Yeah, the drugs are good. But now I can't sleep. which is precisely the opposite effect the drugs are supposed to have. My food intake has been Cream-of-Wheat, banannas and ice cream.

All of these back injuries and oral surgeries have Heather and I way behind on our wedding invitations. Plus, it turns out half the poeple we want to invite we don't have addresses for . . . (oops, I dangled).

So if you think you should be invited, send us your address!

My teeth have been stolen. My four teeth of Wisdom are GONE! Alas . . . the novacaine has yet to wear off so I am not yet in agony. And I have things to do this weekend, dammit!

Heather is taking care of me, which is a role reversal from last week when I was caring for her following our car accident (we were rear-ended on the highway, she was driving and now has whiplash plus neck trauma -- don't worry, the insurance of the stupid lady who hit us is accepting full damages . . . [I dare you to diagram that fragment]).

And I started my new job last week! So yeah, we've been busy.



. . . Nitris Oxide is my friend.

Ok, ok. I confess!! "Get Your Hands Off of My Woman" is a really fun song and I can't get it out my head. I still don't like the band on principle!

Damn you, Rob.

Apparently, I am being judged. Judged as a poor future husband, due to the ring I have given Heather. I told her this would happen. But, I guess she didn't realize how much it would upset her. It is the snide comments, the odd glances, that upset her. It is the suprised looks, as if they all want to say, "Is that it?"

I tried to explain to her the signifigance of the ring a husband presents to his intended. It is a symbol of how good a provider he will be. And this is why I waited so long in proposing . . . because I had very little money! I have watched friend after friend, and aquaintance after aquaintance, get married, and the rings just seem to get bigger and bigger. And all of them diamonds. Tell me how not to be intimidated.

So there I was without a job, and the whole world saying "when is he going to propose?" (I know this from all of the "about time"s we heard when delivering the news). But how could I bring myself to propose to her and give her a ring when I didn't even have income?! Over and over I've seen girls presenting each other with the rings their future husbands have given them and they just fawn and goo and melt over these gorgeous expensive diamond rings. Except, Heather wasn't one of these girls. I guess heather had taken economics and so she had discovered that a bigger diamond doesn't mean a bigger love! It is, perhap, something that attracted me to her in the first place. ...Well, I was able to bring myself to propose when she finally got it through to me that she loves me regardless of my financial status or the condition of the ecomomy! That she just wants to be my wife! That she DOESN"T CARE about having a giant, shiny ring. Over and over she said I could give her something from a vending machine and she would be the happiest girl in the world.

But here's the best part . . . as we went ring shopping, I saw that the rings she was drawn to the most did NOT have diamonds, they had sapphires. And so, we found an amazing deal online (well, actually she did) and found this ring . The price range we could afford went higher than the cost of this ring, but of every ring she had seen both online and live, THIS was the ring she wanted, this was the ring SHE chose. What could be more perfect. I like that the main stone is not a diamond. I prefer to be nontraditional, especially if it makes her happy.
And THIS is why she is so upset by people judging me. It is because she is happy and perfectly content with the ring I have given her, and yet people sneer.

I'm pretty sure we will get over it. I guess she just didn't realize it would effect her this way. And we have friends already who understand the so-called value of appearances they way we do. The people who really KNOW us (our real friends, I guess) understand that there could be no better ring than this one.

Ahem . . . uh, apparently everyone already knows that The Darkness is tongue-in-cheek . . . and my (now removed) pronouncement was meaningless and stupid. Ignore me.

**removed for stupidity**

My friends, my faithful, my significant few . . . I have an announcement. After six months of unemployment, I am finally EMPLOYED!! Yes, I have a full-time gig with the John Brown University bookstore. The place smells like new books. It is wonderful.

Alas, all is not happiness. For next week, Heather and I are going with the Speech and Debate team to nationals (in exciting Ohio!), and will be forced to miss two amazing concerts in this area. We will miss Project 86 in Tulsa and we will miss the Solid State tour (including the beautiful, wonderful and amazing Beloved and Haste the Day and Underoath and Dead Poetic) kicking-off in Fort Smith. Good shows around here have become RARE and I have to miss two of them. I'm weeping as I write this.

But anyway, tonight I get to see Nate Parker. He is reading his poetry tonight at the request of the English dept. I went to school with Nate when he was at JBU. Well, he has returned, with an MFA in Poetry from University of Alabama. He was an excellent poet before he left and now he's an amazing one. . . . I rarely covet what people have, because I usually covet what people are, and tonight I will go feeling like a dog beneath the dinner table, wishing I new what it was like to dine up there.