Our Story

One Year Ago… Part XI

I knocked on the door and was greeted by the cutest little Boston Terrier bouncing off the screen door. Then I heard his voice holler at me, “Come on in. You’re Early.”

“Yeah but I didn’t speed.” I still don’t think

“I’m almost ready. I didn’t expect you that soon. I figured I had more time.”

“Well we have to drive to Springtown.”

“Where?”

“That’s what we always called it in college. Anyway it takes an hour.”

“Um… it takes about 45 minutes from here….”

“No it doesn’t.”

Yes that continued on for a while. So when he was finished getting ready I had to razz him about a girl being early and ready to go before a guy. Then we went and got in my car.

Talk about nervous. And when I get nervous, I have a tendency to ramble. I will talk about anything and everything and sometimes it’s nonsense. I think I proceeded to talk about the CD playing in my car. I know lame right… So then I started talking about the photos that a friend of mine and I took earlier that spring. We thought it would be fun to be “models” so we started taking photos and posing for pictures. I had him pull out my laptop from the back seat and told him to open up the folder and look.

Another advantage to me driving is I knew my way around town. And he was right, we made it in 45 minutes. So we had lots of time to kill so I proceeded to drive him around town and show him all the places I lived and the ever popular “art” in this person’s yard. It is a meat cleaver carved in the top of a tree.

It finally got time to head to the south end of town where the restaurant was and again, knowing my way, I made it in excellent time. I pulled into the parking lot and sat there and texted my friends wondering where they were. They were about 15 minutes behind us. Once they finally pulled into the parking lot and parked, we all got out and the introductions started. Kalem & Evelyn were excited to meet this guy I wouldn’t shut up about. Jason was fine either way, Josh, didn’t care to meet this guy at all. We proceeded into the restaurant and met up with the rest of the group.

The waitress came around asking what we wanted to drink and who was on whose tab. We’d never talked about if he was buying mine or not and I was prepared to buy my own when he spoke up and said I was on his ticket. Ok no pressure on my part. I think that actually made me even more nervous. To me that made it an official date. I guess I really thought this was just 2 friends meeting up to reminisce about old times… and now I was on my first date in forever. Dinner went great!

At the end of Dinner Evelyn said we needed to go to the mall. Debs was having a sale on dresses. I grinned and Kalem goes, oh she wouldn’t make him go with all of us. I grinned right back and said,” Oh really?” Then I looked at him and asked if it would be ok? He said that’s fine and Kalem rolled his eyes. It was official we were headed to the mall, shopping. The J’s, Kalem & Evelyn got in Jason’s car and we got back in mine and off to the mall we went.

Once at the mall he struck up a conversation about electronics or computers or something with Kalem & Jason. Cha-ching, that’s the in key right there… know about technology 🙂 with those guys anyway. After we made our purchases at Deb off to Dillards we went. Evelyn had a dress there she wanted to find and purchase for a cruise. Josh’s foot was hurting him so he lagged behind, but he lagged behind for more reasons than that.

After we made all the purchases at the mall we could we parted ways and the two of us headed to my friends Jamie & Brian’s so they could meet him too. Yes all my friends wanted to meet the guy I wouldn’t shut up about. We were there until around midnight when we finally decided we needed to head home.

We made it home in great time. When we got there, his mom was home from work. We sat in my car and chatted for at least an hour.

So now it is 2am and I’m still at his house. I was getting tired but at the same time got my second wind. We got out of my car to say good night. It was so awkward. There was this funny tension between us, you know the end of a date, do you say nice knowing you and leave? Well this has been fun, I’ll call you, we should do it again sometime… what? or do you kiss or hug or walk away… I hate the awkwardness. Especially since I hadn’t been there in ages.

