Medium Dawn Felagund of the Fountain

Yesterday, Bobby and I celebrated twenty-one years together. We celebrate the anniversary of when we started dating, not when we married. We were young nerds in love, at the end of our 9th-grade year. I was 14, and he'd recently turned 15. We had been friends for the entire year at our magnet school for math, science, and computer science. (Neither of us went to our home high schools, so we often marvel at how precarious our even meeting was: We both applied, were accepted, and decided to go; we ended up in the same homeroom with identical schedules except that he took PE when I was in band.)

He was the social superior: very liked by everyone and popular in our isolated nerdy class. ("Magnet kids," as we were known, mostly took classes together, since we also tended to be in "gifted and talented" classes in our other academics as well.) I was middling, the kind of girl who doesn't really get noticed but starting to forge my own identity and express myself more freely. Going to a magnet school was a big deal for me in that I wasn't stuck forever with peers who had known me mostly as an awkward nerd who was despised by most other kids and had a slew of humiliating baggage associated with her. It gave me a chance to start over again.

Anyway, in May of 1996, I realized that I had a crush on Bobby--actually, my best friend pointed it out to me, in a note she wrote to me on her graphing calculator, of course, because we were blithely naive of how stereotypical we "magnet kids" could be--but even though we were friends, he was a social class above me, and I didn't think there was any hope of reciprocation. In retrospect, it says something about my self-esteem at the time that I assumed that this person who was my friend, who was never anything but kind to me, would never entertain the possibility of dating me.

So, long story short, said best friend and one of Bobby's friends who found out about my crush orchestrated the two of us dancing together at the last dance of the school year. And we haven't looked back since.

We never actually asked each other out, but one never asked the other to get married either. We just fell into stride with each other, and that's where we've stayed. (On this theme, we've never had "a song"--the thing to have when we were first together--but we do have a poem.) I sometimes tell him that being with him is the same as being alone ... and for an introvert, of course, that is a high compliment.

We're long past the point where I'm supposed to wonder and want other people, right? I truly don't. I told him the other day that if he ever finds someone he prefers to me (he insists he won't), then I'll just live alone, with maybe some animals and a lot of houseplants.

"And a lot of spiders," he added.

Indeed, he knows me. (He asked me to remove a largish jumping spider from the ceiling the other day that I would have totally just kept around and loved like people love cats. I much prefer spiders to cats!)

So yesterday I buzzed out of work pretty early for me and popped into my email just long enough to make sure that the SWG hadn't crashed into the Sun or anything dramatic like that, and then took the evening off from everything. We went to Parker Pie for dinner and shared hot Buffalo wings and a pizza with hot Italian sausage, roasted red peppers, and ricotta cheese. I had a Citizen, and he had two Hill Farmstead beers, so I drove him home (the lush ... I always drive him home! my beer allergy works out really well for him!). We took the Goldens for a walk down River Road--Guinevere is in training as a therapy dog and has homework five nights a week, so Bobby spent half of the walk working with her while Lancelot and I were the distraction--under a watercolor evening sky that was doubled in the river. We returned right as the sun set to sit out on the deck and read until it got too chilly for me to bear. (It is still unseasonably cool.) Then we warmed up in the hillbilly hot tub, saw the first fireflies of the season, and I saw seven satellites (as well as Jupiter being insanely bright right now).

It was a great evening. It's been a great twenty-one years.

Bobby ended up placing fifth in his category today at the Mountain Dew Vertical Challenge. This was a very impressive result (in my admittedly biased opinion!) There were 36 competitors in his category, which was ages 26-35, so he was also competing against guys significantly younger than him. And it is also worth remembering--and it's easy to forget sometimes because he's come so far so fast--that he has only been doing this for four seasons now, and missed part of two of those seasons due to injury. So I am very, very proud of him. :)

( Pictures below the Cut )

As of yesterday, Bobby and I have been together for 18 years.

I have told the story before of how we got together at the ages of 14 (me) and just-barely-15 (him) at a dance at our nerdy math-science magnet school, so I won't repeat it now. Suffice to say that we have been together for well over half of our lives by now with no plans on changing that anytime soon. I am still as crazy about that man as I was the day in ninth grade that my best friend typed on my graphing calculator, "You are in love with Bobby," and I realized that I was (in teenage terms anyway!) indeed in love with Bobby.

I'm going to beg preemptive pardon for the cheesy sentimentality that follows ... I connect with Bobby as I never have with another human. He is both my best friend and the partner I've chosen to make my life with. I never thought I'd want to marry anyone. (I never thought anyone would want to marry me!) I test as 100% introvert, and since I work a job that requires me to be "on" socially for at least a few hours a day (my students don't let me off easily on that either!), then I need a break from people more often than not, and Bobby is the only person who doesn't count in that. I often tell him that he is just as good as being alone, which sounds awful, unless you know what it's like to live in an extremely introverted brain, and then you understand that it's actually the highest compliment I could pay. We are at the point where we often joke that there is a shared brain that floats between us because one of us will think something and the other will say it, or we will speak in unison. He has seen me at my worst and still manages to love me.

