Thursday, September 26, 2013

Re: Kitchen Table #1

It's been a bit since I've blogged, outside of occasional entries for my husband. So, here goes nothing! I fully blame the firefighter wife sisterhood ;-) So, a new weekly format has started, and the lovely Val has encouraged us to give input, as well. My poor fingers were itching to blog again, so here I am.

Topic: How Were You Brought Into the Fire Life?

I met The Boss at a big dinner out with a bunch of friends. It turned out that we had a ton of friends in common, but had never met. He'd seen me online, however, and knew I'd be out that night. As the night wore on, people left, and he continuously shifted seats as the group got smaller, until he was almost directly in front of me. Up until then, he'd taken every chance he had to stare at me. At one point I even asked one of my girlfriends who the dude was staring at me. She laughed it off and said he was probably looking behind me. (Note, there was a blank wall behind me!) So, we finally get to talk a little, but he is a man of few words most of the time. He's very much a still-waters-run-deep kinda guy. It gets late and I live a ways from the restaurant, so I finally decide to leave. He and two others leave too, after all three of them and another friend try to give me "easy" directions back home. I make a few wrong turns, but eventually I get home. I look him up, and drop a quick message to him, because even though he was a bit of a creeper, I was interested in talking to him.

So, we exchange tons of emails, and finally tons of texts. He tries to explain that he has a crazy schedule. I laugh about that one. At this point my son is 3, and I share custody with his dad. I have my full-time work schedule arranged so I'm a stay at home mom when I have Minion. I also go to school nearly full-time (3 classes most semesters), and I am working an under-the-table job to pay off medical bills. Oh, and on top of all of that, when we met I was working back shift (AKA 1800-0600). I was supposed to work it for a week, and wound up on it for 5 or so weeks that time. So, I make it clear to him that whatever crazy schedule he has, it won't faze me. He finally tells me what it is, and is surprised that I roll with it so easily. It's a numbers thing for me, and I'm a numbers kinda girl, so it works. He works each day of the week once, in a three week period, for 24 hours at a time. Got it.

We finally have our first one-on-one date, for lunch at a chain restaurant about halfway between us (we live an hour-plus apart) We meet about noon, and we talk for hours. It's literally almost dinnertime when we finally walk out. He walks me to my car, and I'm wondering in my head if he is scrawny or athletic. We kiss good-bye, which turns into quite the little show on the side of a semi-busy road, in front of the restaurant. He picks me up and moves me against my car, while we kiss. *SWOON* (Yeah, I'm sappy and love a strong man!) That is on Friday. He's available again Sunday, and we have lunch again, with lots of conversation (okay, conversation mostly from me, but by now I've figured out how to get him to talk, at least a little!) and again, making out like teenagers in the parking lot. We start going to most of the weekly Tuesday night dinner meet ups (anytime he isn't on shift) and that becomes date night.

Randomly one night, my dad (whom I lived with after my divorce) lets me know that he's being considered for a large promotion, but if he takes it, he will be moving several states away. I panic, looking for a place to live, knowing that I can't afford anywhere decent that has two bedrooms. I start looking in the area the FF lives, because my son's dad doesn't live too far from there. A friend offers for me to move in with him, and have a duplex arrangement. I'm contemplating it and consult The Boss. He tells me that if I am going to move up here anyhow, it may as well be in with him - he has 2 bedrooms that are utterly unused, save some random swords and purses (definitely a story for another time!) I brush off the offer, but a week later, I accept it. Terrified, I pack Minion and myself up, and we move north to our new home. I'd been dating my FF for less than 4 months.

The first night I stayed in the house totally alone, I'm pretty sure I never really went to sleep. The dog was there, but she's trained to not get on furniture, so she wasn't much help. Over time, it got easier. We live in a very safe area, it was just scary to be alone in a new place. Six-and-a-half months after I moved in, he first verbalized that he loved me. Another month later, he asked me to spend the rest of my life with him. Six months later, I took his last name.

These days, I'm wife, mom, room mom for school, team mom for football, team first aid for football, and I work full time at a job that I once loved but no longer love. We share Google calendars so I'm not constantly counting days to figure out when he is on shift, and so at a glance we know who is where, and when. He works part-time doing paramedic work for a private company in another county. Full-time he is a firefighter and a paramedic with 11-ish years in the career service, and several as a volunteer. I still have my moments, but most days I'm pretty happy being a firefighter's wife, living the firefighter's wife life, and wearing more hats than a hat rack. Forget being a jack-of-all-trades, I'm a Missy-of-all-trades...or at least 10 nights a month I am!