Martin and Jenna, 2

.... This is the continuation of the story of how Martin and I met and fell madly in love. You can find the first part here.

...Being the impatient person that I am and dying to talk to this hilarious person on the other end of AIM I started getting onto AIM every evening to talk to Martin about everything and anything. He was hilarious. ridiculous. and amazing. I pretty much could have talked to him forever. But I've still never met him. I honestly have no idea what this person looks like, or sounds like, or really is he even actually a boy. It was all very ambiguous at the time. The entire concept of reality goes right out the window when you are getting to know someone over the internet. Are you really getting to know them at all? Is this even real life? I was very confused and there were a lot of unresolved questions....obviously.

So, when after months of this confusion, Martin invited me to go moonlight bowling with a bunch of his friends while he was home for winter break I jumped at the opportunity. And then I started picturing how awesome our relationship would be. And how we would obviously immediately fall madly in love. And also, how cool I would be to be dating a college student. Yeah, I was in high school.....superficial....no way!

Finally, Saturday, the day of the bowling arrived. Martin was going to pick me up at 9 or 9:30 - sometime around there. Bowling was from 10 to 1. I suppose, since this is the person I ended up marrying, I should remember every detail of that night. And I should have some sort of long winded story about getting ready and what I wore. But I honestly don't remember that at all. If I had to take a guess I would say I was wearing a white Hanes tshirt with a brown sweater over top. But that's only because I went through a solid two year phase when I thought white tshirts were basically the epitamy of looking cool and casually. Totally sexy, yet so simple. I've since revised those opinions, even though I'll still never knock a white tee. And the brown sweater, well it's been my favorite sweater as long as I can remember. I just wore it last week. Like any good wool sweater, it's only gotten better with time. And it's definitely always been one of my go to looks even though it does absolutely nothing to accentuate a figure (that tends to work in my favor though because I'm slightly lacking in the curves department.)

Anyway. Martin came to pick me up and my mom answered the door......

continued next week.

Martin and Jenna

Although you read the story of Martin and Jenna are madly in love (and have hilarious conversations) on a daily basis, I haven't really ever told the story of Martin and Jenna meet and fall madly in love. And I have decided that yesterday would be the perfect day to begin the telling of that story, unfortunately, I'm a day late.  Bear with me, I'm going to tell it anyway.

Part of me wants to just cut through a few chapters and get right to the wedding (our wedding was amazing) .... but I also love to relive the tingling, ears on fire feeling of being newly in love. And also, I'm long winded, so I'll obviously start at the very beginning.

Here we go...

This story, like most of my stories, starts about five chapters before you would expect. This story starts waaaaay back in 2003! when I was an awkward senior in high school and Martin was a young college stud. This story starts waaaaay back when people used to use AOL instant messenger. Remember those days? Ah, those were the days.

So, here we are in 2003 and I am a senior in high school. My life was fairly consumed with normal senior things and while I wasted a lot of time talking complaining to my best friends (whom were all in relationships) about my single status, I didn't really do anything to change this situation and even if I did have the motivation or the attention span to commit to one crush at a time, I didn't really have the first notion of how to actually make the jump from crush to boyfriend. So...yeah...me...17...single...awkward. And did I mention my two best friends (I'm looking at you Amanda and Caton) were in long term relationships all the time. I guess we can safely add 3rd wheel to my previous list.

 Mildly embarrassing side note: During junior year when Caton started liking the boyfriend whom she was dating my entire senior year they would for obvious reasons spend a lot of time walking together in the hallway between classes. I, because Caton was my best friend and because I have a lot of stories to tell, would spend a lot of time walking with them between classes. From a storyteller's perspective, the best place to tell your story is in the middle of the audience to allow for all listeners to attend to the story with equal raptor. So, this is where I often stood when walking through the hallway telling my stories to Caton and Mike - right in between them. After a few weeks of this Caton actually had to pull me aside and politely ask me to please stop cutting in between her and Mike every single time I saw them because they kind of were dating. Whoops!

When my mom came to me one night and asked me to "get on the computer thing and ask Andy Beach a question" She didn't actually say ask Andy Beach a question there was an actual question in the spot, but 9 years later that has escaped my attention, something about cows or the fair. Andy Beach and I showed cows together at the fair so I can only assume that is what I was asking him about. Possibly show halters??? I said sure, and logged onto AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) to ask Andy said question.

I most likely started the conversation with Andy by getting straight to the point of my question. I don't really remember, but that seems like what I would probably do. However, "he" got me off track with "his" witty banter for some thirty to forty minutes before revealing to me that "he" was not Andy, but his college friend, Martin. (ok, he might have told me who he was somewhere more in the five mark range, but we definitely continued the conversation for a while)

I could have talked to this mysterious person hiding behind Andy's screen name for hours, but eventually he had to go and left giving me his own screen name and telling me to IM him sometime soon.

stay tuned next Wednesday for the continuation....