Thankful

Or, "The Story of How2 and A."

I feel like, being Thanksgiving, I should post the obligatory "What I'm thankful for" post. I was thankful for the little jelly bean growing inside of me last year, and I'm thankful for the incredible little person she became and is becoming. I'm thankful for the person she made me grow up and become. That's probably what I'm most thankful for. But you know I love my kid. So I'm going to discuss someone to whom I've promised I would keep his exposure in this blog to a minimum -- I'm thankful for the love of my life, my best friend, my baby daddy. I'm thankful for my husband, A.

It's been years since we first met, working together at Old Navy. He was a supervisor for the shipment/stocking team. I was a cash register peon. I wouldn't call it love at first sight. Like I've discussed before, I kind of thought he was an asshole. He was cocky, arrogant, and because he was pretty much the only desirable guy on staff, had full pick of the Old Navy litter. And he knew it. It was only a half-joke when people would joke about which member of staff was his flavor of the week. I was warned about him, and I knew his type. I wasn't amused by it and despite his flirting (and despite my huge crush on him, which developed pretty quickly), I refused to be another notch in the Old Navy belt. We could be friends, but I would never let it go beyond that.

One day we were having a discussion about hugging. I'm not a hugger. I come from a long line of non-huggers. I told him this, and he found it bizarre. And knowing him, I kept talking about how much I hated it, just hoping he would hug me because he's an asshole like that. He hugged me. I swooned inside, but put on an incredible act of "Oh my God, you're such a dick! Get off of me, GROSS!"

A. and I could have bypassed over a year of pained concealed crushing if he would have gathered the balls to ask me out two days before he first tried. I was sitting in the breakroom one day and he came up to start conversation. He asked, "So what are you doing this weekend?" We were friends, good friends, and so I told him about this date I had with a guy from school who'd asked me out. "I don't really know where it's going, or if I like him," I told A.

Truth be told, had I answered that question differently, A. was going to ask me out on a date to a concert. And truth be told, if he had asked, I would have said yes and bailed on the other guy. But he didn't, and I wound up dating the "other guy" for a little over a year, while A. went through a string of girls that I found to be less than what I felt he really deserved. I hated his girlfriends, and I hated that he was wasting his time.

A. eventually quit Old Navy, and I did not too long after he did. We fell out of touch until I ran into him at a strip club a few months later. I was there with the "other guy" and my (female) friend J., and we were drunkenly stumbling to a bathroom when I ran into him and a bunch of his friends. According to A., we hugged, and his date for the evening flipped out on him later that night, telling him, "Well, it's obvious you're in love with her." I unfortunately don't remember any of this, I only remember trying to keep track of J. in the crowd because she's a whole 4'11.

Our first date, we went to see Borat and had dinner at IHOP. At the end of the date, he awkwardly asked me out on another date, to be his +1 at his cousin's wedding, and I happily obliged. We kissed in the front seat of his car. A. is the only guy I have ever kissed on the first date.

We'd been officially dating six months when I got pregnant with Punky. By then he'd already drunkenly proposed to me several times, but no ring and no sober proposal meant that it wasn't official. But while I was scared shitless when I saw that positive pregnancy test on the bathroom counter, I was never worried about us. When we were friends, I never considered A. to be anything but. But when we began dating, I knew it was something big. I don't know if I knew this to be "IT", but I knew it was bigger than anything I could comprehend. And it has been.

We got married after dating 11 months in a quickie Vegas wedding, and I've never looked back. I have my match in A. He can be an asshole -- I have no qualms admitting it, and he knows he is, too. He's an asshole. But I'm no shrinking violet, either, and somehow it works for us. All our individual bullshit that people couldn't stand, somehow we have inherent immunity to it from the other. It's like two piranhas in a tank. We don't go after each other with our "assholishness" -- we somehow cancel each other out. But put us in a united front against or toward something, and we're unstoppable.

He's my best friend. I don't know what I'd do without him hugging me at the end of a really rough day (now he hugs me just because, not because I challenge him), or patiently waiting through my OCD spasms of list-making, late-night bathroom scrubbings and constant rituals. He lets me be me. I let him be him. And somewhere in this process, we find each other in this strange chemistry that would probably destroy other couples, but somehow we thrive on.

He's an incredible father and I couldn't imagine raising Punky without him. He adores her. I see him every minute I look at her. His eyes, his smile, his attitude, his laugh. She is him. Being Punky's parents has been the greatest collaboration we've ever had, and she is such an awesome little person. I have had a hand in it, but so much of it is A. I see so much of him in her.

So that's what I'm thankful for. I'm thankful that despite my age, I managed to find my match. I'm thankful I have someone to curl up with in bed, someone to push out of bed and who doesn't complain that I steal covers. Someone to make fun of my driving, to bring me cookie dough and Mountain Dew, and someone who gets me. I get him, too. And I will always be thankful for that.