4 Years, Where has the time gone.

Well today is Brittany and I's (I think that's proper english?) 4 years of dating anniversary and my oh my where has the time gone. A lot has happened in those 4 years. I thought I would outline some of the things that have changed since then.

When I met Britt she had a boyfriend. Now she has a fiancee’, me of course. Brittany had short, blonde hair now she has long dark brown hair (oh jet black according to her and her blog, but I like it and tell her that it makes her look exotic). When I met her only one dog ruled our lives, the man-beast, half dog-half human, Toby and now we have 3 dogs, 2 kennels and a partridge in a pear tree.
When I met Brittany she rented a house in Manhattan, KS and now we own a house together.
The infamous apartment where Brittany talked to me all night, the first time we met, (yes LITERALLY all night, in fact I fell asleep standing up and woke up and was scared because I thought she saw me sleeping and would think I was a jerk, thus negating any chance I would ever have with this hot girl, but no, not Brittany, she didn’t skip a beat and kept talking at her usual pace of 234,3234,375 wpm. To this day I have never met anyone who talks as much or as fast as Brittany. In her world, something that can be said in 15 words takes her 143 for some reason. But that’s why we love her)…..ANYWAYS that apartment, the glorious Oread Heights, is gone now in Lawrence and having a hotel built in his place. Something tells me that when we take our 4 sons to Lawrence and I say “Boys, that is where your mother and I first met, won’t have the same affect looking at a hotel as a trashy run down apartment would have.

Of course it wasn’t always hugs and kisses with Brittany and I. Lest we forget our break. Brittany decided she didn’t want to date a young college stallion anymore and thought a break was in order for us. (she says mutual break, I say I was dumped!) I mean what was this girl thinking, she had a 5th year college senior, with little ambition, no career prospects and no job prospects and to top that off she had a job where she worked 60 hours a week and traveled every week and she was going to just throw that away!?!?! Its funny how things work out though, because without that break I don’t think Brittany and I would have ever gotten engaged/married. The true signs of a good relationship are lasting through the tough times. Anyone in the world can do the relationship when it is in its honeymoon phase and things are good. But long lasting relationships, are the ones that persevere through the tough times, and although at the time I hated Brittany for it, I look back and am glad it happened as it let both of us figure out what we wanted to do with our lives, which turned out to be sharing them with each other forever.

Ok, now I feel all sappy and stupid now, see what happens when you are engaged to a Hallmark worker? Everything becomes a greeting card! But back to the stories. Like I was saying it hasn’t been all good times with Britt and I. One of my favorite stories was the webcam/skype idea. Oh man what a doozy this one is. As the 6 of you that read this blog know, Brittany and I did the Lawrence/Manhattan long distance relationship thing pretty well. Well about 3-4 months into dating Brittany being Brittany decided that while yes things were great and good, they could be better. I have always maintained that the thing I love the most about Brittany is also the thing I hate the most about her and that is that she is never content with ANYTHING! We could have the perfect house and the perfect jobs and Brittany would still want us to have more. In a way this is a good thing for me, because I have the tendency like all men to become lazy and this makes me be my best, whether I like it or not. But back to the story (man I have ADD this morning).

So it’s a Sunday night in Lawrence and Brittany and I were finishing up a weekend of fun. Brittany sees an ad in the paper, buy one webcam get one free. She instantly freaks out. “Oh my God Jimmy we have to get these, imagine how fun it will be to see each other everyday while we talk! It will be so much better because we will get to see each other everyday” I go on and on about how retarded this is, as 80% of all of her ideas are. She pushes and pushes and finally I say ok lets do it. We goto Office Max spend our $25 and get 2 webcams. Brittany is all eager to use them and I think the next night we have everything set up and ready to go and start in on the Skype part of our relationship. Well much to my happiness this phase lasted all of about 4.5 days. I notice that as the week is going on that Brittany is becoming agitated easily and annoyed by everything I do. I’ve realized now that sometimes Brittany wants to be mad, just to be mad, because she likes to get mad at me. I think she thinks it’s a sport and if it is she is an All-Star in it. I can sense our relationship quickly leaving the honeymoon phase and entering first fight phase which is the most crucial. 85% of couples do not last past their first fight (yes, I just made that up). So Brittany talks about how this might not be working out, blah blah blah I’m not really paying attention. A day passes and we don’t talk. I go down to Manhattan to visit her and we find that spark again. I am happy and life is good.

Fast forward two weeks and Britt and I are talking about how stupid of an idea the webcams were. Brittany then confesses it. “I was upset because I had to talk to you and do nothing else because you could see me and I think my grades were suffering (meaning Brittany’s first B grade , which is another fun story of us almost breaking up).” Now yes I know what you are thinking as I was thinking the same thing. God forbid you pay attention to your boyfriend while you two are so far apart!!!! She goes on to say that she likes the phone so much better because she is able to “multi-task.” Translation I can do my homework, shop, watch TV, talk to pi-phi’s, pretty much do anything but pay attention to me. I’ve realized that Brittany while a great talker, a good listener she is not. I guess Britt failed to realize that the purpose of the webcam is to be in front of it and actually paying attention to the person you are looking at on the other end.

I sometimes think that when I tell her stuff today instead of listening to what I am saying she is thinking in her head what she is going to say next. Anyways I hope that you guys found that story funny. I probably didn’t tell it right, but its funny that something that Brittany thought would bring us closer like webcams almost broke us up. I laugh about it now of course because I mean who would have thought that by seeing your long-distance girlfriend/boyfriend every day via webcam would be the cause of your relationship ending. I certainly didn’t.