When I arrive, I see in the front entrance Monkey (yes, that's his name) holding a red paper heart. On this heart is written, among other things, "for our 11th anniversary, I thought I would tell you about the 11 places that I love to love you the most." The first heart represents our walks outside, not the small room full of shoes.
So a scavenger hunt of sorts begins. I run around the house looking for stuffed animals holding red paper hearts. When I've found 9, it gets tricky. I can only think of one more place, not two. So after searching in the weirdest places (the laundry machine – does he love me for doing his laundry?) I give up and go for the one I know will be there – the car. Yes, even those 10 minutes of our morning commute is precious to us.
Since I'm obviously having trouble with the last one, Ray gives me a hint – the last one isn't in the house. No wonder. So we go for a drive. I can only think of two possible places we could be going – a garden, or my favorite restaurant, Chez TJs. And since this is me and Ray we're talking about, of course it's the restaurant.
Chez TJs is a very fancy but unpretentious little French restaurant just off of Castro St in downtown Mountain View. I love this place! The building is just a cute little Victorian house, and the dining areas take up the small rooms which used to be the living, family, sitting, and dining rooms. We've been here once before, for our 3 month anniversary, and it was such a wonderful experience, I was crying with joy by the time they brought out dessert.
So this time, I'm super excited, but I'm trying to just take in everything. I look around the room, at the little art lamps and roses on the tables, the architecture of the building, the colors of the paint, the art on the walls which I think is different from last time… Ray brings me back to our table. I haven't even noticed the little plates and utensils placed with perfect precision in front of us, the basket of bread, the little saucer of softened butter with carefully crafted little waves, or the one sheet, paper menu lying on my plate.
Ray says, are you ready for number 11? Yes. Then why don't you take a look at the menu? I look down and see that at the top of the menu, right under "CHEZ TJ", are the words, "Will You Marry Me?"
After that, everything happened so fast. Later, I had to ask Ray for a play by play, because I was crying so hard, I'm not sure I saw or heard everything. By the time I had read the words, Ray was at my side on bended knee, holding a little white box with a diamond sapphire ring. And he said something like this: the last place I love to love you is everywhere in the world. I want to love you every day for the rest of my life. Will you marry me?
Technically, I'm not sure I actually said yes. I was choking and crying and smiling, but I at least nodded.
(Ray: I didn't actually know what to do at this point. I couldn't remember if in all the movies, the guy takes the ring out of the box and puts it on the girl's finger, or if the girl is supposed to take the box and look at the ring and put in on her finger. I went with the first….)
Ray put the ring on my finger, and he just held me a while, and I just cried. So now I'm feeling a little embarrassed about crying (it's a really small restaurant, and there's another couple sitting right next to us). So I start laughing, but it's a small, quite kind of laugh, so it actually sounds like I'm sobbing. This makes me laugh harder, but I sound like I'm just sobbing harder. Ray lets go of me a bit to look at me and make sure I'm okay. That's when I notice that a waiter is standing there waiting for us to sit down so he can give us some complimentary champagne. Now I'm really laughing hard, with tears streaming down my face, and my nose all snotty. But I manage to sitdown so we can have our champagne and read the rest of the menu.
That's our story, we're engaged!
P.S. – What did we eat? You'll have to wait for the next post!
