I'll get back to that. It's been a busy few months:
- My boyfriend's family came to visit in December for Christmas (the first time I've met his mom/sister).
- I went to TX on Christmas day (and stayed a week) to see my mom, dad, grandmas, brother, sister-in-law and niece.
- Had a quiet New Year's by going out to dinner and watching a movie in. (Yeah, I know, I'm old and boring -- I'll get to that too.)
- Went to Montana with the ColoradHos (playing as the Denver BroncHos) for a tournament in January.
- One of my good friends on the hockey team had 4 brain aneurysms not long after we got back -- that was super scary, but amazingly and miraculously she's made so much progress in her recovery that they're expecting her to play hockey again in the future!!!
- Went to St. Paul, MN to visit a client for a week in early February.
- Got an unexpected offer on my condo in mid-February (I hadn't listed it yet, just had asked a friend what I needed to do to fix it up in order to list it).
- I went to Warren, NJ the 3rd week in February to visit a different client.
- The last week of February I rented a storage place, donated 75% of my furniture, moved the rest of my stuff, cleaned my soon-to-be-ex-condo, had it's furnace fixed, had it's carpets cleaned and closed on the place (a shout out to Becca and Iggy for all the moving labor and for putting up with my stress-monster ways during that time!).
- We found out my grandma had 2 weeks to live, so I booked a ticket out there toward the end of that time to see her and help my mom who took FMLA leave to do the hospice care.
- Got engaged.
- Turned 40 (told you I was old and boring).
- Actually went on the trip to TX to visit my grandma one last time.
- Had an "intervention" at work to remove all other clients from my plate for one week so that I could concentrate on one that's in danger of missing a go-live in September.
- And since then I have been playing catch-up from that crazy week -- it wasn't worth it, by the way, because we couldn't agree on the specs and they're still in danger of missing September and now all my other deadlines for my other clients are closer and need attention. (For the record I said I didn't like the idea, so perhaps I'm guilty of not putting in the 150% effort needed to make it work. Most likely, yes.)
- I think that's it. We've now arrived at April 2nd and Easter weekend. Holy moly, where does the time go? (See? I even sound old and boring. ha!)
I should pause here to say that I am terrible with presents. If I buy you one, and I see you, I will give it to you. I can rarely wait for the day that occasions the present. I should probably become a last minute shopper -- it might be cheaper because after I give you the first one I tend to have to go and buy one so I have something on the right day. And...I'm just as bad at getting them. My mom/dad shipped me some presents, and my mom always wraps lots of stuff individually. I opened present per day until they ran out.
Iggy has strict rules about waiting until the day for presents. But I think I'd worn him down because he said OK this time. I opened some fun stuff - a restaurant diary, a wine label preserver and diary, a subscription to 5280 magazine (a Denver/Colorado magazine), a vodka infuser (so much fun! -- have had one OK batch so far and one pretty good one -- the good news is that it's fun to test!). After all that he said "I have one more present" and that's when he asked me if I would marry him. I was so surprised! And I'm a good guesser! (Hey - this is my blog - I can spin my abilities any way I want!) He said he struggled with what to buy because he's not sure how I *really* feel about diamonds.
After I got back from TX and Iggy got back from the guys' trip to Las Vegas for the opening weekend of the college hoops tournament, we went to the store to trade in the solitaire ring for a different ring. Normally I wouldn't probably have done that -- because I like keeping the gift itself. But he said that was the plan, so I figured it must be a good one. Now, I am not a very good shopper. I like having a list and a plan and getting in and out as quickly as possible. So I looked at the website over the course of the time he was in LVNV. I picked out a few, printed out the pages and took them to the store. I even said on the way there "hopefully this will take like 30 minutes and then we can go to lunch". Iggy, in his wise ways, said "maybe we should have lunch first". That was a good call. At the store I showed the salesperson my list. She said she'd look them up and to browse for a minute.
?!?!
I didn't want to browse randomly. I wanted to see my list. And I was tired of all the random salespeople gushing "Oh congratulations!" And I was not pleased that there was a crowd of people to wade through. Eventually she gave the list to someone else to look up -- apparently there were easier customers to wait on that actually liked browsing and wanted to make an afternoon of it. Salesperson 1 down.
The only part of browsing I enjoyed was watching the other people. Luckily there were lots of those. There was a knot of girls (women in their early 20s) picking out an engagement ring. There was a woman there older than me. She and her future husband seemed to be beaming as brightly as the 20-year-olds. I know have a little hang-up currently about being 40 and being a bride -- I seem too old to be all giddy and gushing, don't I? Not that I was ever that way, I guess. I'm also a little hesitant because I was married once before and I feel a little guilty at going through this "once-in-a-lifetime" process for the second time. Not that any part of it's really been the same -- including my feelings. I think when I was 24 I figured it "made sense" and was the "next step" after dating for 5 years... Anyways. Back to Bridezilla and the ring selection!
Salesperson 2 was a guy -- I hoped that would be better and he'd be more no-nonsense about the whole thing. He looked at their inventory on the computer in the back room (after inviting us to browse and get ideas while he was occupied). When he came back he said "we have 2 of your top 3, so let's go find them." Ok, better. But we couldn't find either of them. Apparently they have no organizational system at all. I picked some randomly after that. The "rules" only allow you to keep 3 rings out at a time, so I kept having to choose one to give back. Sometimes he'd put it in the case and sometimes in his pocket. (Does that seem fishy to you?) Usually that was really easy, but at one point I had to randomly pick. And I kept holding my solitaire up to the ring in question to try and imagine the diamond in there... Eventually he offered to get a loose stone to let me see how it might look. That was good. A couple of the settings that seemed cool looked overpowering (to me) with an actual diamond as the featured attraction. Then I thought I'd like to look at the one I randomly selected to give back. Of course we couldn't find it again. (I wonder how many rings they lose even with the "only 3" rule.) Eventually Salesperson 2 said "I have an idea -- I will be right back."
His idea was to bring in Salesperson 3. Apparently each time we got a new salesperson we went up the foodchain of salesperson hierarchy. I was thinking at some point we might actually get to talk to Tom Shane himself. This guy said "let me double-check the inventory and see if I can find your #1 choice." He also invited us to browse while we waited.
(sigh)
The good news is that he did come back with the ring I wanted to see! It had been ordered off the web and was going to be shipped out at the end of the day. So I felt a little guilty about choosing someone else's ring, but he assured me that he'd changed it so that the Kansas City store would be fulfilling that order now.
I really tried not be be a Bridezilla, but I think I turned out worse than all the other brides-to-be there. Most of them were excited to tell their story to the salesperson and seemed to love hearing "congrats" from people whose job it was to sell them a ring (granted one of the Tom Shane commercials says they don't pay their sales staff on commission -- cynical me thinks that instead they probably use a bonus system).
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