Southwest Virginia Blogs

The Boy and I had quite possibly the hardest weekend apart yet. On Saturday night, I got quite possibly the scariest message from him ever. It said “[My friend] committed suicide today. I don’t feel like talking right now.”

And we didn’t talk. And I didn’t sleep. I was up Saturday night, almost the entire night wishing he would call, but he didn’t. Then I spent most of the day at home yesterday waiting for him to call, but he didn’t. Last night I was taking cat naps, wishing the phone would ring. Finally, around 4 am, I was finally able to talk to him.

Right now, all I want to do is get on a plane and get to him. Unfortunately people are apparently relying on me to do so much at work this week that it would be next to impossible. I don’t really care though.

The boy may be coming back to visit sooner than I thought.  He mentioned last night he has the opportunity to leave base for a couple of weeks and help a recruiter in the area.  He also said he would never consider doing it before, but he really misses me.  That makes a girl feel good. 

Ok, I'm back.  I dropped the boy off at the airport this morning and he is now almost to Alaska (actually, he's in the middle of a layover in Seattle).  I'm very sad so I don't feel like writing.  I will say we had a wonderful week and his family is great.  His mom already has us married in her mind.  

I'm going to go be sad for awhile.  I'll update soon. 

Ok, I'm back from Bristol and I do have pictures.  However, I don't know if I'll have time to download and post them tonight.  I have to get ready for the Boy.  He'll be here in ONE day.  If I find time tonight (after cleaning the house and finishing my laundry), I'll try to post a few pictures.  Until then, you can visit W's blog and see some.  She's "Tired Teacher" on the sidebar. 

If anyone cares, the Boy is currently making his descent into Seattle.  He'll be two hours away from me in less than 10 hours.   

What is the strangest way to meet your boyfriend’s mother?

For me, it would be when she showed up at my office today to visit my secretary (and was introduced to me as “Your potential mother-in-law”).

The Boy was going to surprise me at the end of this month.  He was going to show up on my doorstep without telling me he was coming.  It was going to be very sweet and a few tears (mine, of course) would have been shed.  However…

My impromptu trip to Florida last weekend made him think better of it.  With my family, who knows when we’ll be jetting off to Florida to check on the grandma or to the beach for a quick weekend.  When he told his dad he was coming, his dad said “You better tell her.  She’ll probably want to take a day or two off work to be with you some.”  He had also told his best friend (are you seeing that I was the third to know?  Oh yes, he was harassed about that) and then realized his best friend is married to one of MY good friends who I have lunch with at least once a month to catch up and our lunch date will occur sometime between now and the day he arrives so keeping it a secret would be hard.

Anyway, all of that was simply to say the Boy will be here for 8 days at the end of the month (he is taking 10 days of leave, but he’ll have 2 full days of travel here and back).  I’m really excited.

Or, as W says, STD-Day cause, let’s face it, those are probably going to be passed around a lot tonight.  I have to tell you guys, I hate Valentine’s day.  I think it’s gone way too commercial and is just another way for card companies and florists to make a ton of money and I would prefer my guy do sweet things randomly, not because a holiday tells him to.

That being said, I must admit, this was a good Valentine’s Day.   This morning, around 9 am, the receptionist called me to the front where waiting was a vase of red tulips.  Which not only means he remembered to order me flowers all the way from Alaska, but he also remembered that I don’t like roses and that one of my favorite flowers is the tulip (in case your wondering, the other is the daisy).  THEN I got an incredibly sweet email which almost made me cry (ok, maybe I did a little).  Plus I got all kinds of goodies from the secretaries and other random people.  I’m pretty happy for a Valentine’s Day.

I promise, more on the Enemy story will be posted later tonight.  I just wanted to share my actually happy Valentine’s Day since I haven’t had one of those in a long long time.

I’ve been asked by a few readers to tell how I met the boy. Because I’ve switched blogs a few times since we met (or, more accurately, re-met), I’m going to rewrite the story of our meeting (err…re-meeting).

My best friend could probably tell this story better, since she was there, but here goes. W (that’s the best friend) and I decided to go out to a bar one night in an attempt to curb boredom. It was in August and there wasn’t much else to do. So it’s a Saturday, we’re going to go have a few beers and then come home. We ran into another girlfriend, we’ll call her Jen, and were sharing a table when someone we all knew from YEARS ago walked in the door.

