Together for 8 years
Tomorrow evening will be the 8 year anniversary of my first date with Karen.
In some ways, it feels as if we have been together forever, and at the same time it is amazing how quickly that 8 years has come and gone. So many things have changed in that time.
For half of that 8 years, we have had a little boy in our lives. Jack.
For the past two years, we have had a beautiful little girl blessing our lives.
For 5 of those years, we have been married.
For almost 6 of those years (4 months shy of), we have lived here in our home in O'Fallon.
Karen has worked for Principal for about 7 of those years.
We've lost a few loved ones along the way.
- My grandma Mildred in 2006.
- Karen's gr-grandma Helen.
- Our friend, Shannon
- My dad, James Austin Mullen
- my pal, Boo dog.
Personal changes: (just to list a few)
- I've gone from having hair that had just reached ponytail length in August of 2000, to having it short, to having my head shaved bald (periodically growing it out just a bit before shaving it off each summer), to now having hair that is half way to ponytail length again.
- I've gone from a size 36" waist, to a size 38" waist, and back again to a 36" pant size.
- I've changed the way I dress, my glasses, my shoes. Mostly for the better.
- I've been medicated, and managing my bipolar for the majority of those 8 years. A big improvement. And for the most part, successfully managed.
- I've gone from being an agency temp, to being a full time employee (cannon fodder peon) at work, to be a courier truck driver, to being a project coordinator, to now being a Department Lead; with staff and "peons" of my own to direct.
And, to think, it all started on the internet. Answering an email, that came to me from a bored woman sitting in front of her laptop computer in a small town in Iowa. Bored, because she was from my home town but had been relocated for a job, to a place where she knew no one, and had nothing better to do than surf the internet, watch TV, and drink Bartles and James wine coolers after work.
The only reason she emailed me, after reading my profile (and seeing a photo that was about a year old, from Aprill of 1999), was because she realized that I had graduated highschool with her cousin Don Mars.
We began exchanging email messages, and then progressed to chatting online through instant messaging. Years ago, I actually had those IMs saved. But as my old PC crashed, the messages were lost. It would be funny to go back and read them now.
In fact, the first time I spoke with Karen on the phone, it was while my co-worker Charles Waite and I were rebuilding my PC and reinstalling windows 98 onto the machine. We then started working on updating our Geocities websites (at that time renamed, "Diggerz Dominion"). Once my internet connection was up and running, I logged into my IM program (Yahoo messenger, if I remember correctly) and sent an IM to tell Karen that I was back online.
Since we hadn't worked out all of the bugs, and my 33.6K modem connection was being extra slow (a month later I upgraded to 56K), I asked Karen if I could call her on her phone. She sent me her phone number, and I called long distance to hear her voice. It was a sweet, happy, and innocent sounding voice, and I was drawn in from the first time I heard it.
Karen didn't have a photo online, for me to see what she looked like, but from her voice I had imagined a petite little girl, with almost childlike features, with long brown hair and dimples in her chubby cheeks. Boy, did I have it all wrong. LOL
Two months, a dozen or so phone calls, and a hundred email, text, and IM messages later, Karen told me that she would be coming home to St. Peters. She'd had enough of Iowa, and was moving home to Old Town (about 3 miles from where I lived at the time). I told her to call me when she got home, and I would come over to help unload the moving truck.
That call came on Thursday, August 10th. Eight years ago tonight. I threw on some shorts, and t-shirt, along with a pair of white socks and my black nylon velcro sandals, and hopped into my beat up 1989 Chevy Celebrity (hand sprayed spraypaint job and all) and went to meet the voice of my dreams. The person I met did not at all match the image I had in my mind, and I was fairly certain that I would not be asking her out on any dates beyond the one we had talked about having when she got home from Iowa over the internet. I was wrong, again, and I'm all the happier for it.
On Friday night, I picked her up at her new home (where she was one of 4 femal room mates) and we went to Ruby Tuesday's for dinner. We sat at the bar, so that we could chat with my brother, Stephen, who was tending bar that night. A part of me figured that if things fell flat on their face, and we found that we couldn't have the level of conversation that we had found we had online, that I could draw my brother into the conversation to avoid dead air time. Nothing could have been farther from the truth. We hit it off so well, that I almost made us late for the movie that we had decided to go see at the Mid Rivers Mall Cine. We saw Coyote Ugly.
It was a good first date. And, in spite of the fact that I wasn't sure that Karen was my "type" of girl, I knew that I wanted to get to know her better. At the very least, I figured that if it didn't work out, one of the girls she was going to be room mates with was a cute, curvy, redhead. It wasn't like we were an item yet, so the possibilities were there. That redhead is now my good friend, and "adopted" sister, Sherrill. In the end, things turned out exactly the way that God intended for them to be.
