Category Archives: Marriage

A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.
~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, 1966

Wow. I can’t believe that today makes one year since I said “I Do” to my husband. Not that we have spent a full year together, of course. So far, we’ve spent about 10 weeks living together and about 13 weeks total together in the last year. Normal for a military couple, until you realize that he was only deployed a few months out of that time.

March 21, 2009 Huzzy & Wifey

I’m finally in Washington state and am loving spending time with Huzzy. He’s deploying very soon and will be gone for the summer, so we are trying to make the most of it. It’s tough, though, since we both feel a bit cheated out of it because the others in his division have been able to spend several months with their loved ones. But oh well, it is what it is, I guess. At least I’ll be able

Spending quality time with Huzzy before our first deployment began.

to see him up until the last minute this time and will be there when he gets back.  Okay, scratch that last one because I may be going to South Korea for a few weeks with the Navy myself and it may, depending on the timing, be about the time Huzzy is supposed to return. So he may return and I may be gone. That will totally suck.

However, we are doing what is best for the family. I still don’t have a job here and while I’m on unemployment (not that I’ve been “approved” yet nor have received my first check), going active duty for two weeks will bring in some much-needed money. Of course, I may have a job by then but it’ll be extra income then since Washington mandates that employers give four weeks of PAID military leave for reservists.

Anyway, I know several of you have been wanting to hear the story of how Huzzy and I met. So here it is. I’m pretty sure it’ll be a bit long.

Seattle Underground Tour on our 3 day honeymoon

It was 2007 when we first met. But the story starts before we met. I had been dating on and off for a few years and had been on a few online matchmaking sites. Well, two really. I found that the first one was just pretty much people who were trying to get laid and that’s it. So I tried Y@hoo Personals. By 2007, I think I’d been on the site for a year or two and had met some very nice people. I dated here and there and dated one person for several months during the summer of 2006. But it didn’t work out and I continued to stay on it.

Huzzy was also on the site. And it ended up he lived just a few miles away from me.  While he was kinda-sorta looking for long-term, he was also not above looking for the one nighters. What can I say, he’s a guy. Anyway, he

Goin' to the church and we... just got MARRIED!

contacted me in April or so of 2007. I think we talked a bit here and there, but honestly, I really wasn’t that interested. I’m not sure exactly why. His photos online weren’t the best (he is a HORRIBLE photo taker, I’ve found!) and he refused to used the “f” key, instead writing words like “phun” for “fun” and as a writer, that really annoyed me.

However, what was behind his words kinda intrigued me. And he always there if I wanted to chat. I do remember not liking the fact that he was military because that was not the type of life I’d envisioned for myself.

By May, I’d started kinda dating another guy and since I dated just one person at a time once I was about at date #3, I started blowing Huzzy off. Apparently, he started dating someone about this time as well but that didn’t last long. Neither did my person… he took off for a job in California and stopped contacting me. However, because we were “exclusive” I didn’t feel right about going out with anyone else until I had officially told the other guy that I was no longer going to date him since he couldn’t return my calls. However, I couldn’t get a hold of him.

My flowergirls... and now I'm an aunt!

June 10th rolled around, which was my 25th birthday. As per usual on my birthday, my plans fell through and none of my friends were going to go out with me that night. Huzzy and I were chatting online and he said he’d take me out to dinner and a movie. But, again, since I hadn’t talked to the other guy to tell him everything was off, I didn’t feel right about it. That and I really didn’t want to meet a random guy off the internet for my birthday. I just wasn’t into it. But Huzzy’s insistance was starting to wear me down and I was getting interested in meeting him.

Now, before we go on, let me tell you how careful I was when meeting people in person that I had met online. I was paranoid. And this will make the rest of the story funny.

First, I never met the guy in real life until I had been chatting with him for at least a month. Second, the guys never knew where I lived until I was in a real relationship with them. Actually, before Huzzy, only one guy was ever invited over to my house. Anyway, I also told my best friend all about the guy, where we were going to meet, how long I expected the date to last and when I was expected home. I would call her when the date was finished and let her know I was okay. If I didn’t call by the time I told her the date should be finished, she was to call me.

Huzzy and me with Skah when he was 11 months old. December 2008

If she was unable to get a hold of me or if anything had ever happened to me, she knew that when I went on a date with a guy, I left all his information–including all our conversations and his online profile–up on my computer. I figured that way, the police could easily track him down if need be!

