Archive: Hitched

If there is one wedding anniversary tradition I enjoy, it is that JG is always on summer break by that time, and I budget my vacation days so that I can take the day off from work. Yay! My boss looked at me oddly when I applied to take off what appeared to be a random Wednesday, but I love having the break for us.

JG and I exchanged presents in the morning when I got back from my second run of the week (reward, please!). I happily opened two word-nerdy books, the new Jack Johnson album, and the soundtracks to Juno and Dan in Real Life. JG received a set of dominoes in a leather-ish case to satisfy my need to accommodate those traditional anniversary gifts, a book about dominoes, and Wii accessories. Thinking about our gifts kind of makes me chuckle because they aren’t traditional or even romantic at all. Who cares? They are right for us.

JG and I spent the morning at Longwood Gardens to see “Nature’s Castles,” an exhibit of three amazing, walk-through tree houses, and the water gardens, because JG has a deep desire to build one of his own someday. The weather was pleasantly hot, and the gardens were not crowded at all. We walked through the Idea Garden, which simply has seasonal plants in bloom and labeled for your convenience, and we tried to brainstorm what to do with our sad, empty flowerbeds. It became clear that, while neither of us has any real experience in planning out a landscape, we both had strong opinions, and we were not very skilled in expressing them. Oh, my. I think redoing those beds might be our next Marital Challenge.

In the afternoon, we lazed around the house before going out to dinner, where I had a delicious mojito with my Thai seafood paella, and JG opted for a lobster in a brandy curry. Since I had to work the next day, we made an early-ish dinner reservation, and we were in and out of the place before the sun went down. Ha! We really are “oldlyweds,” as Janet coined.

On the way home from dinner, I pondered a conversation from that morning with my sister, who had called to wish us a happy anniversary.

Sister: Do you feel wiser?

RA: Wiser?

Sister: You know, because you’re older. It’s been three years!

RA: (pauses) Well, I don’t feel wiser than, say, yesterday. But I feel wiser than I did three years ago.

Sister: (snorts) Yeah, I’d hope so.

Should I feel significantly wiser after three years of marriage? I still feel like a fledging married person, what with all of the miscues and small irritants of daily life. However, I do perceive that JG and I are getting settled and more comfortable with how being married works between the two of us. If anything, this third anniversary feels permanent to me, as if we’re not pretending any more. Is simply spending the day together enough to celebrate a marriage?

Yes, it is.

I’ve come to the very last question, and it only took me almost five months and ten posts of answers! I commend the persistence out there. Today is our third wedding anniversary (woo!), so I thought Val’s inquiry would be an appropriate fill-in while I am taking the day off from work to be out and about, celebrating. With no further ado:

Val asked:

How did JG propose?

When I was writing for a blog network last year, I wrote a post about how JG and I got engaged, and the following is a slightly edited version, which bears a striking resemblance to our first date.

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As proposals go, I’m rather picky. I dislike public proposals hypothetically, but I loathe the thought personally. If I had anything to say about it, there would be no ballfields, blimps, or bullhorns present if the memory was going to be free of dread. Also, I tend to glaze over during proposal stories that involve some sort of recitation of Shakespeare or poetry. I love literature, but that is not the point of the proposal. Save it for the open mic, Buddy, and get to the point.

I communicated my preferences as clearly as I could after it became clear to JG that he would probably have to think about the delivery of The Question. He thought my proposal pet peeves were amusing, however, and felt the need to taunt me every time we were at a sporting event or saw a plane fly overhead. “What if I proposed to you right now, on the scoreboard?” he’d ask at football games. “What if that plane is a skywriter and it spelled out a proposal from me?”

I’d roll my eyes and mutter that if he knew me at all, none of those absurd things would happen. And they didn’t, thank heaven.

At the end of the summer spent apart, JG and I moved back in for our last year of college. After getting situated in our respective rooms, JG suggested that we go for a walk. It would be a nice way to enjoy a relatively empty campus.

We set out on our usual loop and I had an inexplicable feeling that something big was going to happen. I did my best to breathe deeply and act normally, but my mind was racing.

Oh, my gosh, what if JG is proposing tonight? He’s been grumbling about how he hasn’t found a ring yet, but what if that’s a front? He’s being awfully quiet right now… But maybe nothing is going on. It won’t be good if I get all excited and then nothing happens. I can’t be disappointed if this is just a normal walk, but it would be so cool to get engaged tonight! It’s so pretty out and hardly anyone is around, yet. No, I can’t get excited. That’s not fair to him or me. I can’t fool myself into thinking that every walk or time alone means a proposal. Besides, JG might not even have a ring, right? Okay, I need to be fine with the fact that we are not getting engaged tonight. And that’s okay. No need to be let down. It’s okay.

Presently, we sat down at a bench that we thought of as ours. It looked to me as though JG took something out of his cargo pocket, but in response to my inquisitive face, he said, “Oh, just a mosquito.”

Okay, calm yourself down.

Then we were quiet. “I love you,” JG said.

“I love you, too!”

