Bumble. We're not afraid to admit it. Let's be real, we're no spring chickens. We both have several chapters in our books of life. Right off the bat, we'd often say our vendiagram is so similar it's almost a perfect circle. But let's start at the beginning, April 11, 2025. I was having terrible luck in New Mexico (which included multiple entertaining stories, one involving a broken elbow at a roller skating rink). Anyhow, Bumble kept on telling me I needed to widen my circle. I was like, "I have a 50-mile radius, how wide do you want me to go?!" Well, I happened to be in Fairfax, as in Virginia, the week prior meeting my youngest god-son Quinn, and my Bumble account popped off. Seriously, I had like 250 interested peeps. It was the following Friday back in Santa Fe, and I had just about had it. I was like, fuck it, with several bourbons down the gage, I sat on my front porch and opened my Bumble app. You can’t actually see who likes you on Bumble unless you pay for it, so I paid for an extra week. On the opposite end, Toddy was at the end of a six-month subscription and super tired of the catfishing and the rigid Northeast flavor of female partners (he’s originally from Southern California). I don’t think it’s a surprise that Toddy liked me, but as I was swiping through multiple profiles, his prompt was a song lyric. This was a no-brainer. I sent him a message back verifying that it was originally a Leonard Cohen song, but I was a fan of Jeff Buckley’s version. He countered that Rufus Wainwright does it better…and our story began. An hour later, we were on the phone with each other. By the end of our conversation, which really was a culmination of serenading each other (Meatloaf had nothing on us), he had bought a ticket to visit me in Santa Fe the following weekend. Let me tell you, he was flying halfway across the country, but driving those 53 minutes to the Sunport in Albuquerque was the most nerve-wrecking thing I’ve ever done. I couldn’t even sit down. I stood by the escalator for 40 minutes with purple flowers, waiting for his flight to come in during a freak blizzard in April. I had sent several friends a proof of life that I was picking up my husband, and would you know it, we both proposed to each other that weekend. When you know, you know. We would visit each other every couple of weeks, and in June, after two weeks of pneumonia, we took a two-week road trip through the entire West. We even marked off three states Toddy had yet to visit. Let me tell ya, if you think you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, go on an extended trip with them. I recommend a road trip, but any extended trip will do. By the end of those two weeks, I was ready to say I do, and so we made it official, which meant calling and telling my folks, lol. And here we are. Toddy is selling his home in Alexandria and moved to Santa Fe at the end of August. We’re planning a small civil ceremony in Vegas on December 25. My youngest goddaughter agreed to let us share her birthday with us. I’m at the tail end of my dissertation, hoping to defend in March. So we’d love for you to come and visit at our high desert cottage after I become Dr. Evy :) We love you all and can't wait to give you lots of hugs!!