::how I met Josh::

I have been thinking about fate lately.  And that always leads me to Josh.  I wanted to write down the rated G version of how a feel in love with him.  

With out too much boring detail about unneeded history - I had actively spent the entire year before I met Josh being single.  I was actively done with dating.  I felt I had learned enough about it, and I was very uninterested in going thru the whole process again unless it was with someone very different than my usual type (slightly dim and easy to control).  I was 23 and already burnt out on the process.  What a narrow minded little 23 year old I was.  Most of the people I started college with had already graduated, but a few were back to attend Grand Prix (a Purdue tradition of hard partying and something about a go-cart race).  Those alumni friends had come back to stay with me for the weekend.  Just as we were walking out the door I said to one of the guys of the group, “Maybe tonight is the night that I get to meet someone special.”  But really I was just trying to talk myself into being interested in the activity. 

We went to the frat party that we had preplanned to attend.  It was going to be a gathering of my dearest friend’s boyfriends fellow alumni (is that too much detail?)  I knew most of this alumni group and was happy to see them.  Being the little flirt I was, I went down the line hugging each one and kissing their check.  There were two strikingly hot ones at the end of the line that I did not know.  When I got to the tall one I just gave him a little smile of hello, but he says, “Were is my hug and kiss?”  So I stand on tip toes and kissed his check – at which point he grabs me off the ground and holds me in the air like I am a feather.  I fought him to put me down, which he did not initially do.  To you currently or formerly petite girls this may not sound like a big deal, but at that time I was 5ft7in and about 140 (that is a slight lie).  I had never been literally picked up by anyone since I was a child.  This guy was S-M-O-K-I-N-G hot and acted like I was just a peanut of a girl.  I was speechless and stunned.  And I liked it.  A lot.

(Pause to think back on that initial image – tall with huge arms and eyes that sparkled with intensity and flirtation)

It is hard to explain the initial pure jolt of electrical chemistry that occurred to me when I met him, but it was so undeniable.  He was fresh on a separation from his first wife and had a two year old kid.  Not exactly every sorority girls dream – but I never was a very traditional sorority girl.  (Hell – I just had to spell check sorority.) 

After a short time I got the chance to meet his daughter.  I always had a spot for kids – even in those old selfish days.  Little two year old Emma woke up from her nap and was groggy, she reached right out to her Dad as her main source of comfort.  I had never seen a father be such a calming agent to a child.  Once she was awake he put her down and pretended that he was going to tackle her and she jumped right in my arms as her play protector.  I cried and cried.  I had never seen anything like them together.

As our rocky relationship began I tried many times to cut ties with this guy and his baggage (not Emma, but his Ex was not the peaceful person she is now).  Most of my friends just could understand the relationship at all.  “He is a little too much reality for a Saturday night.”  But I never could stay away for long.  I would drive down to throw his stuff at him and break up and he would stand too close and smell too good and…

It took us years to find an equilibrium.  He was scarred from his failed marriage and I was full of a long history of bratty-ness.  I really can’t believe he asked me to marry him when he did, we had just started to settle in as a couple.  But sometimes miracles happen and we just figured it out.  It was surprising how easy the marriage part has been so far.  Our getting married and having Lily 13 month latter was the key to both of us getting our heads together.  My friends that I have now don’t know him as the troubled boyfriend of my past, just as the adorable father of my children.  It’s been 10 year now as a couple and 8 of it married.  I adore this life that we have created together.