Eternal Sunshine...

About three weeks after Sam and I became engaged, he left me in Utah to begin his career in San Francisco. I planned to go with him the weekend he left, to help him find an apartment and get settled, but about a week prior to our adventure I had to undergo an emergency root canal surgery, which subsequently got infected and left me barfing and in the most intense pain I had ever been in.

And so, the morning of his departure came and the two of us stood in front of his dad's house, crying and trying to say goodbye. Well, he was crying. I was more just misty-eyed and embarrassed.

Just kidding. I was ugly-face-tears-blending-in-with-snot crying and he had, maybe one, adorable tear trickling down his manly cheek. He was wearing a yellow t-shirt and baseball cap that day.

Anyway, we said goodbye and I watched through the blur as his maroon tacoma backed out of the drive and headed off down the street out of sight.

Not being one for theatrics, I threw myself onto the ground, sobbing wildly and rolling around, snorting and screaming and rubbing my face in the grass. I felt desperate. The only thing I could think to do was to call him. And so I did. And when he heard the tortured animal screeching on the other end of the line he came rushing back to me. When he pulled up, we just looked at each other all red faced and puffy, and laughed. And then I hopped in his truck. And with only the clothes on my back, we rode off into the sunset.

We are the freaking cutest.

But, it didn't take long for us to become painfully re-aware of why, exactly, I had originally planned not to leave with him that day. I was horribly nauseated and felt, pretty much, like someone was repeatedly taking a baseball bat to the side of my face.

We had been driving in agony for about an hour when Sam pulled off the side of the freeway. We prayed that I would be able to feel well enough to make the rest of the trip so that we could spend a little more time together. And we prayed to know to turn around if I wasn't going to be able to handle the weekend.

Directly after we ended our prayer, I got out of the truck and staggered a few feet away into the brush. And then I puked my guts out. And then I staggered a few feet further. And I peed. And then I felt like a million bucks.

I skipped back to the truck, all giddy and gleeful and feeling great, to my little husband-to-be, who was sitting there, completely horrified by what he had just witnessed. He stared at me for a second, and I smiled back at him, like, "what??" and he was all, "you just pretty much barfed and popped a squat at the same time." And I was like, "yeah" and then we laughed and I charlie-horsed him for pretending it wasn't the cutest thing ever.

And we had a lovely weekend together in San Francisco.

Later, Sam told me that he had never felt so certain that he wanted to marry me than in that moment, watching me stumble around in the weeds by the side of the freeway.

No... No he didn't. But you can imagine what it would have been like if he did.

He mostly just said he thought it was pretty gross and a little endearing but mostly just gross.

Now, why am I telling you this story, you ask? Well, because today is our anniversary. And you get to tell these kinds of things unabashedly on your anniversary. And while Sam has to be in New York City on this day of days, I'm sitting here, dreaming of him and thinking back on some of our stories... and this one happens to be one of my favorites.

So, here's to five years of love and adventure, my darling. I miss you. Happy Anniversary!