Okay, this is kind of long... sorry.
I was a single mom and had been working in a job for about four months when they told me the office was moving. I planned on moving about 30 miles away to keep my job, but my grandma got hit by a car and had to have her hip replaced so I needed to take care of her. I ran into a woman in the bathroom at work who offered me her job, so I transferred departments. Tim was not at work my first few days, but we met about a week later at a neighborhood cleanup our department was doing. I thought he was handsome, but then realized he was married. Darn! We both worked in Seattle, but lived about 30 miles south in Puyallup, which was kind of unusual. We kept running into each other in the grocery stores, at the fair, or other community things. We were friendly at work because we had similar interests and our girls were close in age, so we got along really well even though he was 12 years older. We were good buddies at work.
Several months later, a co-worker got engaged and she was talking to a bunch of us about rings for guys, I looked over to check Tim's and realized he wasn't wearing it. I did a ring check every few days for several weeks, and it never re-appeared. Then his daughter came into work with him one day because she was home sick from school. She was 10 at the time and really liked me, so she spent a lot of time at my desk, and ended up telling me that her mom and dad weren't living together anymore. Tim was really private and quiet about his home life (other than kid stories) so he never said a peep. I felt bad for him. Tim and I started going to lunch together every day, but that was about it. I felt weird bringing up the subject of his separation, so I didn't, which was also kind of awkward. We talked about everything in the world but that.
Meanwhile, I went to a tarot card reading with some friends, just for fun. There was no romance in the cards for me. I joked with the guy about it and he said that I wasn't ready. He said I needed to create a list of exactly what I wanted in a guy. He said that I needed to stop compromising on important things and just focus on what I really wanted. I went home and made my list. The next day, one of my other friends from work, Luis, asked me about the reading. I told him and he wanted to know what was on my list. I read it to him and he said, "Ohmygosh, that list is totally Tim." I realized that it was true, and then Luis started to try to play matchmaker. There were several crazy stories and a lot of funny hijinx that ensued after Luis became involved. It was really crazy. Luis and I knew that Tim had an online dating profile somewhere, so we tried to find him, and I ended up on a dreadful blind date with someone who wasn't Tim. Ugh. I lost hope. I told Luis that I was giving up. He urged me to do something drastic.
I was taking a trip to Barcelona and Italy in late October of 2001. The morning I was leaving, Tim drove me into work. I told him we should get together and go to dinner when I got back. He was totally silent. I just about died. Later that day, another co-worker was supposed to take me to the airport, but she cleverly dumped me back onto Tim because she was also in on the matchmaking efforts. He dropped me off at the airport and gave me a goodbye hug. I spent the ENTIRE flight to Europe trying to figure out his mixed signals. I talked to him and Luis a couple of times when I was in Europe, and they both emailed me. Tim finally told me to call him when I got back. We went to dinner but then he acted like it was just like our regular lunch outings. I went back to work and he acted like he hadn't seen me at all. I was totally confused.
Finally, I invited him over for Thanksgiving. He declined because he was going to have the kids. We went out the next night and had a couple of drinks and then everything came out in the open (our daughters had also been conspiring and Emily told Tim to ask me out). We've been together ever since.
), so we spent a LOT of time together in the gym. i was dating someone, and so was he, but by december of our sr. year, we were hooked. we ended up going to sr. prom together, went to the same college, and that was that. the day he proposed, he drove me back to the gym where we met and asked me there.
