It's Our Anniversary... (but shhhhh!)

Sure enough, today marks four long years of martial…er… bliss…?

Well, maybe it hasn’t exactly been an “easy, breezy” four years, but there have been a lot of blessings along the way. We’ve also had our share of “opportunities for growth”. And, after all this time, we can proudly boast that we’re still together, making it through one day at a time, with a bright future ahead of us.

Now that I’ve got the sentimental blahbitty-blah out of the way, I should probably explain the title of this, my very first blog post. After all, it probably seems strange that I am “shushing” in regards to our anniversary – a day which most people greet with exclamations of joy and celebration. You see, Nate and I learned fairly early on that our anniversary is bad luck. Take our wedding day, for example…

No, I’m not kidding. Our actual wedding day was mostly a train wreck. The delay in our ceremony caused by the perpetually-late group before us was exacerbated by one of our own guests. We had asked a dear friend and former bishop to attend our wedding and sign the marriage license as one of the witnesses. Apparently this friend forgot that we were getting married because he never showed up! We endured perhaps half an hour of waiting before someone finally told us that he was missing, at which point we quickly replaced him and moved forward, but not without a great deal of frustration and disappointment.

Jump forward one year in time. Nathan and I were still in our first apartment together, both going to school full time and both working. I decided to make Nate an exceptional steak dinner for our anniversary. We hardly ever ate steak, which was a painful transition from Nate’s former life, so dinner was meant to be a very special treat... especially because I wasn’t big on cooking. Thus, a little while before he was due home for the evening, I went to work on dinner. About ten minutes into the meal, while some olive oil warmed in a frying pan for me to sauté vegetables, I stepped away from the kitchen. I can’t remember why I was gone or for how long, only that the loud scream of the smoke detector brought me right back to the kitchen…

where the olive oil had become a pan fire, and the room was filled with smoke. Suffice it to say that Nathan came home to me, standing on a chair in the living room and cursing at the still-screaming smoke detector, with a char-broiled steak in the oven, a frying pan covered in flour on the stove, and frozen vegetables on the counter.

We had Burger King for dinner.

Our second anniversary is a much less humorous story. In short, Nate was working at job he hated; I was mentally fatigued and depressed from school, where I was finishing up my bachelor’s (which included writing a thesis for my honors class); and we were only slightly above water with our finances. I didn’t feel particularly celebratory, Nathan wanted to make the best of it, my grumpy mood made him grumpy…and we slept in different bedrooms that night.

In retrospect, that suddenly sounds a lot more humorous!

When our third anniversary rolled around last year, I had the good common sense to put all celebratory plans on hold. The phrase “Happy Anniversary” was strictly taboo on March 24th. In the end, we had a very nice, normal day, and went out for a fabulous dinner the next night. There were no tears, no fires and no fights.

Since last year our “anniversary” was such a smashing success (relative to prior years’ failures), I am re-instituting all of my former rules. The phrase “Happy Anniversary” is NOT allowed until tomorrow, nor are any special activities – not of any kind!

So, on that note… Have a nice day, everyone.