Well folks, I have to confess: I'm writing this up a year after it happened. Whoops. It's been a very crazy year, for reasons that will soon become apparent.
I organized a group of SWE ladies to visit the Strip district's Society for Contemporary Craft on July 9th for a ringmaking class. Peter was knee-deep in the comps process and hadn't slept much the previous night, but I cajoled him into joining us and helping to make my ring. Here is where it becomes a little complicated: while he was in Germany, we had talked about getting engaged and I had done some research into what I might want, but never really found anything I loved. There were too many choices. At that point, I floated the idea of how cute it would be if we both just made one, and he agreed. And then, sort of coincidentally, I planned this event for SWE. While our prior conversation was fresh in my mind, it was apparently not present in Peter's for the duration of the event. To keep from raising suspicions of our fellow ringmakers, I had sized both right and left ring fingers and was supposedly designing for the right hand. The winking and nudging directed at Peter about it being left-hand bound was sadly undetected. I explain this important misunderstanding as it's a pretty amusingly relevant representation of our relationship as a whole, wherein both parties have differently organized and prioritized brains. Anyway, we snipped a strip of metal, made a design, annealed and bent it into shape, then soldered the joint and polished it off:
It was only after we got back home, when I explained myself more thoroughly, that we decided to use it as an engagement ring. Which is to say, Peter asked if I was proposing to him, after which he had to ceremoniously remove the ring from my right hand and put it on my left. This (physiologically arbitrary but culturally significant) change meant that, after over six years of dating, we were engaged. Some unexpected freaking out was done on my end, even though it's not like I had envisioned a different outcome. Brains are weird. Hugging also ensued.
In any case, I had already planned for my mom and her friend to come up to Pittsburgh to see the Dave Matthews Band on the 14th, so I decided to keep it internet-quiet until then. I still wore the ring to work, but that made far fewer waves than I had anticipated, which was convenient. I had heard many times how, after my mom and dad were dating for a while, Mom-mom would always check my mom's hand for a ring. The one day she didn't was, obviously, the day my mom had to basically wave her hand around to get noticed. I figured I'd similarly wait and see how long it took her to notice. I thought she'd get it right off, but it wasn't until she brought up her stuff from the car and got into the apartment for a few minutes (after an excess of left-handed nose-scratching) that she was like, "You don't wear rings. What's that?" Hah! And then there was much rejoicing, phone calls, and finally Facebook posting of a photo we had taken on the rooftop a few days earlier. Weirdly, the day we ate dinner up there (BBQ takeout, I believe), there were randomly fireworks right after. Celebratory!
And then we headed out to the First Niagra Pavillion to see the Dave Matthews Band, which was another adventure entirely. The trip was funded in part by a prize I won playing a Coke Rewards game... wee. The venue is mega-sized, but without any kind of sane parking theory. Instead, there is only one entrance and one exit to the lot for thousands of people, and the lot itself is just a flat-ish grassy hillside where people park basically willy-nilly. Getting in took a good while; getting out was nearly impossible for about 45 minutes. The people watching was pretty prime, though, and I had read about the parking lot dysfunction so we just relaxed and ate snacks afterwards. The show itself was knockout - I knew these guys were good, but to be that good for two straight hours with minimal breaks is nothing short of amazing. Hooray for DMB! Thus begins a pretty good July - but more on that later.
I organized a group of SWE ladies to visit the Strip district's Society for Contemporary Craft on July 9th for a ringmaking class. Peter was knee-deep in the comps process and hadn't slept much the previous night, but I cajoled him into joining us and helping to make my ring. Here is where it becomes a little complicated: while he was in Germany, we had talked about getting engaged and I had done some research into what I might want, but never really found anything I loved. There were too many choices. At that point, I floated the idea of how cute it would be if we both just made one, and he agreed. And then, sort of coincidentally, I planned this event for SWE. While our prior conversation was fresh in my mind, it was apparently not present in Peter's for the duration of the event. To keep from raising suspicions of our fellow ringmakers, I had sized both right and left ring fingers and was supposedly designing for the right hand. The winking and nudging directed at Peter about it being left-hand bound was sadly undetected. I explain this important misunderstanding as it's a pretty amusingly relevant representation of our relationship as a whole, wherein both parties have differently organized and prioritized brains. Anyway, we snipped a strip of metal, made a design, annealed and bent it into shape, then soldered the joint and polished it off:
It was only after we got back home, when I explained myself more thoroughly, that we decided to use it as an engagement ring. Which is to say, Peter asked if I was proposing to him, after which he had to ceremoniously remove the ring from my right hand and put it on my left. This (physiologically arbitrary but culturally significant) change meant that, after over six years of dating, we were engaged. Some unexpected freaking out was done on my end, even though it's not like I had envisioned a different outcome. Brains are weird. Hugging also ensued.
In any case, I had already planned for my mom and her friend to come up to Pittsburgh to see the Dave Matthews Band on the 14th, so I decided to keep it internet-quiet until then. I still wore the ring to work, but that made far fewer waves than I had anticipated, which was convenient. I had heard many times how, after my mom and dad were dating for a while, Mom-mom would always check my mom's hand for a ring. The one day she didn't was, obviously, the day my mom had to basically wave her hand around to get noticed. I figured I'd similarly wait and see how long it took her to notice. I thought she'd get it right off, but it wasn't until she brought up her stuff from the car and got into the apartment for a few minutes (after an excess of left-handed nose-scratching) that she was like, "You don't wear rings. What's that?" Hah! And then there was much rejoicing, phone calls, and finally Facebook posting of a photo we had taken on the rooftop a few days earlier. Weirdly, the day we ate dinner up there (BBQ takeout, I believe), there were randomly fireworks right after. Celebratory!
And then we headed out to the First Niagra Pavillion to see the Dave Matthews Band, which was another adventure entirely. The trip was funded in part by a prize I won playing a Coke Rewards game... wee. The venue is mega-sized, but without any kind of sane parking theory. Instead, there is only one entrance and one exit to the lot for thousands of people, and the lot itself is just a flat-ish grassy hillside where people park basically willy-nilly. Getting in took a good while; getting out was nearly impossible for about 45 minutes. The people watching was pretty prime, though, and I had read about the parking lot dysfunction so we just relaxed and ate snacks afterwards. The show itself was knockout - I knew these guys were good, but to be that good for two straight hours with minimal breaks is nothing short of amazing. Hooray for DMB! Thus begins a pretty good July - but more on that later.
No comments:
Post a Comment