Husbands & Wives & Married Lives OR Gorillas & Geese & How they Co-Exeest

Our oldest son turned 7 last week. This was the first year we held his birthday somewhere other than home (or a relative's house). He had a pirate-themed pool party at the Y. We were REALLY limited on how many people we could invite and so we opted to have a 'Family Only' pizza party later that night.
It was during his party that I realized something.

I'm sure this really comes as no shock to couples that have been married decades, but it really hit home to me during this party at the Y.


It started when we decided it was time for cake. I was going to be the one lighting the candle & presenting the cake, but first the kids needed to be rounded up & put in chairs. I asked Justin to help.

See the confused question mark?? It sounds like a simple request doesn't it? This is about the time I began coming to my above stated conclusion.

What he really heard out of me was this. I had to repeat my request a couple of times while he stood there looking at me like I was honestly just squawking and quacking at him. Finally it seemed to translate. Either that or the kids had heard me repeat the request enough that they finally went and sat down. ~ This may have been his agenda all along. I think I have just discovered something else.

I had to tell him that my mother wasn't going to magically appear and handle these things, that I needed him to step up. I got another ape-look from him.
I began trying to cut the cake and again asked him for help. I reminded him again that my mother wasn't going to magically appear. Same ape-look. He finally told me that "that's why the other ladies are here." ~ Yes, he really DID say that.
As if on cue, some of the other mothers came into the kitchen, one after another to help me. The first came in and I thanked her and griped about my husband's inability to realize that he should be helping. The second mother came in and immediately asked if anyone else's husband was driving them up the wall because hers sure was.
It was then that I totally got that expression about women being like a gaggle of geese. We worked together getting the cake and ice cream out to everyone all the while squawking about our husbands when we were in the kitchen.

We managed to make it through cake, ice cream, and presents and to the pool. It was there that I realized that most ALL marriages are comprised of a gorilla and a goose.
We were sitting around the pool, some of us in it with the kids and some sitting on the edge relaxing. One of the other mothers was watching her husband in the pool with their toddler. He was letting the boy stand alone in the water and she was worried that he would/could easily fall into the water and go under. She began calling to him to please hold onto the baby. That the baby was in the water and could fall. That the baby was too young to be standing alone like that. Her husband just looked back at her with a big, goofy grin on his face.
Being married to a gorilla myself and being able to view the situation (as opposed to being in it) I immediately realized what he was thinking.

He had told me earlier that his job was to keep the baby from drowning. I'm pretty sure all he heard from her, at least given his big grin, was that he was doing a good job keeping the baby from drowning.

It's all about Gorillas & Geese and How they Co-exeest. ~ Yes, I know it is a typo. I'm trying to rhyme so quit being a douche.

Raise Your Mug

~That's right .. we camp in style, bitches~

Today is St. Patrick's Day. It is also Justin's and my 5th anniversary. It's funny how 5 years can fly by and, at the same time, feel like an eternity. They've been a great 5 years though, and I really do look forward to 50+ more with him.
Read on if you want to hear our story. If not, Happy St. Patrick's Day to you all!

~My favorite of all the Trash the Dress photos~

Our relationship didn't start out like most relationships tend to. And nothing has been par for the course since then really either. I don't think I would have it any other way.

Justin and I met at the Coffee Pot, a local bar in Roanoke. We were both there to see a band, Sun Dried Opossum, play. I went in to check it out, but nobody was really there. Only one small group of people caught my eye, and mainly because one cute guy with long dreadlocks caught my eye. I am such a sucker for cute guys with dreadlocks!!
I ended up staying and we ended up getting to talk and hang out. From that night on I would tend to run into the same group of people, until I began hanging out with them all on a regular basis. We would head out in the evenings to bars around the area, go see shows together, or hang out at friends' houses. It was a good time.
Justin was a student at Virginia Tech at the time, and I was in massage school in Christiansburg. We realized that our schedules were similar on some days and decided to start carpooling on Wednesdays. This was how we became really close friends. After school we'd hang out with friends in Blacksburg and then we'd hit up "the beer store" (aka Vintage Cellar), then head back to my house to share in good beers. This is also how we both truly became beer snobs.

Some things sound really cheesy to say when you're already married to the person. But when I met Justin (and he agrees the same happened to him) there was a very strong and immediate bond between us. We were only friends but there was a very strong "something" there.
We wound up spending the majority of our time together, even when we were also hanging out with the group. Justin was spending, on average, a good 5 nights a week at my house, either sleeping on the couch or in the spare bedroom.

Eventually our relationship did take a romantic turn, even though we were still "just friends", and on May 5th 2003 I found out for certain that I was pregnant. We talked it over and agreed to have the baby, who would become Shannon, and also to get an apartment together (my lease at the house I was renting was up). We didn't want to get married though just because I was pregnant, we really wanted to try and let things develop as normally as they could between us.
When we moved into the apartment we had even considered not sharing a bedroom. By the time move-in date arrived though that plan was out the window and we were a couple.
We agreed that it was imperative that Justin finish college. He took a job working 40 hours a week at a local restaurant and I worked at Papa John's as well as at a local spa as a massage therapist.

We stayed in the apartment for 2 years. During that time we had Shannon, we got married, and Justin graduated from college.
We then moved in with my grandfather for a few months while we were in the process of buying our first home. My grandfather would keep an eye on Shannon in the evenings, after he'd already been put to bed, and we would go down to the house to work on painting it and so on. This September will mark 5 years of us being in this house.

We had lived here for about a year when we decided to have another baby and I got pregnant with Tristan. That was at the beginning of Winter and the start of the new year brought a new job for Justin, his first job out of college using his degree. I quit my job at the spa (I hadn't been at Papa John's since Shannon's birth) when he started his new job. For a while I did massage therapy out of the house, until it was too much after Tristan was born.

In the time we've been together we've both grown a lot. Reality has often hit hard. We've learned the value and importance of starting at the bottom. Of working your way up. Of doing things yourself.
I can very honestly say that there is no-one in the world I would rather be with.