I saw Sheniqua on my anniversary

So.... I went to see the movie Red tonight.  It's my anniversary (okay well one of them, but that's a different story) and we went out to dinner and a movie.  Okay first I have to tell you that Brad and I think this is the very first time we've ever done anything celebratory on or for our anniversary and we've been married for 17 1/2 years. (and really this time was a fluke too - Brad decided we should go out and made the arrangements and it just so happened that our anniversary fell on a Saturday and.. yadda, yadda, yadda we went out)

The way we have celebrated each and every anniversary is with a race to see who remembers it first.  We both suck at it.  It's usually at 12:01am on the right day and one of us will say to the other HappyanniversaryIwin and the loser will say some version of "Aw man, shit!!!".  Though sometimes it's not till very late in the day and one year we both totally forgot until the following day when I called him from work to say "happyanniversaryIwin" and then we had to have this long debate about whether the win actually counted since it was no longer our anniversary.  Obviously I prevailed and it totally counted.  Brad had been on a winning streak for a while, but then the last 3 at least I had won but I'm totally bummed to report that this year I lost - damn it!!!  But, I only have to wait until April to try to take him again.

And okay apparently it isn't a different story since I'm continuing now.... We were planning our wedding which was scheduled to be November 6, 1993.  And for a variety of reasons, not the least was my deteriorating mental health, we decided (read: I begged) to elope on our way to Jazz Fest in New Orleans that spring.  So we went to the local court house and got married in April of 1993 which was witnessed by Fred the gray squirrel and hopped on a plane and enjoyed our first Fest.  We did have the November 6th wedding as planned and to this day no one in Brad's family knows we were already married when they watched us get married.  (This bubble will be burst soon enough as our kids know the truth and we would never ask them to keep it to themselves, so it's just a matter of time before the shit hits the fan, and hit it, it will)  We've celebrated both anniversaries ever since - well... our sort of celebrating.

Okay - back to Sheniqua - So we're watching Red (which was pretty good) and there's a scene where 2 of the characters go under cover and the woman (Mary Louise Parker) is Sheniqua Johnson (I think that's her last name and her body wasn't nearly as it's been described she'd look) and she was pretending to be some sort of scientist and I said out loud, much to the great delight of the people sitting next to me - "Hey! She's Sheniqua!!!, I know a Sheniqua!"  Of course then I worried that there was in deed someone really named Sheniqua in the audience who I had just offended by the shocked tone in my voice.

Anyway - that's my story for the night and since I've complained before, I'll add that Brad and I seem to be doing better right now.  I'm not sure we're out of the woods yet, but it's better and that's good for both of us.