I tease my man about his scrawny-ness often.
"Geez, won't you grow a butt already?!"
"Chicken legs!"
"For a moment there I thought you had grown an ass, but then I realized you were just bent over."
But truthfully, although I give him major shit, I find him incredibly sexy. I've long said that in
my dictionary, skinny is synonymous with sexy.
And today is the 2nd anniversary of our marriage. Two whole years! The time flies by.
Our wedding photos all turned
out completely gorgeous*
I'm not overly superstitious but I will admit that at times I can see where things could be considered signs. Both of us are big procrastinators, always underestimating the time it will take to do things and as a result we're often found rushing around like the proverbial headless poultry. Preparing for our wedding was no different...
Amazingly, despite all the last minute things to do, the wedding went off without any problems. I'd been through the wedding deal several times with my friends and knew to expect at least three things to go wrong. Well, three things
attempted to go wrong, but all three ended up working out just beautifully and only added a little bit of stress.
The weather was perfect--sunny and blue skies, not overly hot, with a nice cool evening to help the dancers at the reception keep from melting. The entire thing was exactly how we hoped it would be...just perfection. Our dance floor was never empty for more than a few moments from the minute the DJ got started until they kicked us out. We hit a local bar and closed that down afterwards and despite all the drinking and the crazy mix of people, there was no drama and everyone said they had a great time. For weeks afterwards we were hearing that our wedding was the best one they'd ever been to, ever.
It made the Big B feel a lot better to hear this. "If I had known it was going to turn out like this ahead of time, I wouldn't have bitched about all the money we were spending before!" he remarked to me a few weeks afterwards. I smiled because while he theoretically knew how much we were spending, I had kept the details from him after he almost had a coronary when I told him how much the flowers for the bouquets were going to cost...I think he much preferred it that way!
So although I'm not superstitious, I take our completely successful and kick-ass wedding as a sign that our marriage will be the same.
Another sign is the story of the rings...no, not
that story (Lord of the Rings), but instead a simple story of two forgetful people who are not used to wearing rings.
The Big B complained during our long engagement that it wasn't fair I got to wear a ring and he didn't until after the wedding. I told him too bad, so sad--I was the one losing my incredibly unique last name, after all!
That being said, I had to get used to wearing my engagement ring at first, not being a girl who normally wears rings. One morning I was carpooling with my mom to work and put on lotion in the car on the way. I removed my ring to keep lotion from gunking up the facets and settings and put in my lap while I moisturized. Mom pulls over to the curb in the middle of downtown Minneapolis; I hop out and walk to work.
Hours later, I leave the bathroom stall and go to wash my hands and that's when I realize something is horribly wrong...MY RING IS MISSING!
I stagger out of the bathroom and run into my boss on the way out. I don't know what my face looked like, but it must have reflected what I was feeling because he immediately asked if something was wrong. I told him I lost my ring and he immediately gave me leave to go look for it.
In my head, I knew
exactly what had happened. I had failed to put the ring back on after lotioning, and so I had two options, one hopeful and one a snowball's chance in hell. The first option, which I desperately prayed was the case, was that the ring had fallen somewhere in my mom's car and was patiently waiting for me to come get it.
The second option was that it had fallen onto the downtown street when I exited the car. I figured that if it was in the car, it would wait for me, but if it was on the street, the sooner I got there, the better the chance it would still be there.
I walked/limped as quickly as my maiming shoes would let me, and all the while visions are running through my head of what the Big B would say when I told him I lost the incredibly expensive diamond ring he had sweated and saved for to give me as a sign of his devotion. Every time I tried to think of what I would say, my mind blanked and all I could think was "Please....please....please be there!"
I turned the corner and started looking frantically at the sidewalk where I had hopped out. Nothing. My eyes spied a sewer grate and I was almost hoping it would be in there, as at least there it would be safe from casual passers-by, even if it would be a pain to get it out of the grate.
I began to lean over to look down into the sewer when my eyes were inexplicably drawn further up the side of the curb...and there, incredibly, was my ring!
Against all odds, it was there waiting for me! I don't know how I got from where I was at to the ring--it felt like one moment I was standing in shock, and the next moment I was snatching it from the ground. I put it on my finger where it belonged and then had to lean against a light pole for support as my knees went weak.
It was sitting on the little apron of concrete between the sidewalk and the tar of the road. What are the chances that this ring would not be seen by anyone in the 5 hours it had been sitting here, glinting in the light, sparkling its worth to anyone who took a closer look?
