Monday, October 27, 2014

20th Anniversary or 20 ish hours away


Happy Anniversary to us! 

Now, I know that once people reach a certain age, they don't celebrate the day they began dating.  But for Eric and I, that date marked a significant change in our relationship, like the song says, "What started out as friendship has grown stronger...".  We were friends.  And 20 years ago, last Friday, Eric took that friendship and kicked it up a notch, by asking me out.  Of course, it wasn't simple, there was lots of drama, but he chose me.  And when he asked me out, I said Yes.  And I took his hand, and we never looked back.   And now we've been together for 20 years.  It is so cool to be able to say that.  This year marks a change in our relationship, I was 19 when we started dating, now I have been with Eric longer than I had a life without him.  That's saying something.  I look around at other relationships, and I realize, this is something to be proud of.  Staying together, and still loving each other after 20 years is Hard.  All the stuff we've been through, it has been hard.  And as another song says, "we've made it through the rain...", it's something to be Proud of, and I am very proud.  

It seems Eric and I have trouble sneaking away on the wedding anniversaries of multiples of 5.  We ran away for our 5 year anniversary, to Memphis, to visit my Uncle, and I was in the throes of my infertility battle, and nothing was going the way I wanted.  It was hard.  At 10 years, we had Christopher, but 2 weeks before our anniversary, he had to have surgery to get a feeding tube put in.  We were planning on running away to the Poconos, but ended up just running away for 1 night downtown.  And for our 15th wedding anniversary, last year, I had a baby a month before.  There was no running away.  We were thinking of the Poconos again, it was the #2 choice for our honeymoon, #2 DisneyWorld.   We'll get there someday, but 1 month after having a baby, we were not running away. At least, we didn't plan to.  But then Eric's grandfather passed away, days before our anniversary, and we ended up on the road, all 5 of us, so the only anniversary celebrating we did was have a nice lunch at Cheeseburger in Paradise on the way to Marion.  

So, I thought I'd kidnap Eric this year, for this anniversary, our 20th, and take him to DisneyWorld for the Food and Wine Festival as a surprise.  Only he found my deposit on the credit card, and thought the card had been stolen.   He freaked out, and I had to confess what I wanted to do.  Actually, confession really was good for my soul; I'd been so worried he would kill me for adding to our financial situation, and Jake wasn't weaned yet.  I hadn't been able to sleep.   

We ended up deciding to not go to Disney at this time.  We are leaning towards going in June, during Star Wars Days.  

That left us with a what are we going to do now?  Mom W. was still kind enough to offer to watch the boys.  So we decided to run away.  After considerable debate, we chose to run away Thursday night to go see the Sing Off winning a capella group Home Free and stay in a hotel in Carmel.   So, we dropped the boys off with Mom W. at 4:30.  God Bless Her.  Jake had had a rough night with me, I prayed she'd have an ok evening with him, that he'd sleep with her.  We arrived in Carmel, footloose and child free with about an hour and a half before the show.  So we went exploring into Old Town Carmel.  Next door to the Palladium, where the show was going to be is a mall that didn't used to be there.  Inside were a couple restaurants.  After bombing at the first, the wait was going to be a half an hour, we walked away, thinking we'd go for sushi down the street.  We passed a place called Divvy's, and there was a menu out front.  Ah ha!  And not too crowded either.  

We went in, and it's a tapas style, small plates, meant for sharing.  Now in theory, if I finally get a night away from the kids, it would be idea to NOT share my dinner with anyone.  However, I don't mind trying new things and sharing with Eric.  



I got the Divvy's drink special, as we sat at the bar.  It's a very good thing we weren't driving anywhere for a while, my drinky was quite strong.   Eric got a sampler of local beers, quite tasty.
I felt like such a grownup!  
And I think we tried something from every page of the menu. 
It wasn't cheap.  But it was yummy!  And it was so nice to eat yummy food, sit at the bar, and just have a good meal without having someone complain about what we were serving...as the boys have been wont to do lately.  A little after 7 we settled up and walked over to the show.

Our seats were on the mezzanine, high in the balcony.  In theory we were in the front of the balcony, but because of the oval shape of the venue, we were actually Behind the group.  What an unusual vantage point.  Eric felt bad that we were staring at the group's backsides.  I didn't mind much.  They turned around, and there was no bad to be seeing through.  And the band turned an acknowledged us frequently.  Had it been any other band/group, those seats would have been bad, but for us, they were really cool.  No wonder people love being up on stage during the show.  It's amazing to see the joy on all those faces, to hear them all singing along.  It was almost like we were up there too! 


One of the things that I loved best about this group was their Bass man, Tim Foust.  He's got the best range I've ever heard.  His low is so low that when I was watching on tv my ears could barely hear it.  He's phenomenal.  And he can kick it up to his chest and falsetto like too.  Huge range.  


