Back when MrsHM and I lived in Malaysia, I was able to connect Gizmo+ to Google Voice for a free U.S. number that friends and family could call me with.  Shortly after we moved back to the U.S., Google discontinued Gizmo+ service, and my free landline went bye-bye.  Sure, people could call me with my Google Voice number, but only if I was Gmail was open.  A tip I got on Facebook led me to the OBi100 VoIP Telephone Adapter.

Set-up was super easy.  I plugged the Obi100 into my router. Then, I plugged a cheap cordless phone into the Obi100. After that, I simply followed the instructions on ObiHai’s website:

In about 5 minutes, I had a free landline!  Now, when you call my Google Voice number, the phone rings just as it would if I had traditional phone service.

A couple days ago, the advertisement (an article by design) shown above appeared in countless college newspapers across America. It was put together by an organization called F.L.A.M.E. or “Facts And Logic About The Middle East”– only they specialize in demonizing Islam and Muslims.

In order to counteract the effects of hate speech and misinformation regarding our communities, I personally believe that Muslims should be proactive when it comes to engaging their neighbors. In addition to being proactive, I also believe it is important to respond simply and swiftly to articles and ads such as the one above.

Within hours of the original ad appearing, the president of Hillel (the Jewish organization on campus) denounced the advertisement as hate speech against Muslims. Another Jewish member of the university community also wrote a letter to the editor denouncing the ad.

The Muslim Students’ Association (MSA), in contrast, decided to ban all discussion about the offensive advertisement, and deleted all comments regarding the ad in question, whether positive or negative. Furthermore, they decided to do…absolutely nothing.

Instead of opening themselves and inviting community members in, they closed up like a clam shell, spending time deleting all traces of discussion on their Facebook wall. I encourage the MSA to re-think its position and to use this as an opportunity to speak openly about Islam and Muslims, etc.

For those of you reading this that are part of Muslim organizations, I urge you to consider engaging your local communities and inviting them over to discover shared values.

Related: My letter to the editor regarding the ad..

HijabMan’s Note: Please welcome our new guest blogger, Kiran. She’ll be posting healthy recipes and whatever else she feels like writing. She also blogs at 400Degrees

Salaams, Greetings & Hello I’m Kiran!

HijabMan and I have been friends for some time, but I didn’t really get to know him until he photographed my wedding two years ago. At the time I was living in Indiana and have since moved to Connecticut. After getting married I had to face several adjustments: I was beginning a masters program (I’m a librarian by training), I was moving to some strange unheard of state, and after so long, I had to share my space with another person. Fortunately he likes books and I like shelving them (not that a real librarian would).

Ahem…anyways, back to the point of all of this, I also had to adjust to preparing food. Mind you, I love food, but before being married preparing food for myself just didn’t happen very often. I mean, who would really want to have meat residue wedged under their fingernails? Not I. However, given the options of eating out or cooking healthier meals at home, I had to give in and pick up the spatula. I found that once I began to cook, I loved the process, I found it therapeutic. There are so few things in life that have a definite beginning, middle and end. I can directly see the results of my labor AND enjoy it – most of the time. I began to try new things, and experiment with different recipes. It would so often happen that I would cook something and never return to it again – even if it was amazing. So I (actually, my husband) began to photograph these new creations and post them on facebook in an album called “The Gastronomer’s Log.” Several months later I created a blog “400 degrees from perfection” so that I could offer more details, instructions and comments – something that just couldn’t happen on a facebook album. Now I’ll also be posting on HijabMan about twice a month with a new recipe.

Now that all of these formalities are out of the way, lets don our aprons, grab our spatulas and get cooking.

Breakfast Berry Quinoa
Adapted from Whole Living Magazine

Serving Size: 2

½ cup quinoa rinsed and drained
1 ½ cups milk
1 tbsp honey (or to taste)
½ cup blueberries (or mix of any berries)
2 tbsp shredded coconut
pinch of cinnamon

Bring the milk and quinoa to a simmer in a saucepan over medium-high heat.

