My husband has this sweater. It’s red with a black and white stripe across his chest and down his shoulders and arms. When we were dating he wore it pretty regularly. It looked good on him. Eventually, because it got a fair amount of use, it started to give out. A hole appeared by the stripe on one shoulder. It kept getting bigger and bigger. To be frank, it went from a sweater that looked good on him to a sweater than made him look like a bum. He wore it anyway, like a security blanket he couldn’t part with.

I did laundry for him on occasion during the first couple years of our marriage. One day, after the sweater came out of the dryer, I formulated a plan. I rolled it up the way you would if you were packing a suitcase, and I hid it in one of his storage tubs. I didn’t want to throw it out, I know how sentimental he can be, but I had to stop him from embarrassing me in public. It took him a while to miss it, but the day came when he asked if I had seen his red sweater.

I lied.

The apartment complex that I currently live in has a really odd atmosphere. It’s almost like a retirement home, but way cooler. Roughly half the apartments in the complex are rented by people over age 60. When we moved in, there were only two children in the whole place, which is +140 units!

What does my complex have that yours probably doesn’t?

1. 102.9 Lite FM is piped through the hallways during the daytime. Yes, just the daytime. It is turned off every night around 8pm or so.
2. A ‘Take-a-book/Leave-a-book’ bookcase full of old treasures. Today I scored a 6th edition (from 1961) copy of 500 Recipes by Request: From Mother Anderson’s Famous Dutch Kitchens. Awesome. *grin*
3. A pretty good sized group of women does a Tai Chi exercise VHS tape together in the lobby some evenings. This ‘community benefit’ is not advertised anywhere. I think it’s a by-invite-only kind of thing. I find it totally adorable.
4. Jigsaw puzzles sometimes appear in the lobby for tenants to put together. I’ve been so tempted to kidnap a few pieces for a couple of days, just to see if anyone notices! I’ve been good though.
5. Cheap laundry!! A wash cycle is $1.00, and a dry cycle is $0.50. An entire load is clean for just $1.50! Around here that’s nearly unheard of!! It’s probably because half the renters can remember back to when it cost $0.25 to wash. At least one person has lived here since the place opened in the early 60′s.

I’m sure I’ve missed a few things, but those are the big ones. I’m really quite glad we moved here. The location isn’t perfect, only having close access to one bus line, but it’s totally homey and cool here. (Is it homey or homy? Google results seem to suggest it is both!? They’re listed as variants of each other… it’s an infinite loop!)

My fifth wedding anniversary is coming up soon! Man, where does the time go? We’ve almost known each other for nine whole years. Amazing.

I knew pretty early on that he was the kind of guy, or rather THE guy, I’d marry if I let myself. Our first New Years Eve, after we’d only been together for a month and a half or so, Jon’s friend asked me if I thought I’d marry him. I’m sure I turned bright red, but I managed to say something un-scary like “I dunno” rather than “Yeah, probably!” I mean, you can’t tell a guy after just a month and a half that you’d probablly marry them, right? *smirk*

The photo is from our trip to Wisconsin Dells in 2003. Weren’t we cute back then? Awww…

If I don’t have to work on our anniversary, we’re thinking about going to Kozy’s for lunch. Our brother-in-law is a chef there and if he’s working I think I’ll just have him suggest a menu item for me. How fun is that, right? Get the chef to personally recommend something? Love it. *grin*

I miss my Grandma’s house.

She had the most fantastic raspberry bush behind her barn. It was crazy – the berries on that bush grew twice as big as any on her regular rows of bushes. Black raspberries on one side of the yard, red on the other. She taught me to put them in milk with sugar, and then squish the heck out of them til the milk was bright red or purple.

She had a great front porch, too. It faced a good sized road and I remember using it as my own personal stage. The passing drivers were my audience. I’d plug my boombox in and dance up a storm. The trees in the front yard were enormous too, so it was always nice and shady on that porch.

She also had the best game closet upstairs. There was an old board game version of Family Feud up there. I remember having a really hard time figuring out the answers to some of the questions since the game was older than any of us kids. There was also a great marble game called Avalanche. I don’t think we ever played by the rules – it was way too entertaining just letting the marbles go through the board.

The first job I had while living on my own was as a Customer Service Representative at Super America. It was alright, for an entry level type position. In the beginning, I spent most of my time cashiering, and occasionally stocking shelves or the cooler. Later I became an Assistant Manager Trainee and I did daily sales reconciling, prepared the deposits, audited parts of the store, checked in vendors, etc. But you know what else I did there? I gained a greater appreciation for the movie Clerks.

There were a lot of regular customers.  We didn’t have a milk maid, but we did have a guy who went through all of the Sunday newspapers before deciding which one to buy. We also had a few people who’d attempt to stock up on coffee creamers and ketchup packets, even if they weren’t buying anything. *smirk* If only there had been a Jay and Silent Bob style duo hanging out in front of the store.

OH! On another Kevin Smith note… My husband got yelled at by Shannen Doherty while Mallrats was being filmed. He was working the drive-thru at a fast food place, so when the guys inside messed up her order, she chewed him out. *chuckle* I wish I had been a fly on that wall!