didn’t I Do this before?

Let me lay out a time line for you…

John and I met online twelve years ago in a B5 chat room.

We met face to face eleven years ago at a Scifi convention. (Why yes, we’re geeks. I make no apologies for that)

Eight years ago we were married.

Got that down? Ok good!

When he moved from New York to Wisconsin to be with me and the kids, he was warned by one of my jaded exes that “It won’t last.” He was told that I would dump him after seven years or so.

As you can see, he’s been living on borrowed time.

John argues that his time reset when we got married, and that his seven years wouldn’t be up until our seventh anniversary. If that were true, he’s still beating the odds. We’re at eight years now, so I’ve already tolerated his company for a year longer than promised.

I remind him of this often, that his seven years are up and he’d better be extra special nice to me or I’ll kick him to the curb. We often plan our divorce when we purchase big ticket items (I still say the TV is mine). Since we know it’s looming we figure we should plan ahead; it will save on lawyer costs down the road.

Our anniversary was last weekend. John and I planned a dinner out on Friday, and then a few games at the pool hall before crashing early so we could get up for our trip to Ohio on Saturday. John received a last minute work request though. Sister Toni needed some help setting up a projector for a chapel fund raiser. If it were ANYONE else, John would have said no. Toni’s a sweet-heart though, so he asked me if it would be alright if we stopped at the chapel on our way to dinner. I said sure, no problem, as long as I could give her crap for crashing my date.

So we went to the chapel and Toni met us in the foyer, thanking us profusely for coming to her aid. However, as we walked into the church it became very clear that I had been set up.

Waiting for us were a few of our close friends (thanks Lisa, for stopping me from swearing at John in the church), there to witness a renewal of our vows.

After I sputtered out a few incoherent things, I turned to John and said “You’re trying to reset your clock and buy more time aren’t you?” He admitted that yes, he was.

This whole thing came as a complete surprise to me. John and I don’t keep secrets from each other. We just can’t. It’s not that we have a transcendent relationship where we’re above lies and deceit, we both just suck at keeping secrets. So I was really shocked and amazed that he’d managed to pull this off without me having a clue that he was up to something.

The rat!

Anyway, John had written me a note summarizing our life together. He said he originally was going to say a little speech, but he figured he’d forget what he wanted to say when the moment came, so he wrote it down instead.

He’d had a friend of his (one of his favorite pinup girls) make a hair piece for me…

and Lisa had a bouquet of seven roses for me to carry down the aisle.

John even found the song that was played at our first wedding for our procession.

Toni officiated, because she was in on it from the beginning.

And I only had to kick John once to get him to vow to forsake all others before me. He’s been faithful for eleven years, he just took a moment to weigh his options.

A big surprise for me was that John had gotten us a new matching wedding set. Apparently my rotten daughter Alexi had helped him pick out the rings and never leaked a word to me about it. I’ve since grounded her out of spite.

The little one there is Lucas, our friend David’s son. He acted as an impromptu ring bearer.

And then John got to kiss me in a church, the highlight of his day.

It was all very sweet, and yes, I was really surprised. John’s like that though, just when I think I have him pegged, he surprises me. That’s probably why I haven’t dumped him yet. Life is always interesting when he’s in the room.

He did give me the option to say no, but I’m crazy not insane. I know how good I have it. I’ll keep him around seven more years… and then we’ll see what happens. :D

Hugs,