Do you know how long 14 years is? It’s a long time. It’s longer than either of my children have been on this earth.

Let me give you some examples. In 1997:

– Titantic was released in theaters

– The first Harry Potter book was published

– Mother Teresa and Princess Diana died

– The Hale-Bopp comet came close enough to earth to make a group of people don their Nikes

And, my husband and I said, “I do.”

Fourteen years ago today, he saw a slender, well-coiffed, non-wrinkled, perky-boobed girl walking down the aisle. Today, he sees something very different. He sees tired, stressed and, decidedly, unperky. And, most nights, I don’t even make him dinner.

I have gone up two dress sizes and wear lounge pants most days. My hair is always up in a bun and I get headaches a lot. To be honest, I’m kind of a pain in the butt.

But, he keeps on loving me through it all. For better or for worse.

And, I keep loving him too.

Happy Anniversary, Dado Fali. Thank you for marrying me.

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So, you know how your husband goes out of town for the weekend and your young dog has been vomiting and having diarrhea for four days, and you have big deadlines, and you have to go get your daughter at camp, which ends up taking more than six hours, and you cry the whole way there because you just got a crown on your bottom tooth, and it’s sitting too high and jamming your upper tooth into places where it shouldn’t be and “bruising” the nerve, and it hurts so bad that you take three Dilaudid and it still hurts, but OH BOY do you sleep…you know, when you should be working, and you need to do laundry so you can pack to go out of town and speak in front of 3600 people, and then your old dog gets a tick and when you try to pull it out with tweezers you just end up getting half of it and a whole lot of blood all over your kitchen, and you have to make an emergency trip to your out of town dentist on a Sunday…you know, when you should be working, and then the young dog who has been vomiting and having diarrhea for four days decides she DOESN’T WANT TO GO IN THE YARD TO GO TO THE BATHROOM ANYMORE and you have to literally drag her to the grass, and then she gets stung by something and her face swells up so much that she can’t see, and then you are SO HAPPY when your husband walks back in the door?

Yeah, me too.

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The other night, my husband and I did something we rarely do. We went out on a date.

The kids were being spoiled at Grandma’s house as we slid into a candlelit booth at my favorite seafood restaurant which is one of many fine dining experiences owned by a local restaurateur. We decided to splurge and started with beer and calamari with green beans and red peppers (me) and wine, clam chowder and a wedge salad (my husband).

Okay, truth be told, we weren’t splurging as much as we were using a $100 gift card that my husband got for Christmas. But, we were eating a lot. My pants? They were splurging.

For the entree, I chose a delectable pecan crusted trout and my husband decided to completely deplete the gift card and ordered twin lobster tails. You know? Twin, as in two.

When the $115 bill arrived, we thought we had gotten off pretty cheap.

Until the waitress said, “You can use this gift card at one of the eight C.M. restaurants here in town, but he sold us to another corporation three years ago.”

Needless to say, we skipped the popcorn at the movie that night.

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This past Sunday morning, my husband was off running 26.2 miles, which meant that I had to make my own coffee and walk the dogs.  Um…rude!

The coffee making wasn’t too bad because I have one of those single-cup thingies now, which means I didn’t have to do much other than push one button.  I wish you could push a button for picking up dog poop.

But, the real challenge in walking the dogs is that we have one that just turned 13 and another one that just turned 2.  Their energy levels are slightly different.  So are their joints.  While one could easily clear a fence, the other one can barely stand up.

My husband is brave enough to take the dogs off of their leashes at the park near our house, despite Daisy (the young dog) once sending a lady over her handlebars when she ran out of the woods right onto a bike path.  And the fact that, just last week, she rolled in a maggot-infested, dead rat.  Side note to the hawk who drops rodents from the sky around here:  Pick smaller prey.

I don’t particularly like dealing with angry bikers with head injuries nor do I want to wash maggots off of my dog…again…so, on Sunday, I took Daisy out in the yard with a ball and a ball-chucker to work off some excess energy that couldn’t be worked off with a regular walk.  Also, thank you to the person who invented the tool that allows dog owners to NOT touch the slobbery ball.  I love you.  Really.

The entire time that Daisy was playing fetch, Blue (the old dog) was sitting at the front window, whining.  I watched her pacing and crying for 20 minutes.  I felt so bad, that after I took Daisy inside, I took Blue out for some one-on-one time.

Blue immediately picked up a big stick and pranced around the yard to show me that, despite being 13 years old, she’s still got it and I was quick to tell her so.  There was a lot of her looking proud and a lot of me saying, “Ohhhh!  Blue has a big stick!  She’s a big dog!”.  And, also a lot of my neighbors looking at me funny.

Then she dropped the stick and started tearing at the grass with her teeth to show me, again, that she’s still got it.  I was happy to see her spunk.

A few seconds later, she found a tennis ball laying in the grass and brought it to me.  I looked into her eyes and saw the puppy that I picked out 13 years ago, this month, when she was barely four weeks old and her head made her so top-heavy that she fell over.  I asked, “Are you sure, girl?  You want me to throw the ball?”  She looked back at me, panting, her ears perked, just waiting for me to tell her to “go get it”.

I threw the ball to the back of the yard and watched as she clumsily trotted after it.  Her front legs ran while her back legs stayed stiff, but she gave it her best effort.

Until she tripped on a tree root.

She landed in the mud with one hind leg facing forward and the other hind leg trapped behind her.  She was doing the equivalent of the doggie-splits and couldn’t get up.

I ran to her, clasped my hands under her belly and lifted her back to her feet.

Then I crouched down in front of her and rubbed her neck, nuzzled my face close to hers and said, “See, old girl…you’ve still got it.  At least Daisy can’t do that.”

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