When To Pop?

You know those situations that occur, and you say, "Well, this is no fun, but someday we will look back on it and laugh"?

I have a feeling Hilary is going through one of those times right now. To say that she is ready to be engaged is to say that the Cookie Monster would prefer some Chips Ahoy in the very near future.

I am trying to put myself in her shoes. It's easier to be me right now - I know how the story ends. I know when we are getting engaged.

She, on the other hand, is completely in the dark. And, I admit, I'm not helping things. I am in a bit of a precarious position - I want to reinforce my feelings to her so she will feel safe and secure in our relationship, but at the same time, I don't want her to be thinking that our engagement is just around the corner.

Is that wrong of me? I don't know (actually, probably). But I want it to be a surprise to her, and the longer I can hold her off thinking that engagement is imminent, the easier it will be to pull off.

Which brings me to this post.

I've been trying to avoid any direct talks about our future because the engagement is so close at hand. I suppose I know that is nearly impossible, especially since we are moving in together in the next few weeks.

Friday we had a long talk about the state of things in our relationship, and I had to figure out a way to keep her in the dark without making her feel insecure. This was, as you can imagine, not so easy.

My plan all along has been to set up the actual proposal around Labor Day weekend. We are going to Virginia Beach that weekend to be with her family, and I know how much her family means to her. It's the perfect setting to me.

Here is the problem though - Labor Day is still over a month away. That doesn't seem like a long time to me, but it appears that Hilary's mental calendar advances in dog years these days. A month until engagement to her might as well be six more months.

In speaking to my father about this on Friday, he continued to urge me to just get it over with. I see his point - it's going to be a special moment no matter how or when I do it. At the same time, I still believe that though it will be special no matter what, it can still be "more special". My analogy to him was if you win $40 million in the lottery, you will be excited, but you will be even more excited if you win $100 million, and if you had a choice between the two, you'd choose the latter, right? (Note - using analogies runs in my family; we are unable to communicate without them. It's either a blessing or a curse - lately I've been leaning towards curse).

Her family is important to her, and therefore it's important to me that they be a part of the engagement in some form or fashion. It's something I really don't want to bend on.

So, I want to wait. I know I could do it at any time between now and then, and I know it would certainly be a load off of Hilary's mind (see previous post regarding the cruise), but I am stubborn.

Hopefully, the angst Hilary is feeling now will turn to laughter someday when we look back on this.

Or, she will kill me.

For those of you who had the cruise...you lose

When Hilary and I booked a cruise vacation back in March (or maybe it was April), I wasn't ready to consider engagement. That's not a reflection on her; it was still just only a few months into our living in the same city and she was still commuting back and forth to DC, which gave our relationship still a slight long-distance feel.

However, as the weeks went by and our relationship continued to grow, I began to consider the notion of proposing while on the ship. Certainly, there were plenty of good reasons to do it:

- it's a vacation, and would give us the opportunity to be engaged without all the madness that creates for at least a few days

- we would be in several places with aesthetic beauty (the ship's casino!) that might provide a terrific backdrop for the moment

- it would more than satisfy Hilary's desire to be engaged before I moved in and we began living in sin (note to future children: daddy has no problem with it, just so long as you are doing it for the right reasons - you know, like affording better cable)

In the end, I chose not to do it. I'd love to give you a lot of good reasons, but it really boiled down to two main ones - one good, and one you probably won't like as much.

First the good one. In many of the proposals I've seen and heard about amongst the people I know, there is often two parts of the proposal surprise: the popping of the question, followed by a surprise appearance from one or both sets of parents.

If I proposed on the cruise, I couldn't really pull that off (at least not without great cost). I debated the idea of having her family and mine meet us at the airport upon our return, but we wouldn't get back until Saturday night and it seemed somewhat of a waste to only have everyone together for a couple hours all told. Not being able to add in the family component was a big negative.

The second (and more selfish reason) was, it was too cliched for my tastes. It would be so obvious for me to propose on the cruise; I knew this intuitively as well as because roughly everyone I knew asked me if I planned on doing so. I may make fun of my friend Joey Lazarus for never doing what people suggest to him, but the fact that so many people were certain I was going to pop while we were in the Caribbean made me all the more resistant to the notion.

