i have such a crush on this man

Leonard Nimoy, that is...

aftermath

Got hit with a two-day migraine Tuesday morning...not as bad as some in the past, thankfully, but lasted a bit longer than usual. The migraine part is done, and now my body is just...unhappy. Sore/tired/tense, like gravity has been turned up a notch or two. You know how when you have a sore muscle, your body twitches and does everything it can to not use it, which ends up throwing everything out of balance and off? It's kind of like that, starting from inside your skull, and working its way out and down. Just have to relax a bit and let things balance back out...darkness and quiet are your friends [well, they usually are, but now even more so].


[update: gardeners just showed up. how do they know??]

random good/happy/content memories

The smell of Claudine's general store, that powdery tangy sweet candy smell meets old wood shelving scent. I used to scrape together change to spend there...a little went a long way, and it was the best retail therapy ever. Cherry Chans, candy buttons, penny gum, Lemon Heads, those giant chewy Sweetarts, whatever those hard-won pennies and dimes could buy me.

A bit later in life: standing outside Claudine's on the pay phone, pumping in coins to call Greg long-distance. Scraped together coins for that one too. Talking away, only to be interrupted by "Please deposit 25 more cents to continue your call" [talk about old-school]. That one embarrassing day I was 25 cents short and had to hang up, only to have the operator ring back to ask for it. I ended up borrowing it from a neighbor who happened to live nearby...I felt horrible.

Lightning bugs. Freshly mown grass. Just rained-on concrete. Coconut suntan oil. Chlorine. Chick-o-sticks. Thunderstorms. Bike rides. Summer.

The smell and sound of the eucalyptus trees around the house in Half Moon Bay. The salty fishy tang of the Pacific, wafting in open windows. The sound of the surf.

Sharing pizza with Dad. Drinking daiquiris with Mom. Dad's tacos, Mom's spaghetti. IGA pizzas. Lawson's subs. Snyder barbeque chips. Those awesome sandwiches that Greg's mom made for him in high school. The pizza squares that dripped grease down your hand. Pepperoni sticks from the Dari Twist. Bloomer's chocolate and coconut haystacks in a big wooden basket. Archway Dutch Cocoa cookies.

Hanging out on Monie's front porch at the yellow house, running around the yard, playing, imagining, being a kid. Those crazy steep steps upstairs at her other place. The deer/forest mural on the wall. Squirrely and Puddles. The pop-up camper. The gravel alleyways, that crunching sound of riding your bike through them. Clotheslines full of laundry.

Working with Doug, trusting him as a friend and manager, loving the team he'd built, being part of it. Following him to two more companies, more teams built, processes created, people met, much learned.

My weird-ass L-shaped cube at Calico...a space that wasn't really good for anything, and I carved it into an awesome little area.

That one spring day in Foster city when I was driving my Cabrio, top down, music blasting [Papa Roach, full volume], making a tight U-turn on Edgewater, feeling content and confident. Not sure what it was about that day, but it really sticks in my head even now.

No trash pickup in Trinway back in the day, so we had to burn trash or take it to the dump. No mail delivery to the house, either...you went up to the post office. If anything was too big for the box, you had to ask the postmaster [or mistress] for it. You knew them by name, they knew you. Man, I loved that feeling of seeing the "parcel too large for box" notice sitting there...it was a little Christmas every time.

Dad at the house in Pacifica, wanting so badly to fix the doorbell. I loved how he took care of me, at the same time acknowledging that I didn't need him to any more. I think he knew that I would try to come up with things for him to help with...I liked it, and I think it made him happy too.

Flying home early from Paris to surprise Mom at work. Major success, many tears, many hugs.

Christmas in Moss Beach, opening a big box from Mom and Dad, seeing Runny Babbit tucked inside. More tears, big smiles.

[...to be continued...]

and it's only going to go up... :^(

ouch.

red tape

Yay! Tax refunds!

Yay! Direct deposit!

Yay! Savings account upgraded from old grandfathered type to fancy new type!

Boo! Account number changed!

Boo hoo! Direct deposits failed...

the ring

Will fought hard with Tiffany's to make sure the ring got here before he had to leave for GPF...and he managed to surprise me again, slipping out while I was napping to pick it up. Sneaky, wonderful man.

answers

Some answers to questions we've been getting:

Were you surprised?

Yes. <expletive> yes. "Stunned" only begins to cover it. Brain shutdown, gears grinding, clutch slipping, total gobsmackedness.

Why so surprised? Haven't you guys been together for a while now?

Yeah, a couple years now, and we had been talking "in it for the long haul" for a while. But I knew going into this that Will wasn't big on marriage; in fact, it was one of the issues that lead to the end of his last relationship. It didn't matter to me...I was enjoying the moments together and sharing the same path with him, so I just accepted it as a part of who he was and where he'd come from and didn't think twice about it.

How did you meet?

Heh, that's a good question. Our standard answer is "we both worked at Facebook". Beyond that, neither of us really knows how we actually first met. Here's the long version:

I was the geek groupie hanging out with the IT/network guys, he was somewhere in that crowd, but even then, I don't really remember how I was introduced to him. Somewhere along there, he mentioned that he was going through the break-up thing with his girlfriend, and I said that I was losing both my boyfriend [work transfer across country, with long-distance relationship just not an option for many reasons] and my best friend [who was also moving out of the area]. I'm guessing we commiserated together, but getting together just wasn't in the cards...he was busy with work and a redhead he'd been friends with, and I wasn't looking for another relationship just yet.

