Sorry still loyal readers (and apparently there are a handful of you, as I keep getting asked if I’ve killed off the blog). It’s…it’s graduate school. All I do is write and write and write. I do so much quick-draw style synthesis (what is the point of that, you’d be right to ask) that writing is no longer the pleasant diversion from office work that it once was. I actually have started looking forward to statistics (how’s that for improbable?) just to give my vocabulary a break. Also, what little is left of my blogging energy is being diverted into a new pursuit that I will detail a bit further down the page.
So: A catch up must commence.
Since June, I have gone to the beach with my entire family, my parents’ dogs, my sister’s kitten, and B and we all survived despite the inevitable M-family throw down (this time, my father was to blame). B and I made the trip to the cape in one day, which is a shit ton of driving, to put it nicely. On the way up we were both rather cheerfully delirious, but returning home, we spent the last fourth of the trip driving in a massive thunderstorm and screaming, “fuck you!” at each other. I provide this glimpse to set up a punchline…
On August 24th, the day before my classes started, B cajoled me into going on a woods walk and proposed! It was completely surprising, utterly romantic, and I cannot describe it with any kind of justice so I’ll offer up a picture at the end of this post.
Because I am a very modern girl, I (we) have a little wedding website [EDIT: do you want a link? Shoot me an email] that you are welcome to visit if you are interested. Isn’t the title wonderful? I came up with it and it made me laugh (do you get the pun? I think you must!). B wasn’t quite as amused. But there it is and since I have a separate forum, mostly wedding chit chat will be confined to that space rather than here. Maybe. Probably not. Let’s break that rule right now, with a pre-engagement story, shall we?
Although I found out later that B had talked to my parents and my grandpa last March (Who knew my family could keep so mum?), for me the proposal story begins the night KCB and I saw the Sex and the City Movie (which was a little irksome, wasn’t it? I mean, I’ve seen it a couple of times now because I miss the entertainment of the TV show enough to suffer through the movie, but I think all of the characters were sold short with that one). K was leaving that week to move to VA (a fact I still have not completely accepted) and we were trying to cram in a last bit of time together. We were talking about the marriages in the movie (one more parenthetical aside: “just get me a huge closet” offers an nice summation of everything I dislike about the movie) and K noted, “you know, I’m your ring person, but we don’t even know what size you wear and I really feel that we need to have that figured out before I leave. Don’t read into this and get all freaked out!”
And so we made a date to look at rings the next day (time was of the essence). K decided that we’d just go to the big box mall stores basically to fact find.
First up: A free standing store that shall remain nameless (though you would know it by it’s grating radio ads), we walk in and are immediately welcomed by…a girl I went to high school with. Shit and hell! It’s not that I didn’t like her, it’s just that I felt like (commence magical thinking) I was being discovered counting my imaginary rings before my engagement hatched. I was pretty worried that she would tell people that I was there looking at rings, especially since she proceeded to show me all of the rings our former classmates had selected for their own. In a word: Ugh. What’s worse, my ring size is a teeny tiny 3.5 (it’s more like 3.75, but whatever). It is not a finger that can pull of a huge diamond. In fact, anything over a karat looks rather obscene on my little hand. Further, big honking obnoxious cocktail sized diamonds are not my taste. Despite my explanations, the quote of this piece of our adventure was: “We can put a big diamond in there.”
Off to an inauspicious start, we ventured inside the mall to a jewlery store that sells, along with the more usual jewlery store offerings, little crystal figurines. This may have been a sign. “I really envision an eternity band,” I told the ken doll fake tan, plastic sheen salesman, “I like the antiquity of the style and I just want a hint of sparkle.”
“Oh,” he said, “but ladies want these kinds of rings for their wedding bands, not for their engagement rings.”
“Well,” I replied, “I don’t think I necessarily have the most typical taste and I’m not especially traditional and I like eternity bands.”
“We could put a big diamond in there,” he suggested.
[Entirely misapprehended] quote of this store: “Ladies want…”
I was at once amused and demoralized when we finally made our third and final stop. Carlyle and Company. Kate knew a saleswoman here and specifically requested her (her name was either Vivian/Beverly for some reason I cannot remember). We told her what we were doing and she was immediately helpful. She showed me all sorts of rings (both engagement and non engagement), had me try on tons of styles and early in the process observed, “Yes, your hands are very petite, you wouldn’t want a ring that overpowered them.” It was delightful. I was surprised that a round solitaire turned out to be my favorite (I had initially envisioned a cushion cut, but found that they look rather clunky on me). It was such a charming experience – I really do recommend this branch if ever you need non-custom jewelry.
Quote of Carlyle and Co: “You have unique taste and you’re looking for a ring that speaks to it.”
I had no idea at the time that Kate was taking extensive mental notes to report to B. Or that our mall (mis) adventures would eventually lead to…This:
(taken by our dear friends J and C)