Reduce the heat to maintain a simmer, cover the pot, and cook until the quinoa is tender, and most of the milk has been absorbed (about 15 minutes).

Remove from heat and spoon into two bowls, stir in the honey and top with coconut, berries and cinnamon.

Recipe Notes: This is a very adaptable recipe. One could easily substitute maple syrup for honey, add bananas, mix up the berries and omit the coconut. I’m sure some nuts on top would be pretty tasty as well. Have fun with this!

HM’s Note:  This post describes a situation of domestic violence. 

I was just reading the latest article on AltMuslimah, where the author describes her experience with domestic violence.  It reminded me of a chilling experience I had three days before we left Malaysia… I wrote this immediately after it happened for a newspaper there.

***

“It’s personal issue. Sorry. I appreciate you telling me.”

With a pat on the back, the guard in front of the KLCC Mall Taxi counter dismissed me, and let an abusive man walk away with his battered wife.

Just hours ago, my wife, 4 year old daughter, and I walked into an elevator lobby right below the Petronas Towers to find a man pummeling a woman’s head repeatedly. Her face was stained with bruises and tears were rolling down her face. Other people present were standing around as if nothing was happening.

I stared at him for a moment in shock before I ran outside to the restaurants near the water fountain. “HELP! A man is hitting a woman! Call the police, call the guards!”

While I was outside, my wife heard him say in Malay, that the woman was a ‘worthless wh**e’ and he had her number, if anyone wanted it.

I ran back into the lift lobby just as the man escorted the woman into the lift. Without thinking, I stuck my hand out so that the elevator doors wouldn’t close and continued to yell, repeating,

“THIS MAN IS HITTING THIS WOMAN. CALL THE POLICE, CALL THE GUARDS.”

Nobody moved except the man. He tried to get me to let the elevator doors close, while stating that the battered woman next to him was his wife, as if to legitimize his actions.

In the same instant as he let her go, she collapsed onto the floor of the elevator, completely limp from the constant pounding that she had received to her head. In the background, I heard my child crying, confused.

People gasped, but they did nothing except leave the elevator. He pulled the woman up and walked out of the lift with her, towards the taxi stand.

I followed and continued to plead to anyone to call the police. I explained that there were witnesses, that this man had just beaten this woman so much that she collapsed. Again, my voice fell on deaf ears.

Finally, a guard near the taxi stand stopped him for a few seconds and immediately let him go. As my spirit and emotions fell, the man patted me on the back, and told me it was a personal issue. The woman looked over her shoulder at me, and I called out, “I’ll pray for you!”

They walked away.

Is this a personal issue, Malaysians? Is it acceptable to stand by idly, and let a man beat a woman? In the middle of a mall? To the point of collapse?

Or is it a crime?

Why am I asking these questions?

Before I first came to Malaysia, I had heard and read about Sisters In Islam. It made me happy, especially as a father to a little girl, to know that there was a movement here to make Malaysia a better place for women. I commend their hard work, and this incident is proof that groups like Sisters in Islam are sorely needed.

Despite their best efforts, however, it is clear that attitudes have to change on a societal level. There is absolutely no excuse that I was the only one to take any action.

I really want to write about how violence against someone’s mother/sister/daughter is NOT okay. I want to write about how If your friend/brother is the abuser you should address it with him, and If your sister is being abused, you should offer her your support.

But I can’t. The problem is so much more basic in this country: Inaction and a general lack of critical thinking. Pardon me for saying so, but from my perspective, it seems so common that I’ll just call it institutionalized. It’s a problem found in all levels of society.

When the Pizza Hut ran out of ice, the waiter asked my Malaysian wife, “So what do I do now?” (Literally, in Manglish: “No Ice, Then how?”)

When tasked with the governance of this country, the politicians busy themselves accusing other politicians of scandalous bedroom behavior.

Instead of providing a religious and spiritually uplifting education, the ‘scholars’ pass fatwas against football jerseys, yoga, and the poco-poco dance.

