I Knew What I was Getting Into

This is me and John in 2004 when we were dating.

As you are getting to know a new person, you discover a lot about them. Over the years, I've learned a lot about my husband, and I like to think that now I know him better than anyone else. I will always remember the first time I felt like I had a real "this is who he is" moment.

We'd been dating for about 5 weeks at the time. We were having an at-home date, homemade dinner and a rental movie. It was actually the most romantic thing we had done. John came up with the idea; he asked me to "teach him how to cook something."

I picked a recipe, we shopped together then swung by Hastings and picked out a movie. We chopped and sauted and laughed. We sat on the couch and ate while we watched I-don't-remember-what. John was taking our plates to kitchen when it happened.

I was watching as he walked directly and deliberately into the trash can. And, I saw it coming. As he was going, I thought, "He going to walk into the trash can, he is going to walk right into it." And then he did.

As he picked up the spilled trash and put everything right again, I realized this was not the first time I'd seen something like this in our short time together. It dawned on me that it would always be like this, and I needed to decide right then if this was annoying or if this was endearing.

As I watched him clean up my kitchen, I couldn't help thinking, "Well, he is awfully cute."

Seven years, I still come home to things like this:

Yes, that is a large hole in the toilet tank. He doesn't know how it happened. It just did. And he's still pretty cute.