This weekend was huge.  Friday our contractor finished the work,  The kitchen and the bathroom are now finished. It feels like Nicole and I had a roommate move out. All of the tools, the chaos, the filth, is gone.  The house is finally all ours and we love it.  Saturday my dad came down and helped hang some drywall.  It was the second time he has come to visit me in buffalo in like 9 years, but it went fine and wasn’t awkward at all.  It probably helped that we had work to do together in the house which created less awkward moments, but when it was done it seemed like he wanted to help out with more so I think we may see more than 1 visit a decade from now on. I learned a lot about drywall which is good because I am awful at it.

Getting ready to hang the Bill’s Screen TV

Hanging some drywall.  There’s a few more pictures but they were not very flattering.  With our new kitchen being in, its time to eat healthy.  Also, whats my butt doing here?

    Saturday night I went to pick up something from the jewelry store and then came home to propose to Nicole.  Alright, it wasn’t that random.  Nicole and I have been talking about it for a while and have been looking at rings.  She doesn’t ever wear jewelry so looking for a ring was challenging.  Nothing about anything we do is traditional, but that’s how we are, and I love it.   We picked out rings together Friday because we ended up finding one that she really liked.  She also said I would still have to ask her and that she wasn’t going to wear it until I did.  So Saturday night I went to pick up the rings.  For weeks I had been thinking about it.  You always see dudes doing extreme things to propose, often involving public displays which Nicole and I find to be obnoxious.  I wanted to create a t-shirt with us on it, and in Italian would say: “Mi vuoi sposare.”  I designed the shirt when she wasn’t home and planned on mailing it to her in an anonymous package.  Unfortunately, the image of us looked like it was part of a Rorschach test.  So she would end of receiving a shirt with something written in a foreign language on it, and weird random ink blots trying to resemble an image.  All of this coming from an anonymous sender.  That wouldn’t be too creepy would it?  So i decided not to.  So Saturday night I left to go pick up the rings.  I stopped over to her mom’s house to get permission which turned into a much expected awkward moment, but hilarious in hindsight.  I walked into the house, and said “Hello.”  Her mother walked over to the door while Nicole’s sister Amanda came down stairs with little Jake (her son/Nicole’s nephew) and sat on the landing, staring at me.  So there I stand, with the two dogs running around screaming and barking, with Amanda, Jake and her mom staring at me wondering why I have arrived at 7:30pm by myself.  I didn’t want to ask her mom to speak in private, because that would have made it even more odd, so I just looked her in the eyes and asked her for her permission to marry her daughter.  She looked at me with a completely emotionless expression, and said, “No.”  We then just stood there looking at each other for a few moments and finally that emotionless face turned into a genuine smile and she told me that her and Nicole’s dad both give me their blessing.  Amanda and Jake said that they liked having me around.  So with the blessing from the new additions of my family, I left to go pick up the rings!
    Once I had the rings in my hands, and saw how great they came out, I couldn’t wait.  I have been in love with her for a long time, and every day I love her more.  We never fight, and we love spending time with each other.  Never have I felt so connected to a person like I feel with her. I drove home rehearsing the lines that I wanted to say to her in Italian, trying to get it just right so that I didn’t sound unnatural.  That was going to be impossible, so I had to just make sure I could say it the best I could.
    I pulled up to the house, took a deep breath, and walked through the front door.  Nicole was in her pajamas on the couch with a big towel in her hair watching TV.  I walked over to her and got down on one knee, only i was behind the couch and it didn’t register to her what I was doing.  I, of course, was too nervous to understand that she couldn’t see me on one knee and had no idea what I was doing.  She was watching “Date Night” and awful movie with Steve Carell and the volume was up higher than usual making it difficult to speak in a normal voice.  We looked at each other oddly for a moment when I said, “Can you turn the volume down, I’m trying to talk to you.”.  She turned down the volume on the TV while laughing at me, still not really registering what it was I was trying to do.  I just looked totally weird crouching down behind the couch with a look of confusion on my face.  I said to her, “Ti amo sempre.  Mi vuoi sposare?”.  What she said right after that moment was sort of a blur because I think I was overloading mentally.  I believe she smiled and said, “ohh…thanks”.  I realized that I had to follow up in English, so I said, “That means, will you marry me?”.  She said “yes” and then let me know that she sort of understood “Ti amo sempre” (I love you always), but had no idea what else I had said.  I put the ring on her finger and followed the happiest moment of my life to date with a kiss and phone calls to our family.  My mom was incoherent because she was crying so hard.

The animals are really excited.

    So the entire process of getting engaged was not how I imagined, but a lot more memorable because of it, and I’d have it no other way.  We don’t plan on having a huge wedding, just immediate family and a few close friends and some dinner.  Nicole and I don’t like big productions, and would prefer to spend money on other things, like our planned trip to Italy in June.

    I will have more entries this week on a regular basis.  With the work in the house being completed, I’ll have more time to do some entries.  Lots of things to talk about! Go Bills!!