So instead of ending it, we prolonged the inevitable and continued to talk. Go figure… LOL. At about 3am I realized I was exhausted and I really did need to go home and go to sleep. I proceeded to try and leave again. This time I was a little more serious. Plus that late in the night or that early in the morning, however you look at it, I was COLD! So that brought us closer together. He said he had extra body heat so we proceeded to hug. Hey, he kept me warm, I didn’t care! 🙂

Ok must go home, back to the awkwardness!

How will this evening end?

Guess you’ll have to come back again to find out 🙂 I know I’m mean but to be continued.

One Year Ago… Part X

As per usual, when something you are excited about and looking forward to is coming up, something inevitably always goes wrong. So you must be wondering what went wrong this time… I got a silly summer cold. Yup, you read that right, I got a summer cold the week of dinner club, the week of hanging out with this long lost friend. I’m not one who usually goes to the doctor when I’m sick. I usually just let it run its course and proceed on. I’ll sometimes take over the counter meds just so I’m not completely suffering but I usually just tough it out. Not this time. I didn’t want to cancel. I didn’t want to wait for my next chance to meet up with him. He lived in Kentucky, I mean seriously, how many chances would I get or how often??

So I did what any normal girl would do, I found my old high school year books and looked up his picture. I had to remember what he looked like! Yup, check, he looks like what I remembered from way back when… oh wait, those were from way back when. Well you get the picture, right? 🙂

The day before “the big day” he was able to take a vacation day and come home a little earlier than normal. He got in around 7pm. We talked and texted the whole way (I sure hope he wasn’t texting while driving!!!). I didn’t realize he was going to be in so early so I went over to the J’s house to hang out and help Josh bake a cake. We were texting all through this. He was sending me pictures of shirts he had and pictures of him in a cowboy hat and all kinds of pictures. I think I sent him pictures of the cake I baked.

So the day came, July 25th. I woke up that morning and did the normal morning ritual of going to town with my mom. I’m not really sure we set out on a mission that day but we headed that direction non-the-less. While in town, of course I was watching the time. I had to get home, get my hair fixed, make-up on, and dressed before 4pm. That’s when we had to leave to go to dinner. I volunteered to drive because he left his convertible top down all night and wouldn’t you know, it rained.

While in town I looked at my mom and said, “We should go visit Dotti.” Dotti is the Elizabeth Arden make-up rep at Macy’s. She always loves giving me a make-over and I figured, hmmm… maybe we’d be lucky and she wouldn’t be busy. Dotti hooked me up! I had beautiful make-up! Then we ran home and my mom decided to fix my hair for me. I then got dressed and I was ready to go.

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One Year Ago… Part IX

The next few weeks were very similar to each other… talking on the phone, texting, talking through gtalk… You know, the getting to re-know you.

The group of friends that I made started what we referred to as Dinner club. We’d get together once a month, go to different restaurants, usually ones that weren’t chains and we’d (get this..haha) go to dinner. Some dinners were dress up, guys in suits, girls in cocktail dresses, some were more casual, but we were more about just getting together and trying new restaurants around the area. So the e-mail came out for the July invite for dinner club at a restaurant called Touche and I wanted to go, but I didn’t want to go by myself so I was torn about if I wanted to accept or not.

While on the phone talking one night, he made the comment he was coming back home for a visit. Of course that sparked some excitedness (I think I made up that word) on my part! Maybe we could get together and catch up. As the time got closer he let me know the week he was coming. (I bet you saw this coming…) It just so happened to be the weekend of Dinner Club. So I made the comment to my friend Kalem at work one day and he told me I should invite him. hmmm… me having to make the first move… I wasn’t so sure I could do that. So some other co-workers they all agreed I should invite him as well. After a couple days of pondering this, I decided I wanted to ask him. The worst that could happen was he’d say no. The bad part though was this was one of the dinners that the guys wore khaki’s and the girls nicer sun-dresses. In talking to him, his clothing wardrobe consisted of jeans and John Deere t-shirts, that means probably no khaki’s. So now I was going to be making him buy some dress pants so he could go with me. So yes, I talked myself out of this. I was back and forth so much that I was annoying not only myself but everyone around me.

