Yesterday was my tenth wedding anniversary. Or rather, my unniversary, because I pretty much postponed it. It was raining cats and dogs in the morning, we have a backyard filled with manure that needs to be either tilled under or decorated with a horse, and the car broke down. Aside: why oh why, car karma gods, can we not go one year without some major problem with a vehicle? Just ONE YEAR? That horse is looking better and better. I've been fighting a cold and too much work for a week, not to mention the fact that my hormone-addled, pregnant body thinks 6:00 pm is bedtime these days, so I hadn't gotten out to really even think about what to get/give/do/say for my husband. My plan was to go shopping on Thursday while I was supposed to be working at home and get something to have ready for when The KingofHearts got home. And maybe I'd make a cake or something. Or buy a cake. Yeah, that's more likely.

But since his car wasn't working well, he took mine to work so as not to get stranded on the Beltway in the rain, which limited me to web surfing for his gift and using leftover Easter cookie dough for cookies instead of a cake.

The tenth anniversary is aluminium (who comes up with this stuff anyway?). We've got a lot of tin cans around the house and I did entertain the idea of building him a giant pyramid of Diet Coke. But I was going for something romantic (wha ha ha... me... romantic... I make me laugh) and since it would take a few days to have this delivered, I decided that I would buy him a camera. A few weeks back, I gave him my camera to take a picture in the mall of something funny that I would later turn into a funny blog post (see how THAT idea came to fruition) and he smacked his arm against something as he walked away and dropped my beloved free camera that was given to me on the concrete floor. It hasn't worked since. So I thought I'd get him a camera to make up for all the grief I gave him about breaking mine.

About 11:30 am, as I was paging through the Best Buy website trying to decide which one to order, the door suddenly opened, KingofHearts walked through into the kitchen and kissed me as he place a big bag in my lap. In it was...

you guessed it...

a camera.

It was our very own Gift of the Magi story, except I didn't have to do anything and I could use the gift he got me. So better.

It's still hard for me to believe that I'm a married woman, much less one that has been married longer than most marriages last. It's incredible to me that that weird guy living next door to me ten years ago who watched me leave for work in the morning and kept telling his roommate "there's just something wrong with her" is now the man with whom I choose to share my life. Oh sure, he irritates the crap out of me now and then, but even now, he's the first person I want to tell when something goes well in my day and he's the last person I want to see at night when I'm complaining about what didn't.

It has not been an easy ten years. We've been through a lot and I know it wasn't what he bargained for when he first asked me to marry him and I said no and then he asked again... and again... and again. (In fact, I don't think he even bargained for that part.) Other women would have been the starry-eyed romantic he wanted, had fewer reproductive issues, been more supportive of his tendency to obsess over hobbies, enjoyed talking on the phone, joined him in his never-ending quest for friends and social events and been less cynical about it all in the process. But I'm not sure I would have gotten through some of the trials and tribulations of the past ten years with my sense of humor in tact without him by my side. Even today, I still love just going to the grocery store with him and bantering about whatever in the car on the way. I'd rather do that than go to the nicest dinner at the nicest restaurant in my best clothes (and that's not just because none of them fit).

I love the life we have together, no matter how many stupid things go wrong, and I love the family we've fashioned: our beautiful daughter, the friends and supports we've found here, our actual families out west...

So here's to ten years - it only seems like twenty.

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