I read magazines that made me want to pick up and move and go somewhere and so something different and then at the exact same hour I read Martha Stewart Weddings which made me want to just be engaged already and yet I held my tongue because someday it will happen and with every passing breath of a mention I get the same non response and smile but I want to shout that I don’t care about a damn ring or even planning the damn date of an actual wedding which we want to have (which my future intended already knows) I just want to be able to say that I’m engaged to the only person that has felt like home and made sense and I can’t seriously imagine ever being without. We have already made the very serious and real decisions about our future together, becoming domestic partners. We are one, except for those silly, traditional words. And today it’s bothering me. Am I secretly not good enough? Is that it? Why is the concept of being engaged so scary when our lives are completely entwined already. I know we don’t have *money* for a *wedding* but the wedding we want is a big happy picnic which won’t cost that much. And doesn’t even have to be planned for the upcoming year…it could be next, next Fall and I wouldn’t care. Is it really about the money in this case? And even worse, when did I become this person? Why DOES it matter? If I don’t need a ring and I don’t need a date (which I don’t) what difference does the word “engaged” mean? I don’t know but I know I am bothered by it, and again, I hate myself for being bothered. For thinking I am not good enough somehow. For thinking any and everything all at once. And for not feeling like I should mention it again, because if the element of me being traditional and the idea of making it a surprise is truly the only thing holding us back I cannot once again have this conversation. And I laugh thinking about having this exact conversation with quite a few of my friends on the *verge* of the *ask* I told them to “just stop talking about it.” Now I know easier said than done. And when I don’t talk about it? I passively aggressively take it out in other ways like getting very upset that while I have been cleaning out the front hallway and making dinner, my beloved was on the phone and playing around on You Tube and when I asked to check my email I was shooed away and this pissed me off because I wanted what I wanted right.that.second and suddenly took other nagging annoyances and self doubt and transferred it on our poor, unsuspecting and healthy dinner option making dinner out to be something of a bigger deal than it should be because I was making it while someone else wasn’t and and and…you see where this gets a person. Nowhere. And as soon as I was over it, which took a few minutes suddenly it was brought back up because now the phone was no longer in use and my temper tantrum apparently didn’t only bother me so even if I was over it, perhaps someone else in the house was not. Grrr. Tomorrow, I’m likely to have another one of the dreams I have been having in the last week or so which involves me, and me and me again being single without Mark. Three in the last week or so. What are my dreams telling me? Am I secretly scared? I don’t know. What a freak. All I know is I’m content in the present knowledge that I’m always going to be safe and secure and loved no matter how fucking crazy I might be at times. And that should be good enough, right?