"is that my foot?"

Have to post this because it's hilarious.
In order to understand, you have to read this post and look at the picture at the end.
This is a text from my little sister:

Best text ever. And yes, I do call my sister "Shmittles". Although I don't really know why now that I think about it...

oh, day...

   Days like today make me want to punch babies. Or kittens. Or anything else innocent and cute. Except not really because that's just mean.
   Instead of abusing my wonderful blog by ranting about my day that I will forget about in approximately 17 hours, I drew a fancy picture to tell the tale. 
   Some necessary facts about today in order to accurately set the mood:
     It rained, snowed, hailed, and was sunshine-y today. Yep.
     When I was walking these routes, I was walking sideways due to the wind.
     My nose was stuffy.
     My backpack was heavy.
     Ok go.

another week

My Typical Appearance and Thought Progression Throughout an Average Week
You can click to enlarge the picture

how it aaaalll began

   Since all the blogger-folk I follow are reminiscing about their love stories in celebration of Valentine’s Day, it made me want to tell mine. So you get to read it. Yay, you!

   It was my sophomore year in high school and I had the BIGGEST crush on this kid, who I will refer to as J. J was funny, athletic, had good morals, and was pretty cute despite the mild acne and remaining baby fat. My good friend, who is actually my current roommate in college (weird!), and I hung out with J and his good friend A quite a bit. We’d have movie nights at least once a month and hang out during lunch break at school.

   As the annual girl-ask-guy dance (aka, “Sweetheart”) approached, I decided I’d muster up the confidence and ask J to be my date. I had it all planned out; I was going to decorate his locker (obviously), decorate his red pickup, and make him a big card out of cardstock asking him to the dance. It was very unoriginal but still awesome.

   Much to my dismay, J got snatched up by one of my gal pals a few days before my attack. I was severely disappointed. Now who would I ask?! Almost everyone was taken. My four other backups had been asked already. I was SOL and not happy about it.

   Until…

   I had choir with a girl named D who was a year below me. She and I stood next to each other in class and she told me about her  life while I nodded and listened along. One good thing about our friendship was that she had an older brother, who will be referred to as G, that was a Junior. I didn’t know him very well but had French with him on B days. Due to the fact our high school consisted of barely over 400 students, it was kind of difficult to not know at least five facts about someone. This is what I knew about G:

1. He's very, very tall
2. He lives on a farm
3. He hangs with the "cool crowd"
4. He's in band
5. He has a good French accent

   And that was about it! I also found him pretty cute but, due to my current semi-permed hair and braces state of appearance, I didn’t see there being much of a chance. D tried for a few days to convince me to ask her brother to Sweetheart. I kept telling her there was no way he’d say yes, that he’d probably already been asked by 27 girls, and that I didn’t even know him that well. Nonetheless, she never gave up. About a week before the dance, she told me she’d get me his locker number and give me his phone number if I grew a pair and asked him to go with me. Nervous but slightly excited, I agreed.

   That next day after school, one of my friends and I scurried to G’s locker in the Junior hallway and decorated it with giant red paper hearts and little notes that said “Will you go to Sweetheart with me?”, signed “anonymous” but with my phone number attached. The plan was that D would tell G to check his locker after basketball practice so he’d see it

   That night I was extremely nervous as I awaited his phone call. Hours went by even after I knew his practice had ended. Had he seen it? Did I put it on the wrong locker? Did he think it was weird and not want to go with some amateur-locker-decorator to the dance? All those thoughts echoed through my head.

   Finally I couldn’t take the anxiety anymore and picked up the phone myself to ask him if he’d seen his locker. Normally I would never, ever, under any circumstances call a boy because my face would get all hot and my hands would sweat and my voice would sound like I was trying to imitate a helium-induced squeal-like pitch. And, not surprisingly, that’s exactly what happened when I called G. This is how our conversation went:

   G: “Hello?”

   Me: “HEY IT’S ANNA I WAS WONDERING IF YOU HAD SEEN YOUR LOCKER AND I JUST WANTED TO TELL YOU IT WAS ME”.

   G: “Oh yeah, I know.”

   Me: “You know? How?”

   G: “D told me.”

   Me: “Oh, gotcha.”

   G: “Yeah.”

   Insert extremely awkward 5-10 second pause…HERE.