It’s super easy to live your life doing nothing. It’s easy to hide behind dumb fatwas and slogans like “Satu [One] Malaysia.”

The lack of critical thinking among grocery store clerks and waiters is one thing, but I worry for you Malaysia. I worry for you when your citizens and your civil servants stop thinking, and stay silent when a man beats his wife to the point of collapse in broad daylight in front of a dozen witnesses.

Later on that day, after realizing that my daughter had seen everything. I reiterated to her that the man had done something seriously wrong, but that the police and the people did not do their jobs. They didn’t help to protect the woman.

She told me she never wanted to go to KLCC ever again. I’m going to do better than that. I’m going to do my job as her parent and look out for her best interests.  Now, I know I won’t always be there to protect her.  There is no doubt that my daughter will have to combat sexism, abuse,  and misogyny wherever she ends up.   Domestic violence is widespread all over the world, and police and others generally don’t do enough to combat it.   But for now, moving to a more familiar context [read: country], however, makes me feel like I’d be better able to protect her.  More important than geography though, is what and how I teach my kid.

This experience has made me even more convinced that I need to spend time fueling my daughter’s sense of self-worth and passing on the knowledge and skills needed to protect herself.  Hopefully, when she witnesses an injustice against herself or others she will know not to keep silent.

Photo Credit: Maria Khwaja

Disclaimer: I totally respect women’s abilities to make their own decisions about their bodies, and I’m not trying to argue that men taking an interest in these issues means that any man should have the final say on any woman’s decision.

With the very real chance of widespread power outages due to Hurricane Irene, a note on Facebook explaining the safety of refreezing breast milk was passed around. I posted it and within a few minutes, a woman asked why I as a man should be so concerned with breast milk.

Multiple reasons with the simplest first.

1. I’m a human being, and I like learning about everything… so that I can be a resource for people who don’t know.

2. Most of my friends are female. And I care about half of the human population.

3. I have a wife who travels a lot. So frozen breastmilk or breast milk sharing (yes, I am familiar, and a proponent) will eventually be a reality for me.

4. Most importantly, I believe every man should know about women’s bodies — form and function. It makes men better fathers, partners, lovers, and friends.

5. I believe that is God’s command, to be the best person you can be.

To get back to the question itself, “Why are you so concerned about breast milk?”  I wasn’t surprised by the question.  In some circles (Muslim ones included) there tends to be an emphasis on the separation between the sexes– not just space wise, but also ‘information’ wise. There are men’s spheres and women’s spheres. Men stay out of women’s business. Women stay out of the men’s business.

I was faced with this mentality head-on when getting to know an ex-fiance of mine. For example,  when discussing our future wedding, she expressed disbelief and confusion that I had an opinion on what I wanted to wear and how I’d like the ceremony to be performed. Weddings were woman-stuff. Men just had to look half-way decent.  While superficial, this was just the beginning of several discussions that hit this male-female barrier.

On another day the topic of childbirth came up when we were with a friend of hers who happened to be a physician’s assistant. I happened to express a critique of modern day obstetrics and specifically mentioned the controversy surrounding episiotimies after her friend claimed that ‘they do them all the time.’  I  said that I would want my wife to consider a mid-wife.  Needless to say, they stood aghast at the words coming out of my mouth.   I learned very quickly that I was expected to stay out of every conversation that they classified as ‘the woman’s domain.’   It’s just one of the reasons that relationship ended.  And one of the reasons I’m married to MrsHM.  We merged our spheres into one, and everything is open to discussion.

All of the above are reasons for the [expanding] section on our bookshelf devoted to Marriage, Sex, And Children. Everything from pleasing your spouse (e.g. She Comes First: The Thinking Man’s Guide to Pleasuring a Woman) to having children (e.g. Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth) and raising them (e.g. Positive Discipline for Preschoolers: Raising Children Who are Responsible, Respectful, & Resourceful)– all of which I own and recommend.

See More @ Relationships & Sex and Parenthood, Family, Etc.

