Heal & Grow with Nickie
Join your host, Nickie Kromminga Hill, and her guests on a journey of personal stories and insights into healing and growth from past and current trauma. The focus is on fostering true connections through conversations centered around vulnerability and authenticity. The goal is to collectively heal and find opportunities for growth, promoting a sense of togetherness.
Heal & Grow with Nickie
18. A Conversation with Paul Hill
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On our Eleventh Anniversary, join hubby Paul Hill and me on a journey back in time as we rewind eleven years to the moment our lives changed forever - the day we said 'I do'. The joy, the tears, the highs and lows - we're unraveling it all.
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Discussion on Wedding Planning and Marriage
Speaker 1Hello everyone. It is so great to be back. I wasn't around last week. Well, I was around, but there was no podcast because I had a case of the laryngitis, which doesn't work too well when you're doing a podcast. Anyway, I am so excited today because I have another guest, and that guest is the man, the myth, the legend, the one and only, paul Hill, also known as my husband. I am so pumped that he is here today and, as a little teaser, we did a sound check a couple months ago now and I'm gonna play that for you now and then we'll do the real interview.
Speaker 2Hello everyone, it is July 3rd 2023.
Speaker 3Can you believe, it is July already.
Speaker 1I cannot, can you?
Speaker 3Can you?
Speaker 1Can you hey? That goes with what my shirt says right now.
Speaker 3What does your shirt say?
Speaker 1It says anything. You canoe, I canoe better.
Speaker 3Well, it needs some musical notes. I think on there.
Speaker 1On it? Yeah, that would be pretty cool. I feel like it's sort of an insider joke.
Speaker 3Oops, did I ruin your podcast? You know, you didn't ruin it.
Speaker 1You're just like showing everyone what it's like to live with you, I enhanced it you enhanced it. I mean, hey, are you gonna be my first interview?
Speaker 3I don't know.
Speaker 1Great. Tell me about a time, tell me about something that happened in your life, and how did you heal and or grow from it?
Speaker 3Well, this one time I broke my ankle.
Speaker 2Yeah, you broke your ankle. Yeah, I don't even remember this.
Speaker 3I was on one of those double swings. You know that you face each other.
Speaker 1Oh, do you mean like? Oh, they're almost like a. You know those swings that are on like porch fronts. Yeah, so it's like that. But they're facing each other. Yeah, there's one that fit.
Speaker 3Yeah, okay, and this was in Marshfield.
Speaker 1Okay.
Speaker 2So you were little because you were family friends were over. Okay.
Speaker 3And they were older and they kept pushing me higher and higher.
Speaker 1Was it just you on the swing? Yeah, okay, and I was like.
Speaker 3I was like, okay, no more, I want to stop. And then they wouldn't, because they were. I thought it was pretty funny. So I put my foot through the little. There was a gap in the slats in the bottom and it twisted my ankle.
Speaker 1Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3Backwards and broke it.
Speaker 1And so you were swinging, and then you did that at the same time to like get it to stop.
Speaker 2Like you were going to put your foot all the way down to stop it.
Speaker 3I did put my foot through. Oh my gosh, yeah, you broke your ankle, broke my ankle. So I said I don't remember if we went to the hospital right away. I do remember laying on the couch and eating dinner, and I remember corn was part of the dinner. Corn yeah, but I don't remember if we if then we realized it was broken, or if we had come back from the hospital with a cast yet? Yeah, not sure.
Speaker 1What did the people do that were pushing you? Did they feel bad? What?
Speaker 2happened.
Speaker 1Well.
Speaker 3I hope so. I hope they felt bad, yeah, so I'm just going to check our levels here, nuts.
Speaker 1I thought we were doing like an awesome interview right now?
Speaker 3Oh, we're not.
Speaker 1Well, I thought we were, but now you're going to stop and check levels.
Speaker 3Well, the weird thing is, I thought there's a headphone thing here and a headphone thing here and I thought we could both listen and you can like check levels, but it's not really working very well.
Speaker 1Okay. So, All right, well, thanks for being my first interview.
Speaker 3Okay, okay, thanks, okay, I love you. I love you too.
Speaker 2Okay, bye. Welcome to Heal and Grow with Nikki. I'm your host, Nikki Kraminga Hill. Here we talk about everything grief hope, illness, work, family tragedy, possibilities fun stuff and not so fun stuff it's all on the table. Let's take a look at our lives and work to Heal and Grow together. I'm so glad you're here, Ready.
Speaker 3Ready.
Speaker 1I don't, you can't be that quiet. Hey, hey everybody. Please let me introduce my guest, Paul James Hill. Oh my gosh, Paul, I didn't even ask you for a bio. Paul, give us a quick bio.
Speaker 3This was not on my pre-approved list. Born in Wisconsin, raised in Wisconsin, you know, went to school for music, and that brings us up to today. Great, what is today? Today is September 3rd, our 11th anniversary.
Speaker 1Yes, it's our 11th anniversary. You all will hear this on September 5th, but we are recording on Sunday, the 3rd, so it's our official anniversary.
Speaker 3Can you believe?
Speaker 1it. I kind of cannot actually conute. I can't believe it. 11 years Wow. Yeah, we're gonna talk about our marriage and just previous relationships today.
Speaker 3Did they fly by?
Speaker 1the 11 years, you know what they kind of did. Actually, I remember our wedding day very, very well, and I don't know if it's just because of photos, but I remember that day so well that it kind of seems like it was this morning.
Speaker 3And I don't think there was much panicking, so we were able to enjoy most of it. So there weren't fires for us anyway. Tired to put out, yeah.
Speaker 1Do you think why, like looking back on that time, you hear people talk about what a fun and challenging time it is to plan the wedding. But I just thought it was fun mostly. The only challenging thing was kind of dealing with my mom sometimes, but she was a lot of help.
Speaker 3Yes, she was. I mean she made all those arrangements.
Speaker 1But you were a very hands on groom. I feel like, well, I don't know you could talk about that, but I feel like you had just as much as much say blah, blah, blah, just as much say in everything that I did.
Speaker 3Yeah, and I don't think either of us had any or many really hard and fast things that had to happen.
Speaker 2Right.
Speaker 3Right. There were some things we know we wanted Right, but there was nothing we were like going to. You know, knock down, drag out, fight over Right.
Speaker 1Because it's just. It's just a day. Yeah, I mean, it was a great day, but it was still like it was a party. It was a total party, it was a blast, but I just remember planning being super fun with you.
Speaker 3Yeah, I wonder if did we start earlier than most people, or Well.
Speaker 1I don't. Well, we didn't even get engaged until January, right, yeah? And then we got, we were married in September. So you know, do the math, what is that? Eight months, yeah, I don't think that that's even that long. Some people plan their weddings for years. It feels like. Do you think it was because we were older than the typical bride and groom?
Speaker 3Probably, and I think our families were pretty chill about it for the most part, so it wasn't. Here's a hundred cousins that you've never met that need to come and you need to find a place for them to sit, and here's. We didn't even invite some of our cousins Right. So I think that took a lot of the stress, that we could do what we wanted.
Speaker 2Right.
Speaker 3And we weren't, you know, trying to accommodate.
Speaker 1Did we ask our parents for their invite lists?
Speaker 3I'm pretty sure we did. Yeah, yeah, I remember asking hey, you know, like how far down the list maybe in different words, you know, do we go? How many aunts and uncles and cousins or second cousins.
Speaker 1Yeah, we did. I'm remembering that now.
Speaker 3And then when we got a little over 200 or whatever the list was, we're like, yeah, this is a pretty good amount, yeah, and we can't really go much far as it's not.
Speaker 1Is that how many people we had at our wedding? Well, I think we invited that. Because right now that sounds like an awful lot of people.
