In 6 days I will be celebrating my 6th anniversary with the love of my life. Every year around this time, I write an anniversary post, filled with all that we've learned over the years, and thoughts of how encouraged and blessed I am that things used to be so hard, and now, are so easy. That would be my normal and traditional anniversary post....
But guess what? I've discovered a gem in the last year. I'm NOT normal. And neither is my husband. We're freaks, we're ridiculous, and yes, our marriage is hard. But we're still completely and utterly in love with each other, in fact, more than ever.
Instead of my long "we are perfect for each other" list, here's a glimpse of what life really looks like:

-We eat copious amounts of food at night. Probably the equivalent of 3 meals in one. A night where we don't go to bed mumbling the words "my tummy hurts me", where then the other replies "dude....I know." is considered an "off-night".

-I love to pick the skin off around my nails, and by pick the skin off, I mean, pick until I see blood. After a bad day, Chris came and sat down beside me while I sat in silence, picking away. He offered me his hand, to which, I gladly accepted. He then spent the next week complaining about the massively deep hangnail I gave him. He has since not offered me his hand on a bad day.

-I've developed a foreign morning language, and my husband has developed the gift of interpretation. It's called 'grunting'. Two grunts for "coffee" and four grunts for "what time is it". We plan on continuing to expand the language, to the point where we won't have to speak english ever again.

-My husband twitches in his sleep, and by twitches, I mean convulses, seizures and completely shakes the bed. For the most part I've learned to live with it, although, there have been nights where I've woken him with savage "love-taps", followed with, DUUUUDE!!! WOULD YOU JUST SLEEP STILL!!!!!

-Some couples have nice cutesy nicknames for each other, like sweetums or shmootsie. My husband and I on the other hand, refer to each other as 'DUDE'. We just find it easier, being only one syllable and all.

-I'm very easily scared. At least three times a week my husband will scare the crap out of me by doing one of the following: simply walking into a room, falling down (or up) the stairs when he's trying to be elastic man, or, my personal favorite, a sneeze, which are so loud you could hear it from across the street. I've learned to be loving in knowing that it's not his fault, by only getting mad at him occasionally.

-One day about a year ago, while putting away the dishes, I found a small little plastic toy gorilla sitting on the top shelf of the cupboard, having no idea where it came from or how it got there. Since then, Chris and I take turns placing said gorilla all over our house, to which the other finds him in their shoe, pocket, a plant, or my personal favorite, at the bottom of my coffee cup (note: being easily scared, when I first saw something black and floating in the bottom of my coffee, I thought it was a bug and screamed. Of course, I called Chris to A: give him poop for scaring me, and B: give him kudos on the awesome hiding spot that I have yet to beat.)

-Sometimes each of us like to take turns enjoying the sound of our own voices, and sometimes, all that really matters is having the other one there hearing, but not necessarily listening. More than half the time, we tell each other things, and watch the hearer nod and say yes, only to bring it up a week later, and hear that same hearer say a brain-dead expressionless "HUH?"
(P.S. My hubby went out today, and before leaving asked me to turn the sprinklers off in a few minutes. When he arrived back home an hour later, he found me writing this blog post, and made note that the sprinklers were still on.)

-We recently went through a phase of watching every single episode of Seinfeld, from start to finish (180 episodes). We've now replaced that obsession with watching every single episode of The Office. Many times we watch it in bed, planning on only watching one or two episodes, which leads to 4 or 5, which leads to 2am, on a work day.

In conclusion to my ridiculous list of idiosyncrasies, we don't have all the answers. Half the time, we're scrambling to find just one answer. In this whirlwind called life, you never know when a storm is gonna hit, or a bomb is gonna drop. But we've made it our one goal, to ride whatever wave comes, and ride it hard. Because life is too short to be anything but extreme, and nothing short of ridiculous.

Happy Anniversary to the love of my life <3 ........