the gruesome details

The blog has been neglected with the distractions of giving my soul to another person. That is time-consuming work. The extraction itself takes days. At any rate, here is how it went down:

I wanted to propose ninja-style – you know, so she wouldn’t see it coming. So I (with the help of couple of co-workers and RS2) concocted a scheme in which I would place the bling, I mean, ring, in a plastic easter egg claiming that my boss had given it to me to give to her. The "egg-from-someone-else" solution was key because it prevented me from having to explain why I was giving Monica an easter egg. Not that I don't give her things, but easter eggs. That's not how I do.

I wasn't nervous about asking. I was anxious. Once you get that ring, you kind of want to - for lack of a better phrase - get it over with. It's difficult to explain but buddies of mine (married ones) experienced the same thing. I wasn't nervous in terms of asking theMonica. I was pretty sure she would say yes, but asking theDad-ica . . . well, that was a little nerve-wracking. I thought he'd be cool with it, but it's still pretty intimidating. To make matters worse, when I went to do it he wasn't where he was "supposed" to be, so I had to sit around and wait for him. It made me nervous and, strangely enough, sleepy. Not sure why, but I couldn't take a nap because I had to get my game face on. In the end, he was cool with it and we brought it in for hugs.

Afterwards, I put some candy in the egg and then the ring wrapped in tissue paper and placed the egg in a Easter-looking Chinese takeout box (I don't know what those boxes are called, but that's what it looked like). I had told theMonica she had to stop at her apartment to sign some tax forms (total lie!). We both got there at the same time. And she’s all, “Where are the forms?” as she was on her way to her aunt’s house and kind of in a hurry. I said, "Uhhhh, there in this European carryall somewheres." Then she went off to use the little girls’ room. Carpe Boxem! I placed the box on the kitchen table. I took care to make sure it looked somewhat in disarray, so as not to arouse suspicion. She came into the kitchen and said, "What’s this?" "Oh, my boss gave us those as Easter gifts. She put an egg in my basket for you. It's got candy and little easter bunny trinkets." "I always knew I liked her." The part about trinkets was supposed to throw her off when she saw something wrapped in tissue paper. But by then candylust had taken over and theMonica was already opening the egg, ignoring all my subtle subterfuge.

The candy was two pieces of this dumb crème saver stuff. Monica was not impressed. Then she started unwrapping the ring. I had to use a lot of tissue paper to hide what it was and about halfway through she looked at me like she thought she might know what was up. As she finished the seemingly interminable unwrapping of the ring, I got down on one knee and asked her to do my laundry for the rest of my life. No! I asked her to marry me. She hesitated . . . waiting, waiting, waiting – head nod! That counts as yes in most countries! And is legally binding in illiterate cultures! Ok, she really didn’t hesitate. But, she was already crying at this point. Kind of a lot. I thought they were happy tears, but I had to ask after a while, just to make sure she wasn't sad or had been pepper-sprayed.


The rest of the night was spent telling the above story 1.5 million times. Then on Friday we went to North Carolina to spend easter with RS4 and the rest of the fam.

So, there it is. No date has yet been set. (People are really weird about this, thinking there should be a date already. Jeez, give us 5 minutes to think about it). Maybe I'll raffle off an invitation or something. Don't everybody clamor for it all at once.