Five Years and Counting...

Or is 12 years and counting?

Today is our 5 year anniversary. For the life of me I have the hardest time remembering our wedding anniversary. Seriously...year before last I COMPLETELY forgot. Hadn't crossed my mind at all until that evening when my husband handed me a small box. Inside was a small anniversary band with 7 diamonds. Yes I completely forget and he buys me a diamond ring. (I did make him brownies that evening in hopes of atonement...which worked. You know what they say, "The way to a man's heart is through is stomach.")

So it isn't too surprising that I was thinking about our summer vacation on Wednesday when I remembered we had an anniversary coming up and realized OMG it is this Friday. I mentioned it to him that evening and he told me that I could have evened things up for the "Forgotten" year since it hadn't crossed his mind. We ended up deciding to go out for a nice steak dinner last night (with Jed in tow since Shelby is out of town). I told him not to bother getting me anything since I was planning on stopping at the liquor store this evening for a nice bottle of pinot noir (yes Lori, the 47 pound rooster) and was also going to track down one of those vacuum sealing cork stopper sets.

I'm not sure why I have a hard time remembering our anniversary. However I should note that I'm really bad at remembering my own age. Seriously! It's crazy but I have to stop and think what year it is to remember that I'm 37 (one of the benefits of being born in a year that ends in zero...it's 2007 therefore I must be 37. I then add and subtract from that to remember everyone else's. Jay is a year old, my sister is 2 younger, etc...). I'm not a time counter. I was never one to keep track of how many months, weeks, days and seconds we had been going out. And to me, the last 5 years is just in a drop in the bucket of our relationship. I met him 12 years ago, with the exception of the year I lived in Michigan (2 or 3 months of which we were broken up) we have been together. 12 years, damn, that's an amazingly long time. Almost 1/3 my life.

But I foresee many more years. We are opposites but opposites that compliment each other. He is outdoorsy, I'm very indoorsy. He is pessimistic, I'm an optimist. He listens to Pink Floyd, Metallica and White Zombie, I prefer Jewel, and whatever is on the local country and pop stations. He prefers dark beers, I gravitate to light American beers, red wine and margaritas. He watches Married with Children, Ultimate Fighting and hunting show whileI watch Grey's Anatomy, Desperate Housewives and just about any reality show known to man-kind, even the bad ones. (The only two shows we watch together are Hereos and Lost.) For two people so different, we get along remarkably well. I think is is because we both live life in a similar fashion: with honesty, focus on family, avoidance of drama, trying to do what is right.

We rarely argue. Granted we disagree on things, but we rarely argue with one another (arguing with the teen is a whole other story). His friends are amazed when I "let" him go riding, fishing, hunting almost any every weekend without a fuss. They are so used to their wives/girlfriends throwing a fit and complaining. As long as he is willing to stay home when I need him to, I would just as well have him out of my the house for awhile and happy.

And to think, had I not picked him up in the bar that night, I might have missed out on all of this...