I had a much different post written for today, July 26, our 25th wedding anniversary. But mother nature had other ideas. Last night, while most people were sleeping (not me, I can’t sleep during thunderstorms unless I’m lying on the floor underneath something) a record-breaking 12″ inches of rain fell on our area. Roads were inundated, basements and homes were flooded and two separate animal facilities were flooded resulting in the death of one dog and ten puppies.
The thousands of dollars I’ve spent repairing the basement seems to have helped. The only problem we encountered was rain came through the bottom of the windows. But really, what do you expect when the basement windows are at ground level or lower and you have a river flowing through your backyard? I heard the sump pump running during the night while I wandered the house and I could see the water running down the walls beneath the windows. Ideally, the drain tile that was put in the floor next to our most offending wall is supposed to catch any water that runs down the wall. But, we’ve found before that the 1/4″ horizontal drain opening can’t handle extreme downpours. That little opening just gets inundated.

Our only real loss was a room-size rug on the floor, but since I wasn’t particularly attached to that rug, it went out in the trash. My daughter across the street didn’t fair as well. Everything in her basement on the floor was soaked. Luckily, since she’s been through the water problem before too, most of her things were raised off the floor. So I spent most of my day cleaning basements, mine and hers.

But it is still our anniversary. Twenty-five years ago, GH’s daughter, Kim, totally orchestrated our wedding and reception. She wanted us to have one, but we really didn’t. Since GH and I had both “been there, done that”, neither of us wanted anything big.

GH probably never really expressed what he wanted. He’s a man. No offense to any man that might be reading this, but you guys have it easy. I always tell GH that I want to be a man, to have the perks that most men have like not having to shop or plan or cook. Other than that, I’m completely happy with being a woman–(hear me roar.) GH’s idea of planning something is like asking me if I want to go out to dinner and then asking me where we should go. He only plans for HIS trips, i.e., hunting, fishing, etc. cuz he knows he’s on his own for that.

Anyway, I digress. I wanted to make sure that this anniversary was celebrated because odds are he and I won’t make it to our 50th; he would be 102 and I would be 93. It could happen, but wouldn’t put a lot of money on it.  And as I said before, if I’d left it up to him, we’d have celebrated the same way we did the last couple of years, with a paper plate or napkin.

So for this momentous occasion, I decided to take the easy, but more expensive way out. My brother got his subdivision clubhouse, I bought most of the food and I had a cake made. Unless you’ve entertained a large group at your home and prepared all the food, cleaned the house and cleaned it all up again afterward, you won’t be able to appreciate how great this was. It eliminated so much stress that I was able to fully enjoy our party.

I’m very old-fashioned and when I started thinking about what kind of cake I wanted (again, GH didn’t care), I knew I wanted a vintage cake. Ideally, I would have had a two tier cake, but I’m too much of a tight-wad to spend $220 for a cake, so I settled for a double-layer one-tier cake. As I thought about the cake topper and what I wanted, it suddenly occurred to me that I already had the perfect cake topper–my mom and dad’s wedding cake bride and groom from 1952!

We had a great turnout even though it was very hot, 105 °. The younger guests enjoyed the pool but most of us “mature” people stayed inside in the air conditioning. And you know it had to be very hot because otherwise my vanity would not have allowed me to wear a sleeveless dress.

And the cake, from Susie Q’s Bakery in O’Fallon was one of the best I have ever eaten, and we ate it all!