Then one day he walked by my desk and told me, "by the way, we're having an affair." After my stunned laughter died down, he explained that his ex-girlfriend was convinced that the reason they broke up is because he'd been cheating on her with me for a while now. We shook our heads, giggled at the absurdity...I even told him "no offense, but you aren't even on my radar." He agreed, since his type leaned more towards redheads and rock-climbers, and we both just stood there shaking our heads bemusedly.

And the best part? After he left my desk, I had to send an instant message to a friend of mine asking her what his name was... :^D

After that, he would stop by and give me updates on our "affair"...the length of time we'd apparently known each other was getting longer and longer, the drama getting more and more entertaining. And somewhere in there, I ran through the "well, *would* I date this guy?" train of thought, and apparently he did as well, and we both ended up on the "affirmative" side of the argument. If it hadn't been for all of that, I can honestly say we wouldn't have gotten to know each other as well.

And so here we are. :^)

When is the big day? Where are you getting married?

No idea. See above re: "surprise, complete and total". Since marriage wasn't an option [or so I thought :^) ], we never did the standard "if we were to get married, when/where/how would we do it?" conversations. So basically, we are starting from scratch here.

How did he ask?

[warning: gushy gag-inducing sweetness ahead :^) ]

It was after we got home from the Saw Doctors show in San Francisco...I'd had a great time, and we were both tired and our ears were ringing [I was a bit hoarse, since I'd been yelling and singing my fool head off at the concert]. We were lying there cuddled up, just chatting and talking in that "late night body-tired but brain-wired" way, and we started talking about how we like our lives with the other one in it. The random ways we fit well together, the way we make each other laugh, the shit we've both been through and the other has helped with...and out of the blue, Will says, "I would spend a reasonable facsimile of forever with you" [it's an inside joke with us, a nod to the silliness of the blind assumption that love automatically equals "forever and ever", rather than the reality of two people working at it together and putting in the effort to make it a long-lasting partnership]. That in itself was enough to get me choked up...then he sits up a bit, looks deep into my eyes, and asked me to marry him.

Brain = broken. Seriously. I froze. Not in the "oh fuck, what do I do?" way, but in the "zomg, can't process, rewind, replay, rewind, replay, yes, that's what he said, wait, what, wow, hello are you there Earth to Stacey better answer him wake up yoohoo snap out of it" overwhelmed way. Cue waterworks and the "yes", and a sleepless night with brain whirling.

Later, he told friends that he'd been thinking about it for a while now, and that he got impatient and didn't want to wait for the ring. And I've got to say, the timing was absolutely perfect: it was a sweet, tender time of relaxing and curling up with each other after an awesome evening together. It felt so right, so organic and natural when he asked...I don't think he could have planned it any better. I wish *I* had been a bit smoother with my response...more Hollywood "hands flutter to her mouth, a tiny tear makes it way slowly from the corner of her eye while she looks up through her eyelashes and quietly whispers "yes, my darling, yes, I will marry you" and then she leans into him for a strong embrace", and much less the "deer in the headlights, frozen by the emotion and overwhelmed by the utter awesomeness and love and surprise, then blubbering like a baby, snorfling into his shoulder as she hugs him for dear life and smooches him frantically all over his face" spectacle it actually was.

Even now, I am still a bit out of it as it all sinks in. But it's a good fog to be in.

What about the ring?

I actually haven't seen it yet...it's out for sizing, and like he told our friends, he was impatient and didn't want to wait. But he showed me online: round diamond with two round sapphires flanking it, platinum band. I like. A lot.

[Funny story: he disappeared the morning after asking me, saying he was running some errands. He came back a while later, hugged me, and said, "I did it backwards." I had no idea what he was talking about...then he said, "your ring will be here in two to three weeks, it's being sent to New York for sizing." More of Stacey being gobsmacked and waterworks. :^)

I couldn't figure out how he got my ring size, then I remembered him talking about wedding bands, what did I want, and jokingly saying "hey, we could save money and use one of my old rings!", then we sat there goofing around and trying them on and chatting about what we liked. The smart man paid attention to what was closest to fitting me and used that as a guide for the size of the engagement ring, hence the "errand" he had to run that morning.

Sneaky one, he is.]

So what now?

Hmm, another good question. It's all still sinking in.

So are you excited?

Yes, but also not really. I know that sounds horrible, so let me explain:

I am absolutely excited about being Will's wife. But honestly, this doesn't change much...we were already planning on spending as much of our lives together as we could. So this doesn't add more weight or power to our commitment to each other, since that was already there. Basically we have invoked an "automatic renewal" clause to our relationship contract...other than the ceremony and the paperwork and me changing my last name, nothing has changed in our plans for our futures. So am I excited and stunned and thrilled and loving the idea of being married to Will? Most definitely. But it doesn't change the fact that we were already partners, sharing life and facing the good and the bad together. It's just a nice bonus.

he asked...

...I said 'yes'. :^)

evidence

of another excellent set by the Saw Doctors:

share the darkness

Saw Doctors, Slims SF, Will...

...very good times.