Kate Gosselin is Ridiculous.

That is all.

How I Almost Got Divorced on my Fourth Anniversary

So this week I celebrated my fourth wedding anniversary.

I know - whoa, yeah, four years, that's a long time.

And - I know - it's not really that long at all.

But anyway, the fact that four years has passed in the blink of an eye while it has also been like OMG I HAVE BEEN MARRIED MY ENTIRE LIFE is a topic for another post. Let me go slow here, gain some momentum on the old (new) blog.

So you know, I had do what people do on their anniversary. NO! NOT THAT! Good God, people, your mind is always in the gutter.

I had to buy an anniversary card.

This should be quick and painless. Not like the time that I had to buy a card for a friend of mine who adopted an abused dog and had to have one of his legs amputated and then he broke another leg and they found out he had cancer and had to send him across the rainbow bridge. I mean - there's a pretty slim selection of cards that express that sentiment. But an anniversary card? No big deal.

There I am, in the card aisle. I find the anniversary cards without too much trouble. At first glance, the designs look pretty awesome. In fact, there are a lot of PINK ones. As you know (well, okay, you probably DON'T know yet since this is only my third blog post) pink is my FAVORITE color. So I was browsing the pink cards and was getting a little frustrated that they all said "For my wife" when I needed it to go the opposite way. It actually took me a few minutes to work it out in my head that this card wasn't FOR me, it was FROM me so I sent a few mental vibes to my other half about the one I REALLY liked and then stepped away from the pink and down to the "For my husband" cards.

I realize a few problems right away. They are all brown. Ick. Brown is the color of poo.

I see that there are a few ways we can with this. We can go the cartoony route. There is actually one hilarious card with ducks wearing clothes. I wish I would have snapped a picture of this for the blog because let me tell you, it was a funny one. I actually almost buy this because my love of ducks is just a tad bit behind my love of the color pink BUT I remember that this is not ALL ABOUT ME. Plus, do cartoon ducks really express my feelings about my husband on the fourth anniversary of our marriage? So not only are the ducks out, I also decide to forgo the cartoon dogs, cats, hedgehogs (seriously, you just can't make this shit up) and a few with weirdly misshapen and overweight people.

A few more steps down this aisle and we're at the cards with the scripty print. Excellent. Now I should be able to find something. I pick up the first card.

"On this day, I married my soul mate." Oh no. Here we go.

"God has blessed me with your love." Already pulling the God card.

"I love you more today than yesterday." Um, sometimes. But let's be honest, some days you do really stupid shit and I love you LESS.

"For the one man I was born to be with." I like to think that I was born to do something awesome. Not that being your wife isn't awesome or anything. I just hope that I get to do something else awesome too. Something more awesome. Uh. Moving on.

"All my best moments are spent with you." ALL of them? You never have, like a great day just being by yourself, reading a book or something?!?!

I'm going to be honest with you. I started having an emotional breakdown. Right there in the card aisle. My marriage wasn't like THIS! I didn't feel like ANY OF THESE THINGS. I didn't LOVE MY HUSBAND BEYOND ALL OTHER THINGS OMG. What kind of marriage did I have anyway?! Finally I just grabbed a stupid card (it had some pink on it, I admit it!) and headed for the exit. What did it matter? My marriage was pretty much over anyway.

I drove home trying to cheer myself up. 50% of marriages end in divorce, so I'll be in good company. We made it four years, that's not so bad. Good effort. I beat my husband home, so I went upstairs to sign the card I bought. As I was finishing up, his car pulled up outside and I watched him get out. He pulled out the bags of groceries and a bouquet of flowers. He opened the front door and I heard him greet our dog and cats telling them each how much he missed them that day. I heard him start putting dinner together. I finally went downstairs and he looked up at me - "HEY! I didn't know you were home! I'm glad you're here. You want to give me a hand?"

The rest of the night could have been any other night. I tried to help with dinner and used the hot oil he was heating up for chicken for the garlic I needed for sauce. I transfered it to another pan but the heat was too high and the oil spattered and I burned my arm. I was too lazy to look up the recipe and added the ingredients in the wrong order, but just threw the vodka in the sauce at the end anyway. We moved the cat from the counter no less than twelve times before compromising that he could sit on the towel but NOT the plate. My phone rang off the hook with calls both important (which I ignored) and non-important (which I answered). The dog may or may not have licked the chicken. We finally cracked open a bottle of wine and sat down at the table and as he toasted us with a smile I had to laugh out loud. This was us! In all our messy, complicated glory.

As we finished up our dinner, we exchanged our anniversary cards.

I hope you saw this coming. The one he bought me - totally pink.

I guess we belong together after all.

So we have a blog. Now what?

