My first month with Matt

Okay, still trying to catch up to the present day, recapping on the month in which I've failed to write. Hey, as Thoreau wrote, "My life is the poem I would have writ, but I could not both live and utter it." i.e. I was too busy living it up to spend time writing about it ;)

So... this is when the whirlwind started that has not yet ended. Actually I guess it started with the CLR race. Then the day after the race, I flew to Seattle to work at a conference at Microsoft. I got to have dinner with my cousin Erica and her husband Todd, which was really nice because I hadn't seen Erica in years and I'd never met Todd before. Todd also was cool enough to take my coworker Cameron and me with him out on his friend's boat on our last night. The weather was perfect and we were out watching people water-ski and I felt lucky, as I do at least once on a work trip despite the long boring hours at registration, that I have the opportunity to travel and experience some cool things. And Matt was sweet and sent some beautiful roses to my hotel room. A few nights we stayed up pretty late talking. I like this guy!

Since this wasn't my event and I'd already bought Michael Franti & Spearhead concert tickets for Joe and me, I got to leave the event a little early and rushed home just in time to meet up with Joe for dinner and the concert, which was great. I love my bro.


And then, since Joe was going out on the town anyhow after the concert, I hopped in the car and headed to Wilsonville to see Matt. Unfortunately Matt works Monday-Saturday so it's much more convenient for me to visit him. He took me to the beach (my fav!)...

Despite being early August, it was pretty chilly and windy. Oregon Coast, what do you expect?

I made my efforts to bond with Zoey... I think she likes me. And Matt likes me too... in fact, we're now in a relationship and I can comfortably call him my boyfriend!

He's got a sweet-tooth like me... luckily he's also active (loves basketball) so hopefully he'll be a good influence there.

Then the next weekend, Matt finally comes back to Bend to see me, although it's short since he works Saturdays. I took him up to Elk Lake, and even though we'd just been running around there two or so weeks before, it is much much colder there now. And he met the parents :-)

Side story: I'd wanted a puppy and had been looking for a lab for a few weeks and my dad found a litter just ready for adoption. I picked out this adorable chocolate female, debated on some names, debated on whether or not I was ready for a new baby especially since I'd just met this awesome guy who lives three hours away... and the day I'm supposed to go pick her up, I have to take Jack to the vet AGAIN and he needs surgery for this cut on his neck that he keeps tearing open, which costs me over $300, which leads me to freak out about getting a puppy and the expense of that in so many ways, which leads to my parents adopting her instead. So... happy ending after all. Except in my checkbook.

So the next time I went up to Wilsonville, Matt had caught puppy fever. Zoey, his darling dachshund, is almost nine and he thinks she gets lonely while he's at work and has wanted a puppy for years. I do a little research online and find a litter of mini dachshund puppies that look just like Zoey (black & tan) just ready for adoption. So we drove out, picked out the calmest one, and rescued her from the flea-invested hole she was living in. And the name Matt picked... Ellie, which was one of my puppy choices.

My poor conehead Jack wouldn't stop scratching his wound. He needed sutures and because it was so high on his neck, the bandage kept slipping. I took him up to Wilsonville to keep an eye on him. He let Ellie cuddle but I think it's only because he couldn't actually turn around very easily to see her.

So in my lovelife, things are going very well. Matt is amazing. No one's perfect, of course, but he's pretty close to being exactly like who I've wanted to meet. He's kind, sweet, funny, easy to be with, chill, smart, quirky, affectionate... and we want the same things in the future... we'll see. Right now I'm trying not to get ahead of myself, even though we have talked about what the next steps would be (when it's the right time in the future), and enjoy where we are. And for the first time, I actually feel really calm about the relationship. Okay, I've still had some freakouts but they've been less extreme. I've been less dramatic, at least internally. I feel really good about this, most of the time, and I know that... if it works out and we're together forever, it'll be awesome and it'll have its challenges and I'm excited to have met him and start that and take it all on. And if it doesn't work out in the forever sense... well it will with someone. So for now, just enjoying the moment...