What Happened to That Hot Guy I Bought off the Internet...

Postcard photo of beautiful Mt. Rainier above Yakima, Washington State.

Ever wonder if long distance relationships work out?   What about buying a GUY on the Internet?  What if both only cost $10?  This is the true continuing story of just that!


You have to read "Best Ten Dollars I Ever Spent" in March, to understand how this all came about, because this is part two here!


In my post “The Best Ten Dollars I Ever Spent” you learned I went from a man-hating divorced mom of three sons and a professional career woman, to an IDIOT in love.  Yeah, and smitten with a guy who lived some 1,200 miles away!  


When my two long-time girlfriends, also divorcees (who were single for many, many years) just up and got married within 4 months of each other, it blew my world away. 

My other longtime Gal Pal, Carol on my left.  She kept the ball rolling by getting married four months later!

I had to totally change my thinking.

My sons: David on left, Austin in middle, Brad on  right, me in back. Taken about 1993.

On a whim, I had paid $10 to two Christian singles websites on the Internet, for one month membership each, with the intent purpose of just making a “guy friend” I could talk to by email or phone.    Nothing serious.   Just wanted to add some “spice” to my life.   My female “urge to merge” had long since gone dormant.  (You know the saying, “If you don’t use it, you’ll lose it?”)  Well, mine had been MIA (Missing in Action) for several years!  Nothing “melted my panty hose” anymore. .. until I met HIM.

My hunky guy on LDSSO from Denver

So, when I happened only a week later upon a very handsome, very interesting widower from Denver, Colorado, on “LDS Singles Online” (LDSSO.com), my heart did a flip-flop in short order, quite unexpectedly.  His name was William.   He was a Computer Engineer, had four grown daughters, grandkids even, but he looked and acted very, very young.  In fact, he was HOT.  Yeah, all six-foot-two of him, blue eyed, with big perfect white teeth, full lips and dimples!  He was a tease, but not a skirt chaser.  And he was built like a brick sh_t  house!

"Graywolf"  William in 2001

Most disconcerting of all, was when he sent me photos of him around 21, I recognized him!  For the last 2 years I had been seeing that same face in my DREAMS!   Now, I didn’t know what to think of that.  Was this Fate?

Take away the glasses and this face I had seen in my dreams!

It didn’t help that he was super smart, funny, charming, affectionate and generous, kind and honest.   


 He could really kiss.  (I know, my sons and grandkids are going “Ewwww!!” again here.)


   Plus his (now deceased) wife of 32 years had trained him well, “broken him to the harness,” shall we say. 

   Why he didn’t have a single nasty big wart, hideous crusty mole, a  really annoying habit or a giant horn growing out of his head, I don’t know. 

He was TOO perfect.  And he LIKED ME! (read the first post for details.)

 

  Maybe he liked me because he’d been looking for a replacement wife for four years and was ready to give up.  He told me that the first question he usually asked women on the FIRST date, was “Do you like to cook?”  Sounded pretty desperate to me.   Funny, he didn’t ACT desperate.

 William, alias “Graywolf” from Denver must have also seen the sign on MY forehead that said “sucker for tall guys,” because I sure acted like one around him.  Thus it was that after one horrendous short visit with me in person, in May of that year, 2001, he set himself up quite willingly for a SECOND apocalypse with me, this time in June.

My HOT Internet guy called me almost every night, on “his nickel.”  I lost a lot of sleep – talking/listening to him and dreaming about him all night.  Why was I behaving like this?  I was 56!  Combined with exercising my lardy butt for five months, (and losing a significant portion of ME) and getting very little “shut eye”, I was beginning to look like a white prune, wrinkles everywhere, things trailing along behind me.  It wasn’t pretty.  Still he persisted.

No, I didn't stick my finger in an electrical outlet.  It was windy!

                I lost weight for ME, not him.

As I got skinnier, he began to grow closer emotionally.  One night when he called he announced that he’d broken it off with all other women he’d been communicating with since he met me online.  After picking my fuzzy chin off the floor, I swallowed hard and told him how happy that made me.  Was this really happening to ME?  He already knew I was a “one man woman.”

Austin age 15 at Scout camp 2001

By the middle of May William suggested that he could take vacation time and come out for a longer visit, and maybe we could make plans to do some fun things, at his expense.  


