My Favorite Hillbilly

Just over 8 years ago, I met this really nice man. He's from Missouri. He refers to himself as a Missouri, redneck, Ozarkian hillbilly. He's a nut, but he's my nut. We met in June at a church function I was attending in his hometown in Missouri, and we married in December. Our four grown children smiled and mostly kept their mouths shut. Thank you, grown children.

Us with our smiling grown children

Let me tell you about My Hillbilly. Aside from having sayings that make no sense whatsoever ("He was goofier than a mashed cat"), he's really a wonderful man. Of course, I knew that before I married him (honest I did, grown children), but it became really apparent to me during the series of misadventures we laughingly refer to as our honeymoon.

The unfortunate events actually started before the honeymoon or even the wedding day. I always get my flu shot in the fall, but the fall of 2003 was very busy. I was selling a house, buying a house, moving, and planning a wedding. So you can see there was no time to stop and get a flu shot. Naturally, a week before the wedding, I came down with a lovely case of the flu accompanied by vertigo. Dizzy spells. Very dizzy. Fortunately not all the time, so wedding plans continued. I drank lots of OJ, took lots of decongestant and kept going. An hour before the wedding, I was in the ladies’ room swigging Robitussin from the bottle. I didn’t know it at the time, but The Hillbilly had a sore tooth which would become abscessed in the next few days.

The wedding went well and the reception was fun. While we were enjoying our reception our children were decorating our car. They used several cans of shaving cream and blue crepe paper. Did I mention that it was raining? And we had rented a white car for the honeymoon? And that wet, blue crepe paper will dye the white paint on your car? While cleaning shaving cream off the rental car, The Hillbilly lost the extra key to my regular car, and we never did find it. 

The guilty parties. Evidence to be used at a later date.

 

We drove our blue and white rental car to the coast for a few days and had a lovely time. We walked on the beach, and went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium . We ate at several really nice restaurants including our new favorite, Bullwhacker’s. It was all very nice except for the parts where he was holding his face in his hand moaning, or the parts where I was having dizzy spells or throwing up. Oh, and the earthquake. But that was centered many miles away, and while it surprised The Hillbilly, I was used to it, and my head was spinning so much I hardly noticed it anyway.

Fortunately when we returned home, my brothers-in-law were able to buff the blue out of our car, so it was white when we returned it.

Rather than make this the longest blog post ever written, I'll continue tomorrow with the portion of the story in which the car breaks down and miracles occur.

In the meantime, tell me, what was the worst thing that happened on your honeymoon?