Silence, again. What is going on?

“I love you,” he repeated.

“I still love you…” I said, slowly.

All at once, he was down on one knee! He held an open ring box and said, “I love you – will you marry me?”

Then I laughed.

Not at him! Just in general! I laugh when I’m nervous or happy and this was both! I laughed, and then I quickly said, “Yes!”

JG put the ring on my finger and we both grinned from ear to ear. That “yes” didn’t make up for the laughing, though. I have never heard the end of it.

Previously: Lent, hypothetical actions, superpower, television, favorites, hypothetical money, decisions, babies, hypothetical stuff

#45

At the end of JG’s first year of teaching, he told me that everyone in his department was attending the retirement party, which was coordinated by what I like to call the Faculty Fun Committee. One of our closer teacher friends was and is the Fun Leader, and she was pretty bent on having a good proportion of younger teachers present. Plus, JG’s department head was retiring, so it was only right to go. I like any opportunity to dress up and see JG’s co-workers, so I willingly put it on the calendar.

First, though, I had to go with JG to graduation, which had to be indoors that year due to weather. Students, parents, and relatives were crammed into the stuffy school building, and JG walked briskly through the hallways to get his bearings on what was going on, since he was a rookie. I trotted along behind him in kitten heels, doing my best not to slip on the terrazzo floors, and more than one administrator gave me an odd look as if to say, “Aren’t you supposed to have your graduation gown on, young lady?”

Once JG found his post, I sat with another teacher’s wife to watch the closed-circuit television broadcast of the ceremony in the auditorium. There was speech after speech after musical number after speech, and the list of seniors to be announced seemed interminable. At last, it was over, I wormed among the masses of people with my fellow spectator to find our husbands, and we all headed to the party.

When I jokingly coined the term “Faculty Fun Committee,” I mistakenly assumed that there would be a modicum of fun involved. I suppose there is an upper limit of fun at which a retirement party tops out, but however much we paid for our tickets was just not worth it. The atmosphere was not great, due in part to the windowless room populated by tired teachers who had been at the school for more than twelve hours. I don’t remember if there was a bar, but if there was, it didn’t have a positive effect on me. I had not mentally prepared for sitting through the long ceremony only to have a piece of overcooked chicken and some cheese cubes. It was nice to meet JG’s colleagues and see the corny tributes the departments created for their retirees, but, oh, I was tired. On the way home, I told JG that I would be happy to come with him whenever he, or any of his friends, retired, but until then, I did not mind passing on this blessed event. He didn’t blame me.

Last year, without telling the Fun Leader, a group of us skipped the retirement dinner and made a reservation at an Asian fusion restaurant. JG and I tried sushi for the first time, I had a lovely Chilean sea bass entrée, and the restaurant has become one of our favorite places. Such a change from the year before!

Tonight, after this year’s graduation, the tradition continues at a new (to us) Italian place. I’m excited to put on a cute dress and see our teacher friends. I just wish the Fun Leader could join us.

Over the weekend, JG decided to assemble a homemade meat smoker in the style of Alton Brown. He’s been talking about it ever since we saw the episode of Good Eats with instructions, so once he set his mind to it and realized that he had an unused gift card to Home Depot, there was no stopping him. JG spent Friday afternoon at the hardware store, toting grill racks to the garden department to check against the diameter of terra cotta pots, and he reported garnering more than his fair share of odd looks from the staff, not that I was surprised.

At home, after dinner, JG put together the working model of the smoker, while I looked on with a cocked eye. I’d believe it when I saw it, I said. Not that I didn’t trust Alton Brown, but did two terra cotta pots, a hot plate, a bowl of soaked mesquite chips, and grill rack a smoker make? I had my doubts. JG was all glee and excitement: “We can smoke meat all summer! If this works, I’ll get a big pot for the top and I can do a whole pork shoulder! Except they call it a pork butt. Oh, and ribs! And I can make jokes about all the things I’m smoking!”

“Please don’t,” I said.

The next day, JG was ready to start up the smoker when we got home from the gym. One of our friends was on hand to witness the great experiment, and the two of them set up the manly smoking station while I hulled strawberries and made a taco dip to tide us over. The chicken JG had prepped went into the smoker, and we watched the thermometer to monitor the temperature. Unfortunately, the smoker failed to perform on the first run. JG hypothesizes that the hot plate shuts off automatically when it reaches a certain temperature, so maintaining an internal temperature of at least 250 degrees was not feasible. I think we need to procure an old-school hot plate without a shut-off switch or rewire this one so that it doesn’t foil the smoking efforts.

In any case, JG grilled up the chicken and the ears of corn we had ready, and it was a tasty dinner nonetheless. The two guys started chipping golf balls in the yard, and when I suggested that they hit a few at the local driving range, I immediately won points as the Best Wife Ever. They cleaned up as quick as a wink before they left, and I enjoyed a quiet house with Ted on my lap.

In retrospect, I should not have expended any energy in suppressing JG’s jokes, because those “what I’m smoking” lines seem to come up on their own. Ah, well.