My husband and I met in New York City during the blizzard of 1996. He lived in a haunted Victorian Mansion, with a billiards table in the basement, taxidermy birds, fox and a giant elk, antique furniture piled on top of each other, grand pianos, giant ceramic demons hanging from trees, and feathered Indians made of stone. It was so different from the conservative Chelsea apartment I shared with my aunt.

One afternoon, he and I walked from the haunted Victorian Mansion to the Staten Island Ferry bound for Manhattan. He stopped me, and bent to pick up a black plastic Batman ring on the ground. Then, he took my left hand and slipped the toy on my ring finger. Realizing what he’d just done, we both became nervous. Just then a strong gust of river wind hit us. It blew for about half an hour’s worth of our walk. The Winding Wind, we called it later. The Lenape native tribe called the island, “Sandy Shores and Haunted Forests.” I like to think we were cosmically married by the island ghosts that afternoon.

Eight months after we met, we got officially married on a mountaintop overlooking Lake Tahoe in Nevada.

We lived in New York City for a couple of years, while visiting his family in Maine during the holidays and summer seasons. Here we are on the picture above, hiking up Mt. Washington in New Hampshire, the tallest peak on the Appalachian trail (8,000 or so feet elevation). It is also known to have the fastest wind speed ever recorded in history.

After that summer, we headed West to California. Together my husband and I run our internet home business and continue pursuing various creative interests.

After 8 years of being married, we decided to have our first child. We are very excited about becoming a family, although also happy that we have spent a great deal of time enjoying life as a married couple, before jumping into the new challenges and rewards of parenthood.