02 20 00

oh wow

Have you ever been totally blindsided by something you knew was coming?

Today was a very lazy wake-up day. I would wake up, roll over, say something to the effect of "We should get up," and then I would fall asleep again in Dave's arms. The third or fourth time I did this, he finally mentioned that his arm was falling asleep, so we dragged ourselves out of bed.

After a little bit of procrastinating, we decided to go to the Cuyahoga National Recreation Area to an overlook that I had taken Dave to the first time he came down here. During the summer this place is very crowded; you basically have to wait in line to see the view. But in winter there is almost no one in the park. We had the overlook to ourselves.

The rocks were all snow covered, and I opted not to sit down. After a few minutes of taking in the view, Dave took my hand and said, "My mother told me how you requested to be added to her ICQ list."

Ah, yes. Dave had given me his mother's ICQ number, and I requested to be added to her list with "Hi! Potential daughter-in-law here!" Dave's mom has been bugging Dave something awful about us, peppering him with questions out whether we were getting engaged, etc etc.

I said, "Yeah."

Dave nodded. "Remember how we'd been talking about maybe talking about maybe getting married later?"

Again, I said, "Yeah."

Dave squeezed my hand. "Well, it's later..."

I looked at Dave, a million thoughts running through my head. At the foremost of them all was, "Uhh... Is he actually proposing?" I looked down at my hand, unable to meet his eyes. "Yeah... It is later," I finally said.

Dave hesitated for a moment. "Well... So, do you, you know, want to get married or something?"

He is asking! my mind screamed.

Truthfully, I was shocked. I was totally unprepared for that question, and just looked at him. He swallowed uncertainly and squeezed my hand again. "Well, you don't have to answer right away."

Oh. God.

I found myself nodding. I lifted my head and looked him in the eyes again. "I do," I whispered. "I do want to get married."

He hugged me. I wrapped my arms around him, breathing in his scent. He voiced what my own mind was wondering. "Uh... So, are we like engaged now?"

I giggled. "I don't know!" I replied. "I've never done this before!"

Yeah. So I'm, like, engaged or something now.

We decided to make it "official" with a ring. I'm partial to silver, and wanted something not too expensive. We drove to a department store and perused their lame stock of jewelry before going to a real jewelry store.

When I told the lady at the jewelry store that I wanted a silver ring, she started yelling at me. (Ok, now really yelling, just chewing my head off.) "You can't put a diamond in silver! It's too fragile, too brittle, too cheap, too silver, too cheap ass!"

(I may be paraphrasing here.)

So we settled on a very simple white gold ring with a diamond solitaire. I'm wearing it now... It feels odd. But it feels very right at the same time.

We both kept "eek"ing and "yikes"ing our way through dinner (my Valentine's dinner with my boyfri - err, fiancée) before going over to my parents' house to break the news to them.

When we walked in, I located my mother in the basement. I pulled her aside. She looked at me with questioning eyes. I held out my hand with the ring.

She looked at the ring. She looked at me. She looked at the ring. She looked at me and started squeaking. "Oh. Oh! OH! Are you...?"

I nodded.

"OOOOOOOOHHHH!!!" She wrapped me up in a big hug. "Is Dave here? I want to give him a hug too!"

Later she said, "If I had held interviews I couldn't have done better." She pointed at Dave. "I like him!"

My dad was a little less enthusiastic, but I could tell he liked Dave. We got a little of the fifth degree as to "When? Where? How?" but we expected that.

Dave calls it "an expression of intent." We'll hash out the nitty gritty details later.

Yeah. I'm engaged and stuff.

I feel: happy, scared, excited, jittery, and fortunate.

But I also feel a lot of love for this guy. I'm sure about this.

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