Diamonds Are Forever

For you fellow reality TV junkies, don't get fooled by the title of this blog. I'm not talking about Lakisha's "American Idol" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7KdrjUWA14 performance.

No, instead I'm talking about the real forever diamonds... of the engagement ring type.

It was last Saturday, St. Patrick's Day, when this all took place. I'd just gotten dressed from having showered that morning. Leisurely I sat at my computer, puttering around to kill time, when Eric (my boyfriend) came upstairs to say "come downstairs, I have a surprise for you." I appeased him with a "yeah, I'm coming" response and went back to my emailing and other random internet stuff.

Fifteen minutes later, seemingly ticked that I hadn't come downstairs yet, Eric made another attempt. This time I conceded and followed him down the stairs.

We stopped at the bottom of the stairs and he pointed to some flowers he'd moved from one vase to another one by the front table. In my head I'm thinking, "this is the surprise that pulled me away from making my Spark People www.sparkpeople.com entries?", but really what I said was: "Oh, they look good there, but now the other vase is empty." Yeah, I'm heartless.

"No, I have another surprise," he said, leading me into the kitchen. There I saw a demi bottle of Moet & Chandon http://www.moet.com/html (the makers of my most favourite champagne, White Star, which Eric informed me a week or so before had been discontinued). There were two glasses already poured, their tiny bubbles bursting as they reached the top. Eric, being the sweetheart that he is, explained that he'd bought the small bottle so that I could try White Star's replacement.

Side note: This all made perfect sense, since he'd been making random visits to the liquor store all week in preparation for our ensuing St. Patty's Day celebration with a bunch of friends.

Eric toasted "to us" and I immediately drank (gulped) to that. It was a very sweet surprise, and I would have been quite content had the surprise ended there. But it didn't...

"I have another surprise for you," he said, pulling out a pizza box shaped box. I knew inside was a large cookie from Treats, because I had presented him with a similar box just a month before for Valentine's Day. I thought, "how sweet, he bought a St. Patty's Day cookie as a dessert for the party." Really, I'm usually not this gullible.

I opened up the box and inside was a giant shamrock-shaped cookie that read in green pipe-icing: "Will You Marry Me?" THUNK - that was my jaw hitting the table. I didn't quite grasp what I was reading. I'm a slow reader and all, but I had to re-read those four short words over and over again. So much so that I had to be prompted by Eric's "turn around" whisper in order to twist my body and see that he'd been patiently waiting behind me on one knee with a ring in one hand.

THUNK - that's me practically fainting to the floor.

I immediately gave him a huge hug, while tears started to fall down my cheeks. It was moments later when I realized I hadn't answered him, so I blurted out "OF COURSE!!! I don't know if I said yes yet or not." He confirmed that I hadn't said anything and slid the ring on my finger.

It's now my sixth day of being engaged and it's still so overwhelming to me. I think it took three days to really sink in. I've never been one for fairy tale weddings or mushy stuff. Ask anyone who knows me, I'm a typical stone-faced tomboy in many ways! I never thought a size 5.5 ring could make me feel so overwhelmed, but it has.

Eric has surprised me in so many ways, not just with the proposal but also with meeting and exceeding my expectations on an almost daily basis. I've truly found my "forever" and am now a proud owner of my very first diamond because of him.