Judy P's Tickle Trunk

or Get Off Your Knees Mr. Benson, We Have a Wedding to Plan

The delays began to pile up. First it was the pre-Christmas blog entry, then the Christmas entry, followed by the the post-Christmas entry. The photos were all set aside and the words for each were organizing themselves, Tetris-like, into neat little stacks in my left frontal lobe in preparation for delivery to my patient Tickle Trunk patrons. But typing time was scarce and Christmas preparations took priority on busy work-day evenings – I plodded on, hoping to catch up once I started my holiday break. Then all of a sudden my thoughts of documenting and romanticizing my Christmas adventures were thrown right off the sleigh. On December 21st, right out of the blue (or the red and green as it were), in a chimerical swirl of fairy-dust and ribbon toting bluebirds, my sweetheart proposed marriage. I giggled, and when the the twanging of the strings of a thousand Cupid’s bows ceased, I accepted. And giggled some more.

The delightful news is trickling out to family and friends and at work the interrogations have begun. “When are you getting married, where are you getting married, was it a surprise, is there a ring?” Now I’m not the ‘put yer eye out with the glare from a bag of karats diamond sitting on a platform of lethal spikes in a gem crusted band’ kind of girl. In fact, I’m not really much into rings at all. But when my colleague arrived in the staffroom the morning after Lance proposed, flaunting her newly set, old stone, diamond ring I felt the gauntlet had been dropped. “In your face Megan Waite” I shouted as I whipped out my hand and waved my ring finger, resplendent with its adornment of a three inch antique glass doorknob. Tee-hee. The room went up and the jaws dropped, not by the sight of my magnificent doorknob, but due to the fact that I was really and truly engaged. I loved sharing my surprise.

Ring bling or is it a doorknob?

So it seems that everyone is asking about a ring. I do have one in mind but it will be a band I can wear for any occasion from a New Year’s Levee to a wilderness trip down the Mersey. I will wear it dancing or when gutting fish. In my search to solidify a design, I discovered that on eBay you can purchase a “GP gemstone Zirconia diamante engagement-type ring” for under two dollars. By Jehoshaphat, if they want to see a ring, I’ll show them a ring. I ordered a variety of twelve of the loudest and tackiest ones I could find. Once they have completed their ride on a slow boat from China, there will be a new ring to sport every week until I get married. I promise that I’ll post them regularly to be admired.

In the meantime, like my cards and parcels of years past, my Christmas blog entries will be arriving late. I’ll try and garnish them so that they are more palatable than those stale turkey left-overs sitting in your fridges. A belated Merry Christmas to you and yours. Tee-hee.