Once Upon a Time...

... a girl went to a party.

It was the summer of '96. A group of freshly graduated friends gathered to celebrate our last summer together before scattering off to begin our lives as grown ups. It was a diverse mix of strangers and friends (mostly strangers to me, but everyone was a friend of someone there).

I met someone that evening.

One of the guys at the party caught my attention during a poorly played game of badminton when he decided to use the oh-so-suave-and-subtle (albeit, accidental) pick-up maneuver of running into me and knocking me into a post. Sigh. So dreamy... :)

He turned out to be a very nice guy and despite the unconventional "introduction" and the fact that he was incredibly shy, we somehow managed to start a relationship. My family loved him and for some strange reason, he got along with my pesky little brothers and parents. We were a wonderful match.

At the end of the summer, I moved away. I had always dreamed of going to Tennessee for college and was happy to discover that my dream was becoming a reality. But after a semester of long-distance, I made the terribly difficult decision to end the sweet summer romance. It broke my heart to break his heart, but it was what I felt I needed to do.

Fast forward to now (there's no need to relive my entire mess of dating mishaps again right now. We all know it's there):

Less than a month ago (August 22nd, to be exact), I declared myself free of the tragic heartbreak of the past. I realized that by developing a random crush on someone, I was finally ready to put in a real effort in the dating arena.

The next day I signed on to Facebook and discovered a private message waiting for me. It was one of those "hey, how you doing, it's been so long" messages from someone I had never expected to ever hear from again.

His name is Mike. He now lives in West Virginia. And in the course of 12 years, he managed to find it in him to forgive me for my decision.

We started writing on Facebook, then email, then eventually text. With 12 years worth of life to catch up on, there was so much to say to one another. Amazingly, he's still single, still sweet, and still a lot of fun to talk to. We have so much in common, most importantly our sense of humor. His messages always crack me up and to be honest, I look forward to my phone giving the familiar ding of an incoming text.

This past weekend, Mike came back into town. His family still lives here and he had already been planning a trip out to visit them. Since he would be in town, we decided to meet up and catch up face to face.

He arrived on Thursday, but we didn't have plans until Friday. After work Friday evening, I ran home and took my time getting ready (okay, I'll be perfectly honest, I left work early so that I would have a decent amount of time to prepare myself). I had mentally went through my closet several times in the week preceeding, and had switched my outfit a dozen times in my head while at work that day. I finally settled on a sundress and sandals (casual, but pretty; comfy considering the temprature decided to head back into the 90's for the weekend; stylish as always). He showed up about a quarter after six. I was outside watching Jade play with the neighbor boys. Surprisingly, she didn't bark at him when he showed up.

He's tall. Even in my heels, I only clear his shoulders. He's just as good looking as I remembered him being, more mature looking with the facial hair (and normally I hate that stuff!)

We went out to dinner and stayed at the restaurant for several hours, just talking and laughing and catching up. Then he came over to my place and we watched The Princess Bride. Not only is it THE BEST date movie ever, but it's was also one of the few that we knew we both would enjoy. At dinner we discovered that we have very different tastes in movies (as in, every movie he mentioned I either said "I never heard of it" or "Yeah, there's a reason I haven't watched that one").

Saturday we did lunch and a movie at the theater (his choice this time).

Somewhere along the line on Saturday, we semi-discussed the "what next" of our situation. It's obvious that we both like each other very much, we still have so much in common and get along so well. But we'd be starting at the same place we left off, across the country from each other.

Enter Deema's brain. Time for the usual debate: yes or no? heart or head? take a chance or proceed with caution?

Well, what would you do?

We're both a bit of the romantic type. We decided that thanks to the progress of technology, the availability of "vacation time" and airplanes, and our life experiences as much behind us as still before us, that we might be a bit more prepared for the trials that distance will hand us.

In other words, we decided to give ourselves a second chance.

I'm really excited and happy to have him back in my life. He's incredibly smart (please don't ask me what he does because the best I can give you is "something with computers and the government". I really should pay closer attention when people talk about work....) and silly and even though I'm not supposed to admit it (often) extremely sweet. He even sent me flowers at work a few weeks ago. See, sweet!

Even though we don't watch the same type of movies, we do share the very mellow, relaxed nature that allows for compromise. I have no fear that he will punish my one girly movie by sitting me through three boy shows. We do have a similar taste in music, but I don't know most of the artists he listens to. Neither of us like country music (yay!!!).

He still gets along with my brothers (well, he got along with Derrick. I can only assume since he's so much like both of them that he will also get along with DJ still). Mom is happy because he likes dogs (she thinks there's something wrong with a guy who doesn't like dogs). And he's been dog AND cat approved. Not only did Esther allow him to pet her after she watched him play with Jade, but Jade PLAYED with him. And she didn't sit between us and growl at him (like she does with every other person I've tried to hang with).

Most importantly, he makes me feel special. It's been SO LONG since I've been really special.

It seems I've got my work cut out for me on the clothing front, though. It's a sign of how much I like him that I'm willing to just be content with being fashionable for the both of us.

