Today, as I weighed my options for venues (thanks to Danielle Miller), planned the guest list, tried looking at dresses, and failed at picking colors, Rob was out inviting every Tom, Dick, and Harry to the wedding. I think we now have a "Rob's Bartenders Through The Years" table.

I did not want to go to Rob's sisters's house last Saturday. Tammy and Katy live at the beach and I live in the forest, so you can guess that there is quite a lot of Garden State Parkway between us. Also, even though Rob woke up bright-eyed and bushy tailed, I had to go to work on a beautiful weekend morning. Ugh.

Rob headed down south and I headed into my works parking lot.

Sometime after noon, the following text messaging took place.

Me: Actually, I feel better now, thank you for asking. (Eds. note: He didn't.)
Rob: Feel better?
Rob: Love ga
Rob: Ya
Rob: I have a headache.
Rob: Come here after work.
Rob: We will go to Biggies (Eds. note: Clam Shack) in asbury park =D.
Me: I'm not gonna be able to leave here for a while. And by the time I do, and drive down the parkway, by the time I get there, you will have had enough and want to turn around and go home.

(At this point, he had already roped his sisters Tammy and Katy, Amanda, and Tom and Danielle Miller into going with him to buy my engagement ring, and Tammy had given him the idea to propose to me outside of the Stone Pony, where we met thirteen years ago at a Type O Negative concert. Peter Steele is looking down from heaven and is content.) Don't worry. I didn't know any of this at this point.

Rob: Just come. Pleeeeeeease.
Me: We will see. You will have to convince me.
Rob: I will buy you lots of clams.

(Now I'm just fucking with him. I had already decided that I had nothing better to do on a Saturday night, and even driving all the way down there just to drive all the way back was better than watching MST3K by myself. )

Me: Sweeten the deal.
Me: You're losing my interest....
Rob: I'll have my shirt off!
Me: That's nothing new.
Rob: I'll buy drinks too?
Me: I don't want you to buy me anything. Tantalize me! Dazzle me! Come up with the most amazing reason to get me down there. I'll give you one hour to brainstorm.

(Eds. note. I bet he wished I said that before he bought the ring.)

Rob: I love you. I just want to be around you.

(Cue AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWs)

Me: I was thinking more along the lines of building an effigy to me out of sand, or something, but okay.

Fast forward a few hours. After Tammy calling and hassling me, making sure I knew south from north (to the mountains, but that's another story) I arrived in Asbury Park. I parked my car and fished around for change for the meter. I didn't have any. All my quarters had gone to the parkway trolls, and ATMs don't spit out change. Rob runs up to me. I tell him we have to borrow money from Tammy & Katy. He shoved a quarter in the meter and pulled me towards the Stone Pony. A quarter bought me only fifteen minutes of rented parking space. I should have smelled what the Lascar was cooking.

Walking toward the Stone Pony I figured T & K were inside waiting for us. I wondered aloud to Rob that if I asked Security nicely, would they give me back the uber-gawth spiked dog collar they took from me all those years ago, citing it as a weapon. Rob kissed the top of my head, but clearly, didn't hear a word I had said as we walked past the entrance to the building. Two homeless people in hoodies were sitting on the curb. There were signs on the side of the building announcing upcoming bands. One of them was threatening to blow away. Someone had used a lot of tape to attach it, but not enough. As the corners blew towards me, I could make out the random letters "Ro" "Poo" and the letter "Y". We walked closer. The letters morphed into words: "Rob" "popping" and "YES". We stopped walking, and I shut my eyes and shook my head. This couldn't be what I hoped it was. This time, when I opened my eyes, the sign read:

 "Rob now popping the "QUESTION" featuring the band YES!!"