Speaker 3Yeah, I think we invited around 200. Okay, Because, they say what is it? 10 or 20%, don't come.
Speaker 1Right, but that was not the case for us. I remember us talking to a couple of different places and they gave you that.
Speaker 3Yeah.
Speaker 1And then we got a stat like 10 to 20% of the people you invite won't come, and I want to say like 90% of the people we invited came.
Speaker 3Well, that's because we're awesome.
Speaker 1Is that why I mean, that's probably the reason why.
Speaker 3And there was bacon.
Speaker 1There was bacon. Yes, so we had. Our wedding was on a what was on Labor Day, because that was on Monday, which meant that all of our like musical theater and musician friends could attend, because Monday is the only day that's dark. Plus, it was a holiday, which meant that everybody else could come too.
Speaker 3Yeah, there was no school.
Speaker 1Right.
Speaker 3So the friends of ours who are teachers were able to make it.
Speaker 1Right, and we got married at 11,. We were just talking about this this morning. 1130, I think, is when our service was.
Speaker 3Yeah, we could probably pull out a whole invitation. We probably could.
Speaker 1But the whole thing, I remember the whole thing was wrapped up by like four.
Speaker 3Yep.
Speaker 1And then we actually went to like the quote unquote after party at our hotel, right, yeah, but the whole thing was done by about four.
Speaker 3Yeah.
Speaker 1So maybe that's why I thought people could come too, is they knew it wasn't going to last.
Speaker 3And we were only dealing with one venue. You know, because there are people who are getting married somewhere, and then everybody has to make their way to another place.
Speaker 1Right, good point.
Speaker 3And sometimes the wedding party is bar hopping in between. Yeah, so people wait for that.
Speaker 1We kind of decided we wanted to just do one stop shop. Yeah, just have everything there.
Speaker 3Brunch dance go home, go home. And there was a hotel attach, which was nice and a lot of people would have had school the next day or next morning.
Speaker 1Well, they did yeah and or a show the next day, right, right. What do you remember like the most about our actual wedding or what do you Like? What are some of your favorite memories from the actual wedding, or things you wish that if we were going to do it again, we would do differently?
Speaker 3I don't know that there's much I would do differently, because the weather was awesome. My gosh, it was gorgeous. I remember the day before, though, they were thinking, oh, maybe 10 am some rain but that never showed up. We had that hawk land in the trees yeah.
Speaker 1It had two different color eyes.
Wedding Memories and Reflections
Speaker 3Yeah, and pictures and I think for the most part things were just pretty chill. Yeah yeah, it just kind of ran itself. It really did. And the place we got married that policy they have to have someone be your spokesperson so any issues that pop up the staff isn't coming to you. That paid off.
Speaker 1And I think we only had one quote, unquote issue.
Speaker 3And that was like to open more wine or something. Yeah.
Speaker 1And it was because we had told them I don't know, I don't remember what the number was, but we had said you can open X amount of red, x amount of white, whatever. And my aunt Melanie, who was our spokesperson she only came over to me once that I can recall and she just said can we open up another bottle of wine?
Speaker 1One other bottle of wine. That's all they did. Is they open up one extra bottle of wine? Yeah, and the only thing that I would do differently is I forgot to tell our photographer that my parents were divorced, and so, of course, she was taking a bunch of photos of my parents together and they were such good sports. It's not really that big of a deal, but I saw her posing them and I was like I ran over her. I was like sorry, this is my fault. My parents are divorced, so they're very friendly and cordial to one another, but you should stop taking photos of them now.
Speaker 3Well, and I remember ahead of time she told us to come up with a list of all the photos we wanted and I did that, and then I have no idea where that list went. I did not have it that morning and then so we were making it up on the fly like, okay, guys, get in here Now, ladies, now couples, now cousins, grandparents, and so we're kind of making it up and trying to do a mental checklist. Oh yeah, I do remember that, and so it was a little disorganized and we're like somebody go run and get the kids or whatever.
Speaker 1Yeah, I do remember that too.
Speaker 3But it turned out we got pictures of everybody anyway.
Speaker 1Well, they did such a good job of taking a photo of every single person that was there.
Speaker 3I mean yeah, Plus we have a couple selfies from the front.
Speaker 1Well, that was kind of before selfies were just starting when that happened. You remember it like people. They didn't have that. We didn't have dual cameras on our phone back then.
Speaker 3We used an actual camera Right.
Speaker 1We brought it up there and then took a selfie with the entire group. And then, do you remember, we took a picture of the people standing on your side and the people standing on my side standing up for me. That was amazing.
Speaker 3Now wait, was it actually a selfie or did Kelly take the photo?
Speaker 1Oh, I think maybe Kelly Kelly was our officiant.
Speaker 3Yeah, it looks like it's a selfie because we're leaning. I think she might have taken it.
Speaker 1You and I took a selfie when we were doing. Remember, we didn't do a unity candle, instead we did a little painting of a heart. We took a selfie from there.
Speaker 3And our paint had dried up, so we were stabbing at the paint to try to break the crust Of a painting.
Speaker 1We have it. Actually, I'm pointing at it right now. It's hanging in our living room, but I loved it. I loved that we did that. It was something a little bit different. So I was 37 and you were 41 when we got married 2012.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah. So we were at the time. I was like, oh gosh, this is old, which now I don't think that, but we, you know a lot of people get married in their 20s and the early 30s. I had definitely gotten to a point where I wasn't even sure that I wanted to get married anymore.
Speaker 1What were your? What were your thoughts on marriage prior to us getting married? Like what you could talk about either. I mean, you could talk about whatever you want, but like previous relationships or and or what. What did marriage look like to you as a kid? Like what? How was marriage modeled to you while you were younger?
Speaker 3Well, you know, I think back to like my parents or grandparents on my mom's side, because I didn't really know my dad's side grandparents, because they were much older, but there were at least. The grandparents were very traditional in their roles. So, you know, grandpa's out fixing things and doing stuff and grandma's doing the cooking and and cleaning and stuff, so very traditional, and I think that kind of stayed for my parents, although the blinds start to get a little blurred. But either way, it seemed like there was some and this is what I talk about for our marriage some teamwork. Yeah, so it's not just you're responsible for this or you're responsible for that. Well, maybe we all have our roles, but I think we try to cover for each other, if you want to call it that.
Speaker 3Yeah, when somebody's sick or tired, you know somebody's going to pick up the slack and it's not like, oh, Nikki's sick and she hasn't done the dishes, so they're just going to pile up, you know they. You know, we'll try to cover help each other out. Yeah. So I guess you know they kind of modeled some good teamwork and yeah even though they were more traditional roles.
Speaker 1Did you think, did you just automatically assume that you would be getting married sometime? Or were you ever like I'm going to think about marriage. I don't, I don't, I don't know that this is for me, I don't know that this is for everyone. Or did or did you just know you're going to get married one day?
Speaker 3I don't, I don't know that I thought about it in that, those terms.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 3I think maybe in my thirties. But as the thirties started to dwindle or come to a close, I was like you know, whatever, whatever happens, you know really were you.
Speaker 1Just I mean, was it, was it really that casual to you like? Oh, whatever, we'll see. Yeah.
Speaker 3Because, you know, I have an uncle who who did end up getting married, but he and his now wife I they they weren't married for the longest time and it almost seemed like there was no intention to like they didn't really need to. And so I was like, oh, that's, you know that works for them, right? So why shouldn't that also be a model for other people, right? You know, we don't need a piece of paper or somebody to say you know, you don't always need that.
Speaker 1Yeah, I really wanted that. I really I really did. Can we talk about your high school girlfriend, well? Like any of your girlfriends, but specifically your high school girlfriend, because you gave her a promise ring. Oh yeah, while I mean, was she older than no?
Speaker 2she was a couple years younger than you.
