That’s right, things started looking much better for me in my twenty-fourth year.  Much better, as a matter of fact.  The whole year was pretty stellar, really.  See, my birthday is at the end of January.  Shortly before my birthday, I signed up for Yahoo! Personals.  I had gone to a wedding a few months prior for a couple who had met on eHarmony.com.  The groom and I had gone to high school together and I thought, “Hey – if Seth can meet such a nice girl online, maybe I can find a nice guy myself!”

I had a few first dates, but nothing that really went anywhere.  Then one day, I was scrolling through matches in my area and came across a guy who was a few years (okay, six) older than me and hailed from my hometown.  I had no idea who this guy was.  My hometown has a population of 1800 people, so everyone pretty much knows everyone else.  The first thought that ran through my head was, “Who is this guy and why don’t I know him?”

I clicked on his profile and read through it.  That was when I had my second thought: “I need to know this guy!”  He was a former military officer and a single father who was “not looking for a mom” for his daughter.  He was also a self-professed Star Trek freak.  Could this guy be any better?

So I sent him a message.

Time to meet the family!
Photo courtesy of Kay Kauffman

We exchanged a couple emails and I learned that he was originally from another town, which explained why I didn’t know him.  We made plans to meet for supper at a local restaurant a few nights later.  I arrived early.  I was so early, in fact, that I had plenty of time to work myself into a nervous frenzy.  Seymour arrived early also, just not as early as I did.

Naturally, the first few minutes were a little awkward, but once we started showing off pictures of our kids, we seemed to relax a little.  There’s nothing like showing off pictures of one’s kid for putting a parent at ease!  Pizza was ordered and conversation made.  He asked me what about his profile had appealed to me and I replied that I loved the way he spoke about his daughter.  I had been looking for someone who also had kids because I thought it would be easier for them to relate to the sorts of things I would be dealing with.

I also admitted that I loved Star Trek, too.  Seymour looked skeptical.  To impress him, I quoted a scene from Star Trek: Voyager, my favorite series, and told him who said the line, who else was in the scene, and what else happened in the episode.  He was suitably impressed and, when supper was over, asked if I’d like to see a movie that night as well.  I said yes.

During supper, Seymour had told me about the major remodeling he’d done at his house and, since we had time to kill before the movie, he asked if I’d like to see his house.  I said, “Sure,” so we climbed into his truck and left.  As he turned the corner to his house, I looked down the street.  “You don’t live in that green house, do you?”

“Yeah…Why?”

It turned out that he lived in the same house my best friend had lived in during high school.  When I explained that I had spent the better part of my teen years hanging out there, he quipped, “Well, then I guess you won’t need to see the before pictures.”

He had done a lot of work to the place since the last time I’d been in it; it looked amazing.  As he was showing off his handiwork, he couldn’t resist showing off his collection of Star Trek DVDs: every season of every series, in addition to all the movies.  My geeky little heart tried to flutter right out of my chest as a puddle began to form at my feet from all the drool.

We left for the theater a little while later, where we saw Fool’s Gold.  It was an okay movie, but we both enjoyed How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days more.  Still, for date movies, it was a fun watch and Donald Sutherland was awesome as always.  But as we were leaving, I suffered an extremely painful bout of klutzis totalicus.

By now, it was the first part of February.  Of course, it really doesn’t matter whether it was January or February because either way, winter in Iowa equals snow and ice and cold and the myriad bad things that go along with all that crap.  As we were about to step down from the sidewalk into the parking lot, Seymour pointed down and said, “Be careful, it’s icy.”

“Okay!”

Bam.  My feet flew up and I landed flat on my ass.

Well, half of it, anyway.  Seymour is awfully quick and managed to half catch me, so only part of me hit the ground.  My butt hurt for a week, but my pride hurt longer.  I mean, how much more embarrassing could things possibly get?  No, wait – I definitely didn’t want to know the answer to that question.

This is my favorite engagement picture. ♥
Photo by Witt Photography

Luckily, the ground was frozen solid, so the cold kept my backside from hurting too much on the way home.  My face, on the other hand, burned enough for both my top and my bottom.  But my impressive powers of recalling random useless trivia at a moment’s notice apparently made up for my inability to walk on ice because Seymour asked me out again.  We were living together by the end of the summer and by Christmas, we were engaged.

All in all, I’d call that a banner year.

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