"A blind date??? Seriously? Well, what the hell, why not."

This was my response to a patient of mine when she asked if I wanted to meet her friend.

"I guess it cant be that bad. She DID say that this girl is a fire fighter. Of course, that could go one of two ways though...."

So we met for a first date. I knew she was cool when she answered the door, dressed for a first date in the end of winter wearing flip flops! Now we are talking!

9 months later we ran off in solitude to the snow covered shores of Tahoe and were married, on the beach, in December, surrounded by snow, with our Dog as the ringbearer. No one else. Just us and the girl who married us.

Yeah, we may have lost some family and friends by the decision to elope, but that just speaks to the kind of friends they were. As I see it, My relationship with my wife is Us first, everyone else second. If you cant handle that, we dont want you.

We talked about kids during our dating months but it seemed to become less of a desire after we got married and we continued to enjoy each other. Now 8 years later, we are more close and enthralled with each other than ever before. We look at our other friends that have kids and see the way they look at our lives...More than once we have had admissions from our friends, the parents, saying - "Not that we DONT like our kids, but if we could do it all over again, I dont think we would have them."

We took that to heart.

And as you all know, the benefits of not having kids have outweighed any thoughts of having them - in our eyes. We enjoy significant freedoms and more experiences and fun then any of our other friends can ever enjoy. We are "selfish" (as far as having a family) by definition i suppose and that is just fine with us. Dogs, Motorcycles, classic cars, quads and dune buggies, Rv camping, weekend getaways....and minimal responsibility.

We knew it was RIGHT when the best vacation we ever had was at a Sandals resort in the Caribbean (no kids allowed) and the worst was a carnival cruise to Mexico during spring break....ugh...

So here we are. Madly in love, Spending weekends alone at the cabin up by Tahoe, Heading to the 49ers game tomorrow, staring long into each others eyes, getting tattooed with each others initials (corny, right?)....Ah the bliss.

It is nice to read that others out there feel similar.

Enjoy your quiet evenings, you dinks! I am off to crack open another bottle!