Speaker 1So you gave her a promise ring when you were going to college.
Speaker 3Yeah, like before I went to college.
Speaker 1And when you gave that to her, did it mean at that time this is like we're getting married, this is my ring to to signify that we will be engaged someday. Because isn't that kind of what promise rings are? That's probably what they mean, okay, but I think I was clueless enough, yeah.
Speaker 3That it just meant we're we're dating exclusive. And you know, we promise to keep dating. I don't think in my mind.
Speaker 1Give that to her as like it's not pre-engagement no, no, nothing, not that I remember.
Speaker 3I mean I'm glad.
Speaker 1I finally asked you about this because I always thought that that's what that meant, I mean that is what I would say.
Speaker 3It means now Right, but back then, little naive Paul, you know, probably didn't know that or didn't think that far ahead Right In the ring category.
Speaker 1The ring category.
Speaker 3The subject of rings.
Speaker 1So was there anyone before me that you thought you might marry? I mean, you don't have to get specific with the names if you don't want to, but like why? Why was I the person? Was there a person? Because you know that I I was with someone for four years before you and I were together and I absolutely thought that we were going to get married. And even before he and I lived together because we were okay, we were together for four, but I think we only lived together for two. Maybe I don't really remember, but we had a conversation where I was like look, I know anything can happen, but I would not move in with you unless I thought that we were going to eventually get married.
Speaker 3And he said, yes, that is what I think too, I think in my 20s or 30s I would have thought, not even thought about marriage unless we had moved in together, because to me that would have been the next, the progression which is interesting because you and I did not live together before we got married.
Speaker 2Well, that's not entirely true.
Speaker 3It was like three months maybe, but we were already engaged by the time that we moved in together, but my younger self would have been no, we need to live together to see how we live together, because I don't remember thinking marriage while with anybody else.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 3I mean, you know it's all a blur, but it's all a blur.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's interesting because I don't know that I've ever thought about this until right this second. We moved in together because we were going to get married, but I was never worried about what it might be like to live with you, isn't that kind?
Speaker 3of weird, I guess. Yeah, it's, but I think, still, thinking about the progression, it makes more sense to do a little living together first, absolutely, even if it's just a couple months. Right, because I think I don't know. You hear stories people move in together and all of a sudden, it's horrible you know dude's working in the garage after every meal and has no time, or you know like you get the weird traditional roles or stereotypes happening. Sure, because they haven't figured all that out ahead of time.
Speaker 1What, okay, I'm thinking back to. I gave Paul a bunch of questions that of course, I forgot, just things to think about. You know, going in Because you know we, paul and I, talk about our marriage every once a while, you know. But this is pretty different to talk about it with you and record it and then send it out into the world.
Speaker 3Wait, people are gonna.
Speaker 2People are gonna listen to this.
Speaker 1It might just be a few, but they will More and more every week. Yes, what? What have been the hard parts about our marriage?
Speaker 3Well, I think we tackled a couple hard things right away, before we even got married, and I think we started talking about money right away. Oh God, so that was. I think in the long run that helped us the Supper immensely because we figured out that we're both broke. Yeah, I'm not good at thinking ahead.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 3Paying off bills and you know that adult stuff. But we, I think we took the the stigma away from it yeah, about you know, being bad at it or being broke and just took a more realistic look like how can we tackle this? Let's make a plan. We got rid of our credit cards and we paid them off, are you?
Speaker 1comfortable talking about what you're gonna have to now, because I just brought it up what You're absolutely correct in, that we we started off before we were married talking about, like, what is your debt? What are your savings? Like what, what is the bottom line? What are we walking into together? But can we talk about what happened when we opened up our joint checking account? Sure, do you remember? I don't.
Speaker 2You will remember once I start talking about it.
Speaker 1So we got remember, we got. We got remembered. We were married in September. I don't remember when we we opened up a joint account at, like US Bank or Wells Fargo, one of the two big ones. I don't remember and I don't remember exactly how much time before we got married that this happened, but my dad had written us a check for I want to say was $10,000. Do you remember?
Speaker 3now yeah.
Speaker 1Yeah and jump it. I'll tell the story, but jump in. I think it was for $10,000 for our wedding and we were so excited. We go and we deposit this money together and we open up this joint account and how many days later it's like three, three days later. Yeah, it's gone. Yeah, it is. There's zero money in that account and I mean it took us a while to figure out what had happened. Do you want to talk about that?
Speaker 3Well, I think we we made some calls.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 3They're like oh, this you know, collection agency for Paul's student loans decided they could come in and it was they deserved it, or they?
Speaker 1you know they were able to take it had you defaulted at that point? Probably.
Speaker 3I mean, I had been on payment plans and this is maybe like I, you know, had just started to. I gave up a little.
Speaker 1Well, I I mean in in the interest of complete transparency I had, or I had also defaulted on my loans several years prior and was in good standing again by the time that that we had gotten married. I can't remember if you were still defaulted on yours or not, but they came in and were like, well, you always at least this much money and we haven't been able to get ahold of you. And now your, your name and your social have come up and this is our money. Yep, and we were able to prove to them that that was gift money. Yeah, just you know which is.
Speaker 3I don't remember exactly how we did it, but it's kind of easy. It was joint money, so it wasn't just me.
Navigating Marriage
Speaker 1Oh yeah, you're right, you're right, and so they weren't allowed to take that. Because I had my name on it too. Yeah, so that is how we but.
Speaker 3I think there's also then agreement from me with the, with the loan company, to start, and that's when you started back up again. Start back on the payment plan, and you did, and you have been.
Speaker 1I mean up until COVID, when you know payments has, payments have paused, but like. But yeah, that was kind of a big deal and we didn't I remember we didn't lose it at each other, it was just a okay, this sucks and this happened. How do we take care of it?
Speaker 3Right, and I think for the most part we probably panicked a little. Oh, we for sure.
Speaker 1I know I did.
Speaker 3Then, you know, collected our brain cells and started making some phone calls, right? Rather than just throwing up our arms and being like, oh, let's not do that again. Right, we actually figured it out.
Speaker 1Well, we also changed our behavior. Yep, like I remember gosh, maybe it took us three years, I don't remember exactly but we made a vow, an additional vow, to stop using credit cards, because both of us I can't remember how much credit card debt we had together, but it was separate, but then together because we got married, it was. It was a decent amount. I don't really know what I made my decent, but it was enough and we paid that down so that we didn't have any credit card debt. Right, I remember one of the only fights that we've had. We've had not very many fights.
Speaker 1Three or four Like bad ones. Yeah, was because of you would use your credit card to get gas or something Right, and I got really mad at you because we had promised not to Yep and you had done it anyway. Yeah, so we don't we still? I'm going to give us a pat on the back. We have no credit card debt.
Speaker 3No credit cards. Well, except that debit cards sort of act like that once in a while.
Speaker 1But I just had LASIK this past week and did not realize that I was applying for care credit. I thought that I was just seeing what the the what the terms were.
Speaker 3Yes, what the?
Speaker 1terms, were it turns out, I was applying for credit, so now I guess we do have some credit card debt on that, but that'll get paid off this year. What else? What else has been hard about our marriage? Because when I so, I have this secret that I've never told anyone, except for Paul, because I don't. I don't want to sound like I'm bragging. I'm gonna get emotional weird. I don't want to sound like I'm bragging. I don't want to sound like I think that Paul and I are better than other people.
Speaker 1But my deep, dark secret is that our marriage is not difficult, and I realized that that could change at any point. But we've been together for 11 years and it has not been hard. People talk about how hard marriage is and and I don't think that it's been hard. There have been things that we've gone through while we're married that have been hard, like you know parental illness and death and Major job loss and Me being sick, and I mean those things have been hard, but I haven't felt like they've been, that that our marriage has been hard. Does that make sense?