Is that unfair to Hilary? Maybe. It's entirely possible she will be upset with me when she eventually reads this post and makes me sleep on the couch for a night. But my feeling is, the proposal is going to be a special moment for both the ask-ee and the ask-er. I want to find a way to do it that will satisfy both her desire to be asked (growing daily from what I can tell, but more on that in a minute) and my desire to do it in a way that will be (ideally) unique and surprising.

So the cruise was off. When we returned from our vacation, a friend asked me if I thought she was disappointed that it didn't happen. My response was I wasn't sure. We don't really talk much, currently, about when specifically we will get engaged, mostly because I want it to be a surprise. So it was hard for me to know what her level of anxiety was...until today.

Let me start off by saying that I may get in more trouble for posting this than it's worth, but from where I am sitting today, I think it's too funny not to mention given the nature of this blog. I.e., Hilary may get mad about it in the short term, but the further away we get from it, the funnier it will be (to her that is - its funny to me right now).

Hilary is supposed to be having dinner Thursday night with her friend Jaygima, a co-worker from her days at HMS Host who like her moved to Atlanta to be with her significant other (to whom she is now married).

This morning, she forwarded me an email from Jay with something funny she had written. Normally, I'd just glance at an email like that before hitting the ol' delete button.

For some reason though, Hilary forwarded me the entire email chain, and I inexplicably started reading it. This is not normal behavior for me, and I do feel slightly bad about it, but my eyes somehow saw the word "ring" in part of the thread and subsequently my curiosity got the best of me.

What did I learn? Apparently, Hilary is quite ready to get this show on the road:

"It’s just really frustrating the whole engagement thing. I know you know though. I just wish it would happen already!..."

And from another portion:

"We just got back from our cruise on Saturday that was really fun. No ring, but I overheard a conversation before the cruise that keyed me into knowing it wasn’t going to happen. I’m glad I knew for sure beforehand or I would have been anxious during the cruise and upset towards the end..."

Wow. I guess she is ready, eh? I can't for the life of me figure out which conversation she overheard, as I am pretty good about keeping any engagement planning talks from taking place anywhere near her. It's possible someone asked me if I was going to propose within her earshot and she heard my answer, that's the best I can figure.

So, this leaves me with a bit of a dilemma. At present, my plan is still to put the plan into action around Labor Day weekend, when we will be in Virginia Beach and I can incorporate her family easily into the blessed occasion. I like this idea a lot. Most of my brainstorming on how I will eventually pop the question revolves around the notion of being with her family in her hometown. However, Labor Day is still 5 weeks away. Based on the tone of the email I just read, it's entirely possible that Hilary will run several hundred volts of electricity directly through my testicles if I don't ask her to marry me soon.

I have a choice to make - do I re-evaluate and change course to help Hilary maintain her sanity? Or do I stick to the plan and risk the safety of my future children. This is a toughie...

The Things You Do For Love

My Dad, Suzy B and me

Welcome to the blog! No one of course is reading this yet as I haven't made it for public consumption yet, but someday people may read this (Micah and Hilary Jr.?) and I felt like this was as good a place as any to document the lead up to our nuptuals.

For the first post, I thought I would write a diary of sorts of my day spent selecting Hilary's engagement ring (a live blog of sorts, except written after the fact, so while it's not technically live, it will be in that style and will feature many of the thoughts going through my head at the actual times they were happening).

Let me give the set-up first. We have a family friend who works as a private jeweler (whatever that means) in NYC, and who was wonderfully willing to be my tour guide through the engagement ring purchasing process. However, the concept of this person sending diamonds back and forth for me to look at seemed like a horrible idea and a huge hassle. As it turned out, my dad (who once worked in the jewelry business - is there any job he didn't have at some point?) was going to be in New York City on business, so I decided to fly up to the Big Apple for the day to whittle the process down to a few hours.

Fortunately, by brother-in-law Will is working at Delta for the summer, so he allowed me to use one of his coveted "buddy passes", which made the price of a roundtrip ticket to NY less than $100 (for those thinking I'm Mr. Moneybags to be flying to NY just to look at a ring, this explains how I was able to make that happen). Now all I had to do was figure out a way to slip it past Hilary that I would be out of town for the day and not have her get suspicious.