 Like White Water Rafting, camping, hiking, eating out, sightseeing around my area and beyond.    


Gosh, that sounded like more fun than I’d had in ten years!   My son Austin had a week of Scout Camp in late June and would be gone then. 

So, we made plans for “Graywolf William” to come out again around June 22^nd.    

My Austin today,  Isn't he handsome?

 It would be beautiful in WA State then, trees leafed out, flowers blooming, nice temps in the mountains.  I was getting a second chance, after the first fiasco!  I felt like I had won the lottery.

As June warmed itself in the Yakima sun, his plans developed further.   He paid up front for a whole day of White Water Rafting, (including a barbecue) on the Wenatchee River, 100 miles north of Yakima. 


I arranged for us to stay at my girlfriend Nan’s house in Wenatchee, WA, which had 4 bedrooms, so we would be close to the early morning rafting trip and other sights.  

My plans for our week to ten days together (sleeping separately, we’re Mormons) included camping in the Mt. Rainier National forest, hiking around Ohanapecosh campgrounds, visiting amazing Ohme Gardens in Wenatchee,  the Chelan County Museum, the Leavenworth Bavarian Village, and the Applets and Cotlets Factory. (A must see.)  It sounded really exciting!

I realized that I really LOVED this guy, way too late to stop my heart from falling off the cliff.  He had started talking about moving me out to Denver, and helping me and my son Austin get an apartment, and a job there, so I would be closer.  He even paid for my license application to substitute teach in Colorado.  He sent brochures about Denver and surrounding area for me to see.  He started saving money aside for my costs to move!

Wow, a man who puts HIS money where his mouth is.

       It dawned on me what he was really getting at – the possibility of MARRIAGE!    Did I really want to go there?  Apparently my heart had a mind of its own.  My brain said “NO!”  I had a good life in Yakima, a profession and schools that I loved, my friends and my other family were in the state, not far.  But my body and heart said, “YES, YES, YES!”  

 Wait a minute, he had NOT even asked me!  

I didn’t tell ANYBODY about him, except my cousins in Portland where I’d visited recently.  They already knew I was a wack job.   Nobody wants to make a fool of themselves.   I was especially good at doing that.   Time flew; I lost more weight, got a tan walking in the sunshine, and before I knew it there was only a week and a couple days left before he was flying out to me. 

That Wednesday, I got a call from him EARLIER than usual.  He said,  in a strange voice seeming nervous, these quite cryptic words:

 “I just sent you an email.  Please read it and let me know what you think.” 

                           Then he hung up!  

Oh, boy, that didn’t sound good.  He never did anything like that before....  He was probably breaking up with me and canceling plans.   I rushed to my computer and with shaking hands, opened his email. 

   

It read,

  “How about making that vacation together a honeymoon?”  

    

A HONEYMOON!?  

Was he proposing marriage?  Five seconds later I had him on the phone.  The answer was “YES!!”  HIS AND MINE!   

His reasons were solid.  Too much temptation if I was living in Denver for us to get ourselves in trouble morally.  (I know in today’s world that seems stupid, but that’s Mormons for you.)  Then, he told me he LOVED me.     Yeah, THAT melted my panty hose.... 

William in June 2001

But how do you pull off a wedding in only a WEEK?  And out of state?

He’d done research on the State of Oregon and discovered that the only county in all the surrounding states where you could apply for a marriage license BY MAIL happened to be the one just west of Portland! 
Portland was where he could fly in the most expeditiously and where my cousins happened to live, who maybe could be our witnesses.

 

Whew, I was shaking I was so excited!  At the same time I felt I could NOT tell anyone, not even my own sons.   What IF William backed out at the last minute and made me look like an idiot?  (I probably already did, just not publicly.)  Pride held my mouth shut with TWO hands, while Joy pounded my heart with both fists!   ARRGH!

My first phone call was to my cousins, Dr. Bob and Anita, who lived in Portland, Oregon, to ask if they’d be my witnesses.  Graciously, amazingly, they said YES.  (I don’t know what I’d have done if they had said NO.)  They knew I had not known William but a few months, and probably thought I was losing my marbles to marry him so soon! 

