(Note #1: From now until Valentine's Day I will be chronicling how Mr. Blue Eyes and I met, as well as sharing some personal journal excerpts from the early days/weeks/years of our relationship. WARNING: Journal excerpts will contain large amounts of over-the-top, thick as maple syrup, fresh from the pine tree SAP. I was young and in love and I wrote about it shamelessly. If you are allergic to sap you may want to take a Claritin or just avoid these posts all together. If not, read on or click HERE to see a list of the archived posts.)

(Note #2: Sorry I didn't get anything posted yesterday. It turns out that the world doesn't actually stop turning and my kids don't stop having needs when I'm trying to sit down and write our love story. Reality can be cruel sometimes.)

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I jumped into my car and raced (for me 'raced' mostly likely meant going 5mph over the speed limit) over to my sister's place of employment to show her the note. I was bursting. How did he know where I worked? Why did he happen to be in the parking lot, at my work, on a week day when he lived an hour away? How did he know which car was mine? How did he know that I wanted to call him?

Once again it seemed our paths had randomly crossed.

I waited until evening to call, until after my parents were in bed. This was back in the days when telephones still had cords attaching them to the wall. I needed to wait until I had some privacy and quiet.

Whatever butterflies I may have had in anticipation of making the call were quickly quieted when I heard his voice. I don't know if I can even explain it, the way the sound of his voice affected me... It wasn't just that he was kind and interested in me. There was something about his voice that immediately made me feel like I was...

Home.

(Now we will take a 10 second break for Farmer Gal to fan herself. This is powerful stuff, people.)

We talked for three hours, and I think we would have talked even longer, but he had to go to work. He worked the 11pm-7am night shift at the time. It was just as well, because we needed something to come between us. Even then, even only over the phone, I distinctly remember this feeling of falling... into one another. Becoming lost in one another. From that point forward and into the first year or so of our relationship, had we not had school and jobs and other obligations, I think we would have never been apart.

So, how did he end up in my work parking lot on a week day? (Remember... he slept during the day normally, so it was especially odd that he was even awake at that time, let alone driving by.) A friend from work needed to go to his home town -- about two hours north of where Mr. Blue Eyes lived at the time -- to pick up some furniture and needed an extra hand. As luck would have it, the town I worked in just happened to be on their way, and Mr. Blue Eyes must have heard me mention this -- and what kind of car I drove -- when we met at the casino. He later told me that the doors didn't work on his friend's truck, so he had to jump out, Duke's of Hazard style, to put the note on my car.

We talked about our families, our lives, past relationships, pets... I think we even talked about meeting the summer before and I got a little needling for turning him down. My mistake, maybe, but as our relationship progressed I learned that everything had happened in God's time.

He had plans for the next couple weekends, so it wasn't going to work for us to get together. He said he would call when he was going to be back in town.

And he did.

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Coming up in the next installment... Journal excerpts. Face-to-face meeting. Mr. Blue Eyes and Farmer Gal sitting in a tree pasture. The details are about to get... juicy.