Fourteen years ago, a local magazine featured me as one of the ‘Sexiest Singles in Town’. Yep, that happened.

Anyhow, I started writing a relationship column for the same magazine shortly after. You know what that means — the crazies came out of the woodwork.

More jaded than ever, I had absolutely no interest in getting married. Shortly after the column started, I was auctioned off for a date at a black tie charity event.

For some reason that night, several married men hit on me, pushing me even further into the belief of never wanting to get married.

At the end of the night, a man wearing a wedding ring came over and asked me if I was still single. Just as I was about to go off on him, his wife walked up. They wanted to introduce me to their friend. I told them my number was in the book and forgot about it.

Well, their friend called me on Monday morning at my place of employment and I agreed to have dinner with him that Wednesday night. He wanted to pick me up, but I refused, and told me I would meet him at the restaurant. Who did he think he was? He could’ve been an ax murderer for God’s sake.

So, on April 16, I walked into Olive Street Bistro in Shreveport, Louisiana, and there he was– the man I was going to marry wearing an orange, long-sleeved button up sitting at the bar. I knew instantly I was going to marry him, which was unbelievably unnerving, since I never believed in love at first sight.

Less than two months later, I had moved in with Eric into an old, charming 1920’s home in South Highlands in Shreveport. This house had an original black and white bathroom, complete with the vintage tile I am obsessed with. Anyhow, we started to restore the bathroom shortly after I moved in, complete with redoing the cabinets. The last thing that needed to be done was to bleach the floor.

Then, Eric started to ask me when I was going to mop the floor in the bathroom. For those of you that know me even a smidge, I fucking hate being told what to do. I hate it with a vengeance. So, I didn’t mop the floor. This went on for two weeks. Because no man was going to tell me what to do, damnit.

But, finally, I mopped the floor on a Sunday morning, July 27, to be exact (12 years ago today!). That night, I was sitting on the couch and he went to take a shower. When he came out, he put on the Michael Buble song ‘That’s All’, and asked me to dance with him. As we were dancing, he said, ‘I love you’, and I said ‘I love you’ back.

Then, he said, ‘I love you more’, to which I said ‘Prove it’.

He instructed me to go look in the bathroom. Sitting on the black sink was a blue Tiffany’s box. It was my engagement ring.

He proposed to me in the bathroom. He had waited to ask me until the floor was mopped, to signify that we had completed our first of many projects together. We got married less than seven months later (yes, to those that are counting, less than a year after we met) and the couple that introduce us served as a bridesmaid and the best man in our wedding.  I’m also pretty sure he’s not an ax murderer.

So now, this photo has been in every bathroom we’ve ever owned. When we moved into our house we built, we used the same tile in our master bathroom as was in the bathroom he proposed in, except now they are in a chocolate brown, not black.

The first few months we lived in our current house, the photo was out for framing, and something felt ‘off’. When it was finally hung up, he and I looked at each other and said ‘now it feels like home’.