The only time I didn't feel tired after working late on a Friday

Last week at work was as pressured as grains of rice inside a pressure cooker or a lump of iron being pounded by a hammer to form a thin sheet. So I missed a golden opportunity to catch up with Daniella and others to watch a free outdoor opera performance on Friday and instead came home at an ungodly hour feeling exhausted. I rarely get headaches but this was a night where it felt like an angry garden gnome with his beard chopped off was rattling my skull with a plastic Hello Kitty umbrella.

M. had called during the day, although it seemed like millions of years ago by then, when I was still dealing with a barrage of emails and conference calls to tell me that, "There's a surprise waiting for you at home." I remembered his call as soon as I got home and found him still awake. I hugged him briefly before asking, "So where is my surprise? What is the surprise? Is it still a surprise?"
He grinned and said, "Of course it's still a surprise. Look," while pointing at the kitchen counter. There was a small lacquered wooden box sitting next to the incense and matchsticks I always leave there. As soon as I saw the box, I felt like I had known what the surprise had been all along.
"It's my ring! It's my ring!" I said, delighted that I had known, and surprised that I had had to ask.
"Open the box," M. said.
"You open it," I said, suddenly superstitious. "You're meant to put it on my finger for me, too."
He opened the box and slid onto my waiting finger a beautiful silver circle crowned by a fantastic, obscenely perfect gem. Almost instantaneously, what had to be the world's most cheesiest, toothiest grin spread across my face. I felt as though I had drunk the elixir of life and was giddy on its energising power.
"It's so pretty!" I said. I stared and stared at it. M. grinned along with me, although perhaps not with such a wide stretch of his mouth.

M. said it, and I'll say it. I'm glad I agreed to marry him without the ring. The ring came afterwards! So there.