An engagement story, Pt. 1

Soo.... I've been meaning to tell you that Jason and I are officially engaged. Since March 6th. I know, I didn't see it coming either! It was so sweet, he had all these rose petals and candles and picked out the most perfect ring and.....and then I barfed from all the cheesiness. Ha. I'm kidding. About the barfing. And the rose petals.

And the candles. And the ring (it is perfect, though). Here's the real story:

We've talked about getting engaged/married before, and pretty much what happened is we got tired of referring to each other as boyfriend and girlfriend because we'd been that since high school and it sounded so, well, high school, and for a long time we've felt like so much more than that, having a child and a house together and all. So one Sunday evening in early March, after a family dinner out (Evelyn was with us), we went walking past some shops and I saw some costume jewelry, and this is what happened (or at least how I remember it happening. You know you never remember conversations exactly how they happened):

Me: Hey, we should get rings (half-jokingly?)

Jason: (Chuckles). Really?

Me: Yeah. Well, if you want to. Do you want to?

Jason: (Laughs again). Sure, if you want to.

(This is how many of our conversations go).

Me: Okay. Should we just get engaged right now then? Is that okay?

Jason: (Laughs yet again) Yeah, if we find rings. I always thought you wanted a big surprise.

Me: Oh, I used to probably. When I was young and didn't know I could want something different.

Jason: Okay. This will make it much easier on me. 

And then we decided to look at rings (real ones, not costume jewelry), at the jewelry story close by, and the salesman who helped us probably thought we were the easiest couple ever because it took us no less than 20 or 30 minutes to find what we wanted. The big things were price (cheap) and design (simple). I found the most simple rings, which are plain bands, and picked the cheapest of those. It really doesn't get any easier than that! They didn't have plain bands for men, so we spent a little more time picking out his, especially since he works on cars a lot and needed something durable.

Once we made our final decisions, the salesman cleaned our rings, we slipped them on, paid, and walked, with Evelyn, out into the snowy street, and it was perfect, it was romantic. It was us and what we've evolved to be.

When we told our friends and family, everyone was really really excited, like REALLY (mostly our friends, I'm sure our families have thought of us as engaged/married for a while), and it made Jason and I feel like we should be more excited about us, the way we used to be, before we juggled parenting and householding and working and schooling......

And of course there were the standard questions: How did he do it? When's the date? I want to see a picture of your ring!

So then I had to explain that he didn't "do" anything, and that we don't have a date and probably won't get married for a long time, and that I could easily describe what my ring looked like - a thin white gold band. And once I explained all of this, people's excitement wore off a little, I think. And some people were confused that he got a ring too and thought that maybe we'd gotten married....and I just had to laugh at all of it, but also think, "If announcing our engagement takes this much work to explain, I can only imagine how much work the wedding will be.....so let's push it off for a long, long time....."

Yes, that's us. August 2010.