15 Years Ago

15 years ago I met a man that would change the course of my life as I knew it.  I wouldn’t have thought so, since we met at a tiny little bar called the Holy Cow Brewpub at the end of a night where he had been on a very ambitious pub crawl with friends.

Neither he nor I were thinking we were going to meet our soul-mates that fateful weekend.  I was visiting Las Vegas from Maine and he from Arizona.  We were both just looking for a fun weekend get away with friends.

I’ve told our story a million times.  I’m not willing to go through 100+ posts to see if I have told it on this blog or not, but this is a slightly different story.

15 years ago after a night of drinking and gambling and then sobering up a bit, Rob and I found ourselves on the steps of an exit way near the snack bar at Circus Circus noshing on what would become known as our “White Trash Breakfast”.  It’s a simple recipe, because simple was all the snack bar did back then.  It was a Pastrami sandwich, potato salad, nachos with fake yellow cheese sauce and beer.  We sat on those steps while we talked, laughed and ate that morning and it was glorious.  That was the beginning of our falling in love.

Over the years we have revisited the snack bar at Circus Circus to recreate the meal, swapping beer for soda.  The last time we went back they had completely remodeled the place and we weren’t sure we were even in the right spot.  But they had Pastrami sandwiches, potato salad and nachos with fake yellow cheese sauce so it felt right to us.

The bar that we met at no longer exists, which is sad to me because we also used it as pre-reception watering hole spot 14 years ago after our wedding, when the restaurant we had our reception at wasn’t ready for us yet.   It is as much a part of our history as that white trash breakfast.  But I guess someday that snack bar at Circus Circus may no longer carry Pastrami sandwiches or potato salad or even nachos with fake yellow cheese sauce.

It doesn’t matter, because our history is in us.  Not some location that we went to a few times.  My husband proved that to me tonight when he semi-surprised me by spending an hour in the kitchen tonight recreating our white trash breakfast.   He made a small batch of potato salad, prepared some tortilla chips with fake yellow cheese sauce and we put the pastrami sandwiches together, standing side by side while we laughed and talked.

I’m so glad I sat on those steps and had that white trash breakfast with him 15 years ago.  I’m even more glad that I married him a year later and have spent the last 15 years loving him and our life.