Ah, Thanksgiving.

This is the anniversary of my first date with my husband. I don't think he got me a present, but that's okay. Before our date, he spent the whole day at the beach having some sort of weird alternate universe Thanksgiving with his French mother and I had spent the day with my family, enjoying traditional dishes, such as heaping servings of passive aggression, and sides, including resentment, boredom and occasional flashes of humor. It was a good day for something new. According to him, my sweet husband spent the whole day looking forward to our date that night. Awwww...

He picked me up in his two door Honda Accord* and we started with dinner at Garibaldi's. That makes it seem like we were some kind of fancy couple, who ate in fancy restaurants. The reality is that the only two places open were the IHOP and Garibaldi's and I was too bloated to consider IHOP. We split the check at Garibaldi's and went to a party, filled with a lot of people my husband knew and a few people I recognized. I don't remember much about the party, other than I realized that I had forgotten about a lot of people I grew up with. They were (and are) nice enough, but I went to boarding school and I wasn't all that cool to begin with, so I don't think anyone really missed me. I like parties where I don't really know anyone, though, because there's no pressure.

After the party, we went to a bar called Jungle Jim's; I had never been there and I've never been back. I'm not even sure it's still open. I remember that it looked like the bathroom of a pizza place and that we ran into a friend of mine from school, who was with my eleventh grade prom date (his claim to fame, I'm sure...not). They eventually got married and they're divorced now, which makes me sad, because they both seem like nice people. They have three little children, and I know that children usually don't make marriage any easier. Not to be depressing, but children can destroy a marriage. Not that children destroyed their marriage. If there's one thing I've learned in ten years of being married, it's that you have no idea what goes on in other people's relationships. Seriously. I mean, would you ever guess that A. and I like to dress up as school girls and get in slap fights eat takeout Chinese right from the carton?

By the time A. and I had our first date, I knew far more about him than a potential girlfriend should know. He lived in an apartment across the street from mine and was friends with my roommate. When she moved to San Francisco, he didn't notice and kept coming over, in the middle of the night after he came in from a bar. I was happy for the company, because watching Jerry Springer at midnight all by yourself implies that you're watching it for real and not just as a joke. And A. needed an audience; over a couple of weeks, he read all of his diaries from his post-college years to me. That was before everyone in the world had a Blog, by the way, so it wasn't really normal to share intimate details of one's life with relative strangers. And there was some seriously embarrassing stuff in there**.

In spite of knowing all his deep, dark and flat out strange thoughts, I married him, a year and two months after our first date. I married him for his health insurance, his heartbreaking good looks and because I couldn't (and can't) imagine spending my life with anyone else.

Happy Thanksgiving, y'all!

* Boy, do we ever wish we still had that car, in light of our recent experience with a BMW. Speaking of, if anyone wants a 2001 BMW five-series wagon that might just need a new engine, I will give you a good price. This is not a joke. Email Me and make an offer.

** This is one reason he will never leave me, because if he does, all of that stuff is going right here on my Blog. And I'll never leave him because I really love our house and I couldn't afford to live here without his income. Shallow, I know, but it is what it is.