Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Who is Sweet Pea?

Even if nobody reads my blog at least it will be a diary for me to document milestones in my journey of weight loss.

So, I thought it appropriate that I introduce myself and explain who "Sweet Pea" is. It's probably obvious that I am Sweet Pea. How did I become Sweet Pea? Well, that brings me to the picture posted here (left). That's me....in the midddle, April of 1985. The three of us in the pic were celebrating birthdays at a party a mutual friend threw for us all. For me it was my 16th birthday. That also happened to be the night that I met my now husband, Rick. He and I dated for 2 years back then and he is the one that first called me Sweet Pea. He came to the party that cold, wet April night with a friend of mine. We met and I would like to say the rest is history....but it didn't work out that way.


If you don't want to hear a love story then you might want to skip this paragraph....fair warning to you! He was soon to be 18 the night we met and I thought he was cute but since he was not from around here (small, country town where I was born and raised)...he was a city boy and he was older, I didn't think much about him other than he was cute and polite. Well the next few days/weeks that followed he stuck around and stayed with our mutual friend (the guy that brought Rick to the party). We got to know each other and about a month after that night we met we started dating. One problem though......he was leaving in a month for Basic Training (Army). Turns out he had enlisted just a few days before meeting me at my birthday party. So, he and I were inseperable for the next month. He was at my house as often as he could be. He made me laugh....ALL the time! He treated me differently than other guys had. I was hooked! And let me tell you that when he left for Basic Training I was not a happy camper! We wrote letters and got to know each other even better while he was gone. When he was on leave after Basic Training we again were inseperable. When he was home on leave in December that year (we'd been dating about 6 months) his Christmas gift to me was a beautiful First Promise Ring. (I later found out that weeks earlier he had written a letter to my dad asking permission to give me the ring and telling my dad how he felt about me). Everytime I had to say goodbye to him I was miserable. He eventually was stationed at Fort Collins, Colorado Springs, CO and for my senior trip my parent's took me to CO to see him. I'm pretty sure they knew that I thought he was THE ONE for me. (Below is a picture of Rick and I saying goodbye when I visited him in CO)

In February of 1987, after a month of having him on leave, he was set to go to Germany for TWO YEARS! (BELOW picture is he and I at the Indianpolis International Airport on the day he left gor Germany. Can you tell that neither one of us was happy?) This is not a great picture I realize that but it's the only picture I have of that day! It was a gut wrenching day for both of us. Little did we know that our lives would never be the same.


While he was in Germany, I was finishing up my Senior year of High School and preparing for college. Rick and I had talked many times about getting married, me coming to Germany when I graduated H.S., etc. but of course back home I was hearing "you are so young, you don't know what you want, you don't need to be tied down, give yourself some time, blah, blah, blah!!!" I was very confused during this time of my life and to further complicate things, Rick and I could only communicate via snail mail (yeah, can you believe it....there was no Internet or email back then!) He couldn't even call me on the phone!!!! So I went to college thinking that I needed to make sure that he was THE ONE. I wrote him a letter and told him that I felt we should date around just to be sure.....interesting note here....I would find out years later that the same day that he received my letter in Germany, he had written me a letter asking me to marry him!


I felt horrible sending him a "Dear John" letter but again I was so confused! So without boring you and going into all of the boring details now, we broke up, I dated a couple of guys in college and after dating my former husb for 2 years we were married. We were never happy. I think that we both settled and that's another long story that I won't even start on. Anyway, he and I were married for 17 years before we divorced.

I think I've went on long enough for tonight. I'll have to finish more later on how this story ends up....LOL. But just for a preview check out the picture posted below. That's Rick and I on our wedding day, June 7, 2008!

2 comments:

  1. Well you cant just quit like that! Its like a cliff hanger. Amazing story though! I am glad you finally found true happiness.

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  2. Yeah, I was getting really into the story. . . you need to FINISH it now! Hop to it! Nothing like a demanding blog reader, huh? I will stay tuned for the rest of the story :)

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