And, 8 years later, here we are. I couldn't have asked for anything better, or anything more to make my life complete. (wouldn't mind having more money though. LOL)
In some ways, it feels as if we have been together forever, and at the same time it is amazing how quickly that 8 years has come and gone. So many things have changed in that time.
We've lost a few loved ones along the way.
- My grandma Mildred in 2006.
- Karen's gr-grandma Helen.
- Our friend, Shannon
- My dad, James Austin Mullen
- my pal, Boo dog.
- I've gone from having hair that had just reached ponytail length in August of 2000, to having it short, to having my head shaved bald (periodically growing it out just a bit before shaving it off each summer), to now having hair that is half way to ponytail length again.
- I've gone from a size 36" waist, to a size 38" waist, and back again to a 36" pant size.
- I've changed the way I dress, my glasses, my shoes. Mostly for the better.
- I've been medicated, and managing my bipolar for the majority of those 8 years. A big improvement. And for the most part, successfully managed.
- I've gone from being an agency temp, to being a full time employee (cannon fodder peon) at work, to be a courier truck driver, to being a project coordinator, to now being a Department Lead; with staff and "peons" of my own to direct.
And, to think, it all started on the internet. Answering an email, that came to me from a bored woman sitting in front of her laptop computer in a small town in Iowa. Bored, because she was from my home town but had been relocated for a job, to a place where she knew no one, and had nothing better to do than surf the internet, watch TV, and drink Bartles and James wine coolers after work.
The only reason she emailed me, after reading my profile (and seeing a photo that was about a year old, from Aprill of 1999), was because she realized that I had graduated highschool with her cousin Don Mars.
We began exchanging email messages, and then progressed to chatting online through instant messaging. Years ago, I actually had those IMs saved. But as my old PC crashed, the messages were lost. It would be funny to go back and read them now.
In fact, the first time I spoke with Karen on the phone, it was while my co-worker Charles Waite and I were rebuilding my PC and reinstalling windows 98 onto the machine. We then started working on updating our Geocities websites (at that time renamed, "Diggerz Dominion"). Once my internet connection was up and running, I logged into my IM program (Yahoo messenger, if I remember correctly) and sent an IM to tell Karen that I was back online.
Since we hadn't worked out all of the bugs, and my 33.6K modem connection was being extra slow (a month later I upgraded to 56K), I asked Karen if I could call her on her phone. She sent me her phone number, and I called long distance to hear her voice. It was a sweet, happy, and innocent sounding voice, and I was drawn in from the first time I heard it.
Karen didn't have a photo online, for me to see what she looked like, but from her voice I had imagined a petite little girl, with almost childlike features, with long brown hair and dimples in her chubby cheeks. Boy, did I have it all wrong. LOL
Two months, a dozen or so phone calls, and a hundred email, text, and IM messages later, Karen told me that she would be coming home to St. Peters. She'd had enough of Iowa, and was moving home to Old Town (about 3 miles from where I lived at the time). I told her to call me when she got home, and I would come over to help unload the moving truck.
That call came on Thursday, August 10th. Eight years ago tonight. I threw on some shorts, and t-shirt, along with a pair of white socks and my black nylon velcro sandals, and hopped into my beat up 1989 Chevy Celebrity (hand sprayed spraypaint job and all) and went to meet the voice of my dreams. The person I met did not at all match the image I had in my mind, and I was fairly certain that I would not be asking her out on any dates beyond the one we had talked about having when she got home from Iowa over the internet. I was wrong, again, and I'm all the happier for it.
On Friday night, I picked her up at her new home (where she was one of 4 femal room mates) and we went to Ruby Tuesday's for dinner. We sat at the bar, so that we could chat with my brother, Stephen, who was tending bar that night. A part of me figured that if things fell flat on their face, and we found that we couldn't have the level of conversation that we had found we had online, that I could draw my brother into the conversation to avoid dead air time. Nothing could have been farther from the truth. We hit it off so well, that I almost made us late for the movie that we had decided to go see at the Mid Rivers Mall Cine. We saw Coyote Ugly.
It was a good first date. And, in spite of the fact that I wasn't sure that Karen was my "type" of girl, I knew that I wanted to get to know her better. At the very least, I figured that if it didn't work out, one of the girls she was going to be room mates with was a cute, curvy, redhead. It wasn't like we were an item yet, so the possibilities were there. That redhead is now my good friend, and "adopted" sister, Sherrill. In the end, things turned out exactly the way that God intended for them to be.
And, 8 years later, here we are. I couldn't have asked for anything better, or anything more to make my life complete. (wouldn't mind having more money though. LOL)