Happy together

Talk about your landmark weekends. Not only did we get to spend what we kept referring to as a “poor man’s weekend getaway” at Kerry’s brother’s and sister-in-law’s house out by Ann Arbor, I also seized it as a prime opportunity to pop the question. That’s right, we got engaged. I’m going to be a married man. It’s both wonderful and surreal at the same time. The storage capacity of this blog couldn’t contain enough words to properly convey my excitement and bliss in the days after this moment. Trust us when I say that we are not only very happy, but very cognizant that we’ve earned this happiness, that we have no problem owning this joy.

Friday night we got out of town and chilled a little, it was like driving up north to stay at someone’s cabin for a few days. We stopped at the market, bought a weekend’s worth of light grub, some beverages, and checked in to our temporary housing. We got up Saturday and I had a whole day before this thing was going down. Firstly, she had no idea it was coming. She was expecting a proposal closer to the end of this year, around New Year’s, as per several earlier discussions. If I wanted to inject any semblance of spontaneity into this thing, I thought I should propose in July. I found the ring, a 1920s antique, sort of art deco emerald filigree engagement ring. It took me months of scouring antique stores to find it, but I did, randomly, on a visit to Ann Arbor to help empty Larry’s studio. Now that day was fucked up, there was a lot of crazy emotion there and I thought I was detached enough from the situation to duck out of the way of some serious impact, but I still caught some shrapnel from that. But I found this ring out of the blue, in a shop on Main Street in Ann Arbor. I’d like to think that maybe Larry had a little something to do with that.

I paid off the jewels on Friday and could pick it up the next day, so when we woke up Saturday, I enacted a few plans to shake free from Kerry so I could go pick it up, a task easier spoken than actually accomplished. I told her I had to take some pictures for some freelance stuff and I’d be back in an hour. “I’ll come with you,” she said. Fuck. So, I shifted gears and said I could do it later and that we should go ahead with our plan to go to Ann Arbor, putz about in some shops, get some lunch, and kind of freestyle the afternoon. I had no idea how I was going to get that ring, but I thought if I got close the store, I could show a disinterest in whatever other store we were in and say, “hey, I’ll meet you back here in 10” sort of thing. Even that didn’t work. We got two doors away from the ring when we found a bookstore of sort of New Age-y type shit, religious studies, etc. A sign on the door advertised the services of a clairvoyant that day offering drop-in readings, a 15-minute minimum. Fucking bingo! She points to it and asks if I’d be interesting in trying it, you know, for shits. Sure! Sign us up. You go first! Which is what she did and I high-tailed it out of the store, down two doors, scored the ring and came back. Interesting though, when I got to the antique store, the door was locked. The woman let me in very cautiously because she knew who I was and I had spoken with her the day prior. They were doing their inventory and had all of their diamond rings out of the cases — rows of them — and on top of the counters, probably $1 million worth of rocks there. I thought, for a second, now would be a great time to have a gun.

With ring in pocket, I returned to the bookstore with about 10 minutes to kill. After perusing titles about holistic parenting, raw food detoxification and how to maintain your temper, it was my turn with Madame X. Kerry couldn’t believe I was being open-minded about this. I guess I was as much of a fraud as she was. I listened to this broad’s hooey for 15 minutes, paid up and got the fuck out. Kerry said the woman said she cleaned her crown shakra. Sounds to me like she’d been drinking some crown shakra.

That ring box burned a hole in my shorts pocket all day long. When Kerry wasn’t looking I would shift it to a different pocket so when I sat next to her she couldn’t touch my leg and blow the big secret. The day passed and we hit Pepperz, which, despite its intentional illiterate name, was actually quite tasty and cool in there.

I had the walleye, Kerry the pasta primavera. Both were quite good.

It was warm in there, probably because it was about 93 outside, so we headed to Babs’ Underground Lounge, where we knew they’d be blasting the a/c, as well as some icy martinis. As is typical with Ann Arbor I had to endure some serious assault on my better judgment. There was some “stick” music festival there, these kind of funky-looking gee-tars. I think this guy says it all, really.

I just wanted to keep yelling from the crowd, “I like your pants!” He’s also finger-popping the neck of his axe there.
We then pass this lovely alley

And some fucking LAME art student/stencil Star Wars bullshit. Here is someone’s “tag.” Gross.

We got to Babs and enjoyed the lovely confines. We were there once last summer and the bartender, Rob, remembered us and where we were from, which I thought was very cool. Really nice guy, great bar.

We left Babs and headed to Dominick’s, one of our favorite Ann Arbor mainstays.

We enjoyed some sangria by the fountain

before heading across the street to the law quad. That was where I was going to propose. We love the law quad. In the very embryonic stages of our relationship, we shared a significantly romantic moment there. Plus, her dad stayed there in the ‘60s when he studied for the bar, so it does have some familiar aspect to it. It’s shrouded by these century-old buildings and lush grass. It’s lovely.

We walked and found a bench

where I would later take a knee after much out-of-character hemming, hawing and general awkwardness. She said yes. I am a happy, happy man these days. Afterward, we got on our phones to call family and friends. I went back to the bench to snap a picture. It was dark and my flash was going off when I hear this crazy woman across the lawn fucking screaming at me about how I’ve been following her around my whole life, taking her picture, ruining her. She was obviously very disturbed and kept yelling “That’s right you sonofabitch! Keep taking my picture! You’ve ruined me! You and the CIA!” And then she paused “And I have autism!!” she fucking screamed. Great.

We called some peeps and then returned to Babs for some champagne before heading home. Probably the most significant day of my life, I would have to say. We’re now planning a series of headaches and stress and bullshit for the next year. Oh, and there’s a wedding too. Sometime in October 2007. City Chicken readers get the VIP Room.