Aaaarrgh

It's Friday night and I'm desperately trying to consolidate some files of some pictures I'd seen on Google for a meeting. The color wheel is spinning. Click, drag, clink it into the stuff-it-expander, Noink! all done, print, 'shit!', click drag 'NO NAME' widget into the recycler, yank the plastic thing out, collect printouts from photocopier, rush back to meeting - all with a half eaten strawberry tart in mouth. There is some gum on the table, which I unconsciously unwrap and eat. The combination is not super.

Sometime on Tuesday (earlier that week), Stephanie turned 26 and I sent her an SMS : 'happy birthday stefarnie law!' - not very funny. I'd tried to get organized about her present this year too (well more opportunistic than organized), and had (with a lot of Sarah's help) gotten a kick ass acrylic necklace spelling out the word "AAAARRRGGH!" in a kind of 60s horror B-film font.

Anyway so tonight (Friday) is her celebration and the meeting I'm in has already rolled over into the table's reservation time.

Later at a place called 'the secret garden', we'd all been doing the catchup chat over calamari rings and nicely breaddy bread thing, when sometime in between the waiter clearing out the plates and us wondering where our mains, there's a small lull in the conversation during which she reaches over for Taddy's hand and makes an announcement,

'He proposed to me last night.'

There's second of silence.

'Wow !' I exclaim - 'wow?' - largely because I didn't not know how to process the information, except that I knew - should be happy/ surprised/ enthusiastic. so 'Wow !' it was, and luckily I was flanked by two of her girl friends and an equally astounded Julian who all jumped in - so I think we pulled off the momentary sonic bang of enthusiasm that was needed.

'Congratulations! ...I'm, so, so happy for you' (...I continue) - how is it that my oldest and closest friend gets engaged and I'm suddenly digging around in the expression bargain bin?

how didn't I notice the ring? How is it she's getting married?

Tonight she's 26, about to get married and just bought into a nice little flat with Taddy - her soon to be.

----

"What do you reckon girlfriends and boyfriends talk about?" "on the telephone?"
"Yeah, like this", "I don't know... they say I love you?", "and I love you mores'?", "haha yeah and let's kiss tomorrow!'", "and your eyes are so pretty I miss staring at them", "Honey" "yeah... honey" - "honey pie!" "Honey?" , "sweetie?" etc...

14 years later, we're at home club and we'd been eating calamari rings, dancing and are now a bit drunk and propped up against each other.

"Why didn't I cry?" she asks, "Cry what, when?" - "when he proposed... I didn't cry." "why do you even have to cry?", "Oh you know you were saying your other friend cried" (the friend She's referring to is June, who started crying when her boyfriend proposed to her while scuba diving in a reef - she was then .. forced to come up for air or something). "but people don't always have to cry, I probably wouldn't", "No! but I'm crying now!".

And for that moment - whilst I'm hugging happiest person in the whole world - I wonder if we'd ever really really figure all these things out.

Anyway Steffie, here's to figuring it all out - and I don't think you could have picked yourself a better person to find out with. Someday we'll sit and compare notes, but in the meantime: Congratulations! Wow! I still can't believe you're getting married. and yeah, don't worry about forgetting to cry - that's just silly.