Filtering Life

What is that saying? When life throws you lemons, make lemonade? Let’s just say the stand is open and we are selling drinks a dollar a pop. We walked through the house last night and the second we walked through the front door we smelled….you guessed it….urine. I couldn’t believe it. I had a short frustration cry followed by…what do we do to get out of this. My brother has only recinded on one other contract so he said he would have to call the seller and let them know what was up and then talk to the broker at his reality company, who is also “the big cheese”, owner. The phone calls have been flying back and forth over the last 20 hours. The bottom line is, if they want to, they could sue us because they “did everything we asked them to and now we are backing out.” When my brother talked to the broker, he found a couple of key documents that were supposed to be initialed by us and aprroved by the sellers; and we, nor they, signed them…so that is a major bonus for us. The contract was contingent on the smell being removed and it was not, regardless of the processes they used. Anyway, I signed what I could and it was faxed off today and now we sit and wait on their countermove. I have run the gamet of emotions since yesterday and now I am at rest with it. I think about all that God has brought us through in the last 2 years together and this is just life, it doesn’t make it easy, but these are the things that refine us and teach us about putting things in perspective. I was reading Psalms 84 a few days ago and was reminded of a great truth of God’s character. He talks about providing a home for the sparrow and a place for her to raise her young. If He did these things for a sparrow, how much more will He do for Ryan and I? Ryan is always so calm and assuring in these situations which can tick me off or be a soothing balm. Today, it has been a balm. After praying about it and asking for God’s peace, I feel much better. We only pray that we won’t have to pay a million fees. We can’t look at any more houses until this gets resolved, so the pause button of life has been clicked again. Stay tuned for the exciting outcome…dunt dunt dunnnnnnnn…
Speaking of Ryan. Today marks our two year anniversary of dating. I know you technically don’t celebrate dating anniversaries when you are married, but it will be hard to let June 23 pass us by without going down memory lane. Of course I love going down memory lane at 11:00pm and Ryan feels tortured by my incessant talking, laughing and climbing all over him when he is trying to sleep. I don’t know why, I just come alive late at night. I know deep, deep, DEEP down he finds this endearing. At least he puts up with it and has a good attitude.

Just a reminder, Ryan and I were friends first for about 3 years without the least bit of flirting or romantic thoughts between us. All of a sudden in May, 2004, I started to get butterfly’s when he would walk in a room. I tried to shake it off. I mean, come on, goofy, silly, wicked tall Ryan? It was too weird of a thought that we could ever cross the line of friendship into romance. Anyway, two years ago today we spent the whole day in Charlottesville walking around and flirting. Ryan is NOT a flirter, so I knew there was some mutual vibing going on. I really wanted to see how we would do spending the whole day apart from everyone….would there be sparks….would we be able to talk as easily as we normally did in front of people? It started raining so we ducked into a movie theatre and watched Dodgeball. It took the whole two hours of the movie for us to get the nerve to put our arms next to each other….OUR ARMS…how scandalous! Gotta love that first contact. After that, I am embarrassed to say, we took the scenic route home down the Blue Ridge Parkway and kept pulling over to walk different trails. We were a pathetic display of flirting as we kept pulling on tree branches and dumping leftover rain water on each other, play wrestled, the whole nine yards. The crowning moment is when we both slipped down to the ground. He helped me up and as we stood up we hugged. The hug must have lasted 20-30 seconds. It was intense because that was the first prolonged contact we ever had. Once we let go we just started talking like it never happened…nobody acknowledged it! So funny. Once we got back to my apt. we put “When Harry Met Sally” in (subconscious… friends becoming lovers…..maybe?) By the end of the movie we were officially holding hands. When the credits were rolling I finally got the nerve to face him and said, “Ryan, do we need to talk?” He thought I was about to give him the boot for making a move, so he asked me to go first. I just spilled the beans about having feelings for him but not knowing what to do about it and then he shared that the same thing was happening for him over the previous month. One thing led to another and we kissed. I knew this was the make or break part for friends crossing over. If it was bad or I started laughing, I knew I couldn’t do it. It was just the opposite…it was amazing! That boy can kiss and kiss we did. We logged some serious hours that first night. Within two weeks we told each other we loved each other and that we wanted to get married. I truly believe being friends for those 3 years solidified so much for us. It is so much easier to built romance into friendship, than friendship into romance. Here we are 2 years later, married and having a baby!!!! It is so amazing what 730 days can bring together. I can not imagine living life without him. He is so perfectly suited for me and is my best buddy. There is not a day that goes by that we don’t laugh ourselves silly. So that is our embarrassing confession of how we came to date. It was pretty pathetic and everytime we retell the story to each other we die laughing at how cheesy we were. I know we have all done some juvenile things just to get that one touch or one long look from the one we want….I don’t know if we will ever grow out of it.
Alright, well the baby is doing it’s afternoon dance on my bladder, gotta run.