When will a shoe drop?

Craig and I spent several days together at The Garden. We entertained for the first time, had our second date to an outdoor Singer/Songwriter Festival in Hendersonville, picked out colors for redecorating he was already planning to do, gone shopping in Lowe’s and Harbor Freight and have thoroughly enjoyed the simplicity of spending time together. I continue to enjoying cooking.

This was a pretty inspired brunch on Sunday – vegetable has with eggs over easy and homemade cornbread from masa. Fortunately, he is easy to impress and please with food.

Among his skills is the ability to arrange and maintaining fresh flowers.

I got to see the cows in the pasture for the first time Saturday night as we returned from the outdoor festival.

Today Craig went with me to Tools for Schools and really enjoyed meeting the other volunteers and getting started working on a project.

What’s the next thing to pressure test a new relationship? How about a car trip to Iowa for a family wedding. We will be gone a week. We will drive by the farm and visit the towns I grew up in and perhaps drive up to Luther College. He will get a good idea of the environment that shaped me.

I look forward to visiting people and places important to Craig. I had the opportunity to have a lovely conversation with one of Craig’s ex-wives They have remained close friends and Craig encouraged me to call her. Their friendship has been an issue for other women he has dated. She also offered to talk to me . I was not really concerned about their friendship, but thought it might be helpful to validate my own observations with someone who had know Craig much longer than I have. We had a lovely 60 minute conversation – some of which was about Craig. We connected as independent, free-spirited women. I particularly appreciated the fact that she took time away from her career as a therapist to be a long-haul 18 wheel driver for a period of time.

While I am sure there will be bumps in our relationship with more time, I am not going to look for other opportunities to pressure test it. I will relax and let the relationship continue to evolve in the easy manner it has thus far.