11 Years to Life

It's hard for me to believe, and I'm sure the husband will tell you the time has just flown by for him, but Saturday is our 11 year wedding anniversary. It's been 11 years since I broke all those boys' hearts and made Clint the luckiest man alive. I kid! Sort of. There's been better and worse, sickness and health, richer and poorer along the way.

Clint and I were married in the metropolitan city of Toccoa, Georgia on December 1, 2001 (who wants a ball and chain for Christmas?). I was a year out of college and he had just finished graduate school. We went on our honeymoon to a pre-Natalee Holloway Aruba and enjoyed basically having our own private island for the week. And then the real world came a-knocking. Two days after we got back from our honeymoon, we started packing for our move from Atlanta to Charlotte for Clint's first real, adult, career-beginning job. We slept on a mattress on the floor of my empty apartment while what pathetically little else we owned was packed into a U-Haul (in retrospect, Clint need not have packed the majority of his man stuff as it did not make the interior decorating cut), and Clint officially graduated from Georgia Tech the next day. Then we made the four hour drive to Charlotte and thus began all this marital bliss.

For better, for worse: mmm hmmm. We bought our first house, our first lawnmower, our first Christmas tree. There have been tailgates and beach trips, friends' weddings, some fabulous Halloween costumes and in general, lots of laughs. We've also lost family members, friends, jobs. We made new friends and got new jobs (I just never wanted to keep any of mine. Jobs, that is, not friends). There was one terrible trip to Mexico--the frozen drinks are made with the ice made from the water you aren't supposed to drink. Put that in your Cabo guide book next time.

For richer, for poorer: yowza. I don't really want to go into a lot of personal detail on this one, but there have been some penny pinching, coupon clipping, peanut butter sandwich and $1.99 frozen pizza days (yes, they are cheap and no, not particularly tasty). Lest I forget, one of us retired at the ripe old age of 29 and I will buy generic until the day I die in order to avoid ever participating in any more corporate team building exercises. But hey, there have also Christmas bonuses, tax refunds, raises and (very small) inheritances along the way. I could say something trite about being rich in love, but things like that make me TIMMAL (throw up in my mouth a little). That's just not my style.

In sickness and in health: check. In the last eleven years, one of us has lost an appendix (his, and I don't mean the book kind), had walking pneumonia (hers), stitches (all his), a zillion colds, stomach flus and a serious bout of food poisoning (again, hers...I have incredibly good luck). We've both gained and lost weight through the miracles of low fat, low carb, low cal, low sodium. Low on our list of favorite things, too.

We've also had some adventures that our vows didn't include and we probably never expected. For snoring and for coughing fits, for cover hogging and for nights on the couch, whether Clemson beats Georgia Tech or vice versa. During times of methodical and deliberate action (his), and fast and furious turn this mother out (hers). With all the ups, downs, ins, outs, things we've chased and things we've run from, you'd think we'd be in better shape by now.

Happy Anniversary to my kinder, gentler, much more patient other half. I will probably only be around for another 60 years or so, so enjoy every minute of it. Here's to many more years to come!