Related Link: The Art Of Manliness

(Photo, “An Unexpected Light” by YazNotJaz, except I like to call it, “Go Read A Book About Breastfeeding And Dog-ear All The Pages!”)

Obi100 + Router + Cheap Phone

In Part 1, I described how much I hated running and papayas. And then I told you about how my super-athlete in-laws got me to sign up for an 11 kilometer run:

“[They are] so athletic, in fact, that they took advantage of my newly married, I-don’t-speak-metric, willing-to-do-anything-to-impress-you self, and suggested we all split up into teams and participate in Malaysia’s Powerman competition. This involves each of us finishing either an 11K run, a 64K bike, or 10K run.

Long story short, I’m running my first-ever 11K in a little more than two weeks. In order to prepare for the event, I promptly read dozens of articles on barefoot-running, bought a pair of Vibram FiveFingers, and laid down on the couch. 11 kilometers. That’s 1/2 mile, right?”

Well, I did it. I ran 11 kilometers (6.835 miles) non-stop, with a time of 1 hour and 9 minutes, in ‘barefoot’ shoes’. And it felt like nothing. I actually enjoyed it!

See, I’m the kind of person that lives off of small, happy interactions. In fact, I get so much energy from someone smiling and wishing me a good day that I feel like bouncing around for hours afterwards. That’s exactly what happened during my run. I started waving and smiling at everyone standing on the street watching– the race officials, food vendors, and little kids.

It didn’t feel like work at all, and before I knew it I crossed the finish line way ahead of my competition, my sister-in-law Lin!

The feeling was the same as described in the book, Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen.

Christopher McDougall writes,

“…everything I’d been taught about running was wrong. We treat running in the modern world the same way we treat childbirth—it’s going to hurt, and requires special exercises and equipment, and the best you can hope for is to get it over with quickly with minimal damage.

Then I meet the Tarahumara, and they’re having a blast. They remember what it’s like to love running, and it lets them blaze through the canyons like dolphins rocketing through waves. For them, running isn’t work. It isn’t a punishment for eating. It’s fine art, like it was for our ancestors. Way before we were scratching pictures on caves or beating rhythms on hollow trees, we were perfecting the art of combining our breath and mind and muscles into fluid self-propulsion over wild terrain.

It’s true. What I felt was nothing short of elation. Now it’s just a matter of getting into the habit of running.

Do you run? What do you run in? What do you think of this whole barefoot movement?

It was our first Eid prayer here at the main mosque here in Blacksburg, Virginia. The mosque itself is set up such that women are on the second level overlooking the men’s space. Of course, throughout the festivities as well as during the Sermon the men could hear the women above enjoying themselves. It was, after all, Eid– a joyous occasion!

“SISTERS!” One of the men yell.

“Sisters please, ” the Imam asks the women to quiet down.

I’d like to say three things. And feel free to post this in your local mosque.

1. If you put women and children in a separate space apart from the men, they are no longer are part of the congregation. Therefore you should not be surprised when they start talking during the sermon.

2. Another reason why women have disengaged from the happenings in the mosque are the things said about women inside the mosque. (E.g. During a sermon: “The majority of the inhabitants in hell are women.”)

3. Yelling, “Sisters!” or asking them to quiet down wont work either, because as long as you make mosques where women are in separate rooms, balconies, etc… They are not your sisters. They are the noisy neighbors upstairs. My wife mentioned that even when the women were admonished, they continued to talk. I don’t blame them. I would too

Advocate one space for all!

Image: Konya, Turkey 06/2011: Everywhere I went, I saw men and women praying together, many times near the front of the mosque.

Full disclosure: In this video, he does not say what his personal opinion is regarding this issue. However, he does finally admit that on every issue, there were multiple opinions. Specifically, on the issue of women leading men in prayer, al-Tabari held that women can lead men in prayer if they are more qualified. In addition, Ibn Taymiyya also held that if a woman was literate while the men in the congregation were not, she could lead them in prayer. This also confirms what Khaled Abou El Fadl has said the tradition states all along, that if women are more knowledgeable than men, then yes, they can (and should) lead men in prayer.

