I'm Engaged

I ordered a diamond engagement ring for K. last night. When it arrives in a few days I will get down on one knee and ask her to marry me, although we are pretty much already engaged since she was the one who picked out the ring online. It's just like me to order something like this off of eBay. They really do have some nice vintage rings from reputable sellers. We plan to announce our engagement to our parents over the holidays. K. wants to start planning for a wedding next year. I told her I want it to be sometime in February, like my parents.

Despite the big news on the girlfriend front, other areas of my life are still really unsettled. I need to really take some strong action, I can't live like this. The most difficult thing is that a lot of my problems seems out of my control. I can't help that my dad almost died last month and is in need of a heart transplant, or the fact that we had to stay with him in the emergency room while he had a series of operations.

Last night I went over to my parent's house and move some furniture from their old office. Dad's looking really tired nowadays - he's not sleeping a lot due to his nose bleeding so much from all the blood thinners and making him sneeze at night. He's got bandages on his nose to stop the bleeding that look rather alarming. My mom has become pretty fatalistic - every time I stop by the house she mentions how I will have to take care of Seymour when my dad is gone. He's not fucking gone yet. J. and I sat around and messed around with his new studio gear. I watched the season 3 finale of Lost with my mom and dad. Everything is water under the bridge at this point between us, I just sort of want to enjoy whatever time we have left with each other on this planet, and I want my dad to know how much I love him. The old resentments and insecurities regarding my relationship with my parents seems so unimportant now. I just want my dad to get better.

K. nagged at me the other day because it seemed like all I wanted to do was play guitar and not think about anything. We had agreed to sit down and go through Dave Ramsey's budgeting worksheets, but I didn't want to do anything on Saturday by lay around the house and eat and watch movies. God I'm getting fat. It's cold out so it's harder for me to get to the gym again too. I had to explain to K. how I'm just so overwhelmed: the engagement, moving in together only a week ago, my dad getting sick, missing work due to having to take care of my dad, feeling behind at work, frustrations with my job in general, family obligations, the impending holiday season, financial responsibilities compounded by the holidays and the engagement ring, gaining weight, just everything.

We stayed up pretty late last night, K. heped me sort out at least a couple of those issues, she's such an incredible person, I'm really lucky. What's great about finding the person you want to spend the rest of your life with is that it grealy simplifies things - all you have to worry about is taking care of that person, nothing else really matters. Negative people, career troubles, self doubt, money issues, politics. You just have to deal with it, because the most important thing is that other person and making sure you're doing everything you can to make sure they're ok. Today it's back to work again, and back to my new campaign of working a lot of overtime and trying to get ahead on the job. I'm also starting a one month campaign to lose as much weight before Christmas.