The GuyorThis is Liza’s Fault

I started writing these things down a while ago, and wasn't sure if they added up to an entry. Then Liza responded to a post I wrote about holding back my mushy relationship gushing by saying, "I always enjoy hearing about the fun relationship stuff... Feel free to share." So this is her fault. ;) (edit: ahem. Liza gets CREDIT for making me feel it is okay to share this stuff. So yay her for helping unleash my warm fuzzies on the interweb.

I am also posting this now because a couple of days ago I celebrated my 6 month anniversary with The Guy. It’s not a very long time, but hey - 6 months and he still thinks I'm great. Go figure.


The little pros and cons of a man become almost irrelevant once you get past a certain point. He gets into your bloodstream and you wake thinking of him and you find he is suddenly familiar in that way that allows you to fall asleep with your head on his chest. Instead of whys and why nots the details just become who he is to you. The further along my relationship with The Guy goes, and the more impossible any thought of turning back becomes, the more I find myself contemplating the details. As if I can examine them more closely, now that I am hooked and they are in that sense immaterial. I find myself chronicling them, as if to remind myself years from now how the pieces of him came together for me.

He has these crinkly laugh lines in the corners of his eyes that just GET me. Right there in my gut. Some part of me stands still when he laughs or smiles widely; this wide, genuine smile with bright white, very slightly crooked teeth and starry, squinty eyes.

He does accents, really sharp accents. It’s silly but the accuracy of the accent is strange and striking and he’ll just burst into one out of the blue, as if he’s always been Scots or Irish or Russian and I just never noticed before because I haven’t been paying attention.

He asks about my artwork, sometimes feverishly curious, but has never expressed an opinion about the paintings on my wall. He knows they are mine - he has at some point made an offhand comment that indicated this - but he has never expressed an opinion about them (this may just mean they are quite awful... but then I cannot imagine why he wants to see MORE).

He is worshipful of knowledge, knowledge for the sheer useless existence of it. Not the application of it, or specific knowledge, but just knowing things in a general sense. You get the impression that he must have been one of those children who tried to read the encyclopedia cover to cover.

He points out things that he feels will be useful to me and that he (often incorrectly) assumes I do not know. It makes me want to bonk him with a frying pan in a Wyle E. Coyote sort of way. But then he'll tell me something I actually didn't know and I realize I'd rather he tell me these things for the benefit I get on the occasions when I do learn something new.

He's kind natured. Far more than I am. It's probably the most noticable difference between our personalities.

He loves absurd humor the way I do and loves the book Good Omens but has somehow never read any other Terry Pratchett which just seems counterintuitive to me (since writing this he has started reading Terry Pratchett's Discworld books. It is a wonderful feeling to be sitting next to someone while they are reading a book you love and have them laugh out loud and then have to stop and tell you what it is that made them laugh because they want to share how good it is with you.)

He dances with me when we’re just talking. We’ll be standing in the kitchen or hallway talking about something and he’ll take my hand and spin me out and pull me in toward him and just start dancing with me to no music at all while we talk.

He often uses the phrase "when we're old and gray" and when I point this out to him he says, "Sometimes you just know."

He makes perfect pancakes. They’re surreal, each one is exactly the same size and they are perfect circles and they are always just the right golden color and even though they are made from a mix - MY pancakes from a mix never look like THAT. It’s like he has special magic pancake powers. I, who cook so often and typically with much success, am in awe of his pancake skills.

A lot of the truly thoughtful things he does are things I would never think of. He buys me a new tube of toothpaste because he noticed I was running low and he happened to be at the store ANYWAY so he figured he’d get some. He was putting rain-ex on his windshield and goes ahead and does my windshield, too, while he’s at it. If he notices that something needs to be fixed, he fixes it. He’s that kind of guy. I never dated that kind of guy before.

We think alike. He’s crazy forgetful like I am and, like me, has the attention span of a chihuahua on crack. This works out because, being the same way, I know how to work with that.

He forgot our three month anniversary. Which I realize isn’t even a “real” anniversary. But I remembered and had a gift waiting when he arrived empty handed... so THEN, two days later he showed up at my house with a bottle of wine and bags upon bags of groceries and rich red roses and proceeded to roast an entire chicken and steam veggies and make some fantabulous cheese sauce with Gruyére and Mozarella and some sort of herb and pepper Gouda. He poured me a glass of wine and brought me slices of baguette with bits of the cheeses to try and I stood there in the doorway to my kitchen thinking, “Where on earth did this man come from?”

If we go to bed late we typically end up lying awake for a while, chattering goofily to each other. We call each other dumb nick-names and talk in silly accents and goose each other and laugh until we cannot breathe.

Never before have I felt so at home as I do when he and I are laughing like fools and making no sense but understanding each other perfectly all the same.