Fifteen Years Later....

The Best Thing College Ever Gave Me...

    This is going to sound so fifty's housewife but I'm going to say it anyways...the best thing I got out of college was Hero Hottie.

     Hands down. Without a doubt.

     Sure, I got a whole lot of other things out of the experience.

     Biology rocked. Annoying the furniture man's son in biology lab because I was a girl and understood the material just a bit better...still makes me laugh every time I pass the furniture store.

    Hanging with friends. Learning stuff that I have never, ever used.- but don't tell my girls that.

    But meeting Hero Hottie...tops it all.

   It's our anniversary tomorrow. Fifteen years. I've spent almost my entire adult life with him.

   I didn't even know who I was. He didn't know who he was.

   After we married, we continued college. We had a little cottage house where we played house. And during lunch we would both come home and eat Ramen noodles and watch television. Or not...

   But it was fun and easy. Romantic and fairy taleish.

   Than life happened. And it wasn't easy. It wasn't fun. Not all of it. And we have had our moments of just being roommates and we have had our moments of just simply being parents.

    And we had our dark moments where we weren't on the same page. I'm not sure if we were even in the same book...

   But together...if you look at the entire story...not just chapters...we've done pretty good.

   So here's to the man who sometimes steals the covers without realizing it, who always gets me a coffee when I need it, who has encouraged me to write and write and write some more until I succeeded. (Like today, when my article, MY article was on the front page of the newspaper! Of course, my very first front page article would have to be about buffalo balls but that's the stuff good stories are made of.)

   Here's to the man who

                loves 

                                    me 

                                                for 

                                                      me.

Tidal Wave

   Standing on the beach, my toes wiggling in the sand, the sun beats down on my bare shoulders. The small waves lap lazily but steadily against my ankles, drawing out the little tiny crabs from their locations. They flow, helplessly in the wave for a few inches, and then they scurry back, burying themselves in the sand again. But it's only on the edge, where the salty water kisses the land and in a few moments, the cycle repeats.
   The sea offers them an abundant serving of tasty things that crabs like to eat and I notice that some of the crabs like to stay near the long green ribbons of seaweed.
    The tides comes and goes and their life is intertwined with it, regardless of how hard they have to work to keep from completely being washed out to sea or the fact that they can't be too far away either. Danger lurks from being too far away from the sea. The heat of the sun, the sharp beak of a seagull, or the lack of food.
   And through all this, they never give up.
   But do they really have a choice.

   Sometimes I feel like life is that edge between ocean and land. Richly abundant and teeming with adventure but also dangerous and wearing. 
   How many events in my life has swept me off my feet like an ocean wave and threatened to take me out to sea? Some I saw coming....others were unexpected. There's a rule about the ocean...don't turn your back on it. Is that the same about life...don't turn your back on miscommunications or bad habits least they become tidal waves?
   Life ebbs and flows and we are intertwined with its rhythms; regardless if we want to be or not. When the weather is good and the ocean is calm we need to enjoy the sun warming our souls and the sand between our toes.
   When the weather is bad and the ocean is crazy we need to take cover; knowing that all storms eventually come to an end and the sun will shine again.
  
   So for right now this girl is going to find a rock ledge to hide under and wait for the storm to pass; letting the waves wash away the debris of gathered negative thoughts and when the sun breaks and the ocean glows with its warmth; this girl's going sunbathing.