Bryce Gruber’s Thoughts of the Day: I’m Engaged

When love is not madness, it is not love.  -Pedro Calderon de la Barca

I am engaged. Yes, that kind of engagement. The kind that signifies a willingness and readiness to be married to some other human… and I’m just as surprised as you are, but happily so. My family altogether abandoned the idea of me ever being married ages ago, my friends didn’t think there was a man I could stand for long enough, and the general public watched me on Millionaire Matchmaker being generally disengaged from the idea of love as a whole. As it turns out, I’m just a peculiar creature and it takes an equally as peculiar foreigner creature to lure me in to the idea of love, marriage, family stuff, and all that comes along with.

So you’re probably wondering who this foreigner lovely gentleman is. In my typical fashion, he’s a Middle Eastern man from a sandy place with a deep love of hummus, a soft spot in his heart for New York real estate, and a noticeable accent.

Aside from these things, he’s quickly become my son’s best friend and I can’t think of a single hour that has gone by since he’s come into our lives that my son hasn’t uttered “Mommy, Joe’s blue car, peez?” Being with him is sort of like eating a falafel- there’s a lot of nutritious value that sort of goes unnoticed because it’s masked by a crusty exterior (he needed a little polishing when I met him), the nuttiness of the tahini (he’s literally bat-shit crazy), and the visual appeal of the beet salad (he’s cute when his clothes match). And somehow the fiber in the chick pea batter is filling enough to keep me from even considering other meals.

We met about 1.5 years ago (or maybe a smidgen more), but I genuinely couldn’t stand him. At the time I was dating someone else, too busy to care about his lame attempts to start conversations, and too disinterested in men in general to care that he was following me around like a lost puppy. At some point over this past summer though, that all changed. We sat in a crowded room together (as we so often would), and he whispered to his friend, “that’s the girl I’m going to marry.” I didn’t know he said that, but about an hour or so later in the middle of our meal in a big banquet hall I caught myself looking at him and thinking, “I think I’m going to marry that guy. He needs better shirts.”

Fast forward to November 2011- we’re engaged! I’ll keep everyone posted on wedding details, but don’t expect the typical big, flashy wedding stuff from me. Weddings, in my opinion, are about love and building a life together- not caterers, locations, distant relatives, and floral arrangements.

for those of you wondering, that’s my real face and my real ring shopped onto my fave 80’s Glamour Shot pic <3