A few weeks back my husband said something that really struck a cord with me. I asked him if he ever thought about what would happen if we broke up. He said no. I was stunned. I asked again, "well obviously when we fight it has to have crossed your mind right, I mean you have never thought about what would happen with the kids, the house etc." And he said no. Summarizing he said that he married me because he knew I was the one he wanted to be with forever. I know a few people reading this blog will find me naive but, I love knowing he feels that way. It seems like it is never the man who feels that. He said even when we fight it’s never crossed his mind to leave. Somehow in his head he just knows we are meant to be together.

I know you will laugh but I’ve spent the week reading the Twilight saga over and over and OVER. My favorite part is the end of Breaking Dawn when Bella finally lets Edward see in her head. I loved it because he was able to see every memory she had, know every reason she loved him. To recall their entire relationship.

It got me thinking about Rob and I. I was talking to my cousin today about how oblivious Rob and I were the first year we were together. And, like Bella I sat there recalling all of the moments I had never noticed before.

When we first met, we were simply hanging out here and there. Slowly we started hanging out nightly. He was also hanging out with another girl and I was hanging out with my oldest friend Jeremy. I was also 8 months out a relationship that ripped me up. One of the nights we were sitting there talking I had told Rob that I had no interest in love. In fact, in those first two months we talked about everything. You see, that is all we did, talk (okay and maybe a few stolen kisses.) Rob worked weird hours, so when I got done with school I would go to his apartment, sit in his living room and wait for him. Sometimes he would get home in time to watch Dawson’s Creek with me (don’t even try and deny it babe.) We would end up in his room just laying there in the dark talking. Eventually I would pass out and he would get up putzing around his room.

It never occurred to me until now, that normal people don’t do that. They don’t spend two months doing nothing but talking. My cousin informed me today that it was already obvious then. She basically said DUH. During this time, I kept telling everyone Rob was just a summer thing. It wouldn’t last. It appears that everyone around us already knew what it took us so long to figure out. Even his friends were taking bets on how long it would take us to realize we were going to get married. I of course laughed at all of his friends.

During one of these talks he mentioned how he didn’t like holding hands, it was weird. The odd part was realizing how often we actually held hands. He even told me once that he actually liked holding my hand, and to this day we hold hands most everywhere we go.

Still, I didn’t notice any difference, I thought we were still just hanging out. He did too. We were still seeing other people. One night, out of the blue he told me he had a present for me. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a rock. He had picked it up on the side of the road where he was working that night, because he was thinking of me. How on earth could neither of us notice, that you don’t do things like that with someone you are just talking to? How did we not realize how much that one little gesture meant?

That ended for me, when Jeremy called me one night, while I was standing in Rob’s porch (it was a covered one that is why I say in.) He called to tell me he loved me. I hung up. Twice. This still didn’t register in my head, in my mind I hung up because I was still telling myself I didn’t want love.

Weeks later Rob’s friend died. Driving home from the funeral he called me and asked me to go to Monterey with him. ME, not the other girl but me. And so I went. I could have stayed home and partied, went out etc, but I didn’t I went with him. We spent that trip around a campfire barely speaking, mostly talking with our eyes. Again, I still didn’t get it. I didn’t realize how sparingly that kind of thing happens. When I returned home and told everyone about the trip, it appeared that they could see what was happening, and all I saw was a fun trip to California.

The first time he said I love you was funny because at that point I think I already knew I loved him, it just didn’t register in my mind. I was in the process of walking out of his room, very mad when he told me to stop, because he loved me. That was right about the time we decided that maybe we were more then just "seeing" each other.

Still though, I figured six months would pass and we would both be over it. So many more things came to mind. Things that in the moment seemed insignificant and now made me feel like a moron for being so oblivious. How could I have been so stupid? How did I not know where it was going, that we were going to end up together?

Now I sit here wondering, if things are happening now that I’m just letting pass me by. Are there little things that other see that I don’t? I mean if everyone in the world knew we loved each other before us, what else does the world know about us?

I talked to my little cousin today who said, Rob and I are the happiest couple she has ever seen. We were the most functional couple. And, we were the kind of couple she hoped to be a part of some day. She said the oddest part is how rare we were. It used to be normal for people to marry and stay married. Now, something like 70% of marriages don’t last. Yet here you have, Rob and I, two naive, hopeful idiots who are hell bent on being together forever.

