Mawwiage: What Bwings Us...Togethah....Today.

Thirteen years ago today, I married my best friend, but it weren't always purty and romantical like that.

We met 15 years ago in a smelly, musty music dungeon known as the basement of Mason Hall. That meeting is a lot like life:  we all thought it was disgusting and stinky at the time, but it's all unicorn farts and flying leprechauns when we think back on it. I miss that smell.

Big Dawg and I were introduced by a guy that was a really awesome friend to both of us. He and his family are still some of our favorite people to hang out with and laugh!  (Waddup, Bumgardners?!)

We didn't have some whirlwind romance where birds chirped, angels sang and our eyes bugged out  like in the cartoons. Over the next few months, we discovered that we really didn't like each other at all. He was an egocentric butt that had to be in the middle of everything. It's kind of ironic that that's one of my favorite things about him now.

But I wasn't the only one being judgmental:  he didn't like me either, and he liked EVERYBODY. I was quiet and kept to myself, so he thought I was a stuck-up biddy that thought myself too good to talk to other people.

God knew what was He was doing when He crossed our paths, though. I'd just gotten out of a long relationship with a guy that I still thought the world of. I'd ended it with him, but I couldn't tell you why. I just had this feeling in my gut that I wasn't supposed to be with him any more. I'd decided I wasn't going to get in another long relationship...I wanted to have fun and enjoy being a single college girl for a while.

Now, to hear him tell it, I was hot on his path asking him out. That's not exactly how I remember it. Actually, my roommates and I were going to a party at a friend's apartment that night, and a friend of ours was getting ready at her dorm. I called the dorm lobby to see if she was ready and to make sure she was still coming.

Well, he answered the phone. We chatted for a minute, and he asked what I needed to talk to Zoe about. I told him we were going to a party, and asked him if he was going. (THIS is where, in his version, I succumbed to the passionate cries of my heart and pleaded for him to make me his one and only.)

He said "Sure, when I get off duty," and the rest is history. Well, not, not just yet. Well, it turns out, the party was so loud that when he asked for my number, either I gave him the wrong one or he wrote it down wrong...I honestly don't remember which one.

But remember when I said I didn't want to get in another relationship? Well, this caused a problem. Once Zoe gave him the right number, he began calling all the time. I suppose he was smitten with all of my marvelousness. ;)  I spent the next 3-4 weeks at Wal-Mart. We didn't have cell phones back then, so if I wasn't at the apartment, you couldn't talk to me. I didn't want to tell him no, because I had started to like him... but I desperately wanted to be single, dang it!

But I eventually answered the phone....we went out to Applebee's in his Sanford & Son pick-up truck, and the rest was history...speckled, coffee-stained, needle-stuck, diaper changin', baby totin' history. This is just a brief piece of our story, which I'll be sharing more of this week. Buckle up and hold on for the ride of our life together... it's been amazing.

To my best friend and my baby daddy x 3, I love you to pieces, and I wouldn't want to be on this ride with anyone else. I love that we laugh when zombies eat people or when evil forces posses movie characters and fling them around like hockey pucks. I love that our answer to every world problem is to punch someone in the liver. I love that we make fun of everything together. I love the life we've made. I love you...like a fat kid loves cake.