Well I definitely got more response in the comments and in text messages than I was expecting so I took time out of my busy schedule to post part 2.  You’re Welcome. (Ok I write that part two days ago when I started this blog… but you’re still welcome) So anyway, now that you know what the official plan was, here is the story of what actually went down Saturday:

First, Jennifer’s step-brother Shawn and his girlfriend Rachael came to visit for the day on Saturday.   Shawn and I were going to play golf if the weather allowed, and Jennifer and Rachael were going to go do girly things no doubt, but it didn’t really matter because we had all day to do whatever we wanted, until 5:30 of course.  So sometime during the day, Jennifer got an email about a showing on one of her other listings, which she proceeded to schedule for 4:30 that afternoon.  So I thought, even better, she will leave at 4:30 to go show, which gives me plenty of time to leave without needing to make up an excuse!  So just after 4:00, Jennifer left her house to go to the first appointment, and I sat there with Shawn and Rachael with about 30 minutes to spare before I needed to leave.  Everything was lining up perfectly, and my brilliant planning skills were going to go off without a hitch!

We immediately ran into a hitch.

After about ten minutes, Jennifer surprised us all by walking back into her house, and informing us that her clients had called, and they were running about an hour late…. (Hitch!) Then she just sat down on the couch and started playing Mario Cart like she didn’t have a care in the world.  So I was thinking, it’s ok, she will just go to that appointment late, and be a little late to Becky’s (my) appointment, and the plan can go on as… planned?   That is, if she does still go to the other appointment first, and saves mine for last.  So after a while I was starting to feel a little frustrated that she was so unconcerned that her appointments were overlapping, so I very casually brought up the point to her (trust me it was all kinds of casual)   and apparently she had been thinking about this, and had decided that she was going to go to Becky’s appointment first.  Oh great!  So you’re leaving any minute, for Becky’s appointment no less, which means I need to hurry up and leave 20 MINUTES AGO!

So the panic set in, and more of the anger, and I pretty much had no choice but to make up some excuse to leave and shoot out of there.  So I drove at a very unsafe speed through April Sound to my condo to pick up the ring and meet Eric so we could get back out of the subdivision before Jennifer left.  However, everytime I try to call and text message Eric (about 10 times) my phone just gives me an error or sits there like an idiot and does nothing.  So I restarted it, which seemed to take forever (All of this while weaving and bobbing through old people across the subdivision) and I finally was able to call Eric when I was pulling into my parking spot.  So I spout of some frantic gibberish that sounded like “GET-OVER-HERE-OH-NO!!” while I ran full speed around my giant bushes on the wet limestone, and into the condo.  I grabbed the ring out of the top of my closet, the bottle of champagne and stash of champaign glasses, and ran back outside… again with the limestone but with more important things in my hands now so I can’t slip and fall and throw everything in every direction.   So luckily Eric got the message from my foreign fast talking to jump in his truck and be screeching up right when I came running back out.  So I jump in and we are off to the races… although, he pretty much drove about 30 mph slower than I had been previously driving, but I wasn’t going to complain.

So the I decided the first priority was to figure out if Jennifer was going to beat us out of the subdivision, so I called with some excuse about leaving my wallet at her house or something, and found out that she was just leaving. Phew!  So at that point I knew we had about a 5 minute head start on her, which wasn’t ideal, but it would be enough… or WOULD IT!  (Hint: no)  So before we hang up she starts asking me which appointment I thought she should go to, and I gave it half a second of thought before saying something like “Listen! if those people are an hour late, and you have another appointment by the time they finally get here that is their fault!”  Which should have seemed about 100 times more concerned than I would normally be about some appointment… but she never seemed to ask “Why are you screeching the answer at me?”

Anyway, so from there on everything went smoothly and as planned thanks to my… NOT!  Are you serious?  Don’t you even see how much longer this post is from this point?  Speaking of which…

Things get even worse now.

So yeah, right when everything seemed fine, and it seemed like I’d managed to avoid the crisis, Eric pulls out his Supra Key, which is the little device realtors use to open the lockbox on the front of homes that are for sale, to get the key out, because you need a KEY, to open a DOOR!  Eric has one, because he’s supposedly a realtor.  This isn’t why I picked him of course, but it was a bonus, because then we didn’t have to try to borrow one, and we obviously couldn’t just steal Jennifer’s… SO, I start his Supra Key, and some error pops up that says “CLOCK ERROR BLAH BLAH”… Strange but true.  So I try not to panic, and Eric assures me that it just needs to be updated.  So we call the update service, listen to the slowest automated voice of all time, read off 8,000 numbers to me that I have to punch into the supra, and finally finish, and the supra display says “Successful!”.  Oh REALLY supra?  So when I press enter, you won’t immediately spit another clock error into my face?  (It did.  THREE times.)  You might even say that going through that process THREE times took the rest of the trip to the house, because I received the final clock error just as we were pulling up to the house.  So I tell Eric to turn down a side road so we can hide the truck around the corner in the trees, so he does, and goes about six houses before he stops and remembers to let me out at the house.  So I get out with the ring, the supra key, the champaign and the glasses, and run six house lengths back up the road (They are large houses, and plenty spread out.) while Eric goes to hide the truck.  So after probably startling a few neighbors, I arrive at the door step, and try one more time to trick the supra key into doing what I want, but apparently when there is a clock error, a supra key will focus on it until it dies (which it almost did in that moment… death by smashing)  So I finally let myself accept the truth that we aren’t getting into this house, at least not without a little door or window damage, which I wasn’t willing to try after spending all kinds of money on a ring and surprise party (patience). 