I closed my eyes again, and this time, my face was wet. I covered my face with my hands. Rob said "Watermelon, hatstand, uncle, jelly, stopwatch." Or maybe he didn't. Even though I rack my brain now, I still have no idea what he said, until he reached in his pocket and got down on one knee. Only then did I notice that the homeless people had taken off their hoods, and were actually Tammy and Katy, hiding in the shadows so I wouldn't suspect anything. Tammy had a video camera. Rob opened the box, and inside, was the most beautiful piece of jewelry I had ever seen. He slipped the ring on my finger, and I jumped on top of him and held him as tight as I could.

I don't think he ever actually asked me anything. I don't think I ever answered him with a yes.  None of which was necessary. Tammy and Katy were crying, which meant that something earth-shattering had happened, and I didn't just imagine it. His sisters clamored to hug me, and welcome me to the family. ...

Yeah. That's all the clarification I needed. Robert Lascar told me to marry him.

I mean, Robert Lascar asked me to marry him.

Nah.

He told me to marry him, and just like me, I have gone along with his plans. Whether they be outsmarting NJ transit personnel, lecturing transients about unwelcome residents (ducks, rabbits, turtles found in the park...)  getting ourselves into trouble, awkward proms, annoying the public, shaving one's face at a fancy restaurant, climbing into the tubes and making small friends in a Chuck E Cheese, causing a general raucous, driving too fast on a glacier, walking too slow in the snow, eliminating bugs from a cockroach motel, finding olives and lesbians, falling down the stairs, our mutual love of pissing off Steve, using the storage room as a bathroom when your sister is puking in the only available toilet, Kratos, "arentcha glad I'm wearing shoooooooes?", bad april fools jokes, making fun of my ferret, brunches the both of us would die for,  300 (button your shirt!), barefoot princess, "I'm gonna put you on the floor," your EZ bake oven that is powered by a lightbulb, seafood pancakes, SLUT DADDY, The Three Dumbs, "I won't remember anything after this...", Autopilot, Jeeple Steeple Creeple People, Brown Jerky, and a thousand other things he came up with to make me laugh.


Or the night at Eds when I told him I was no good at being a girl. I told him I honestly don't know how to dress myself, or wear makeup, or get strangers to buy me drinks, or be provocative in any way.

Rob put his arms around me and said: "Girl, I'm gonna put you in a dress."

I am now shopping for a wedding dress. Well played, Lascar.

Apparently, my relationship weather vane is not completely broken.

Today, Rob, Steve and Amanda went to the Renaissance Fair. I was stuck at work, missing the opportunity of ogling medieval boobies squished together by homemade corsets. Mead was had, and as it turns out, Rob asked Steve to be his Best Man. Now, I wasn't privy to this conversation, but in my head I can imagine the conversation going down leaving Steve very confused. Leave it to Rob to have a Best Man before he has a fiancee. ::collective sigh::

Steve is Rob's best friend, and will do anything for him underneath the sun, except keep secrets from his OTHER best friend: ME. So out into the Houlihans parking lot runs Steve to meet up with me to tell me the fantastic news.

Steve: "Shay! I'm Rob's best mmmmmmmmm?" (that last part got a little bit dragged out as it finally occurred to him that Rob may have wanted to keep this little conversation between the two of them.) Steve clapped a hand over his mouth and turned abruptly on his heel and started marching back into the restaurant.

Me: (calling out to his back) "What are you?"

Steve: "Nothing! Nothing."

Steve disappears into the dark restaurant just as Rob explodes out of it. I get a trademark yelp and obnoxious hug from him as he almost tips me over and happily tells me that he asked Steve to be his Best Man.

Me: "Best Man for what?
Rob: "For what?"
Me: "What is he the Best Man for?" 
Rob: "He's not. *I'm* the best man. He is an Okay Man."
Me: "He seems to think he's the Best Man."
Rob: "Oh, yeah, I told him to be my Best Man in my wedding!"
Me: "I am excited for you! Don't you think you should have a fiancee first?"
Rob: "Well, picking Steve was easy. Picking a fiancee is going to be a lot harder."


Sigh.

Why you shouldn't ask me to do anything, ever.

I couldn't plan a trip to the bathroom if we were in a bar, there were three of us and I had a map.