So back to this business of blogging. There was one legit point that Zelda did have. What on earth was I going to blog about?

I was not short on ideas. The possibilities were endless.

I could blog about books.

I could blog about movies.

I could blog about cooking. Er, maybe not.

But I COULD blog about wine!

I could blog about crafts!

I could blog about greyhounds and cats. Hell, I could have an entire blog filled with pictures of animals in clothes! See?

Or animals making ridiculous faces! Who doesn't love that?!

I thought about all the blogs that enjoy. I just so happens that I read a lot of Mommy blogs, so I thought that maybe I should just go ahead and go with that. But you know, I don't have any KIDS so I guess that would be kind of creepy. BUT then I thought –what happens BEFORE a Mommy blog? Generally speaking, nothing, because it seems that most women don't start blogging until after they have kids. But I mean, they have a WHOLE LIFE before then. So I thought, well then, I'll just have a pre-Mommy blog.

Sometimes in this here blog I'm going to have to have a few moments where I get real. This is going to be one of those moments, so buckle your seat belts, folks. There are a lot of reasons I want to do this. I want to hone my writing skills. I want to have a place to dump thoughts that just keep rattling around in my head and keeping me up at night. I want to make friends and be part of the blogging community instead of being that weird pervert who just peeks in the windows. But mostly, I want to have a record of my life for the kids I don't even have yet. I want them to know what Mommy's life looked like before they were a part of it. And you know, while I'm being REAL here, I guess I want myself to know too.

So that's it. I'll just blog my life. The random and not so random shit that happens to me every day. I'll probably talk about lots of different things – books, movies, cooking misadventures, DEFINITELY wine and crazy pictures of the crazy people and animals that are part of my life every day. I mean – think about it. HOW COOL would it be if your great-grandmother had blogged her everyday life? Okay – so maybe not that cool if all she did was milk cows and make butter all day. BUT WAIT – see, that was a trick because you're nodding your head like YEAH NOT COOL but just think – do you know how to make butter? You don't. And BUTTER is DELICIOUS so you would probably read that blog after all! Ha! Got you on that one!

Next up… maybe more animals in clothes. You know that will be your favorite.

Blogging with Zelda

The question has never been "Why blog?"

The question has always been "Why NOT blog?"

And while I had plenty of answers for the first question, it was the second question that would stop me dead in my tracks. It's better for me to just get this out in the open with my first post, just throw it all out there. I have this - well, this - let's call it a "thing." When I was thinking about this - my very first blog post ever - and thinking of how to explain this thing, I thought it might make more sense to you if this thing had a name. I thought I might name it Zelda. Let me introduce you to Zelda.

Zelda is my worst fears. She is that voice in my head that tells me that I'm not good enough. Not pretty enough. Not smart enough or clever enough to ever be anything that's *insert any positive word here* enough.

Zelda had a lot of reason why I shouldn't blog.

A blog! What a narcissitic thing!

Who did I think I was anyway?

Why would anyone care what I had to say?

Who was my target audience? What would my tone be? What would I write about? Would I have to write every day?

WHAT WILL THE MORMONS THINK OF YOU! (You see, I follow a surprising number of Mormon blogs - and I can imagine that my blog content might not always be - uh, how do you say it? Mormon-friendly? And what if the Mormons find me, and they read my blog and they say OH WE HATE YOU (which isn't that the point of being Mormon that maybe you can't hate people) and they stop blogging just so that I can't read their blogs anymore and that would make me so sad I might just curl up and die from loneliness.)

And then Zelda said - MORMONS ASIDE - WHAT ABOUT YOUR MOTHER? You know you're gonna swear in this blog - you're going to say horrible dirty things with a lot of bad words and some day your mother will find this blog and she will say I raised you to be a better person than all this FILTH you're spewing into the universe and you have so disappointed me and Zelda was right all along and my own mother will disown me and that would make me so sad I might just curl up and die from loneliness. Again.)

So - you see - this blogging business - it seemed me that it always ended with my dying from loneliness. And if you know Zelda - she is very persausive.

So I never blogged. Zelda and I read blogs. Sometimes I even commented (Zelda didn't approve). But I never blogged.

But over time, you know, Zelda has really started to piss me off. In fact, if I really think about it, this blog probably started when I saw a special report on the nightly news about bullying in schools. As I listened to these little kids talk about how they're afraid to go to first grade, it reminded me A LOT of Zelda. And when that girl in braids and knee socks put her chin up and walked into her classroom I thought - YOU GO GIRL! and then I was pretty much embarrassed because this wee girl can face the bullies at an inner city high school who probably have GUNS and here I am hiding from Zelda who ISN'T EVEN REAL.

So here we are.

Screw you, Zelda.


(I apologize in advance to the Mormons. And my mother. I really love and respect you both.)