One of the fun songs they do, is a cover of All About the Bass. 
In fact, I'd never heard this song until Home Free posted it on Facebook.  I loved it immediately. They tweaked the words a little to make it that the boys like a girl with curves too.  Melts my heart.  


And they sang Johnny Cash's Ring of Fire. 
My video isn't very good, but I had to capture a snip here and there.  It was soo cool.  Tim Faust sang so low that I could feel the beams of the balcony vibrate.  They sang it on the show, and here you can hear it better with Avi from Pentatonix, the video rocks, and in person, without Avi, it still rocked.  I swear, if he had been at the Battle of Jericho, he could have single-handedly knocked those walls down with just his voice.  
Yeah, it was an awesome concert.  

We crashed at the hotel, and no small baby woke me up every hour or two.  
Unfortunately, when I checked in the next morning, my mother in law was not so lucky. 

But she let us play a little bit before relieving her of all the yahoos.  

You know, we're wild and crazy kids.  And after 20 years of being together, what do we choose to do given a day to ourselves.  That's right, we went shopping.  We walked the halls of Whole Foods.  By ourselves.  I bought oily supplies and some fun groceries that we just can't around here.  And we walked up and down every aisle.  They had samples of cheese and crackers, and it wasn't crowded on a Friday morning.  It was lovely.  We worked up an appetite, so we decided to try another new place 
for lunch.  

294/365



It's called The Journey, and it's a sushi/chinese/american buffet off 69 in Fishers. 
I'd not heard of it.  But a very pregnant friend traveled there for their last family of 4 meal before the 5th was born. In my mind that's high praise.  For who wants to travel that far when they're a million months pregnant?  Must be good.  I checked the menu online and I was intrigued.  


I think that about says it all.  
Seaweed salad and sushi, all I can eat?  Oh yeah! 

After our fancy luncheon at Journey, we waddled home and picked up the kids.  
It had been 20ish hours away from Jacob and my boobs were going to bust.  And we were exhausted.  I think I'm going to need more than 1 night of sleep to catch up on the many sleepless nights.
So we were tired by the time we got hom.  The boys did quiet time while Eric, Jake, and I took naps.  
Because we could.  


I didn't have a ton of money to spoil Eric as I would have liked.  
But I did get him a gift... a Steak-n-Shake gift card.  20$ for 20 years. 
Kind of sappy. 

Have I ever told you this story? 

Picture it.. Butler University, 20 years ago, I was just a kid in college, I was 'studying' pharmacy, but I use the term studying loosely, I was also in the marching band, and band sorority, Tau Beta Sigma.  Our brother fraternity, Kappa Kappa Psi held their meetings at the same time.  Usually I'd walk over with a group of co-ed friends.  Eric and I were friends at the time, until one night, after I'd casually mentioned to my friend Kelly that I'd go out with Eric if he asked.   She, among many, had told me I should, and I finally, reluctantly, agreed.  And then she went and told Eric.  On a certain Monday night, before our TBS/KKPsi meeting, Eric sat me down on the steps of Ross Hall and asked me if I'd like to go out on a date with him, to go see Les Mis, which was playing the coming weekend, for a matinee.  Um YES!  It took me a second to realize the implications.  Um, I was going to go on a date with Eric.  How did I feel about that?  OK.  So he put his hand out to help me up, and I took it.  And we started holding hands.  Immediately.  After the meeting, a bunch of us were going to go to Steak-n-Shake.  It was the only place around open 24 hours, so it was verra popular among the college crowd.  We stopped by his dorm so he could get his wallet, and as I waited, a friend of mine, the girlfriend of one of my Brothers, leaned over and said, "I didn't know you were dating?  How long have you two been together?" I looked down at my watch and replied, "About 2 hours."   And we went to Steak-n-Shake.  And while normal people go out to fancy restaurants on special anniversaries or Valentine's day, we often will end up back there.  Back to the where it started.  For that was the start to our relationship. Once we crossed that line from friends to dating, we never looked back.  We didn't need to.  We already knew the stuff about each other that would be deal breakers in a relationship.  As friends, I knew he wanted to get married, have kids.  I knew that he was an active participant in his family church, heck I'd even visited, just because I'd been the friend that had a car and could give him a ride. Yup, we just started holding hands, and never let go. 

Now, it's been 20 years, and what does he want to do?  Go to Steak-n-Shake with the boys for a family dinner.  We all enjoyed it.  It was the perfect end to a wonderful day. 

1 comments:

Elizabeth said...

What a wonderful, wonderful celebration, Cathy! Glad you were able to get away. Congratulations!