In the Beginning...

Years ago, there was a girl (well, technically, she was a woman) who moved to a small town by herself. She bought a cat. And then another cat. And then "acquired" another.

You can see where this is headed, right?

So she...bought a dog. Just to put a stop to the "crazy cat lady" metamorphosis.

She also entered the crazy world of online dating. She met a few nice guys, but no one who really made her heart race. No one who really made her feel the kind of passion necessary to take it to the next level.

And then, she gave up.

See...that's when it all begins to happen, right? She stopped looking, for the most part. Stopped expecting. Went about training her new puppy to sit, stay, and come.

And just for giggles, she checked the local online personals one day. More for entertainment purposes than anything. There was only one guy on there under the age of 40. She was 27 and had already tried the "older guy thing" and found herself less than impressed. So she clicked on his picture. Not at all the kind of guy she'd take two looks at in a bar, but...hmmm....

A crumpled cowboy hat, a white tank top, tattoos up both arms, a rottweiler smiling in the foreground. And those blue eyes. A sort of sideways smile.

What the hell, right?

And so she contacted him.

Which led to several weeks of emailing back and forth. The content of those emails were varied and probably quite entertaining, as we tried to learn about each other by asking questions and fishing for information about beliefs, values, interests, future plans. And for her, the writer, it also involved quite a bit of "reading between the lines" and analyzing word choice and...well...let's be honest...editing (in her head, of course). But, she found him to be intelligent, funny, sarcastically witty, and well-read - even if he could't figure out how to use punctuation...at all.

Eventually, they planned a face-to-face meeting at a local entertainment establishment (friends on speed-dial, just in case there was a need of rescuing). All nerves and jitters, she found her way back to the section in which they'd planned to meet, sidled up to the bar to order a glass of liquid courage, and scanned the crowd of seated customers, trying to pinpoint the right one.

There he was, casually leaning back in a chair, surrounded by a group of others. Without the hat or the tank top, he was hard to pinpoint. The long-sleeved flannel shirt and clean cut, freshly shaven face just weren't what she was expecting. They made eye-contact, and then she was sure. Yep, that was him. Wow.

He pulled away from his table and his friends and made his way up to the bar.

__________________________________xoxoxoxo

I don't even remember how we introduced ourselves...maybe we shook hands, maybe we didn't....We found a table for two and just talked (well, mostly I talked and he listened). Somewhere around two in the morning, we decided to leave, since I had to work in the morning (I'm pretty sure I couldn't pull of those hours anymore). He walked me out of the building, gave me a hug, and nothing else (damn!), and we planned to see each other within a few days. My body was humming with exactly that feeling of wooziness that I had been seeking for years. That feeling that signals that lust is imminent, and love might follow.

We dated for a few months before his dog moved in with me. Yep, you read that right. The dog. The dog who fell in love with mine. The big, old, smelly, sweet rottweiler who took my little, neurotic Aussie mix under his wing like a doting father. It was the first test, really.

Several months later, the man moved in, giving up his own apartment so we could save money and time. That was the second test.

And then...well, there was the internal test we both had to get past...was this The One? The One we could see ourselves with Forever? Did we want to make that leap?

We were both dedicated, loyal, hard-working people who knew that marriage and kids were part of our long term plans. We were both pretty "old school," small-town, kids raised by Vietnam vets who were still married to their high school sweethearts. We knew the kind of work involved. We knew the real picture of marriage.

And we decided we were ready.

So there we were...two very happy, passionate people standing in front of a judge and all our friends and family, saying, "I Do."

Now, we're here...almost eight years later - and well, let's just say our marriage is "in progress." We have our ups and downs, though in the past few years, our downs have been more numerous than our ups. We seem to be hitting that plateau...the doldrums of marriage that are so easy to enter and so hard to get out of.

Which is why I'm here.