The Second One - 1,000 Words

She sent me this pic while I was at work on Friday. This is the dress she wore when she married me two years ago today.  A thousand words for sure.

We picked our wedding date (9/3) because we both love Idaho’s Septembers,  but also because the numbers of the day have been significant in our lives. At the top of the list, nine was my volleyball number and she’s got three kids. Ahem. We’ve got three kids. 

She was trying the dress on Friday because we planned to wear them last night at our celebratory dinner. We’ve road tripped this weekend to visit her oldest daughter who’s begun her freshman year at college. When we rolled into Boise last night however, we were beat from the long, twisting drive from Moscow.  We’re hoping to feel like going out tonight back home in Poky.

Back to the picture… 

The dress. She found it in the Dallas airport months before the date when she went back home to visit her ailing grandmother. Our wedding and favorite colors are purple and green, so this was simply perfect. Now every time the boys visit their grandparents, the oldest one sends her pictures from that dress shop in the airport showing us his favorite patterns with commentary.

Her legs. My wife has some damn beautiful calves. A piece of advice I got for our wedding day was to notice a few “snapshots” and save them in my mind. We got married on our favorite trail system in Pocatello and when we were walking toward the preacher (her brother), I noticed the dress flowing over her shiny, strong calves as we walked on the trail. Gulp. Now when we hike, that image often resurfaces. 

Her feet.  She has a tattoo on her right foot that says “I'm strong & powerful.” Indeed.

 

The bottom of the mirror.  Our sweet doodle Wiley Wayne did that while we were on a vacation at some point over the last two years. We saw Wiley Wayne go by on our Facebook feeds while we were on our honeymoon in Sun Valley. He’d been returned to the breeder who we got our other dog from because “he was defective.”  That family had eight kids with five under five. WILEY WAYNE WASN’T DEFECTIVE!  Neither one of us mentioned seeing the puppy. We both silently kept thinking about him and revisiting his pictures. When one of us casually mentioned, “So, did you see Krystle’s puppy?”  It was over.  Wiley Wayne is our honeymoon baby. It’s a $14 mirror and we’ve not replaced it because (a) he’ll likely do it again, (b) we’d rather spend the money on other things, and (c) clearly, the mirror still works just fine.

The lime green shoe in the back. That’s my latest pair of gym/running shoes. I’ve been a little more regular with the gym since school started and I’ve renewed my gym membership for the semester at ISU, but our hectic lives haven’t helped me make it a habit yet again. That lone shoe is me not giving up on that 6-pack – and her not caring one way or the other.

The wooden chair arm. She refinished the wood on that chair at some point, and it keeps floating around the house while we try to find a place for it.  It’s currently her clothes-catcher by Wiley’s mirror. 

The flat dog bed. We got a cheap CostCo memory foam bed for Alli, the 13 year old black lab that came with her. She doesn’t use the bed very often, but we keep it for her in front of the vent for cool air in the summer and warm air in the winter.  Alli’s been coughing lately and her legs are starting to give out.  That bed probably won’t be in our room too much longer. 

The corner of the bed spread. It took us a while to find a bed spread we both loved. We should have bought three of them. I surprised her for Christmas by painting two of our walls that teal color in the print.

The white walls.  The color is Sherwin Williams Creative White. SW1911.  It used to be a Columbia Paint color (8620) before Sherwin Williams bought Columbia.  I’ve painted four different houses that color—including my mom’s when she was away one weekend for a work conference. A bunch of my friends at the time helped me surprise her because I had to do it while she was gone so her emphysema wouldn’t be enflamed with the fumes.   The fresh paint brightened my childhood home and made selling the house easier when she died not long after. Creative White is crisp and clean and goes wonderfully with accent walls of any color. 

The wood dresser.  After mom died, I used some of her life insurance money to buy bedroom furniture. That piece of furniture is one of the most grown-up and serious things in the house. (Third drawer up holds my emergency clown nose and all sorts of other whimsical junk though.)

The wood floors. I don’t love having a wood floor in the bed room. I prefer to have my feet sink in to plush carpet when I roll out of bed, but with three dogs and four cats, we need something easy to clean.  The wood needs to be refinished   It’ll probably happen after the kids are out of college.  And after we get a new mirror. 

Her hands. One of the gifts of being gay is the deep gratitude and intense thrill every time I hold one of those hands. In public, it entails scanning our environment and assessing verbal and physical threats. If you’ve ever seen us hold hands, you’ve gotten to experience me experiencing that gratitude and that thrill. One of my favorite song lyrics by Andrew McMahon and the Wilderness is, “For all the things my hands have held, the best by far is you.”  Yep.