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Okay, so it was more like “Mommy and Daddy’s Couple Of Hours Out” but I think it still qualifies. I actually put on a dress and we left the house for dinner out like “normal” people. It was nice. “What was the occasion?”, you ask. We were celebrating our anniversary. Yep, we’ve been married 8 years on Monday. Some days it seems like less than that. Other days it seems like more. Pretty typical, I think.

We went to a local “nice” restaurant on the beach. What I like about where we live and the restaurant we went to is the “California Casual” atmosphere. You see men in shorts and Hawaiian shirts with flip flops right along with people in dress slacks. Mostly dresses for women. Not “beach casual” but definitely not “I’m dressed up and uncomfortable”, which is nice. And to be able to have a nice glass of wine and conversation with The Daddy that doesn’t involve me doing chores while we’re talking was a bonus! Add in a view of the surf, and it was the perfect dining experience.

Eight years. Sometimes it seems strange that it’s been that long. We were remembering some of the places we’ve lived and things we used to do. I was thinking of the ways that we’d grown, mostly through the hard times when things weren’t as either of us would have liked them. When one or both of us were being unrealistic, selfish, or clueless. And that made me grateful for the hard times. Because, although our relationship is far from perfect, we’re headed in the right direction.

The Daddy got me the most amazing gift. He’s good at that. In the past it has involved trips to Tiffany’s , among other places, which is nice. But this year it was a lot less expensive. He wrote me a poem about why he loved me. He had a friend draw the most amazing picture around it and framed it for me. It’s better than Tiffany’s because it was unexpected and thoughtful. Not that jewelry can’t be thoughtful. It can. But it involved a guy putting feelings on paper. Maybe typical in sensitive college poetry majors but not in guys who’ve been married for eight years. So I will hang it in a place where I can see it often and will read it on those days when it seems as though we’ve been married forever instead of only 8 years…