A quick sidebar: There is a famous story from when Will got engaged to my sister Hannah, where he flew back to Corpus Christi ("The Body") to get the ring he was planning to propose with. He did it on a Wednesday when we would usually be playing soccer, so as to explain his late arrival at home to his nosy bride-to-become. All went as planned - except that while he was in Texas he made the fatal mistake of getting his hair cut, and when Hannah asked him when he got it done, he responded, "When I was home." Will is an idiot.

I was determined not to suffer the same fate as my new bro, but I too am cursed to be in a relationship with Nosy McNoserpants, so I had to be prepared to throw her off the scent.

Now that we've set the scene, let's get to the action.

6:15 am - I set my alarm to get up at this time, as I was planning on getting on a 7:45 am flight to LaGuardia. I told Hilary I was playing racquetball before work with my co-worker to explain my early rise; typically she is long-gone by the time I get up for work around 8:00 (8:20 after four snoozes). She bought it. So far so good.

6:50 am - I arrive at Hartsfield-International Airport, park my car in the economy parking lot, and head towards my gate. One of the great things about flying by myself is that I am quite content to get to the airport as late as is humanly possible without missing the flight, while Hilary likes to get there a little earlier, like say a calendar month in advance. I chuckled about this fact to myself as I arrived at my gate for the 7:45 flight at 7:33.

This actually worked out well, because with Will's buddy pass I have to wait until the end to board anyway since my priority lies somewhere between Tuberculosis Guy and terrorist. On this particular flight, I was literally the last person onto the plane in the only seat left unoccupied.

10:00 am - Landed at LaGuardia - so far so good. I managed to sleep a bit on the way up despite sitting next to one of the worst possible seatmates - the talker. I realize I am quite the gabber myself, but when I get on a plane, I just want to listen to my iPod and go to sleep. So dude, please, leave me the @#$@ alone. I called my Dad to check in, and headed to catch a bus to Grand Central Station.

10:30 am - Well, I wouldn't say this counts as things going awry (foreshadowing), but traffic was a murph, so it took about an hour to get from the airport to the city. Still, this gave me time to continue acting out the ruse that would lead Hilary to believe it was nothing but a normal work day for me.

With her new job, Hilary no longer uses any instant messaging programs, which made my job a little easier. Still, we email back and forth during the day, so keeping that afloat would be the biggest challenge. Both of my sisters were on board to help out though, so I called Hannah and had her check my email to see if Hilary had written anything. She had, so I dictated an email back to her.

Let me tell you something I learned from dictation. Mushiness is a private, private thing. It's all well and good to write "I love you!" to your girlfriend, but telling your sister to write out "Next paragraph - I love you, exclamation point" sounds really, really lame. Doing it on a crowded bus doesn't help much either.

11:30 am - Ok, that took a little too long, but my appointment at the jeweler wasn't scheduled until 12:30. My Dad was there to meet me at the bus station and we headed to grab a quick bite before going to check out the bling (question for future kids - do people still use that word in the future? it annoys the crap out of me now, so for your sake hopefully it has faded).

Telling mom about my purchase

11:45 am - We were supposed to eat at this midtown restaurant called "Dishes", but despite being given directions to pretty much the exact street corner it allegedly resided on, we couldn't find it. I did however find a kosher deli with a shawarma skewer running, and my contract with God stipulates that I eat shawarma whenever the opportunity presents itself.

12:15 pm - Ok, maybe that wasn't the best idea. My stomach is not going to enjoy the flight home later this afternoon.

12:30 pm - Right on time, we get to the jeweler's office to check out the merchandise. Her assistant shows us a couple things to begin with, all of which look exactly the same to me.

Frankly, the whole diamond business cracks me up. I mean, how long does the average person get to spend looking at someone else's ring? Four, five seconds? And usually the finger where the ring resides is in motion for most of it, no? The only way most people can tell the difference from one diamond to another (aside from size, obviously) is if they have one of those diamond microscopes, and how many people walk around with those? 10% tops?

Still, I want a diamond that is going to make Hilary happy, so I am trying my best to understand what she is saying.

I actually learned a decent amount (I mean for a guy) about diamonds in the last couple weeks. During Hilary's last trip to DC before she started her new job, Hannah and I went to Solomon Brothers in Atlanta to get my first taste of the ring-selecting process. Following that, my friend Kim, who works in the diamond industry, spent a couple hours showing me more options and explaining more about the Four C's (cut, color, clarity, and calligraphy).

