I think I'll start by showing some pictures of people he sort of looks like to varying degrees.
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| Chris "Mr. Big" Noth |
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| Australian Actor Anthony LaPaglia |
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| Bad Boy Charlie Sheen |
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| Hilarious Comedian Eugene Mirman |
And here he really is, the handsome culmination of the best characteristics of all the above:
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| I looked through my own recent pictures and they're all blurry action shots, so here's the picture from his work. |
We met at probably the worst possible moment in time. I was out at a bar with a friend celebrating signing my first real job contract. I was going to be teaching at a college in Illinois in a few months! The bar was in Kansas, where I was attending grad school and where C was pretty well established with his house, new business, and full-time job. He was out with friends after helping one of them move. He still can't believe I found him attractive when he'd just been moving a friend all day. But he smiled at me from a neighboring booth, and I smiled back, and we waved back and forth, and he invited me over to his table and bought me a drink. It was pretty sickeningly sweet, now that I think about it.
So we clicked, but had some decisions to make. I'd been through relationships with at least some long-distance component, and those never worked out well (obviously). So we spent a lot of time together that summer and decided that we'd make it work, distance be damned. And we did! We talked every day and had some long weekend visits and on New Year's Day (7 month anniversary) at around 3 in the morning he proposed. Having completed one semester of full-time teaching I was already pretty certain that it wasn't something I wanted to do for the rest of my life, so I finished out the second semester to fulfill my contract and then moved back to Kansas. Then we got married a couple weeks later!
He always wanted kids, lots of kids. I wasn't so sure about them. But we adopted our dog Sprocket together, before I went to teach, and he let me get two kittens as soon as we got back from our honeymoon. And this may sound ridiculous, but when one of the pets misbehaved, seeing the way he handled the situation helped me to relax about the whole thing. He was able to laugh things off, and that made me laugh things off, and I realized if I could laugh off whatever mini-catastrophe had occurred, I may just be able to handle a kid.
But first, he insisted I finish my dissertation. Always looking out for me, that one. He knew better than I did that once we had kids it would be so all-encompassing that I may never return to that, and I would always regret getting so close to finishing my degree. So he supported me and put up with me as I was learning to navigate a full-time job and spending my weekends holed up in the home office he cleared out just for me. But I got that done, and then the kids came.
He's the most awesome dad. Just like I predicted based on the pets, he can take any bad situation and turn it around with his sense of humor. And he actually started collecting Box Tops before the kids were ever in school, can you believe that? He is so loving and involved in the kids' lives, and it's so fun to observe.
He's a practical dreamer. He is always thinking about ways we can have a better life and he has so many great ideas. He's completed multiple NaNoWriMo's! But he also stays firmly grounded in our present reality, so we never have to worry about paying the bills or putting food on the table. And a major bonus--he handles all the major paperwork because he knows paperwork makes me cry. And the technology set-up at home. I have no idea how people manage these days without having a professional tech person at home.
He's not perfect, and I'm not perfect, and we occasionally butt heads. But even our fights are pretty funny sometimes. I don't know how I got so lucky, but I'm so glad I met this guy at the worst possible time.
