A Valentine's Day Post: My Love Story

Happy Valentine's Day folks, I'm gonna get all lovey dovey with you now...so if you're not into it, don't read on! 


I first met my husband James when we were three.  We went to the same pre-school which may sound weird to you, but for anyone who grew up in a small town, they know that’s not that weird considering there were only a couple pre-schools to choose from. The same was true for elementary schools but thankfully James and I went to different ones.  I doubt I would have been so smitten with his ‘dangerous’ demeanor (below) and badass reputation once I entered Grade 9 had I known him before he hit puberty.

Loaded soda + smoking = cool

 He made his first move at the local legion where we were watching a 'Battle of the Bands' and then he courted me for several months in bushes, parking lots, cemeteries, and coffee shops before finally asking me to be his girlfriend. We “dated” all through high school with a couple dramatic breakups near the end, but the breakups never stuck, and we would end up back together by the end of the week.  People referred to us as ‘the organ’ because we survived as a unit, splitting smokes, bottles of booze, hamburgers… Pretty much everything was collected and brought back for 'the organ' to consume. We were NEVER apart unless our parents forced distance between us, and they did inflict this torture occasionally in the spirit of school work and time with our families... 'groan'. : )

grade 9 semi formal

 He went to France for 3 months on exchange when I was in grade 10 and I cried the whole time. To this day my brothers still make fun of the large box of used tissue that sat beside me most days while I watched romantic movies and listened to Macy Gray's  'I Try' (below) while counting down the days I had left to endure on my calendar.

Macy Gray - I Try

  It was the most heartbroken I have ever been.  He left the day before Valentines Day!  I remember sobbing in history class, sobbing at Sears, and telling my mom that I really didn't think I was going to make it.  It's amazing how long three months feels when you've only been alive for 15 years. When he returned I think it may have been the happiest days of my life thus far, we were sickening.  We would skip class as to not interrupt our loving embrace.

 gross.

  Our romance continued into a dramatic long distance love affair when we lived a whopping 2 hours apart while I was in College moving between St. Catharines and Toronto and James was in university at Guelph.  I was such a crazy bitch in those days.  I blame the birth control pill. 

nice outfits.

 We spent a lot of time on buses for a few years, like an insane amount of time on buses.  Grey hound should name a station after me! When I graduated and moved to Toronto for good, James came with me and commuted to Guelph for his final year of university.  We moved into a basement apartment on Dundas West.  I still remember those first few months of jumping up and down in OUR living room and sleeping in OUR bed!  It was so liberating!  We could finally sleep in the same bed without having to sneak around!  I LOVED that apartment but in retrospect in was a disgusting damp hole in the ground and we slept on a futon mattress on the floor, but in our youth it was perfect.

(hey look, i got off the birth control and stopped driving....)

 We saved up enough money to take a trip to Europe which we had been planning for what felt like an eternity.  We went to France, Italy, and Amsterdam…  It was my first ever trip abroad, so I was amazed and terrified all at the same time.

  We took a train from Paris to Toulon in the south of France to visit the town James stayed in during the only three months we had ever been apart from each other.  When we got off the train in the sunny south I couldn’t believe my eyes.  It was warm and beautiful just as he had described in his letters.  We went straight to the hotel so I could put on the flip flops I had been DYING to put on since the previous summer. The hotel was the most beautiful I had ever seen, Hotel Bonaparte!  He then brought me to the Port on the sea where he had spent hours apon hours writing me those heart wrenching love letters those many years ago.  It was kind of surreal and breathtaking.

  We bought a sandwich, to share of course, from a vendor, and the sandwich was the best thing I had ever tasted!  There were french fries on the sandwich!  I was in heaven….french sticks, cheese AND french fries!  Amazing.  And then he did what I was secretly hoping for. I finished my bite of the most amazing sandwich I had ever eaten, and then I saw the most beautiful ring I had ever seen in real life.  It was perfect, antique, red (my favorite colour) with diamonds and a garnet!  He told me he wanted to spend the rest of his life sharing sandwiches with  me.  I couldn’t have dreamt up a better engagement if I tried.   

The vacation only got better from that point on... 

Morocco

 Vernazza 

 Venice

 Paris

Amsterdam

as did our life together...

 We were married on the farm in 2008 and have been happily married ever since. 

 I love our life together.  Sometimes I still want to jump up and down when I sit back and think of how happy we are in OUR house as a married couple able to sleep in the same bed every night.  It's everything I ever wanted.  

Barcelona

 Going East

 PEI

Thanks for reading my cheesy love story, I figured if I was ever gonna tell it, this would be the most appropriate day.


Love really is all you need,
gag....ya i know, shut up.
Desiree
xo

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