Honeymoon Heartache

If you all haven't been over to Brittany's blog Living in the Moment, you really should. She's been such a wonderful friend to get to know & I just love her stories. I usually feel as if I'm going to spit milk out of my nose (like I did when I was 5) when I read her posts. I give you Brittany Ann!

I am so honored that Mrs. Potts asked me to post a little something on her blog while she’s off celebrating her anniversary.

Happy Anniversary, Mr. and Mrs. Potts!

And here goes nothing…
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I was supposed to blog about my favorite memory from my honeymoon.

I was supposed to give you a little PG-anecdote from the week I spent with my husband after my wedding, which took place a little over a year ago.

I was supposed to deliver a guest post that Mrs. Potts wouldn’t be embarrassed to post on her blog.

And I tried. I really did.

But the problem is, I just couldn’t pin it down.

My honeymoon was, honestly, my favorite part about my wedding. I loved it all so much.

My husband and I vacationed for a week in a tiny resort on a tiny island in the not-so-tiny Florida Keys. It was the off-season, so we basically had the resort, the island and several fine-dining establishments all to ourselves.

We road bikes through the islands; we had private dinners; we took long, romantic soaks in our own hot tub; we chartered a boat and took a private tour of the historic district of one of the Keys; and we lounged on the beach all by our lonesome, romantic selves.

It was the perfect honeymoon.

Perfect.

That is, until the last night.

All that vacationing and, well, honeymooning, had tuckered us right out.

We were quite tired, so we decided to stay in for the night.

Dressed in swimsuits and lounge wear, we ate dinner at the resort’s bar and grill, then lounged in the hot tub with some mojitos. We tucked in early, watching a Law & Order marathon. We dozed off soon after.

Or, rather, I dozed off soon after. Till about 1 a.m.

When I was awakened by my husband whimpering and pacing our honeymoon suite.

You’d have thought his dog died, the way he was whining.

Except his dog was fine.

No one, in fact, had died.

The reality? The reason for the whimpering? My husband had heart burn.

Bad heart burn, apparently.

He was crying, people. Literally, he was crying.

Walking up and down and around the room like he was shot in the arm and slowly bleeding out.

Now, I love my husband, and he is a strong, strong man in many ways.

But he is rendered completely and totally helpless when he gets sick. Literally, he turns into a whiny little girl. I’ve actually seen him get a head cold and act as if he’s bleeding out from the ebola virus.

He does not have a high tolerance for pain.

Heck, he doesn’t have a high tolerance for discomfort.

So, needless to say, in my tired, 1 a.m. state, I wasn’t amused by his heart-burn whining.

I became even less amused, however, when he spotted that I was awake.

Because now he had an audience. The whining escalated; the complaining grew. At one point, he actually told me he thought he might be having a heart attack and felt like he was going to die.

I remained unsympathetic.

I’d lived through the man’s heart burn before, pre-wedding. He always, always got heartburn.

He always, always got heart burn when he ate fatty foods.

And he always, always, always got heart burn when he ate fatty foods fast.

Which he’d done that very night. He’d inhaled a bleu-cheese steak burger and a plate of French fries in five minutes flat.

After I told him not to order it.

After I told him to slow down.

After I told him he was going to give himself heartburn.

My husband had officially reached his first “I told you so” married moment. I was not amused in the slightest.

So, I did what any normal newly married bride would in this situation; I glared at him, covered my head with my pillow and ignored his babyish antics, hoping and praying I could go back to sleep.

For about 45 minutes.

Until his whines escalated to wails.

And until he begged me to walk across the resort and get him a bottle of Sprite because “that was all it would take to him feel better.”

I sat up in bed; I glared some more.

He begged, pleaded.

I scowled and slowly began to rise.

He then had the audacity to tell me to hurry up because he “was dying over here!”

I swear, I almost killed him right then and there.

But instead, I rummaged through my suitcase, pulled out a pair of jeans and hoodie, threw them over my pink and black lacy negligee, and headed out the suite’s back door.

I can only imagine what a sight I was: wearing a pair of jeans, a half-zipped hoodie and a honeymoon teddy, traipsing across the windy beach at 2 a.m.

I flew into the lobby, mad as all get out, only to find the person manning the front desk sound asleep.

I am not exaggerating when I say it took me 15 minutes and several full-body shakes to wake him up, plus another five minutes for him to come out of what turned out to be a sleepy, drunken stupor, just so that he could charge our room for the bottle of Sprite I was taking from the front desk cooler.

I then began my own version of The Walk of Shame back to our suite.

I handed my whimpering husband the Sprite, but before I could even finish the sentence, “Sip it slowly,” the big galump had chugged the whole thing in one gulp.

And then promptly threw up. (Like I knew he would.)

We barely got him to the bathroom in time.

Romantic, no?

The next morning, we left.

In my husband’s defense, he did apologize. Profusely.

I also apologized (although not as profusely because I still maintain, if he’d just listened to me, we wouldn’t have been in this whole mess, and I wouldn’t have had to go traipsing through the Keys in a negligee at 2 a.m.)

Still, the story has, eventually, become funny.

In fact, when we talk about our honeymoon and how much we love it, my husband always tells this story. (I’ve tried to point out that this story doesn’t exactly sell the merits of our honeymoon to anyone, but my man’s never been one to shy away from the odd, misunderstanding looks of friends, family, or perfect strangers.)

Still, our honeymoon, complete with this one awful night, has really become synonymous for our marriage.

There are times we don’t listen to each other; there are times we don’t understand each other; there are times we are downright annoyed with the each other.

But we always, always love each other.

We always, always laugh about it in the end.

And we always, always come back to the place of remembering the good times; the positive, big picture, even when there are little bits of bad floating throughout.

Because if we had to do it all over again, we would, negligee night-walk and all.

- Brittany