It was four years ago in Mexico that I was told to do that.

What should have been a simple matter of putting a ring on my bride’s finger almost turned into a fiasco. The heat and humidity of the warm weather on the Mayan coast had caused swelling of our entire bodies but particularly our fingers.

Her ring wouldn’t fit. I tried twisting it, even rocking it, onto her finger.

“Push, Baby, push,” she insisted.

So I did push, harder and harder. She pushed back. The Justice of the Peace looked on.

The ring finally slid on as we both sighed with relief.

Through the ups and downs of 4 short years of marriage she still wears that ring.

A long, long time ago, from an IP address far, far away, Fragileheart tagged me with this meme.

I’m only going to partially play by the rules though — I won’t tag anyone else at the end of this.

1. Adrian is my brother, my only sibling whom I see maybe every 4 months or so. He is my brother, 7 years younger, whom I yelled at, oppressed, and took advantage of in ways that only he remembers best. Yet with all the good he’s brought into my life, I can’t imagine growing up without him.
2. Naegele’s Rule has no application within my life for the foreseeable future. The Girl and I have no plans for human children of our own.
3. Teeth are obviously a huge part of my life. Shortly after I started practicing, however, I almost quit the profession. I had a difficult time dealing with the bullshit I saw happening to patients in too many of the offices that referred to me. I stuck it out though, created stringent policies to deter referrals from unethical dentists, and am much happier now.
4. Hodoscopes trace the paths of charged particles. I believe that life is one giant hodoscope and that all of us are particles within its field. Life is about energy on many levels. How we manipulate this energy is how we define our living.
5. Orchitis is basically…uncomfortable for a guy. I’m sure that every man can recall every single time he’s had a traumatic impact to his nuts. Any guy that says otherwise is either lying about remembering or lying about being a guy. My worst memory of this kind of thing is when I decided to be an idiot gymnast and I attempted to walk along some monkey bars. My feet slipped of course. My balls stopped my fall before my wildly flailing hands could.
6. Nymphicus Hollandicus was Tweety, the first bird The Girl and I ever owned. He loved her, but hated me because I was the one who clipped his nails and wings. He grew up to be a very spoilt bird who loudly demanded more incessesant attention than we could share. He now lives with the manager at a pet store that we frequent. He’s very happy there since he’s the only bird in the house and he gets to accompany his new owner on car trips and horseback rides.
7. Ygdrasil — the Norse mythologic Ash tree — reminds me of a girl I once knew. The tree’s roots and branches hold Earth, Heaven, and Hell together. Jannike, my favorite Norwegian, broke that all apart for me. The stars were strangely aligned when I met her. The fragmentation that she brought into my world prepared me for the rest of my life.