5,110 Days or 4,382.868 Burritos

Today is the fourteen year anniversary of our marriage. Eric and I have been married long enough that we now have to do the math as we try to figure out just how long it has been. I have been thankful for this marriage every single day for the past fourteen years. We have been through a wide array of life events, highs and lows, but our marriage has remained a source of strength and stability. We encourage and support each other, but we mostly just have fun together. I married my best friend.

We celebrated with a date on Sunday night as my mother was able to watch the girls for a few hours. Eric and I remembered to snap a few pics while we were eating gigantic burritos.

Here is what I look like drinking water. Great photo!

Here is what Eric looks like drinking a margarita. We are basically professional photo journalists. Wait...hold on...I think I hear opportunity knocking....

When there are chips and salsa I will eat them until I feel sick. I cannot stop. I will not stop. I feel like this is just a human truth.

Oh wait, you're in luck. Here is a very natural looking photo. 

Here is when I made Eric laugh. I am super witty, so he basically looks like this all of the time.

Dinner was a gargantuan burrito. You cannot really tell, but the burrito was as big as my forearm. I actually took a photo of the burrito next to my forearm for size comparison purposes, but the intense lighting made it look like my arm was next to a plate of barf. Incidentally I was unable to finish the burrito....largely the direct result of chips and salsa taking up half of my body volume. Also, I may or may not keep randomly sending out this photo in completely out of context situations.

So, in conclusion I really think that Eric and I should stop counting our marriage in years and instead counting it in burritos consumed. We actually grabbed burritos after our wedding as we were so hungry. You know, I am going to take a crack at an estimate which will include regular burritos and breakfast burritos consumed over the past 14 years...

3 burritos a week for two people= 6 burritos

6 burritos x 52.177 weeks in a year= 313.062 burritos a year x 14 years=4,382.868 burritos BOOM!

Hike

 

Undate

So, it all started with my mother's post about a movie (click here). I left her a comment jokingly asking if she wanted to watch the girls. She actually wanted to babysit so Eric and I could go and see a movie.Weeee! A date! A much needed date after a kind of disappointing week off for Eric.

You see Eric starts his new job on Tuesday and has had the past week off from any and all work. We had planned a trip out of town, but opted to stay home and work on some projects around the house. Then Cordelia got a stomach bug, so we decided to shoot for a day trip.  Then Eric got sick. Then Elise and I got head colds. Next Eric decided on a quick out of town trip with his friends. He wanted to go vinyl shopping and check out an art exhibit in Boulder. Unfortunately a blizzard hit, not us, but on his road trip route. Anyway it just seemed as though nothing would go as planned. Don't get me wrong, we have had a lovely week, just not the one we planned.

When my mom offered  to watch the girls while we went to a movie we jumped on it. Then we started thinking about just what we could accomplish with 3 hours (movies are so long now). We decided to have something of an undate.

 
Photo by Eric

We dropped the girls off and then we came back home and worked on art. We just worked and talked and listened to music, wonderful! We ended by going on a little dinner date. We ate and talked and delighted in each other's company. Perfect! We picked up the girls brought them home and put them to bed, thankful for the recent purchase of blackout curtains (daylight savings time is hard on families with little kids). Then we talked the night away!

Eleven

What? Who are those two kids? Wait, that is us way back in time----eleven years ago!!


Today is our eleven year wedding anniversary! I can't really even understand how those eleven years have passed, yet time continues to move forward (or sideways or slantways, depending on your perspective). Eric and I had already been a couple for quite some time when we got married, but that was the day we made a very serious commitment (our vows said FOREVER, not 'til death do us part) to each other and probably made the best decision of our lives. Not one single day has passed in those elven years where I didn't feel a deep gratitude for my husband and our marriage. Today is no different. I am so in love with my husband (yeah, yeah, yeah it's my blog I can be sappy) and today is a day to celebrate.

In honor of our 11 years I thought I would paint a little past/present picture for you:

2001
Eric and I were technically homeless. We had left our first college, planning to move to Montana after the wedding. We stayed with family for about a month before the wedding.

