He looked harmless enough...!

Dear Boy and I were blessed to celebrate our 4th wedding anniversary yesterday. It was perfect. Literally. In every way. I couldn't have asked for DB to more thoughtful, romantic, sweet, and basically... himself.

This morning I'm asking myself, as I often do, how the heck did someone as spastic as me get so lucky? What did I ever do to earn such a fabulous guy?

Answer: Nothing.

In fact, the first time I met DB (briefly and in passing), I immediately rejected him as "not my type," which is basically the gentle way of saying, "ForGET it."

He was the exact opposite of what I'd dreamed of. I always loved blonds; his hair is almost black. I wanted a tall guy; he's barely 5'8". I drooled over outgoing, show-offy, brilliantly social types; DB prefers a night at home reading a book. I preferred guys with the gift of gab (as if we needed two in this house, ha ha); DB takes his time over every single thing he says, and often chooses to say nothing at all.

But all of those things I thought I didn't want are exactly why we ended up together. And not because I had some brilliant flash of insight and realized I'd been wrong the whole time.

No, no--it was because I had written him off as harmless.

I figured that he was so not what I wanted, I didn't have to think about it. So I didn't. I didn't think about it when he started calling every day at lunch looking for his sister, even though I told him several times I was the only one home at lunch. I didn't look at him suspiciously when he offered to buy me lunch since mine looked particularly unappetizing. I didn't squirm with worry that he liked me when he hung out for hours talking to me while waiting for his sister to come back.

Then one day, all at once, as we were sitting on the couch watching a movie (at DB's insistence and with me being as thoughtless as usual), I realized that it would be so awesome if he chose that moment to put his arm around me. For a moment, I was blown away by the thought. We were just friends, right? But then again, look at the evidence. Maybe he thought I was hot. Maybe he even had a smidgen of liking for me. Was it possible?

I spent the next half hour in an agony of anxiety about what to do about this. Should I lean back and let him? Did he want to? Maybe I should just hunch over, make him really put himself out there if he wanted to. Wait, no. I was probably totally misreading him. Maybe I needed to run to the bathroom and then come back and sit further away from him. Or closer. Or maybe not. Or I could lean back. Hold it, didn't I already reject that one? Shoot. Now what?

Fortunately, DB is not so complex. All my nervous fidgeting told him I wasn't averse to the idea, so he put his arm around me.

I snuggled in.

And that was it.

I was more than halfway in love with him already and didn't even know it. He had listened, talked, hung out, and basically courted me for several weeks without me even noticing. It didn't take much after that for me to be so totally head over heels in love with him that his simple "As you wish" (yes, he really did say that--does say that--to me) was enough to put me floating several feet off the ground for the rest of the day.

All because, well, he looked harmless enough.

So, here's to the sneak attack. And to my darling hubby, without whom I would've long since gone insane. We've been through losses, pregnancies, infants, moving, school, money trouble, remodeling, depression, car trips, potty training, and a million other everyday miracles together. I know we're in for several million more. And don't worry about me not thinking twice about you before; I'll think about you forever now.