The most significant point that he makes, in my humble opinion, is what I’ve been waiting years for a mainstream Muslim scholar to say: that there were multiple opinions on every issue.

“I would argue that the ‘islamic tradition’ has within itself all of the needs to renovate ‘the house’ but its going to take an immense amount of intellectual energy, it’s going to take very very highly qualified people, which necessitates institutions, that can train and produce the types of people that are needed to engage in this activity.”

This is pretty huge, considering some of Hamza Yusuf’s previous statements. A few years ago, he was adamantly against the idea of women leading prayer. A few years before that he was even more conservative. Who knows, maybe he’ll turn out to be a progressive in another few years time. (I kid, I kid…).

Update: I’ve been thinking about this all day, and it reminds me of a discussion I had with @AzamHussain. When mainstream scholars hold back information that they know is correct but choose to withhold it they knowingly mislead people and disrespect their congregations. The most pertinent example is the subject of this post. When Dr. Wadud was getting (much more than) harassed for leading prayer in NYC, Hamza Yusuf didn’t say a darn thing. Now, years later, he finally admits that, yes, there was debate on the issue and some scholars say it’s just fine for a woman to lead men in prayer. Where was he back then? While I appreciate his and other’s contributions to the American Muslim community, this tendency among ‘mainstream scholars’ to err on the conservative side while withholding the full story still rubs me the wrong way.

This is just one reason why I choose to read the Qur’an in solitude, and not through the lens of the ‘scholars,’ whoever they may be.

Now for a personal note: A big thank you to Dr. Amina Wadud for pushing this issue in our time. I’m afraid the discussions surrounding women’s spaces in mosques (let alone, women leading prayer) would not have happened had it not been for her. May God bless you a thousand blessings, and thank you for being an inspiration to me when we first met in 1999 when I was 16– at the Islamic Hinterland conference in Toronto.

Which reminds me to thank Rahat Kurd and everyone else who made the Islamic Hinterland conference possible. In other words, BIG HUGS.

You can watch the entire discussion here. Here is a transcript of the video clip above plus what he said afterward, to give you some more context:

Now, in terms of what is legitimate renovation*[9] or ‘tajdeed’, I would argue that the Islamic tradition is a vast tradition. The Islamic tradition is largely un-read. Even people now that are studying in ‘madrasahs’, studying at Shar’ia colleges do not go deeply into this tradition. This is simply a fact. One of the things – I’ll give you one example. When I wrote a paper on female prayer, because this was an issue a few years ago, years ago when I was a student in Mauritania, I remembered in a book that Ibn Ayman from the Malaki madhab considered female prayers was permissible, and I remember as a twenty-one year old student underlining that; and I actually went back to the book and found my underlining of that statement. When I studied the prayer issue, I was so stuck by the fact that not only was it debated early on, but there were multiple opinions. Imam Tabari considered it permissible for women to lead the prayer if they were more qualified than men – to lead men in prayer. Ibn Taymiyah himself permitted women to lead men in prayer if they were illiterate and she was literate. He just said that she should lead from the back because she might distract the men if she was leading from the front. Ibn Taymiyeh! Permitting a woman to lead men in prayer!

This is the tradition, it’s all there. People have no idea how many of these issues were already examined and discussed, and erudition and energy went into this so if you look, I would argue*[10] that the Islamic tradition has within itself all of the needs to renovate the house, but it’s going to take an immense amount of intellectual energy, it’s going to take very highly qualified people which necessitates institutions that can train and produce the types of people that are needed to engage in this activity.

‘Usul ul –fiqh’, which is one of the great – it is essence the philosophy of legislation in the Islamic tradition – much of the Qur’an and the hadith is in fact closer to what we would call ‘constitutional Law’ in the west. It’s not Statute Law. The Prophet, peace be upon him, gives far more constitutional expressions in legal injunctions than he ever gives cut and dry statute law – ‘do this, don’t do that.’ He leaves things open. There’s an immense amount of ambiguity in the hadiths; this was known early on. There are very few verses of the Qur’an and hadith that are considered as what is known as ‘qat’iatil dilala’, which is where the understanding of the expression is absolute; that we know exactly what it means. It often holds two, three, four, five, six meanings and you get all these multiple interpretations.

