Four days ago, I successfully waited for and then completed what I (at the time) considered the most-stressful portion of the engagement process:

I plucked all of my nosehair.

And then I asked her parents for permission.

I can’t say that it went as designed.

I picked that particular day because Melissa works on Sundays and it was one of the rare weekends that the sister (who lives in Los Angeles) was in town.  Seeing as how I go home to my parents’ house (which is about ¼ mile of private road away from her parents’) every Sunday, I figured that I could quite easily "just swing by" and smoothly ask her entire family for their permission.

Turns out they made plans without my permission.

Finding out that I had about a 20-minute window where they were a) dressed and b) still home, I rushed over there.  

No stress to this point.

But about half way through this 80-second drive, I got a feeling in my stomach that felt like a cross between nerves and instantaneous diarrhea.

Hobbling to their front door, I pulled the sister outside and showed her the ring.  I think I accidentally proposed to her. But she's alright.  So it isn't a complete loss...

So she leads me into the house. 
They walk around the corner, and I'm trembling like a gummy bear on a paint-shaker and just blurt out "I’m here to ask your permission to marry Melissa!"


This is the first step of what I hope will be the story of our wedding. I say "hope" because there's always an outside shot that he says no. 
Didn't see that one coming, did you?  That's right, Melissa is a dude.  A big, 6'4", 260 pound dude. He looks like the guy in the Brawny ads.

That's a lie. Melissa is 6'2", tops.

　

So I've got permission, but now I've got to propose.  And once again, a well-intentioned, well-thought-out plan goes tragically awry...

I told her parents the same thing I told my own: that my plan was to propose about six weeks from that day, on a trip that I gave her for her birthday.  But after the pure trepidation I felt while asking permission, I’ve realized that going two days into a vacation with a ring in my bag is going to make the stress of the moment seem relatively minuscule.  

In an email exchange with her sister, I started brainstorming ideas only to realize that the only Friday or Saturday evening that we have available between now and October is Saturday night.  

That’s two days from now.

So here I sit, in an airport in Boston, having slept about 12 hours in three nights that stretched Seattle-New York-Boston and now I’m waiting to go back to Seattle and I’m realizing that my nerves have created only one certainty about my upcoming flight:

I am going to vomit a vomit so violent that Jesus will refuse to hold my hair as I do so.

God help us...