Speaker 3Yeah, well, and I think what? What I noticed almost right away Is we I think we had things off before. Yeah, they get crazy. So you know, it's it. It's not like Borrowing trouble, where you're like, hey, I know you're gonna do this, but don't do this. It's, it's just like oh, you know, maybe we need to rethink that. Yeah, or yeah, we don't wait till things boil over, because that's really hard to come back from.
Speaker 3Yeah, I think you're right and then, and then you know when things have gotten that bad. I know I would. I don't harbor some. You know memories of that and it's hard to get past right. So so, if you don't even get close to that point, then you don't have to worry about it.
Speaker 1There was some time early in our relationship in it also in our marriage where I had a difficult time Trusting you when you would say something and that had nothing to do with you, nothing at all. My previous long-term relationship. Whenever I felt like things were a little weird which would happen sometimes I have pretty good instincts and I would say, hey, this isn't feeling right, what's going on, are you okay? He'd always be like, yeah, I'm great. And then it turns out he like just had this internal list of Things that were wrong with me and things that were wrong with our relationship and and how things were bad. But he never shared it with me and I was really burned by that and because of that it took me a while to Take you at face value that.
Speaker 3But that again had nothing to do with you, and what's really interesting is one of the times I can actually tell you about that. You didn't trust me.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1Because, of someone. I want to hear this, okay, it was our first anniversary.
Speaker 3Yeah, I was coming back from teaching Either at one of the colleges, so a long drive already and I was driving to the, the bakery that had done our wedding cakes. Oh yeah, you get a free one-year anniversary little cake. So I had to drive there afterwards but I Think you had contacted somebody and said hey, I think Paul forgot about our anniversary and now he's scrambling to go get a gift.
Speaker 3Oh, I did yeah and you're like you're late and or you weren't like you're late, but you, you know, you thought I was scrambling to go find something because I had forgotten Our first anniversary and I was just going to go pick up the cake. Yeah, sorry that's right.
Speaker 2The cake was really good.
Speaker 3But you were like oh, you know, in my past relationship, this, this is what.
Speaker 2This is what this is distrust right the distrust.
Speaker 3This is that's tough.
Speaker 1This is the distrust. This is the distrust. Yeah, I don't feel like I do that anymore.
Speaker 3No, I think you, you, I think you're pretty good at taking me for who I am.
Speaker 1Take me for what I am.
Speaker 1That's a little thing from but maybe that took a while it, did, it, did I remember that's human nature, I think just like checking in more than I needed to and and just not trusting that you were telling me the truth, because I did. I had, even though there was. You know, I'm just repeating what you just said, but even though you've never given me a reason to not trust you, you know that that old, old wounds run deep. Is that the thing? Well, I'll sit with my parents. My parents had a horrible marriage and and other marriages around me were also not great.
Speaker 1So I thought and this is going into you know, you know what, what? How is our marriage different than what you thought it might be? I Thought it was going to be very, very difficult. Even though our Art, our relationship leading up to engagement and then the time from engagement to marriage was not difficult, I thought it was going to be very difficult. I thought that we were gonna have major communication issues, you know, because that is what I saw, I saw lying in relationships. I saw people who just didn't really care. So I kind of thought, well, if, if that's gonna happen anyway, I hope it happens with this dude, because so far things have been okay if you're not gonna trust someone, at least, at least don't trust.
Speaker 1Paul, like how did you think? Did you think that our marriage would be different than it is so far?
Speaker 3I I don't remember trying to anticipate what it was gonna be like, because you know we have a, we have a lot of fun and it's a lot of the time it's not planned. So yeah, you know it's pretty spontaneous. Yeah, yeah, and I think it was like well, how in the world, you know, can you predict how a wedding, or how to how marriage, is going to go?
Speaker 1Yeah, I just I default to that. I'm because of my anxiety. I always try to figure everything out at a time. So really, you didn't, you don't really think about it, you were just like, oh, it'll be fine.
Speaker 3I think I was probably more focused on you know our work like are we both gonna work enough? And you know, to you know, if one's not working. You know, like Survival, right stuff, not Emotional, I guess, right which I yeah, that is a little bit.
Speaker 1So how did you? At what point Did you think, a, I love this person or, b, I want to marry them because I? I rememberI Don't remember how far we were in our relationship, but I remember being like, oh my god, I love this guy, when there was something wrong with your dog, trooper, and you had to take him to the vet. Speaking of dogs, I don't know if you can hear snowball, but she, we have the gate, the gate up, so that she can't be in this room with us, but she can see us and she's starting to cry a little bit. So it's just in case you hear some whining, everything's fine, she's so not neglected, she's not neglected. She just was saying, out of us, anyway, you were bringing, don't even know if they can hear it. You were bringing troopers of the vet and I woke up that morning and I thought I I Need to be at that appointment too.
Speaker 1I mean, it was pretty presumptuous of me and and obviously trooper was not my dog, but I was like I know Paul's worried, I'm worried about Paul, I'm just gonna go. And I Showed up and it wasn't until a few weeks later that I was like you're totally in love with this dude. And then Do you want to talk about the story about who said I love you first?
Speaker 3Well, I think People have probably heard this story. I Think you said it first.
Speaker 1You know, I said it first and why was that, paul? Why did you wait for me?
Speaker 3I didn't wait for you. I think you just couldn't hold it in any longer. Oh, my god, that's just burning inside of it was burning inside of me.
Speaker 1Oh, I was so irritated because we started dating in February and I'm notorious for saying I love you too much to people, but but the fact of the matter is is I do love everybody to a certain extent and I thought I'm not gonna say it first. I'm gonna wait for this dude, because Paul is Not a super emotional person and I am very emotional.
Speaker 1And I'm closer to robot them, and I wanted to make sure that I wasn't like misreading what I thought was going on, and so I thought I was just I was just waiting for him and and how'd that work out for you it?
The Proposal and Engagement Process
Speaker 1did not work out well. I I remember us being in my apartment. It was sometime in August, so you know, six months, seven months, how long that was six months. It's not actually that long of a period of time now that I'm looking back, but I was like I I had thought about it a lot. I was like I have to tell this man that I love him, because I do love him and and if he doesn't love me, that's gonna be incredibly painful. But I need to know now so that I can cut my losses and move, move forward. And I just remember I don't I'm sure I journaled about it. Don't make fun of me.
Speaker 3I'm not laughing, you're laughing.
Speaker 1But it's just like I really love this person that much that I am willing to risk it all. And you were in the kitchen and I was in the hallway and I was sort of doing this weird like not a dance, but like I just I had ants in my pants, you know. I was like and I said, hey, babe, I got to tell you something and it's really important and I'm really nervous, but If I don't tell you now, I'm gonna burst. And you're like, oh my god, what? Yeah, what's going on? Are you okay? And I was like I Love you. And you said oh, babe, I love you too. Oh, you're like you think this is hilarious, don't you?
Speaker 1I'm so smooth and I said Then why haven't you said anything? Do you remember what you said? I don't you said because the girls supposed to say it first.
Speaker 3Hey, that's thinking on the fly right there.
Speaker 1So you were thinking on the fly, so you didn't really think that. So did you only tell me that you love me?
Speaker 3No, I said that the girl goes, that the girl says it first.
Speaker 1No, you have stuck by this story for 11 years. Are you changing it now? What do you?
Speaker 3mean, like the girl always says it. That's what I'm saying. Wait, you, you think that no, I think I came up with that on this in that moment. Oh Friends, we are getting a revelation here, right now. Is it though?
Speaker 1Yeah, I believed you. Okay, remember when I talked about how I trust issues, ladies and gentlemen, here, here we go. So why didn't you tell me I?
