On a snowy Monday afternoon fourteen Januaries ago, I went to the courthouse in the same dress I’d worn for high school graduation and got married to a super long-haired rocker boy. We had few worldly possessions and almost nothing of monetary value between us. We moved into a basement apartment in a roach motel. Our bathroom was so tiny, our knees hit the wall when we sat on the loo.

We ate a lot of pancakes (cheep cheep) and went home for dinner whenever possible. There was no cable and we played countless hands of 31. We celebrated medical assistance with a trip to McDonald’s. We celebrated financial assistance for college with basic cable. I watched reruns of thirtysomething at night while my new husband was at work. I never managed to get the funky, sticky, melty kitchen floor clean.

We had a baby and while one of us was in the hospital, the other one of us partied like it was 1994 and passed out in the apartment with the front door wide open. We had a lot of visitors and a bilirubin-filled baby and I stayed up nights nursing and being afraid of Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun” video.

We moved into a new rat trap. We slept in the living room in the summer to be nearer the window air conditioner. We had another baby. We fought ghosts. We bought a house. We had another baby. We had problems. We had solutions. We had pharmaceuticals. We had Bud Light bottles.

I have serious doubts that anyone who knew us in 1994 really believed we’d ever make it to the two year anniversary and frankly, there have been times I’ve thought he wouldn’t make it to see tomorrow. But here we are. He’s stuck around, I haven’t killed either of us and we are making it work. Making it work forever is the plan, but through the weekend is a sure bet since we’re planning on going to dinner and seeing a movie. Next week looks okay, too, I guess. I’m too cold to do anything drastic between now and the end of February and then I’m busy with a fundraiser in March. He starts fishing in April sometime and then May is his birthday.

So definitely until Summer. And then he’ll get out the grill and we’ll sit in the garage sipping beers with his sister. We’ll gossip and admire the tree in our front yard that we adore but will probably fall on our house sooner rather than later. He’ll get a sunburn on top of his sunburn. I’ll crab at him about it. We’ll turn our air conditioner lower than anyone else we know and we’ll be proud of it. He’ll take the kids out at night for catfishing and I will hose them all down upon re-entry. We’ll fight and we won’t and he’ll occasionally make a witty remark that I will congratulate him for.

In August we’ll fight about money (because who says the kids need to wear clothes to school?) and we’ll get it figured out by September. October is my birthday and then someone wants to dress up like KISS and in November he turns on the Christmas music and I wear earplugs. I’ll spend too much money “finishing up” Christmas shopping (new skateboards aren’t really stocking stuffers) and he’ll fume and fuss. But we’ll put one foot in front of the other and then we’ll do it all over again. And again. And again.

Probably forever. But for sure through the weekend.

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