So anyway, from about the beginning of May, I started having sinus infections and actually got strep throat for the first time in my life. It was constant for six weeks. Sinus infection, strep throat and tonsillitis. I’d go on meds and within 24 hours of getting off of them, it’d be back. My doctor decided that I needed to have my tonsils removed in order to stop the cycle. That surgery was set for Friday, June 22nd. My mom came over to help for the weekend since we knew I’d be out of it for a few days.

Huzzy and I had spoken on the phone a few times before my surgery. I loooved his voice and thought it was amazingly sexy. I knew I was eventually going to meet him in person, but preferably after I lost the 10lbs that I’d immediately gained just weeks before the surgery due to double dose of steroids they needed to put me on to get the tonsillitis to go away (so they could do the surgery since it’s risky to do it while you have a raging infection… especially on adults).

It so happened that after the surgery I had a severe reaction to one of my meds or something the following Monday. I was in such severe pain that the liquid Lortab they gave me was not even touching the pain. I have a very high tolerance for pain so it had to be really bad for me to even take the Lortab versus just regular Motrin. I react quickly to drugs so I generally don’t need as much as most people.

The doctor took one look at me and put me on Oxycontin… in ADDITION to the Lortab. That didn’t really help the pain so much as make me so entirely loopy that I didn’t care I was in pain. If you’ve been on Oxy before, you know what I mean by loopy. Add in the Lortab and man! I was flying high. If you have ever been on Oxy and have read the warning labels, then you know it says, “It is not recommended to make large decisions while on this medication.”

Can you see where this is going?

On Friday, June 29th (okay, techincally it was the 30th since it was after midnight), I made the best and stupidest decision in my life.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. And please know that the rest of the story is pieced together partly from what I remember in my fuzzy state and partly from what Huzzy has told me.

Huzzy had checked on me via internet a few days before. He was on leave and was visiting family in Ilinois. He ended up calling me on Friday on his way back from Ilinois. Even though it was painful to talk, I was enjoying talking to him and besides, the Oxy/Lortab combo was making me not care about the pain.

I talked him through a several-hour traffic jam and he kept asking when he could meet me. I told him after I felt better.

He was set get back home about 2 a.m. or something. And he asked if he could come over and see me since we were both up.

Our wedding cake and topper... entitled "The Pinch"

And I agreed.

To let him come over.

TO MY HOUSE.

At night.

Where I lived alone.

Remember my whole paranoid protocol when meeting people for the first time?  Yeah, thrown out the window.

I’m telling you, they don’t have the “Don’t make large decisions while on this medication” warning on Oxycontin for nothing.

I did tell Huzzy several times that he had better not expect anything because I wasn’t that type of girl (of course who knows if he believed me since I was letting a stranger into my house in the middle of the night).

I had taken a shower that day (not really an easy thing when you are flying high) and had pulled a brush through my hair after it air-dried (I blow dry it for a reason, folks, so you know how  AWESOME  my hair must have looked).  My face hadn’t seen makeup for two weeks and I had sweatpants and a t-shirt on.  Yeah, I was seexxxxxay!

Re-creating our wedding cake topper.

So he parked his truck on the street and walked up. I remember thinking that I couldn’t believe how tall he was (he’s 6’5″).

I think we talked for half an hour in the livingroom before I told him I was really tired and he was welcome to sleep here… in bed with me… but that he wasn’t going to get anything.

Yup, you read that right. I let a stranger in my house and invited him into my bed. Go me. Go Oxy!

Nothing happened that night. Huzzy was a gentleman. I think he rubbed my back. I remember unhooking my bra so he could rub it better (um… yeah… I’m NOT like that. At all. I’ve been called a prude more than once!). He tells me that I was insanely funny that night and kept him laughing the whole time. I remember nothing about that.

So he had to get up early the next day and work a balloon festival, or rather, the same day, and left a few hours later. He came back later that day. And every day after that. We went on our first “date” was July 4th where we went to the Michigan lakeshore to watch the fireworks. I was no longer on Oxy (I only stayed on it for a few days) but was still on the Lortab. Actually, I was on the Lortab for three weeks.  I tell my husband that by the time I was off drugs, I was already attached to him so I let him stay

And that’s the story of how we met.  It was both the best decision (hey, I found the love of my life) and the stupidest decision of my life. I still can’t believe I ever allowed a strange man I met off the internet to come to my house to meet me in the middle of the night. I can’t believe I wasn’t killed.

I’m the luckiest woman in the world… for more than one reason.