YEAR 1
There's been one emotion that keeps turning up in my life over & over again lately, & that emotion is disbelief. It isn't the kind of disbelief that's tinged along its edges with sarcasm or outrage, but the early stages of a real genuine, Talking Heads' "Once in a Lifetime"-style internal dialogue. It's big & it's beautiful & it is swirling around my Peter Pan tights, which are hung up neatly on a hanger at the ready (for those extremely rare moments when thirty-somethings everywhere need a hero).
It's been one year since I went to a party at the Big Blue House & saw a pretty girl that I did not know just milling around in the kitchen all cute-like. Naturally, I was pretty offended by this. Some rando girl who just happens to be super adorable has the AUDACITY to just be hanging out in my house -- MY HOUSE -- & I didn't know her? Nuh-uh. It was some kind of crazy affront that I was going to get to the bottom of. Yes I was. And yes, I did.
I walked up to her & just started talking. In all honesty, I don't think she had bargained for some rare breed of lunatic to harass her that particular evening, because she swiftly departed for the restroom & said she'd be right back. Yes, that's usually the kiss of death, but I'm pretty stubborn & I didn't have anywhere else in particular to be, so I stayed put just in case of the very slim chance that she actually wasn't trying to shake me off. So imagine my surprise when she came right back & started talking to me. An epic conversation about music (what else?) ensued, & some time later in the night (though it felt very short), she told me she had to leave. Still clinging to my overconfidence, I flat-out demanded that she give me her number so we could plan on going to some shows together, then I walked her to the door & stole a kiss. Sneak attack...it's pretty much the only way I don't get shot down.
The rest, as they say, is history. Our first year together has FLOWN by. We've met each other's families (multiple times!), moved into our own apartment together, & talked about the future. That's not quite right. We didn't just talked about THE future, we talked about OUR future.
I could cite a thousand special moments spent with this woman I love. The best thing of all, though, is that we've grown so much together. I've learned a lot about myself through her (mostly good, but she's also not afraid to occasionally hold up a mirror to my bad habits -- of which there are more than a few). We care about each other, & it translates effortlessly into a million little mostly indescribable things. It's in the way we put the toothpaste on both toothbrushes, even if one of us is lagging behind schedule in getting ready for work in the morning or bed at night. It's in the way we invent theme songs; mine excel if they're sung like R Kelly or Michael McDonald, & hers frequently take the form of slightly off-key twee versions of unwritten showtunes. When theme songs won't suffice, a carefully placed short burst catch-phrase will do (a personal favorite of mine is when Esme declares "chi-cken-guts! drive-me-nuts!"). It's in the way she lets me know she's hungry by gnawing on my arm, sometimes like it's corn on the cob, & sometimes like a hunk of meat. It can be painful, but it's always funny. It's in the way she will randomly start sniffing my ear like a puppydog. If her nose were wet, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference. We travel well together, we sleep well together, we work well together, & although we don't always speak the same language, we're striving to get fluent in one another's chosen dialect. What more could a lucky man like me ask for? I'm pretty stoked that I get to love this woman.
It's been one year since I went to a party at the Big Blue House & saw a pretty girl that I did not know just milling around in the kitchen all cute-like. Naturally, I was pretty offended by this. Some rando girl who just happens to be super adorable has the AUDACITY to just be hanging out in my house -- MY HOUSE -- & I didn't know her? Nuh-uh. It was some kind of crazy affront that I was going to get to the bottom of. Yes I was. And yes, I did.
I walked up to her & just started talking. In all honesty, I don't think she had bargained for some rare breed of lunatic to harass her that particular evening, because she swiftly departed for the restroom & said she'd be right back. Yes, that's usually the kiss of death, but I'm pretty stubborn & I didn't have anywhere else in particular to be, so I stayed put just in case of the very slim chance that she actually wasn't trying to shake me off. So imagine my surprise when she came right back & started talking to me. An epic conversation about music (what else?) ensued, & some time later in the night (though it felt very short), she told me she had to leave. Still clinging to my overconfidence, I flat-out demanded that she give me her number so we could plan on going to some shows together, then I walked her to the door & stole a kiss. Sneak attack...it's pretty much the only way I don't get shot down.
The rest, as they say, is history. Our first year together has FLOWN by. We've met each other's families (multiple times!), moved into our own apartment together, & talked about the future. That's not quite right. We didn't just talked about THE future, we talked about OUR future.
I could cite a thousand special moments spent with this woman I love. The best thing of all, though, is that we've grown so much together. I've learned a lot about myself through her (mostly good, but she's also not afraid to occasionally hold up a mirror to my bad habits -- of which there are more than a few). We care about each other, & it translates effortlessly into a million little mostly indescribable things. It's in the way we put the toothpaste on both toothbrushes, even if one of us is lagging behind schedule in getting ready for work in the morning or bed at night. It's in the way we invent theme songs; mine excel if they're sung like R Kelly or Michael McDonald, & hers frequently take the form of slightly off-key twee versions of unwritten showtunes. When theme songs won't suffice, a carefully placed short burst catch-phrase will do (a personal favorite of mine is when Esme declares "chi-cken-guts! drive-me-nuts!"). It's in the way she lets me know she's hungry by gnawing on my arm, sometimes like it's corn on the cob, & sometimes like a hunk of meat. It can be painful, but it's always funny. It's in the way she will randomly start sniffing my ear like a puppydog. If her nose were wet, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference. We travel well together, we sleep well together, we work well together, & although we don't always speak the same language, we're striving to get fluent in one another's chosen dialect. What more could a lucky man like me ask for? I'm pretty stoked that I get to love this woman.