for a million years

(Can I get in any worse of a mood? It’s unfair. I didn’t sleep at all last night. I will dance a jig of unadulterated joy when this week is finis.)

May 8 is usually a pretty decent day. Lots of good things happen on this day. My friend from kindergarten, Valerie – it’s her birthday. I remember that always because today is also my grandmother’s birthday. Had foul-temper been the secret to everlasting youth and seat-belts been paid more attention to in 1984, the cold-as-ice Grande Dane (from whom I get an ever-present forehead wrinkle – thanks GENETICS!) would be 97. Mind-melding.

Grandma Nete made truckloads of spritz cookies with fruit-jelly-centers, a relic from her Iowa housewife days. She was constantly pissed about something (anything), and liked watching pro-wrestling on TV. Also she watched Senators baseball on TV, with the sound turned all the way down, and the radio turned up because everyone knows that TV baseball announcers are total shit. I have other great memories involving her, but I’ll refrain. Basically, had you met her, Internets, you would have met Future Me; and I miss her.

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- If you were to ask him what he thought of me when he first met me, he would say I was too quiet and wore overalls- neither of which were total dealbreakers, persay, but those things def. made me … questionable. (I am not even joking when I say overalls, dude, I owned formal ‘alls. Gray velvet.) Also, he was dating a v. short girl who I think was in ROTC. Luckily for him I had a great ass back then, and his Option #2, a girl named Julie with a body to die for, turned out to be crazy. Actual insane, straightjackets, etc.

- If you were to ask me what I thought of him, I would say he was cute, if you liked JOCKS, but I was busy polishing my roommates Docs so I could wear them to studio the next day and hooking up with a guy who kind of reminded me of a Chihuahua, but wrote LYRICS ABOUT ME IN HIS NOTEBOOK DURING SOCIOLOGY CLASS, and reading a lot of AS Byatt and listening to the Rachels and experimenting with eyeliner, so get back to me later. The next school year, he DID get back to me. And I was (mostly) over that brooding phase.

I also (think) I know the first moment he thought of me as real, honest, serious-stick-around-bona-fide-G to the F potential (correct me if I’m wrong?) I was in the TV lounge of my dorm. I was working as an RA, and I was on “building duty” that night, and instead of doing my rounds to make sure the baseball team wasn’t smoking up again, I was watching the Simpsons. He had stopped by just to say hi. Somewhere in that episode, there was a Stephen Hawking joke in the dialogue, and I laughed. And apparently, that was the first time this kid had met a female who knew who Stephen Hawking was, or at least well enough to laugh at a joke about him.

So, in conclusion, I am still very glad I married him, although if we were to go through that circus again- let’s just say I would have taken into DEEP consideration skipping the childhood-religious-upbringing-thing and made it legal in Augusta’s James Brown Plaza, if only for the photo op. Oh man, can you imagine? Best wedding shots ever.

(happy anniversary.)