   Me: “So you don’t really have to if you don’t want to…”

   G: “No I want to.”

   Me: “Ok…”

   G: “It’s just that this other girl already asked me.”

   Me: “Well you can go with her.”

   G: “No, I’ll go with you. I just don’t know what to tell her.”

   Me (in my head): Well how ‘bout “no” for starters…

   Me: “Oh ok.”

   Insert another pause…here…

   G: “Ok well I’ll tell her you asked me first. Plus I think she asked like four people. So I’ll go with you.”

   Me: “Ok!”

   G: “Ok. Well I gotta go but I’ll see you in French tomorrow.”

   Me: “OKAY BYE!”

   So definitely not the most romantic conversation. I mean, it’s not like I expected him to squeal with delight that I had “chosen” him to be my date and talk about how excited he was. But a little tiny bit of glee would’ve been appreciated. From that point on, I commenced Operation Awkward Anna. I knew the next few weeks would be hell with all the inquiries of “do you like G?” and resulting assumptions of “OMG! You totally have a crush on G!”

   I also started to realize they were kind of right. I don’t know if it was just my mid-teen hormones getting super excited about the slight possibility of a guy liking me or if I subconsciously knew there was some mutual interest. I did know, however, that every time I saw him at school, and I mean every time, my face would turn purple and my heart would start beating abnormally fast and I would scan my location for the nearest possible exit so I didn’t have to talk to him looking like some psycho sweaty purple-faced person. That went on for the entire duration of time before the dance. People would ask me why I even asked G to go with me if I couldn’t even talk to him in public. They reminded me I’d kind of have to talk to him at the dance. Not even that, I’d have to make physical contact with him because, after all, it was a dance.

   Ah, shit.

   I had completely forgotten what had started this whole emotion frenzy. I had to show up with him in front of everyone at school and dance with him?! Not only that, but I’d have to probably spend time with him before the dance because apparently the cool thing to do was go out to dinner together beforehand. Gee whiz.

   Thanks to my friend volunteering my house for me, it was decided that I would host the pre-dance dinner. It would be me, G, my friend that asked J, and J. Wonderful. Let the awkwardness begin!

   The night of the dinner, G called me and asked for directions to my house. For some reason, he said he kind of knew how to get there which was strange to me because I lived in the middle of NOWHERE. Seriously. I could stand out on my porch for hours and the only voice I’d hear was the farmer on the lot below us yelling at his sheep.

   Anyway, G, J, and my friend all showed up and we ate a delicious dinner of Chinese take-out in our little cabin that sits on our property which doubles as my dad’s office. Our main house was so small that we wouldn’t have been able to host our group while still allowing my parents and sibling to inhabit the structure.

   During the course of the meal, we tried at conversation but mainly stuffed our faces with eggrolls and fried rice. This was before I realized shoveling forkfuls of carbohydrates into my mouth with limited breaks for breathing wasn’t the most ladylike behavior. A majority of the conversation consisted of my friend and I laughing about stupid things only 15 year old girls would think were funny and complimenting each other’s liquid eyeliner. About halfway through our feast, G cleared his throat and began the strangest conversation of my life.

   G: “So, uh, this might be a weird question…”

   Me: blank stare.

   G: “But uh, do you have a room in your house, upstairs, with a little tiny door?”

   Me: after exchanging a quizzical look with my friend, “yes…”

   G: “Oh ok,” slight pause. “And uh, do you have a spiral staircase?”

   Me: “Um…yes…”

   G: “Oh ok. I used to live here.”

   That really happened. So it turns out that G and his mom rented my house (before I lived there, obviously) after his parents got divorced. His bedroom was my sister’s room and his favorite place to play was the little attic space that was accessible through the tiny door upstairs. What’s weirder is when we moved in, my sister and I found a little toy tractor up in a grove of pine trees and we figured a cute little boy must’ve lived there at one point and played where we played. And yes, that cute little boy is now my boyfriend of almost five and a half years.

   Since I wasn’t allowed to date until I was 16, G waited for me and we’ve been together ever since. I am so blessed to have been able to spend those trying years with someone so special and I hope there are many more in our future. So many more stories come from those first few months of trying to asses each other that will require more than just one blog post!  But that is the tale of the beginning… 

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