Well of course we were in love back then, look how bright and shiny we were! That’s actually a prom picture from 17 years ago, but you get the idea.
Over the years, we’ve grown considerably less bright and shiny:
Lena's first morning at home
Liberty wearing me out
First peek at Maya
Bryan, you’re awesome and I love you, and you’ll always be bright and shiny to me. Happy 14th!
April is busy for me what with pondering spring with its new beginnings, and staring at a giant bunny in my yard. This bunny leaves the most gigantic piles of bunny turds out there, right where she’s eating. My yard must be extremely high in fiber because I just can’t believe it. I’m going to take a picture. Then you’ll be sorry.
Our anniversary is tomorrow. Fourteen years, suckas! And you thought it wouldn’t last. I don’t know what it means that every year around this time Bryan asks, “How long were your parents married?” I hope I don’t find out that he had a secret bet with my dad and after our 19th anniversary, he’s going to call my dad and be like, “HA! I stayed married to one longer than you did. Pay up.” That would suck.
And Lena and Liberty turn 11 on Saturday. I haven’t even ruined them yet. Probably. April does sometimes kick me in the gut with the years-old fear that I had when things started to go downhill in my pregnancy and then Liberty’s surgery and recovery. I really have to tell myself that everything is fine and they’re both healthy and I’m not trapped inside a hospital while spring happens outside. I can eat whatever I want, not hospital food. And Liberty can breathe right on her very own. And I can see them both every single day instead of being too out of it and hemorrhage-y. I feel like I should get over it already, but it’s like body memory and when I look out the window at the sunshine and new leaves, I’m right back in that hospital looking out the window, watching spring happen, worrying, praying, crying, worrying, praying, crying.
Anyway, spring is stupid. Give me summer. Everything turned awesome that summer. Cute little onesies and babies who lived with me instead of at the hospital. And we’d put them in their little matching outfits and make them hug each other. And they liked it!
I’m so glad it’s March. I’m not even bothered by the huge piles of melty, dirty snow out there. I’m not, because it’s March! And spring is almost here! And I get to go grocery shopping tomorrow! And I get to use Bryan’s fancy pants Excel spreadsheet with a pivot table or something like that so my inputted (is that a word?) recipes spit out an accurate grocery list, unlike the inaccurate grocery lists I usually take to the store.
This new grocery list thing is a big deal because I plan my menu for the whole month and shop for the whole month in one shot, only going back to the store for a quick weekly trip for produce and other perishables. When the grocery list is long enough to include the fixin’s for a month’s worth of meals, some things get left out, which drives me insane. When multiple recipes share certain ingredients, I used to have to tally them up very carefully, which took forever. Tallying and I don’t get along. I get bored with it and then I make mistakes and double tally one thing while forgetting to tally another and it’s just a huge headache and makes me want to write, “pizza, Chinese, pizza, fish fry, pizza…” on the month’s menu.
Enter my husband, the Overlord of Organization, the Sultan of Symmetry, the Rajah of Regulation, the King of Configuration and all-around great guy, Bryan “The Spreadsheet Whisperer” Aldrich! (And the crowd goes wild!) I told him what drove me crazy about the stupid grocery list and he made the crazy go away, just like Thorazine. And then I asked him to marry me all over again. He’s thinking about it.
For lazy, loungy holidays and the people I get to share them with in real life, on the phone, and on the internet. I love my people.
I had a better quality picture, but I love that it’s almost noon and they’re in their jammies, lounging all over each other, playing pretend together. I should probably get in the shower. I know everybody at dinner will be thankful for that.
April is just a month full of celebrating around here. Well, celebrating and saying things like, “Really? Is this how old we are? Do we have kids who are going to be 10 years old on Friday? And did we just celebrate our 13th anniversary on Monday? There must be something wrong with the maths.”
The maths are wrong, baby, cuz your hotness is rockin’!
Easter was lovely, except it needs to last much longer so my family can stay much longer and we can have, like, an 8-day feast instead of a weekend binge where we drink and eat too much and hurt ourselves. If we knew it would last longer, we could pace ourselves. I promise we would pace ourselves. My sister and I discovered that it doesn’t really matter what kind of wine a person drinks. If that person drinks too much of it, that person’s belly gets mad at them and punishes them. In other words, it’s not the quality, it’s the quantity. My sister-in-law is wise and she knew that already. She and my brother and brother-in-law, along with Bryan, were able to go to the Ohio Deli (as seen on Man vs Food!) and eat and eat on Saturday, while my sister and my mom and I stayed with the kids. Well, my mom stayed with the kids. Tracey and I just laid around and said, “Shhhh!” But now we know. Damn.
My Columbus friends were able to meet my family and that was lovely. I felt like I should be more nervous about it for some reason, but I wasn’t because Kristen, Dawn and Lynne are just Ohio versions of me, my sister and my sister-in-law. I don’t branch out much in my friendships. And the husbands? All of the husbands are beaten down by perfect matches for their loud and lovely wives, so we love all of them, too. Even my brother. I never found the bellybutton lint he hid here, but I have a feeling he hid it on my pillow. Just thinking about it gives me chills. Or, maybe he unscrewed the screen on the showerhead and put it in there so I shower in lint leavings every morning. Ew!
With that, I’ll leave you with another disturbing image. Everybody knows that My L1ttle Ponies love Easter. I just didn’t know how much they love it until I walked in the bathroom and found this little filly enjoying Maya’s Easter basket. In front of the mirror. Seriously, H@sbro, who designs your baskets*?
*I didn’t buy this basket. My mother-in-law bought it for Maya 2 or 3 years ago. I didn’t even notice what the little pony was doing until I saw her watching herself in the mirror with that look in her eye.
P.S. Don’t ask me what Maya’s basket was doing in the bathroom. Nobody wants to know.