 

I can imagine what they said to each other AFTER hanging up that phone:  “Here she goes again, husband number four !”  (At least they didn’t LAUGH hysterically and HANG UP ON ME!)

My cousins "Dr.Bob" and Anita in Portland said they would be our witnesses.

One hurdle down, now the BIGGEST one left - WHO on earth would perform the marriage ceremony for us in OREGON?  I didn’t know a single soul and my cousins didn’t go to church.  I had a LOT of phone calls to make!

  I got the marriage license downloaded on my computer from the Washington County website.  I printed it out, completed my part and I mailed it priority mail to William in Denver.   He had said he would make sure it got to the Washington County courthouse in time for me to pick it up before the wedding.  Now, I STILL had to find someone to marry us!

For TWO DAYS, I called every church, justice of the peace, hospital chaplain, and LDS (Mormon) Bishop I could get a number for, in and around Portland, Oregon.   Nobody was available in JUNE, on that short of a notice!  The LDS Bishops refused to marry us if they didn’t know us personally.  

I sounded like a fool on the phone.  An OLD fool.   It was not looking good for our hastily-made plans.  If I’d been standing, drenched in gasoline, on a burning roof I couldn’t have been more stressed out!   I cried, I laughed, I cried some more.  My fingers were numb from dialing...

   There was only one judge’s office I hadn’t been able to reach. 

Almost in tears, I called the last number, to ask if that judge could do the wedding, knowing the answer already. 

Looking down the Columbia River Gorge from above. Portland was just down river.

 A very nice secretary said “no” that judge couldn’t.... but she "had the number of a retired judge who did!"

  I was ecstatic!!  Would you believe I called him while he was playing racquetball?  Yes, he said he'd perform the ceremony IF we could be at the Portland Rose Garden at 3 p.m. on Friday the 22nd, because he had another wedding there at 4 p.m.!   That worked with our schedules!  

          I had found someone to marry us at last.  I sighed so loudly I think I woke someone in China.

William let me know the next day that he had received the license application form and was sending the hard copy with a check by express mail to Oregon immediately.   If I could pick it up at "such and such time," in Washington County, we could get married as planned on the 22nd.

I don’t think I slept a wink for the next 8 days.   Not only did I have to rush around like a maniac, my mind totally NOT on my work, but also I had to find a DRESS, shoes, AND the ability to keep my BIG mouth SHUT.     Like I said, in case...   I was NOT going to be a fool to an audience.  I was not telling a soul. 

Funny thing was that William DIDN’T tell his daughters or anybody at work, either.  Guess both of us thought it might all fall through.  This was really nuts, and we both knew it.

There was definitely a PLOT afoot to keep me from finding a decent dress at a price I could afford.   What DO you wear to your fourth wedding?   (A bag over your head for sure, YES, but what color dress?)  Probably black  ---  because that was the mood I’d be in if he didn’t get off that plane in Portland!

I found a dress that I hated, but it fit, at least.  (They don’t make pretty dresses in hippo size.)  I figured I could wear it to church whether or not I got hitched.   Found the shoes. (Not the kind any human could walk in without breaking an ankle, but they matched the dress.)   William said he’d wear a suit and a yellow shirt to match the dress.   One more hurdle jumped.

 I think we were both really nervous, but we kept on talking about our wedding plans as IF they were really going to happen. 

  

My cousins.  They had something up their sleeves that fateful day.

My cousins arranged to meet William and me at the airport at Barnes and Noble Bookstore at 1:30 pm Friday afternoon, in three days.  They said to give them a call since they lived close to the airport.  That was cutting it close to our 3 pm wedding time, but it couldn’t be helped.   Still, it felt like SOMETHING surely would go wrong.

The odds of this all working out smoothly were about as good as getting ice cubes in Hell.

Because I felt cheated of a formal marriage proposal by his email proposition, I insisted that William must get down on one knee in the airport and ask me to marry him.   With a very sinister chuckle he said, “Ok, but you are going to be surprised.”   The way he said it, it didn’t sound like I was going to like it.  What was he up to?

Beautiful Multnomah Falls, one of the places we planned to see.

If he’d drawn a ring on my finger with a magic marker and asked me to strip naked in church, I think I would have still been delirious.  I was in LOVE.