Speaker 3Don't know I, I, I'm not one to. I know I I don't say that much. Yeah, but then we got engaged, like four months later. Yeah.
Speaker 1That timeline is not making sense to me.
Speaker 3Yeah, I don't know, you're better at the timelines than I am yeah, and then.
Speaker 1So then you, you propose on January 2nd yeah, and you didn't tell your family, you didn't? I?
Speaker 3Told your dad yeah because I was playing Christmas Eve Services with him, yeah, and told him I was gonna ask. I think I asked his permission, yeah, and he was pretty happy and I think he's he knew something. You know it was gonna happen. Yeah, and then I Told him when I was gonna do it.
Speaker 1Oh, you did.
Speaker 3I think so because I didn't want him to say anything Like the next time we saw him right, or for him to act weird or wait for us to announce it or whatever, and you didn't tell your parents.
Speaker 1So we got engaged. At Paul's family's house, we went snowshoeing and we had been apart for about a week. So I so we both drove up to your parents house on Christmas Eve Christmas Eve day, because I had two days off For from shows and then you stayed there. I basically left you there. I drove back home to shows for the rest of the week and then we we must have had January 2nd off, I think it was a Monday and so I drove back up and the plan was for us to drive back home together the next day. But we got engaged on Monday, the second, and you didn't tell your face. So you're like, okay, bye, we're going snowshoeing and then we come back and we're engaged but I think they knew something weird was up.
Speaker 3Yeah, because in that week in between, when you were, when you had left After Christmas, yeah, my parents and I were out driving around and remember even what we were doing, and there was a small liquor store and I was like, oh, let's pop in there and see if they have any little of those mini champagne bottles. They're like what that's? That's odd. And of course it was a small enough middle of nowhere place that they didn't have any. So I think I bought a full bottle.
Speaker 1Yeah, there's a big bottle.
Speaker 3But they were kind of like what is?
Speaker 1why do you need?
Speaker 3champagne, and I think I made my excuse for something about New Year's yeah.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 3Yeah.
Speaker 1That was a fun time.
Speaker 3Yeah, and it was super cold, if I remember right when we were snowshoeing like bundled up as much as you can be, you know it, just like our faces peeking out right. Yeah, and I did have the ring in my snow pants, hoping that my fingers weren't so cold that I would drop it in the snow was in like a Pouch yeah, a little pouch. Yeah, I Was very surprised you were you felt backwards into the snow like a snow angel.
Speaker 1I was just like so, on our way, on my way up my way, driving up that that exact morning. I knew things were very serious with Paul, we hadn't. We had sort of made a couple of quick little jokes, you know, about Marriage, but like we had not talked about getting married. But we had been together long enough to know, like if it wasn't headed this direction, why are we hanging out anymore, really especially?
Speaker 3at our age, right exactly.
Speaker 1Yeah and yeah, cuz you had when we met, I was 35 and you were 40, Right that sounds right.
Speaker 1And so on the way up, I had decided that that when we got into the car to come home the next day that I was gonna start talking about it, because I had a couple of things that I Wanted to happen and I wasn't one of those. You know, you hear that some women are like planning their weddings from their little girl. That wasn't me, but there were a couple of things I wanted to happen, two things in particular one, I Wanted the man to Not necessarily ask permission but inform my parents, yeah, and the other thing that I wanted him to do was Neil to propose, which is super old-fashioned. But those were a couple of things. And also because I have a really small Ring finger, I think it's like a four and a half. That was something that this person was kind of needs to know about, and maybe we would have to go shopping for rings or whatever. So I, all of that was fresh in my brain. So we go snowshoeing after I've been there for like an hour.
Speaker 1Yep, we, we headed out pretty pretty quickly, yeah, and we went down that one path and then we came back and we stopped at Buck and Rosie's which doesn't make sense to anyone, probably, but us and all of a sudden you just like stopped, turned around and I don't remember exactly what you said, but it was the kind of stuff you start saying when you're going to get engaged. Do you remember what you were saying?
Speaker 3No, because it was also really cold out. So my face was probably half frozen and I remember speaking was difficult. How it gets when your lips, your face, can barely move.
Speaker 1But you were like, you know, you were saying this stuff like there's no one else I'd want to spend my time with, and one thing that we had both talked about quite extensively prior is that, well, I said and then you said it back to me too, I don't know if you remember this several times I just said I've never felt this comfortable with someone before and I've never been with another person who loves me exactly how I am, because I'm weird, I'm silly. This is before I knew I was sick, so I thought that I had a ton of mental health issues. Turns out I don't have a ton, I just have what's less than a ton, a half a ton, a pound. You know, I'm a very specific. I'm not for everybody, you know, and you had mentioned you hadn't been around someone who loved how silly you were. Like you're so silly, paul, and I me, so.
Speaker 1So then you start saying the stuff like I've never met anyone who loves me the way that you do. And in my brain I'm like oh, oh God. And I remember I stopped you and I said can you just pause? Can you just pause, pause, can you please pause? And you're like, yeah, and I said is this, is this happening right now? And you were like, yeah, and I said, okay, great, go ahead. Because I? Because all of a sudden, my, my brain was like, oh my God. And I wasn't, I wasn't in the moment, I had taken myself outside of the moment and I was like looking at it from outside of my body and I was like I need to be present for this. But I can't be present for this unless I know that this is what's actually happening.
Speaker 3Plus, you really hate the cold. I hate the cold.
Speaker 1And so you, you proposed, and I said yes, and I remember following back. Was it then that I fell back into the snow?
Speaker 3Yes, and then you got up.
Speaker 2And then, what did I do?
Speaker 3Then you asked me to do it over again, but this time on one knee.
Speaker 1Yeah, and you go. You said I'm wearing snowshoes. And I said yes, I know.
Speaker 3But do it anyway. Did I say that, no, but?
Speaker 2do it anyway. I said yes I know, that was implied.
Speaker 1And it was hilarious, y'all. You know cause he's got these. He has snow pants on, like we are bundled up like the Stay Puft marshmallow man, and so to see him have to like separate his snowshoes and Neil, but but thank you. So yes, paul proposed twice and you actually had two different rings.
Speaker 3That's right. And then the antique one.
Speaker 1Yeah, like what's that called Tiger Tiger?
Speaker 3eye yeah, tiger eye Yep.
Speaker 1And and then, the one that I that I wear, which is a band of diamonds, was my engagement, my engagement ring.
Speaker 3And they're all massive diamonds.
Speaker 1They're huge, you guys. Yeah, that was our engagement story. It was really sweet, yeah.
Speaker 3Then we walked back to the house and told my parents and they were excited.
Speaker 1Got out of the champagne.
Speaker 3Then we called your mom, we called my mom, Because I had not told her. Yeah, because you two are pretty darn close and I didn't. I mean, I'm sure she would have kept the secret. Yeah, but she may have acted funny.
Speaker 2Yeah, she definitely would have. You would talk to her, she would have have fun.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3Exactly.
Speaker 1And then I called my dad right away and he goes. I knew it, I knew it. Yeah, and he told me that you had asked my dad.
Speaker 2I didn't know that.
Speaker 1Yeah, and then I remember I remember us going downstairs, which is where our bedroom was, and we just talked that day and we're like, okay, it's about to get crazy. And you know, once we start telling people because we hadn't told, I mean, we just told our parents, that was it Once we start telling people, people are going to be very happy for us and very excited and they're going to have a lot of things that they want to say, like what do we?
Speaker 3want A lot of suggestions. Yes, yes. I think we almost immediately started making a list of what we want what we wanted from a wedding.
Speaker 1Yep, who we wanted to stand up for us. The things that were here are the things that are very important to us, and here are the things that are not important to us at all and we kept looking at that list and I think we stayed very true to that.
Speaker 3Yeah.
