love story

In case you haven't noticed, I read a lot of blogs.  In fact, I read a few blogs so religiously...I might as well be a part of their family.  One of my most favorite parts of getting to know a new blog is digging into their "stories."  Sometimes that's a birth story and sometimes...it's my personal fav-a love story.  


Here's my love story. 


I'm always afraid of throwing this out there...but you know, it's the 21st century and pretty much everyone is world wide webbin' it 24/7 with their iphones now a days.  The boy and I met online.  Prior to meeting the boy, my current roommate at the time and I decided that we needed to try this whole online dating thing out.  We were both single and we were tired attempting to meet classy gentleman out at bars.  After setting up some simple rules for dating (don't worry...I'll blog about these rules later.) we both signed up for match.com and began.  Let me tell you something...if you are a single twenty-something year old girl, you are seriously missing out if you don't online date.  As soon as you sign up, you are bombarded with guys you think that you are beautiful, witty, and amazing.  Now, not all the guys are winners...but that too is a story for another blog day. 


I'd gone on a handful of dates with some interesting characters and nothing was really working out.  After one particularly bad date that involved a "gentleman" throwing a 20 at me and crying at our dinner table, I retreated over to a friends house.  I couldn't bear the thought of another date so bad that it would only end in man tears.  With her help, and a couple of glasses of wine, I believe that I went on a winking rampage.  For those of you that aren't hip to online dating, a wink is like an old school 3 AM facebook poke.  It's the equivalent of a holllaaaa.  I remember winking at one guy in particular.  I was initially attracted to his super handsome picture BUT I thought that perhaps he may be just a smidge too old for me.  After all, I was a mere baby of 24 years old and this guy was the dirty thirty.  


After all my hollers were said and done, I went home and tucked myself into bed to dream of my prince charming.  A day or so later, I received an email that was a result of one of my winks and it went a little something like this...

Thanks for the wink, your profile is great and you seem like fun.I do have a couple questions:Is it bad that I don't know what a "whistle tip" is? What is the dislike of balloons about? Where you attacked by a balloon animal as a child or something? Where is "firework Fridays?" How could I have missed this in Raleigh? Where do you volunteer? I ask a lot of questions. If you have any for me, I'd be happy to answer!  Now...I don't need Bill Nye the Science guy to tell me that the above email was one busch league old man response.  I thought about just dropping him like it was hot...but the old man was at least good looking, so I decided to throw him a bone.  I mean, I'm witty...perhaps he didn't know that he needed to kick it up a notch.  I decided to email him back in typical Baldinelli fashion and if he couldn't keep up, I'd have no problem saying goodbye.  My listed response went a little something like this... 1. i like lists 2. i think you need to watch this video asap. and you NEVER need to tell anyone that you dont know what a whistle tip is. that is a deal breaker, friend. its a good thing that im in a good mood today or i would have straight up deleted your non-whistle-tip-email speedy quick. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccgXjA2BLEY 3. i am not quite sure where the balloon phobia came from. i like birthday parties. i can straight up murder small children in musical chairs. but balloons are my enemy. 4. i work in a super cool workplace. we have special days like milkshake mondays, tube top tuesdays, whoo whoo wednesdays, toe up thursdays, and firework fridays. i like fireworks as much as i like milkshakes. 5. i guess i need to explain my job now...i work at a resident camp outside of raleigh. its a summer resident camp, so i only really work three months out of the year. the other months out of the year are filled with golf cart races, fireworks, and other things of that nature. 6. i dont really have any questions. im just going to go into a quick explanation of why i am kind of a big deal. a) i am a cornhole hustler. i can beat anyone at anytime anywhere. b) i know all the words to any song that has ever been played on the radio c) i know all the places in raleigh to get a soft pretzel d) i am super hot. uber hot. ridiculously good looking e) i enjoy quality tv shows like family guy, reno 911, and greys anatomy. perhaps the greys anatomy doesnt quite fit in with the other two shows... 7. my name is jen you need to stop what you are doing and email me back right now. do it.

