>Note to self: Never, ever, ever again watch Lady Gaga on David Letterman before bed.

I dream every night. It seems as though I never actually sleep because the dreams are so vivid and real and usually always ridiculously crazy. I, at first, fall into bed with that stretch out on stomach and head on pillow sigh of ahhhhhh and close my eyes thinking, yes tonight I will sleep, after all it’s been a good day. However I awake at 1:30am with a start and rush to the bathroom checking to make sure I didn’t wet the bed because I have to pee so bad! I sit in the bathroom wondering if it’s just the 7pm coffee or are Depends right around the corner… on this note I return to bed.
Yes and then the dreams…
What I can recall (and am willing to share) is somehow I am in a gym and there’s a jv and high school basketball tournament going on. One boys team is getting ready to play and a wormy coach walks out all puffed up looking for his dry erase marker and then one of his coach assistant’s who is a rather muscled up big guy jumps up and runs to get one for the wormy coach who in turn throws it back at the dudes face because he wanted a different one, to which the bigger dude, ducks his head and heads off to get the other marker. I shake my head and walk away. There is nothing that perplexes me more than a grown man licking another man’s boots as he walks around in pompous arrogance…
Next thing I am sitting watching a jv girls team getting ready to practice and divide up into teams and the Hispanic talking coach grabs me and says “here you play on this team”. I look at her with a ‘hello!?!??’ I’m 34 not 12, I think they’ll notice. To which she replies, no they won’t, I have the paperwork to prove you’re of age, get out their and play. She then looks at me and says, ‘it’s okay, you just need to go get in the egg and meditate and be reborn. Have you experienced rebirth today?’ To which all of a sudden now I am on the team and I look over and my basketball playing cousin who is also in her 30’s is playing with me. We just look at each other and shrug our shoulders. Game on?
Next thing I know I am outside and I look over and here comes a young girl I have known since a child dressed up in the Lady Gaga gear of the David Letterman interview. She prances up as if it is no big deal that she is dressed this way. I am thinking “Good Lord what is the world coming to? Please do not allow this woman to influence our youth, she uses Your words but she twists them to her own will.”
Somehow from there I end up being put in charge of my friend Michelle’s favorite tree. It is a tree that looks like a dinosaur leg bone and she loves it and wants to keep it safe. I at first find this utterly ridiculous, but as the men come to try and take the tree away I grab on for dear life and am holding on with heaping sobs to this tree… They finally jerk it away and I am standing there explaining what happened to my friend and am still sobbing as I say, I can’t believe I got so attached to a stupid tree…

Now if I were a dream analyzer I could spend hours trying to decipher through all this mess, but it’s really quite simple…
Don’t watch the News or Lady Gaga on David Lettermen before going to bed.

>Well, I am not much on Hollywood’s idea of love, but there are some one liners in some films that just stick with you forever. Considering that tomorrow is my wedding anniversary, I would like to share one of my favorite.
Richard Gere in Runaway Bride is talking with Julia Roberts about how a man should really propose. He tells her, “Look, I guarantee there’ll be tough times. I guarantee that at some point, one or both of us is gonna want to get out of this thing. But I also guarantee that if I don’t ask you to be mine, I’ll regret it for the rest of my life, because I know, in my heart, you’re the only one for me”
I LOVE THIS!
This is the truth. There will be tough times. There will be times when you will look at each other and, well, just not like each other that much. Those times will come, but they will also go. If we walk away, give up, because of a tough time… oh my the amazing good times we miss.
I have learned that each anniversary has become sweeter. The best days were not the “honeymoon” days, the best days are now. The best days are when we come through a trial together. The best days are when both kids wake up throwing up in the middle of the night and you spend the entire night and next day tag teaming between kids, vomit buckets, throwing towels and blankets and shirts and what ever you can find to catch what doesn’t make it in the bucket or bathroom. The best days are holding each other up when you’re waiting in the hospital. The best days are when you realize that you are not perfect and neither are they, but together you manage to even each other out somehow.
I have learned that God has used my husband to make me a better woman. I hope that God has used me to make him a better man. I have learned that love (Biblical love) never fails. I have learned that if I can live out the Word of God in my home, I can live it out anywhere.
I have learned that the more time I invest in knowing my husband and trusting in his character the more deeply I fall in love with him, because I freely fall with no reservations. I have learned that as the walls of self protection fall the safety of true intimacy is all the protection I need.
So the Runaway Bride proposal was one of my favorite, but my very favorite proposal of all time, was the one in my apartment bathroom 12 years ago.
To my wonderful husband of 12 years, Mr Patrick Vaughn, Happy Anniversary! I love you so much and I know in my heart that you are the only one for me…  🙂