Anniversaries

One year ago today, on June 16, 2012, I began talking to Daisy.

Today, on June 16, 2013, we celebrate our one year "acquaintance anniversary," I suppose it could be called.

Daisy and I have several anniversaries of different sorts, and there is some dispute over a few of them. I maintain that she and I have been a couple since roughly mid-July to mid-August, and we really have been. Yes, our first few months were incredibly rocky and filled with a ton of stops and starts, speed bumps and issues we had to overcome, but I always viewed us as a couple from that time onward, despite not really having a definition as to what our relationship was at the time. While we were together, we didn't make everything official and completely solidified until early October, when we'd already been a couple for more than a month at that point and hadn't called it that.

Daisy was the one good thing, the one shining light that came out of my hellish summer last year, when it seemed like absolutely everything else was crumbling down around me. She stuck with me through it all; she supported me, she did her best to take care of me (even though she didn't have to) and she was my rock. And I loved her. I fell in love with her quickly and deeply, even though I tried to tell myself not to (in order to save myself more emotional battery if it didn't work out).

Now, a year later, we're engaged to be married, and a year from now, that wedding will have already taken place. If I hopped into the Delorean and came to visit myself this time last year to tell me that "Hey, in a year you'll be engaged to this woman and you'll be planning your marriage," I would have been stunned at future-me. Yet, that's what's happening. And really, I couldn't be happier about that. Daisy and I do have our little squabbles and arguments from time to time, but they're always smoothed out quickly and efficiently and we continue to move forward. We are perfect for each other, and I can't put into words how lucky I feel that I have her in my life.

Yet she was still slightly perturbed that I wrote in my last post that, at least this week, I am more excited about seeing Man of Steel than I am about our wedding planning. Can't win 'em all.

Today is also Father's Day, and once again, the cats have gotten me no presents. Little ingrates.

I've barely spoken to my father in twenty years, but my Dad, the man who raised me and who has been with my mother for just as long, will be getting a call this morning before I go to sleep for most of the day. Yes, I've already gotten my dad and Daisy's dad Father's Day presents, and sent them to them a week or two ago, but that's beside the point. I sent my mother $40 worth of coffee for her Keurig machine well before Mother's Day, and yet I still called her on Mother's Day, because (duh), it's the right thing to do to show that you care.

I also didn't realize in my planning last week that if I'd chosen to go see Man of Steel today, the theater would be swamped with people taking their dads out to see it. I am now glad that I am waiting for when Daisy comes down in a few days.

Daisy is planning to book the wedding location on Tuesday, and then come down on Wednesday morning. We'll go see the movie that night, and then she'll leave (at the latest) on Friday morning, since she'll have to work that night. Again, it's a short trip, but this won't be a big deal since she and I will be spending the 4th of July together in Omaha anyway, and probably a few days afterwards as well. I haven't really asked her about how the logistics of that excursion will work out, primarily because I have a pretty open schedule and don't really have anything to do before then but pay a few bills and keep looking for/applying for jobs. When Daisy comes down in a few days, we'll make a short shopping trip together (I want us to go to Dillon's to get some good groceries and the like, for example), but otherwise I really don't even have to leave the house for anything for another two weeks or so, roughly. My money situation is perfectly fine right now, as I've been living primarily on the tax refund money I have, and have been using it for everything. While I do have bills and rent to pay, everything else is relatively negligible -- I haven't needed to put gas in my car for over a month, for example, and barely eat when it's hot (cooking during the summer just makes the top floor of my house that much hotter).

While I'm in Omaha I'm going to try to see if Daisy can recommend a nice, cheap haircutting place. While I love my long hair and thick beard, again, they're not going to help me get a job when it comes to formal interviews, and they're both incredibly, oppressively hot to keep and maintain in the summer months, especially when the average temperature inside my house tends to be about ninety degrees. Normally, I would just cut my hair myself with my clippers, but if I do that, it can't be styled and/or it generally just gets buzzed down pretty short and military-style, which would make me look like a skinhead or cancer patient to any potential employers. That would be bad, as you may have guessed. And, after having the full beard for about four or five months now, it's time to take it off again. I don't like to, I don't want to, but it's necessary to do so in the summer. The bonus that comes with this is that by the time we get married next year, my hair will have grown long again and I will have had time to grow back the beard beforehand. The beard only takes about eight weeks to come back in fully.

Some of you may laugh at that, since you can grow a full beard in a week or two. I can't.

There are some rain and storms slowly moving through the area tonight, and when I say "slowly" I mean really fucking slowly. It's been thundering off in the distance for the past hour or two, and I will occasionally see a small flash of lightning out my back window, but it's coming so slowly that I really want to go outside and yell at the sky for it to hurry up and arrive -- it is so hot in my house, even though it's relatively nice outside, and I desperately want the wind to pick up and the rain to come so that some air will move and my weather allergies will stop trying to kill me via sinus congestion and pressure. I've barely been able to breathe for the past eighteen hours or so because of the storms' slow approach.

Update: it began raining, and rained for five minutes at the most before stopping. It has now dried up and has evaporated off the radar, and my allergies are just as bad as before. The Weather Channel is predicting -- and I couldn't make this up if I wanted to -- "Heavy T-Storms" for tonight's forecast, starting in the evening. It's supposed to storm and only get up into the 80s through Thursday, which makes me happy. But I'll still believe it when I see it.

My spider patrols have been going well; tonight I've only killed one since 11PM or so, and that was up here in the bathroom. I haven't seen a single one downstairs in several hours despite a few trips down there to do laundry (read: wash the sheets that Pete decided to violently-hairball-spew upon). I'm still putting out more traps once daylight hits.

I have a bit of a to-do list over the course of the next two or three days; since Daisy is coming down, I will of course have to do some cleaning of the house, including vacuuming (which I've needed to do anyhow, so meh), I'll have to pay my car insurance bill and the cable bill, and I'll have to take out the trash and put away the laundry.

Update: I just paid my car insurance bill. I told Daisy that it's both awesome and somewhat hilarious that the only thing I ever use my Citi Card for is to pay my car insurance. Yes, I could write a check for it if I wished to -- it's only about half a month's rent -- but eh. I'd rather just pay it and then, if I have to, pay it off in installments with the card.

On that note, I'm going to leave you. I shall keep all of you updated on anything else interesting that happens.