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One Year Ago… Part VIII

 

So who really wants to be alone, little lone on holidays? Well, I can sure tell you, I don’t. Because I hadn’t been alone on a holiday in a long time I didn’t know what I was going to do with the 4th of July approaching very fast. It was a scary time. Some friends of mine had a fireworks stand and they said I could come hang out there but then my mom got the bright idea we should go visit my aunt and uncle in southern Oklahoma, get as far away from here as possible and go relax in her swimming pool. We could take my dad’s horse down with us and practice in my uncle’s Barn to get the mare in different surroundings (dad was training her to be a cutting horse). So we loaded up the trailer, packed our suitcases and headed for Oklahoma.

The thought was a great idea, but in actuality, there is a lot of downtime to do nothing but think. My mom and my aunt tried to keep me busy but busy wasn’t cutting it for me. Since the 4th was on Saturday last year, work let us out on Friday so we went down on the 3rd. When we got there my mom and I met up with my aunt and we all went to town while my aunt got her nails done. We went shopping and to Wal-Mart. The town she lives in has one of the dirtiest ranked Walmart’s in the nation. How’s that for nice thoughts. Anyway…. when we got back to the house we jumped in the pool. When my uncle got in from working cattle we all went to the movies. My mom wanted to see The Proposal. I thought I was ok with that, ok definitely a cute movie but not one you want to watch when you break up with someone.

By the time we got back to the ranch (my aunt & uncle’s house and yeah it’s a nice sized place), it was late and everyone went to sleep. Well, that is, everyone but the insomniac, me. I laid there and played solitaire & spider solitaire, Free cell & Hearts. Nothing could make my mind shut down and then if right on cue I got a text from him. He was still awake and had actually left the house he was living in to run to Sonic for a drink. I figured since he’s up I’m going to take advantage of this and called him. We wound up talking from about midnight until 3 am when I decided my phone was going to die if I didn’t plug it in and the cord wasn’t long enough to reach the bed. We talked about everything. What happened in my previous relationship, how he wound up down in Kentucky, what it was like living in Afghanistan, his daughter, and the fact she was coming to visit him for a week. You name it, we talked about it. I believe God knew what I needed, a friend to talk to and he delivered. I must have felt at ease when I hung up because the next thing I knew it was 7 am and I got up and headed out to the arena to ride horses.

 

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One Year Ago… Part VII

Him: It’s kind of funny a few weeks ago when I was home visiting I found some old pics of you and me and Taria in Florida!! What a time that was LOL

OMG I think my heart stopped!!!

Ok so I think I was way over reacting. So what if he found photos of us… he didn’t say he was swooning over them or anything like that. He said he found photos of us and that was a time. Well heck yeah it was a time, it was a great time. A fabulous time.So now remember where I told the part where I ordered an iPhone 3GS? Ok it now comes into play

Back to facebook talking:
me: I can’t figure this phone out… I got a new phone yesterday and it’ll allow me to read all inbox messages but yours… Weird!

Him: Weird are you using an iPhone?

me: I am now and it won’t hardly show me your responses. I just got this Monday though. I did have a Pantec Duo.

Him: LOL. Sorry for your troubles… LOL. are you using the facebook App or Safari Internet?

me: I was using the fb app. sounds like you know about iPhones… In that case does that mean you have one and if so… that would mean you were at&t right? I could be completely assuming all of this though… but if you have at&t and you had unlimited texting… that would be so much easier. I don’t think my iPhone wants us to talk… it lets me see everyone’s message they sned me through here… geez…

me: and if not, I guess I’ll use the dial up internet at the house… it’ll make my desktop feel loved. I bought a laptop last Thursday night and I can’t hardly stay off of it but it isn’t hooked up to the internet unless I’m at a friends house.

