Too-freakin'-cold

I grew up in western Oregon, which is essentially a temperate rainforest and a wet cold. When I was a teenager we moved to eastern Washington, which is a high desert and a dry cold. In my early twenties my family moved to Utah, which is a higher desert and a drier, colder cold. Since I was a child I have had an electric blanket on my bed. I would turn it on while I was brushing my teeth and doing other getting-ready-for-bed activities so by the time I got in bed it was nice and warm. I like getting into a warm bed. It makes me happy. Getting into a cold bed kind of makes me cranky. Getting out of a warm bed into a cold room makes me really cranky, but there's more going on there than just cold. There's also getting up, which is not my favorite way to start the day. Basically, cold and sleep do not go together for me. Then I got married.

Matthew LOVES getting into a cold bed. It is a disorder. However, as newlyweds, we took advantage of it. Our first apartment had cinderblock walls and the wooden ceiling was the just the underbelly of the roof. The place was built before the word 'insulation' had its own place in the dictionary. I brought my double bed to the marriage, but not my electric blanket, and Matthew had a barnacle attached to him all night, usually before he even finished lying down. It was fun.

It is now seventeen-and-a-half years later. I still do not have an electric blanket on my bed. But I do have an electric floor. When the bathroom had to be remodeled a few years back, Matthew really REALLY wanted a tile floor. This was a source of conflict. Equally as much as I hate getting out of a warm bed into a cold room, I HATE cold feet. It takes forever for my feet to warm up, and a tile floor in my bathroom in Utah is pretty much guaranteed to leave me with cold feet. ALL. DAY. So Matthew got a coil heater to put under the tile. Because he is the best husband ever and I love him.

The last time I looked at the temperature, it was 14 degrees outside. That is too-freakin'-cold. I am tired, so even though I should be making/wrapping Christmas presents, I am going to bed. A cold bed, because Matthew is playing Arkham Asylum. Nobody for me to barnacle onto. My bathroom floor is a toasty 90 degrees. I am SO tempted to sleep in the bathroom tonight.

Happy Anniversary to Us!

I fell in love with Matthew in Camelot. This is true. There used to be a park just off the Springville exit called Camelot. It is no longer there, which is sad, but that is where I fell in love with Matthew for good and certain. If you've already heard the story, well, I happen to think it's a rather nice romance, and if you haven't, then we should talk, because there's LOTS more than just this. Like the conversation in front of Bridal Veil Falls where he told me he didn't feel right about dating me. But this post is about how I fell in love with him, not how I wanted to strangle him.

We went to Camelot one Saturday (NOT on a date) and wandered around enjoying the shade under the trees and just talking. There was an irrigation ditch/canal that went through the park, and on the other side of it was this beautiful meadow. We wanted to go walk in the meadow, but to get there we had to walk across a log over the ditch. Now, it was a good-sized log, and if it had been on the ground I could have walked on it till the cows came home. But it wasn't on the ground, it was over some truly nasty-looking water, and there was just no way I was going to risk falling into that muck. There was also a four-year-old little boy wearing shorts and cowboy boots that was just zipping back and forth across that thing. He made me feel very foolish. But not foolish enough to walk across that log. And I really wanted to go walk in that meadow. So Matthew sat down on the log facing me, his long legs almost dipping in the water below, and told me to sit down facing him. Then he scooted backwards across the log, telling me to look at him and not down at the water, until we reached the other side. The little boy stood on the bank and laughed and teased Matthew about being too scared to stand up and walk across the log. Matthew never even said a word to him, he just kept talking to me, calmly, until we made it across. The meadow, by the way, was a mosquito breeding ground like I've never seen before. You actually couldn't breath because they would fly in your mouth or up your nose. It was nasty, so in only a few moments, we were back on the log again, Matthew scooting backwards until we were back on the other side. He never did say anything to the kid. And I fell in love with him.

A week later I went back to Camelot by myself and walked across the log several times. I didn't fall, and I didn't scoot, and I didn't tell anybody I was going to do it. Matthew had already made it impossible for me to fail. It was already okay if I was too afraid to walk across, but that time, I wasn't.

The rest of the story is that less than a year later we were married (it still took some time after that for us to actually date, but I said I wouldn't go into that here). Today makes it a whopping, wonderful fifteen years, and Matthew is still scooting across logs for me, telling me to look at him, not the scary stuff around me, and making it impossible for me to fail.

How absolutely fitting that I fell in love with him in Camelot.