The wife and I celebrated our two year wedding anniversary this year on May 11th. For those of you checking your calendars, yes that was two months ago.

The main reasons for this delay are as follows:

1. This blog didn’t exist until recently.

2. I wasn’t sure how to write about our marriage in a way that captures the amazing, scary, lovely and amazing thing that is our marriage.

Then, like a bolt of lightening inspiration hit me and I had my idea.

Cheese.

My marriage is like good cheese. (That’s the name of my new relationship book) Like a really really good bleu cheese. The stuff that’s kinda moldy and smells a little and tastes really good on crackers or fruit or off your finger as you cry alone in the dark…

… (clears throat)… Where was I? Oh, right. Cheese.

Good cheese is good cheese because it has good beginnings. Either tradition or ingredients, the origin of cheese is important to it’s final product.  It requires the right climate to cultivate and become that very special, and often expensive, cheese we love to show off to our friends at dinner parties.

We were friends first. That was our beginning. Despite my early advances and her early retreats, Stax and I were friends. Our friendship cultivated for three long years and eventually, after what seemed like a freaking eternity, the climate was right and we took that next step towards expensive cheesedom.

She kissed me.

That’s right, no matter what she says, no matter how much she protests, no matter how much I can’t really remember how it happened. She. Kissed. Me.

That kiss turned into a relationship and that relationship turned into an engagement and that turned into marriage.

I’m not glazing over this, I promise. It’s just not that important. I mean, it is… because it happened and it’s what this post is about, but it’s not because that’s the good stuff.

You’re probably wondering why I picked bleu cheese.  bleu cheese is only as good as the mold that grows in it. Mold is traditionally a bad thing, think old apples and gross bathtubs. But in cheese, and medicine (Thanks Dr. Flemming) mold is good. Those little bits of “bad” in an otherwise pure piece of cheese add a dimension that makes it one of the more sought after and desirable cheeses out there. I mean, it’s everywhere, salads, wings, on crackers, on apples, colognes (Not yet, but soon. I will sue you Calvin Klein if you steal my idea.)

Every good marriage has a bit of that “flavor” to it. It needs it. Nothing is perfect and usually if it seems like it is, there is something being overlooked. I love my wife every single day. I love her more than the day I met her and I will continue to love her for the rest of my life.  But, not every day is perfect. There are troubles and there are hurdles and there are frustrations. And when those days happen I think back to our beginning, our friendship and the phases of relationship we cultivated that brought us to this point.  I think about all of the little things we’ve had to go through and I know that it’s just “flavor”. It’s just that extra bit that makes our marriage special.

It’s what makes me want to put it on an apple and eat it… erhm… you know what I mean.

My marriage is like good bleu cheese that will only get better with more time and more mold…

I’m getting that framed for Stax next year.

The Blob