Staying up past 9:00: Sarah

My next guest blogger's picture should be in a magazine. She and her husband are stunningly simple and perfect. I love Sarah's blog: My Little Dot. Her stories always make me chuckle. Sarah is always so wonderful to comment on my blog...I feel like I know her from our comment conversations. 

How did you meet?

Working as a hostess in a restaurant involves getting used to a completely different body clock.  While I now find it difficult as a wife and mother at the ripe ol' age of 28 to stay up later than 9:00pm, back when I was 18 I'd stay up until the wee small hours of the morning with the rest of the restaurant workers in the area.  We'd all finish our shifts and head over to the only bar still open at 1:00am, and there we'd all complain about our bosses and drink shots of ridiculous concoctions and feel secure in the knowledge that the "morning shift" didn't start until 10:00am so we were okay to stay and drink until closing.

On one particularly chilly November night, we were in the bar drinking far too much and I took my friend's hat she had left on the table and put it on.  After the usual conversations started to die down and more serious chatter began, we heard these strange sounds coming from across the room: newcomers.  Not only that, but FOREIGN newcomers.  Very strange indeed at such a late hour.  

Drunk as skunks, we noticed three handsome British men drinking pints and talking all...y'know, British.  Wearing a hat of course makes one feel brave and courageous (or it was the drink), and I decided to go for it and seductively pointed and then beckoned the cutest one over with my finger (to be honest, I can't remember this part, but my husband assures me it was "seductive."  Why he uses air-quotes I don't quite understand...).  The littlest one came over and I asked him to buy me a drink; instead, he got me a large pint of water and told me he liked my hat.  I then offensively mocked his accent for the next few hours and we ended up chatting about all sorts on the bench outside as I sobered up with the water and the fresh cold air.  He asked me if I'd like to go out sometime, and although I had had one of the best conversations I'll never remember, I couldn't say yes - at the time I had been going out with someone else for nearly two years.

The night ended and I thought that would be it - just a fuzzy memory of a wonderful conversation with a beautiful British bloke - but for the next few weeks I couldn't stop thinking about him, and also about how horrible my current boyfriend was (long story, but trust me, he deserved to be thrown back).  Christmas was just a few days away and I ended things with my boyfriend, drove to his folks' house to collect the $1500 he had stolen from me (no joke), and made the decision to find that handsome foreigner and see if he was still available.

Of course I hadn't gotten his number, nor he mine, and I only knew his first name.  So I spent the next few weeks going back to the bar at various times to see if I could catch him again.  I left my number with the bartender and hoped and wished for a miracle.

Thankfully, he hadn't given up hope either, and it turned out that he had decided not to give up on me and was spending time visiting the same bar trying to catch me again (of course we always picked opposite days and times...).  Eventually in early January the bartenders put two and two together and gave each of us the other one's phone number, but fate stepped in too, and before we had a chance to phone one another, I walked into the bar as per usual and he was sitting right there.  I walked straight up to him, and we just looked at each other in one of those movie-moments that freeze everything around us and make the moment last a little bit longer than it really does.  And then we both laughed, and made a plan for our first date.

Ten years later, and now we both find it difficult staying up much past 9:00pm...