But he does make me laugh, and isn't that what us girls are really looking for?

Chasing Two

I would just like to say that watching a two-year-old is a lot harder than watching a teething three-month-old. Oh sure, you who have had children already know this, but for those of us childless few who only spend an hour and a half once a week in the church nursery, this information comes as a bit of a realization. A fun and interesting realization, of course.

Tonight's 2-year-old offender: the adorable Corban who actually doesn't turn 2 until tomorrow. His mom and dad decided that it was time to switch him to a "big boy room" and figured that shopping for his new bed would be easier without his input, so I got the pleasure of having him over for a short visit while they visited IKEA.

We met at BWW for dinner and after eating and visiting for a little bit, Corban's car seat got transferred into mine and we headed over to "Dema's house".

The first thing we had to do at my house was introduce the tiny Corban to the people-shy, but child-loving Jade. Corban stands right around Jade's height, so she was quite unintemidated by this little person. Good thing because I don't think he would have liked the barking all that much. Jade seemed to like Corban a lot. She followed him around and licked his face when she would get a chance. Corban wanted to play fetch with her at first, but being the young and overly excited (and impatient) puppy that she is, she would snatch the ball from his little hand and he was afraid that she would bite him, so he stopped playing with her. But he didn't mind her continuing to follow him around.

Corban got to spend a couple hours playing at my house. We watched some Veggie Tales, read a little out of one of my children's books, colored in my Elmo coloring book, and poured all the change in my loose change jar all over the living room. Twice. At least he helped me pick it back up. Funny kid. He's got the same kind of attention span as Jade has with her toys: play with them long enough for them to make a mess, then find another means of living room destruction while the adult (me) follows in their path and tries to keep the chaos to a minimum. Finally Jade got tired of following Corban in circles (I had blocked off the kitchen and stairs so that they both were stuck in the living room) so I took the two of them outside and we threw balls around the yard (me throwing for Jade, Corban just throwing one for his own entertainment). Corban's mom and dad came back not too long after we went out there. Unlike at church when they pick him up from the nursery, he was not exactly "happy" to see them. In fact, he saw them, shook his head emphatically, then ran back into my house and shut the front door on us. I guess that means that he had a good time with me. :) He even gave me a kiss goodbye before I handed him back to his parents.

After waving goodbye to my red-headed buddy, I finished picking up the evidence of my babysitting adventure (I had finished cleaning the living room properly before he came over, so it didn't take very long), then Jade and I crashed. We were worn out. But we had fun and I suspect that she will be okay if I get a chance to do it again. Which I hope we do.

Learning Something Every Day

So, my new "thing" lately? I mean besides spending all my free time (and not so free time....) emailing or texting the re-acquainted former flame? I'm learning a new language. And of all the hundreds of languages for me to choose, I decided on Finnish.

Yes, I do have a reason other than just because no one else in the area would ever think to learn that one. I have friends who live in Finland. I decided that I'd like to be able to read it because when Riikka writes in Finnish, it's beautiful. And as I started teaching myself, I realized that it wouldn't be so terrible for my first trip oversees to finally happen sometime relatively soon. And I'm more likely to go where I 1) know someone and 2) somewhat speak the language.

So a week or two ago, I got online and find some sites to help me begin to read and hopefully eventually speak the lovely language. I've got a very limited vocabulary right now, consisting of not quite 200 words, none of which are verbs (unless you count the one word that can be used to say "be careful"). However, I know enough that if I were to somehow find myself magically transported suddenly to the middle of Finland, I would be able to ask for the trains (junat), the telephone (puhelin), the bathroom (wc), and the ingredients to make a sandwich (leipä - bread, kinkku - ham, and juusto - cheese). I could also tell the police (poliisi) that I need help (apua), a doctor (lääkäri) and a hospital (sairaala). I can count to ten (kymmenen) and say all the days of the week. And of course, the most important word for a Deema about town: shoes! (kengät). No, that wasn't actually the FIRST word I learned (but close).

The biggest problem I'm having is learning to pronounce the words. I've got a pretty good idea of the way the words sound (almost every language is easier to learn than English because most of them stick to the rule that each letter makes the same unique sound each time) but I have no idea how the inflections work. Also, I'm unclear on the meaning of "long" vs "short" sounds as both consonants and vowels can be either long or short (with English it's only vowels that we do that to). And I've yet to figure out the difference in sound from the "a" and "o" and the "ä" and "ö".

Since I have no verbs in my vocabulary yet, I'm not making full sentences yet, but once I do start, then I can see another problem teaching myself is going to give me. That's the problem of learning sentence structure. I barely understand how we form sentences in English and now I'm going to have to figure it out by myself in Finnish. Spanish sentence structure made perfect sense to me and German eventually started to click. I can only hope Finnish is as simple and straight-forward as those two.

Naturally, I had to choose to learn a language not taught at Clark (or any other institutions near here that I can find). But honestly, I think I will be better for it. I think the struggle will help me learn it that much better and hopefully this one won't leak out the hole in my brain that made me lose most my Spanish and German words.