The day of our wedding, I left Yakima with my rented car, wearing my calf-length yellow flowered wedding dress, and packing a small suitcase for overnight.  


My son Austin was at Scout Camp already for a week.  William had made reservations at the Holiday Inn at the airport for a Wedding Suite, he assured me at the last minute as he gave me his plane schedule again.   All was set, everything was going smoothly.   SO FAR.  I still had my doubts.

 I only had to find the courthouse in Washington County and pick up the marriage license and make it back to the airport in time to meet William and my two cousins.    I would phone them from the courthouse to let them know all was well.  I just had to drive East back into Portland.   Piece of cake, right?

Thanks to MapQuest I found the courthouse, got the license, called the cousins, and headed back toward the Portland airport in my rented car.  I took a deep breath, told myself everything was going just fine, when I started noticing the traffic getting a little heavy.  Pretty soon I was completely BOGGED down in a TRAFFIC JAM!  All six lanes were blocked.

NOT A TRAFFIC JAM!  I had to meet the airplane, William and my cousins in 30 minutes!

Would my wedding to this gorgeous hunk fall through?

  It was a TWENTY minute drive from where I sat, creeping along in a parade of SLOW cars.   I would NEVER make it.  I imagined William, who had NEVER met my cousins, and them never having seen him,  missing each other at the airport, and ALL of them wondering where in HELL was I?

I started praying for a MIRACLE.  I clenched the steering wheel so hard I think I bent it.  

   Then it happened.   The MIRACLE!

Like a parting of the Red Sea before Moses, the traffic seemed to be disappearing all around me!   I gunned the car forward and I think I vaulted over the entire city of Portland, skyscrapers and all.   I somehow made it to the airport just 15 minutes before William's plane was landing.  Yeah, a 20-minute drive in TEN MINUTES.  I think I vaporized a highway patrolman.    I arrived at the airport and rushed to the rendezvous site.

                   MY COUSINS WERE NOT THERE!  

I looked everywhere around the tiny Barnes and Noble store inside the airport, but NO cousins.  (And the clerk didn’t have any messages for me.)  So I borrowed his phone and called them.  Cousin Bob answered, and asked where I was.

   “HERE," I said, “at the Barnes and Noble Bookstore!”

   “Well, we are standing right in the store by the front.  Where are                        you?”  

   “RIGHT HERE, at the bookstore!” I countered. 

  “Where, inside or out?” Bob asked.

  “I am standing RIGHT by the checkout counter!”  I screeched.  (I only had one nerve left and THIS situation was getting on it!)

   Silence.  (I could hear him breathing.)

   “So am I...”  (More silence.)  I pictured his head whipping around because that’s what MINE was doing.

We were both very frustrated that neither of us could SEE the other.  I kept describing my dress.  He said he was wearing a bright burgundy jacket.  (My cousin is about 6 foot 5, very distinguished-looking, so he’s hard to miss anyway!)   Whirling dervishes could not have spun around as many times as we did, looking around for each other.

Cousins Bob and Anita.  Sorry, the speck on her face was on the paper photo. She's flawless.

Finally it dawned on me.  Could there possibly be TWO SUCH stores at the airport?  My cousins traveled internationally to and from this airport ALL the time.  Wouldn’t they have told me that?  I turned to the clerk and just asked.

                  

                   Turns out, there WERE TWO!

  And they were “miles” apart!    While they rushed to the one where I was, I found out we had ANOTHER even more upsetting problem:

William’s plane was GOING TO BE LATE!  OMG!  "Just KILL me now," I moaned. 

 What if he came in so late that we missed the judge?  I tried to call the judge but got only voice mail, so I left a message that we might be a bit late.   This was more like it – things starting to go terribly WRONG.  That was the story of MY life.

My cousins came flying around the corner just then.   We hugged, and then walked quickly together, catching our breaths, to William’s arrival gate, as I told them the BAD news.

My cousin Bob was unflappable.  He calmly assured me everything would work out.  It was like having a surgeon stoically inform you that your head was missing.  I was in a total PANIC!

