Six Month Anniversary

Last week was pretty rough around here at Lainey's Life Lessons, but there was one highlight to the week that wouldn't end.  My honey and I celebrated our six month anniversary of dating!  It occurred two days after our tearful parting from Roxy and I really didn't think I was going to be up for celebrating at all.  I even asked my honey if we could postpone our celebration until the weekend.  Little did I know that my honey had already put plans into place to brighten my mood on the actual day of our anniversary.

Months ago, my honey announced that he would not be celebrating monthly anniversaries.  He was a man and there were limits to how mushy he was willing to get.  This cracks me up because he has a far higher threshold for romance and lovey-doveyness than I do.  He did, however, allow that he would celebrate anniversaries on the multiples of three months (e.g. 3 months, 6 months, and 9 months).  Regardless of his decree, I have always wished him happy anniversary on the 6th of every month.

On our three month anniversary, I came home to find this on the dining room table.
I'd told my honey that my favorite flowers were Gerbera daisies.  He had no idea what that was.
He bought me these chrysanthemums thinking that they were daisies.

The day of our anniversary arrived with little fanfare.  My honey gave me a good morning kiss, wished me a happy anniversary, and headed out to work.  I thought that would be the extent of the celebration for the day.  I was wrong.

I went about my work day as usual.  Children thrive on structure and routines and in my grief, after losing my beloved pup, so did I.  Being at work was just easier than being anywhere else.  I didn't take any time off work to get over my loss because the thought of writing sub plans was far worse than the thought of slogging through the day with my students.  I didn't tell my class about what had happened and the kids went about business as usual, keeping me far too busy to think about anything but what they needed me to do for them.

I love my honey and here is one of the five million reasons why. He has a mind like a steel trap! He takes in every little detail and stores it til he needs it. Sometimes he stores inane trivia, which makes him THE "go-to" guy for stats and team trivia on game day. At other times, he quietly stores away what I like to call "fun facts". Fun facts are things that I mention in passing, that I might write about in my blog, that he overhears in my conversations with my friends or family. He is fabulous at tucking away these little gems of information about me and using them to his advantage later. Last week, my honey reached into his bag of fun facts and remembered something that I wrote about in my second blog post ever.

In a Valentine's Day post entitled Happy Single Awareness Day, which I wrote before we started dating, I took a time-out from my previous "single and loving it" status to lament how I wished I had someone to send me flowers at work on Valentine's Day. I talked about how depressing it was to watch the florists' delivery vans arrive with flowers for the other teachers and not me. Now, that was one sentence in a blog I wrote seven months ago before we were even dating.

On our anniversary, as I went to take my class out to recess, the school secretary stopped me in the hallway and told me that a box had been delivered for me in the office.  Nothing more than that.  Since boxes occasionally come for me with various school materials, I didn't think anything of it.  I took the kids out to recess after promising to stop by and pick up whatever was in the office during lunch time.

When I made it to the office, all the secretaries and the school nurse were lurking suspiciously.  You know what I'm talking about...taking way to long to put a file back in the file cabinet and shooting me little sideways glances as if they were waiting for something.  I went over to a box of what looked like student test books and asked if this was the box that had come for me.  They told me, "No.  Your box is the one that says Pro Flowers on the side."  Now I knew why everyone was lurking.  Pro Flowers ships their flowers in thick, nearly indestructible cardboard boxes.  The ladies knew flowers had been delivered for me, but they couldn't see what the flowers looked like inside the box.

The girls were all hoping for red roses, but I was delighted to open the box and find a dozen red, pink, orange, and white gerbera daisies.   He remembered what my favorite flowers were!  Plus, this time he's done his research so that he knew what they looked like.  No more chrysanthemum faux daisies for this girl.  Also, hiding in the box was a cute little teddy and a big glittery red heart to put in the vase with the flowers which proudly proclaiming my honey's message, "I love you!"

I lit up like a Christmas tree when I opened that box.  The girls 'oohed' and 'ahhed' over the teddy bear and the heart, but wondered why he'd sent daisies instead of roses.  After I explained the significance of the daisies, they decided that my honey was a keeper.  I happily toted the box up to my classroom and smiled every time I looked at it the rest of the day.

Aren't they pretty?!

But, what really earned my honey massive bonus points happened before I got home that night.  My mom, who has been decidedly and justifiably upset about losing Roxy, called the house while I was driving home from work.  My honey answered and they talked for a few minutes before my honey decided that my mom needed some cheering up of her own and invited her over for dinner.  Spending time with my mom was fairly low on my honey's list of priorities for that particular day, but he's such a softy that he couldn't leave her home and lonely when she was hurting.  How can you not just love a man that worries about your mom?

There was another celebration later that evening after mom had gone home and I'd returned from choir practice, but that part of the story isn't appropriate for a G-rated blog.