Proposals and Such

This is such a monumental occasion in one's life that I am for once at a loss for words, or rather there are so many words that I don't know where to start. Let me just say that as I type this blog I frequently find myself glancing down at my hand in excitement. No, I'm not excited about that nasty curling iron burn that finally healed. I'm excited about what Chris gave me this past Saturday night.

After our flight from Puerto Vallarta landed, Chris, Heather and I headed over to Enterprise rental to get a car. Chris wanted to cash in on his free luxury car rental. As he took the keys for the fancy old-man Volvo from the rental worker, I couldn't help but be a little disappointed that he passed up the powder blue, convertible bug. Chris however had other plans in mind that I was completely unaware of. As it turned out, the weekend was pretty rainy so the convertible would have gone to waste in the end. Saturday morning we went to church in Arlington to support Heather as she preached about women's ordination in the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. It was a good sermon and it was looking like an ordinary Sabbath. That afternoon we hung out at Chris's house, looking at our pictures from Mexico. We had no plans for the evening. As we sat and debated what to do, Chris's brother came in the room to tell us he was leaving. Upon asking him where he was going, he said that he was going to hang out with some friends. I asked him who and he just said, "oh, some friends." I immediately thought of the empty house he was house sitting and his absent girl friend but didn't say anything. Left to ourselves, Chris suggested that we take the fancy old-man car for a drive, just to enjoy having a 40K dollar car for the evening. As we got ready to go, he was so busy deciding what to wear and getting some music that he forgot to gel his hair. As we backed out the driveway I looked at his puffy head and said, "You're not going to gel your hair," at which point he exclaimed, "Oh, I forgot!" FYI - Chris is more particular about his hair than some women I know. Once the gel is set, no one is to touch it for fear it might get puffy. And in the three and a half years we've been dating I can't recall a single instance in which he left the house without gel or a hat. So as he exclaimed, "Oh, I forgot," I couldn't help but udder something about his mind being preoccupied. As we drove toward Fort Worth and then toward Arlington, Chris kept reading new text messages and sending what looked like responses, all the while saying nothing about their content. He did however comment on how nice the evening turned out and how happy he was that it stopped raining. After ignoring his preoccupation with his phone as long as I could, I finally asked him who kept sending him messages. He calmly replied that George was sending him some dirty jokes. They must not have been very funny jokes, because not one of them made him laugh, smile or want to share it with me. And then we pulled up to a very familiar place - a place of significance for the two of us. As Chris turned off the car in the parking lot by Lake Arlington, I tried to act cool and unsuspecting, however my emotions got the best of me as we approached an empty blanket with some cushions, roses, lit candles and rose petals scattered about. As I turned away to keep myself from crying, I caught a quick a glance at the open ring box in the middle. And the rest is between Chris and I. All you need to know is that as I sat on one of the cushions he knelt before me and asked the monumental question, and of course I said yes. It all made sense - Jesse's secretiveness about his Saturday night activities, the lack of hair gel, the tex messages and even Chris' insistance on getting his free fancy car rental for this particular weekend. An hour later as we gathered everything together to leave, I couldn't help but jokingly thank him for not proposing earlier that morning at the Filipino church.