Our Engagement and Mom's Day

Well, today is what it is. I am just now getting the chance to post because I spent the day with my amazing children, having fun bowling, then feeding the ducks and geese at Krug Park, and then having dinner at Dad's. This all came after breakfast in bed and some other great surprise gifts that Rachel cooked up for me from the three of them.

I struggle with celebrating Mother's Day. It is an odd feeling day, up and down. I myself have no mother...blah, blah, she's still with me....come on, she's not here. Then there are my own children who bring me great joy.

Today was another special day for me too. Brian asked me to marry him 6 years ago today under an umbrella at a Royals game. The moment I said yes, I knew this love was the 50+ year love, the kind that most people long to be a part of, but many won't...the kind of love where you still like each other...where together you are always 100%, even if you aren't both giving 50/50. I will always love him.

So here's a list of things I love about loving Brian. I had a good time thinking about some things to write.

1. He put me and the girls first (and then Tye too when he came along). I went round and round with him about buying himself things. He would just sit back and watch as the girls and I shopped for clothes for them, and most everything he bought during our marriage came because he actually couldn't do without it or I surprised him. Even money he would get for Christmas or his birthday...he would always say for us to take it for what we needed. I always made him save it up for a new Jeff Gordon car or some tools or something. He would always tell me that he had everything he needed. I loved that immaterialism about him.

2. He spent the entire day on Sundays working on his lessons for the next week. I finally came to realize that this was because he was a perfectionist and also because it kept me from making plans on Sundays when the race was usually on!

3. He had this orange plaid shirt. It sounds worse than it was. Orange was a good color on him. This plaid shirt was just very different than anything else he ever wore. I playfully teased him about it any time he wore it. He would come in while I was putting on my makeup and dance around with his orange shirt on and wait for my comments. Then he stopped wearing the orange shirt. One day he came home from school and said that a group of 8th graders had come to visit him today. They were getting a skit ready for something in which one of them would portray him, and they wanted to borrow the orange plaid shirt. He came home and told me about it. I said...good God Brian, you're a middle school teacher. The only reason they would want to borrow that orange shirt is to make fun of you. He giggled and said he thought I actually might be right. The shirt is still hanging in the closet, but I don't remember him ever wearing it again.

3. He spent 2 whole days drawing the plans for a shoe rack. The shoes in our house drive him crazy. Early on, they got dumped into the coat closet every day, and this completely stressed him out. So he worked and worked on plans to build this shoe rack. He measured, he fretted over the size and where to put it. He lectured us all on how we would keep the shoes neater once he made the rack. He continued to gripe about the shoes. I finally asked him when he was going to build that shoe rack, and he said...let's just buy one. So we did. The shoes are sort of organized now, it depends on the day.

4. He let me make porcupine meatballs like 3x before he finally fessed up that he didn't like them. The man ate nearly everything, he tried all kinds of different dishes and there wasn't much of anything he didn't care for, except for those meatballs. I've already mentioned that he didn't like funnel cakes or pizza pockets or hot pockets or pot pies...he would say just grunt when one of those foods was mentioned. He would bargain with me that I do all the cooking and he would clean up the kitchen. He did finally take up grilling, which he enjoyed, either because it kept him from doing the other cooking, or it was just a good excuse to sit on the deck with a beer.

5. Brian has lots of Jeff Gordon 1:24 cars. He was very particular about them. The girls messed with them once in a while and it didn't settle well with him. I was repeating this story to a friend of my grandma's who came to my house for a baby shower for one of my sisters. She was checking out Brianville and I told her that the girls sometimes messed with the hoods and the trunks since they open. She giggled and opened every single one of the trunks and hoods, then said...see what he does now! So when he got home, he started in on the girls, and they just laughed and told him that some old lady that came over had done it. The expression on his face was hilarious.

6. Then there was the time that he started in on the girls for hitting the garage door with the basketball. There was a fairly large dent, way bigger than a basketball could cause, and we were trying to figure out where it came from. Rachel said she was fairly sure she had never hit the door that hard. He just kept on. Then the next day my dad called and said...by the way, I backed into your garage door the other day.

7. When I met him, he was obsessed with his laundry. I guess a single guy has different concerns than a single mother of two young girls. He would do his laundry in the mix of his lessons and the race on Sundays, and everything got put away. Shirts were hung a certain way with certain buttons buttoned. Pants were also hung a certain way with the seam facing a certain direction. When I started doing his laundry, this really stressed him out. He liked me doing his laundry of course, but was so particular that I finally had to tell him that I didn't have time to spend all day on a Sunday doing a week's worth of laundry just for him. I told him he was welcome to do the laundry himself, but that my goal was to have clean clothes, unwrinkled and hung on hangers, preferably back in the right closets, with clean towels etc. With as busy as we were, this was usually a reasonable goal that we could meet, at least early on. Then Tye came along and Brian and I basically lived out of the laundry room. I told him I know I was a bad influence on him, but he seemed by then to realize that maybe those particularities were ok to have ditched for the life he had with us. There were only so many hours left after work, and we enjoyed spending them together, which is what was important.

8. His hair...I don't have to say much, I've already mentioned his lengthy routine. As much as it was more convenient once he buzzed it, I long for the days that he spent longer getting ready than I did. He would take a shower and get dressed and come out and joke around with the girls because with wet hair, he looked like a troll. I can't begin to tell you the laughs we had over his hair issues.

9. Coffee was another major need of Brian's. Just the other morning, Tye said he thought he needed a coffee. It was hilarious. Brian couldn't function without his coffee in the morning, or all day, as his friends at school would attest to. Anytime he was in the hospital, he would beg the nurses for a good cup of coffee and then he would be ok. They always did a great job to try to accommodate his needs! I miss the smell of coffee brewing in our home each day. When his mom would come to stay with us, they would drink a whole pot of coffee while watching the game show network. I know those were good times for her too.

10. And speaking of which...games shows! Interestingly enough, he did not like Jeopardy. He and his mom wanted to be partners on Wheel of Fortune. He also really liked Lingo, which he got the girls to watching. But most of all, he loved the Price is Right. When we first met, he didn't necessarily watch these a lot, just when they were on or he had time. But in the last few years, with him spending so much time at home, he really started enjoying watching them. I forgot to mention Let's Make a Deal and Match Game, which I think he mostly watched to make fun of the clothes and prizes from that time period! I teased him some about watching these, and he finally told me that he thought it was fun, it exercised his brain, and it wasn't as stressful as the other shows on t.v. now. Good point.

11. I was gently reminded of this funny quirk of Brian's when my brother-in-law disappeared for several minutes tonight after supper. He was looking for some reading materials, and Karis and Erin and I had a good laugh about men who spend long periods of time in the bathroom. I got the giggles because when Brian needed a pit stop like this, he would say he needed to see a man about a horse.

I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I would still have said yes if I knew.