Of All the Law Schools In All the World...

Eight and a half years ago (how can that be right??) I had a message on my answering machine in my apartment. Some guy, wanting my help with some law school thing. I called him back.

And that was how it started.

Somehow, after the first date, which came sometime after the law school thing, after the party where we realized we wanted to know each other better, we ended up inseparable. I remember the afternoon I was on the floor in his living room, listening with sharpened ears as he referred to me as his girlfriend on the phone with his mom.

Then it was long distance in Los Angeles, then very long distance in Scotland, then just long distance again in Los Angeles. Then cohabitation, in the cute apartment in the cute LA neighborhood. Our first house, in the bad neighborhood that wasn't as bad as it could have been because it was a cul-de-sac and the gangbangers went elsewhere to make their mischief.

I knew we were meant to be long before he sat with me outside our brand new house, in the park overlooking the lights of the downtown highrises and asked me to marry him.

We've been through job changes and job loss, cross-country moves, career left turns, bought three houses, rented two apartments and a house, taken 2 bar exams, moved twice to cities where we knew almost no one. We've had four cats and two dogs (now down to only 2 cats). In August 2006, we managed to join ourselves together far more permanently than we could have ever believed, and made a baby. We're working on another one of those right now. Basically, we've been through thick and thin (physically and metaphorically). It hasn't always been fun, but it has always been better because we were together. No matter what comes in our lives, we can get through it because we will be together. I have absolute faith in that.

November 13, 2004 is only the halfway point of our story from when we met until now. But in some ways, it was just the beginning.

Four whole years! (Feels like forever.) Love you, sweetie. You were, are and always will be the best thing that's ever happened to me.