We're Doing This Thing and We Want You Involved.

In the midst of a pandemic, Travis and I did what we could to keep our minds sane, our bodies healthy, and our love alive. We created little date nights here and there to make life more interesting, especially since we couldn't get out of the house, couldn't see friends, and couldn't do the usual things that entertained us. I had seen a video where a couple went to a store and randomly selected a movie, snacks, dinner, and dessert by walking down the aisles and telling the other person to stop. Whatever you ended up pointing at, that's what we'd buy. We ended up with Halloween II for a movie and several junk food options for us to munch on. The movie had just ended and, out of no where, Travis set a little, smooth, pink rock in front of me and said, "Will you m-m-murray me"? The rock fell on the floor and we spent some time trying to find it! We both cracked up laughing because of how he stuttered to get it out and I, of course, said, "Y-y-yas." Significance of the rock: it was a rose quartz that he had found on the beach at my family's camp on Sacandaga Lake. Although COVID had made it impossible for him to make it into a ring, the thought and the love behind it means more to me than any diamond ring would have. Eventually we will make it into a real ring, but for now, it's my little penguin pebble of love.

We had both noticed each other across a crowded internet dating site. He took the chance and wrote me a well thought out message. This shining pearl of a message sat in my inbox among a few badly written, poor grammared, half ass attempts to woo me. Luckily, I sifted through the dirt and read what he had wrote... it was intelligent, funny, and it showed me that he had paid attention to what I had written in my profile. We chatted for several weeks; light banter mixed with semi serious life pondering questions. And then, we decided to meet halfway between our homes at a pizza place in Duanseburg called Jonathan's. We met there on a warm September night and enjoyed a meal of pepperoni and onion pizza and hot wings with extra blue cheese. During the meal, he was talking to me about something but I was heavily distracted by the larger man sitting behind him with a partial, hairy buttcrack hanging out of his pants. I apologized for not paying attention and let him know that he needed to turn around and see what I saw; there was no way that I was living through the sight of that buttcrack alone! We never stopped laughing since that night. A few weeks later, we had a date at the George Landis Arboretum and, while looking at the stars on a blanket, he turned to me and said, in the most romantic way, "Do you want to be like, a couple or something?" And I said yes.