Here is a story about a girl and a guy and how they met, married, and lived happily ever after. It's not the Hallmark movie version where the boy meets a girl and the girl instantly falls in love with the boy (that's no fun right?) It is our story.

In 1989, when I was 23 years old, I went with a friend to see a psychic named Marilyn. Being single, she wanted to know about her future mate while I, who had been dating the same guy (blonde hair, blue eyes, and skinny) for several years, wasn't interested. Except there were plans to go to lunch afterward and since I'm not one to miss a meal, I agreed to go.

My girlfriend went first. When it was my turn, I followed Marilyn into the kitchen where she started flipping through a deck of Canasta cards and explaining what lay ahead for me, because, as we all know, Canasta cards can be used to predict the future. Har. Har.

She said I hadn't met the man I would marry but I would soon, my husband would be very tall and have dark hair and eyes. He'd drive a green pickup truck and I would meet him while I was sitting at a picnic table at an outdoor party and I wouldn't marry the skinny guy I was dating, the one with blonde hair and blue eyes.

And I'm sitting there thinking: Sure. If you insist. THIS was super worth it while mentally snickering.

I don't even want to know what sort of horrible expression I had fixed on my face when I forked over $25 of my hard-earned cash for that nonsense information. Did I roll my eyes? You betcha'.

Holding him down because he wanted no part of the picture and was trying to jump out of the back of the truck.

But I couldn't deny that my boyfriend WAS a skinny guy with blonde hair and blue eyes, that this Marilyn lady hadn't known I would be joining my friend, that she hadn't peppered me with five trillion questions and knew nothing about me, not even my name.

My main takeaway was that she made a lucky guess, because practically everyone wants tall, dark, and handsome, right?

Flash forward two months. I got a new job (which she predicted.) On my first day, the company celebrated reaching the milestone of one million safety hours and hosted a lunchtime festival for the employees. In other words, since no employee had lost a finger, an eye, or a limb and no one had been mortally wounded on the job for eleventy billion days everyone got a sandwich.

The sandwiches were being distributed in a grassy area outside. At lunch time I got my hoagie and sat alone at an empty picnic table. A few minutes later a guy sat across from me. He ate his sandwich in three bites while I was watching him and thinking That was impressive eating and then Hmmmmmmm...tall guy, with dark hair and brown eyes, and we're sitting at a picnic table. Wait just MINUTE HERE...is this...MY FUTURE HUSBAND??!!

Nope. He ate his sandwich and left without saying a word.

Whatever. I had a boyfriend.

First night home from the hospital with a baby who refused to come out (27 hours of labor!) He made up for it by always being a good sleeper.

Later that afternoon who walks into my new office but the I-Can-Eat-A-Large-Sandwich-In-Three-Bites guy. We worked in the same department. Someone introduced us. His name was Bill. We chatted and I thought that was the end of it. I wasn't interested. But apparently, he was. He regularly came into my office and made dumb jokes while I pretended to be amused. One day it occurred to me that he was flirting (because either I'm clueless or he had no game or a lot of both.)

He asked me out three times before I said yes. (There was that boyfriend I had to deal with first.) He wanted to go water skiing on our first date. I was thankful when a hurricane blew through that morning and water skiing was no longer an option - because a bathing suit on a first date?! SERIOUSLY?!

Instead, we went to the movies and saw Lethal Weapon 2 and then to TGI Fridays.

Oh, when he arrived at my apartment he drove up in...you guessed it...a green pickup truck.

On the way to the hospital at 10 pm at night. I made sure to put on lipstick (eye roll). Broken water and labor pains were going on there. I relive the pain whenever I look at this picture.

After two years of dating, we got married. We celebrated 33 years of marriage this March. All blissful, of course. (Wink Wink)

We've had our hard times—many, many hard times—but we've had good times, too. I'm fortunate for so much, but mostly, I count the little things, like having someone who makes me a big, hearty breakfast on the weekends, shares my love of McDonald's and Disney World, makes the bed as soon as he gets out of it, and never leaves a wet towel on the bathroom floor.

Everyone has a special This Is Us story, and that is ours.

If you read this far without losing interest, I applaud you. Summarizing three decades of life together on one page is challenging. I promise that the next blog post will be shorter, and one day, I will tell you a story about how we got engaged in the most unromantic way.

I'll leave you with a few pictures of the early days. One is of Bill in 1984. He was building his mother’s new house. He is in the kitchen working hard. Note the Budweiser. The other is of me in 1984. My first job between high school and college was at a gas station, where I also worked hard. Note the perfect fingernails, clothes, and hair.

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