I spent the majority of last night working on a few projects for friends and family, and all of a sudden it was midnight, then three a.m., then an enormous storm at 4 when I thought the house was going to blow away. I may be exhausted and out of it this morning, but now Jamey will be home in less than 48 hours. Always fun to look at the scenario that way.

Part of the reason I was awake so long before going to bed last night was because I started reading through some of the old emails Jamey and I exchanged early on.

If you look closely, you can see the tiny subject text that reads “Continuing.” There are hundreds – if not thousands – of this subject line in my inbox, all sent between Jamey and myself over the course of our relationship.

It’s always mindblowing to us when we think about how many emails alone we exchanged over the first few months of our courtship. I’ve mentioned before that Jamey digitally wooed me; arguably, I also put up a sizable wordfront to pique his interest. Since our relationship started as long-distance, though, email was obviously the best way to go. We could quickly and easily communicate our thoughts to one another, which of course was amplified by the fact that we had (and have) smart phones and can email whenever, wherever we are.

Naturally, we couldn’t read enough about what the other person had to say, so these exchanges went on and on over many months. From time to time I find myself perusing old emails to see just how far we have come since those first impressions were made. It even got to a point in our evenings when Jamey would write me right after work, I’d respond, then hear once more from him before he went to bed. I then had the entire night to craft a fun, witty, and mildly flirty response, which he would then read right before he headed off to work the next morning. It was a system we cherished, and Jamey would call me out when I broke the routine.

It’s funny now to think how much suspense we left each other in at the end of every email. We of course wanted an immediate response from the other, but everything had to be written just so. I suppose this is one of those things I loved about Jamey immediately: he has such a knack for telling a story, and his ability to write it well encouraged our conversations to thrive. I then and still do have so many things I want to learn from him, about him, and with him.

Since then, our email conversations have stalled now that we live together. I’ve even become an early-to-bed practitioner, despite my once late-night owlings.

But when Jamey goes away, Claire tends to play – play in ways that basically involve me procrastinating getting into bed, despite the fact that it’s needed and I was exhausted.

Here’s a line of from Jamey, dated to a Jan. 10, 2010 email. In it, Jamey discusses the history of romantic love – a reasonably easy win for him in the overall line of conversation (I do love me a good history blather…) Still, it’s a thoughtful note and a dash silly, since it followed a brief analyzation of a John Mayer Lyric:

One of my lit professors at Carolina and I used to argue all the time about the history of romantic love. He maintained that it was created with courtly love in the 12th century when the whole chivalric movement began. And he’s right in that there’s no real references to that kind of thing prior to it… But I’d like to think that it isn’t a reasonably modern invention. I’ve often kicked around the idea of writing a book about it. But I’m kinda scared to find out that it is man-made. Lately, though, I’ve been thinking that maybe Dr. Rollinson was right that it’s a good thing. If humanity can essentially create it’s own emotion, complete with physical response (not that, Sinner), then maybe we can improve ourselves further.

A book, eh? You were pulling all the big guns out!

But really, those early revelations were probably key. I of course eat this stuff up, and replied with an even more theoretical pondering that most likely took us on a whole different train of conversation.

No wonder our continuings lasted through hundreds and hundreds of email chains. I might have to write him one before he comes home Thursday, just for old time’s sake.

Then again, don’t these blog posts kind of count?