I had to tell somebody about this and I was still shaking and my mom worked downtown, so logically I went to her first. She too knew something was wrong immediately. I started my story with the preface "Just so you know, I have my ring" and I held it up to prove it "but I have GOT to tell you what just happened!"
She couldn't believe my good fortune either. We debated on whether I should even tell the Big B. I knew that if I had truly lost the ring, either we wouldn't be getting married (something I had to talk him into in the first place) or at the very least I wouldn't be getting another diamond ring! But since the ring was safe, did he really need to know that I'd almost lost it? On the one hand, ignorance is bliss, but I also didn't want to keep something like this from my future husband. After all, successful marriages require communication and honesty, right?
When I got back to work, my boss asked if I found it and when I told him the story, he said to me, "Buy some lotto tickets! You're obviously on a lucky streak!" I decided not to push my luck.
Eventually I decided to tell Brandon...and after I finished, shaking a little as I told the story, he turns to me and says laughingly, "This is one of the things you could have kept from me."
Go figure!
I chose to take the story and my freaky good luck as a sign that we were destined to be. But then something else happened...
It's our first winter as a married couple and the Big B is happy to be wearing his ring. He was even less used to it at first, not being the kind of man who wears jewelry of any kind (he doesn't have pierced ears and even avoids sunglasses for the most part). By this time he wore it constantly, even to bed, and had developed a habit of twisting it whenever his hands were still and his brain was moving. We pile in his Hyundai to go to Menards for some things when he stops to put lotion on.
Sound familiar?
Apparently, my hubby and I don't learn from each other's mistakes. He did the SAME THING I had done before--took the ring off to put on the lotion. We take off for Menards, come home to put our things away, and suddenly he comes up to me with his face paler than the usual white-boy Minnesota winter complexion.
"I can't find my ring..."
We search his car frantically but come up with nothing. We look at each other and get in the car and drive back to Menards. It's mid-winter and the parking lot is a mess of snow, slush, dirty ice humps fallen from the wheel wells of cars and here and there some pavement peeking through. At least here we can hope that some customer didn't notice it and walk off with it, as the grey of his Tungsten ring would blend in too well unless someone was looking right at it. Unfortunately, this meant it was that much harder for us to find.
We found where we had parked or close to it, and began combing the lot for the little circle of metal. I began to feel hopeless--no way were we going to find this thing! B swore he would come back during his lunch break the next day if we didn't find it that night. I comforted myself with the fact that at least his ring was cheaper to replace than mine!
Just as we were about to give up, he shouts! and strides to a spot nearby, bends over, and triumphantly holds up his wedding band.
*Whew*
Now I don't feel quite as bad about almost losing mine, since he did almost exactly the same thing with his.
And it just reinforced my belief that we are, indeed, meant for each other.
How else? We make the same mistakes...and have the same luck. I like to think it was Someone--the Universe, Fate, Higher Power, call it what you will--that wanted to show us that if we believe in each other and persevere, we can get through the bumpy stuff, even when we think all is lost.
The other day we had another ring scare...I get home and he tells me, "I can't find my ring, but I didn't have it all day at work so I assume it's upstairs in the bed."
He sleeps with his ring on, and while it requires a tug to pull off his finger, it's conceivable that it could have been pulled off while he slept.
But after we tear the bed apart and search every corner of the bedroom area and don't find it, a familiar panic starts to set in. We return to the car and find nothing...I quiz him on whether he remembered having it on during his drive to work. He can't recall and we're getting desperate.
We're ready to head to his work to check the parking lot, store and break rooms just in case when he comes running out of the garage door.
"Found it!"
Turns out that it was hiding in his back brace. It has these neat hand-pouches to help him put it on by himself, and requires him to put his entire hand in the pouch. Apparently, when he put it on that morning and pulled his hands out of the pouch when he was done adjusting it, the tension was enough to pull off his ring.
So for these stories, our without-a-hitch-wedding (except our own, of course!), the way we are both ready to argue at the drop of a hat (and love it), our shared love of geeky things, our passion for the things we love (even if we don't love the same things all the time), and a thousand other small details...
...I truly believe we're a match destined to be.
After all, when I was a little girl, I answered my BFF thus when she asked me, "Who do you think you'll end up marrying?"
"A big-nosed, tall, geeky guy with glasses."
While the Big B doesn't have glasses
(and his nose isn't all that big), I'm confident that at some point in our lives he'll require corrective lenses and then my prophecy will be completely fulfilled.
Happy Anniversary Hot Stuff.
I Love You.
*Photos courtesy of Erin Johnson Photography. You can (and should!) check her out here or here at her blog. She did a wonderful job on our engagement photos and her associates did a perfect job at our wedding.
