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I have often heard people speak of true love, but for me, it was more of a sense of what was right, like the right amount of cinnamon, or the right amount of wine. And as far as other things I have heard, to say that I was his is not at all a phrase I find accurate, though I might say I was devoted to him, And I did not know if I would be with [him] when we were 12 and 15, or 54 and 57, but I knew that I should be.
– from A Still Small Voice, by John Reed
Yesterday was David’s 3oth birthday. I wanted to post something yesterday, but with all of the birthday activity, and being sick, I didn’t get a chance to. Today, I’m home sick from work, so I thought I’d take advantage of the free time and tell you a little something about him.
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A year ago, David and I sat on a bench at the Navy Memorial, trying to talk our way through the very complicated beginning of our relationship. It was a Friday after work, the day before his birthday; I had taken him to lunch earlier since I wasn’t expecting to be able to see him again until Monday. I had written him a letter telling him 10 things he didn’t know about me and baked him cookies, which I left on his desk before he got in to work. He loved both the letter and the cookies.
We were talking about how the beginning works, when everything’s so complicated. He was afraid of making a big change; I was afraid of never getting to be with him. We knew that this was a chance we had to take, or risk wondering about it for the rest of our lives, but the first step was very scary. Around and around we went, each of us fighting the other, trying to make our way to common ground.
Eventually, the talking stopped and we just looked at each other, searching each other’s eyes, wondering if we were thinking the same thing. I decided to risk it, and leaned in. He stopped me.
“Wait,” he said. “I want to tell you before I kiss you.”
“What?” I asked, hoping I was right about what was next.
“I love you,” he said.
I smiled with tears in my eyes. “I love you, too.” I said.
And that was that. We’ve been together ever since.
It hasn’t always been a walk in the park, obviously, but even when it was so hard a couple of months ago, there wasn’t anywhere else I wanted to be. David is my other half in so many ways; even after a year, he’s still the first person I want to tell things to, the first person I want to do anything with, the only person I can imagine waking up to every day and coming home to every night, the person who believes in me when I don’t believe in myself, the one who supports me and encourages me and helps me up when I stumble, the one who seems to understand me the way no one else can. His are the arms I want around me when the world feels like too much; his are the arms I burrow into each night as I fall asleep, knowing there isn’t a single place on earth I’d rather be.
I love the way, if I’m walking behind him, he absentmindedly reaches his hand back for me to take, because he wants me next to him. I love the way he comes up and kisses me out of the blue for no reason. I love that we casually say, “When we get married . . .” or “When we have kids . . .” like it’s a foregone conclusion, with no doubt that it will ever come to pass. I love that he takes such good care of the tomatoes, even though he won’t eat them. I love that he acts as my ears without either of us even realizing it. I love the way he brushes me off every morning when I tell him how handsome he looks (“You say that every day”) because I know he’s secretly pleased to hear it. I love the tilt of his head when he’s about to say something sweet to me, and the way he secretly touches my leg under the table when we’re out to dinner. I love that every time we drive somewhere more than an hour away, we have to be sure we find a Sheetz so that he can get a vanilla cappucino.
He’s so smart, and he makes me laugh every day. He makes me a better person in so many ways, and I know that I’m lucky to have found him. I hope I get to write one of these every year.
May you live all the days of your life.
– Johnathan Swift
And she’s as princess-y as ever, let me tell you. Here she is, decked out in her birthday finery:
It’s the shoes that kill me.
There was trampoline fun for everyone!
There was a piñata – princess-themed of course.
David suggested I appreciated the irony of beating the princess-themed piñata to pieces (I’m anti-princesses). He wasn’t entirely wrong.
There was a cook out and cake. Before I say anything else, let me once again commend Molly on her cake craftiness. She asked the Princess what kind of cake she wanted, and she made it happen. That said:
Hannah Montana? When did my sweet, innocent, princess-loving niece discover Hannah effing Montana? God help us.
When I asked Nate if the Princess wanted anything special for her birthday, he told me that when he asked her, she said “Flip-flops,” so I headed to the flip-flop extravaganza that is Old Navy and picked out two pairs. I knew which ones she’d love most, and I was right. Here she is, modeling both her new dress from her other aunt, and her new favorite flip-flops:
I wish I’d taken video of this – she was sashaying back and forth in the living room like a model, flipping her hair, with her little hand on her hip like that. I was dying. She is too grown. God, I love her.
We worry about what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today.
– Stacia Tauscher
1. The Princess, who turns 5 today!
2. Dippin’ Dots. It truly is the “Ice Cream of the Future”!
3. a comfy pair of scrub pants
What are you happy about today?
The aging process has you firmly in its grasp if you never get the urge to throw a snowball.
– Doug Larson
I guess when I turned 32 this past Tuesday, I officially became old, because I was driving past the skate park yesterday, and my first thought wasn’t, “Look how much fun they’re having!”, it was “Look how dangerous that is. And why aren’t any of them wearing helmets?”
Oy.
This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.
– Douglas Adams
Some of you “long-time readers” may remember a feature around here called Tuesday’s Things to Be Happy About. I stopped doing it about a year ago, but I decided I wanted to bring it back, both because I miss it and because I feel like I need something that forces me to post when I otherwise might let posting slide. I was going to call it Ten Things Tuesday, but I like the alliteration of this a little better, plus it’s not so ambitious, which will help me not feel not so much pressure.
