My apologies for not updating the blog recently. I wanted everyone to see the entry on Ireland. I have spent the majority of the Summer working both of my jobs at the hospital. I have my full-time job as the administrative assistant to the newly promoted Assistant Vice President of Support Services, Robert White.
On some evenings and Saturdays I am a patient care observer in the Emergency Room Psychiatric area. There are four rooms in the Emergency Department designed for people who come in with the express reason of mental illness, alcohol and drug abuse. These patients are a high risk population for hurting themselves and possibly others. For this reason, these designated rooms have video cameras in them. My job is to observe the patients and write down in their medical records what they are doing every 15 minutes and to alert the nurses and doctors of any issues that these patients may be having as the nurses and doctors are not able to be in all rooms at all times. Often times there are many interesting happenings. At the hospital behavioral issues are called "Code Green". I have a panic button for when patients become seriously problematic. When a patient's alcohol level is .53 (when the legal limit is .08) they do not always behave nicely. I looked up alcohol levels and anything over .40 can result in death. I have only had to push the button twice, and it was on the same guy. Our psych patients are usually females and our drug and alcohol patients male. So, just working the Summer away.
Recently, I have found several friends from my time out West that I have not been in contact with for years. The way that I have found them is through a site called Facebook. Many of my newly found friends have asked me about how I met Paul and we ended up engaged.
So, here is our story...
I spent some time on a website called LDSPals.com meeting other Latter-Day Saint singles. One day I found the profile of a man named Paul who was Irish and a professional photographer. Both intrigued me. One, because I am of Irish ancestry and my family is quite proud of it. Two, because I have a degree in Photography and love it. We shared email through the website for a few months, then exchanged personal email addresses. After almost a year of basic emails back and forth, I took the chance and in a quite pushy manner asked Paul more personal questions. Although a bit uncomfortable, Paul answered and I felt like we had gotten to another level in our communication. We started to exchange letters and gifts via the mail (or post as they say in Ireland). He sent me the loveliest gold earrings for Christmas. No man outside of my family had ever purchased something so lovely for me. It made me feel quite special.
We decided to speak to one another on the phone on New Year's Eve. Paul gave me his phone number and I agreed to be the one to call him. I attempted to call seven times. I always got a busy signal. I called the international operator five times and got the same results, "The lines are quite busy, call back another time." I frantically sent an email to Paul explaining what was wrong. I cried my eyes out I felt so bad thinking of him waiting beside the phone wondering if I had mislead him. My heart still hurts to think about it. After many attempts on my part to reach him, he decided to call me on January 1st. He called me and we talked for hours. It was amazing. I had a hard time understanding everything he was saying, but his accent was so attractive! I loved just listening to it.
We found out the myriads of things that we had in common. Our love of our faith. We both made a similar commitment to our religion by serving missions, a very important facet for me. Something that I felt strongly - no couple can be truly yoked without that same level of commitment to religion and faith. A person cannot serve an honorable mission without being forever changed for the good. I wanted, even needed, someone who would understand what I went through, how it affected me, and who would glory in the experience with me. It was the best thing I ever did in my life. I wanted someone who knew that and felt the same way about their experience. We share our love of our missions. We shared the same 'lost' feeling after returning home to 'real' life.
We share other things as well. A love of movies, music, literature, and art/art history. We are movie super-freaks. He loves different facets of movies than I do, but we can talk for hours about them too. He is easy with enjoying movies too. We are not cruel, demanding critics. We don't attend movies to change our lives, we attend for entertainment. I like the visual aspects, the language, the humor, the music. Paul loves the visual aspects too, but focuses on the technical pieces, the history of the movie maker, his talents. We both love the musical group U2. We agree completely that they are one of the best in the world hands down. Paul's knowledge of art and art history impresses and humbles me. I never thought I would find a man who knew and appreciated art in the way that I did. He could stand in an art gallery for hours. I never thought I would find someone who understood why a person would stop and take photos at the oddest moments.
I had never had a serious love relationship before and was terrified of relationships in general. We were speaking to each other upwards of 20-30 hours per week. Thus began a courtship by phone. I think that I may have never ventured into a relationship without this type of stage to become comfortable. My feelings were becoming quite strong. To my relief Paul expressed that he had similar feelings. By March we agreed that we needed to meet one another in person to see if there was any chemistry. You can talk to someone until you are blue in the face, but if you are not attracted to each other anything else would fizzle out. We made the arrangements for him to come to America so we could meet each other and find out.
Paul was worried about our age difference. He is 13 years older than I am. I told him that it didn't matter one whit to me. I told him that men are five years less mature than their age and women are five years more mature than their age, so we really had only three years age difference. I didn't want someone younger. I wanted someone exactly like Paul.
On May 18th I went to the airport to pick him up. I was so nervous I wanted to vomit. I was terrified to my bones. That I would be a disappointment or an ugly ogre that repulsed him. It obviously didn't turn out that way. He came through the security gate and I knew him immediately. We walked towards each other and just held one another. I didn't want to let him go. A cheesy saying, but true, it felt like I was home when I was in his arms. I never felt that way before.
His trip was slated to last three weeks. I took him everywhere. Baltimore, Washington D.C., New York City, Gettysburg, and Ocean City, MD. During our trip to the beach, I was not careful and did not notice when he did not put any sunblock on his legs. He got burned worse than anyone I had ever seen. Second degree burns, sun poisoning, and huge welts full of liquid. I had to take him to the hospital emergency room. He was not able to walk, so his trip was extended another two weeks. As he healed we had more time to spend together, reading, watching TV, and just hanging out together. At the end of the two weeks and it came time for him to leave we were both in tears and really freaked out. We extended his trip one more month. We were able to spend time going to more exciting locales. We enjoyed the King Tut exhibit on an all day jaunt to Philadelphia. Our relationship became more serious as the days passed. We went and bought an engagement ring of Emerald and diamonds. I chose Emerald because Ireland is the Emerald Isle and I wanted something that really represented both of us. On July 1st we went to the Baltimore Inner Harbor. Sitting on a wooden bench where the lights were sparkling on the water he asked me to marry him. It was quite magical. Here is a photo he took right after he asked me.
Paul's three week trip turned into a three month trip. It was amazing.
So, that is the beginning of our story.
