Gush

Are you strongly opposed/allergic/squeamish when it comes to lovey-dovey gushy stuff?

Then stop reading now. Trust me, it gets bad.

So I've been meeting a lot of new people lately being in Nebraska and the first question I always get is "how did you and Paul meet?"

I usually try to refrain from the gushy, disgusting love stuff on my public blog, but I feel like if I don't write these kinds of things down soon, I will forget.

Not that I could ever forget how handsome Paul was/is. Or how sweetly he wooed me. Not that he had to do much. Falling in love with him was pretty easy. Like taking a bite of your favorite kind of cake easy. And then eating so much of that cake that you get adult onset diabetes. Just kidding. But it was easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy.

So I'll start from the beginning.

Paul and I worked together. Not exactly the most romantic fairy-tale way to meet, but there you go. We worked different shifts, in different parts of the building, and it's pure coincidence that we met at all, really.

Another boy at work kept pestering me to go on a date with him. I wasn't interested, and I told him so in the nicest way I knew how. I had just dealt with a difficult breakup and I wasn't quite ready to put myself back out there for someone again. Eventually, this other boy continued to pester me so much that I ventured off at work just to avoid him. Thus, I came across Paul.

The day was a Tuesday. It saddens me that this particular memory has become so vague to me. The parts I can recall are going downstairs to get some ice. Actually, getting some ice was just an excuse to avoid getting asked out after I had already said no thanks. The part after this is all a blur. I know that I spoke to Paul. And then I spoke some more. In fact, I couldn't stop talking to him. I had never been so nervous and so comfortable speaking to someone at the same exact time before. He was easy to talk and listen to. I probably chattered his ear off in my nervousness. Then his shift ended and mine began. I said goodbye and went back upstairs to my desk. Half an hour later, he was there too, listening to me chatter again. I wasn't getting my work done. Before we could exchange phone numbers, my supervisor told him to go home. The rest of the night I was a jittery mess.

A few days later, I was talking to Paul's supervisor/good friend. I (jokingly) told him that if he could get Paul to ask me on a date that I would buy him lunch. So Paul asked me out on a date. I still owe his old supervisor lunch. That Saturday, Paul came over to my house and I made us sandwiches. Afterwards, he drove me to Salt Lake and took me to a Pink Floyd show at the Clark Planetarium. Our long talk continued through the date. He bought us some astronaut ice cream (which is delicious, by the way) and held my hand. Our long talk continued and (Warning: this is going to be cheesy) I knew that he was special. It used to annoy me when people would claim that they fell in love on the first date, but I now I completely understand. I felt utterly out of control with my feelings towards Paul on our first date together. We talked late into the night, and he walked me to my door at about 2:00am. I waited for him to kiss me goodnight, but he didn't. That kept my head whirring until the wee hours of the morning. It took him more than a week's worth of dates before he would kiss me at the door. To a girl hyped up in love, that's like an eternity, folks!

Now fast forward about two months.

Now, most intelligent people will tell you that rushing things when you're still in the "infatuation stage" with someone is a bad idea. It probably is and was at the time. But we didn't care. All we knew was that we couldn't imagine our lives without including the other. Paul took me home to Colorado to meet his parents in early October.

(Paul's parents' house in Colorado, circa October 2009)

And he proposed November 9, 2009.

And we were married September 23, 2010.

So there is our love story. I thank my lucky stars diurnally that I have Paul. And that he has me.

Do you have a love story? Tell me about it.