Anniversapalooza!

Bruno’s the homegrown into big world grocery store in Birmingham, AL, had free food and wine tastings tonight at the store across from our neighborhood. That’s nice. Warm. Wine. Yum. Suffice it to say, that I no longer feel like cleaning for my parents and older brother who are due on my doorstep around 11:00 this evening. I feel like writing and perusing through various books. I feel like enjoying myself. Since it is the first visit of my parents and older brother to the new house, I must only take a brief moment to enjoy myself and flex my fingers and mind. Mr. Husband is working late much of this week to prepare for the publisher forum that is being held at work next week. He’s going to present some mind-blowing stuff to the publishers and be all brilliant like it comes naturally. I’m getting excited about wearing my proud badge. It’s a busy week, as always.

My parents and older brother are coming into town for our housewarming that is being held on Saturday night. It is a night of coming together of good friends to see our house and enjoy each other’s company. We haven’t had one new wedding this year. It’s time for a party—otherwise, how do we gather all the friends together for one night of laughter? Party. Yes. And we’ve invited the kids. We’re at that age where all our friends are sprouting babies. We’re still trying to sprout, and until we do—we want to be surrounded by everyone else’s babies. It’s so neurotic and true.

We planned the housewarming around our first anniversary. We call it Anniversapalooza. It’s all in the name. We were festive for three days. There was a bit of surprising heartbreak in the middle of that, but we won’t talk about that. That is never to be written about—you know who you are. Our first anniversary was about building traditions. Will we be the couple that always vacations on our anniversary, which is a very popular traditional sentiment? Or will we be the couple that snuggles at home together, locking ourselves away from the world to focus on each other and remember our wedding day? Ideally, it’d be nice to be the former type of couple—big vacation where we can lose ourselves in romance and adventure. However, the new house and scary economy force us to be the latter type of couple. And we like it. Tradition is saved. Let it be.

Sunday morning, we woke up and played The Newlywed Game on DVD—complete with 1970s couples where the women are giggly and oppressed (without realizing it) and the men wear colors so loud that today they’d be prominently pronouncing themselves as batting for the other team. The questions are a bit outdated and blindingly sexist, but the video clips from the real show with the squirming women and the clueless men make up for it. We’re addicted. It was fun just to be reminded of silly things like our honeymoon and strange things like “who was the most aggressive the last time you made woopee.” Love that word. We should all use “woopee” more often in every day speech.

Monday night, Mr. Husband and I drove home from work. We pulled into the garage and he put on our song—The White Stripes “We’re Going To Be Friends” (from the movie Napoleon Dynamite). He put his iPod on the dash of the car and gave me the sweetest card ever that slayed any fear a women could ever have and build castles in my heart. Big giant castles with a moat and dragon and everything. Then he ushered me inside to see my new china cabinet. Holy crap! That was totally not expected. Something to show off my sparkly stuff. Amazing. Mr. Husband is the most awesome and thoughtful man in the world. His gift totally made my gift of a Krupps Heineken Beer Tender look puny. That’s ok. He loved it. Draft beer in the kitchen. Dig it.

Later, we watched SNL and 30 Rock. We laughed and snuggled. The next night, we ate our one-year-old cake that was crusty and dry but surprisingly good (but strange). We laughed and it was just Mr. Husband and me. Just us. We planned for the future and kissed a lot between some other stuff.