Happy Anniversary

Today marks another year married to The Husband. It seems like just yesterday we were consummating our marriage in the court house bathroom. There have certainly been ups and downs, good times and bad, but we’ve always managed to stick it out and for that I am grateful.


I hope this doesn’t embarrass him, but I thought I would talk a little about the sweet things he has done over the years.


I guess I should start with my ring (yes, it needs to be cleaned and polished BADLY). When we got married we exchanged simple wedding bands, but on Valentine’s Day of that same year he surprised me with the ring I had said I wanted. We weren’t living together yet, I was still working out my notice and trying to rent my house and he was still living in the barracks, so I drove the four hours to be with him for the holiday. We stayed in a hotel on post. I had bought him a bunch of those miniature plastic football helmets out of a gumball-type machine. I only stopped feeding it money once I got a Cleveland Browns helmet since that is his favorite team. He was opening them while I was unpacking or something and then he asked me to try to open one of the containers. He claimed he couldn’t get it to open. I should have known then that he was up to something for if he couldn’t open it, I surely couldn’t. Inside was a ring that he had custom made for me, it wasn’t ready on the day we got married, but it was perfect nonetheless.


He used to open doors for me, which was sweet, but I would say that I was a feminist and could open my own doors. Now I’m lucky if he doesn’t knock me down trying to get in the door first.


He carried me over the threshold of our townhouse rental, finally moving in together after being married for three months.


He was supportive in his own way after we lost our first baby. We grieved differently, but I am thankful that we came to understand one another’s sense of loss. Even though he was worried about not having permission to leave, he drove me several hours to the beach just so I could watch the sun rise and hear the relaxing waves crash to shore. He knew it was exactly what I needed after the miscarriage. I don’t know if I ever thanked him for that or let him know just how much it meant to me that he took a risk in order to help me heal.


We went to visit his mom and brother in our first year of marriage and spent two days walking around D.C. He didn’t laugh, to much anyway, when my toenails turned black and fell off from all the walking. Instead he viewed it as a fun story to tell all our friends. I was slightly concerned that he would see it as a sign of weakness. Damn toenails weren’t strong enough! Instead he was good humored and easy going about it. Now two years later when I had the c-section with The Daughter and wasn’t up being chipper and lifting 40 pounds only an hour after the surgery, that was viewed as a sign of weakness. On the up side, it forced me to get up and walk in the hospital, and as soon as we came home I cleaned house and resumed normal activity. We seem to push one another … we are a little competitive.



But talk about sweetness, The Husband took complete care of The Daughter for the three days we were in the hospital. My blood count was extremely low and I spent much of the time sleeping so he took care of her by himself. I didn’t change her diaper for the first time until we were back at home. He did an awesome job and it made me love him deeply, no matter what happens in the future.


We were in a store once and I remarked how I liked a particular mirror as it would go well in the guest bathroom. He later cashed in a mature savings bond (that he had had since college) and surprised me with the mirror. It looks great in the guest bath!



Because we live so far out in the sticks, florist won’t deliver flower arrangements here (food places don’t deliver here either, bummer) so The Husband drew some flowers using the paint program on the computer and emailed it to me saying “Thought you said flowers couldn’t be delivered to the house”. Some might find it cheesy, but I found it thoughtful and creative.



He has always tackled whatever home improvement project that I come up with. He has painted the exterior of the house, built shelving for above the toilet, built a vanity for my makeup, built a wall of bookshelves in the living room, replaced the flooring in several rooms in the house, built a fence around the pool, and tinkered with several other projects.



Growing up his family didn’t really celebrate holidays (no tree at Christmas, no cake on birthdays, no box of chocolates at valentines, no egg dying and hunting at easter, no turkey at thanksgiving) so he views my family’s traditions as excessive, but he mostly plays along anyway. Although he often times rebels and does things his way. That means gifts may not come on the actual holiday but later on when he feels it’s not an expectation. One year in particular on Valentine’s Day he refused to get me anything, as he had done before on other holidays, so I was upset but oh well what can you do. Then later on that week I awoke to pink post-it notes pasted all over the house; a whole pad of them with messages to me from The Husband. There were 100 or so post it notes. Some are pictured here, some are too personal or xrated for my blog, and others are mundane like “thank you for sweeping” and “thank you for mopping” and there are at least three or four that say “thank you for NOT over analyzing these statements”. I keep these notes in my sock drawer and occasionally pull them out to read over. Very sweet gesture.



The Husband is hands down the smartest person I know. He makes a perfect or near perfect score on every test he takes, from military related tests to college tests to IQ tests. Yet most people don’t know that because he is so humble. He’ll listen to others brag about their score all while not revealing that his is higher. If asked he will evade answering, modestly downplay his performance, and then change the subject.


Yet he doesn’t like to read for pleasure. It has to have pictures for him to be interested.



But he often lacks what I would call Common Sense. It makes for some funny moments. That and his clumsy lack of coordination. Imagine how many times he has hurt himself over the years … good times. LOL



And he prefers to work with his hands rather than have an intellectual type job. He choose to go in the Army as enlisted even though he had a degree and could have been an officer. He could have gone into any MOS but he chose something that he wanted to learn more about but didn’t have as much prestige. He doesn’t care for heights, but chose to go jump out of perfectly normal airplanes. He could have gone into a less deployable unit, but chose to volunteer for a hard, always on alert, highly deployable unit that saw action the public doesn’t always know about. He always volunteered for more training, shot perfectly every exercise, and was the go-to person in his unit’s MOS for getting things done.



I affectionately call him Mr Mensa Knuckle Dragger. Or when he does something clumsy or stupid, I just say Way To Go Genius.



He loves sports and is very competitive. He learned how to play in the inner city ghetto so you have to be tough to play against him.



He is like a kid in some ways, able to let go and play with abandon. I like this about him although I sometimes playfully tease him about it.



I like when we get time to play Know It All, Clue, Rummy, Yahtzee, or some other game together. We learned the hard way that we can’t play basketball or tennis together, but we do enjoy running in 5k races together. We do better in extracurricular activities while working as a team rather than competing against one another. I think he would do really well on Survivor.



I enjoy his sense of humor, sometimes getting it, sometimes not, often times rolling my eyes at the cheesiness. He taught me the only joke I can remember well enough to retell. I once had someone tell me that it wasn’t PC and might be offensive to some so I don’t repeat it often, but will here now. “If you are an American when you go into the bathroom and you are an American when you come out of the bathroom, what are you while you are in the bathroom? Drum roll please … European. You’re a peeing.” Get it? HaHaHa See why I roll my eyes at him a lot?



He supported me going back to college, and continues to support me in staying home to raise our kids. I guess I can repay him when he is an incontinent deaf old fart with one foot in the grave. That statement refers to some insider stuff like There was this one time in SERE school, or There was this one time on the way to Kansas, or Have you met my friend, Mr Terry? I can’t remember his first name. Was it by any chance Dysen?



I fell in love with him more than eight years ago, continue to love him, and hope we have many more years together sharing love and creating memories. Happy Anniversary!