arkansas

The date of our wedding anniversary has always been a thorn in my side.

September 9th, 1989

First of all, I don't like odd numbers.  And there's nothing even about September 9th, 1989.  Nuthin'.

I did not want to get married in September.  I wanted April.  But April wouldn't work because we would've only been engaged for six months and Rick had some crazy rule about being engaged for a full year.  I had no such rule ... but since he did, if I insisted on April, it would've had to be in April of 1990.  And that would've thrown the entire universe into a tailspin.

Yeah, an April wedding would've caused us to miss Hurricane Hugo completely.  And we all know that that wouldn't work.  Cuz we wouldn't be celebrating our 25th right now.  And we certainly wouldn't have gotten a "redo" on the radio.

Okay, so if I couldn't have an April wedding, I wanted a June wedding.  Nope.  No June wedding for Rick.  Too cliche.  Too many other people getting married then.  Okay ... so how about August?   Nope, too hot.  Actually, I wasn't all that crazy about August anyway, since my parents got married in August.  Didn't want to compete with them.  (Instead we married a whole 8 or 9 days after their anniversary ...)

So, the soonest Rick would marry me in 1989 was in September.  September is was.  But the date of the 9th was wrong.  Well, I didn't know it at the time, but it became wrong real fast.

Rick was in the Air Force back then and he always had his "guard duty" on the first weekend of each month.  However, since there was a holiday over the first weekend of September, his guard duty fell on September 9th of that year.  But to show me that he would even give up his beloved guard duty for me ... we married on one of his guard duty weekends.  I was so proud of him.

Proud ... until I realized that NONE OF HIS AIR FORCE FRIENDS COULD ATTEND OUR WEDDING!  We hadn't thought about that.  But that was easily accepted.  What really became the biggest thorn in my side was that EVERY subsequent guard duty in September WOULD FALL ON OUR ANNIVERSARY!!  Grrr.

But you know what we really couldn't beat?  Once we had a child ... school started (at least in California) DURING THE 2ND WEEK OF SEPTEMBER!   EVERY YEAR!  Hence, we never got to enjoy a little vacation getaway for our anniversary.

Hence the reason we wanted to make sure we got away on our 25th.

But not to Arkansas.

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