There's No Story, Really

Most people want to know the big engagement story. Well, there isn't really one.

This is how it all came down. (You'll have to ask Jim if he sees it differently.)

The week of June 17, I was Skyping with my friend Nozomi. (If you have friends who live far away and have computers, you need to learn about Skype! Go to http://www.skype.com/ It's free! You can instant message, voice chat, or even web cam.) Nozomi said, "You know I'm going back to Japan in March. You need to get married before I go back to Japan." (Jim and I had already discussed getting married sometime between Jan. and June, but not between Ash Wed. and Easter. I had also talked about wanting to go back to Japan for a couple of weeks in the spring myself.) Nozomi continued, "You should get married in January." I told her that I had also been thinking about that, but I told her that Jim and I hadn't talked time table for awhile. Nozomi said, "Then you should bring it up."
"I'm not going to bring it up!" I said. "He'll bring it up when he's ready."
So Friday, June 22 I go over to Jim's house. Not long after walking through the door, Jim said, "I've been thinking about time table. I think we should get married in January."
"Me too!" I laughed. "So does this make us 'officialized'?"
"Nah," said Jim, and went on to say why not. So we decided not to tell people.
So the next day my mother straight out asks, "So do you and Jim have a date yet?"
I couldn't lie. "Well, as of last night, we have a month. It's January. But don't tell people because we aren't 'officialized'."
We still weren't calling ourselves "officialized" when we went to New York, but as we met more and more of his relatives, it got tiring to explain the whole yes, we're getting married in January, but we aren't really engaged yet thing. So we stopped correcting people. In the car on the way home, I said that the whole official engagement thing was starting to feel very anticlimatic, BUT that didn't mean he still couldn't do something romantic at some point!! Then I found out all the people he had already told anyway. "I only told people who live out of state!!" I said. My poor mother had been sitting on this info. for awhile, and to my knowledge, my dad still hadn't been informed. In my mind, it was Jim's job to talk to my dad, although I was perfectly fine with us talking to him together. Well, that conversation never really happened either. We had already set up our first counseling appointment with Tim Havlicek by the time my dad heard it from us--not that my dad was in any way surprised.
So I don't know at what point we became "officialized," but it happened somewhere in there. The romantic proposal thing never happened. No, I don't have a ring, but that is MY choice. I boycott diamonds and don't really wear jewelry except my God ring, which has its own story.
I'm too cheap and pragmatic for jewelry! However, that does not mean that I'm not a romantic because I am. And I still think it would be nice to have some sort of creative celebration of the event!