I knew she was the woman for me when she said, "I hate eating ants."

Because of microfracture surgery on Alison's knee, she wasn't working during my grafting this year. So Alison was helping tar my trees to seal the grafts. This also gave us some time to talk several days. One of her comments a couple of weeks ago was quite interesting and comical. We were talking about relationships, dating, marriage, and such, when Alison made this comment. "I don't know if I would have dated you if you had been living with your parents." Some of you may be laughing hysterically now, as I did at the time. Alison asked with a bemused look, "What's so funny about that?" Which is even more comedy, and why we are a good fit. I said, "So you're not sure that you would have dated me if I was living with my parents, but the fact that I was living in a barn with no bathroom and had been for over 3 years was no problem." Alison, "But you were living independently in the barn, it was your barn." Alison eventually moved into the barn with me. I lived there for over 8 years, she lived there for a little over 2. We finally moved into our log house last January.

I think I first knew Alison was the woman for me when she said, "I hate eating ants, they don't taste good." Habitating with Alison is like gold panning for strange and funny statements. She does not spew them constantly, but they're truly notable when she does toss one out. Alison was living in Chapel Hill, NC when we met. Small ants were getting in her apartment and into her cereal. It was too much trouble to pick the tiny ants out and she wasn't going to throw the cereal out. So she just ate the cereal with the ants. She said they made the cereal taste funny. I knew I had discovered the rarest of women. Probably not every man is looking for such qualities as ant eating in their mate. Alison knew I was the man for her when I ate cat food with her. We eat strange things, don't we. Her cat, Oscar, loves canned cat food and we were wondering what made him so nuts over it. So we tried it, and we are still wondering.

We tend not to say please and often don't even ask for somethings. "Get me the scissors." But we say thanks for all kinds of things, big and small. "Thanks for getting the mail." "Thank you for that wrestling match." Our prefered date seems to be the weekly trip to the grocery store. We miss the other when only one of us is able to go. So I tell her I take her on an expensive date every week, she pays. Alison says, not many women could live with me. I know it's not a criticism, just an observation. I like honesty and blunt is just fine. I'm rather bluntly honest. She also says that she likes the parts of me that she tends not to like. Without those parts, there wouldn't be the good parts either. Alison says she realizes she can be hard to live with, but I say it's not a problem for me. We're not naive or looking through rose colored glass, far from it. Manure grows vegetables and flowers quite well, but you do have to put up with a some smell for a bit. We were both married once before, which accentuates our appreciation of each other. Our understanding and acceptance of one another's uniqueness is nice. It's like a chipmunk met a frog and thought that makes sense. You can figure out which one of us is which.