Sunday, 3 November 2013

20 years


I've been married 20 years, or at least on Wednesday this week I'll have been married 20 years. DH this is your reminder that it's our anniversary this week...let's see if you actually read my blog or not. I'm amazed, somedays it seems just the other day I was lying in the bathtub hungover and feeling like crap wondering how I was going to put that wedding dress on and get through the ceremony, at roughly the same time DH was waking up covered in doughnut crumbs (it's best not to ask).

DH and I have actually been together for 26 years, and that's a long time. We've both changed and neither of us are the same kids who met across a crowded room at some house party all those years ago. We're both older (duh), more jaded, not quite as lean (I'm trying to be polite here), grumpier (him not me), and I don't think either of us has the same outlook on life that we had back then. How have we survived? I have no idea, I think we've been best friends and partners for so long neither of us knows how to survive without the other, we're each other's safety nets and our strengths and weaknesses play off each other to give some sort of dis functional symbiotic relationship. 

I may joke and kid about things, but marriage isn't easy, anyone who's been married more than a few years knows that. Half the time you want to put that plan regarding the wood-chipper that you and your friends concocted over drinks one night into action, the other half you can't remember if you paid the life insurance premium so you're praying they'll survive that drive down the snowy highway. 

I will say this about DH, he's the one person in my life I trust implicitly, some may think that's blind, but his integrity and honesty is something I admire. I could do without the moodiness and back problems though ;) but overall he is the most kind-hearted, generous and trust worthy person I know.

There, he got a couple of lines of me being nice to him, I'm covered for this year. I feel the need to shower, public tributes of love are not my thing.  I never started writing this intending it to turn out like this, I was going to write about how surprising it is that we've made it this far, but when I look back it hardly feels like it was 20 years ago, and yet at the same time it was a whole lifetime ago.  

So, 20 years, it's momentous right? We celebrated our 10 year anniversary in Cuba, what are we doing for this one? The actual anniversary will be spent at home, I'm not even sure if we'll go out to dinner or have a nice steak dinner at the house with the kids. However in two weeks we are going to England for 10 days to celebrate another wedding, that of our niece. We get to see some very special family members who we haven't seen in far too long and take the kids on an adventure they will remember for a long time, I couldn't think of a better way to celebrate.