A few months ago, I decided I couldn’t wait any longer. I wanted to marry Kim. As anyone who has been around us can attest, we are pretty inseparable and cuddlesome. After careful consideration, I have decided I want to grow old and wrinkly with her and then I want to chase her around the house with my walker. Suffice to say, she makes my toes wiggle.

So having come to this point, I started shoping for a ring. Kim had looked at one in Rich’s so I figured that would be a good place to start. When I arrived at Rich’s I was pleased to discover they still had the ring. I just needed to have it resized. No problem (although the sales clerk looked at me funny when I said Kim’s ring size is 4. I think she thought I might be a child molester). The sales clerk packaged up the ring and sent it off to be sized. “Check back in two weeks,” she says.

Two weeks later, nada. “Check back next week.”

After the third week we are closing in on a camping trip Kim and I were planning to take. This was where I had planned on asking her. The day before the trip I am starting to get a bit annoyed. I call up Rich’s and spend quite a bit of time on hold. Finally the sales rep says “We’re not quite sure where the ring is…” I inform her (in the scary quite voice which is only used when someone is about to get hurt) “I will be at your location shortly. Let’s see if you can find it.” *click*

I got to Rich’s and stood around for half an hour while the store clerks fumbled and stumbled. Finally, they told me that the ring was lost. I began counting slowly to 100. I managed to calm myself enough ask them to refund my money without killing anyone. Afterwards the clerk asked for my phone number so that her supervisor could call me and apologize. Assured her in no uncertain terms that I was the last human on the planet her supervisor wanted to talk to. In deference to the probable healthy prison term I would receive, I didn’t carve out her entrails with a rusty soup spoon. It was, however, a close thing.

As it turns out, my camping trip with Kim did not go off as planned. We did spent a wonderful day wandering around Red Top mountain, which restored my sense of joy.

On our return I did some more shopping and picked out a perfect ring. Now all I had to figure out was when to give it to her.

After about a week, the ring was burning a hole in my pocket. Then one night, Kim and I where snuggling on the couch and she made the comment that I was “very patient.”

“About some things” I replied.

“What are you impatient about,” she responded.

I responded with the ring.

She said “Yes.”