled and chose Christmas Eve. He prepared both a smoked and a roasted turkey for us as well as all the fixings and it was delicious. He did a wonderful job and had a great time doing it, which made me happy. You see he likes things made from scratch. I roast a mean turkey but I go by the meal in a box school of cuisine, so it was a treat for everyone present!
Now I will visit the ghost of Christmas Past. The Christmas of 1984. This just happens to be my favorite week of the year. Not only is it Christmas but 26 years ago I was given a gift that led to another gift.
One of the most Precious Gifts of My Life. The only comparable being my children.
Some of you who have been around for a long time may have read a post I wrote last year for New Years that touched on this subject. Part of it told the story of a gift my parents gave me for Christmas but at the time I hadn't started using pictures on my blog yet. This time around I have a special treat. Now my parents usually had great taste. Even as a teenager I could ask them to pick something out for me and they would come home with something terrific. I even put them in charge of a bathing suit one time and they came back with a great suit that I honestly couldn't believe they bought for me! This time around I'm not sure what happened.
As a quick recap: The night after Christmas one of my friends wanted me to go out and I didn't really want to go that bad but decided to go anyway. I was behind on laundry so my wardrobe choices were limited. I had some clean black pants. I had my really killer scrunched white ankle boots. Hmm, What to wear with them? My parents had given me a sweater for Christmas. I was 19. I was a pretty sharp dresser if I say so myself. Fashion was one of my hobbies. I Did Not do cutesy. I Did Not Do Pink. I did pegged legs, converse and checks for casual. I did stiletto heels, cowl necks and narrow skirts for going out. I was going to a dance club. It was already ten o'clock at night and the day after Christmas. How many people would actually be out, right? So. I put it on. And that night I saw a really cute guy beckoning to me from across the room.
And this year I give you proof of my magical gift!
Proof that miracles do happen!
Proof that if something is Meant To Be- Nothing can stand in it's way!
Proof that Love conquers ALL!
Proof that my future husband may have already been drunk when I showed up.
Because This, carefully archived in my cedar chest. In perfect museum quality condition.....because I never put it on again, IS :
THE SWEATER I WAS WEARING WHEN I MET MY HUSBAND!
A similar pattern with sheep started this craze but when my parents saw this, apparently they knew it was for me. Because I like cats. And possibly was not aware at that time that I was the biggest dork on the planet.
But the dear man talked to me all evening. And danced with me. And offered to drive me home.
And has been by my side nearly every day of our lives since.
He says it wasn't the sweater, it was what was in it.
My parents were very pleased. I wore the sweater they bought me...and they could finally turn my room into a den.
I will never part with my magical sweater it will always stay in my box.
I will never part with that cute guy either..but him..I keep in plain sight!
In Honor of National Marriage Week, Valentines Day & a Couple of Anniversaries!
I already celebrated 25 years of being a couple with my husband on new years but our 24th wedding Anniversary is in a couple of weeks and I'm pretty excited and proud of it. That with Valentines day coming up made me think about this post. And then I learned it was National Marriage Week Feb. 7 thru 14! Pretty Cool, so I thought it would be a good week for it. Today is also my inlaws 47th Anniversary so I thought this would be the perfect day, in Honor of Them, what better day to celebrate being married a long time!
It makes me think of my parents. They were married for 53 years when my Dad passed away and even though within a few years my mother could not remember who he was, she knew sometimes that she was married and that she couldn't find her husband. Mom passed away just two days before what would have been their 60th Anniversary and I kind of feel that somewhere in her heart she knew and just didn't want to spend that day, or any day, without him another year.
Marriage is really hard work, but you do get some perks for all your effort.
So here are seven nice things I have found about being married a long time. One for each day of this week.
You know that even if you have a big argument, it doesn't necessarily mean it's The End.
Your husband already knows when you need to stop and pee on long trips without being asked, and if they are Really Good have the trip mapped out to accomodate it.
The kids start to leave and you actually have time to hang out with each other again.
You feel all sentimental and proud when you see the gray in each others' hair.
When you take off your glasses you both still look really hot!
After awhile your annoying little habits that drive each other crazy become a source of amusement, not frustration. Except the toilet seat, that is Never amusing, especially in the dark, when you leave the light off to be courteous and not wake them up.
Sometimes you don't have to say anything at all. You can just move a certain way.....and the other one knows...exactly where to scratch.
So you tell me, if you have been married a long time what are your favorite perks? However long you have been married 15, 10, 5 years, let me know. Or even if you're newly married remind me.... I can't really remember back that far : )
