Oh Right

Engagement. Not an upcoming engagement, a previous engagement, or a catered engagement. A declaration between two people of their intent to get married.

I has one.

We decided to tie the knot near the end of August, after I returned home from a visit to my family.  We'd been talking about it with increasing sincerity and seriousness over the past few years, and particularly at the airport before I left to visit the States, but something finally took when I reached the customs official at Heathrow. I'd been standing in the "foreigners and scum" passport control queue for about two hours, dragging a carry-on bag full of memories and dirty underwear, when I was called to the desk by a middle-aged man who looked surprisingly content for a state employee. He bipped my passport, glanced at his monitor, and asked me, not the usual question of "why are you here?" but "how long have you been away?" I said three weeks, and he smiled and said "welcome home."

Welcome home.  I realized then, with great clarity for someone who's been playing in-flight solitaire for eight hours, that home is wherever we are together. All the casual conversations and "we really oughtta"s took on a meaning beyond legality and convenience. It is time to commit ourselves to one another, not a nation. So after another serious and sincere conversation, we agreed to do just that.

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As of Thanksgiving, Boy and I will have been together for seven years. We met when I was an Erasmus student at the University of Kent, about a month after I started this blog in 2004. Thanks to the modern marvel that is Skype we've been in constant contact since I had to return to the States to finish my undergrad--generally two to three hours a night every night of the week on the phone (and later, on video phone). We've enjoyed about three years of living in the same country, two of them consecutive, and are looking forward to many more.

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We have an appointment to give Notice of Intent on the 23rd of November here in Lewisham. We plan to hold the ceremony in the registry office to make sure it's all done right. I've known too many people who've had weird things go wrong--from my mom being issued a new social security card without anyone ever writing it down, to couples sitting down to file their taxes after a year only to find out that they were never actually married, to people winding up with misspelled official names and brand new birthdays. Most of these things can be sorted out without too much trouble, but I'd rather not push it. UKBA nearly denied my visa because I was missing 8 days worth of bank statements thanks to NatWest's idiocy policy.

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Our landlord still lives in Mexico and so far has no intention of moving back to London, so we can continue to keep our home. Since we cut down the huge cypress tree we've been getting more daring and may even hire a tree surgeon to hack some limbs off the ugly sycamore in the abutting neighbours' yard. If we make that investment I want to be damn sure we get to stay.

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We are looking to buy an attractive ring for Boy in the next little while.  I would like to see him in a court-style 6mm titanium band.  They're shiny and scratch-resistant. And it's what my drill bits are dipped in so you know it's manly. I'm also open to him having palladium, platinum, or tungsten. Shiny. Sturdy. Simple.