While we may have only been together for 8 years, there are things that make me think he is right, things that make me hope he is right, that he and I will be forever. I can’t imagine not being woken up every morning by his kiss goodbye. I can’t imagine not passing him in the kitchen and have his hand reach up and grace my back so subtly. I can’t imagine not getting in his car and have him instinctively reach over and grab my hand. I can’t imagine not being married to someone who would sit through five viewing of Twilight just so I could see my "boyfriend" Edward. I can’t imagine not cuddling up with him at night while he tolerates how hot I am as he sits there already melting. I can’t imagine not being married to someone who eats his cup of Cookies and Cream ice cream every night. I can’t imagine not being married to someone who still brings me rocks every time he goes somewhere new.  I can’t imagine not being married to someone who lets me shove my freezing ass hands and feet on him to be warm, I can’t tell you how often I cuddle up close and then jam my cold hands on his stomach or back, and he doesn’t even flinch.  I can’t imagine not being married to someone who puts lotion on my feet every night because he knows I hate to do it myself.  

Sometimes it amazes me how reading something can suddenly stop and make you re-evaluate your entire outlook on something, yet here I was seeing my relationship in a whole new light, in the light that every person around us could see when we couldn’t.

I may be silly. It may not happen often. The world might be against us, but for now, I can only hope my husband is right. I hope that we will never have a reason to part. That we really will grow old together. That I will get to make fun of him at his 50th birthday as much as I did on his 30th. I hope we can be that couple at weddings that are the last one standing on the dance floor when the DJ asks how long everyone has been married. I hope, that I have a hundred more years of being woken up by his kiss.

One can only hope right?

This year my mom decided she was going to bake pumpkin pies.  I was pretty shocked because A: she doesn’t really cook (she has been lately), and B: the extent of her baking is cookies.  Wait, that isn’t true, she does make some very…ummm, adult looking gingerbread cookies.

Anyway she calls me midway through making her second pie freaking out because she forgot to get two cans of sweetened condensed milk.  She was driving store to store to store and relying on my dad to pull her first pie from the oven with out burning it.

Here is the first pie that my dead watched over so well

 

I would say he was awful at babysitting pie huh?

So about 20 minutes later I get a call from my mom.

Me: Hello

Mom:  I FUCKED UP

Me: Ummm why.

Turns out when she was looking for the can of condensed milk they had moved it all to the end isle and her and some lady had been looking for so long that when she found it she just grabbed a can and left.   It appears her first pies were made of this:

Do you notice a difference?

He he he

So finally she gets her pies made and puts them outside to cool.  My dad and the boys are outside playing and my dad came in for a second.  Mom walked out to find this:

 

So my mom finally shows up to Thanksgiving with her perfect pies that ended up looking like that.

From there we had our nice dinner and then tried to take a family picture.  Most of them ended up like this:

Finally after a lot of trying we got one decent one

 

From there Rob and I tried to take a Thanksgiving photo.  Last year we took one on the steps and it was so cute I figured we should take the same one each year.  Six of those photos came out like this:

FUCKER!

Finally we got a sort of good one,

 

To add insult to injury I also totally jinxed myself.  I was alone that morning cooking.  When I was done I texted Ginger about how seriously clean my kitchen was.  I was like there are no dishes the counters are clean wtf this can’t be my kitchen.  She was pretty proud of me.  I replied to her that something was going to go wrong, I would have to spill something big, or mess something up.  Sure enough about 10 minutes before the entire meal was done I knocked the very large very full pan of gravy over.  Luckily I saved it and we still had a lot, however my floors walls and cabinets also had a lot.  I was right.  Somehow I had foreseen my future and I just knew that me, Shannon , could not go a single day with out making a stupid mess like that.  Ask my husband, I have never gone a single day with out spilling something on my shirt.  I made it until 4pm a few weeks back and texted him about how proud I was.  An hour late I spilled something on me, I don’t remember what but I do know it stained and it was bad.  On my way to Katies sons birthday a few months back I got dressed up really cute.  We stopped at Starbucks and I got an iced latte.  We pulled out onto the road and exactly 43 seconds later I spilled over half of it down my white shirt.  So now, I had to walk into Katies house holding my arm over my chest and get a shirt.  So here I am walking around in my cute pants, cute shirt, cute hair with a giant UNR shirt that didn’t match and made me look dumb,  I don’t know how I couldn’t have expected to spill on Thanksgiving.

Either way it turned out great and we all had fun.  I would say this was one of the best Thanksgivings ever.

 **I should add that as I was going to hit the post button on this post I managed to knock over my entire cup of coffee onto a very important paper.  SEE I’m not lying I can’t be trusted with food or drinks.