Color, Cut, Clarity, and...what was that last one again?

I've never been a diamond girl. Okay, I suppose I've at times had a somewhat detached academic fascination with the Tiffany 6-prong engagement ring, but seeing as I did my MFA in metalsmithing, it kinda went with the territory. I mean I've never given much practical thought to the application of actual diamonds to my actual left hand.

Not. Gonna. Happen.

I'd imagine that a certain amount of that springs from the nigh on curious absence of capital *W* Wedding from my adolescent fantasies. I suppose some part of me always hoped that I'd find some other odd little duck and get about to nesting, but the mechanics of it just kinda fugued on by me. If asked, I'd just wave it all off with a "Vegas or City Hall," or allow myself the notion that it would be somehow physically possible to just wake up married without having to endure the indignity of a chicken dance, seating chart, or being asked to show off "The Rock".

Yet here I am - approximately 84 hours into an engagement (to, I feel I should add, simply the most astonishing man I've ever had the great delight to encounter), and nary a Rock in sight. And there will not be. And I'm relieved.

The short story short - on the morning of July 16th, I was sharing the living room couch with Mordred, the Irish Wolfhound while waiting for Douglas to finish showering, so we could go to our usual Greek diner for breakfast. It did not surprise me that when he descended the stairs, he was holding a black box from a jeweler of whose work we are mutually fond. It was, after all, our 18-month anniversary, and we're both big sentimental dorks, and I'd given him a bracelet a few days before, as I'm utter crap at holding onto gifts once I've bought them. What *did* surprise...stun...thoroughly confuse me was that when he and Morgane the Whippet joined us on the couch, he told me that while he was not able to promise that he wouldn't always be overworked and overtired (a reference to a conversation earlier that week), he loved our life together, and our home and me, and he was asking me to marry him.

To be continued...