Barren Mare

A long-necked model

The batteries for the camera arrived with the last grocery order, and so I resolved to honour my promise to at last produce pictures of the ring. Girl Mouse still being in absentia, I decided to enlist the support of another one of Botany's friends, namely Mr Giraffe.

Whereupon I discovered two things: firstly, that I do not really know how to use my camera very well- or even at all- and secondly, that Mr Giraffe, while bewildered by the proceedings, nevertheless looks rather fetching in diamonds.

Observe for yourself:

  

Mr Giraffe wonders, "Why do I have a ring on my head?"

Mr Giraffe thinks, "Huh. I suddenly feel like I am in the Empire State Building."

Mr Giraffe heads off into the sunset on the savannah, his work done. 

As Beyonce might say

I had fully planned on taking and posting pictures of my engagement ring to go along with the following story. In fact, in the stylee of cutesy wedding photographers, I was even going to photograph the ring on the finger of Botany's toy Girl Mouse, thus tying in two recent themes together.

 Then I discovered that the recent child visitor appears to have stolen Girl Mouse or possibly it is just lost. At the same time, the mice finally finally finally started to partake of the poison bait liberally strewn around my flat (and disappearing). That's a good thing but makes the whole topic slightly less amusing, especially as I wonder whether they have perhaps died somewhere behind the washing machine. Lastly- the batteries for the camera that I know I bought for a friend's graduation less than a month ago? Missing. Gone. Nowhere to be found. I decided to take the hint and just write about the ring, for now.  As it is, it has taken me over A WEEK to get a draft post together. 

Knox made it clear around Valentine's Day that he was minded to propose, but being traditionally inclined, he wanted to have a ring on him when he popped the question. However, he's also savvy enough to know that I might be sort of, um, particular about the type of ring I would want. Unsurprisingly, it is actually something that I had given a bit of thought to over the years. As soon as was seemly (approximately five minutes after he left that weekend) I found myself sprinting to the computer to embark on a feast of internet trawling for likely ring candidates.

There was then a rather delicate interval where I wondered how to indicate to him my very particular preferences without being too demanding or grasping. I was unsure of the budget and decided "within reason" would probably suffice. Finally, he said, look, just send me some examples of things you like.

As it happened, that night, I had been looking around a certain popular auction site and found a very fetching item. I loved it immediately. It was a slightly unusual but quite simple platinum ring, with an art deco-style setting for four emerald cut diamonds. It reminded me a little of the Empire State building for some reason. It was not too expensive. And the auction ended in about 11 hours.

"I like that one," I told him via instant messaging. "A lot."

It was, however, I felt, probably quite premature to be rushing into buying the first ring I had seen that I liked, and one should never be too hasty with online auctions either. We talked about it for a short time and then I went to bed. When I woke up in the morning, I checked and saw the auction had finished. The ring was gone. I experienced a pang of regret and then figured I would find another one that I would love just as much. 

I looked and looked and looked and looked. And kept returning the auction page, staring at the ring I had missed out on. There was nothing like it to be found on the internet, certainly not remotely in the same price range. I flirted with a couple of other possibilities, but without all that much enthusiasm. I worried Knox would get tired of hearing about the whole issue, especially when I began wondering how hard it would be to find the person who had won the auction.

"Listen," I said to him, "some other bitch is out there and she is wearing my ring!"

What I can say, diamonds make a girl slightly insane. 

Finally, I gave up and we agreed we could go look around when we were over the States on our March visit. Of course, we spent virtually the whole trip chasing after Botany. Beach! Museum! Aquarium! Wheeling the doll buggy around and around the house! There was no time to do any shopping of any kind for ourselves other than a mad dash to Old Dark Blue for some emergency summery Florida attire. I half heartedly pinned my hopes that we would have an opportunity to at least stick our heads in a jewelry shop when we went off for a couple of nights on our own toward the end of our stay.

The first night at our B&B, Knox seemed quite preoccupied with finding a nice place to watch the sunset. We hadn't really been able to see a single Florida sunset the entire visit so I thought nothing of it. As we sat having early evening cocktails with the guest house owners, we quizzed them about the best spot for sunset viewing and they directed us to a bench just across the road, looking out over the marina. We gulped down the rest of our quite potent drinks and hotfooted it over there.