Him: my number is…… (sorry ladies, I’m not giving it out… haha)

(more…)

One Year Ago… Part VI

Yes the message was from none other than the boy from years ago. The boy who brought back flooding memories…

Him: Long time no see!! How’ve you been??

me: Definitely. Just working, How about yourself?

Him: SAME working in KY right now for the government!! Fun Fun
Where you at now??

me: Wow Kentucky… that’s nuts… oh for now I’m back home with my parents working… in this economy it looks like We are lucky to have jobs. So Married? Kids?

Him: I am divorced with a 6 yo daughter!! You?

Sudden heart sinking in my chest. A bit of hurt or something, I’m not sure the emotion that came over me. I always said I never wanted to be with a guy who had been married or one who had kids. But wait, me, thinking of being with another guy, out of the relationship I just got out of… was I nuts? Was I losing my mind? I think so… Hell this guy never even said he liked me… we just talked through facebook for the first time in 10 years. I know what my problem is… Sleep deprevation is taking it’s toll on me. I NEED SLEEP!!!!!

But I continued on:
me: nope to both. Been dating a guy for 5 1/2 years but that’s on the verge of falling through.

Him: well that sucks. I’m sorry to hear that!! I hope everything works out okay!! Do you have MSN Messenger, it would be easier!!
me: Nope, and I’m not even sitting at a computer… I’m watching off the phone internet… LOL
Him: LOL I see!!
me: Although I was actually on a comp earlier when I found you. Gotta love modern Technology.
Him: LOL I was on my phone when I got the first message from facebook… LOL
That must be when my exhaustion took over and I fell asleep.
It was so weird waking up that next morning (Monday). Of all days of the week I usually dread Monday’s the worst but for once even though things had turned sour, I woke up with a different outlook on life. I’m not sure what the different outlook was, maybe it was the fact that there was life after all… who knows.
And the most amazing part, I actually went to work dressed for work, in matching clothes and got compliments on how I was dressed. That right there is super exciting. I’m pretty sure the previous week I looked like a total train wreck.
In the previous relationship I had made a comment one time that if nothing happened at 5 years to the day (at least a ring) I was walking. My mom always said that I probably wouldn’t do it and unfortunately she was right. I didn’t walk like I had threatened. But I will give myself credit, I did eventually walk. It just took another 6 months to find my feet to do it.
But here was my biggest fear: Who wants an almost 26 year old who’s been in a relationship for 5 1/2 years? Most all the good ones are taken and if they aren’t… why? I actually had a past guy friend tell me that if a girl wasn’t married by the time she was 25, there was something wrong with her. That always stuck in my head. Now I’m that girl so what is wrong with me? Am I the problem?
That morning I realized I had fallen asleep on him last night and that I should probably respond or he might think I lost interest in being friends or something. Who knows. So at 9am I picked my phone up and sent him a message… surely he’s either at work or still asleep and I won’t bug him so I figured it might open up the line of communication for later that night. That way the ball was in his court:
me: That’s Awesome
Boy I sure hope he knows what I”m talking about… his previous message, otherwise he’s going to think I’m a complete airhead or something… well whatever………
me: (one minute later): Oh so how did you wind up in KY?
Him: I joined the army when I was 19 served 2 years at Ft. Campbell Met a few people then when I got out I went back home for a few years then I was offered a job down here. Been working here ever since!! Well not exactly here LOL I deployed to Afghanistan as a DoD contractor for a year!! That was fun LOL!!! NOT!!!
me: Wow! Well you deserve many thanks then for defending our country!
Him: I appreciate that! We should have a drink sometime when I’m home!! catch up!!
me: Sounds good… and you know, you really should put a picture up on your page… LOL
I wanted to see how he’d changed! Who doesn’t want to know what who they are talking to looks like??!!
Him: Lol yeah I know I’m on myspace if you want to check it out!!
me: I don’t usually play there but I’ll have to check it out =)
me: Yeah so I tried that and it said that you were a 40 y/o in Sacramento CA… wow when did you age so much?
Him: Lol I mean I have gotten older LOL and I show my age LOL but I’m much wiser now LOL
Him: It’s kind of funny a few weeks ago when I was home visiting I found some old pics of you and me and Taria in Florida!! What a time that was LOL
OMG I think my heart stopped!!!
and as always to be continued 🙂
Peace, Love & Suspense!

