Crouch, Touch, Pause...Engaged

09-07-2012

This weekend I did a big grown up thing: I asked the lady friend to marry me. After twenty minutes of her crying I finally got a 'yes' as my answer. Followed by a wet sleeve as she wiped her eye.

Happy Days for Jester. Happy Days indeed.

She knew nothing of what was going on, nor that I had been looking for the perfect ring for nearly two months. Every day at lunch I was running out to a different part of the city looking at rings. In the process I gathered material for a nice little rant, only a rant that I couldn't post because it would have given the game up.

See one of the benefits of The Soup is that I can remember details about things. As such, for roughly the last two and a bit years, I have been asking very rare questions about engagement rings. We had a few people we know got engaged and also most of our married friends have rings. Little by little, without being too inquisitive, I would ask about these rings. Did she like the round stone or the square? Was the band too thick or thing? Things like this that resulted in me knowing more about this ring than she would herself. I had conjured in my mind exactly what the ring was and what I needed to ask for.

So why some women in the Jewellers didn't listen is beyond me.

I had one moron greet me with a big grin. I described the ring to her. "The central stone is to be a round cut," says me. The first ring she showed me was what she called an "emerald" cut diamond. Not to show me the band or anything, but because she thought I would like it more. After I told her that this "emerald" was a rectangle with beveled edges she got offended, so I left.

After the third or fourth shop I started to get annoyed at the same stupid sentence said after I described the ring I wanted.

"Ooooh somebody can take a hint."

The first time I let it slide. The second I smiled. The third I stared at her and told her that the lady friend had no idea what was going on. The fourth got informed that the things at the side of my head were ears and I used them to listen, not just prevent hats from falling down. Girl number five was told to stop before she even started the sentence.

In fact one of the main reasons I bought the ring in the store that I did was because the lady behind the counter didn't even hint she was about to say this dumb line. As if every male in the world is barbaric and can't listen to things being said, we need a poxy shopping list to get things right.

But in this last store the magic happened. I described to Tina (because I am now on the first name basis with most woman in these stores around Dublin) what I wanted. Only the first two bits and she walked away. When she returned she had exactly what I wanted. Not close, not needing a minor change, not almost there. This was it. This was the ring that had been in my head for a year or more. When I told her about the lady friend she said "Yep, I think this is 99% what you want and if not you can bring it back and change it no problem."

Sure that was win/win right? But I knew deep down somewhere that this wasn't going to be a problem.

Then a miracle happened (which I reckon may have had something to do with all our dead grandparents beating God over the head until he sorted things out). Ireland has been having a fairly wet summer this year. Downpours and flood warnings abound. The weather being nice and sunny was what I needed for my plan to go ahead, but a week of rain was to be followed by a weekend of rain. Yet on Saturday the clouds pissed off for a few hours and we had a sunny summer day. Queue get the plan into action, the lady friend into the car, the dog as well (he was part of the plan) and off we go to the lakes nearby. At the lake I told herself to walk on and set up the blanket, while i got the lead onto Frodo. While she was gone I attached the ring to his collar (making him the second ring-bearer of his name, haha) and off we go. Of course Frodo being Frodo decided that the moment we hit long grass was the best time to shake himself all over and get comfy after the car trip. To say my heart stopped would be an understatement but lucky for the dog the ring was still on his collar and he didn't have to go swimming with heavy stones tied around him. We walked down to the lady friend and I asked her to check his collar because I thought it was broken. After missing the damn ring four times she finally found it and twenty minutes of crying later I got my answer.

So, all in, I am one very happy and extremely lucky guy at the minute.

Blue_jester

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