Did you know that June 1 is 'Steem Power Up Day'? This is the day you power up that steem to steempower and show your support of the platform. If you've signed up for the Minnow Power Up League here it can be a kinda big deal - we're all on our way to dolphinhood, which feels like a milestone and something to work towards. Sponsored by @yabapmatt and @steemmonsters, and organised by organized and by @paulag and @abh12345 who do a great job of looking at all that data, you can win steem and steem monsters packs by taking part and powering up.

Today is a day of two celebrations - it's Steem Power Up day, but more importantly it seems, it's also my husband's birthday - the absolute love of my life. You heard that right. My husband's the love of my life, not steem. Who knew!

We met hundreds of years ago, it seems, at his sister's house in England, where I happened to land as her sister and my friend were besties, you know - degrees of separation and stuff. It really was love at first sight - he walked into the room, and I thought to myself - first I'm going to shag you, then I'm gonna marry you.

And that was a wierd thought, because independent me was never, EVER going to get married. It was something I vehemently opposed - a piece of paper to say you'll love and OBEY? Are you kidding me? Why would I need that? I didn't want to be so bound, by either society pushing me into marriage, or feeling I had to. But there it was - and the electric spark that shivered through us with our first kiss. That's not a metaphor, by the way - we both felt this electric shock when our lips touched. It was that charged - we'd spend all of three hours together, and we were gone, baby, gone.

This was winter solstice, 2002. We spend 24 hours together and I left, back up to London and up to Edinburgh for NYE. We swapped phone numbers, and he even rang me on Christmas Day, where we spoke for hours. I arranged to meet him on 1 January - I booked a train to go all the way back to Brighton where he lived on a travellers site, in an old Bedford mobile library in a forest. He told me to call him to make sure I was coming, but he gave me the wrong number. There I was, hungover and alone and going all the way from the North to the south of England with no way of knowing he'd be on the other end to pick me up. It wasn't even my country - I was travelling. The train was delayed for hours - rain had flooded many areas and I thought I'd never get there, and sure as hell didn't think he'd be there at all! I told him I'd be there by 5, but the train did not arrive til 9pm.

Turns out he'd checked every single train from 5, and this was the last one. He'd managed to get a whole heap of his mates to go on a pub crawl in Brighton so he could borrow one of their cars, and they were getting rowdy and he needed to get them out of there. Seriously, one of them put in dick in someone's pint glass. It wasn't pretty. Thank god I was on that train, or I would have been going back up to London to where I was staying with my ex, and we would never have re-connected.

Two days later, we decided we'd get married and move to Somerset.

Except I was Australian, and he was English, and there were thousands of miles between us. He left me at the station and said 'see you in six months' - and I got back in four. I had 3 thousand Australian dollars, my 5 year old, and two suitcases. He had a truck and 90 quid.

Sixteen years later, we still marvel at how we even got together in the first place. A series of choices, and a willingness to be impulsive and take risks, and a very, very strong feeling that we should be together. And we weren't wrong - our marriage is strong, and we are still super in love.

And yes, we got married. Within a year, in a tiny rural church, and a backyard party. My parents and sister flew over. The whole thing cost us 1000 pounds and it was one of the happiest days of my life - a ceremony that said: 'hey, we are taking this shit seriously, and I love you so much that I dont want anyone else, and this says so'. Or something like that. We didn't need thousands of pounds to do it - I had second hand heels I traded for doc martens as soon as I got home, and he had tails that he got from the op shop. We honeymooned in Italy at a friend's villa and drank a substantial amount of red wine.

One of my favourite pictures of us, taken some years ago now.

We make effort and we sacrifice for each other. We work hard at our relationship, and have since the beginning - it's not a perfect SHINY marriage, but it's perfect for us because we work together to help each other out. We listen, and we love hard. We've always known, somehow, that it's worth working hard for.

I'm still not that keen on the whole 'obey' thing, however.

But because it's his birthday, and he asked if I could not steem for the day, I figured I could comply just this one day a year.

See ya post SPUD.

AND DON'T FORGET TO POWER UP!

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