I’ve been thinking about this for a little while now, but I wanted to go back through the old entries first and mark off in my little Happy Things notebook the ones that I’ve already used. That has proved to be a nearly impossible task, though, given the nearly 1400 items in the notebook. I did about three entries’ worth and decided it was hopeless. So, I’ll do my best not to repeat, but I’m not making any promises (I will, however, mark them off as I go along now so I won’t have this problem from here on out). Also, some items will probably be topical and will therefore not come from the notebook, since I’ve been slacking about keeping it up, but I will add them as they occur to me.
So, here we go:
1. those tiny bottles of condiments you get when you order room service
2. Friday Night Lights recaps on TWoP
3. the secret way I found to use Google Talk at work, which is great since David started his new job this week and we can’t use the internal IM anymore.
Tune in next week to see what exciting things I’m happy about then!
Also: Happy Birthday, Nate!
Father asked us what was God’s noblest work. Anna said men, but I said babies. Men are often bad, but babies never are.
– Louisa May Alcott
Young Benjamin turned one on Saturday:
We stopped by Nate’s to watch football that afternoon, so I got to see the tiny people for the second weekend in a row, which is never a bad thing.
Later that night, David and I had dinner with Aimee and Tim at a Japanese steak house, which was so much fun. I had a drink bigger than my head, called a Green Dinosaur, which was basically a Long Island Iced Tea with Midori instead of Coke. It was good. Our chef was fantastic, the food was probably the best I’ve had at a restaurant like that, and for once, I didn’t stuff myself (and I counted everything – I’m back on track, baby).
It was so great to spend time with Aimee again – I haven’t seen her in a while – and Tim and David hit it off, because they’re both kind of nerdy (as Aimee said to me on a trip to the restroom). All in all, it was a great day!
The Conductor is three today!
He has grown into this amazing, funny, sweet kid, and I can’t even put into words how much I adore him.
I can’t believe this tiny baby turned into a whirlwind of a toddler, running all over, laughing his head off, jumping onto to me without the slightest bit of warning. He is the best! When he was born, they took him away for a while – I can’t remember why – so I didn’t get to hold him until the next day, but I remember just being awed at his presence. He was the happiest (and giantest) baby I ever met, and even now he’s just so joyful.
This is one of my favorite pictures of him, taken when he was about eight months old. He still makes this look now, like he’s this close to getting into some mischief.
I’m headed down to Richmond today for his birthday (and a belated Christmas), and I can’t wait to see him and give him a million birthday kisses!
Fly free and happy beyond birthdays and across forever, and we’ll meet now and then when we wish, in the midst of the one celebration that can never end.
– Richard Bach
The Princess turns four today!
I remember the day she was born, when I held her for the first time, wondering how anything could be so perfect – she was so tiny, with a perfectly round head – and when Nate and Molly left me alone with her to take a walk, I sang to her, and whispered to her all the things I wanted to teach her as she got bigger, and told her that she would always be my best girl.
She’s at the beach celebrating this week, and I can hardly believe what a big girl she’s become – Nate sent me a couple of pictures yesterday of her early birthday celebration. Here she is on her new “Princess” bike:
And Molly, my ever-creative sister-in-law, has struck again with this castle cake:
I don’t know how she comes up with these things (she did Thomas the Tank Engine for the Conductor’s birthday in January), but she never ceases to amaze me. (And I see there were Dots involved. Why was I not invited?)
I’m headed down next weekend for a little belated celebration; this is the first of her birthdays that I haven’t been there for the actual day, but that’s the way it goes sometimes. I got her some clothes, a very cute pair of shoes, and a baseball glove. Pink, of course!
Don’t ever let me take you for granted
You’ve got your finger on the pulse of my soul
– Erasure, You Surround Me
Today is Aimee’s birthday – now she’s old like me! This is us at 17:
Can you tell we thought we were cute?
And this is us at 30 (before our most recent birthdays):
Still cute right?
Happy birthday, my girl! I love you and miss you!
Sometimes cameras and television are good to people and sometimes they aren’t. I don’t know if it’s the way you say it or how you look.
– Dan Quayle
After much research and consultation with the people at Circuit City, my brother, and you commenter-types, I finally bought my very own digital camera! I went with the Canon Powershot A720. I had my eye on one that had a bit more zoom but was otherwise mostly the same, but chose this one because it has a viewfinder, which I think will come in handy on sunny days when the LCD screen is obscured by glare. The guy at Circuit City said the difference between the 6x zoom I got and the 10x the other camera had was not a big deal. I was hoping to score one with a tilting LCD screen, but they don’t make very many of them anymore, and the least expensive one was about $150 more than I wanted to (and could, reasonably) spend. Oh well.
Also, because this one was a bit cheaper than the other one with more zoom, I got the camera, a carrying case, a 2G memory card (on sale for the same price as the 1G), and a Duracell 4-battery rechargeable battery dealio for only $3.91 more than the amount I told myself I could spend (which, thanks to Aimee and Tim and my grandparents, was about $150 more than my original budget!)!
I got it yesterday and got it all set up. I don’t really know what to show you; I’ve only taken pictures of my cat so far, and that’s kind of boring. But he’s pretty handsome, so let’s take a look, shall we?
Hmm. I don’t really get why I have to resize all of these pictures (I had to do the ones from Houston too, which Aimee burned onto a CD from her camera). They’re HUGE, and I’m having to edit them in Microsoft Photo Editor to be 80-85% smaller than they are when I open them. I wonder why that is? Seems like they’re going to take up way more space on my hard drive than they should because of that.
Anyway, so that’s done, and I’m pretty excited about it. Thanks for all the advice and suggestions; it was very helpful!
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