It’s official — we’re engaged!

The story from S’s point-of-view:

About a month ago, M was off camping with Scouts for the weekend, and E and I went in to the city for the gay pride parade. After the parade ended, I suggested heading over to the greenway along the river for some peace and quiet and nice scenery. Little did E know it was part of a larger plan….

It was a beautiful day. We sat, and relaxed, and admired the sailboats, and had fun feeding peanuts to little brown birds that kept flitting around us. We knew better than to feed the geese. And we talked about how we had walked along that exact same greenway, after we left the science museum on the night of our very first date, nearly 2 years earlier.

E said, “And we just kept walking because we didn’t want it to end.”

Who could hope for a better cue than that? I rummaged in my bag, pulled out the engagement ring I had bought her, and said, “And I still don’t want it to end. Will you marry me?”

And she said — YES!

We kissed, and fed the birds some more peanuts, and talked, and watched the sailboats, and the finished the day by walking down along the greenway, on one more wonderful day that we didn’t want to end.

◊ ◊ ◊

And now the story from E’s point-of-view:

By the time the parade ended I was feeling pretty “peopled” out and I loved S’s idea of sitting by the river. It’s so beautiful and romantic and one of my favorite spots in the city. It’s good that S posted her point-of-view first because I honestly don’t remember exactly how it all happened. I was so overwhelmed with happiness and emotion that some of it is just a blur to me.

One thing I do remember clearly though is S’s great idea for a ring. She chose a style called a “mother’s ring” and it had 3 birthstones - mine, hers and M’s. It represented the three of us coming together as a family and I absolutely loved the idea. Unfortunately the ring didn’t quite fit me so S ended up returning it. Since I don’t really need an engagement ring and S’s idea is so awesome we’re going to use it for our wedding rings.

We haven’t set a date yet but we’re thinking it will be in a year or two.

Coming out to the neighbor kid

S here again. M and I had a discussion this morning about how he will explain to his best friend, the girl across the street, that E is moving in. His buddy will be away from now until after the move-in actually happens, so regardless of what approach we use, she’ll find out after the fact. (Her parents already know about E moving in, and are fine with the whole concept.) The girl supposedly currently has no clue that E and I are in a relationship. This is despite the fact that, on weekend mornings, E comes out of my bedroom in her pajamas, and feeds the kids if they ask her to.

Here are some of the approaches we’ve tossed around (and giggled about) that M could use:

Option 1: the generic lie. “E moved into the spare bedroom because everything is getting more expensive and this way she and mom can split costs of household stuff.”

Option 2: the ridiculous lie. “E moved in because she needed someone to vouch to her parole officer that she had a place to live.”

Option 3: general evasion. “Oh yeah, E is living here now. What do you want for breakfast?”

Option 4: some semblance of the truth. “E is living here now because she and my mom are really good friends. Like, a couple. Yeah. What do you want for breakfast?”

Option 5: say nothing, and wait for the neighbor girl to ask, “Why are there three extra bookcases in your living room, and a cat sitting on top of the hamster cage?”

Making it into *our* house, part 3

It’s been a tough weekend to be painting; it was 93 degrees and incredibly humid. But we’re starting to feel quite a time crunch to get things done before E moves in. So although this post doesn’t come with more before-and-after pictures, you can just picture the last couple of walls in the living room and kitchen turned from grubby off-white to peach. They look really nice.

Yesterday, after we had painted a first coat on the walls, E and I then collapsed in the bedroom in dire need of a nap before attempting paint coat #2. Just as we nodded off, M came wandering through the bedroom on his way to the bathroom. Never mind that he could have used the other door to get to the bathroom without going through the bedroom, or used the other bathroom. His innards have been a bit upset lately, so we attempted to doze while listening to a good 10 or 15 minutes of grunting. Grunting ceased, silence reigned for about 15 seconds, and then he called out, “Mom? Can I take a shower?”

