Poor Customer Service

On September 13, 2014, the love of my life asked me to marry him. I, of course, said yes. Steven gave me a ring that exactly met the few things I had described as my preferences:

• yellow gold
• a ruby instead of a diamond
• emerald cut

Is that not gorgeous??? This was 100% what I asked for.

 When I asked for these things, I knew that they were what I wanted and (although this wasn't the main reason I chose these things) figured that the whole "not a diamond" would make it look less like an engagement ring. I accepted that having a ruby would throw some people off, but since getting  engaged I have noticed that there are quite a few women these days taking the same route. I've seen women with rubies, sapphires, pink sapphires, emeralds, black diamonds and so on. I began to feel that my choice of having a ruby (to match my other red jewelry: necklace, bracelet, watch...) and yellow gold (because I think it looks better against my skin tone) was less of a weird choice and would shortly become the mainstream. Well...

On Saturday, January 31st, Steven and I ran a bunch of errands. In search of a tool set for his car, we decided to swing by the downtown mall. Once there, I convinced Steven to let us go by Kays so I could get my jewelry cleaned. From there, things started to go downhill.

When we walked in, all the employees were with people. We walked over to the men's wedding bands to kill time. After Steven and I had made up our minds on which ones we liked the best, one of the employees was finally free. He was standing across the room, facing the mall instead of the store. Suddenly Steven and I were the only customers in the store and were getting ignored.

I walked around to face him. He smiled and asked if he could help me. I asked if I could get my ring cleaned. I then proceeded to pull a very expensive ring off of my left ring finger (that doesn't exactly have a small stone on it) and handed it to him. He walked away with it to clean it. When he brought it back I gawked at just how much it sparkles when it's clean and vowed to try to keep it that way and slipped it back onto my left ring finger. The gentleman then asked if there was anything else he could do for us.

I asked the man if we could get Steven's ring finger sized. The salesman pulled out their sizing gizmo and we determined that Steven has ginormous fingers when the biggest size they had barely fit. (I'm a five and a half... he needs at least a fifteen and a half!) Then I asked if we could go look at then men's wedding bands. I said there were a couple we wanted to know about. We talked about a few of them and got the price of the one we liked.

Before Steven got the chance to try to make us leave, I asked the salesman, "Can you show us the women's wedding bands?" Notice my words there. I asked to see the wedding bands.

The gentlemen led us over to a section of rings and had us sit down. As we were sitting down I told him that I was torn between getting "a plain gold band or a band with a few diamonds in it for some extra sparkle". Do you understand these words, reader? Because the salesman wasn't listening at all.

He began giving me a spiel about Neil Lane engagement rings. I notice that there are some wedding bands mixed in with the engagement rings, though, and figure that was what we were here to see. While he's talking, Steven and I look at what the have. He finally asks if there's anything I see that I like. I mention that everything they have behind the glass is white gold and that I am looking for yellow gold to match "my ring". (As in, the one he cleaned. The one sitting on my left ring finger.) The man seems to listen for the first time. He mentions that he's a fan of yellow gold, too, and flashes me all of the gold he's wearing. This whole time we're talking, Steven is silent and looking at the rings.

I take off my ring (again, from my left ring finger) and ask Steven what he thinks would look good against it. The salesman takes the ring from me and begins scrutinizing it. I think he is going to assess it and make some suggestions for things to go next to it.

"You know," he says, "We could probably just pop this ruby out and replace it with a diamond."

  Both of our jaws drop. Steven, I can tell, is about ready to get up and walk away. I laugh to cover up our anger at this man's incompetence and inability to listen and deliver what we're asking for and say, "I don't think he would be too happy about that. He paid a lot of money for that ruby." At this point the salesman finally realizes what I want. It occurs to him at last that he is holding my engagement ring and that I am asking about a wedding band seeing as how he just helped us look at men's wedding bands. He could have taken this moment to find a quick way to correct his previous misunderstandings (as I would do at work when I misunderstand what a customer is asking for). Instead, what comes out of his mouth is this:

"Oh, you're planning on getting married in this."

