Anniversary

On Dec. 7, 1999, Dick broke my heart. We'd been very good friends for a while and had found ourselves, on many occasions, well... making out. On the couch, in the bed, on the floor. Whatever. Anyway, I finally told him we needed to figure out what we were doing, and he declared that he wasn't ready to be a "boyfriend" and he just wanted to be friends.

So. I went home to my apartment and cried. And then I called my mom and cried. And then my mom chose that moment to tell me that she was engaged. And I cried some more. And then I pulled myself together and said I would give him a month, and if he hadn't changed his mind by then, I was moving on.

It took a week. On Dec. 14, 1999, Dick told me that he had thought about it and he wanted to be my boyfriend. We celebrated by making out on the couch in his living room, in the house where we still live today.

In the past nine years... We've both gotten fatter. I've had many a medical mishap. We quit smoking. He started smoking again. We've realized we are both slobs. We got a cat, then a dog, and then somehow adopted two other cats. We've moved my sister approx. 18.5 million times. He made my try frog legs, eel and falafel, all without incident. (For some reason I was most afraid of the falafel.) We've fought. A lot. I threw a bowl of sherbet at him, he punched a hole in the wall. (Separate incidents.) We've rearranged our living room furniture a billion times, and at one point, threw all the furniture away and started over again. (You can do that when everything you own was purchased at a garage sale or a thrift store.) Until last year, we'd only spent 3 nights apart during our entire relationship.

In nine years, there have been some terrible moments. Moments of doubt, personal and shared. Complete and utter anger. We've had the mundane and the extreme. Throughout it all, I've never lost faith in our ability to make things work. I still get butterflies in my stomach when I think of our first kiss. And I still get giddy when he says my name (oh my god! he knows my name!).

So, Dick, thanks for driving me crazy, in a million wonderful and challenging ways. I hope we make it 90 more years.