So we attempted to doze while listening to the shower. Then we were treated to about 5 minutes of the random thumping around that always seems to follow M taking a shower. Judging by the sound, M wasn’t bothering with a towel. He must have been trying to flail the water off by flinging himself into walls or something.

M then went into the living room. He couldn’t quite settle down to read; instead it was flip…flip…flip…flip as he browsed through his books. E finally got up and shut the door so we wouldn’t have to listen to the flipping.

Silence. For 15 seconds. And then the hamster, who had been temporarily moved to the bedroom so he wouldn’t inhale paint fumes, decided it was time to get a drink. Clink-clink-clink-clink from his water bottle. E and I couldn’t help but giggle at this point. We were starting to feel doomed.

Another 15 seconds of silence, and then E’s Blackberry, which had also been temporarily relocated to the bedroom to keep it away from paint, went off. E turned it to Quiet mode.

Another 15 seconds of silence, and then the hamster decided it was a good time to move food from one corner of his cage to another. Scrabble-scrabble-scrabble.

Thankfully, the hamster must have decided it was too hot and humid to redecorate his cage (maybe this means he has more sense than we do), and he settled back to sleep. And then, finally, FINALLY, E and I were able to get our nap.

Vacation fun

S here, with stories and pictures from the vacation that M and I took last week. (Poor E couldn’t go; this is her busiest time of year at work.)

Day 1 we headed up to the Lincoln/Franconia Notch area of NH, in the White Mountains. Our first stop was at Lost River, which is a trail and boardwalk through a gorge with many little side caves to go through. M managed to fit through every single cave, though some are very tight. I only skipped a couple (you can bypass any of the caves by staying on the main trail.) Here’s what it looks like, and what it takes to scramble through some of the caves.

As we drove to our motel, we had the best moment of serendipity on our trip. I happened to see a tiny roadside park (Cascade Park, on Rt 3 in North Woodstock) that led into a wide spot on the Pemigewasset River where you could go wading; most of the water is only a couple feet deep. The water was ice cold and quite fast, and M was a bit miffed when he slipped in one of the rounded-out hollows and got soaked up to his chest. But he perked up quickly, and then had more fun exploring, and eventually decided he’d loll in the water on purpose, and we had a nice late picnic lunch here.

We checked into our motel, where the woman took one look at M and said, “Looks like you got a little wet.” He immediately informed her I’d pushed him into the river. Yeah, right — I’d been 6 feet away and he slipped in on his own. But he’s good at revisionist history.

We finished off the day by playing mini-golf at Hobo Hills Adventure Golf, which is next to the Hobo Railroad, so we saw a tourist train go by while we were playing. M loves to play mini-golf, and we each managed to get a hole-in-one, which is always a nice confidence-booster.

Each hole had an example of the graffiti hobos used to leave messages for each other. Most made sense (things like “the police in this town are very easy” or “beware of the barking dog”) but we’re still wondering about why hobos would warn each other of this:

Day 2 we spent the entire day at Whales Tale Waterpark. No pictures, because I didn’t want to bring the camera. It had a lovely large wave pool, and you could float on inner tubes in it. It also had 3 hot tubs. So we basically alternated between excitement in the wave pool, and warming up in the hot tub, with a couple trips down a water slide and a couple turns in the Lazy River (which was so lazy that M said it should be called the Half-Dead River.)

Day 3 we headed up into Franconia Notch to the Falling Waters trail. It’s a very steep trail up along a brook which has several waterfalls along the way. First you get to some 20′ falls, right about at the point where you have to cross the brook on either rocks or a log.

Further in you get to some 60′ falls, and again have to cross the brook on rocks. M is the yellow thing about halfway up.

Finally you get to some 80′ falls, which were truly spectacular. Now M is the tiny yellow speck up top.

Round trip the whole hike was nearly 3 miles, and about 1000′ change in elevation, and totally worth it. Waterfalls were just frequent enough to keep M enthusiastic. When we got to the bottom of the 80′ falls he said, “I’m going to the top so you can get a picture with me for scale” and he took off, eagerly scrambling up the steepest part of the whole trail.