Our anniversary was pretty low-key but good all the same. We went to the farmer's market in the morning and for lunch at a local cafe, then had a bunch of errands to run that mostly involved procuring food for various animals. We went to the gym and to pick up our friend's dog, who we were watching yesterday. We both had chores to do in the afternoon, but we had a date that night: We went to a local Asian restaurant that serves great Malaysian food, then to the movies to see Maleficent (don't laugh! we both enjoyed it!), and then for ice cream at that Carroll County standard, Hoffman's. We went home and were supposed to have a firepit, but the wood was still damp from the rains earlier in the week, so the firepit was hella lame! Putting a votive candle in the firepit would have given an equivalent amount of light and warmth! But it was okay because, after our busy day, we were both yawning by then and went to bed pretty early. Bobby also wrote me a beautiful alliterative poem, which he read for me. It was a good day.

I have been meaning for a while to scan in some old photos from high school. Our anniversary was a good excuse to finally do that!

( 18 Years of Bobby and Dawn )

Tomorrow is the presidential election. World, breathe a sigh of relief; our years-long election cycle will again grind to a close. Of course, it will start up again soon enough.

I am not so worried about the presidential election tomorrow. Oh, I am fervently in support of Obama, for a variety of reasons that I'm not going to enumerate here. Tomorrow's a big day here on ol' Maryland, though. Tomorrow, we vote on a ballot measure, Question 6, that if passed, will extend marriage rights to same-sex couples. Anyone who's known me for even a little while knows that this is a HUGE issue for me--yes, so huge that I am willing to overuse HTML markup and abuse caps lock to make my point! I don't follow polls because they tend to get me worked up for no good reason (since I can hardly change their outcome by myself), but I asked Bobby what the prognostication was for Question 6, and he said it's very close.

It's personal and emotional to me because my sister is gay. If Question 6 passes, it won't really change her situation, personally, since her wife is not a U.S. citizen and, therefore, they need federal law to change too in order to be able to live here. (I don't even know that they'd make that choice, but it would be nice for them to actually have a choice.) In terms of our family, then, it's more a symbolic victory than anything, but it does have very real positive consequences for other people I care about, including one of my dearest friends and his husband, who have been in a committed relationship for over 25 years and yet still lack even basic rights as a couple.

From a less personal perspective, I have very mixed feelings. Not about my support for the measure but about the fact that I'm even called upon to support it. I find it deeply, deeply disturbing that people are so quick to accept that a majority can vote upon the rights of a minority. We are all minorities in some way. That makes us all vulnerable to the whims and bigotry of the masses. Even if one supports the measure, why would one support such a precedent?

Of course, there's the religious angle. I'm not Christian. Never have been and am going out on a limb to say that I never will be. I resent being governed by another person's religious beliefs. I don't presume that others should be governed by mine. And the same Christians who are out there screeching to "Vote Against 6! Don't Redefine Marriage!" are the same who bleat about being persecuted. I'm trying very hard to remember that these idiots are still people and to not be hateful right now. *trying trying trying ...*

So tomorrow, I'll of course be watching the presidential outcome, but I'll be right and truly nervous about Question 6.

( Since this is going on longer than I thought ... more stuff below the cut. )

Today is Bobby's and my 15-year anniversary! A half of a lifetime together! Obviously it is not a wedding anniversary; that would put us married at ages 14 and 15. Yikes. However, we've always celebrated the anniversary of the day we got together as our anniversary. Although we have fond memories of our wedding day, it was mostly official/governmental recognition of what we'd known since we were in the 10th grade and caused a stir in our nerdy magnet program when I started wearing a ring on my left hand and we told people that we were engaged.

For our 10th anniversary, I wrote a series of 33 drabbles (f-locked) about how we met and got together. For those who haven't heard the story, it's our 15th anniversary, so I'm going to wax sentimental for a moment.

( A Tale of Nerds in Love )

Friday night, we were supposed to go out to dinner for meryth's birthday and then go see a movie. Unfortunately, shortly after awaking from our Friday afternoon nap, Bobby started feeling poorly. We went out anyway, but he kept getting worse and worse, so we rushed through our dinner and skipped the movie in favor of coming home. By the time we got home, Bobby was feverish and practically convulsing, he was shivering so hard. He bundled up on the couch for an hour, then his fever broke suddenly and he felt much better. He even ate some oatmeal and waffles that I made for him (his request, not mine!).

So since Meryth kind of got the short end of the birthday stick, we will do a birthday dinner for him sometime later.

This weekend, we had planned to go to my parents' house. My parents are currently doing massive construction on their house. They are converting the current garage into a great room and dining room, knocking down the kitchen walls so that it opens onto the great room, and building a new garage. My dad has kept us all updated with frequent emails and pictures, but he's been chomping at the bit to show off his new room, even if it's nowhere near finished! So we went over to spend the weekend; he bribed us with dinner at Basta Pasta. Bobby and I are still near enough to our days as students that free food will still draw us in.

( Not a Very Exciting Weekend, so under the Cut for the Sake of the Flist! )

Before I STFU and stop jabbering, all Feanorian fans out there, check this out! noliel has made a music video about Nerdanel and Feanor; she did all of the drawings herself. It is beautiful and an amazing effort! I downloaded it on Bobby's computer just so that I could see and hear it (since Pengolodh Lord of Gondolin has no sound card.) It was well worth the effort!

I have promised you all a post about my ten-year anniversary and skating show yesterday....

( So Here It Is! )