30 Days of Memories: Day 8

As you have probably noticed, I like cool frames. Mom and Bill bought me this frame after Jay and I got engaged. I still haven't gotten around to having our wedding date inscribed, but maybe I will by our tenth anniversary.

The year we got engaged, we had family pictures taken, which was Jay's idea. He wanted to give his parents pictures of all of us, instead of just doing engagement photos. I love him a lot for that. Marrying into a family with teenagers and a woman who had been divorced for 12 years was no easy feat, but from the beginning, he did his best to include the kids.

Now, in the past seven years, there have been some rough patches, which was to be expected. The kids and I were pretty much it, so to have someone else join the family had its hard moments, but it has worked out.

The Best Temper Tantrum I've Ever Had

Today marks the two year anniversary of the best temper tantrum I've ever had.

The RockCrawlinChef and I don't celebrate Valentine's Day.  We have no desire to.  Now, let me explain.  We "met" because of a temper tantrum I had after Valentine's Day in 2008.  I'd been a divorced, single mom for going on eleven years at the time and I was not a pleasant person.  I was working way too much, worrying way too much, and tired as hell about doing it all on my own.  I was D-O-N-E.

A friend of mine and I had signed up for Cupid.com mostly because we thought it would be fun to go speed dating and in order to register we had to be members of Cupid.com.  Not a problem, we signed up for our free profiles and went speed dating.  Oh, God, that was a disaster for another time.  I'd even "met" a couple of guys and been out on *one* date with someone I met on-line.  Also disasters for another time.

Valentine's Day 2008 did me in.  I was a royal damn bitch.  There was no one safe around me.  Like I said, I was D-O-N-E.  I was one of those bitter bitches that you'd see on the street and cross to the other side just to get out of my way. 

I still had not completely recovered from my world-class hate-fest when I logged onto Cupid on February 16th, but I was slightly less bitter and in the frame of mind that if I couldn't find just one profile that I'd throw in the towel and become the crazy horse woman I was on the path of becoming anyway.

I went throught page after page of profiles, getting more and more frustrated, when I came across this headline...

"Maybe... just maybe she's out there." 

It piqued my interest and I clicked on RCC's profile.  He was smart.  And articulate.  And liked to travel.  And liked to shoot.  Could it be?  Could I really have just found someone I could connect with?

Before I could second guess myself, I sent him an eye contact, "We might make a good match."

And so it began...weeks of daily emails.  In the beginning, just once a day, which quickly grew to multiple emails a day.  I began to feel something I thought had died long ago - HOPE.  Really, he might be a nice, genuine guy.  After six weeks, we decided to meet in person.  His choice.  He chose Barnes and Noble - no pressure of eating, a neutral spot that we could both make an escape from if we needed to.

We met.  Five hours later, we left B&N fast friends. 

Twelve weeks later, we got engaged. 

Eleven months after that, we got married.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Engagement story...

The weekend after I returned from Salida, the best thing I could have ever wished for happened...RockCrawlinChef  (RCC) proposed. I'm about a month late posting this, but here it is...

While I was in Salida, Jim and Monster got into a huge fight and Jim kicked Monster out of the house. Luckily, Digger stayed at home and so Monster had someone at my place with him. Well, on Wednesday, RCC took the boys to dinner and took Monster to Jim's house to pick up his stuff. Saturday night Jim finally called to talk to me about what happened and, of course, his story about what had happened changed. RCC heard the conversation and got really quiet. When I asked him what was wrong he said that he wasn't sure it was the right decision to take Monster to Jim's house to pick up his stuff, especially after hearing the conversation between Jim and me. So we had this whole other conversation about never second guessing what your heart tells you is the right thing at the time.

RCC was quiet and after a few minutes jumped out of bed (all of our major decisions have been made while naked) and my heart just sank. Those damn ghosts from the ex-boyfriend appear occasionally. He went to his dresser and looked at me and said, 'this is either the most appropriate or most inappropriate time, but...' I just KNEW he'd come to his senses and was going to break things off. I was absofuckinglutely terrified - my whole fairy tale romance was gone. I know that I had to have gone completely white just waiting for the other shoe to drop. And then it got worse, I could tell that he wanted to say something but couldn't. Christ, I was a mess. Once he opened his mouth, he said a bunch of stuff that I don't remember, but I do remember him returning to the side of the bed and getting down on one knee, opening the ring box, saying a few more things (blah, blah, blah, blah - the lips were moving, sound was coming out, but I have no freakin' clue what he was saying) and then finally getting to the good stuff, 'GunDiva, will you marry me?'

Wow.

180 degrees from what I was expecting! I cried like a little girl and I'm pretty sure I asked him repeatedly if he was sure and if this was for real. I couldn't even touch the ring for, like, 20 minutes. I was afraid if I touched it that it would disappear. Once it started to sink in, he put the ring on my finger (which fit perfectly - amazing since he really had no clue about my ring size) and I cried some more. We're not planning on getting married for a while (think next year), but I'm certainly loving the promotion from 'girlfriend' to 'fiance' (or is it 'fiancee'? I can never remember).

Wow, huh?