my goddamn girlfriend tries to ruin everything

"they say a secret is something you tell one other person…"
u2, the fly

i tell people my thoughts quite casually. reason being, i'm pretty sure whatever i'm feeling or thinking about has already been pondered upon, and in a manner much more interestingly than i have the ability to do so. therefore, nothing i have to say is so precious as to hide it away or keep secret. that said, when i plopped down half the cash required to buy lyds an engagement ring, i didn't tell anyone. not because i didn't feel i could trust anyone, it generally never crossed my mind.

gradually, one or two people found out--comedian joe/jim hamilton/flannagan was in the right place at the right time when i was in the right mood; jamie and christian were just too perfect the wedded couple not to tell while i was visiting them, and the filthy terrorist was next to me saying "jihad-durka-durka" when the jeweler called to tell me the setting was finished--but overall very few knew; no one in my family, and only one of my closest friends--he who would be my best man, brian jones.

i told brian for two reasons:

one, we had been on the phone the better part of an hour and out of things to discuss when he asked, "so... anything else going on?" i started out naturally enough, "not that i can think of," when it popped right in there: "oh, wait. i put money down on the engagement ring." it wasn't an announcement, it was an afterthought.

the second reason i told him is: brian lives in new orleans, and though he and i carry a friendship all the way back to jr. high, we rarely see one another and lyds had never met him; who the hell would brian be able to tell that the words could somehow end up in lydia's ears?

oh, fate... you fickle, funny fuck.

not two days after i told brian of my impending bending of the knee, and lyds came home from work, excited: "i get to go to a conference in new orleans! i'm going to meet brian!"

really?

i mean, really?

the jewelry store said it would take four weeks from its order date to have the ring crafted and the stone set, yet somehow lydia got asked to attend a conference a mere three weeks in the future. suddenly, the one person in the world who lydia would never meet before i had the chance to surprise her would be the one person she would be hanging out with.

as if this wasn't enough, the week before she was to travel to new orleans, i was in indianapolis when lyds needed my checkbook and passport.

(she's learning identity theft the easy way)

both of those items reside in my closet, on the shelf, which is exactly where the receipt to the jewelry store was.

now, the receipt was covered, or so i believed, and i knew that both the checkbook and passport were sitting out in the great wide open. i told lyds as such: "if you need to dig for either of them, you're looking in the wrong place."

lyds told me she found both items easily, yet when i got home, the receipt for the ring was right out in the open, too. granted, it was folded over, meaning she would have had to have gotten curious and opened it up to see what the yellow slip of paper was.

so, at this point, i had no idea how much she knew.

she went on her trip, and while brian said she dropped several hints about how i hadn't put a ring on her finger yet, that's been par for the course for lyds for the better part of a year now.

cut to tuesday, march 18th: ring pickup day.

lyds and i have been looking at building a house. we've been discussing floor plans, looking at lots and the like, and lyds has advertised for a renter for the condo we currently reside within. why try to sell in this market, when we can build equity in what we already have?

we had a showing for potential renters at 6:30 pm on tuesday, and i spent the better part of the day cleaning: vacuuming, sweeping, dusting with pledge and windexing the counters and bathroom.

the place looked good.

damn good.

great, even.

except for some papers lydia had piled up on her laptop, the place was spotless.

oh, and next to those papers was a hat i wore earlier in the day and took off and emptied my pockets into.

lyds came home in a whirlwind of anxiety and irritation; the spotless apartment wasn't clean enough! the bed didn't have that hotel-like crease in it! the counter was a mess, what with all the papers on the computer! there's a hat with...

...the receipt to the jewelry store sitting in it.

yes, i'm a fuckng genius.

on any other day, everything would have been fine. maybe lyds would have come home more calmly and not been so busy-bodied about cleaning up an already clean house, but no. on this one day she had to come home in a mood to get done what was already finished.

*sigh*

the good news is, i had already hidden the ring, meaning all she saw was paper. logically, that would lead one to believe that i had put down a payment or the like. i mean, if all the paperwork is in one spot, wouldn't it make sense to have the item there, too?

either way, it all ended at 2am.

lydia hates, hates, hates to wake up.

and she hates to be woken up.

so, being the kinda fella that i am, i got up in the middle of the night, grabbed a bunch of tea candles and fashioned them into a heart on the countertop.

i put the ring in the center, put "open" by peter gabriel on loop on the stereo, and returned to the bedroom to nudge away.

"sweetie..." i whispered. "get up, you have to come see something..."

normally, this would mean i want her to look at one of the kitties, but not this time.

not this time.




(epilogue)

if it seems somewhat dismissive that i didn't tell anyone with excitement of the impending event, it's because i felt very little in the way of special about the whole thing.

if anything, i felt comfortable.

there was no weight upon my shoulders, nor worry in my eyes.

in fact, it felt like the most natural thing i've ever done.




(oh, and the kids who looked at the condo? yeah, they're in; lyds drew the lease up earlier. good tuesday/wednesday combo)

(boo-yah)