Speaker 1Okay, okay, back to our marriage here. Well, here are some things that I think we do that make our marriage work, and I don't mean to imply that these are the reasons why. These are the things I think everyone should be doing, but then I'd love for you to jump in here too, like why, why does our marriage work so well? I think one of them is and this is pretty huge, because I see this happen in a lot of our friend couples, couple friends If we've got beef with each other when we're in front of other people, we let that shit go until we are alone.
Speaker 3Yeah, which isn't very often anyway, yeah. Like we're not sitting around correcting each other Right. Or keeping tabs or keeping score of.
Speaker 1Well, you pissed me off last week, so I'm going to piss you off this week.
Speaker 3Right or like no, this happened on this day not this day or whatever, Because I mean, those things aren't really important.
Speaker 1Right, right, I think you've never corrected me. Yeah, like it just I don't know how to explain it, but it just I notice it happening in other people and I always think, oh, I'm really glad that Paul doesn't do that.
Speaker 3Well, you have to be. I think we're both willing to be wrong. Yeah, so if we said something like oh yeah, you know, this is what actually happened, oh, yeah, you're right. I totally got that wrong.
Speaker 1Right, and also, I wouldn't correct you unless it was important, right, and really I can't think of anything that would be that important. Yeah, I think we just don't sweat the small stuff you know, or we know, like is this the hill I should die on? Yeah, no, you know. And now we're just making faces at each other.
Speaker 3We never do that.
Speaker 1I think our sense of adventure, though, is very helpful, like we are so weird and we know that about one another. Yeah.
Speaker 3And we sort of embrace that a lot of the time.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3And we do things that people might think are a little I don't know. For younger people, yeah, or for people with children.
Speaker 1We frequently. There's two things. We frequently say We'll go somewhere. We like to go places that like like we like to do stuff that kids would like to do, like like amusement park stuff, or like go carts or the Korean game, which Paul says he's an expert on but he is not, or just like like every year for Paul's birthday we go to this corn maze. So we like to do stuff that kids like to do, but every time we do it we say who would bring their kids to this?
Speaker 1Yeah, like when we went to Disney World. Yeah, why would?
Speaker 3you bring your kids to this? Yeah, and we kind of embrace that.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah. Because it's fun, it is fun. Like we like to do fun stuff like that, yeah, and we don't take much seriously, other than a little snowball who just walked down the stairs. You could probably hear it is. So 11 years like what do you think about that? Like last year, on our 10th, we did a huge road trip to celebrate and we also went on a cruise to Alaska.
Speaker 3This year, yeah, maybe we're mellowing out a little bit. We were like this year, you know, we both said I didn't get you anything, I didn't get you anything. And we usually take turns planning each year and we couldn't remember whose turn it was, because we both planned last year. So we didn't take it too seriously. We had some fun yesterday.
Speaker 1Yeah, we went so a week ago, so 11, okay, I'm gonna rewind this a little bit. I love gifts, gift giving, gift receiving. I'll say it.
Speaker 3Themes.
Speaker 1I love an event and so when we got married, I made up this rule that we would alternate years, like you just said, like who's planning, and that whatever the plan was had to coincide with whatever the gift of the year was. So year one was paper and my gift to you. And my gift to you was a photo of us at our dance and I wrote the lyrics to the song that we danced to on the mat, on the paper mat, and so like that was my gift to you, and then we went on a motorcycle ride and we did. If anyone here is familiar with Lake Harriet in Minneapolis, they have a peace guard in there and there's this like these little stations where you can learn how to make paper origami. So like that was the first year, and then we've all turned it back and forth and then this year, 11 is steel right.
Speaker 3Yep.
Speaker 1I think it's steel. We say good old. So last week I finally had an idea and I said to Paul this will be my year, I'll plan this year and I thought about horse shoes, because those are made out of steel. And oh the little snowball, we'll wrap it up here. Babe, she's crying, she misses her mom and dad. So I looked for places around town that we could play horse shoes, and there's a ton of places, but you have to bring your own horse shoes.
Speaker 3I was like I think you can say you have to bring your own horse, you have to bring your own horse.
Speaker 1You have to bring your own horse shoes, and I wasn't gonna buy any and I was too lazy to ask people if we could borrow. So then I thought, okay, well, maybe something having to do with horses, we should go to Canterbury to go to the horse races. So then I looked that up there aren't horse races today, but there's dog races even better and then I realized it was gonna be 100 degrees today and I don't wanna be outside in 100 degree weather and I don't want them racing the dogs. I think they're still doing it. So then it turned into Paul.
Speaker 1Googling Fun stuff to do, fun stuff to do yeah.
Speaker 3Yeah, so we checked out a new mini golf place downtown called the Puttery, because our first, instead of a honeymoon we did sort of a staycation where each day we went out and just did fun stuff around the area. And one of those was mini golf. We love mini golf and wherever we see a mini golf, we're gonna stop and play.
Speaker 1Right, but this was like a new one. We've never heard of this before.
Speaker 3Yeah, they opened at the end of July and it's pretty swanky, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1But then you were like well, these golf clubs are made of steel. There we go. And then this morning we went to this flea market in Elko Elko or something and the joke was we each get to steal something.
Speaker 3And y'all you should see what Nikki stole. No, I'm just kidding.
Speaker 1I stole his heart. Oh, I didn't steal anything, you bought a fighting bell.
Speaker 3I bought a fight bell so like when it's time for boxers to start fighting.
Speaker 1It's like ding, but yeah. So what used to be big, elaborate dates, this year we just sort of dropped the ball. How about I say right now for the record next year will be my turn, okay, and we?
Speaker 2can get back on the schedule.
Speaker 1And what do you love about being married?
Speaker 3I really like knowing that we have each other's back and it's really. I think we have teamwork, yeah, and I don't think either of us are we might complain once in a while, but we're not bad mouthing each other or to other people, and there's just none of that. I don't know. Maybe I would associate that with people getting married when they're younger, yeah, and then also getting married to somebody who they think they're gonna change.
Speaker 1Oh, or they need to change.
Speaker 3That is a really good point, so there's either nagging or complaining and it probably ends up being nonstop.
Speaker 1I think you just hit the nail on the head right there, cause I have definitely Nails are steal.
Speaker 3What did you say Nails are?
Speaker 1steal Good cause. I have a couple of pictures I'd like you to hang today. I have definitely been in relationships with people that, even going into it, I'm like well, I'll just change that about you and everything will be great. I mean, which is so messed up?
Speaker 3Or when people say I'll change for you, I'll change. Oh, yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1I've like been a chameleon in the past?
Speaker 3Yeah, younger people don't.
Speaker 1Don't. Well, everybody don't.
Speaker 3I think younger people are maybe a little more prone to thinking.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 3They either need to change or they're gonna be changing somewhat.
Speaker 1Right. I think we were both very clear with each other from the get go. This is who I am. We would talk about our faults with one another, like here are some things about myself I'd like to change that. I'm probably not going to change, you know, but I and to have you love me exactly how I am even though there's a lot of things I like about myself, I am also a deeply flawed human.
Speaker 3I think we all are.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 3It's part of being human.
Speaker 1Except that, like it's been really sort of freeing for me Things that I used to hide.
Speaker 3And you don't have to love all the things someone does. Right, because they might be annoying.
Speaker 1I actually do not find you annoying, really, yeah, do.
Speaker 3I need to try harder. No. Okay, like you don't annoy me, not even all my awesome jokes. You do not have awesome jokes that you roll your eyes at Friends I mistakenly vowed to always laugh at his jokes.
Speaker 1Like I literally said this in my vows. I don't remember it. I must have blacked out at the time that I said I will laugh at your jokes, even the ones that aren't funny, and he holds me to that. Yup, ha, ha, ha. Yeah, it is nice to know that somebody has your back and but also there's times where I feel like we've been able to say look, I have your back on this, at least in public. I have your back on this, but I don't know that you're making this smartest decision right now. Does that make sense?
