Grateful For My Ridiculous Life

As of today, September 28, 2019 I am 19,997 days old. I lived 13,887 of them with Albert. It's been 10 months, or 304 days since I began learning to live without him. The learning curve has been huge. I had never adulted without him, being that I was 15 years old when we started dating.

Essentially, we grew up together. And oh my goodness we made so many stupid decisions in those nearly fourteen thousand days. We wasted so much time. So many dollars. So many opportunities. We neglected loved ones, our responsibilities and each other. But we forged on.

One can always look back with regret, but I refuse to. (For the most part.) I challenge myself daily to look forward with gratitude. Gratitude for the memories. Gratitude for the occasional smart decisions we made. For the good times. And even gratitude for the ability to laugh at some of the ridiculous stuff.

We had a lot of ridiculous stuff.

We used to laugh at my Dad insisting my curfew was 11pm because "Girls get pregnant after 11."  Apparently that can happen before 11.

There was that time we laid in bed and smoked a fat Cuban cigar. Oh my word! That was the stupidest thing. The house stunk for weeks. I had to wash all the bedding and all of the towels in the ensuite linen closet. As well as most of the clothes in the closet.

And the time we left baby B with Grandma and Grandpa so we could go out for the evening. And we just never came home. Seriously. I just know I would be (and have been) completely judgmental of anyone else ever doing this.

That time when I left baby B with Daddy and went away for the weekend while we lived in what was essentially a tiny home - I think it was 20x15, and came home to find Albert had bought a pool table and put it in the main room. You had to stand on the couch to take your shot.

Baby Brandi had to play ON the pool table because there was no room on the floor. 

We lived in an apartment for the first 9 months of marriage (before moving into the tiny house which, for the record, had no indoor bathroom) Around month 5 when B was a couple of weeks old (Yeah, you can do the math) Albert lost his driver's licence for 3 months due to an excessive amount of points, entirely due to speeding tickets. I'm not even sure if they still do points on licenses - I've never been stopped. (Not for lack of trying.) Anyway, here I am dragging my newborn infant out of bed to drive him to work at 6am (or pick him up if he was on 12-hr nightshift.) She didn't actually have a carseat so I found it convenient to hold her, attached to the boob, while I drove. If I didn't actually experience this with my own life, I would honestly find some of these details hard to believe.

Then, within a few weeks, my older brother also lost his driver's licence, due to irresponsible driving habits, so we decided what the hell, he might as well move into the apartment with us because that would make it more convenient for him to ride his bike to work. (The more I think about it, the more I realize what a FRIGGING AMAZING 17-year-old wife I was. Or a fool. You decide.)

Anyway, Albert decided he felt bad making me drag the baby out to drive him to work so he also bought a 2nd hand bike to ride to work. But he didn't like the colour. So he spray painted it. IN THE LIVING ROOM of the apartment. He did put down a few sheets of newspaper but when all was said and done you could clearly see an outline of royal blue paint on the brown carpet.

I was so fricking glad not to have to get up and drive him to work I laughed it off.

When we gave our notice on the apartment a couple of months later we needed to get rid of the paint pattern on the carpet. So we washed it with paint thinners. And then vacuumed it up with the new $1300 Electrolux vacuum cleaner we had been sucked into buying a couple of months prior - which is another story altogether. Uh yeah. This resulted in a dead, D.E.D dead, vacuum cleaner. And I still loved that man. Truly, I deserve a medal.

To conserve energy on his bike rides to work, he would 'hitch' a ride with co-workers. When he met up with someone on the pulp mill road he would grab onto their mirror or window ledge so they could 'tow' him the last few kilometres into the mill. I truly hope and trust that the guardian angels assigned to Albert Ziemer have received their full reward in heaven.

Honestly, my 'stupid' stories are endless. But our love was endless. And it still is.

And I am so grateful for my ridiculous life.