One Year Ago… Part V

So from Thursday to Sunday, there really wasn’t anything new that had happened. Still fighting through text messages and on the phone with very very very little phone contact. I went out to dinners with my parents and hung out with my dad all day Saturday and Sunday helping with odds and ends around the house. Saturday night I wound up going to the movies with Kalem & Evelyn just to get out of the house. I needed to. I was going nuts. Oddly enough, I’m not sure I spent that much time there in one sitting. Sunday morning felt weird b/c I didn’t jump out of bed, get dressed and head to his house or his church or anywhere for that matter. I got up from what little sleep I had and watched Friends re-runs and then went downstairs and watched some movie with my parents.

Life sure did seem strange but hey I guess that’s what happens from time to time. You learn to deal with it or else you don’t but I was, slowly but surely and truthfully it had only been what, right at a week so truthfully there isn’t a whole lot of time there, right?
Later that afternoon Kalem & Evelyn said they were going to the J’s house (Jason & Josh, easier to say the J’s) to watch Anime and eat dinner. I’m not super crazy about anime but hey I thought it was another excuse to leave the house so I told them I’d meet them there.

So you remember that awesome post about buying a laptop? It is getting ready to come into play. I hope you read up if you didn’t read the initial post 🙂

Since the J’s live in town and have awesome internet, I thought hey, why not go steal their wi-fi. It beats the dial-up internet at my parents house, that’s for sure! At home I wasn’t used to the fast internet so I had to take the baby out for a spin and see what she could do…

One of my addictions at the time was facebook. I loved it, I cherished it, I called it pet names, ok not really but I was addicted. I checked it multiple times a day (my Pantec Duo had internet) to see pictures and status updates and anything and everything there was to see about my friends. So that night I got on facebook. There was a section there where it suggested friends that you should be friends with. Well it has/had a place where you could look up collegues and old class mates. I like to know where my old classmates have gone and what they’re doing with their lives now so I thought, I’ll go through and see who they show that I might not already be friends with… I started flipping through the pages reading the names, questioning who some of them were same town, different state…. not my school.

And that’s when I saw a name that hit me odd. It was a name of a guy I had known since 7th grade. (our town had 6 grade schools and one Junior high so we all met in 7th grade) A guy that sang with me in Animal Science class when Ms. Rush pissed me off. A guy who conned me into carrying his sousaphone to and from parades and field shows because all I had to do was carry my clarinet, a guy who conned me into tying his shoes b/c he had to carry a sousaphone, a guy who I kept awake in English class, a guy who sang a song to me at Disney World in Florida that I fell in love with (Tonic, If You Could Only See), a guy who I had a crush on, a guy who my friend had a crush on, a guy who I drifted away from, a guy who I thought dropped out of high school and for all I knew fell off the face of the earth, a guy that the sheer sight of his name brought back lots of memories and feelings.

(good run on sentence huh?)

But just like up above, there were names of people that went to other schools in other towns with the same name as our town. I truly figured it was my imagination that was playing jokes on me. I truthfully didn’t believe it was him. No way could it be, or could it?

So I did the next logical thing. I hit the button that says, Friend Request. I figured, no harm, no foul. I’ll just see. In fact there are a lot of people on fb that I never have contact with except every once in a great while. I thought, well he may accept and at least I’ll find out if it is him, right?

June 28, 2009 was the change in my life I never saw coming. I went home that night still thinking about that name, wondering if he’d hit accept or not.

