This is what he gets for buying me a drink

As this March draws to a close I simply must post about an very important anniversary in my life. This week ten years ago, I met Jim Dear on the dance floor of Bar in downtown Nashville. The swing dance craze was sweeping the nation, or at least dusting up Music City, and we were both there to avail ourselves of some hep-cat moves like the Gap commercial. Him: tall, kind of goofy-cocky in jeans and wing tips. Me: black skirt, short artist chick hair, and bristling with the attitude that any guy I met in a bar had to be a loser.

Jim Dear had a bit of an uphill battle.

That night I drank the drink he offered (I don't remember what it was, in my less sophisticated days I drank a lot of Zima, perish the thought) and we danced a couple of times but that was all the action Jim Dear got that night.

However there we were again the next Friday and the next and the next... After a while I decided he wasn't really a loser, but it took a lot of persistence on his part and a wrong number on Caller ID (that is a whole other story) to get to the point where I actually took his calls. After that we became great friends and then best friends and then boyfriend and girlfriend. When I discovered he shared my passion for making fun of snooty people in trendy coffee shops, I knew he was the One. On an August night more than a year later he proposed on the stage of the historic Belcourt Theater. Obviously I said yes.

Ten years have passed since that night on the dance floor. The bar has actually closed since then. Ten years has brought us our share of good times and tough times. On our way to the hospital to bring Baby Sprout into the world, I told him this is what he gets for buying me a drink back in 1999. But one decade, one mortgage, two busy lives and two kids later I am so happy I danced with him that night. I picked the guy who, after work crap, whiney kid crap and late nights with a baby, still thinks I'm the girl he wants to buy drink for and get lucky with.

I got lucky indeed.