My exact comment to my best friend was this: “When did [the boy] get hot?” We had graduated high school together. Then I said I would be back. I went over to talk to him, but as I tried to talk with him, I was approached by two other guys. I thought both of them were with the boy. So I was nice to them and talked to them. The boy kind of smiled and shook his head and walked away when the other two were surrounding me (it really was quite the invasion of my personal space). Later, the boy told me he was getting pissed because he was hoping to spend time with me when I walked over.

Fast forward to the bar closing. I hadn’t gotten to talk to the boy and, quite frankly, I was pissed about that. So I did what any normal female would do. I invited him, and all his friends, back to my place with W, Jen and me. Safety in numbers, of course. We get to my house and the boy’s friends (one of which I find out was NOT there with him, but was just there) were still trying to get my attention. I got mad at one of them for letting my cat out of the house (that was quite the dramatic event…I was running through my neighborhood without shoes on trying to catch my cat). Finally, the one that wasn’t with the boy, let’s call him Jeff, went to sleep on my couch. Jen and one of the other guys, Jared, who was also her exboyfriend, went to sleep in my guest room. Another man went to sleep on my other couch. I found out later that man was Jared’s father (don’t ask, it was a strange strange night).

W was outside with the other guy who had been trying to get my attention and the boy went into my bedroom to lay down. So I did what any girl would do. I went and laid on my bed with him. We laid there talking and laughing for hours (we also dozed off a few times in these hours). The next morning he asked if we could go out before he was sent off. He’s in the Air Force and had orders to go to Alaska. We both kind of knew that it would be a date or two and that would be it.

Until the first date happened and neither of us wanted that night to end. And then the second date happened the next night. And again, neither of us wanted that night to end. Then the third date, the next night. The next morning, he had to leave.

That should have been the end of our relationship. He was moving 5000+ miles away by plane and would be closer to Russia than to me. That morning he told me that he knew he was leaving and he didn’t want to ask me to wait for him, but did I think I could possibly give something a try. I said ok. I didn’t want to date anyone else around here and he was sweet (and hot).

So we spent the next two months on the phone every night. An hour to two hours every night talking. Thank god for Verizon unlimited long distance phone service. One day he asked if I could come visit him. I bought the plane ticket that day and made my plans. That weekend, while I was visiting him, I realized that although I was going to have to wait three years for him to be out of the service and to be able to come home, it would be worth it. What’s three years anyway? At this point I’ve been through four years of undergrad and three years of law school and that time flew by.

So we’ve continued with the status quo. I have my life here: my house, my job, my family, my friends. He has his life there: his job, his friends, his obligation to the country. We still spend an hour on the phone every night (or more). We make our plans to see each other every three months (or as close to that as possible) and we talk about the things that we’ll do when he gets home finally. And I’m ok with that. I can still be as independent as I want, but I know at the end of the day I’ll come home, call the boy, and look forward to the next visit.

I know, I went MIA for about a week. I apologize in the least sincere way. I traveled to the great white northwest to visit the boy in Alaska. Now I’m home. I could tell some stories of the trip and the wonderful things we did, but most of them aren’t really for blogging and would be boring to anyone (but the boy and me, of course). Have I mentioned that long distance relationships are hard? Especially when you have to say bye?
I had a lovely time flying through the air. A less lovely time with the airport layovers which turned into delays which made me get home around 3:30 in the morning. I went to work today though (really, I did–for about two hours).

They don’t scrape the roads in Alaska. You just drive on snow. I think that’s funny since down here, people would just lock themselves in their houses and not leave if the roads were like they were up there. This road status doesn’t last simply a day or two either. It lasts ALL WINTER. For those of you who are unaware, winter lasts a very long time in Alaska. I saw a glacier after a long drive on one of those snow covered roads. I considered not coming home. In the end, I came back. I’m not entirely happy with this decision to return. I’ll be home for the next six months before my next trip. He’ll be here in three months. I’m already counting it down on my calender and I don’t even know the exact dates of his visit.

For now, enjoy this picture: