Sometime after midnight last night Jim (whom I thought was asleep) rolled over in bed and proceeded to kiss me a few dozen times. He then pulled away and said, very smugly, "Twenty."

Twenty? Twenty kisses? Well, I hadn't been counting, but it could have been twenty. I asked him, and he laughed and said "Not kisses." I snuggled up to him, confused and thinking, and then realised. Twenty months. We've been nuts about each other for twenty months now. Wow. That just completely blew me away. I mean, twenty months is a really long time, especially if you think about all the days chained together one at a time. Did I say wow?

You know, Marith said something really nice on Friday, about how Jim and I were so solid that anyone who got near us could feel it. I don't know if it's completely true -- well, the solid bit is, but I don't know how obvious it is to random people -- but it's great to hear. It's great that how we feel about our relationship is how it looks to people outside, too.

So today was a bit crazed at work, since I had to do heavy editing on the documentation, plus hand off some bugs to Rachel, plus actually fix a bug of mine that was easy but annoying. Plus I had a dentist appointment at 1540, and even though my last one went really well there was still some anxiety. Plus, finally, group last night was rough for me, although in as gentle of a way as I can imagine it being rough, and I was sore and aching internally from it. I pretty much just gritted my teeth and pushed on through, venting some of the frustration and anger and hurt in talking to Liralen, who was rock-deep calm and understanding until I sorted it out. Someone showed up briefly and cried on her shoulder, and that was a bit embarassing for me but overall nice.

After all this I ran off to the dentist and got filled; I'd forgotten the headphones for my (Jim's, actually) walkman, so I was all panicky, but as soon as I said I'd forgotten my headphones the dentist went hunting around and found me a pair. That was really nice; I don't think I would've done well trying to explain why I wanted them so bad, but I didn't have to since he just took care of it. The fillings went really fast and now I'm at home, numb but not at all sore. I took ibuprofen as soon as I got here so that when the novocaine wears off there won't be much pain left hopefully.

And now I'm home, playing Pern and waiting for Jim. Not much planned for tonight, except we might run to the grocery store if I feel up to it. I've been needing more quick food for a while, plus I want to pick up some ready-made teriyaki sauce that's less salty than the stuff I used last night. I cooked chicken when I got home from group, since Jim was off at Tien's birthday party, and it came out really well. I cut the chicken up, soaked it in teriyaki sauce for about ten minutes, then cooked it in walnut oil. When the chicken was almost done I added a can of green beans and a few chopped walnuts -- and I had warm food, flavourful and nicely textured between the squish of green beans and the crunch of the walnuts. It's my first successful non-recipe experiment and I'm awfully proud of it; the only problem was that it came out too salty for me. Which, come to think of it, probably means just about right for Jim.

Best of all, there's leftovers in the 'fridge, and as soon as I'm no longer numb I'm going to reheat them.