Two Years

Since I'm pretty new, and January holds two very special dates for Steven and me, I thought I'd take the opportunity to give you a little more insight into 'us' by sharing some stories. Today is our 2 year anniversary! We are big ol' nerds about dates. For example, we still recognize the date of the first time we communicated, and we still celebrate the first time we met, not to mention our actual anniversary and, this year, our engage-i-versary. Then in 2013 we'll add our wedding anniversary to the mix! There is just something about remembering those really special days that get us all sentimental. I'm sure we'll drop some of them at some point, but I hope we always verbally recognize them. Having said that, we had just finished watching Wall-e on New Years day when it hit me that our anniversary was 3 days away and neither of us had even thought of it! Usually we are planning our 'versaries' days or even weeks in advance. I think we both just have wedding and future planning on the brain, so it escaped us. We are going to use a gift card my mom gave Steven a while back and go out to Outback tonight. We rarely go places with servers, so it will be a treat! We tried to come up with a together activity afterwards, because we like to do that in lieu of gifts for special dates, but couldn't come up with anything that was weather appropriate, affordable, and we both liked. Oh well, we can just linger over dinner.

Anyway, since I didn't blog about the November and December 'versaries', I'll start at the beginning and then lead up to our dating anniversary which is today, January 4th. Steven and I met on okcupid.com. It's a free dating website, since I guess neither of us was at the point where we wanted to pay for something. He hadn't met anyone off of there yet, and I had 3-4 dead end dates. I had one second date, but I knew it wasn't going anywhere- I think I just was hoping I'd change my mind. Nothing was wrong with the guys; no jerks, no major misrepresentations, but there was just nothing there. I had also joined the young adults group at my church before joining okcupid but that didn't pan out since the 'young adults' were about 35-40 years old. (I did meet a married couple a bit younger than me and the wife and I ended up teaching 3rd grade faith formation together that year so it wasn't a total loss.) So by the time Steven messaged me on November 13, I was really jaded. I was thinking that if the next date didn't work out, I was going to have to figure something else out. I don't like dating and I don't like 'firsts'. Meeting people from the internet was easier than trying to approach someone in public, but was getting old fast. I'm a relationship girl so all those first dates were really wearing on me. He messaged me with some awesomely nerdy line about people who like ice cream, since I had ice cream in my profile picture. We talked for a few weeks by email before we met. I refused to talk on the phone because I was in a new city and didn't know anyone... I was super cautious. We set a date to meet, December 1st, I believe and I ended up having to cancel the morning of because my cat was wheezing and Tuesdays my vet is open late for appointments. I later found out that Steven thought I was blowing him off (can you blame him? "Hey, I can't get together tonight. My cat is breathing funny.") and actually googled to see if there was a vet in Raleigh open late on Tuesdays! I have kept the receipt, jokingly as proof, ever since I found that out because it makes me laugh.

Anyway, we rescheduled for December 3rd and decided to meet at Coldstone. I don't remember a ton about that first date. My memory sort of sucks. But I remember that I got there really early because I didn't want to have to find him. So I waited at an outdoor table for him, but I did recognize him when he got there. The line was insanely long for a winter night, which gave us lots of awkward talk time. It was probably a nice way to break the ice, looking back. I refused to let him pay for my ice cream because I didn't know if it would go anywhere, and just had a hang up about that. We sat and talked for probably 30-45 minutes. He mostly talked about work, I guess so there wouldn't be any dead space. I do remember thinking "Gosh, he talks a lot", which I also thought after our second date and still like to pick on him about (I got a 30 minute description of his grandma). But left to me, it probably would have been weirdly silent, so I'm glad he talked my ear off. After the first date, I had a feeling about him, but I wasn't really sure what. I knew I was interested in seeing where it would go. I thought that if I didn't hear anything from him in a day or two, I'd message him. About an hour after I got home, he emailed me telling me that he really enjoyed the date and would love to see me again. I swooned, because I was used to dating guys who didn't really show their feelings, who felt like they were less of a man if they were excited, and who sort of played games. It was refreshing to me that he was so open about his excitement, so of course I got even more excited.

We dated more and more for the next few weeks and I remember on our date on January 1, 2010 hoping we would make it official. We went out to Applebee's and then back to his apartment where we talked for a few hours straight. It was like we couldn't run out of things to say. He didn't end up asking me that night, so I just hoped it was coming soon. I didn't want to feel like we were dating with no purpose. We were hanging out a few nights later at my apartment and he asked me something along the lines of "So, are we together?". And I replied, "I would like to be!". He got all excited, said he wanted to as well, and that was that! I immediately thought in my head that I couldn't wait to put it on facebook (I know, I know) but I didn't want to seem over eager. A few seconds later he asked if we were going to put it on facebook that night, and he ended up doing it before I could get to it! That made my heart pitter patter even more. Again, I just wasn't used to a guy who was so proud and excited to be with me. I knew he was different right away and he has proven me right for two years now <3.

Stay tuned for our proposal story in a few weeks!