12:35 pm - Our family friend shows up, and I like her immediately as she begins to give my dad grief. A woman after my own heart. When she and I spoke on the phone to set this up a week ago, she mentioned she already had the perfect stone in mind for me, and though she shows me a couple other potential rocks, "the one" is brought out and I gotta say, it looks great. I have a problem expressing myself in this way (as many who know me can attest), so all I can manage to say is, "Yeah, I think it looks ok." But as my dad tells her, that means Micah like-ah.

Examining the rock

2:20 pm - I examine the diamond in many different ways and compared to several others, and it still looks the part. My dad tries in vain to get me to consider a heart-shaped diamond, but I'm afraid he is now 0-3 with his progeny on that count. We agree to talk again in a couple weeks, but I feel comfortable walking out of the office with the notion that we have picked the winner. All that's left to do is grab a taxi, get back out to LaGuardia, catch the 4:00 flight and BAM! - I'm home with Hilary none the wiser. Hannah and Leah have continued to send out my dictated emails, so everything is going well. Still, I am a Hart - nothing ever goes completely according to plan...

Suzy shows me how to look pompous while examining a diamond

3:00 pm - I arrive at the airport in plenty of time to catch my flight. Security is a breeze, as all I brought with me was a book (Sam Walker's "Fantasyland", a book about the popularity of rotisserie baseball) and my iPod. As I get to my gate though, I realize all is not as it should be. There are tons of people camped out in the terminal, and I soon find out why. Weather has wreacked havoc on the Eastern seaboard, and flights have been cancelled up and down the coastline. The 1:00 flight to Atlanta was one of them. Oh, crap.

3:30 pm - First the bad news - the 4:00 flight is delayed until 5:00 now, which would get me back to Atlanta at 7:30. Hilary usually gets home around 7:00, so that could be a problem. I was prepared for this though, so I had Leah (she was working the afternoon email shift) email her and tell her I had a work function that might keep me on the job until perhaps 8 or 8:30. Poor trusting Hilary.

Now for the worse news. Because of the previous Atlanta cancellation, everyone got bumped to a later flight. Currently, I am 78th(!) on the standby list for the next flight to Atlanta. 78th? Really? They need to count that high? After like the first 15-20 names, they should just puta little picture of someone giving you the middle finger. Not good.

4:20 pm - Sensing that things could get ugly (no matter the flight, my priority status would remain at the bottom of the barrel, making it next to impossible for me to get a standby seat on a plane so long as the weather was bad), I got in line at the Delta counter to see if perhaps I could persuade someone to help me out. I flashed my best smile and proceeded to explain to the agent my situation as a poor lovestruck fiance-to-be who just wanted to get home to his soon-to-be bride without her figuring out what he was up to. She seemed sympathetic, but when you are 78th on the standby list, I don't even know if I'd have had any luck as a woman in labor.

4:30 pm - I called my dad to explain the situation, and Macy gets on the case. In the meantime, I begin to think about what kind of excuse I am going to be able to come up with to explain to Hilary why not only might I not be home by 8:00, but it's entirely possible I may not come home at all. This was not part of my original plan, to say the least. I started to think contingencies, but I wasn't panicking...yet.

5:00 pm - Ok, definitely starting to get worried. It is beginning to look increasingly likely that I won't get out of NYC tonight - at least from LaGuardia. I call Will to see what the availability was looking like at JFK and Newark, and begin to ponder how irritated I'd get if I had to fly to say, Birmingham, and then rent a car to get back (about 8 on a scale of 10).

5:10 pm - LaGuardia is basically a ghost. Will, despite being a Delta employee, apparently isn't able to conjure a flight out of thin air (give him time, he's only been there a few weeks). Since it appears that even under the best circumstances I'm not going to be able to make it home by the 8:30 time I originally quoted Hilary, it's time to put Plan B into action. Which direction to go? Last minute poker game? Late movie she wouldn't want to see? The biggest issue was finding a reason for my cell phone not to work in case she needed to call me. She had already phoned once in the morning when I was on my flight, but I could excuse that because I don't get reception at the gym where I'd allegedly been playing racquetball.

