Niffer's Lists

I stumbled into another blog that I'm liking a lot. Actually, it was only because he made a comment on my blog. Of course, since I didn't know who he was, I just HAD to click on his profile to find out why he had the nerve to comment. Just kidding. I love comments. I wish I got more of them. It turns out that he actually follows my blog! Crazy, I know! Anyway, he recently wrote a post that got me thinking about lists and I told him I would write about it.

I happen to think that my list story is pretty damn cool. Of course I also happen to think all my stories are cool, but this tops the list. Excuse the pun.

Long ago I took a step away from the norm and dedicated a whole week to telling the story between my husband and I. Maybe you haven't noticed, but I don't normally talk about anything other than my children.

Anyway, upon reading what I wrote, I was actually astonished that I didn't mention my list. So... here is what happened right before The Beginning.

I had moved out to MD the Fall of 2000 and had a horrible break-up with my then-boyfriend-who-I-once-thought-I-could-marry-but-thank-goodness-that-didn't-actually-happen-shudder. After a year of dating a little I got quite frustrated with the single life. I recall that sometime in the fall of 2001, I called my mom to complain. It was a long conversation filled that centered around the theme of "Woe is me. I'm not going to find someone who matches me here in MD."

My mom's advice? She told me to write a list describing my ideal mate. She told me to write down anything, no matter how stupid, that I wanted in the person I would spend the rest of my life with. She figured that if I could envision him, then he would come to be.

My reaction to my mom's advice? I thought it was the stupidest idea EVER. However, I figured that there might be some benefit to making a list. In the very least, it might clarify in my head what it was I was looking for. So, out came the list. I don't have it in front of me and I'm not even sure I'd share it with the world (hmmm... I'd have to think about that... it might be neat for my children to read what it was their mommy wanted from their daddy), but I would guess that the list had about 60-70 items on it. They ranged from how he handled his money to how he acted around kids.

I wrote the list and I waited. I waited for the man to appear in my life. I waited and waited. Until right before Valentine's Day of 2002, when I had enough waiting. I called up my mom and told her that her list idea was stupid, that I did what she told me to do, and he still isn't in my life. And here I am, stuck alone on Valentine's Day AGAIN.

Her response? She asked me to read the list to her. She said that maybe I forgot something. Huh? How would she know?? It's my damn list!! So I read it to her and sure enough she told me that I left out a very important item, "you forgot to say that he is present in your life."

Again. Stupid. She's crazy. How would that make a difference? But she insisted that I had conjured up this perfect person but said nothing about him actually BEING in my life. Mostly to prove my mom wrong, I took a pencil and wrote in "He is present in my life." I figured that I could always go back and erase it if I ever decided it seemed like a stupid thing to include.

Two days later was Valentine's Day, the "beginning."

We dated long distance for quite some time after that. I firmly believe that when you start a relationship in long-distance mode, it actually accelerates the relationship. We talked on the phone daily, often for hours. Just out of necessity to keep the conversation going, we were forced to talk about the serious topics that don't typically come up in a relationship so soon.

One day we ran out of stuff to talk about and I pulled out my list. One by one, I went down the items and asked him about them. Much to my surprise, he answered every question in a way similar to what I envisioned in my head, with one exception. He could not swing dance. But he did say he was willing to give it a try. Good enough for me.

Later, when I told him about the list, Michael was a wise man. His first reaction was to tell me to go get a pen and ink over the penciled "He is present in my life." He did not want to risk having that line erased.

Since then I've discovered that we love our lists. It was Michael's idea to put together a Treasure Hunt list. I actually have plans to some day write a blog about it but our treasure-hunting has slowed down significantly since the kids came into our lives. In a nutshell, we have a list of items we need to get from places we want to visit. Cowbell from Switzerland. Glass rose from Venice. Tea set from England. You can see some of our pictures here.

We're also wanting to start a list of the traits our ideal retirement location would have. We're hoping to search for places during our travels. It should be fun. Lists are awesome.