He then said, “Let’s keep hiking a little farther, there are more waterfalls.” It may the first time M ever requested prolonging a hike!

After that, we stopped at Cascade Park for another picnic lunch plus more wading in the Pemigewasset River, then headed down to my parents’ house to spend a couple days. Overall, a very fun and relaxing trip.

You know it’s too humid when….

S here. I don’t know which is more disgusting: that I just found a mushroom growing in the corner of the pantry next to the bathroom. Or that a spider has decided to build a web over it and live there.

No, I’m not going to take a photo. I doubt other people want to have this image in their heads. Although I might leave the mushroom there until E comes over tomorrow night, so she can see it in person.

Making it into *our* house, part 2

This past weekend’s adventure was painting the living room. We wanted a lighter version of the Mango Tango that we had used for the accent wall in the kitchen. So we bought paint that was 4 shades lighter on the same paint chip. It took only a couple strokes of the brush to realize Salmon Creek was way too light. E took the paint back to the hardware store and asked them to tint it up one shade darker to Mimosa. We did an entire wall, two coats, and still weren’t quite sure of the color. It was a little lighter and a little pinker than we had been envisioning. After a few hours, we decided it definitely wasn’t right.

So back to the paint store it was, for more paint one shade darker yet, Autumn Reverie. And that turned out to be exactly the color we’d both been looking for. Since we could use Mimosa as a first coat on some of the other walls, we didn’t wind up wasting too much paint overall, and it was definitely worth it to get exactly the peach color we wanted.

Before:

After 3 trips to the paint store:

An ominous sign

S here. Every couple of years, I lose phone service at my house, because branches on the tree next to the telephone phone grow too close and disconnect the wires. The tree and pole are on the lot line of two of my neighbors, neither of whom seem inclined to cut the tree back. The phone company hasn’t done anything other than reconnect the wires and say it’s the town’s problem to cut the tree branches. I call the town, nothing happens, in a couple years the branches grow some more, and we repeat the cycle.

So I was very excited today to discover that the town is finally sending a truck around to trim back branches near poles. I can only hope that the quality of their tree-trimming is better than their sign-posting ability would indicate. Because otherwise, don’t expect to reach me by phone for a while.

Making it into *our* house, part 1

S here; as we discussed in a previous post, we’re doing some serious interior redecorating to make the house feel more like ours and less like mine. This past weekend, we started on the kitchen.

Before:

After the addition of Mango Tango:

We really like how it turned out, although it still startles us whenever we walk into the kitchen.

Happy times in California

Hello all, E here and how great is the news from California?!  It’s awesome to look at all the happy couples tying the knot.  S emailed me a bit ago and said “16+ hours of gay marriage in California, and the state still hasn’t fallen into the ocean.  Go figure.”  So true.

John Jonik is a brilliant political cartoonist and his take on gay marriage is below.  I think he sums it up quite nicely.  Enjoy. 

 

Old Furniture Never Dies

The scene: E and S are in E’s apartment, contemplating a nondescript floor lamp that’s listing about 15 degrees off vertical.

S: “When you move in, is that lamp coming, or are you planning to get rid of it?”

E: “I have to keep it. I don’t care if we use it or store it in your parents’ basement, but it was a wedding gift to my parents, and they’d be really upset if it wasn’t somewhere in my possession.”

The scene: ten years later, S and M are rummaging through S’s parents’ enormous basement, looking for items to furnish M’s new off-campus apartment.

S: “How about you take this lamp?”

M: “OK. Where did it come from anyway?”

S: “It was a wedding gift to E’s parents.”

The scene: another ten years later, M and his girlfriend are in M’s apartment, contemplating a nondescript floor lamp that’s listing about 15 degrees off vertical.

M’s girlfriend: “When we move in to our new house, is that lamp coming, or are you planning to get rid of it?”

M: “I have to keep it. I don’t care if we use it or store it in the basement, but it was a wedding gift to E’s parents.”