All posts tagged: anniversary

One Score and Two Hours Ago…

Published by

…the Spouse and I married on a Tuesday afternoon and unbeknownst to us, the WideEyedHousehold formed. Coalesced. Here we are four apartments and four houses, five cities, and 16 cars later. We got married at 2:30pm and I planned to stop and think about it at 2:30 today – exactly 20 years later. When I looked at the clock it was 4pm and I was folding whites in the basement laundry room. I thought back. At 2:30, the Spouse was vacuuming the downstairs while I vacuumed the upstairs. Evidently marital harmony sounds like whining Orecks. Twenty years ago today I had on a purple dress with a little row of flowers along the back, Watteau train level. The Spouse had on a suit, the first of the three he’s owned as an adult. I remember our family sort of awkwardly assembling at the church, then there was some chanting, then we were married. No one bothered to turn on all of the lights in the church. It was after all a Tuesday afternoon, not a …

18 years together | 4,100 miles apart

Published by

“It’s disgustingly hot and humid,” the WideEyedSpouse tells me. I can hear the barest hint of dogs panting in the background of the call. “Huh,” I tuck my cold feet under me and look out the wide window into a chill, gloomy, rainy fall afternoon. “I’m putting the a/c unit back in the window,” he says and I shiver. Yesterday was our 18th wedding anniversary and we were almost as far away from each other as we can be while remaining in the U.S. We weren’t the farthest apart we’ve ever been on an anniversary. That was in 1998 when I was living in a Eureka BombShelter tent on the north shore of Attu Island and he was in Madison, Wisconsin. The WideEyedSpouse celebrated our anniversary by walking the dogs in the park. As their gift to him, Hamish and Miss Tibbit produced a record setting 11 dookies in one day between the two of them. “Congratulations Boss!” they might have been thinking, “Many happy years to come!” I celebrated by huddling at my makeshift …

17th Wedding Anniversary: Furniture

Published by

No traditional gift is defined for the 17th wedding anniversary. Evidently, being married for 17 years is somehow unremarkable. A middle anniversary. One where you aren’t newlywed, nor have you achieved anything truly notable. It is just part way along the long haul. It is Indiana if you are stuck driving from New Jersey to Minnesota. It is Iowa if you are taking the interstates from Buffalo to Phoenix. Not interesting, not there yet (whatever that means for wedding anniversaries), but at least making some progress. In modern gifting etiquette, the 17th anniversary gift is furniture. I am disappointed in this because at first I read the chart wrong and thought it was porcelain. I need a new toilet, a new bathroom sink, and a crown to replace a fracturing molar in my maxilla. Porcelain seemed just about perfect. But furniture? I guess the giftie list inventors figure that by 17 years the kids and/or dogs have pretty much ruined anything nice you ever had. Maybe it would be a nice anniversary present to sit …