19 Years

Friday was our 19th anniversary. If you had told me I would remain married to the same man for this many years, I'd have called you a liar yet here I am, 19 years later and very happily married.

I almost always forget to get Steven a card. I don't know why I can't remember that but I can't. This year I remembered but didn't write on it. At 11 something Thursday night, I was in the bathroom trying to write something on the card. I'm sure it looked like c*ap but the card was on the computer waiting for him when he woke up, a first for me.

I was slightly disappointed that there wasn't a card waiting for me but didn't say anything. I"m so glad I didn't because when I got in the truck to go to work, there was something even better waiting for me.

Early in our relationship, when we both worked at Circle K, Steven used to take the front of a cigarette carton and write me a little note with his schedule for the week. It was very special to me. When I die and the kids are going through my things, they'll find some of those notes. Now they'll know what they are.

Anyway, there was one of those notes propped up against the steering wheel. I smiled so much my face hurt. I took it to work and looked at it all day and smiled every time I saw it.

I'm sure the ladies at Shell thought he was crazy when he went in at 6 in the morning and asked for an empty cigarette carton and then proceeded to tear off all the sides. I think he did explain what he was doing. He came back home, put it in the truck ( I didn't know until that night) and came in the house to get his phone. I didn't think anything about him coming back in but telling me he forgot his phone was just his ruse for returning home in case the dogs got restless when he drove back in the driveway and I went to look. Wasn't that sneaky?

On to our "date"...

Our anniversary tradition is eating at Outback. We very seldom eat there any other time because that keeps it special. We love Outback. The steaks (me) and fish (Steven) are great, the steamed veggies are wonderful (wonder what they do to them?), the Ceaser salad is divine (very garlicky) and the bread is out of this world.

For the first time ever, my steak wasn't cooked correctly. The 1st half was fine but the second half was red and bleeding. I have no idea how that happened but it did. I'd already cut it into pieces and had eaten half so I didn't send it back. 45 seconds in the microwave the next day took care of all that redness. :)

I was exhausted because the night before was Fall Festival at school so we just ate and headed home.

Just past Briarcrest, we hit a traffic jam. We could see flashing lights so we knew it was a wreck. Traffic was not moving at all, even in one lane. Even the off ramp at William Joel Bryan was not moving. We sat there for awhile before I asked Steven if he was going to turn around (can you believe I actually asked that?) He said that as soon as he did, traffic would start moving and it would take longer.

So - we sat there for 30 more minutes, just yards from the WJB off ramp before Steven finally took off across the median and turned around. There were officers at the Briarcrest on ramp turning traffic back up the on ramp and sending them down the feeder road. Traffic was backed up as far as you could see. When we passed where the accident was, it didn' look bad, one truck had rearended someone but that was the only vehicle. We wondered why both lanes were closed.

kbtx.com reported that it was a 5 car pileup and took 2 hours to clean up. Since we were fairly close to where the accident happened and we waited almost an hour, I'm really, really glad we turned around and came on home.

It was an interesting anniversary "celebration" but that's OK - we're working on year 20 now.