Ooh, lovely sun. Look, pretty colours. Knox put his arm around me. How romantic is this, I thought. And then he whispered in my ear, "Will you marry me?"

I pulled back. Hey! What a chancer! First sign of a sunset and he goes all mushy and...  "wait a minute," I said, "where's the fucking ring?"  

My exact words. Charming, no? The epitome of class. Whereupon, he reached into his back pocket and pulled out a box, putting it into my hand.

I sat there blankly for a second. There was such a strange mix of thoughts in my head. I confess I had no idea what was in the box- I halfway expected it was going to be a ring pull tab from a Coke can, since we had had something of a joke about this and I could not believe he had actually gone ahead and bought something without my having seen it first. I opened it.

In fact, it was the Empire State building ring. He'd stayed up until 5am the night of the auction researching diamonds and grades and carats- and then he bought it for me. It's one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me, and I cried a bit more and said yes, of course of course. And we took cheesy pictures in which I am grinning ear to ear in a slightly manic fashion. With the camera that now needs batteries.   

Pretty dress

Visitors! Visitors from out of town and overseas! For ten days! Bringing with them a young child three months older than Botany and a tendency to pack it in and live life at a dazzling pace. They left yesterday. The house is quiet once more- no more squealing rows over teddies and the doll buggy and the book that the other child wants to read. No more Botany's plaintive cry of "Share!" while wrestling the desired item out of the other child's paw. (Share meaning "give it to me at once", of course.) I'm a little drained and quite backlogged in my usual endless round of tasks (including writing the ring story. Your patience will be rewarded with photos of the shiny thing.)

Speaking of tasks, I have a new daily chore to add to the litany. After 20 or so months of submitting quite dutifully to putting whatever it was I had chosen for her to wear, Botany recently began to demonstrate a preference for donning what she dubs "pretty dresses." Of course when she announced that this was all she wanted (accompanied by ripping the proposed shirt and trousers ensemble out of my hand and throwing it across the room), I only had about two dresses in the wardrobe. In the interests of keeping the peace and being able to leave the house to go to work/nursery in a reasonable timescale, at the first opportunity I duly acquired a couple of suitably fetching dress items. Amongst these was an attractive rose coloured frock, plain in design but made of a pleasingly soft fabric, with a floaty form.

Cue obsession. Absolute obsession. This is the pretty dress to end all pretty dresses. For an entire week it was quite literally all Botany wanted to wear, even at bedtime. Any other dress was spurned emphatically.  Removing the pink pretty dress resulted in tears. Putting it in the washing machine and then letting it dry resulted in a spectacular nuclear meltdown, with tiny fists pounding on the wall followed by a stealth attempt to later actually untie the cord holding up the overhead drying rack. Ain't happening, baby, that rope is secured to within an each of its life, given that when we put it up I anticipated just this eventuality. Unfortunately, there was no way around needing to wash the thing, since the obsession coincided with both a hot spell of weather (sweaty) and the discovery of a food item named jam (sticky). 

Finally, in desperation, my mother made a mercy dash to town to buy a second, identical pink pretty dress. The look of ecstasy on Botany's face when I produced it in the morning and her delighted wiggle of joy when I slipped it over her head made it worthwhile. However, I draw the line at having more than two of the same item, especially since I fully expect that this is a passing fancy that will end abruptly, sooner rather than later. But in the meantime, the need to have a constant supply of clean pink pretty dresses means every night, the dirty one is handwashed and hung up to dry while the next one is rotated into position for the morning.

I suppose, bearing in mind all the strange quirks of toddlerhood, this is a relatively small thing. But the experience of nightly washing and drying of the same dress occasionally gives me an odd Groundhog Day type sensation. That or feeling transported back to the olden days of yore when people really had far less clothing and (I would imagine) made do with one or two dresses handed down from child to child. Mind you, I expect they were accustomed to being far grubbier, generally, and less likely to encounter sniffs of disapproval from the other people at the sight of a little jam down the front.