ONE

Well, looks like we made it. Yesterday was our one year anniversary.

24 more to go and then it's time to move on! :-)

We didn't do anything incredibly sexy or romantic or even all that exciting, but we did spend the day together and talked a lot -- which is the greatest gift I can ever get anyway.

The thing is that Scott and I went through a LOT in our first year of marriage.

Before we even got married, we had the fun-filled ordeal with the Mominator. Scott's mom cancelled the rehearsal dinner, stirred up bunches of drama and caused a mutual severing of ties. I became Public Enemy #1 for causing a woman to "lose" her son. The facts of the case were not important, it was all my fault.

We hadn't even been married for a month when his cat Jasper died. Jasper was honestly his best friend, his buddy, his compadre. Jasper is the only cat who willingly, eagerly came when called and didn't try to make it look like an accident. Jasper loved his Daddy and openly showed affection for every little thing that Scott did for him -- and the feeling was mutual. It was heartbreaking to go through that loss with him, and I honestly would have done anything to have kept that from happening.

Then there was the great move in. This was pretty horrific and undocumented. I hadn't lived with a man that wasn't my dad in 6 years. He'd been living on his own for well over a year. We didn't mesh terribly well and getting cozied into my 1100 square foot townhouse was somewhat of a nightmare. Still, it forced us to really work on our communication skills and, in the long run, made our marriage much stronger. He learned that I'm high maintenance but sort of pretend not to be. And I learned that "whatever makes you happy" roughly translates to "whatever will make you stop bitching at me."

There is still a toilet seat problem that I gave up on.

In December, still not even at a six month mark for our marriage, my dad died. There is no way for me to ever be able to sum up how grateful I am to Scott for getting us through that time. He was my rock and he helped hold me up and then rocked me to sleep at night when I was crying. And still helped keep my whole family's sense of humor up a little. Prime example: Scott went along when we went to the funeral home to make the arrangements. The funeral director was very nice and compassionate, as they are prone to be, and was pretty matter-of-fact in how much the service was going to cost. Scott just flat out asked him if there was anything he could do to lower the price of the services, and the guy came down in price. Later on, Scott admitted to feeling bad because he didn't want anyone to think he was trying to cheapen Dad's memory, and then added, "But baby, you know I don't pay retail for anything."

You have no idea how often I think of that phrase.

2005 has been the year of career shifting. Scott is in his 3rd job for the year. Filing our taxes next year should be mighty interesting.

We've helped my mom move and inadvertently run a low-frills, er, couch and breakfast for my gimpy cousin. We've had a new cat arrival. We've seen friends come and go.

I just did the math and figured that there are 8760 hours in one year. Really, it doesn't seem like that much when you compare it to a lifetime -- which is how much time I hope we have together...

Mrs. Big Daddy :-)