Two Anniversaries

I was feeling a little sad because today marks one year since we had to send our sweet Black Lab, Cleo, to the Rainbow Bridge.

Not a day goes by that I don’t think about her. I miss the way she would jump up and greet me with a big, fat, sloppy kiss when I would get home from work. I miss the way she used to Kravitz the neighborhood by looking out the front window and watching the comings and goings.

I even sort of miss the way she ate EVERYTHING, including dog food, human food, bones, leather, wood, carpet, sheetrock, baseboards, my mother’s Ethan Allen sofa, and every bed and toy I ever gave her.

I miss her deep, bellowing bark and the way she would lay her head in my lap and let me rub her long, silky ears.

Those ears were so big that the day we adopted her from Lab Rescue some lady went by and in a nasally twang, declared, “That dog has hound dog ears!”

My Mom spent the rest of her life doing a great impression of that woman.

I miss the way Cleo and Kova played with each other.

I brought Kova home at 10 weeks when Cleo was about six months old and the minute I sat Kova down on the floor, they eyeballed each other for about five seconds and then both started jumping and playing and they were so excited to see another puppy! It was truly love at first sight and they were sisters in every sense of the word for the next ten years.

I’ll never forget coming home without her from the vet’s office. Kova was so excited we were back because she wasn’t accustomed to us taking Cleo somewhere and not taking Kova too. But then her excitement turned into confusion as she started looking around and sniffing. She couldn’t understand why she couldn’t find her sister.

Slowly, Kova accepted that Cleo was not coming back and she started taking over the Kravitz and watchdog duties. She even sensed that I was sad one night and came and laid her head in my lap the way Cleo used to and it made me happy and sad all at once.

We’ve all adjusted but we haven’t forgotten.

Thinking about Cleo made me think about how short life is and I started wishing I had been more adventurous and less cautious in my youth.

Until I remembered that time I quit my job, packed up my three cats and my apartment, and moved 900 miles to a city I had only visited once, to marry a Dude I met online and had only known for four months.

And I asked myself, “Just how much fucking adventure do you think you missed out on???”

That Dude and I will be celebrating eighteen years of marriage on St. Patty’s Day.

And no, our colors weren’t green. We didn’t have colors. We eloped.

We got up on a rainy Friday morning and drove to Joplin, Missouri. I wore a black suede skirt and top set and he wore short sleeves, slacks, a tie, and a Vincent Price mustache that still irritates me every time I look at the pictures.

The wedding “chapel” was in the back of a flower shop and they hired a minister from a local church to perform the ceremony. He asked if we had witnesses, which we didn’t, so the chapel owner called her next door neighbor.

I watched her walk across the small field, pulling hair rollers out of her hair and stuffing them in her pockets.

She looked like she had probably received calls like this before.

That was our first wedding.

Our second wedding was just in time for our tenth wedding anniversary. We hired an actual wedding chapel, I bought a white dress, he wore a tux and had a goatee like Scott Ian of the band Anthrax. We invited sixty people to witness it.

Then the ice storm moved in and only thirteen people showed up.

Typical.

We ate the catered Italian food for a week because there was so much left over.

Our twentieth is coming up soon. I tried to convince THD to go to Las Vegas and get married by a Gene Simmons impersonator but he says he’s never marrying me again.

I don’t know if that’s insulting or not.

In any case, we’ll be celebrating our eighteenth with friends at the casino. We still have two years to decide how we’ll mark the 20th year. I’m still pushing for a party of some kind, but every time we plan a celebration, we end up with bad weather. This year it’s supposed to be almost eighty degrees here in Northeast Oklahoma. By our twentieth, we’ll be due for another ice storm, blizzard, tornado or flood.

So save the date and plan to wear your waterproof boots.

Or, with any luck, your KISS boots!