The other thing that is so extra-ordinary about our early scholars is that they were very well aware of what we would call ‘fallibalism’ – that they were not dictating ‘God’s Law’ in their jurisprudence. They were dictating the ‘mujtahid’ or the individual’s understanding of God’s Law. In fact even Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziya in I’laam ul Muwaqqi’een has a chapter entitled ”The Prohibition of Calling a Fatwa ‘The Ruling of God “. The Prohibition of Calling a Fatwa the Ruling of God! The ‘fatwa’ is a personal opinion of a ‘mujtahid’ in attempting to understand the intention of a text.

Moreover, the fatwa was known and understood to be specific in many cases to time and place. This is another aspect of fatwa’s that are rarely understood even amongst people that are trained in classical Islamic education. The Hanafi*[11] school believes that the place actually affects the ruling, even though the other schools do not in the Sunni tradition. So if you’re in England, there are certain rulings that would be permissible here that might not be permissible in another place. Other scholars argue ‘no’, but these are the differences of opinion and nuances – this is another aspect – the Muslims have always recognised diversity and differences of opinion, but we have what are called ‘thawabit’ and ‘mutaghayyirat’’ in our Islamic tradition. The ‘thawabit’ are things that do not change: they cannot be reformed. One of them is our basic understanding of God, our basic understanding of Prophecy, our basic understanding of eschatology, of what happens after life; these things are fixed and eternal, they do not change with time and place. God is all powerful, omniscient. He speaks and he has no gender even if we use gender language to express the divine by the limitations of language, but Muslim theologians were always clear that there was no gender to God – God is neither male nor female. Transcendent.

Much love,
-HijabMan

Note: This is the 4th part in a series about how I met my wife (and daughter). Just joining us? Check out Part 1, Part 1a, Part 2, and Part 3.

“Beta, she’s just like you kids–opens the fridge and everything! She even saw that the papaya was almost done, and cut up a new one!” – My Mother

HijabMan: Two months after I left Singapore for the second time, EyeDot submitted a poster presentation for The Fancy-Named Conference in Baltimore. Surprise, Surprise, her poster was accepted, and she enjoyed a fully funded week-long trip to (you guessed it) Philadelphia! Even more exciting was that her trip coincided with Eid-ul-fitr!

Have you been counting? Two out of our three trips, over six months time were fully paid for. How’s that for divine intervention?!

EyeDot: The week, as you can imagine, was a whirlwind. I met HijabMan’s family and friends for the first time, we celebrated Eid together,
I attended the conference, caught a bug and got pretty sick, went ring-shopping, we got engaged, and had a surprise party thrown for us, all while battling jetlag. Phew!

But let’s start from the beginning. This would be the first time I was meeting Hijabman’s family. He had already described them to me – how they are really laid back and relaxed, so I was not terribly nervous about meeting them. “If they’re Hijabman’s family, of course they’re going to be easy to get along with,” I thought, so I was pretty relaxed about it. And indeed I was proven correct.

HM: The day after she arrived, we drove to my parents’ house about 45 minutes north of Philadelphia where EyeDot got acquainted with my family. Only, they got a bit too acquainted: My sister and brother-in-law who were visiting from Chicago shared their illness with poor EyeDot.

Like I mentioned before, my family isn’t into formalities, and if they feel like they need to entertain you, they get a little uncomfortable. If you act just like you would in your own home, they call you beta and make you family.

EyeDot realized this pretty quickly when she saw that the papaya in the fridge was almost finished and nonchalantly found another papaya, cut it up, and stuck it back in the fridge. Score!

