Mates for life (aka The Question)
The date: May 8, 2009; early Friday evening of Mother's Day weekend. Paul's mom is on her way to our apartment to visit and stay overnight. I get home from work to find Paul has washed all of the dishes and is now washing the stove, which really needed it. He's even pulled the knobs off of the stove and is washing them too. (I hadn't even realized they came off!) Paul is all proud of himself. We've gotten on an icanhascheezburger.com* kick lately, so he says to me: "I can has cookie?!" Unfortunately, as is often the case, I am forced to tell him, “Sorry, we don't have any cookies.” So he then asks: "I can has ice cream?!"
I reply, "You want ice cream now? You're mom's going to be here any minute and we're going to dinner, don't you think you'll spoil your appetite?" Paul says, no, no he'll be fine. I'm skeptical, but I think, okay, he can eat a ton more than I can, so he probably can manage the ice cream and still fit in dinner.
Paul happens to still be drying one of the burner knobs and has this big grin on his face, so I take the bait and ask, "So you want me to scoop it for you?" The grin gets bigger and he says, "Sure!" I am totally clueless at this point (no idea what's coming); it's an odd, but not unusual, request, so I do it.
I get the ice cream out of the freezer (Friendly's Vienna Mocha Chip, yummmm), get out a bowl and the scoop and open the lid. I look in, about to start scooping, and freeze. On the surface of the ice cream is carved a message: "Will you marry me?" and a diamond ring is stuck in there by the question mark.
Wheeeee! I couldn't believe it! We'd been talking about getting married, and we had the ring for about six months already (it's an heirloom ring that belonged to my maternal grandmother), but really, I'd thought a proposal was a long way off...
I was discombobulated for about 20 minutes after... but luckily remembered pretty quickly to say "YES!"
- The End :)
*PS. We have already discussed the fact that we will have to ban visits to icanhascheezburger.com to after our future kids go to bed, as it will horribly thwart our attempts to instill good grammar habits in them.
I reply, "You want ice cream now? You're mom's going to be here any minute and we're going to dinner, don't you think you'll spoil your appetite?" Paul says, no, no he'll be fine. I'm skeptical, but I think, okay, he can eat a ton more than I can, so he probably can manage the ice cream and still fit in dinner.
Paul happens to still be drying one of the burner knobs and has this big grin on his face, so I take the bait and ask, "So you want me to scoop it for you?" The grin gets bigger and he says, "Sure!" I am totally clueless at this point (no idea what's coming); it's an odd, but not unusual, request, so I do it.
I get the ice cream out of the freezer (Friendly's Vienna Mocha Chip, yummmm), get out a bowl and the scoop and open the lid. I look in, about to start scooping, and freeze. On the surface of the ice cream is carved a message: "Will you marry me?" and a diamond ring is stuck in there by the question mark.
Wheeeee! I couldn't believe it! We'd been talking about getting married, and we had the ring for about six months already (it's an heirloom ring that belonged to my maternal grandmother), but really, I'd thought a proposal was a long way off...
I was discombobulated for about 20 minutes after... but luckily remembered pretty quickly to say "YES!"
- The End :)
*PS. We have already discussed the fact that we will have to ban visits to icanhascheezburger.com to after our future kids go to bed, as it will horribly thwart our attempts to instill good grammar habits in them.
The naked truth about the "jbirds"
So what's all this stuff about jaybirds and bluejays? Where did that theme come from? Well... it actually all started with a glitch in setting up my account on The Knot. I instantly didn't like the first username I signed up with. So I tried to change it to kikibird. However, due to my impatience in waiting for my original account to be deleted, I snagged the username "kikibird" only to have it deleted immediately after I'd created it, and for some reason (despite lengthly emails to member support) couldn't get it back. So, I resigned myself to its loss, and came up with kikijbird instead, which, in the final analysis, I like a whole lot better.
[Postscript: Recently, the format of the Knot community forums changed, and part of the fallout was that somehow, strangely, the supposedly deleted username "kikibird" resurfaced. So now my posts show up under the username kikibird, while my profile name remains kikijbird. Don't worry though, I'll still answer to both. My guess is there isn't a way to fix it without deleting both usernames and starting over, which I don't want to do because of the link between The Knot, The Nest, and The Bump.]
Anyway... some etymology:
My sisters dubbed me Kiki when they were little. They first called me "Ekka", since they were too young to manage the "R" (or maybe that was the influence of their nascnet Boston accent). But then a little later, I became "Erickeeeeee!" which morphed into "Keeeee Keeeee!" and then (as they grew older, and more sedate), to just "Kiki."
For a while I used the screenname kikibird (nickname + pun on my last name). And when I first signed onto The Knot, it seemed fine to keep up the tradition. But then, when I botched my signup, I started thinking and realized that, come April 24, 2010, I will no longer be just kikibird. I'll be adopting Paul's last name, which begins with a J. I thought to myself, hmmm... "jbird... jaybird, that's an actual bird, isn't it?" And lo and behold, I discovered that jaybird is another name for blue jay! And then the mental sparks began to fly... no pun intended, LOL.
Though Paul and I are not birders, we both love the color blue, and I think that blue jays are gorgeous. It's rather uncanny how appropriate a mascot blue jays are for us. They are a fitting symbol for us as a pair, and they provide a fun theme (both visually and symbolically) for the wedding.
So in the end I'm kind of glad I messed up my Knot account!
*I got the image of the blue jays off the web (ms_diggory)
[Postscript: Recently, the format of the Knot community forums changed, and part of the fallout was that somehow, strangely, the supposedly deleted username "kikibird" resurfaced. So now my posts show up under the username kikibird, while my profile name remains kikijbird. Don't worry though, I'll still answer to both. My guess is there isn't a way to fix it without deleting both usernames and starting over, which I don't want to do because of the link between The Knot, The Nest, and The Bump.]
Anyway... some etymology:
My sisters dubbed me Kiki when they were little. They first called me "Ekka", since they were too young to manage the "R" (or maybe that was the influence of their nascnet Boston accent). But then a little later, I became "Erickeeeeee!" which morphed into "Keeeee Keeeee!" and then (as they grew older, and more sedate), to just "Kiki."
For a while I used the screenname kikibird (nickname + pun on my last name). And when I first signed onto The Knot, it seemed fine to keep up the tradition. But then, when I botched my signup, I started thinking and realized that, come April 24, 2010, I will no longer be just kikibird. I'll be adopting Paul's last name, which begins with a J. I thought to myself, hmmm... "jbird... jaybird, that's an actual bird, isn't it?" And lo and behold, I discovered that jaybird is another name for blue jay! And then the mental sparks began to fly... no pun intended, LOL.
Though Paul and I are not birders, we both love the color blue, and I think that blue jays are gorgeous. It's rather uncanny how appropriate a mascot blue jays are for us. They are a fitting symbol for us as a pair, and they provide a fun theme (both visually and symbolically) for the wedding.
So in the end I'm kind of glad I messed up my Knot account!
*I got the image of the blue jays off the web (ms_diggory)