The Hubs

Today is the fourth anniversary of wedding. I figured, what is a better way to tell you this other than to let my loyal readers know the story of me & my husband. This isn't the first time I've posted about my husband, Josh. Y'all met him when I decided to complain about The Biggest Problem In Our Marriage and when he was hit by an 18 wheeler but now it is time you met him on a more personal level.


I refer to him a lot on Twitter as Hubs or Spike. As you can see, he is thin (deceptively strong, but still a bean pole), so years ago I decided he looks like Spike from Cowboy Bebop. See the similarities?


I met Josh when we were 17. I don't understand why it took us that long to meet though. I have a very close friend named Miranda, and I have known since I was 4. She's lived in the same house her whole life. This house happens to be across the street from the boy who would become my husband. Wait… did I mention they're cousins? Yep. I spent many summers swimming in her pool, many nights sleeping at her house, and untold hours just hanging out in her room Yet I did not met the man I would one day fall in love with, until I was 17.


It was high school in 2002. He was a wrestler, I was a Mat Maid. One day at the start of the season, before a wrestling weekend, I saw him. I am a nerd, I will gather all the information I can before I act on anything. So, I ran to my friend and fellow Mat Maid, and you guessed it, that friend was the dear Miranda. I started asking questions. I wanted her to dish all the dirt on the cutie with the brown curls and the cocky attitude. She was so confused. I pointed him out. Like it was yesterday, I remember her saying, "He's not cute. He's my cousin." I decided right then and there I would have him. And she was going to help me.

The next couple of weeks we formulated our plan. At the big Sean Still Tournament December 7th 2002, Miranda would "leave without me" for lunch. I would mention to Josh and a few other wrestlers that I had no ride to get food, and naturally his good Southern raising would force him to offer me a ride. It worked. We went to Subway. We were there alone so we had plenty of time to swap stories. I remember laughing hard at all of his jokes and hoping I was as pretty as I thought I was. I just knew I needed to hook this boy.

He was out for the rest of the night, so we sat on the bleachers and flirted the whole night. I even pretended I didn't know how to keep the score book (I had been a Mat Maid for nearly 5 years), and had him explain it to me. Actually, he had another cousin on the wrestling team (remember, we grew up/live in a VERY small town), who was CONVINCED that I was flirting with him and not Josh. Poor boy actually pulled Josh to the side and told him to leave me alone. Well, that night I "didn't have a ride home" (that was another part of our plan). Josh offered to take me home. We went to a local park and spent the whole night talking. Jimmy Eat World's A Praise Chorus came on the radio at least 1,000 times that night, and we did fall in love.


(Us at 18. January 2004)

I was graduating that next May (2003) and I knew the statistics of how many high school relationships don't survive being separated by college. I was torn inside. I would be moving 75 miles away to be a theatre major. We made all the promises to see each other every weekend. I cried myself to sleep many nights, hurting at the thought of my budding romance ending suddenly. We spent every single day of the summer together. We even danced barefooted on the roof of his van under the stars. We were young and wanted time to stand still. In an effort to stop the world from separating us, Josh purposed to me the week before I left for college. Naturally, I said yes.

It didn't work. We broke up after that first year of being engaged. It hurt to look at my senior yearbook because there was 2 pages dedicated to cute couples, and we were 1/2 a page. I spent a lot of nights out with my sorority sisters drinking hard and relying on a fraternity guy who had became my bodyguard to keep the creepy guys away from me. I had a couple of college flings, but never recaptured those feelings I had with Josh. I felt so lost and convinced I would never have love again.

Well, one of those flings turned out to be someone psychotic (we all have at least one relationship like that right?). He was a trust fund baby who stole credit cards for fun. He used me to make other girls jealous and cheated on me every chance he got. I was so scared of being hurt again, I put up with crap that I knew I didn't deserve because I didn't want to "drive another one away." The scumbag broke up with me after both I and the girl he was cheating with caught him cheating with another girl. He then stalked me. I would see him outside of my apartment when he lived across town. He was unaffiliated but showed up to all the fraternity parties I was at with my sorority sisters (he even cheated on me with a sister). He went so far as to get a job where I worked. I was scared to leave my apartment and ended up failing a bunch of classes.

I spent all day talking to my best friend saying how "Josh would never have treated me like this." To the point of her finally saying "Will you just give Josh a fuckin call, because I bet he misses you as much as you miss him and I'm sick of you going on and on about him." I couldn't come up with an argument, so I had to call him. Turns out he did miss me and we decided to give it another shot.

It was almost like we picked up right where we left off. We eventually moved in together and decided to wait a long time before we brought up marriage again. Well, at the very end of May 2007, we found out I was about 5 months pregnant (Yes, we didn't know. Yes, I still had my period. No, I did not have morning sickness or weight gain or any other symptom. I almost could have been on TLC's I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant). July 16th, 2007 we decided to go ahead and get married. Our wedding was July 20th, 2007, in my aunt's back yard.


Once again, we were young and in love and ready to take on the world together.


Josh and me and baby soon made three. Even though Josh was stressing that he wouldn't be a good father. I was more confident, because if God wouldn't have wanted us to have a child, this baby would not be as perfect as ultra sounds were showing him to be. Our little growing fetus was perfectly healthy and developing normally. 5 months not knowing you're pregnant, gives plenty of time for birth defects to occur. So while Josh stressed, I prayed that what I felt was true. Once we had our baby, all our fears disappeared.


Like all couples going through the first year of marriage with a new born, we fought, we had fun and we made memories that will last forever. I quit working, only to go back once our bundle of joy got a little bigger, and we stayed a whirlwind of activity. A couple of months after our baby's first birthday, we found out we were pregnant again. This time, my body actually let us know.


We were blessed with another happy, healthy baby boy. Two little boys only 22 months apart meant we'll be busy. Our life really couldn't get any better. Since then, when we're not working hard or trying to further our education, we're going on family vacations…


and spending time teaching the rugrats to play fun stuff, like Rock Em, Sock Em Robots…


and we like to rough house…


we also enjoy teaching our kids the finer points of American vehicles…


Halloween is always fun too…


and golf club sword fights are where it's at!


Our story is not over yet. The kids are getting bigger, and we are doing better than ever. We work hard, we play hard and we love hard.


Oh, and for those of you who don't know (or haven't figured it out yet) Josh and I are zombie enthusiasts. We even have a survival plan that involves us going up to his family farm because it has a lake that they've been able to have several generations of bass sustained by, deer frequent the area and there is plenty of farm land for growing crops. We were discussing our survival plan the other day when Josh said, "I've got a scuba suit!" Once my brain restarted I asked him why in the hell he thought a scuba suit was a good defense against the undead. Apparently, he thinks he can use it to keep them from grabbing on to him or something crazy like that. Anyways, I made him put it on so I could make fun of him on Twitter.


Happy anniversary, Josh! I love you! I'm so glad we're growing old together.

- Whether you love me or hate me, you know who I am.