Wow. What a week. The birthday week was great.

Sweets had a whole mystery birthday weekend planned for me. He wouldn't tell me anything about the weekend-even what to pack. He would just tell me to plan on being gone for two nights and bring my hiking boots.

So on Saturday morning he got me out of bed and made me breakfast. We packed up enough stuff for two nights, including clothes for a nice night on the town. Then he called somebody and said "This is sweetheart (his full name, which he never uses). We're now leaving town- we'll be there in about an hour and a half to two hours." Very mysterious. We got in the car and took off.

The route he took was totally haywire. I was so increudibly excited to be going on a mystery birthday trip. I half expected us to turn around at some point and find that the mystery weekend was to be a hot and steamy weekend in our own bed. Anyway, we drove all over who knows where Connecticut until he pulled into a place called something like Central Village in eastern Connecticut. It took about two hours. We checked into a very nice little bed and breakfast. Well, that's kind of generous. It was a bed and breakfast. The proprietress was elderly and clearly had difficulty climbing the stairs to the second story bedrooms, so she stood at the bottom and directed us to look at the two rooms available and see what we liked. The rooms were okay, but they were also a bit strange- knick-knacks all over every doily-covered surface. Televisions in each room, but dominated by dust and thirty-year old bunny ears indicating a certain lack of cable television. Darn- no late night porn for us. As we finished inspecting the second room she hollered up that the barn was also open- she'd had a late cancellation.

We jumped at the opportunity to see the barn.

The barn was the place for us. A little kitchenette, a decent looking bed, and the best part? A dart-board in the middle of the room. Yup, this was the spot for my birthday weekend. We later named it the Jim-Jam barn.

Anyway, we unloaded our stuff into the Jim-Jam barn and I was instructed to gear up in hiking attire. Back into the car on our way to Connecticut's largest park: Pachaug State Park.

We were pretty hungry when we got there. Sweets had packed up sack lunches- vegetarian fakin-bologna slices on bread with random spreads from the refrigerator. The spread on my sandwich was pretty old and perhaps not edible any longer. I know this because as soon as I was done eating I felt ILL. On the verge of nausea. You know the feeling- are you going to vomit or not? Who knows.

We went on a hike sweets had scoped out earlier- through the camping area to a trail that would take us to the top of Misery Mountain. We set out, me sick but not wanting to tell sweets because it would bring attention to it. There were mosquitos everywhere, but they didn't seem to be biting. The hike was pretty cool- we went through a fairly modern campign area, a giant grassy park, a dirt road, a rhododendron swamp, a rocky hillside, and then to the top. There was a view, as sweets says "You could see all the way to Rhode Island." Which is funny because Rhode Island was like five miles away- heck, we could see Rhode Island by standing on our tippy toes. I did not feel good at all by this point and was checking out various rocks I might vomit from. Sweets then scoots behind me and reaches into his backpack. I turn around and catch him go down to one knee as he says

"Lola, I have a question for you. Will you marry me?"

and I say

"Yes. Oh my god. Yes."

And we hug and kiss and smile and were all of a sudden first-date shy like we didn't know what to say to each other now. And I cried a little from pure joy. And then I worry that I am going to vomit and ruin our beautiful moment. So I take a deep breath and look up at the view again because I want to remember always what I saw from that ledge atop Misery Mountain the day my sweets changed my life forever.

He gave me a big ruby ring. It's gorgeous. I love it. I don't want to take it off. Unfortunately, it's a little big, so I have to give it up at some point to get it resized. Just not this week. I want to stare at it and remember that my birthday wish really came true.