2,922 Days of Summer

Eight years ago today, Gary Gray gave me a wet willy, kissed me, and demanded that I go out with him. In that order. I cried at the time, but I've been laughing ever since. 

Here's the not-so-short photographical story of one-third of our lifetime. 

Once upon a time, I was sixteen with braces.



I met a young Marky-Mark in the lunch line and it was love at first sight.

For me anyway. He took a little persuading because he was a tough guy.

I fed him...

...sedated him...

...and bought him a pony.

Eventually he realized he couldn't live without me.

We dated...

...and dated...

...and dated some more.

We both finished high school...

...and then it was off to the real world - a.k.a. Community College.

In the real world, if you're on a lake, you're required to have ridiculous nails.

We worked together at Red Lobster - The Unhappiest Place on Earth - and somehow made it out alive, although it did take us several months to recover from the black hole that had replaced both our hearts as a result.



I don't know what to say about this picture, except GOSH Gary's had that shirt for a long time.

Gary moved to Colorado for five months, where without me, he slowly started to lose his mind.

I visited him in hopes of curbing the insanity. He taught me to spin-cast and I caught bigger fish than he did.

After that he took up fly fishing just to spite me.

We climbed a mountain! In jeans for some reason!

Then Gary became a man. You can tell because of the impressive beard.
(Hey, there's that shirt again!)

We wore lots of matching shirts and hair colors.

(OH MY GOSH THE SHIRT!)

We took a whole bunch of pictures that look like this:

And sometimes Gary made me dinner.

 

I guess you could say we were two peas in a pod.

One thing led to another...

...and BAM! Happy Ever After.

We loved each other very much...

...and one day we decided to take that love and pay an exorbitant amount of money for a dog who would eventually chew a hole in our carpet -- and that's not the only place.

He also chewed a hole in our hearts.

We discovered that I can fit inside this duffel bag...

...and now that's where I sleep at night.

THE END.

(This isn't really the end -- I mean, we're not getting a divorce or anything -- it's just...I like saying The End at the end of a story because it's a good way to tell people I'm done talking and that it's okay for them to leave.)