How we Spent our Second Anniversary

Photo by Steph Carson.

This year, our anniversary was spent in a way that is unlike any other: on tour. Brian left to join the corps mid-June, and I flew down to Texas on the 17th of June to meet them and primarily so we could spend our anniversary in the same state on June 19th. We knew we really wouldn't get to spend our anniversary "together"--he had to teach all day and I had to cook. But we did have one "special" moment when we rolled into our housing site sometime between probably 2-3 am the morning of the 19th. 


To set the scene: 

We get to the housing site at a very questionably "nice" school and find out we'll be sleeping in the auditorium. Which is fine. They're really dark when you turn the lights off. Usually plenty of outlets and a flat stage to sleep on. But then we walk into the auditorium and find out that it has obviously been locked up since school ended. With no air conditioning. 

So we're thinking we'll hear the AC kick on any minute and set up our air mattress in the back of the auditorium. For some reason everyone else went to sleep and turned out the lights in like 2 seconds. So I'm fumbling around in the dark trying to find my contacts stuff and glasses in my suitcase. We try to settle in and it's obvious we're not getting any AC. And it's not like we can just prop some doors open. It's Texas, and unless you want to wake up with a snake or some insane spider for a bed buddy I'd keep the doors shut tight.

The plot thickens:

So we're down to wearing as little as can still be called decent, keeping in mind we're sleeping in a room with 20 other people. We're lying on our backs trying not to move or touch besides a couple fingers because it's SO HOT in that room. And that's when the noise starts. I questioned whether it was human at first because I've never heard a noise like that in my life. And then it became apparent that a staff member, who shall remain nameless on this blog, was snoring. I seriously thought he might be slowly dying. And it was relentless. It was probably going to continue all night. 

In the midst of this, all the staff got a text from the corps director about the next day's schedule. So one by one around the room we watched all these little spots of light flare up and alarms go off as everyone's phones registered the incoming message. It was quite a funny little choir of beeps and songs. And then on top of that I realized that if you used your imagination the snoring kind of sounded like a chorus of tree frogs. And if you REALLY used your imagination maybe we weren't really in an unairconditioned  auditorium at 3 am listening to the most insane snoring I've ever heard. Maybe we were on a blanket under the stars, listening to the sounds of night. 

And then we lost it: 

Once I shared my tree frog thought with Brian the giggling and laughing began. We couldn't stop. I could barely breathe because there's nothing worse than laughing really hard and having to be as quiet as possible. And the fact that we were exhausted. Tears were literally pouring from my eyes. And every time there was another snore we lost it all over again. At one point we calmed down and Brian looked over and said "Happy Anniversary!" and I realized that it didn't matter if we went out to a fancy dinner or spent every minute of our day together. We had what will probably be one of the most memorable anniversaries ever, sharing his passion for drum corps with me and laughing hysterically. And I couldn't think of any way that would have been better to spend the first few hours of our second anniversary. 

My Roomie Claire is getting married today and I couldn't be more excited for her and her fiance Brad. They are wonderful people and are going to have an amazing life together. I am so lucky that we get to be a small part of their wedding day. I hope they get to have some amazing, unexpected anniversaries together for many, many years to come.