A Year and A Day

Hey everyone! As promised, today's blog post is a special spotlight on my relationship with my semi-newish husband spouse! Since we recently celebrated our anniversary yesterday, I decided this was a good time to reflect on the growth of our relationship over the last year, and I chose to open the conversation to the readers. 

By which I mean begged for input. 

Fortunately, a few people pulled through, and here are some of the questions I received this week...

Q: How did you two meet?

A: Well, good reader, that is an excellent question. Technically, I do know HOW we met, and approximately WHEN we met, but neither of us actually remembers MEETING. 

Daniel and I had been friendly acquaintances for about three years or so by the time we actually started dating. The reason we don't remember meeting is because it honestly wasn't that notable of an event at the time. 

Here is an actual real life photograph of us at band camp the week that we first met:

I assume we probably spoke at some point during this week, and we might have attended several festive gatherings over the years after this first encounter, but I honestly couldn't tell you about all of them. Or any of them, really. 

When we met, I was fresh out of high school and Daniel was fresh back from his mission. He was pretty freaking weird, and I was super cool and popular. HAHAHA just kidding, I've never been cool or popular. I was, however, the youngest person in the band that year, and therefore didn't even register on his radar. I ended up dating someone else in the band.

A couple years later, a group of our mutual friends were gathered at Betos enjoying delicious Mexican "food" and friendly banter, and Daniel started conversing with me and my BFF Arryn. At this point, it was Octoberish, and Arryn and I had been making plans to acquire boyfriends in time for Christmas, so that we would have someone to buy us presents. Arryn and I had determined beforehand that Daniel was destined to be my Christmastime boyfriend, so this was working well in my favor. 

So, anywho, after being friendzoned so hard, I had pretty much given up all hope for ever dating Daniel ever, so I ended up dating a guy from work. 

Another space of time later, I had decided that my life was going in a direction that was kind of a northerly one, so I announced to the general public at school that I had decided to attend another university, about an hour or so away. Most people reacted with mild interest, a few congratulated me on my life choices, and three or four people shouted "NOOOO!"

One of those people was Daniel, which was strange to me, because we weren't really super close at all. When I asked him about his exclamation, he said "You can't leave here! You're too much of a... uh... novelty."

"A novelty?" I said, "A novelty?! That's what I am to you? An interesting trinket for your grandmother's parlor?"

"No I... You just can't leave," he said. I ended up dating another guy from work.

After a few more months, we ended up at Betos once again, with pretty much the same group of friends. Being college kids, we decided it was a brilliant idea to have a party after the football game, and that party involved a hot tub. 

This is how we started dating:

And that leads us to our next question!

Q: What is your favorite thing to do together?

A: We like to do all the things together, but in all total and complete honesty, the time I enjoy most is when we can just chill on the couch and watch TV together. Sounds lame, I know, but it isn't exactly sit-in-silence TV enjoying.

I would also say that I enjoy cooking dinner together, although usually cooking together usually means me cooking and Daniel "helping."

But it's okay, he's cute enough to get away with it.

Next question!

Q: What is something you discovered about each other after you got married that made you love each other more?

A: Well, honestly I don't think I could narrow it down to specific "things" that we learned about each other. There are lots of things we have learned about each other, and we do love each other more all the time. I think what it really comes down to is learning to love the things that bugged me at first.

For example, one of the things that drove me insane about Daniel when we first got married was that he is insanely paranoid. When we were moving into our first apartment, he made me wait by his truck while he took in each and every thing himself, because he was worried someone would steal our stuff. At first, I wanted to punch him in the neck all the time, and I scolded him for his general mistrust of humanity. 

One day, I asked him why he locked the door every time he left for work in the morning when I was still in bed. It made me feel like a defenseless baby, and besides, who is going to randomly break into a second floor apartment in the morning? He responded with "I know, but if something ever happened to you, I would never forgive myself knowing that I could have made you a little safer."

From that day on, I've learned to appreciate his paranoia, because it doesn't really mean that he's a crazed lunatic who will spend the rest of his life in an underground bomb shelter filled with guns and ammunition, it just means that he cares.

Daniel's answer: This question makes my head hurt a little bit just because, like Jackie said, it's a little tough to narrow it down.  But as far as I can think of, I would have to say that I have really come to appreciate Jackie's capacity for service.  I love all the little things that she does for me.  Little chores that she does around the house suddenly mean a big deal to me because it means that A) I don't have to do it (living with only one other person means that there are fewer options for people to pawn chores off on to), and B) I feel like she does them specially for me.  I like the embarrassing sticky notes that she puts in with my lunch, and when she folds the laundry, and when she makes cookies while I'm at work.  They are little things that make a big difference.  I don't want to make it seem like Jackie has suddenly become my little wife/home maker (She would hate that).  I just mean to say that I appreciate the things she does as part of our equal partnership, and I especially love it when she does little things that go above and beyond anything I could have expected in an eternal companion.

Aaaaand, another very eloquently phrased question from a reader:

Q:  I wanna hear/see your story all put into picture form with clever words.

A: That's... not even a question. And secondly, there aren't enough clever words or pictures to describe all of the delightful adventures and superfuntimes we've experienced over the last year and a day, so instead I'll relate yet another amusing tale from our wedding day.

Once upon a time, I have a mostly functional brain that is almost pretty good at remembering things sometimes. On our wedding day, the functional parts of my brain must have been pretty worn out, because we had to turn around at least once on the way to our wedding because I had forgotten things.

When we finally arrived, I was whisked off to be married, and as the ceremony came to a close...

Being the excellent rememberer that I am, I had forgotten to bring Daniel's wedding ring TO OUR WEDDING, after spending the whole day before giving him crap about remembering the marriage license. I didn't want to look like an idiot at my own wedding, and you can't really exchange rings if only one of you has a ring. That's not an exchange, it's a... um... gift.

Anywho, fortunately at the very last minute, one of my aunts suggested that he borrow a ring from someone there, and fortunately my dear spouse has delicate tiny fingers, so my mother was able to lend him her gold wedding band for a little bit until we could go home and retrieve his actual ring.

Here is a very romantic picture of Daniel wearing the wrong ring:

And last but not least, here is a question directed specifically at Daniel, since it's is Spanish, and I am quite unilingual. 

P: ¿Cuando se dieron cuenta que pudieron estar juntos sin uno matar al otro?

Q: When did you realize that you could be together without killing each other?

A: Well here's how it went down.  We were hanging out one afternoon eating at Costa Vida. We were chatting and talking about relationshipy thingeys when I said to Jackie "You know, I think that I like you enough that we could probably make things work together forever." When I realized what words came out of my mouth, my stomach sank, and I made a face like this....

(See Jackie's version of this story HERE)

We were both quiet for a few seconds as we contemplated what I had just said and what it meant. For me it started off like "Oh [insert vulgarity here], what does this all mean?" to "Ok cool I guess.  It looks like I know where life is going now."  And then we both proceeded to freak out a little nigh unto self-defecation.

And the rest is history as they say.

(OK it's Jackie again.)

Thanks everyone, for reading and supporting Plans for Nigel, and thanks for the love and support y'all have provided for me and Daniel over the last year. This has certainly been one of the biggest adventures of my lifetime, and I'm glad I could share it with the entire internet all the time.

Here's another wedding picture.