Our list of responsibilities included keeping two very independent cats alive. Oh and keeping ourselves alive. We didn't have any bills at all at that point in time. Absolutely 0.

We were in Alamogordo, NM.

We had almost no money and no jobs. Pretty much it was a great time to get married and I say that without any sarcasm, it really was a good time to get married.

We had high school diplomas and a few years of college between the two of us.

We pretty much had it all figured out.

2012
We are no longer semi-homeless. Homeowners instead.

We finished college...at least until I lose my mind and go back for the PhD.

Our list of responsibilities is too extensive to bother listing off. Still included on that list are keeping ourselves and two independent cats alive.

We have jobs and our needs are all met.

We live in Wyoming of all places.

We have a daughter and another soon (very soon) to arrive.

We have nothing figured out and are quite happy with that.

Bonus: If you know/care about This is Spinal Tap then you may appreciate the following link.....11

Best Friend

I woke up at 5:30 this morning. The sky was just beginning to lighten I could see through our curtains. I heard the sound of mechanical crickets---Eric's cell phone alarm went off. He had to go to work a bit early today. I missed our morning routine. I miss him this morning...

I am one of those fortunate enough to be married to their best friend. Eric and I have been a couple since I was 16 and he was 17. We have been a couple for nearly 14 years, married for more than 10. I am not sure how that time has passed so quickly, but I can say with certainty that things have only gotten better. Don't believe that nonsense about love fading or the seven year itch, all wrong if you are married to your best friend.

Since I am on the subject I thought I might share some of the things that make Eric so amazing...

1) He does the right thing. He has a strong sense of what is right and wrong and I can always rely on him to act on that sense.

2) You may have already noticed, but he is super dreamy.


3) He's been on the NEWS! If you are new to this blog then I should prepare you that we are obsessed with newscasters.


4) He is a a great listener. I am not a huge talker (funny that I never seem to run out of things to write about). I tend to work through things internally, but when I need to talk I need to talk. Eric is always there to listen, to really just lend an ear and only offer insight when called upon. Yes, he is also a great talker.

5)He makes me laugh...a lot!

For the record this is a picture from last Halloween, you may recall we went as Star Trek Vampires.

6) He inspires me. He will inspire you too if you let him. Seriously the guy can inspire anyone!

7) He is always doing something interesting. Yesterday he was a judge for an art exhibition, went to Tae Kwon Do, then worked as a curator before coming home to go thrifting with me (we were hunting for bad art to enter into the bad art show, more on that to come), then he worked on an art film project, before relaxing with his girls.

8) He is smart. He has the degrees to prove it, if you're into that kind of thing.

9) He is crazy talented. He is a musician. Photographer. Painter. Film maker. Writer. I could go on and on and on....


10) He is a great father! Cordelia adores him.


Thanks for indulging me this morning.

Two Times, One Place

Yesterday afternoon Eric and I took a trip to the Brown Palace Hotel. The 114 year old hotel has seen presidents, royalty, and now Team Wimmer walk through its doors. Oddly when you walk into the Hotel you enter into a strange agreement with everyone else who has made the same decision. We all agreed to pretend that we were living in a different time and place. Now, the hotel has obviously made some changes in its century long history including the beautiful escalator (see below). In spite of the changes the Brown Palace Hotel has not really entered the modern era, nor has it remained as it was originally intended.

I felt like we were not really experiencing life as it was, but some bizarre version of it. Don't get me wrong, I think it is wonderful and fascinating, but strange none-the-less. There were women enjoying tea, dressed in outfits that also bridged the gap between past and present.



I couldn't help but feel a little disrespectful, dressed in my hole-y jeans. I wish that I had thought to dress in my own version of past and present. I feel a bit guilty that I didn't take the unspoken contract more seriously. I love that everyone seemed to believe that they belonged there, in that place, in their own invented time.




