Anniversaries

Wedding Anniversary

Yesterday, my husband and I have been married for 19 years.  In today's day and age, having a 19-yr-old marriage is an accomplishment, one which at 8 years, we weren't sure we were going to achieve.  (I often tell people it took us 9 years to decide we really wanted to be married.)

But after 19 years, we have five daughters ranging from almost 17 to just turned 8.  We've lived in four states and over a dozen houses or apartments.  (Including some accommodations which were definitely unconventional . . . ever lived in a drop-in truck camper and a 12x20 shed?  With three small children?  In the rural desert?  With a husband who is traveling for work and so is only home every couple of weeks or so?  At least I had Internet access, or I would have gone absolutely bonkers.)  And although we may have thought life was getting a little too exciting for us at times (oh, boy . . .), at least we have never been bored.

Some years ago, on a forum, a young person posted a list of things one should do before getting married.  They were all self-centered ideas, wholly inadequate to prepare someone for marriage, ranging from enjoying leaving your underwear lying around the bathroom to permitting yourself rude behavior in your solitude.  It occurred to me at the time that while the list was most likely written as a joke, too many people do not take marriage seriously.  So I wrote up a response:

8 Things You Should Have Done Before Getting Married

1. Lived on your own for a while. It's important to know you can take care of yourself before having to take care of another person.

2. Learned the fine art of conversation. If you expect to be with your spouse for years on end, you want to make sure you are still as fascinating twenty years and four kids from now.

3. Volunteered in some sort of community service. Marriage is a giving proposition. Develop those skills early.

4. Pursued a dream, no matter how small. It will enrich your life forever.

5. Apologized to those guys you dropped flat as a pancake. You'll be able to live with yourself better and won't have those actions haunting you years later in your conscience.

6. Watched the sun rise or set in silent solitude. It is important to know you can live with your own thoughts before having to deal with another person's psychological quirks.

7. Kept your eyes wide open on your proposed spouse before marriage, and resolved to keep them half-closed after marriage. You're going to have to live with some imperfections. Just make sure beforehand those imperfections are ones you can live with for a good, long time.

8. Spoken with someone who has been married for 50 years, to learn the real secrets and priorities of a good marriage. Sometimes the newest ideas are not always the best ideas.

Blogging Anniversary

And in another couple days, it will mark two years from the time I first posted on this blog.

So far, not including this one, I have published 158 posts.  (Written quite a few more, but wisely did not publish many of them.)  Only 30 were written in the first year.  Only 10 were written in the first six months.  Like the geek that I am, I graphed it all out in increments of 3 months and was pleasantly surprised to find a steadily increasing curve, after the first nine months, which were strictly linear, interval to interval.  (I'm pretty sure that the curve will cease increasing after a while.  There are only so many blog posts I can create in a three-month interval without starting to repeat myself or sound trite.  Then again, if I did repeat myself  or revisit a topic I've already covered, the newer readers probably wouldn't know the difference, anyway . . .)

People from 43 countries have viewed my blog.  Remember my fascination with this?  They may have found it by tripping over their own feet and left as quickly as it took them to hit the "Back" button, but they came.  I think some came only to make sure their websites advertising information about on-line colleges or golf swings showed up on my statistic list of traffic sources, hoping for me to follow the links back.  Some people actually searched for this blog, while others found it when searching for hints on electric guitar restoration or hokey pokey videos.  (I've linked the posts I think managed to be searched out by those terms.)  Whatever the reason, they found it, and thus added to my country collection.

In closing, I include my country list, which I have carefully kept over the course of . . . whenever it was Blogspot implemented the Statistics feature . . . about a year?

Antigua and Barbuda  (That's how it showed up on the stats.)
Argentina
Australia
Belarus
Brazil
Canada
China
Denmark
Egypt
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Guernsey
Hungary
India
Iran
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Japan
Latvia
Malaysia
Mexico
Moldova
Netherlands
Philippines
Poland
Romania
Russia
Saudi Arabia
Serbia
Singapore
Slovenia
South Korea
Spain
Sri Lanka
Sweden
Switzerland
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
United Kingdom
USA