The Proposal

Once upon a time - well, 15th September 2012 - I went out for the day.
I was at J-con, a day-long convention which I actually really enjoyed. My expectations had been pretty low, and it was an early morning and predicted to be a long day, so when I found myself chilling out and having a good time, I was pleasantly surprised. I also bought some art from the extremely talented Echosilver - two originals, and a gorgeous little print of a watercolour to go on my desk, for the princely sum of 14 of your English Pounds. I was very pleased.

Then I headed home - to the promise of a roast dinner cooked by Jon, because it was getting towards that time of year and we'd both been starting to think that it was time to head into Winter Mode (Roasts, PJs, Red Wine etc etc).

And I was greeted by this:

Yes, candles, candles we have had before, those were nice, but not the bit that got my attention. Focus on the important part.

Jon had tidied the dining room.

I was delighted. That place had been a shit-tip for weeks, because it's the first room you come into, and it's become a natural dumping ground for crap - coats, shoes, bags, stuff we need to take out of bags that we don't have time to put away right now, junk mail, real mail etc etc.

TIDY. <3

And the candles were pretty too. And scented, so the sort of dampish smell that we sometimes get from the laundry was all gone.

So Jon dished up the dinner (minted lamb - yummm!) but then scurried off to get drinks, and reappeared with a bottle of rose champagne.

HERE is where my alerts came on. I asked what this was all for, and he grinned. Then a look of horror and panic came over my face as he fumbled for whatever-it-was in his pocket, and that made him panic and thrust it towards me with

"It's a hat!"
This was not an inaccurate statement.

Inside the hat, however, was this:

Well. I rather felt like I'd had a comedy piano dropped on me. I said yes - there wasn't much else I really could say. And then I swore at him. And then we drank both bottles of sparkling wine and I swore at him some more.

He revealed that he had a dozen tiny cowboy hat jewellery boxes, because they could only be bought in bulk. He'd been researching rings for months - it's gold, tanzanite and diamond (and matches my Graduation Ring perfectly - also gold, tanzanite and diamond). And it nearly perfectly fits - he stole my Graduation Ring without me noticing to get my ring fitting - unfortunately, that goes on my middle finger and not my ring one. But it's near as dammit a perfect fit.

"It's your birthstone," he told me.

"Is it?" I said. "I thought my birthstone was Topaz."

"Well, there seem to be a couple for each month. But Tanzanite is definitely one of the birthstones for December."


...

"My birthday's in November."



Yeah, he swore a lot. And then he admitted that the flowers he bought - carnations - he'd thought were roses, and hadn't realised until he got home and read the label.

And then one of the candles which he'd put the used match in flared up and singed the cabinet we'd inherited from my Granny.
It wasn't a perfect proposal by any means, but that's what made it perfect for us. That, and a dozen tiny cowboy hats make anything okay.


Do any of you have funny proposal stories? Did you handle it well? Did anything go wrong?