No, there is only one answer - TNT. I had worked for a month straight during April and May at TNT for the NBA playoffs, where I had spent every night from roughly 6 pm to 2 am logging sound for their pre- and post-game shows. During this month I had always come home late, and since I didn't get reception at TNT either (annoying at the time, but a small bonus at present), it would provide a good cover. I try to find as quiet a place as possible in the terminal so as not to let the PA system give away my location ("Listen Jane, don't start with that Red Zone sh*t again.") and call Hilary at her office, where I know she'll be hesitant to talk long. I tell her the good news - my boss from Turner had called and wanted to know if I could fill in on the baseball shift tonight!

The ploy works, and she goes for it. One crisis solved; I now at least have some leeway on time to get home without needing any more excuses.

5:15 pm - Macy is having some luck on his end. Let it never be said that my dad isn't there for his children. On his way to NYC on Sunday, he got bumped from his flight out of Atlanta, for which he got a $400 voucher (basically so many pennies to him with as much as he flies). He gives me the voucher towards a one-way ticket out of JFK on a flight scheduled to leave at 6:50. The only seats left are in first class, so even with the voucher I still have to cough up some dough (but significantly less than I would have). Now all I have to do is make it over to JFK in time to be on board when it leaves. Not exactly my preferred choice, but at this point I can't take any chance on any standby seat from any airport anywhere. I head towards the taxi depot.

5:50 pm - A $34 cab ride over to JFK later, and I've now spent more on transportation to and from airports by automobile than I did by plane. But, I won't complain - anything that gets me back to Atlanta with Hilary none the wiser is worth it. To be honest, I don't know what my max would have been to spend on a ticket home, but it might have been upwards of $500 just to keep the day a secret.

6:15 pm - I get through security, and - surprise! - my 6:50 flight is now scheduled to leave at 7:30. I'll take it, just as long as it leaves today.

7:30 pm - Trivia question: what has two thumbs and has a 6:50 flight now looking like it won't be leaving until 8:45? This guy.

8:45 pm - The flight we are on finally landed from LAX around 8:30, so we actually get to board our plane with the notion that we might land in Atlanta before the midnight hour. Although I am exhausted, I can't help but be a little excited to fly first class. I've only done it twice before, and once was an early morning flight where I slept for most of the time. It's a shame I have to drive home from the airport, or else it'd be time to get my Hasselhoff on. Still, this flight has those little monitors in the back of the seat in front of you which allows you to watch movies, TV, or play games.

9:00 pm - Apropos of nothing, I'd just like to note that tonight is Game 4 of the NBA Finals between the San Antonio Spurs and the Cleveland Cavaliers, and I'm not entirely sure I wouldn't be more frustrated with life watching that game than sitting through my current predicament.

9:15 pm - The plane is fully loaded (and I'm working on it, having ordered a glass of wine and a screwdriver in succession), and we taxi away from our gate. Good to go? Clearly, you haven't been reading this. The pilot comes on to explain that because of the weather, the runways are backed up and we are currently something like 427th in line to take off. At least I can watch a movie. I choose Shooter starring Marky Mark, which seems like a better option than Norbit or Bridge To Terabithia.

11:00 pm - Shooter is almost over as the plane finally takes off. I've seen worse, but I've seen better. For the record, my 6:50 flight pushed back nearly two hours late, then waited on the tarmac for another two hours to boot before taking to the skies.

1:00 am - We land in Atlanta. Praise God. I would love to write something witty here, but let's be honest. There isn't much witty to say when you've spent the past 10 hours at the airport or on a plane.

1:35 am - Home at last - almost. There are no parking places available anywhere near Hilary's apartment, so after circling twice around her portion of the complex, I decide to take a calculated risk. Since I am leaving for work the next morning at 8:30, I park in the handicap spot adjacent to her building under the assumption (fair in my thinking) that no handicapped people will be needing it in the next six hours. Maybe not the best solution, but I am willing to roll the dice at this point. I just want to go to bed - screw the handicapped.

1:45 am - I check my email to make sure nothing imploded at work and crawl into Hilary's bed dappled and drowsy and ready to sleep. For just a moment, I stare over at her sleeping figure. It may have been one of the longest days of my life, but looking at her lying next to me, I know it was worth it. Now if I can just keep it a secret!