Everyone, meet Derick, my boyfriend fiance.
That sounds so weird. Have I mentioned yet how surreal this is? Surreal in a 'you wait the whole 4.5 years you've been dating for this day and then it's over in what feels like 10 seconds' kind of way. I've literally been smiling for the past 48 hours, nonstop.
Where to begin? Derick and I met in college, and have been dating for the past 4.5 years. Talk about marriage comes up. Do you want to get married at all? When? And so on and so forth. I was ready, and so was he. Or so I thought.
He pulled the biggest Chandler Bing the last few months. Suddenly he's asking me questions like "we're already living together, why would you want to change what we have with marriage?" Um, seriously? You're asking me this now? Then he calls me when I'm on a work trip and informs me that he's whisking me away on a surprise trip, I better be ready. That's when I started getting suspicious- a surprise trip? You know what that means, don't you? He's surely been purposely throwing me off and now he's going to do it for real.
Last Friday before we left I made the mistake of going on the Dooce Community to chat. And when I informed everyone of my plans for the weekend everyone responded- OH MY GOD YOU'RE GOING TO GET ENGAGED IT IS CERTAIN. Which in turn made me so giddy I could think of nothing else. Fast forward to when we arrive at our surprise destination- a log cabin on a lake in the Shenandoah Valley.
We're unpacking the car, and suddenly Derick goes 'shit!' It turns out he forgot his bag. The bag that I'm thinking surely has the ring in it. So I test him. There's a Wal-Mart about 20 minutes away, you can just go get a couple things from there to keep you clothed. And he says, ok. And my hopes were crushed. If the ring was in there at all he surely would go to great lengths to get the bag there. He sees my face fall, and since I'm sure now that it's not happening I told him my theories. And he shot them down.
Then he goes into the cabin and starts texting. I find out later he's texting his parents, who thankfully live 10 minutes away from our apartment, and asking them to break in and bring his bag up to the cabin. By now I've given up hope, I've started drinking the wine he poured a little faster. I've turned to the bottle.
While I'm asleep that night his parents show up, hand over the bag with the ring, and leave. I wake up the next morning and he's making me breakfast. I go to make some coffee, since he has what he calls 'plans' for the day. We're going horseback riding and then we're going on a picnic. Except I see that he's slightly shaky and a little bit strange looking. And when I turn back around with a cup of coffee in my hand he's on one knee. And he's crying. And then I start crying. Then he pulls out the ring. And I start squealing. And then he puts it on the wrong hand. And it's cute. And then we're engaged.
He says he's disappointed that he couldn't hold it in long enough to do it on a picnic.
I wouldn't have it any other way.
