Ten years ago today, Rob and I started dating. I was 14. We had met the previous August at band camp. Being the control-freak overachiever that I am, I had already selected The College I was going to attend even though I was just starting my freshman year in high school. The first day of band camp, Rob was wearing a t-shirt from The College and so he immediately caught my eye. Not in an OMG, I have to date him way, but in an OMG, he's wearing a t-shirt from The College which I'm a wee bit obsessed with way. (I was an academics-first kind of gal.) During that week of band camp, I discovered one of Rob's best qualities, his humor. That week would have been a total drag except that Rob kept me laughing continuously.

Then the school year began and I busied myself with overachieving. I had no interest in having a boyfriend. I saw Rob every other day in band class, and we were casual friends at best. I don't know how it happened, exactly, but I soon found myself crushing on him a bit. I confided this to my cousin who was one of Rob's closest friends, and he agreed to put in a good word for me. That same day, Rob started dating this girl we'll call Statue of a Bitch. I'm sure she really wasn't a bitch (although she was stiff like a statue) but she was my nemesis and so I'll call her whatever the hell I want.

Once I've decided I want something, I tend to obsess a bit. That is amplified 10x if for some reason I can't HAVE what I want. Rob was the obsession to end all obsessions. I was infatuated with him, and Statue of a Bitch was stiffly standing in the way. Typically I would have given up after about a month, because I'm not a patient person. And I tried to get over him, telling myself I was acting just like those immature girls I always made fun of, telling myself there was no guarantee he'd date me even if Statue of a Bitch weren't in the picture. But a million little things kept me going, all meticulously recorded in my 9th grade diary. Like the time a pencil fell out of my locker and Rob happened to be walking by right at that moment and picked it up for me. ("That's his way of secretly showing he's in love with me!" I told myself.) Like how sometimes we'd walk to class together after band. Like how sometimes I swear he was totally flirting with me. Or maybe it was the dreams I had on a near nightly basis in which Rob and I were kissing and Statue of a Bitch was standing off in the corner crying her eyes out.

I doted on Rob for six months. Everyone in school knew about it. I was "That crazy girl who won't stop gushing about Rob L even though his girlfriend is like, standing right there." Somehow I knew, and so I waited. We were both in the orchestra for The Music Man and so we were together a lot that March, rehearsing with the group sometimes until midnight. And then, suddenly, it happened. After dating Statue of a Bitch for 6 months, he dumped her on Horatio Alger day. (It's okay, she's married now.) And a week later, on The Music Man's opening night, I was Rob's new girlfriend. (Because, you know, in high school, the guy's like, "Will you go out with me?" and the girl's like, "Um, okay" and so then you're like, boyfriend/girlfriend.) Only later did I find out that my cousin had threatened to beat up Rob if he didn't ask me out. To this day I'm not sure if Rob was actually interested in me or just wanted to keep his face intact.

The rest of the story is that we dated throughout high school and our years together at The College, and we've been married for nearly 3 years now. Sometimes I look at him and for a moment I'm transported back to my high school self and I think, "Holy shit! Rob L is in my house! He's like, RIGHT HERE." I'm happy to report that I'm just as smitten today as I was 10 years ago. Rob, thanks for a decade of making me laugh and making my dreams come true. And for being a wuss-ass afraid of being beaten up. Yeah, thanks for that most of all.

If I ever run away and, unlike in the movies, no one exits the scene saying, "I think I know just where to find her," go ahead and take that line for yourself and then proceed directly to Barnes & Noble. I'm telling you now that's where I'll be.

Our local Barnes & Noble bookstore is my holy place. Whenever I have a day off, I indulge myself by spending a few hours there. When I first arrive, I go directly to the Starbucks and order a caramel macchiato. Then I browse and sip my way through the store, wending in and out and around aisles like a monk meditating through a mandala. Perhaps it's just the caffeine kicking in, but I find myself transcending my normal existence. It sounds silly, I know, but as I inhale the incense of new books and drag my finger along the book spines, I experience a calm and clarity of mind. If you've ever practiced yoga, you know that sometimes strong emotion hits you, unpredictably, during a pose. A similar thing happens to me during my reverie. Sometimes I am buoyed up by an exhilarating sense of joy, other times I am burdened with solemnity. It's a mystic experience and so I cannot explain what happens, but I think the wealth of wisdom and possibility contained within the walls both uplifts and overwhelms me. Sometimes I buy nothing, and sometimes I bring home a treasured relic. Always, though, I leave my holy place renewed and in an altered state of mind.

Thanks to Raspberry Dreams, this week's tagline has been improved to better reflect our groundhog-friendly and PETA-approved approach to Grady removal. (If you missed the original tagline for this week, well then perhaps you should consider checking my blog a little more often. I'm just saying.) Obliterate may sound like ultimate destruction, but if you look it up, it doesn't actually mention death. And while leave no trace sounds like there must be an explosion involved, we really just want no trace of Grady on our property. He will most definitely be leaving many a trace out in a field somewhere, because as I've already made quite clear, we do not kill lurking obese groundhogs (infrequent readers, there is your clue). Raspberry Dreams, you are my hero.

First, let me say that despite this week's tagline, we are not going to kill anything. Think of kill in its more mild sense, as in to get rid of. There just isn't a good K word that I can think of for that, and I am NOT going to go the way of krispy kreme and kwik kopy and put a K in front of a C word, such as kapture. That shit just ain't right. (If you can think of a more appropriate K word, then perhaps you should be the one writing the taglines.) So please, no hate mail. I do not advocate killing anything except maybe spiders, and that really is something for which I should repent. Believe me, nobody wants Grady the Groundhog to live a full and happy life more than I do.

So anyway, we've got this groundhog, Grady. And by "we've got" I mean he has chosen to take up residence under our deck. Grady is one fat ass groundhog. And by "fat ass," I mean if Grady and Punxsutawney were in prison, Punx would be Grady's bitch for sure. As groundhoggy-cute as Grady is, we'd really rather he not live under our deck. There are cables under there we fear he may chew. He burrows and we're just not really burrowing-type folks. Plus, the cats get very excited (and by "excited" I mean oddly disturbed) by Grady and fling themselves against the windows whenever he makes an appearance. Fat Ass Grady just really needs to go.

We're currently devising a scheme which will involve a trap, some sort of tempting food item, and a country ride in the back of a pickup truck. Really just a typical weekend night here in Redneck Valley.

To be continued...