Against the Current.: Blast From the Past (Honeymoon in Italy!)

As some of you know, I was married once before. Hubby #1 was a great guy. A man who truly believed in honor, integrity, and unfortunately for our relationship, fighting for one's country. Yes, I was almost a military wife. I even had those "I ❤ My Soldier" bumper stickers. I know, right? So unlike me.

I'm not the kind of person who does well on my own, and after enduring 3 months of basic training, then 3 more months of AIT, I started freaking out about deployment. We had a beautiful romantic love story though where we wrote each other a letter every day that he was in boot camp. I waited for the mailman and cussed him out in my head when he was late with my letter. I still have a shoebox filled with every one of them neatly arranged in order. I even flew to Georgia to attend his graduation from boot camp.

He was a beautiful person, but as soon as we got married, things spiraled out of control. I was only 20 when we got married, and when I turned 21, I wanted to live in the bars every night. Hubby #1 didn't drink, so that didn't happen. We did have fun though. He was the master of building epic Magic: The Gathering decks. We played all the time. Our friends came over and played too. We set our computers side by side and spent hours at a time playing World of Warcraft, Battlefield 1942, Diablo, and every other popular computer game at the time. We even had a LAN party once. I think we managed 12 computers in our small 2 bedroom apartment, and the neighbors below us were not happy about all the noise all night long.

It's funny how I managed to just shove all these memories aside when we got divorced. Like I was never married before, but that's what you're supposed to do when you get remarried right? Not talk about the first marriage?

Anyway, we both attended Central Washington University. I was a psychology major, he was a history major. We had a history class together once. Once, and only once, I got an A on a test that he got a B on, and history is my worst subject. I teased him about that forever!

But it wasn't meant to be. I knew I couldn't handle a deployment, and it was inevitable once the war in Iraq really got bad. There were of course other issues too, but the biggest was that I just could not handle being a military wife. I hate people telling me or my family what to do, especially the government. So, 5 months after we had a huge, beautiful, expensive wedding, and a 2 week honeymoon in Italy, I filed for divorce. I figured it was better to get it done sooner rather than later. I definitely wanted to get it done before we had kids or anything complicated like that. It was tough, but in the end it was amicable. I still have a lot of respect for hubby #1 who has been overseas for quite a long time now.

So here are pictures from our honeymoon.

This was taken on our tour of the Colosseum in Rome

Me studying the Italian language in or Rome hotel room

Um, okay, I get all these monuments and shit confused, but this was in Rome

Hubby #1 in Rome

Oh, so Hubby #1 was a terrible driver. Barely drove at all. In fact I drove us everywhere even at home. I called our rental car the devil car. Why? it was a manual transmission and I only knew how to drive an automatic. So We got to Florence and I had to just wing it and drive this car to the Tuscan countryside. There were a few emotional breakdowns along the way, but I didn't wreck the car. I like to think I'm a natural driver. I picked it up fairly easily, but have been terrified to drive a manual ever since. This picture was when we finally arrived at the villa we were staying at near Cortona.

Me and Hubby #1 eating at a trattoria in Cortona

This is Roberto. A Tuscan chef who owned the villa, and a wonderful host.

Here we are with an Irish couple enjoying one of Roberto's 5 course dinners. Let me say this. Italians know how to eat... and drink... and when we asked Roberto how they keep in shape well, he said "We make big love." Meaning epic lovemaking sessions every night. Ok, I could go for sexercise every night with a hot Italian man.