Upon seeing the looks on our faces after his statement, he seemed to finally grasp the situation, what his statement implied, and that he was dangerously close to pissing off potential customers. Well, unfortunately for him, he pissed us off. He finally managed to show me what I wanted, but he convinced me to shop somewhere else. We'll be going back to Shane Co to get our wedding bands. Thanks for nothing Kays. I'd liked you up until that day.

The Day We Got Engaged!

On September 13th, the love of my life proposed to me. It went a little like this:

He wanted it to be sunny so he could propose on the beach during sunset with the light all golden and romantic. *swoon*

When we got there it was foggy, but let's back up a moment.

Steven had decided, so he said, that he wanted to go to the beach and take pictures with his new camera (which is actually a really old, film camera he bought off of Craigslist). If we were going to go all the way out to Bodega Bay, though, we might as well get dressed up and have dinner. We hadn't had a date just the two of us in a while. 

This was all very logical and believable. He had been fishing around for excuses to use his new toy and we hadn't had a date just the two of us in a while. I'd recently ended my dry spell of unemployment by picking up not one but two part time jobs, so we'd been seeing a little less of each other. He was all casual leading up to this. The tough part, was that I was going to work overnight the day before and overnight the day of. I was on a tight schedule that weekend. He had to let me sleep up until a certain point or I would be a zombie. And I had to return home by a certain time or my carriage would turn back into a pumpkin - I mean I would be late for work.

So, the morning of the thirteenth, I drove myself home from work at about 9:15 in the morning, slouched through the front door and crawled straight into bed. Steven, thoughtful like he is, had tacked blankets over our bedroom window so that it was actually dark enough for me to sleep. We had agreed that I got to sleep until 3:00 pm and then he could wake me up. He woke me up at 2:00 pm to give me time to shower and because he was worried the drive would take longer than he thought.

After showering, I came out to find Steven hemming and hawing over what to wear to dinner. The dilemma was that we wanted to look nice BUT it was also really hot. But what if it wasn't hot by the ocean??? After debating over nearly all of the clothes we own, Steven settled on what (I believe) we both consider to be his best button up shirt and I wore some appropriately fancy sweater and jeans get up with some fancy, heeled shoes that I almost never wear but he had convinced me to buy several weeks prior. I brought flip flops for the beach.

Steven had previously hidden the ring box in his camera supplies so that I would never suspect a thing. He threw the camera bag in the car and we headed off to dinner. Somehow our conversation was quite appropriate considering what was coming but I believe it was me that brought it up. We ended up taking turns describing each other honestly. Neither of us can remember our exact words (which makes me sad) but I remember that he described me somewhere along the lines of someone who is rare because I'm genuinely nice.

When we arrived to the coast, Steven was a little distraught. It was foggy. I reminded him that after years of living in Arcata, I prefer the fog. He said he'd hoped for sun because it would make for better pictures. When he pulled into the parking space, he quickly changed his mind about the orientation, backed out, and backed into the same spot. I thought he was silly. He said that he wanted to keep his camera safe (which is fair because he'd brought both and one is rather expensive) and figured that people would be less interested in breaking into the back of the car if it was facing the bushes. "Whatever" I thought as I opened the door and immediately tapped the truck next to us rather loudly. "Did you just hit that truck?!" he said to me in awe. "I wouldn't have hit anything if you hadn't have turned us around!" And with that, we went inside.

I had eaten at this restaurant once before, I told him. I wasn't sure until I saw it in person. (We'd browsed menus online days prior to make sure that there were non-shrimp seafood items I could eat.) As we were seated by the large window facing the ocean, I realized we were more dressed up than everyone else. Steven ordered the fish and chips and I ordered the fish tacos. As we waited for our food, which came surprisingly fast, Steven kept mentioning that he wished it was sunny. Our food arrived and we ate, once again leaving no room for dessert, and the check arrived. Steven happily gave the man a card, but the waiter was soon back saying that there was a problem with the card. My eyebrows shot up and I started to reach for my purse so I could pay. Without missing a beat, Steven simply paid with his credit card. The whole moment felt so off to me. He didn't complain about his card. Didn't check his bank account on his phone. Just kept talking about whatever we'd been talking about. Fishy. Very fishy.