Speaker 3Yes, I'm just trying to think of examples and I can't, but I get what you're saying.
Speaker 1I'm thinking of specifically and we don't need to like really talk about this right now because we're talking about something else. But recently, in the past few years, covid notwithstanding you've had some what you and I have considered to be unexpected job loss. Yeah, and it's taken quite a toll on you personally and professionally, and I wouldn't say it's taken a toll on me, but you are very rarely angry and you are very rarely unhappy, and so when that has happened, I wanna do everything in my power to take that away and I can't Like and nobody can.
Speaker 3No one can.
Speaker 1You just have to go through that. So, specifically to that, there's been times where I know I've been like you should not write that email right now.
Speaker 3Well, I just had this conversation with someone else To put a little pause in something before pushing send yeah On, especially email stuff you can't take back, right?
Speaker 1Right, that's all I meant about, like I'll publicly have your back, but maybe in the privacy of our own home I might say please reconsider, or can you just wait on this, or whatever.
Speaker 2But that's.
Speaker 3Yeah, yeah. I don't even know what we're talking about.
Speaker 1That makes sense. But just having each other's back is huge, to know that you are on my side and I'm never worried that you're saying one thing to me and then something else to someone else.
Speaker 3I think we're pretty straightforward.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, and I yeah what? Okay, I have popcorn for you.
Speaker 3Oh gosh, bacon is always the answer.
Speaker 1What song was our first dance to?
Speaker 3Oh God, it's the one that's. I'll be your yes If you're losing your if you're going bald I'll be your Rogaine or whatever it was.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3I'll be your Honeybee. I'll be your.
Speaker 1Oh, you're mixing up too. That was the second question.
Speaker 3I'd like to do mashups.
Speaker 1Okay, so the song we danced to, I think it goes on I'll be your Rogaine when you start losing all your hair. That's what. I'm saying Go on patches to all you wear, do you remember what it's called?
Speaker 3Yeah, I don't. Do you remember who's saying that? It's right in the hallway? It's right there, yeah, I can't get to it.
Speaker 1It's called Take Me the Way I Am by Ingrid Michelson. Yep, okay, what three songs? Oh gosh, what were the three songs during our wedding service? So I'll give you clues.
Speaker 3You really got me.
Speaker 1Okay, that was our recessional. You really got me by Van Halen.
Speaker 3Yep.
Speaker 1What was the processional? What song did I go down the aisle to?
Speaker 3Oh, man, and you know, I can see our group of friends playing Yep Up front. Yep, I can see them doing it, playing and singing. Wow, I don't remember.
Speaker 1Heavenly Day.
Speaker 3All right.
Speaker 1By Patty Griffith, and then you just alluded to it. What song was being sung while we were doing our heart painting? Yeah, the Honey Bee, yeah I don't even know if I remember what it's called. If I were a flower doing a non-affee, I'd want you to be my sweet Honey Bee.
Speaker 3Yep.
Speaker 1All I want is you. Will you be my bride? Hold me by my hand and take me by my side. All I want is yeah, okay. All I want is you Can't remember who sang it, but it was from the Junior soundtrack.
Speaker 3Right.
Speaker 1Yeah, where did we have our first date?
Speaker 3Good Earth, yep, yep At the Galleria.
Speaker 1Where was the first place we traveled together?
Speaker 3Oh wow, Was it Duluth? Yeah, I think so. That's what's going on in my brain, yeah.
Speaker 1Duluth. We brought Trooper with us.
Speaker 3And we travel pretty well together.
Speaker 1Yeah, we do, we do. I think that that actually really helps. Snacks help. That's also when I met your parents for the first time, oh yeah we met them up there and we went to the anchor bar in Superior, yeah, and then the next time I saw them was Christmas, and the next time I saw them we were in a cage, you guys thrown into the fire See if I have any other, because your parents live here and so I saw them all the time.
Speaker 2You met them even before we started dating Because, oh, that's right.
Speaker 3Your mom would come to or your dad to the theater.
Speaker 1They would come and pick, so for a period of time. We still don't know exactly what this was, but this is also how I knew I liked you right away. We think I was having something called Absence Seizures, spelled like absence seizures where you are fully functioning. It's like a blackout, an alcoholic blackout where you're fully functioning but you have no recollection of anything happening. And once I started getting tested I couldn't drive. So my parents would have to drop me off and pick me up and our first dates. You actually picked me up because it was during that period of time, and you I didn't want you to pick me up because I just wanted to meet you there. But that couldn't happen because then I wouldn't be able to go out with you. So you even drove me home that night and there was a big snowstorm that night.
Speaker 3I said text me or call me when you get home, because I was concerned and I think I ended up helping three people out of snow banks on my way home after dropping you off and I was very nervous because it was taking you.
Speaker 1It should have taken you 20 minutes and it took you an hour. And that's when I was like, oh, I can't take it. I actually like this dude, but that also said so much to me about your character that you were stopping to help get other people pulled out of the snow.
Speaker 3But yeah, I was meeting your parents at least your mom first, because people would be hang out She'd come pick me up, and then we would have she and I would have a drink in the bar before we left and a lot of people would. So a lot of people knew your mom and your dad.
Speaker 1What did you think of my parents when you met them? Were you like oh, this is a lot.
Speaker 3Well, you and your mom were two peas in a pod. Right, your dad doesn't talk much, no Sort of like mine, yeah. So I think I probably talked to him more when I played at the same church that he was singing at.
Relationships, Advice, and Future Plans
Speaker 1Okay, let's wrap it up. What advice would you give to people? Firstly, you would only give advice if they asked for it.
Speaker 3This is actually a new good point Professional life, too, something I learned during COVID, or it took to heart. Professionals, just don't give out unsolicited advice. Yes, nobody asked it. Keep your mouth shut Right If you're going to see a gig or a concert just enjoy it. Don't think about all the things you tell them they should have done.
Speaker 1That's something that I really want to do a whole podcast on advice at some point. But when I was like I'm starting to go through all this testing a couple years ago to figure out what's been going on with me this whole time and people would just give me advice and I'm not asking for it, it was like there are times when I'm asking for advice and you'll know that because I'll say I'm looking for advice or feedback requested. Anyway, should someone say Paul, what advice would you give to someone thinking about getting engaged or someone who's about to get married, what advice would you give?
Speaker 3I would ask yourself are you presenting your real self? Or are you trying to be someone else, or are you trying to be what you think this person wants and just hopefully you're already doing that, but maybe not? Is the other person doing the same? Is that that person's authentic self?
Speaker 1Because you are signing up to live with that person for the rest of your life.
Speaker 3You're not going to want to change them. You're not going to want to be changed.
Speaker 1I mean we all evolve. But that's different, that's some good advice You're welcome.
Speaker 3What's your advice?
Speaker 1Thank you for asking.
Speaker 3Either dating, engaging, getting married.
Speaker 1A question I would want them to ask themselves is do you really want to get married or do you just want to have a kick ass party? I think a lot of people put a lot of stack into the actual wedding and don't think much about what happens after the wedding. Because you get married, you have some presents, it's really freaking awesome, you're with people that you love, but after that it's just day to day.
Speaker 3It's life.
Speaker 1It's life, it's mundane, it's do we have to figure out what we're eating? Again, it's laundry. We don't even have kids, but it's day to day boring stuff. There's no one else I'd rather be bored with than you.
Speaker 3I think the whole wedding machine has people convinced that it has to be a huge day. It's hard to convince people that it is just one day. You'll have memories, you'll have photos. You'll hopefully still have all your friends at the end of it.
Speaker 2Right.
Speaker 3But it is just one day.
