After spending a year ring shopping and general wedding planning, a box arrives at our apartment from NYC. Julian did his best to convince me that it’s just a present for his mom’s birthday, but we both knew that was a load of crap. Cue the excited and anxious wait of “when the hell is he going to do this?” As excited and impatient as I was, I tried my best to avoid spoiling any surprises. That was not so successful (Thanks Paul and Brenda!) March 22nd, 2020. First weekend of lockdown. I’m in an oversized tshirt with three day old dirty hair. Not my best look, but we quickly embraced staying home with open arms. Sunday morning we get up, make breakfast, and work on a project in the apartment. We’ve been wanting to read more lately, so Julian suggests we find a book for each of us to read. Here’s where I treasure Julian’s patience. He takes a copy of Where The Sidewalk Ends and hands it to me. He says, “you should read this one. Don’t you love Shel Silverstein?” I scoff at him and roll my eyes, “yeah but that’s not what I meant. I’ve read it before, and I want to read something different”. Julian’s tone changes and pushes the book at me. “No you should really read this one”. At this point I’m annoyed and grab the book from him. I open to the first page and there’s a poem from Julian. Yup, I’m a schmuck. Despite all the spoilers along the way, he managed to catch me totally off-guard with this. I turn around expecting to see him on his knee with the ring. Nope. He’s staring at me annoyed. “Turn the page”. Inside the book, he hollowed out a small circle for the ring to nest in. I am now sobbing. Full blown ugly crying. Before I could even look at him I’m repeating “oh my god why am I crying? I knew this was happening. You are such an asshole”. Again. Really love him for his patience. It all comes down to this. He asks. And I said Can I think about it? As you can imagine, he wasn’t thrilled with that answer. But it seems to have been good enough.