Twenty-Five Years

Next week I'll have been married for twenty-five years. It was a big church wedding with my big Catholic family.  Which was the tradition in my family.  But, things started to go wrong when the venue I'd reserved over a year in advance burned down a few months before our big day.  Then, when I chose an ivory dress, my mother told me my grandmother would disapprove, so I begrudgingly decided to get a white one.  I had it specially made after seeing a gorgeous photo of an extremely expensive dress in a magazine.  Although, my cheap, WHITE imitation didn't turn out the way I'd hoped.  But, I wore it as is anyway to spare the seamstress's feelings.  Without a veil to hamper my glorious, teased hair, despite my mother's protests to the contrary.  It was the one thing I asserted myself about for my own wedding.  And, to this day,  I still regret not wearing a flower in my hair.  As if the flower would've distracted from the enormous, flat bows on my sleeves.  Or the huge earrings.  WTF was I thinking?  None of it really mattered anyway, because the photographer we hired, was about 75 years old with thick coke-bottle glasses which obviously weren't thick enough because all of our pictures are blurry.

I didn't know it was the prelude for all the screw ups yet to come.  

And now here we are 25 years later, with 4 kids, a house and at least a hundred home improvement projects to do that will never all get done.  Because there's too much other stuff going on.  And how can we afford to do stuff on the house when we spend all our money on car insurance for our teenagers to drive?  But, even more importantly, how can we get away from our kids and take a trip, just the two of us, for our 25th anniversary?  A year ago, we talked about going on an exotic, romantic trip to Bali to celebrate.  Or, more like I talked about it and my husband said, "Wouldn't that be weird without the kids?"  Well now that you said that it would!  I haven't wanted to bitch slap him too many times during our marriage, but that was one of them.  I'm just not a violent person.  Ok, there are the times I've given him a backhand swat with my arm or a flying round kick nailing him right in the ass (I'm incredibly accurate, if I'm bragging), but those are totally in fun, even if he gets a little butt hurt.   

This is not the part of the post where I say, "Guess what?  Surprise! We're going to Bali for our anniversary!"  Because between house guests and kids activities it's not going to work.  We can't even fit in one night away in a hotel in Denver (an hour away from here) for god's sake!  In fact, we don't have any plans at all.  Last night while I was cleaning up the dishes after dinner I announced, I didn't get you anything for our anniversary.  To which he responded, I didn't get you anything either.  Ahhhh...romance.  I imagine we'll go to dinner.  Maybe at Golden Corral.  I'm joking.  Or am I? When we're done eating we'll try to find some live music, but there won't be any because Colorado Springs on a Friday night is pretty lame. But, on a Tuesday night it's even more lame.  And that's hard to do. So, we'll probably take a romantic stroll together through the aisles of Home Depot to shop for our never ending home improvement projects.  And then arrive home about 8pm.  With our kids wondering why we're home so early.  Then we'll get into our pajamas, settle in on the couch and watch cooking shows.  The way we do every other night.  Unless we switch it up and watch a home improvement show.

Because if it ain't broke, why fix it?

What can I say?

 I'm a romantic.