Speaker 1It's a great day. It's a great day, but if you're putting all of your eggs into that basket, you're going to be really disappointed two weeks later.
Speaker 3Also, don't go into debt just to have a wedding.
Speaker 1No, we were very fortunate to that. We were gifted some money. I was going to say something brilliant but I forgot what it was. It was something about the wedding, I don't know. I think I would also say piggybacking what you already said.
Speaker 1Am I being my actual self with this person? Because I can confidently say that up until you I was not being myself with those people. I thought that I was. I really did, but I think someone is age, you know, just like with age comes maturity. I had gotten to a point where I was like you know what I'd really like to get married, but it's not the number one thing ruling my life any longer, because I was definitely. I was even going out just to like see if I could meet a guy. I don't like going out, but I would, and the reasons for that were not so that I could hang out with my girlfriends and have a blast. It was to see if I was going to meet somebody. And I sort of regret I feel like I've wasted some time doing that. But by the time you and I had met I was just sort of over it all. You know what this might not be in my plan and I need to be okay with that. What do?
Speaker 3I want to do.
Speaker 1What do I want from my life?
Speaker 3And I don't know that I even grew into myself till my 30s or late 30s, so I couldn't even tell you if I was being my authentic self before then, Maybe I'm just a little slow on the maturity.
Speaker 1You, no, you guys, paul and I, you know what we think is the funniest thing ever Farting.
Speaker 3There are so many fart conversations and jokes in this house. It's ridiculous.
Speaker 2Right out.
Speaker 1Yeah, we're pretty immature. Alright, babe, thank you. Thank you for having me. Well, it's pretty easy.
Speaker 3I mean, I live here, you do live here. You set up all the equipment. There was a microphone sitting here, so I just sat down.
Speaker 1What do you think's gonna happen the next 11 years?
Speaker 3Oh man more adventures.
Speaker 1Yes, for sure.
Speaker 3Gosh, that's probably gonna be the majority of it.
Speaker 1Well, we do love traveling and adventuring, whatever that means.
Speaker 3And I think our new take on jobs and work. Those are all new adventures. Yeah, they're gonna keep evolving.
Speaker 1Do you think we have a new take, or do you think that we've been forced to have a new take, or what do you mean when you say that? I think both.
Speaker 3I think COVID really forced everybody in our community to think a little differently about working in the arts putting all your eggs in one basket.
Speaker 1I already said that, but not about the arts, oh okay. But yeah, you're right, I think I've definitely seen that change in you the past three years, where you I don't wanna say I thought that you were rigid because you weren't, but you were definitely like here is the trajectory of my career. This is what has been happening. Therefore, it's what will continue to happen and those plans had to change and as painful as that has been and I don't wanna negate that at all, because that was a bunch of bullshit, that things did not need to go down the way that they've been going down lately for you job-wise so I'm not trying to silver line it and at the same time, you've had fun taking other gigs that you might not have been pumped to take in the past. It's been really fun to watch you get excited about different shows or different. Maybe it doesn't have to be a show, maybe whatever, but you know what I'm saying. That's been a really fun thing to watch.
Speaker 3But I think some of that also stems from the whole college thing. When you go to school music school it's like here is your trajectory.
Speaker 1This is what's gonna happen.
Speaker 3This is what you're preparing for, and when I went to for my masters, it was all about auditioning to be in an orchestra, at least for me, and the reality of that is. I mean, I can look in the Union Magazine and in the last six months there's been maybe two or three auditions.
Speaker 1Right, they're prepping you for a job In this entire country that doesn't even really exist Exactly.
Speaker 3But you're holding on to it because you've spent all this time preparing and so it doesn't prepare you for the flexibility of change in directions Right.
Speaker 1That's like a whole other thing. Oh gosh, I'm looking forward to. I think we're gonna travel a lot more. We did really well getting ourselves dug out of some financial situations pretty quickly, and now I feel like we sort of plateaued, like things were so great for a while, but now it's like I actually wanna pay off my student loan debt and I know what you do too. So like I think in the next 11 years we could count on maybe even being completely debt free yeah, wouldn't that be sweet.
Speaker 3That would be amazing if we could do that yeah.
Speaker 1Maybe buying our house. I don't know. We rent our house. We got a pretty sweet deal, Great landlord.
Speaker 3We love it here we love it here.
Speaker 1We do not want to leave this house or this neighborhood, and when we first got married, we rented because well, let's be honest, we didn't even try to see if we would qualify for a loan. We were pretty certain.
Speaker 3I think we knew we would not get one. They would laugh us out of the bank.
Speaker 1Right, but now maybe we could. But I don't know, like if we wanna buy this house, but I think just knowing that it could be an option now, whereas it was not for a while. Yeah, I'm hopeful that my business Heal and Grow, grows a little bit. I think you're gonna keep playing, I think you're gonna keep gigging, but I wanna be surprised if you also started doing more. Like for a while you were doing custom, custom drums, you were building your own and repairing and things like that. What do you think's gonna happen with our marriage in the next 11 years? Like, do you foresee I know, okay, this is a weird question because we cannot predict this but like what, do you foresee anything major happening in our relationship or in our marriage? Like what? What could possibly end it? God?
Speaker 3I can't even imagine, because we've had so few actual fights. Right, you know, arguments whatever, but, nothing. So I can't even imagine, I don't even want to.
Speaker 1I know, but I do think that every once in a while we do have conversations like this where we're like someone's always getting a divorce and we talk about like not in a judgy way, but we sort of dissect it, Like what if this was us, you know, and I think? And we sometimes talk about our deaths and like we do talk about things that are uncomfortable, and I think that's one of the reasons why we're successful thus far. I mean, I guess 11 years isn't all that long. You know, my parents were married for 25 or 26 before they got divorced.
Speaker 3Yeah, but but I wonder at what point if they could pinpoint the year that it started to unravel?
Speaker 1Oh yeah, I'm guessing it's.
Speaker 3And how long that went on.
Speaker 1I think it probably went on for a good 20 years. Yeah, we don't have to talk about that anymore, hey. I love you, I super appreciate you I love you. Did everyone hear that?
Speaker 3This is the first time I've said it.
Speaker 1This is the first time I've been holding out. I've been trying to get them to change, but I just I'm so grateful for our relationship, Like I think we have something so, so special and I'm just so happy to be on this journey with you.
Speaker 3I'm so happy to be your teammate.
Speaker 1Yeah, babe, yeah, babe, okay, I love you.
Speaker 3Love you too.
Speaker 1Thank you so much for listening this week. Everybody, I hope we didn't bore you to death by having our own conversation in our living room. I want to thank Leslie Brown this week for buying me a coffee. Thank you so much, leslie. I appreciate it. This is I think this is not your first time, is it Leslie? You just know I need the coffee, right? If you would like to buy me a coffee, I will throw the link down in the show notes. I really appreciate it. Hey, you need a book to read. You should read mine. It's called Things I'm Thinking About, a Daughter's Thoughts on the Loss of Her Mom, and you can find it on Amazon. I am still available for speaking. I would love to come talk to your, your group, your church group, your women's group, your men's group, your groupie group. I don't know what that is. What's a groupie group? Is that like a juicy juice? I don't know what I'm talking about. Everybody.
Speaker 2But here's the deal.
Speaker 1I'd love it if you could support me by sharing this podcast with someone that you think might enjoy it, or by purchasing my book or having me come speak at your groupie group. I would love, love, love to do that. I hope that you all are doing really well and that you're having an excellent Labor Day weekend, and I will see you next week. Thanks for healing and growing with me, Muah, bye-bye.
Speaker 2This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered legal health or professional advice. I am not responsible for any losses, damages or liabilities that may arise from the use of this podcast. This podcast is not intended to replace a professional naracot advice.
