Happily Ever How?

Since announcing the engagement, I've noticed a few questions that I get asked a lot:

1. How did you guys meet?
2. When is the wedding?
3. How did you propose? Did she see it coming?

Well, today, I've got internet access while I'm doing my laundry, and this is as good a time and place as any to put answers to those questions all in one post! Sure, it could be that I want to post something and am drawing a blank on anything else to post, but... I doubt that.... =D

How did you guys meet?

      Actually, it's all Jim and Wendy's fault. Jim and I used to work together out at The Hotel, and formed a pretty solid friendship. When he moved away to live with Wendy, we maintained our friendship by hanging out at least once every few months -- whenever I could get up to their area for a day or three.

      Some time during all of this, Jim and Jynni started talking again, after a long time apart. In May of last year, one of my visits coincided with one of her visits, and I got to meet her and her then-roommate. We exchanged Facebook info and numbers since we got along, and then Jynni and I proceeded to talk as often as possible for almost two months. I fell hard, that's for sure. We were talking before we went to sleep, with me calling to wake her up for her graveyard shift job before I went to sleep, and her calling to wake me up for my swing shift job before she went to sleep.

      Then, I took the plunge. We arranged to both take a vacation and spend the week with Jim and Wendy (her dad and his wife), and began dating at the end of July. After an awesome week together, we both went to our separate homes, knowing we were committing to a long-term, long-distance relationship.

When is the wedding?

      July 19, 2014. When we started planning, she asked if I wanted a July wedding or a December wedding. I said December, and she promptly told me I was wrong. After a logical explanation on her part, we agreed to a Saturday in July, and due to family birthdays/occasions on my side, we decided that the 19th was the best Saturday to have it.

How did you propose? Did she see it coming?

      She didn't see it coming, and I proposed in a wholly nerdy way. I bought the ring almost a month before I went over there, and spent the whole time trying to think of a clever way to do it. We'd both talked about wanting to get married and have a life together before, so I knew that this trip over there would be the perfect time to do it.

      I was hanging out with her while she was smoking (and her daughter was asleep in the house), and she was talking about ideas she had for when we "eventually get married". I excused myself, went back in the house, and got the ring out of my laptop bag before coming back outside to join her. She raised an eyebrow at my quick trip in to the house, and I sat down on the couch (in the carport) in front of her.

      "Jynni, I've been trying to think of how and when to do this for weeks. I want to make it memorable and didn't know how, and realized today that there was no time like the present." Following that line, I got off the couch, got down on one knee in front of her, and pulled the ring out of my pocket. "I can't imagine my life without you and your daughter, and I would love for you to be my companion as we travel through time and space. Will you marry me?"

      Like I said -- pretty nerdy, right? She came close to tearing up and was completely surprised by it, and said yes. I know I'm a spaz for referencing Doctor Who in my proposal, but I got her addicted to the show, and for us... it made sense. Now, we're planning a Doctor Who-influenced wedding, complete with TARDIS blue as our main color.

All of time and space is ours, and I can't think of anyone I'd rather explore it with than her. I love you, Jynni. :)

Would you change things?

I know it's been a while since I was able to blog, and I'll get in to that in another post. Today's post is about the dream I woke from this morning, which is still pretty clear in my mind. It's sort of a dream with time travel -- big surprise there, right?

One of the things that I don't remember is how I time-traveled. It was some wholly ridiculous thing, I'm sure, and I don't remember the TARDIS being involved. I guess dream-Justin isn't Gallifreyan?

This was not involved. Sadface.
(source)

What I do remember is that, somehow, I time-traveled to the early 2000s. Or my mind traveled. Something like that. It was kind of like getting a "Game Over" screen and starting from a way-earlier point. You know what's going to happen, but you're otherwise the same as you were then. I was the physically-awkward teenager that didn't weigh nearly as much as I do now, and was still of the mind that I was too big. The only thing that was different was my mind.

Some parts of the dream were a lot harder than the others. I still feel the emotion that dream-me felt on seeing my Grandpa alive again, and my mom and step-dad happy again. The determination to change some things, but keep some things the same. In the dream, I had resolved to still work at the hotel, so I could meet Jim and eventually Jynni, but I also decided that I wanted to try and get my grandpa and step-dad to quit smoking in hopes of preventing their deaths.

I also remember wanting to fix my education fuck-ups, and actually graduate with my class instead of getting my diploma a year later. Some of the stuff that I wanted to do in the dream is unimportant in the grand scheme of things, and some of it could possibly change my life so much.

The part that really got me thinking was dream-Justin's insistence on working at the hotel so that I could befriend Jim, and eventually meet Jynni. I'm very happy being with her, and even if I could go back and change these things, unimportant and important both, I don't know if things would have worked the same way. Maybe I wouldn't have gotten hired at the hotel, and would've ended up never meeting Jynni, but still having the knowledge of how happy I am with her.

I guess the point of this post is a question: if you could go back and relive your life with knowledge of how events had gone, would you change things? Or would you suffer through the same issues that made you want to change things in the first place?

As for me, I think I'm good with how things are. Sure, I'd love for Jynni and her daughter to be able to meet my grandpa, and for my mom and step-dad to have been able to be together still. But the potential cost is too much. It's not worth maybe sacrificing the love I have now, even if the life I have now isn't my ideal life.