When we went out to the parking lot, the truck was still next to us. We'd gotten off Scott free! We start driving up Highway 1 and Steven is talking about how the light is wrong. He mentions that there is a beach somewhere up the road that he thinks will be perfect because it's so secluded he don't think many people know about it and it should be empty. (Having told Steven years ago that I wanted him to propose just the two of us with absolutely no one else around, this should have been a clue.) I wasn't paying attention to the words coming out of his mouth because I was staring at the clock in the car counting hours. I was concerned that this whole endeavor would make me late for work.

It was a little after six. The drive to the beach was taking longer than he'd expected. After about half an hour had passed I was starting to get worried. He kept wishing aloud that it was sunny. I kept telling him I prefer the fog. And then there it was. I had to pee. The minutes kept creeping by when suddenly we hit road construction. There was a mobile traffic light set up in the road and we had to stop. As we sat there, I finally tell him that I have to pee. I tell him that maybe we're not going to find this mystical beach and should just turn around and find me somewhere with a bathroom or a solid wall of bushes next to the road. He tells me that we've come too far to turn around. He's sure we're close. When the light lets us go, it turned out he was right. We were only one or two twists in the road away from the sudden turn out towards the beach.

The place we pulled in to park said that there was no parking allowed but also seemed to have parking spaces. There were trees enveloping the whole area and blocking the view to the beach. Steven pulled out his camera bag and turned towards me. I told him that I was going to solve that bathroom problem myself right here and that I'd meet him on the beach. A few moments later, I wander through the trees and find myself on a beach.

Steven is wandering around rather aimlessly looking for something to take pictures of. In reality, he was trying to figure out exactly how to do this. We were in the right place, dressed up, the lighting was all wrong, but it was going to happen! The lighting was actually terrible. It was grey and only getting darker. In fact, we were rapidly approaching what Steven knows to be my absolute least favorite time of day. He was quickly becoming pressed for time.

I take off wandering towards the water past him. We begin sort of wandering the beach aimlessly and rather separate. I start picking up rocks I like (as I am inclined to do). After a two rocks, I find a dead jelly fish. I call Steven over to look at it. After he comes over we realize that the water is full of jelly fish and the beach is in fact covered in dead jelly fish. We've happened upon a jelly fish graveyard of sorts. (Grey sky + dead sea creatures = super romantic?) There was also one, solitary seagull on the beach. I find (what we later googled and realized was) a velella. Super weird looking creatures. I insist that Steven takes a picture of it because I am under the impression that we're at the beach to take pictures. Silly me.

After finding one, and believing it to be special, we later found dozens more.

I find myself up to three cool rocks and one whole seashell. My hands are full. From halfway up the beach, Steven yells to get my attention. He is sort of kneeling, a little hunched over, and pointing at the ground. Knowing my weakness he yells, "I think I found a dead, baby crab. I don't want to touch it, though, because I might break it." With glee, I jog over to see the dead, baby crab. When I reach him, I begin scouring the ground from a standing position. I see nothing. 

I look him in the eyes and ask where it is because I can't see it. He breaks my heart by informing me that there is no dead, baby crab. He says that he has something that he wants to give me but that he can't because my hands are already full. He makes me put down the rocks and shell.

He said that he had something to ask me that I've been wanting to ask for a long time.

Would I marry him?

I apparently started blushing really hard the second he said there wasn't a crab and realized that he was kneeling. And I pretty much blacked out the actual words he said and had to ask him to say them to me again later because I was quietly panicking and waiting for the end just to make sure that what I thought was happening actually was happening. I also started crying the second he started talking past the disappointment of no dead, baby crab.

It didn't go like he had hoped. There was no golden sunset bathing us in gold light. But he asked. And I said yes.

Just look at all that fog.

Since nothing went quite like it was supposed to, it was a tiny miracle to realize that one super romantic coincidence had occurred without either of us knowing in the moment. Steven unintentionally proposed five years to the day of our very first kiss.

As some last minute thoughts before I let you go, I figured you should know that A) there was in fact a bathroom on the beach. It was about fifteen feet from where I'd squatted. Patience is not a thing I have, apparently. B) The ring was 100% what I'd been hinting that I wanted which is going to be relevant in the very next post.