No really. For my eighteenth birthday I wanted all of my friends (all five of us) to take a trip to Philadelphia to the Mutter Museum. It's basically a "Ripley's Believe it or Not" of the medical world.Chang and Eng's lawn chair? They've got it. The woman that was buried in a lye field whose body turned to soap? They've got it. The guy with the broken dick that managed to still rape three women? They've got it. (Well, not his whole body. Just the magic broken dick.)

None of us had cars at this point, (well, Rob did, but he was adamant about not trucking four idiot children across state lines to look at broken penises, and plus, his hooptie car could only seat two). And so, I turned to the New Jersey Transit website. After forty-five minutes of looking at a map that had more red and blue lines than a frog that had been soaked in formaldehyde and been readied for dissection, I planned our trip. We would leave Rob and Steve's house on Outwater Lane at mrpphhrhrphr AM to arrive at Newark Penn Station at mrrrppphhrr PM to board an Amtrak train to Philadelphia which left at hmmmphmmrhr PM and catch the SEPTA (PA's version of the PATH) at gobbledygook PM. We would then take a cab (costing somewhere in the area of twenty dollars) to 19 South 22nd Street, Philadelphia, PA by four PM. The museum closed at five.

FUCK.

Back to the drawing board.

I had the basics figured out, when other people expressed an interest in tagging along. I told them that I guessed the train + the train + the train + the subway + the cab would equal to about forty bucks per person. Plus admission to the museum, plus the ride home. Said people backed the hell out. Back to the original five.

Mery came over at some point, to help me plan. Mery already had a seat on the first passenger flight to the moon at this point, so you can guess that the girl knows what the hell she's doing. She told me I was making it waaaay too complicated, and to seek out different methods of transportation. I yelled at her, told her to leave me alone, and kept hacking away at the computer. She ended up falling asleep to the clacking of my keyboard on Steve's bed.

The next day I had figured out a more direct route to Philadelphia. Mery had long since gone home and wished me well since Steve had ashed his cigarettes into her shoes that night and Rob had put them up for sale on Ebay the next morning. Poor thing went home shoeless, but I HAD A PLAN. We would walk to the Plauderville train station, take the train directly to Philly, and take a cab to the Mutter Museum. It would now cost seventy dollars to get there, but at least the route was shorter. I showed my plan to Steve who told me to get bent, he wasn't spending seventy bucks on my birthday, and spent the next four hours in the bathroom trying to pierce his own ears with a wholesale supply of stud earrings he got from Afterthoughts in the mall. I plead my case to Rob. He told me I should just get a Subway six-footer tuna sandwich and stop trying so freaking hard. He then proceeded to dig out a four pound chunk of earwax with a Q-tip and went into the bathroom to show Steve. I collapsed in a heap and cried.

Ten years later, I'm still dating Rob, Steve is married, and we still have the same stupid relationships we had when we were kids. Steve rolls his eyes at any dumb weekend thing I come up with, and Rob is still as adamant as ever about not driving, and is still digging shit out of his ears with CVS brand Q-tips.

Last week, Rob's sister, Tammy, asked me to plan her fiancee's bachelorette party.

OH FUCK.

... to be continued

Introduction

Hi! I will be dispensing with the pleasantries on this one (see what I did there?) because if you're reading this, you already know me, and probably know Rob, or vice versa. We have been together on and off (mostly off) for about thirteen years, with huge gaps in between. Our relationship has been through severe dislike and mistrust, as well as somehow managing to fall in love over again a few times. (Also, he tried to have my ass kicked. It only semi-worked.) What stories I have to tell.

The past is past, and while it has shaped us into the people we are today, I'm more interested in the future. I am also so mad at myself for not finding a less generic way of writing that. Egads, woman. Drink more Starbucks and pull yourself together.

This blog will chronicle our misadventures with each other and the people we love around us. It's mainly for Old Me and Old Rob, for when we start to forget this stage of our lives. But you're welcome to come along for the ride. :)