I have to admit that this was were the old man threw me a curve ball.  After reading my email, he probably realized that I was a big deal.  He knew he had to break out of his match.com standard auto-reply and hit me with some game.  He probably worked on this bad boy all night, drinking jagerbombs while fist pumpin the keyboard....

1. The pressure was too intense; so straight up just quit my job (called my boss a coffee-breath-curmudgeon first), ran off with the company laptop….and am currently hiding in an alley behind the neighboring Bojangles (sharing a biscuit with a odd, scruffy looking gentleman)—all so I could respond right away. 
2. I feel older than the lady news anchor on that video for not knowing what a “whistle tip” was.  I do need to point out that I just so happen to drive that same make and model station wagon they showed several times—hope that doesn’t creep you out. 
3. You haven’t really “murdered” any small children have you? Even if it is all fun and games…..
4. Do you work at the Wily Wonka Chocolate Factory? 
1. “Tube-top Tuesdays?” This doesn't involve any public activity does it? 
5. Three months out of the year?  You live in your car don’t you?  In fact is that you at the end of the alley?  If so we have a couple biscuits left. 
6. I’m sorry, but I’m not great at corn-hole.  Though I do have a picture of me looking awesome (yeah I said it) in a NASCAR sleeveless shirt and camo shorts, while shot-gunning a beer and playing corn-hole.  It was my first race, I was trying to fit in. 
1. I challenge you to music trivia, anytime/anywhere.  Except for maybe this alley—they are eyeballing the company laptop now, and I’m down to one shoe. 
2. You do know you can get soft-pretzels at the store and cook them at home right? 
3. If that’s not suffice I can get cases (yes cases) of “Super Pretzels”—same kind you find at concession stands (and possibly where you work) for very, very cheap (from my work). 
4. Are you more of a Jennifer Aniston hot (debatable until recently) or a Megan Fox hot? 

                                                               i.      I’d have to say I’m somewhere between a Fred Savage from the Wonder Years, River Phoenix from the Stand-By-Me (before all the Coke and death) and the new James Bond guy hot.  One of those might be a little bit of a stretch. 

5. Have you ever seen “How I met your Mother?”  This is crucial. 
6. I can cook, well.  We’re are talking formal training well. 
7. I don’t know how to make balloon animals, so you are safe. 

I think it's safe to say that between his previously mentioned presumably good looks and that email, I was about to be all up on that.  We emailed back and forth for a couple more days until we decided that it was time to put our laptops aside and meet face-to-face. We met for our first date at Frankie's Fun Park.  After all, we met online and rule #1 of making sure that you don't end up chopped into a thousand little pieces by the match.com killer is setting up your first date to be in the most public place possible.  So there we were, on a Sunday afternoon in December, surrounded by hundreds of screaming children.  The boy likes to tell everyone that he was there first, but we all know that he's never on time.  After we introduced ourselves to one another, we settled down to play one of New Jersey's favorite past times-skee ball.  After a few rounds in which the boy emerged victorious, we settled up our tickets for prizes and retreated far from the screaming children to the quiet on-site restaurant where we each consumed about 56 diet cokes and began to get to know each other.  

Maybe it was the mass ingestion of diet cokes, perhaps it was the soft pretzels that the boy gifted me at the end of the night.  Regardless of what sparked something, we instantly hit it off.  Our first date soon turned into a second group date and that date lead to a spur of the moment weekend trip to Jersey.  For the record, HE invited me to come and visit him.  I may have crazy eyes but I'm no crazy-like-adele-stalker.

Almost two years later to the date, we went on a weekend trip to Maine.  That Saturday afternoon, after we returned from a day of adventures, I opened the door to our hotel room to find it filled with Christmas decorations.  There were vases of flowers and a small tree decorated with tiny numbered packages.  The boy instructed me to open each package one at a time.  Each package contained a picture of something significant to us and a reason why he loved the month of December.  After all, we met in December and Christmas is the most magical time of the year.  There were supposed to be 8 presents on the tree (8 is the boy's favorite number) but I could only find 7.  As I'm searching the tree from top to bottom, probably like a mad-woman,  the boy sneaked up behind me with the final present in his hand-a ring and an invitation to spend the rest of our lives together.

If that's not a love story I don't know what is.  BAM.