If a man loves me...

...then for our anniversary he provides flowers, chocolate, and cleans the apartment. I didn't have the greatest day in the lab on June 27th this year, I got in trouble for something I didn't do and the rat that I was trying to sacrifice gracefully refused to hand his life to me though he no longer had his head. I ended up getting home late and when I opened the door to our apartment I must have forgotten that it was our anniversary... because when I saw the huge bouquet of roses and a variety of my favorite chocolate on the table, I was shocked. After the initial reaction wore off a little I understood the real reason for my awe. The apartment that I left irritatingly messy was now completely orderly and pleasantly clean. A clean apartment, especially one with flowers and chocolate in it, brings peace to my soul like few other things do. I hugged Zach tighter than was comfortable for him and couldn't stop smiling. "Gosh you know me well," I told him, "you know exactly what makes me happy!" Some women are swept off their feet by diamonds, some by fancy restaurants, but Ukrainians -- by cleaning men.
I got cleaned up as quickly as I could and we drove into Portland to have one of Portland's best (and maybe only) Brazilian restaurants. We had a great dinner there. The man bringing out the meat to or table completely ignored our red "stop bringing us meat"-sign and continued to slice the tender loins, turkey in bacon, and other traditional meats saying "you just gotta have some of this."

When we deemed ourselves well proteinated and received some delicious chocolate-mint sticks, we decided to take a stroll down the waterfront.

Where Zach couldn't resist joining cute, chubby kids running in the fountain. There is an unexplainable joy that comes from running into water that is squirting out of the ground. Zach is not in this picture because he is much faster than the kid and ran out of the frame.

We walked along the river as long as possible before the Target-bought heels started to devour my feet. When we stopped, I couldn't resist taking a few more pictures of Zach before the sunlight rolled to the other side of the world. I don't know what it is, but he looked way more handsome that evening than ever before and I sure hoped that phenomenon would stick around for years to come.

Eventually we tried to take a picture of ourselves with my fixed length lens... and didn't have much success getting both of our faces into the frame.





















Our first anniversary was quite different than I expected. People always say that the first year of marriage is the most difficult, so I anticipated feeling triumphant at this landmark. In reality I just wondered how anyone would choose not to get married -- it was hands down the best year of my life.










At the end of our evening, we went to my parents' house to drop off the car that they let us use for our date. My mom congratulated Zach on surviving a year with me and gave us two giant grapefruits as a gift.