Oooooh Special

Today is our second wedding anniversary. Despite being very traditional in some ways (the stay at home mom, male head of the household stuff) we are actually pretty non-conformist. Hubby and I were together more than four years before we filed any paperwork and it probably would have been longer if the fact that we weren't legally married hadn't come between us and Hubby's paycheck.

In early 2007 Hubby took a promotion that involved a lot of traveling. He was going to be gone 2 weeks here and 3 weeks there, but we were going to be pretty handsomely compensated for it so at the time it worked out for us. There was just one problem-when I went to his home store to pick up his paycheck they wouldn't release it to me because I wasn't a "blood or legal relative".

Hubby signed a note and faxed it to his home store...they still wouldn't part with the check. He called FROM the office phone, confirmed his identity, and ordered them to release his paycheck. No dice. They said they would be happy to mail him his check at his current job site and then he was free to wire money wherever he wanted, and so we did that. For one week.

Do you know how much it costs to wire money?! Seriously. Not. Cheap.

After paying out $50 to send his paycheck half a mile away from where it came from, we were determined to find a less expensive solution. We talked to every HR representative India had to offer (oh yes, the company Hubby worked for did not have an American HR office...they barely had HR representatives that spoke English) they told us that the only other solution would be for them to mail his paycheck to his mother.

Who lived 8 hours away, and would then have to wire me the money. That's completely overlooking the fact that Hubby is a full grown man who shouldn't have to run his paycheck through his Mommy.

ARG!

So we asked our friendly yet nearly incomprehensible representative "Bob" [that's the name he gave us] to list any and all persons who would be able to pick up his paycheck at it's home store. It was a short list. Hubby (who was in another state), his mother or father (who were 8 hours away), his 18 or older child (Monkey was 3), or his wife.

It didn't leave a lot of options. I remember explaining this to Hubby and then saying, "Hey, you get home on Friday, let's run over to Idaho on Saturday and get married. It only costs $18 there, and then I can go pick up your paycheck."

Does that count as a proposal?

Hubby thought so. During the next few weeks I spent $210 and about 3 hours of my time getting rings and a minister who would agree to marry us in the park across the street from the courthouse. We invited only my parents, Hubby's mom and step dad (who have two daughters who were 3 and 5 at the time...obviously they came too), and my husband's two best friends that he has been friends with for more than 13 years.

Our parents of course agreed to come. Hubby's friend's reactions? The first one said, "Huh. I thought you were already married." The second one said, "Well that only took forever. I didn't think you were ever gonna do it the legal way."

Two weeks later we signed the paperwork, I picked up Hubby's paychecks from then on, and we all lived happily ever after.

That's why we don't really celebrate our wedding anniversary-it's kind of anticlimactic. Plus while we have only been married for two years we've been together for more than 6 now and I want credit for that in this day and age where most people separate after 5.

While it was, in our eyes, an entirely unnecessary exercise in bureaucratic paper shuffling-and even though being married on paper didn't really "do" anything in our lives, except of course give me the legal right to his money (woo!)-I would like to take a second of the day to say that I happen to like being Mrs.M. [Yes that is my new blog name!]

My husband is-and has been from the moment we met-the perfect, God-given other half of my soul and I couldn't love anyone more. He is my best friend, my partner, my sounding board, my protector, and my teacher...I couldn't be anywhere else except with him, and I love growing old and gray together.

And, sometimes I'll admit-the title is nice.