Day 1: Ten Days of Wooing

In ten days, my hubby and I will have been married for ten years!!! We both agreed that this is a major anniversary that should be celebrated!! We know so many people whose marriages NEVER EVER reached the ten year mark, so we feel that in today's modern world, ten years is quite the milestone. I told my hubby that we should have ten days of wooing to represent our ten years of marriage. Why wooing, you ask? I couldn't think of a better word. Basically, we are going to remind each other for the next ten days why we have stuck together through thick and thin and how we have stayed in love for ten years. Make sense?

I think I will start out Day 1 by telling you about that first spark. You know how movies talk about feeling those sparks fly? Well, I did. Back in late 1995, my husband and I worked at the same grocery store. He was a VERY quiet guy with long hair (I feel it is important to note that). I was a year younger, but I was kind of the opposite of him by all outside appearances (umm...class president). Yes, we were in high school. I really only knew that he was a guy I worked with. We did not really cross paths at school so much.

One day, like many other days, I was doing my job as a cashier. My hubby was doing his job, as the bagger. It may have been the very first time that he was the bagger in my aisle because I honestly had never spoken a word to him. That day was different because I kept noticing something about the way he was working. He had flair. I mean real, honest to goodness, flair in how he bagged groceries. And that was it. That was the spark. I know without a doubt that that was the exact moment that I developed an infatuation with him. He didn't say a word while he worked, but he acted like a total badass. He bagged way faster than anyone else at work and he would take canned goods and toss them in the air, then catch them and put them gently in the bag. If you would have looked inside the bags, you would see the most PERFECT bagging job that you have ever seen in your life. Everything was very symmetrical and fit together like a puzzle. Readers, you can laugh all you want. I swear to you that watching my future husband bag groceries with flair was when those sparks happened. It makes me laugh just thinking about it!

After watching him bag groceries, I started kind of wishing that he would be at the end of my aisle each day I worked. I kind of looked forward to seeing this silent, giant (he is way taller than me), long haired, sassy bagger. I had never seen such a quiet, shy person who was also such a major show-off. And, folks, he is a major showoff.....just try playing Trivial Pursuit with this guy.

So I have done some analyzing (cuz that is what I do) about why the sparks flew when I saw that my husband was bagging groceries with flair. I mean seriously....it isn't the typical story about sparks flying. All I can think of is that my husband is a quirky dude. And I LOVE quirky. I thrive on quirky. I may have appeared to be a mainstream kind of girl back in highschool, but I am quirky.

I fell in love hard with this quirky guy....and I am still in love with him. Don't even get me started on all his quirks.

.....he is a messy perfectionist
.....he loves the most obscure music (Ex: Zydeco)
.....he is trying to learn the banjo
.....he can see a very long series of numbers and memorize the sequence instantly (kind of like a Rainman)
.....he appears to be very shy and soft spoken, but he is VERY competitive
.....he describes himself as being "an enigma wrapped in a riddle"
.....he does not even pretend to like local sports teams from Indiana
.....if he taps his finger five times on a table, he has to tap it five more times
to "undo" it. (I'm not kidding)
.....he is LOYAL beyond belief to RUSH music, UK basketball, Tabasco sauce

Need I go on? All I know is that I could never, ever be happy with a beer guzzling guy who just watches sports. I also could never be happy with a super preppy frat boy type who is all about his image. I love my husband's imperfections because they make life interesting. Sometimes frustrating, but ALWAYS interesting.

Stay tuned for Day 2. If I can blog for ten consecutive days, it will be small miracle, but I want to share with the world what our ten days of wooing is all about.