On March 24th, 1995, Fuzzy and I were married in a civil ceremony in the courthouse at Brookings, SD. We wanted to avoid familial arguements over religion and money, so we eloped on a Friday in the middle of Lent, though, at the time, neither of us practiced any religion that observed Lent.

Our friends did, though, and the attempt at finding enough meatless dishes at a midwestern Chinese restaurant proved so fruitless that one of them said, “You know, let’s just all pick a different day, and go meatless then.” I have no idea if they honored that or not, but thought it was good that one of them had a solution.

Ten years later, we’ve bought three houses, sold two, been through a miscarriage, an epileptic dog (he’s stable these days), months where we had to choose between groceries and bills, and months where we were doing just fine, thanks (many more of the latter than the former), and it’s all been this incredible experience of learning to love and trust each other, of making each other mad, sometimes, and happy others (again, more of the latter than the former), and mostly just occupying the same space, a lot of the time, without having to talk.

We still have our contentious moments – we always have a pre-trip fight for example – although over the last ten years instead of letting it stress us out, we’ve learned to identify it. “This is our pre-trip fight,” we say, and we finish it, and move on. And then there is the never-ending issue of my addiction to change – I like to move furniture around every few months, and Fuzzy finds this distressing. I’ve gone through more hair colors and lengths in the last ten years than most others have gone through underwear. And unlike my beloved husband, I have grown beyond a fourth-grade palate.

It’s fitting, somehow, that even though it’s eleven in the morning, I am blogging this from bed. Fuzzy is snoring gently beside me, in his typical non-work-day laziness, and the dogs are curled at our feet. Our family, intimate as it is, begins its next decade together, unified.

I’m not sure what the next ten years will bring. We’d really like a child before I’m too much older (I turn 35 this summer), but if that doesn’t happen, that’s okay. We are enough.

And really, that’s my version of bliss. Not necessarily to be rich, or famous, or have a perfect over-achieving child, but to have enough – a house we love, dogs we love, each other to love, enough money to do mostly what we want, though some things require more planning than others, enough time to explore our own interests as well as joint ones…just…enough.

Fuzzy: Happy Tenth Anniversary. I love you.

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Effective today, there’s a new feature in the sidebar. It’s called Time Machine, and it offers and excerpt from and a link to, posts from a year ago on this day.