I was again on nights of no sleeping or finally falling asleep due to sheer exhaustion. I laid down and tossed and turned and tossed somemore. In college I heard that if you could stress your eyes out just a bit it would help you go to sleep, ie stare at a computer screen, tv, phone, something bright in the darkness so I picked up my phone and thought, well I’ll just check facebook. Maybe that’ll help me fall asleep. And there it was a notification that he had accepted my friend request. And wait, what’s that, there’s a message in my inbox, it was from………
to be continued…….

One Year Ago… Part IV

So now we are up to Thursday of last year. I am on day 5 nights without sleep or very very little. I finally started passing out from exhaustion after midnight every night but for someone who loves sleep, this definitely wasn’t enough to get me through! We are to dress up 4 days a week at the office and I’m pretty sure by this point, as long as I found clothes to wear, I didn’t care. I made it to work and I wasn’t in my pj’s.

I talked to people all day long because of the constant question, “Boy you don’t look like you feel good. Are you ok?” That I swear is the dreaded question to hear!

Still can’t talk to that person on the phone, all that ends of it is yelling which leads to more sleepless nights. Text was the only possible method and you so can’t tell tone through a text message so it was bad!

To me, the world is ending or something. It’s a pretty hard feeling. Heck I dated this guy longer than a lot of marriages last… Think about that for a minute. It was almost as if we were getting a divorce however we weren’t married and we didn’t live together.

So leave it to me, in all of this, remember the iPhone I ordered. Ok so I also had a desktop PC that was really old. Well my friend Kalem had just bought a new laptop and I really liked it so what did I do… I used my non-sleep to my advantage. I started looking for laptops. Then, I found it. The laptop that was going to be mine. While I was at work that day I sent my mom an email and told her I found a laptop I was going to buy. (I was apparently in the mood to spend money!) She asked me to send her a link so she could look at it. I also sent it to Kalem, Jason & Josh (my techy friends) to look over and tell me what they thought. They said, for me and what I do with computers, it was GREAT and really beat my desktop. So right after work I called Best Buy in my town and wouldn’t you know, they didn’t have it. My mom got the idea, let’s look and see if some of the surrounding Best Buy’s had it. We wound up driving to Rogers, AR. (1 1/2 hrs away for a silly laptop, I know, right)

So now you are probably thinking, what in the world does any of that have to do with this story. Oh TRUST ME it has EVERYTHING to do with where this story is going, but again, I’m going to be mean and say…..

***To Be Continued***

One Year Ago… Part III

So thinking back to a year ago the next few days, get a little hazy because I was on day 2 of no sleep. Add in there the fact that the night before lead to a lot of “talking” through text messages if you want to call it that because I couldn’t speak to this person on the phone without one or the other of us yelling at each other.

So now we are at the Tuesday after Father’s Day and still no sleep and still beating myself up over all the turmoil. Then it really starts, I get emails from the sister. Oh Joy… Me, I ignored them. It was best that way. She was just stirring up more trouble than any of this was worth.

***Ok so the next bit of information, is a little off topic, but it is important to the rest of the story so I need to break in to inform you of some information!***

I mentioned yesterday that most of my friends had moved on with their lives. Well I eventually made new friends that I hung out with a lot. The best part about this was I’m a country girl and well, they weren’t… but we got along GREAT! They on the other hand were techy’s. And what do Techy’s have? Techy’s have iPhones! And what did I have? A Pantec Duo. I hated my phone with a passion. My mom’s phone line was coming due for an up-grade and I wanted more than anything to have an iPhone. And this just happened to be the summer they released the iPhone 3GS.So by the time mom’s phone line was due for an up-grade (which she let me have because she’s the best) we had to decide if I was going to go with the 3G or the 3GS. This was the day she was available for the upgrade, and go figure, since the 3GS had just been released earlier in the month, we were still having to order them. It wouldn’t be in until next week. NEXT WEEK, are you out of your mind… Ok fine so we ordered it and went home.

***So remember that was uncharacteristic of this story but I promise it plays importance!***

To Be Continued