49 Months

One reason Ryan and I count monthiversaries is because we got married "so late" in life that we figured we might not live to see some of the high number anniversaries we wish for, and if we do live that long, we might not be in our right minds to know it. Monthiversaries allow us to achieve high numbers while still being young enough to appreciate them!

Having said that, we read an obituary this week for a woman in her 90's who had been married for 55 years. {Her first husband died and she remarried later.} That gave us hope that maybe 50-some years could actually happen for us, too!

Our 49th monthiversary was an exercise in living out the "in sickness" part of our vows. No fancy dress or sunny beach for us this week. But we actually got to spend the day together, because Ryan's department was closed on January 2nd to observe New Year's Day. So that was a treat! Here are a few highlights from the day, with some alliteration for your reading pleasure:

Prayer.

All the sickness we've had, with the respiratory debacle of late last year, followed by Myrtle-the-kidney-stone-who-refuses-to-be-born of early 2017, has taken a toll on us. We approach sickness differently {I want you to pat my head and Ryan wants to be left alone}, and the attempt to NOT keep regifting the respiratory germs had led to a severe slow-down of fun stuff, like kissing and cuddling. You know what? After a while, that drives an invisible wedge and we. have. had. enough. So we spent part of our monthiversary praying together, for physical healing, for Myrtle's birth, for protection against whatever wedge Satan would so dearly love to drive between us. It was good and needed and healing.

Pinterest Fails.

 We've come through the holidays and have returned to a cleaner menu plan. Sometimes I feel like we keep eating the same five things on rotation, so I spent a LONG time in December, trying to conjure up new recipes from Pinterest. Chicken tacos with clean chipotle sauce sounded delicious, and indeed they were, but my WORD. That sauce was a fail fail fail. I mean unless you enjoy having to use a fire extinguisher on your tongue. I went ahead and dumped the rest down the garbage disposal. Not worth it. But at least we had a healthy lunch.

Pictures.

 We are marching forward with our tradition of taking a picture on every monthiversary. I thought this was an appropriate location for our photo, since we spent most of the day here. Bless Ryan's heart, he tried so hard to smile for this, but he was feeling so lousy, that this is really the more accurate representation of our day:

Podcasting.

We didn't take a picture of it, but Ryan rallied enough to record Spill the Beans for the week, and I thought he turned out pretty energetic-sounding, given that he felt like the picture above.

Percolating.

He's being careful on his coffee intake because it's said that caffeine can aggravate the Myrtles of the world. But you gotta have some caffeine, or then you have kidney stone pain on top of a raging headache. So we pulled our our wedding mugs and had a cup of coffee to celebrate our day.

Pie.

Poor Ryan. He's existed for a week on mostly chicken noodle soup and crackers. He just wanted some pie for our monthiversary. I have finally learned to confidently wave the white flag and admit I am not a pie baker and probably never will be. But my good friend Marie Callender bakes a mean razzleberry pie that is both cost-effective and delicious. And Ryan selected her to prepare our monthiversary dessert. Thanks, Marie.

So there it was: perhaps pathetic but pleasant at the same time. {See what I did there with the P words?}

Happy 49th monthiversary, Ryan! I p'love you!

Linking up with Tamar!