We finally arrived at the disembarking gate.  I paced nervously.   Portland, on the Columbia River Gorge, near the Pacific Ocean, is famous for the rain and today was no exception.   My hair was beginning to frizz, the humidity was making my make up greasy and I was HOT.  (Not “hot” as in attractive, either.)   I was melting in the June Portland heat and humidity.  It was horrible.

   William’s plane landed half an hour late. 

 

Like three starving Meerkats waiting for a juicy bug crawling closer, we were trembling with anticipation for his arrival.  (Okay, they were CALM.)   I was a WRECK!

William walked out of the terminal gate... and right into my arms.

William and I at the airport

He looked magnificent!   I was so proud to introduce him to my cousins.  He stood, in all his “hotness” --  with his dark suit, nice tie and yellow shirt; he shook hands and made small talk in his normal relaxed way.  I could tell they approved of my choice.  We scurried over to a vacant waiting room next door where it was less noisy.   William and I posed for a couple quick photos against a dark wall.  Then he did something totally unexpected:

He dropped down on one knee!  He asked NICELY if I would marry him.  Then he whipped out a gorgeous DIAMOND ring, and put it right on my finger!

The big surprise wasn't the nice proposal.....  it was the Millenium Diamond!

My cousins were lucky I didn’t DIE of SHOCK right there in front of them!  Talk about chin burn.  We have it on film!

The hilarious expression on my face and his, when I saw that diamond is preserved forever on paper and digitally.  He could have knocked me over with a feather I was so stunned.   It was one of the happiest moments in my life so far.  While William was hugging me, he whispered, “That was my surprise, now are you sorry?”   I just kissed him!

Don't we look comical?  Yeechhh!

Quickly, we picked up his luggage, made a fast exit from the airport, found my car, and then my COUSINS did something we didn’t expect:

They SPLIT us up!   Wait, I had just gotten engaged, and I hadn't seen William for six weeks!

Anita rode with William in the rental car and Bob ushered me into his luxury “boat” of a car.   I had forgotten William and I didn’t know WHERE the Rose Garden was.  They did.  Not wanting to risk William and me in the rental car getting lost in rush hour traffic, they had a plan and this was it. 

 

Ten minutes later we were at the beautiful Portland Rose Garden, which overlooked the city and the Columbia River gorge.  It was breathtaking.  The judge was waiting, in his black robes at the park entrance, just as planned.  My heart began to pound so hard I was surprised people didn’t turn around to see what the racket was!  William took my hand as we walked down into the amazingly picturesque garden.   I was actually going to get MARRIED!

                The rest is a BLUR. 

I remember vaguely taking my high heels off, walking in stocking feet down the very steep and wet path to a gazebo surrounded by gorgeous roses.  I remember the sun came out and it STOPPED RAINING. 


 I remember Bob giving me away and William putting the wedding band on my finger.  I remember the look of love in his eyes.   I couldn’t tell you a SINGLE word of the wedding ceremony though.  I had been officially engaged for all of half an hour and now I was a BRIDE.   (For the FOURTH time... don’t laugh.  If you don’t get it right the first time, keep on practicing, I say.)

Cousin Bob giving me away to William in the beautiful Rose Garden in Portland

Some curious Japanese tourists and garden visitors snapped photos of us from a polite distance.  Total strangers were standing, staring at us, smiling.  The roses were magnificent in deep pinks, crimson reds, crisp whites and blazing yellows all around us.   It was all over in 15 minutes.

Saying our vows before the Judge. Judge told us that he married his 2nd wife there 12 years prior.  It was his favorite place to perform weddings.

Three months PRIOR I had paid $10 to a singles’ Internet website.   I met William as a result.    That day, on the 22^nd of June 2001, I became his wife in one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen.   A totally NEW phase of my life had just begun.     And I was deliriously happy.

Yes, that was the best TEN DOLLARS I ever spent!

                                                ++++++++++

Married just ten minutes, in the Portland Rose Garden overlooking the city.

The next post is mainly photos of our wedding, and honeymoon. ("Wedding and Honeymoon Photos.")  My sons ALL loved William once they got to know him and so did my two best girlfriends.  

            Sometimes even blooming IDIOTS have a happy ending.  

To go to the last part of this three part story click here:

http://melindatheintrepid.blogspot.com/2011/04/wedding-and-honeymoon-photos.html