Happy Anniversary

My mom thinks our new addition is a prelude to greater things. She also told me that the first year is the very hardest in any marriage, and that all years after the first will seem like a piece of cake in comparison. I didn't tell her my real reason for being relieved. My first year with Bruce has been a year of joy, a year of discovery, and most often a year of reassurances. He has reassured me more often than I can count that I am a real person, with valid and valuable opinions, and that I am more than deserving of every sort of love. He's given me all the sorts of love that I could have imagined before meeting him. He's showed me in every concievable way that there is nothing in his heart but love for me, love for all that I am as a person, and I can only hope that my first year with him has been full of such wonderful revelations for him as well. I want nothing more than for my husband, and all of the people I love, to know how very much they are worth. I want to spend the rest of my years with Bruce giving back all he has given me and more. He's my one true partner.

Friday, May 12 was our first wedding anniversary. We spent the morning doing what we do best - I at the computer and he at his video game - and then went out for breakfast. (It took some doing - I wanted breakfast, he wanted to stay home for a while, and then go to breakfast.) We first went shopping for a manual lawn mower. The fact that we have been shopping at antique malls in the area should give you an idea of how hard it will be for us to find one. By the time we were done shopping, I was aching for eggs bennidict, and we went to Village Inn to feed my craving.

While we were there, we perused the classified section of the local newspaper. Luckily for us, there were several potential puppies available. We were decided on one of four breeds of pup: the scottie, the dachshund(s), and the basset hound(s). We came back home and Bruce started calling them up, leaving messages on at least three machines before he got through to someone. It was the basset hound breeder. She was at a store a few miles away, would be there for a while, and invited us to come down and see the puppy. Right after that phone call, we got a call from the lady who was selling the scottie. She was quick to tell us that he had "an overbite, but he's very sweet and perfectly fine." I was skeptical about this, because in my experience, a salesperson doesn't bring up a fault unless they know it will be noticed immediately, and an overbite can be a serious thing for a small dog. Bruce called a local vet clinic and they told us that we couldn't be sure unless we saw the puppy, and that if the teeth lined up (top and bottom) reasonably, there shouldn't be a problem with them. That was enough to convince us that we weren't interested, and we instead headed out to see a woman about a basset hound.

We took a tour of the store she was at and when we didn't see her we bought a paper to call her from a payphone. (We forgot the stupid ad at home.) She reassured us that she was indeed there, in the one place we hadn't looked before we gave up. We then went back and (of course) found her right away.

The minute she took the little boy out of the crate, we were doomed. I think Bruce knew it before I did. He spent only a minute or two on niceties with the woman before running off to the ATM for some cash.

This is the best gift I could ever ask for, another unconditional love of my life. Happy Anniversary, Bruce.







PS: Check out those HUGE paws!