As you may have read in my previous post on The Big Give, I was going to post The Proposal once I got back from Jamaica. Well, I will get to The Proposal in Part 4 of my many coming posts/updates on Holly and Matt’s wedding.
I thought it’d be funny to post a HE SAID, SHE SAID type of story for you since Matt emailed me while in Jamaica on his take of how they met and his first impressions, etc… So, I only thought it’d be fitting to share you their love story
Here we go…
~ SHE SAID | Love at first sight, kind of… ~
The moment I saw him, it hit me. I fell, head-over-heels, literally, right onto my butt.
<Slow-motion, foggy around the edges, ‘Dreamweaver’ playing in the background…>
I’d just moved to the area, and bought an old wreck of a house in a small town an hour from the big city. Living the single woman, girl-power, home-reno dream. Training for a half-marathon, I’d heard that reflexology was good to prevent injury. So, I ‘googled’ reflexology in the area and made a Saturday afternoon appointment at the first clinic that I found.
That morning, I drove to ‘the city’ to get a haircut and highlight from my Parisian hairdresser…Oh, and I had planned to pop in on my friend’s son’s hockey game in between… and it had been awhile since I’d seen her so I was going to bring goodies from the city to munch on. I realize (now) that the chances that all these things were going to happen as I’d enthusiastically and optimistically planned were slim…
I was a little late.
Ok, 20 minutes late, but with a 60 min appointment, I was confident he’d treat me for the 40 min and just charge me the hour.
At the clinic, I was greeted by the most handsome, flaxen-haired, big chested, muscular, smiling with gleaming-white teeth, happy, drooling, wet-nosed Golden Retriever I’d ever seen! Always a dog-lover I crouched down to greet him and he literally knocked me off my feet and proceeded to give me a warm, slobbery canine greeting. As I sat on the ground, the door opened and I looked up to see my Reflexologist standing there barefoot, in jeans and a t-shirt (accidentally too-tight around the biceps), laughing at the scene cast before him.
What he saw was a woman with an overdone hairdo, trendy eggshell trench coat, pink polka-dot silk scarf and ridiculous matching pink pseudo-crocodile-skin handbag, trying to regain her composure, as his 90 lb oversized fur-ball dog licked the bronzer right off her cheek! I scrambled to my feet and was locked in a tractor-beam by the warm green-brown eyes and was abruptly informed that I’d missed my appointment time but that I could re-book in four weeks…FOUR WEEKS.
I did re-book. But that time I was not late.
During the appointment, he discovered that there was a bit more to me than expertly blended highlights and a pink purse. He learned that I’d been living in a construction zone for the winter, renovating a hundred year old house with my Dad. I’d slept on an air mattress on the ground floor while contractors addressed the electrical and heating issues and moved upstairs once the windows had been replaced. After that, the rest was left to me — scraping wallpaper a few hours each night after commuting and working out of town full time, picking up weekend shifts where I could. I was pretty good at patching drywall and I’d learned that paintable caulking hides a multitude of sins. He mentioned that he’d always wanted to buy an old home to renovate and he congratulated me on my courage for doing it alone.
We laughed a lot during that appointment. He was very charming and I loved his sense of humor. At one point in the conversation, he asked me if I was right-handed. I was taken aback and figured it must be some new-age reflexologist-jedi mind trick. I asked him how he knew I was right handed. He let out a hearty laugh, and proceeded to tell me that the bunion on my right foot was considerably larger than the bunion on my left foot! I just about died of embarrassment. The first cute guy I talk to in months after moving to some small town in the middle of nowhere, spending all my free time working on my house and what about me does he find noteworthy??? My BUNIONS?!?!
I managed to recover some dignity and we continued to share a lot of laughs.
Although not sold on his reflexology, I was interested in his dog. With commuting so far each day, I just couldn’t have a dog and so I asked him if he’d let me ‘borrow’ his dog occasionally when I was in town. He said that would be great and that his pup would appreciate the exercise. And that’s when I became known as “the dog walker”.
Two to three times per week, I’d go to the clinic, walk the pup around town. Occasionally, I’d cross paths with him between appointments and we’d exchange laughs as I was on my way out the door. One day, he asked if I wanted to grab a beer with him later. We had beer and wings and talked for hours.
Over the next few months many walks were taken, many more laughs shared.
At some point, I felt that it was time to take things to the next level. It was time to call in the big guns…it was time for the stuffed peppers.
The story has been told to my sister and I many times over the years. After my parents had been dating for some time, my Mother prepared her stuffed peppers recipe and my Father’s fate was sealed. My Mother still maintains that the best way to a man’s heart is through his stomach and claims this was the recipe that turned Dad’s head for good. When I called my Mom asking for her magic stuffed pepper recipe, she knew instantly that something was up. I didn’t even bother trying to deny it; I just told her that it was time to give things ‘a nudge’.
So I nudged…and he nudged back.
Stay tuned for Part 3 of The Big Give 2009 – HE SAID…
-Joee
Click here for The Big Give: Part 1
Click here for The Big Give: Part 3
Click here for The Big Give: Part 4
Click here for The Big Give: Part 5
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