What a success to make a building that seems to exist in its own little alternate universe. How many places can really create their own space and time? I wish that each person did that within their own home. Wouldn't it be amazing to enter into a home and feel like you have left the present and entered their version of how things are?

Coffee Shop

Eric and I are creatures of habit. When we first became a couple we would go to a coffee shop and talk and talk for hours. Over the past decade we have gone through four major coffee shops. I use the term coffee shop loosely. We tend to find little, hole-in-the-wall places, that just happen to serve coffee. Somehow the coffee shop has become an integral part of our relationship. We love to talk with each other and something about the coffee shop brings out the Chatty Kathy within. Here is a list of our four coffee shops and a bit about why they were so important.
Alamorosa
We found our first coffee shop while we were in high school. The coffee shop, aptly named Alamorosa Truck Stop was, in fact, a truck stop between the towns of Alamogordo and Tularosa. They had pretty awful coffee, but the staff was just wonderful. They got to know us, asked about our lives, occasionally bought us coffee, and even gave us some money for our trip to Europe. When Eric was thinking about joining the military, he tried to rationalize it over a cup of coffee at the Alamorosa. When he was not allowed in, due to a back issue, we were able to celebrate our relief over a cup of coffee.
Mark's Eastern Grill
We discovered Mark's Eastern Grill when we went away to college in Portales, NM. We would go out for coffee here and sit in the back where the Christmas lights were on all year round and on the weekends an elderly cowboy would come in and play piano for an hour or so while people ate their dinners. We discussed where we were going with our lives, what degrees we wanted to get (Eric started in Music Education and I started in Psychology). When we realized that we needed to leave we made the decision at Mark's. We planned our wedding while we were at Mark's.
Finnegan's
Out of all of the coffee shops we have ever called our own, none has been more important than Finnegan's in Missoula, MT. We didn't discover Finnegan's until nearly a year after moving to Missoula. The coffee shop, actually a restaurant, straddles a river. So, you could sit and look out over the river while you sipped your coffee. We went to this coffee shop nearly every day that we were there. We came to know the staff and their lives. They even were willing to make vegan food for us, kind of rare in Montana. They too contributed money to a vacation and often bought our coffee and meals. We made many of our most important decisions right there in Finnegan's.
Gunther Toody's
Finally we arrive at the present day. We are living in Denver. For the past year and a half we have been frequenting Gunther Toody's (see picture). We are at the point in life where we still talk about what we are going to do, but now we are also enjoying all of the things that we have done. We are currently plotting our next move and our next big step in life, often over a cup of coffee. We have become the regulars here too.

We have tried on so many coffee shops to see if they are a good fit, and often we reject a coffee shop if the staff is too formal or the coffee is too good; we become suspicious. When we travel we will seek out the local hole in the wall. The waitress will sit down next to us and share some story from her day. Somehow we have the ability to become instant regulars. I think we just have "regular" written all over us.

Five Photos from the Past Couple of Weeks

This is a photo of Eric that I took on Sunday. We were at a coffee house waiting to meet a friend who was a bit late. Eric and I are both obnoxiously punctual people. So, we had arrived a bit early. You can see in Eric's face that he is just starting to get a bit restless. He is also sporting his signature hair-do. This week he is calling his hairstyle "The Fourth Grade Math Teacher"
I love this photo because it shows Eric as he really is.

Today is Halloween and we forgot to buy vegan candy. We have never really had many trick-o-treaters at our apartment complex, but Eric made this sign to ward off any costumed kids just in case.

We visited The Kindness Ranch www.kindnessranch.org , an animal sanctuary, a week and a half ago. While there we stayed in a beautiful yurt. Here is a saintly picture of Eric in the loft.

We went to the opening of the new Museum of Contemporary Art this weekend. One room was devoted entirely to an artist (I have forgotten the name of the artist) who uses mirrors. Eric took this photo of me while we were there.

Saving the best for last. Here is a photo of Bumblebee, our dog. She got into this precarious position all by herself. Sometimes she gets in these weird moods and just likes to climb up on things. We just bear witness to her eccentricities.