After finishing her blog posts about our dating story, Robin pleaded with me for weeks to write my version, but I always had an excuse (managing two small businesses is my fallback excuse for everything, but somehow Robin doesn’t give that excuse much merit).
Alas, after so many futile attempts, she apparently gave up because she hasn’t mentioned it for a while. It could have something to do with being busy with moving back to CA, buying and remodeling a condo, all the while growing a baby. Or it could be that she just gave up.
Regardless of the reason, a five hour flight is a great time to document my version (rebuttal) of our story while also appeasing my cute pregnant wife.
It all started for me back in September 2009. I had just finished grad school and moved to Orange County to take a breather before beginning the job search. The first Sunday in the area, I went to Church and noticed this cute, dark curly haired girl welcoming all the new girls to the ward. Since it was my first time in the ward, everyone was new to me, but I distinctly remember noticing Robin that day.
The month of October and most of November were full of a long trip to Mexico followed by an even longer and agonizing bout with kidney stones which basically kept me a prisoner in my bedroom and far away from all the happenings in the ward and world.
Robin was in my same Single Adult FHE group, which met weekly, so I noticed her a few times at different activities. The first time I remember really noticing her as in “I think I really want to get to know this girl”, was at our apt at one activity. The activity was over and she was just hanging out with a few other girls. She went in my roommate’s room to look around. (I call it being nosy, Robin calls it being inquisitive). Afterwards she peeked in my room and saw that I had not yet purchased a bed and was just sleeping on a foam mattress on the ground, to which she scoffed and made some remark about my room being messy. She then went to the bathroom and said we needed to clean our bathroom because it was quite messy. (We had just cleaned it earlier that day in anticipation of this activity at our apt).
I remember thinking, this girl is pretty ballsy and confident to say these things to guys she hardly knows. The interesting thing was that it didn’t come across as annoying to me. I was actually intrigued by her.
That night we were looking at facebook and my roommate found her profile and started reading her posts and comments. We both thought she was quite witty and I remember looking through some of her pictures. I also remember seeing that she was 28, which really surprised me, as I had pegged her as 25 at the oldest. For some odd reason, the fact that she was older made me even more motivated to get to know her.
We saw each other at other functions, but only had words in passing until a few weeks later when we were at another activity at a nursing home. We were there to sing to the patients, but someone forgot to tell them we were coming, so they just put us in the gathering room and had us bust out in Christmas carols. It was awkward and we sounded terrible, but there was only 1 person listening, so I didn’t think too much about it. However, I did notice that Robin, in the middle of one of our songs just walked out. After we had finished our mini-concert, I asked her why she left and she simply said, “I just felt too awkward and couldn’t be there anymore”. I thought it was hilarious that she just left.
Later that night, a few of the people that went to the activity, went out to eat. This night was the first time that I actually learned a lot about Robin, and everything I learned, I liked.
I remember thinking that I really liked the way Robin answered questions and also how she formulated her questions. She was creative, smart, funny, sarcastic, and self-deprecating-all in a good way.
That night I remember thinking that there was something about this girl that made me want to know her better.
From there we proceed to the episode known as the scarf, which Robin documented well in her post. Just to reca: We were all shopping at Old Navy for a Sub for Santa family and she wore this scarf the whole time we were in the store, before putting it back right before we checked out (I didn’t know then, but this is a very common practice for Robin,). My roommate Derek, who by now knew that I could be sweet on this girl, was trying to find opportunities to get us together, so as we left Old Navy he suggested that I ride with Robin back to the house. I readily agreed and we had our first one on one alone time in the brief 10 minute trip. I felt completely at ease and comfortable in her presence.
I was leaving the next day for Christmas in Utah and New Years in Washington, DC. So I felt I had to make some sort of move to at least let her know that I was interested in her before being gone for 3 week. The following day, in the pouring rain, I drove back all the way across town to buy her the scarf. In the note accompanying the scarf, I lied and said I was going back to the store anyway and thought I would buy her the scarf.
I sent her the scarf and left on my travels. I remember receiving her email thanking me for the scarf and reading it a few times, thinking that she was articulate and very talented at expressing her emotions and thoughts.
I was in DC with friends for a week for New Years and thought often about Robin while there, even though I never mentioned anything to anyone about her, since I didn’t want to create this illusion in my head that wasn’t grounded in reality. To be honest, I still didn’t know much about this girl and didn’t even know if she was interested in me, but I was excited to get back to OC and find out. Side note, DC was a blast, but so, so cold, which was another reason to be excited to be back in CA.
After getting back to CA in early January, I made good on my word of “hoping to get to know (Robin) better in the New Year” by asking her out for a date on January 10, which happened to be my dad’s birthday. My brother and his family were in town that day and asked if we had any plans for the weekend, to which Derek replied “Yeah, Cody is going on a date”. Which instantly got my family’s attention, seeing as most of my family was very concerned that I was approaching 30 and still single and childless.
My plane is getting ready to land and my computer is out of power, so that is where we will leave it for now.