During Eid, the extended family headed to my parents house for brunch and all-day food-coma. Unfortunately, her conference started the day after Eid, so we had to leave the festivities early and drive two hours south to Baltimore. As EyeDot started packing upstairs, my family began asking me questions in hushed tones. Was I going to propose to EyeDot? Do you want us to throw a party?

In all of my excitement, and introspection about my upcoming plan to propose, I neglected to tell anyone my plans!

Within two minutes, a plan was hatched. I would propose on the coming Friday afternoon in Tyler State Park after a short hike. The family would surprise EyeDot [they love surprising people!] with a party that evening. My sister and brother-in law extended their tickets to accommodate the engagement party.

I absolutely love the fact that there was absolutely NO DRAMA related to the festivities. Game. Set. Wait For The Match!

After dropping her off in Baltimore, I drove back to my place since I had just started nursing school. Tuesday after class, I picked her up and we drove to my brother’s house in Delaware for a surprise we-love-and-appreciate-you party for my dad, who had recently recovered from surgery. [I told you they liked surprises!]

While I was in class, my family took EyeDot to Edison, NJ, the “Little India” about two hours drive from their house to look for engagement rings and jewelry.

They eventually found a beautiful ring, but EyeDot wanted to look at more. So on Friday afternoon, I drove to my parents’ house, secretly called her mother to ask for her hand, and got the green-light to move forward. Philadelphia’s “Jeweler’s Row” was our first stop. After checking a few shops, however, I convinced her that the American 14 Karat standard has nothing on the 24 Karat shine in Little India.

EyeDot: After walking in and out of practically every jewelry store in Edison with Hijabman’s sister, I finally found a ring that caught my eye. It was a beautiful ring, but I really had my heart set on having a colored stone in my ring, Specifically, a ruby. Since I had heard that Jeweler’s Row over in Philly might have more ruby options, I persuaded Hijabman to take me there to check those out first before deciding. The next day, with me starting to feel really ill, we drove aaaallllll the way to Philly, but none of the ones we saw there screamed my name. Then we drove aaaalllllll the way back to Edison to get the 1st ring. Then we drove aaaalllll the way to Tyler State Park because Hijabman said he wanted to go hiking before sunset.

Now, I love sports and the outdoors and was really looking forward to a walk through the woods, as we’d talked about hiking a few times now. But I was really quite sick by this time and Hijabman knew this, and still he insisted on going hiking!

I knew something was up.

The ‘normal’ Hijabman would have insisted that we go straight home and that I curl up in bed with some hot ginger tea. I also noticed that he had slipped the ring into his jeans pocket earlier when he thought I wasn’t watching. Mmm…

Something was definitely up!

HM: She felt seriously ill, but humored me, and let me take her ‘hiking’ for the last hour of sunlight. We walked through Tyler State Park to a foot-bridge above a small stream. I have a ring in my pocket, and praying that I don’t drop it in the water.

“Hey, look! There’s a deer!” I exclaimed. (Real smooth, I know).
“Umm, I’m not looking. There is no deer, Hijabman.” She said with a smile.

EyeDot: Let the record show that when Hijabman pointed to a deer, he was pointing upwards. Not downwards, where the ground was, but up into the trees! A deer in the trees? I think not…

HM: She humored me again and turned around for a moment so I could get on one knee. She turned back around and listened as I proposed, and responded with a “Yes, of course, I’ll marry you!”

EyeDot: Being with Hijabman felt ‘comfortable’ – I was happy to see him acting like a toddler when goofing around with my own toddler, and easily switched to a more responsible and authoritative figure when she started on one of her tantrums; I was delighted that he has no problems blending into the fabric of my larger family makeup; I was ecstatic to find that it’s easy for me to fit into his own vibrant and decidedly ‘normal’ larger family dynamic. So of course I said ‘YES’!

HM: And then, still on my knee, I suddenly realized there was a jogger standing behind me, waiting to pass.

“Congratulations! Sorry for interrupting, at least you have a witness now!”

We let him pass, and hugged for what seemed like an eternity, only to realize that the jogger had done a loop, and now was waiting to pass again!

“Congratulations again!”