Chapel of Love

Yesterday the RLA and I celebrated our 17th wedding anniversary. It’s totally been all hearts and flowers and sweetness and light every minute of those seventeen years, and if you believe that, I’ve got some dry land under a bridge on Alligator Alley that I’d like to sell you. In any event, we haven’t killed each other, and we haven’t even left permanent scars, unless you count the wedding tattoos. He didn’t propose to me until 15 years after we wed. We got married on Bastille Day, because I knew that I’d get one decent French meal a year, at least.

On our tenth anniversary, we did the Paris to Dakar Rally, after a fashion: we had dinner at EPCOT Paris, and spent the night in the Animal Kingdom Lodge.

This year, we stayed home, and cooked dinner together, then blew off some illegal fireworks (Purple Haze, to be exact. My rule of thumb for buying fireworks is that the words “Shoots flaming balls” should appear somewhere on the label. Also, “Light Fuse and Run Like Hell”. The mulberry tree has a few scorch marks, but the roof and the screens over the pool are still intact, which cannot always be said when the RLA and I get our pyrotechnics on.

Tonight, I am taking him to see Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (10th row, eat your hearts out). My gift from him was this:

A Kid Robot dunny, hand covered in beads by a Huichol tribe in Mexico. In the traditional peyote pattern, no less. Awesome. Does my man buy good gift or what?