Things started as they tend to in this modern world: with a meme.
It amused me.
From: ifunny.co
I’d been doomscrolling facebook, as one does. Amused, I reposted it, and moved on with doomscrolling. Little did I know, that action would change the course of my life: I was now destined to become a dog dad.
Later that evening, I received a facebook message notification from a coworker. We’d been acquaintences for a number of years. Our two development teams tended to overlap on major projects. We’d worked a couple company recruitment events together, we both occasionally went to a mutual friend’s movie night, and we often crossed paths playing Pokemon Go in the community.
The next day being Valentines day, I dug out my favorite valentine image. (CW: anatomical hearts and kittens)
So how does one adult indicate interest in exploring a relationship with another adult? Clearly, through interpretive ducks, legos, and pokemon.
Things naturally escalated from there to petty theft. As it was told on our theknot page:
Our story starts with Derek stealing Elizabeth’s smoothie. A few of us were walking up to third floor at work to get a beverage from the coffee shop and Elizabeth was talking up their smoothies. She was so needing a strawberry mango smoothie that day. When they got there, Elizabeth let Derek cut in line ahead of her. He orders a peach smoothie. Elizabeth’s turn! She orders her drink. They’re out of yogurt to make anymore smoothies!! It couldn’t have been timed any better. Derek was just taking his first suck on the straw and realizing the magic of the smoothie to simultaneously see Elizabeth semi- fake death glaring him and saying “You…”. The barista felt so bad, she gave Elizabeth a Dixie cup of what didn’t fit in Derek’s cup. And that’s the story of how Elizabeth discovered their frozen lemonade was actually pretty tasty. This ended up being the initial foundation of our relationship including how Derek asked Elizabeth for a date… sort of? (See image 1 about smoothie science)
Of course, the next smoothie attempt turned out to be in the middle of a blizzard and the smoothie place was closed - so we had a burger date instead, because the burger place wasn’t. But it went well. And we started messaging more, hanging out, navigating some tough things together. And then made the dating relationship status official by annoying all our friends:
From there it lead to only more debauchery including a wonderful April Fools joke about us breaking up. Several people called us on it, but we managed to redirect them into believing it was real.
From then on it was facebook official, which is as official as you can get. facebook told me so.
And then when I finally did corner her in the woods:
Me: You’re a catch.
She: You’re so full of shit -
Me: drops to one knee
I wanted her to pick out her own ring, so I used a substitute.
It was right before COVID-19 times, so by the time we picked a date and figured out a plan, we wound up holding the ceremony and reception in a tent in our backyard because no where else had capacity with the distancing restrictions.
Testing the lighting setup.
And of course, what else to do as we walk from the altar?
Thumbs up, of course.
Courtesy: Schrage Photography
One of you once used the term ’there’s a lid for every pot’ while we were discussing stories and it stuck with me. I’m not sure if I’m the lid or the pot here, but depending on how you want to interpret the metaphor I’m sure we both have moments of embodying both lid and pot vibes. We click in a way that I never expected to experience - and I’m thankful every day for it.
We joined our houses and together found we were parents to six cats. Three have passed from old age (18+ years is a solid run and they had a fantastic retirement home in the countryside) and two more have come into our lives as rescues. These are not dogs, however, and neither of us had ever had a dog - never considered being a dog parent.
So when we walked into the pet store to pet a dog, we did not expect to leave with a dog.
Yet we left with Bandit, a “miniature husky”.
Criminally adorable
We owned nothing for dog parenting, so we immediately went to Sam’s Club. But we also couldn’t leave him alone in the car. We’re pretty sure everyone thought we had a toy.
He used it as a bed for ages, and eventually used it as chew practice.
![A Slack conversation. Derek writes at 11:15 AM in third person: 'He's getting some [fire emojis] ready and preening feathers nervously, trying to figure out what's a good time to ask and the best way to not [explosion] a friendship if she says no... oh my he's just a foxy little mess inside. He's probably overthinking it, he's kind of a birdbrain at times. So now it seems that this dude in red appeared sitting just off his shoulder chanting doooo iiiiit like his life is a cartoon.' The message includes a photo of rubber ducks and small toy figures. Elizabeth replies at 11:26 AM: 'Well I see he's crept quite a bit closer. That's a good thing. I think he should listen to his new cartoon life character and take a chance.'](scaredy-fox.png)