So at that time, I saw Eric in the distance running past the same houses, probably freaking out the same neighbors… and having finally conceded defeat, I decided to try to just set up the video camera and tripod outside (Oh did I not mention I was carrying those too?).   So I ran and stashed everything in a corner by the back door, and ran back and handed off the supra key to Eric as he ran up (For some reason Eric remained strangely confident that they supra key would work if we just kept updating it).  So he continued to the front door to work on it, while I took the rest of his camera equipment to the back door and started setting up the tripod.  I told him to keep watch down the road for her so he could abort and run around to the back of the house if he spotted her flying up the road before he could get inside (she drives fast).  However, he couldn’t have done a very good job of this, because I only had time to pull the tripod out of the bag, and peek out around the corner, before I saw her car already halfway down the road coming right for us.  So I yelled “abort!” or something similiar, and ran to the back door and threw everything back in the corner, then took up a hiding place behind a corner of the house, halfway up the driveway.  Meanwhile, like 20 seconds later, Eric comes walking by my hiding spot quite briskly (I say “briskly” because it’s definitely the best description) and mouths “she’s here” as he walks by.  So in my head I’m like “Oh thanks Eric!  Does ‘abort’ mean ANYTHING to you!?” 

So she comes driving up right beside me, but about 2 feet short of seeing me around my little corner, so I look over to see what Eric came up with, and apparently it was to pull some kind of ninja ostrich move, and duck his head down into the little 4×3 ft cubby hole by the back door where all of the equipment was.  So basically 90% of Eric’s body is sticking out in the open (maybe 80% cause he has a big head), but it wasn’t enough for Jennifer to recognize him, because the next thing I hear is her car door open, and her say “Can I help you??”  So about this time I finally decide, well this still has to go down, because there’s no explaining this away, so I just step out from my hiding spot (apparently just in time because she was about to screech out of there to avoid getting attacked by these strange men with no cars in sight, and lots of video equipment).  Well, as soon as she sees me she goes from being really scared, to being really confused, with maybe a little hint of annoyance.  So she’s like “What?  What are you doing here?”.  Which by that time I’d made my way over to her car, where she’s still halfway sitting in the seat with her hand ready to shift in reverse, and I knelt down and … Stay tuned for Part 3!

Jk, I wrote more right here, you could clearly see it so calm down! 

Anyway, first I said “What do you think I’m doing!”  And she was seriously so confused, she just kept switching between telling me she thought she was getting attacked, and asking what I was doing there, so I knelt down, and I said something like, “Well, I know it’s taken a little longer than you wanted, and this definitely wasn’t how I expected it to happen, but I’m asking you to marry me!”  So she kind of made a face like she didn’t believe me, but didn’t want to show it, yet she said “Whatever… no you’re not” (Although she was already smiling all big).  So I was like ”Oh no?” and reached back and pulled out the box, and opened it up… and the ring fell out onto the ground!  So there I am, kneeling in the wet driveway, my scared and confused girlfriend looking at me with a weird look on her face, and the stupid ring falls in the stupid water because it came loose during my marathon run from Eric’s truck.  So I picked it up and gave it to her, and the whole time she’s just looking around, shaking her head, confused as ever, all the while slowly putting the ring on her finger and looking at it there.  So apparently she finally had enough proof, and I was like… “Well is there anything you have the urge to say?”  So she was like “Yes!” and we hugged and kissed, and Eric took pictures through the car window from his ostrich corner (which actually looked pretty good because of Eric’s nice camera).  You can find those at www.jacobandjen.com which will actually be the official website once I build it but for now I just threw up the background so you could look at the pictures.  If the link goes down let me know because I’m transferring that domain and it could finalize any time.

Anyway, what I said to her at the car was probably a little different, but either I don’t remember, or I don’t want peeps knowing what I said specifically ok!  Anyway, stay tuned for Part 3, which will be about her ring and surprise party… Dun dun dun…

Thanks love you guys!

P.S. There are also a couple pictures of the surprise party, where I was telling the story in person, and definitely made my mom, Melinda, and a couple other ladies cry. (Not to mention Matt, who cried more than everyone else combined!  Bam!  (I don’t know)