The Adventure Continues!

We met on tinder. Claire had a lovely profile about her writing career, that she had all of her teeth still and most importantly, great hair. My profile asked if there was anyone who wanted to touch my butt. Because I was the second to swipe right, I made the first move. What drew me in was Claire’s writing, and her amazing hair. I am also a writer. So we first started talking about our writing projects, what we like to write etc. Claire write epic fantasy; while I write mystery/thrillers. After talking for a couples weeks, and a couple snow delays, we met for dinner at Portofino in Merrimack on January 25th, 2023. It was also snowing that night, but both of us were willing to brave the snow. I had to meet this person. And after meeting, we both knew that night, that the other was special. We were practically thrown out of the restaurant as they needed to close but we didn’t want to stop talking. So we spent like another twenty minutes outside talking and getting snowed on. It was the beginning of a beautiful love story. And it continues to grow.

In October, I started to look at rings. We had been living together for a few months and hadn’t killed each other yet. I took that as a good sign. I had known since February that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her and marry her. I bought a ring custom made off Etsy, with a moss agate stone. Moss agate symbolizes abundance, new beginnings, and balance; which are three things I believe every marriage needs. I did not want to have a Christmas or New Year’s Eve proposal because those are lame. So I chose December 30th, the day before New Year’s Eve. Totally not the same. The day came and almost everything was going wrong. The plan was to have a girl’s day and do beauty treatments and to end with a fancy dinner of mushroom risotto. I had a risotto on our first date and I wasn’t about to tackle eggplant parm, since Claire has a special way she cooks it. So, like I said, the day came and everything started to go wrong. Our hair deep conditioning treatment went wrong and we ended up washing out our greasy mops for days. Then I ended up buying the wrong wine for the risotto. And then we both didn’t enjoy the risotto. I should not have picked the first time I made a dish to be the proposal dish. And then we kept getting interrupted all day. No one understood that we had plans, and we were not budging. But still, I was determined to propose. One good thing was going to happen that day. It had to. So I cleaned up from dinner and decided to use the hot kitchen as the excuse to go outside. I had stashed the ring outside on the balcony when Claire was trying to wash out the hair disaster. I came out of the kitchen and asked if she wanted to go outside since it’s so hot in the apartment. Claire said “That’s okay. I just turned on the A/C.” Somehow I got her to follow me outside to the balcony. I made her keep the Christmas lights up for this purpose. (I know, me the Grinch wanted Christmas to stay.) Claire followed me out and I was on one knee. I quoted Gandalf and said I was looking for someone to share in an adventure, but really to continue our current adventure to the next part. There was other garbled nonsense, since I was so nervous. But I did have it all written down to give her. She said yes! Sadly, because of the hair disaster and also because we’re terrible at selfies, there are no photos from this night. But we did start to take more photos and perfect our faces after this. See our photo gallery for some examples. I am the luckiest woman in the world to be loved by the most beautiful woman. And I am so excited to marry her in May.