Grampa's feeling better

I'm assuming he is, because he apparently went out on a date a couple of nights ago. I'd call to ask how it went, but I don't want to embarrass him too much. Considering this was his first FIRST date in seventy years, I'm sure it was a little nerve-wracking for him.

Must admit, I was surprised when my dad told me about it. Grampa swore he was never going to date and would live the rest of his years on his own. I'm glad he decided against this. He's a good looking man who acts at least fifteen years younger than his age, he has most of his original teeth, can still drive at night and can ballroom dance like a champ (I could barely keep up with him at my wedding reception). Hell, I would consider signing him up for an AARP edition of The Bachelor!

I'm really, really happy that he isn't relying solely on my parents for company. I really, REALLY hope the lady he's seeing has good hearing, so every other word in the conversation isn't,

WHAT???

My new addiction

http://www.etiquettehell.com/

Deliciously horrific tales of dunderheads.

Faceache and other annoyances

Well, yesterday was my first day back to work without prescription painkillers since my wisdom teeth were yanked. I was hurting so much, my ears started to ache and pop. Stupid me left for the office without bringing any Advil with me. Thankfully, one of the new accountants had four left, so I'm gulped them down as I typed. Today, I'm back home and back on the Tylenol with codeine.

Rockmaster hubby went on one of his purchasing benders and came home from Target with a flat screen television. I was NOT happy because I wasn't consulted or even warned (he had just gone out for some generic pharmacy stuff) until I tripped over the box in the kitchen. While I can understand why he picked it up (we had HD cable with a crap screen, the set was on sale, it was the last one), I was upset that he didn't call me with this plan. We probably would have argued a bit but then I would've given in, but I was out of the loop. He finally realized that I was sincerely upset, not about the television (which I might figure out how to use in a month) but about the lack of discussion. He apologized profusely, especially since I threatened to leave all the sets in the house tuned in to "I Love Money" if he does this again.

Once I've signed a contract with a school and once he's secure in his current job or elsewhere, I'll breathe a lot easier. We'll be able to live the DINK (duel-income, no kids) lifestyle at that point, and I won't mind an impulse purchase near as much. Fortunately, we still have plenty of savings so I can buy a bicycle soon.

Wisdom-less

Teaching interview was yesterday, wisdom teeth removal was today. Both went surprisingly better than expected. I'll post more details when I'm feeling a little more with it.

A Challenge!

The Challenge:
- Post 3 things you've done in your lifetime that you don't think anybody else on your friends list has done.
- See if anybody else responds with "I've done that." If they have, you need to add another! (2.b., 2.c., etc...)
- Have your friends cut & paste this into their journal to see what unique things they've done in their life.

1. I ran away with the circus for a weekend. It's a long story, but I got to pet a lion and my friend did NOT elope with the dog trainer, so it had a happy ending.
2. I rode a zipline course through a rainforest in Alaska. It was breathtaking, even when I got stuck and had to pull myself about twelve feet.
3. I modeled a t-shirt for a Famous Amos Cookies ad. I was in fourth grade and kept complaining that the cookies had raisins in them.

Two years? Wow...

Well, today is our second wedding anniversary. I'm honestly glad to say that it hasn't been easy, but it's been a partnership in progress. There were times that we were absolutely miserable and staring at each other like we were total strangers. However, I always make it top priority to make sure neither went to sleep mad at each other. It seems to do the trick. Every night, we talk through what's been bothering us about the day. It smooths things over so I don't sit up at night wondering what's wrong.

One of the downsides of marrying later in life is that we're a bit jaded. The last two years have been reteaching ourselves and each other to stop reacting as if we're still in the relationships that didn't work. This has not been easy because we've had some doozy exes, but it's worth it to look to the other side of the couch and know my decision was a wise one.

At least we're comfortable enough with each other that we went out for Mexican food and didn't hold back on eating the beans.

Buzz buzz

The Rockmaster hubby and I wound up at Cafe Brioso from 6-11 last night for a Barista Jam. Tons of amazing lattes as well as demonstrations of how to use their espresso equipment, all for $5 (proceeds went to a charity purchasing bicycles for Rwandan citizens). I made a fairly decent espresso using the standard equipment and the guidance of a Cleveland barista named Wiggles. The hubby played with the pump machine that intimidated even the experienced baristas who had never seen one before (we heard it could possibly explode if used wrong).

The actual Jam was a latte foam decoration competition, with each entrant making three huge lattes and making designs using only the milk pour (no help from toothpicks or whatnot). The surprise winner was a guy from Grove City, beating out local favorite Chester from Luck Brothers. I slucked down his winning latte (SOMEONE had to drink these things once they were made) and can vouch that it was delicious as well as beautiful.

The only problem was that I was still wide awake until about 3:30 am and the cat STILL woke me up at 6. I should have dragged the hubby to the Tip Top with everyone else for the after party. A small amount of whiskey and conversation might have taken the edge off the coffee jitters.

The bane of Columbus living.

Reading Lists!

Taking a page from a Live Journal friend, here's a list from LibraryThing of 106 most read books. These are my results. Bold titles I've read, * titles I own but have not read, and Italicized titles I've begun but not finished. It definitely gives me some plans for summer reading!

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell * (got it for my birthday but it's too big to carry to school)
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion*
Life of Pi
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged (I got through the first chapter and loathed it)
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales (I even read the parts not assigned in class)
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels and Demons
The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise)
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (I should get this out of my car)
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon*
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

Earthquake?!?

I was woken up at around 6:40 this morning to the bed lightly shaking. I thought it was the cat, but Pandora was downstairs. Turns out a 5.2 earthquake all the way in Illinois made it all the way to Columbus. Pros slept through it, heavy sleeper that he is, but BOY was he excited by the news of the tremor.

Once Upon a Time, Part 1

This is a story that popped into my head sideways. I'll be posting what I have a little at a time in the hopes that I'll decide where to take it next.

We were twelve, my sister Emily and I. It was early August, and the heat draped on our skin with beads of sweat and mud. We were too young to go to the cotillions with Mother and too old to throw dirt clods with the neighborhood kids, so we stuck together for company. This was okay, since Mother taught us that we’d been born together, so we might as well stick together. The neighborhood kids also couldn’t get over that we were two girls that looked exactly alike, so they tended to be a little distant with us.

I could never understand how anyone could mistake the two of us. As far as I was concerned, Emily was the pretty one. She had a pretty that came from deep inside her and radiated across her face. Mother said that she was graceful, but to me, that was what made Emily pretty. I was the one with my nose in a volume of Grimm Brothers or Hans Christian Andersen. It didn’t make me “the smart one”, just the one who looked for mermaids in the lake and fairies in the trees. Emily didn’t laugh for making her search with me, but maybe that’s because there was nothing in our reality that was as much fun as my fantasies. Mother never questioned my attachment to these stories because she knew Daddy used to read them to us. Emily would fall asleep after the first page, but I would stay awake, begging for the next chapter. Daddy left one night while we were sleeping, but he gave me his books and Emily his watch and wedding band before he closed our door for the last time.

Emily sat underneath the tree I was trying to climb. She had picked Black-Eyed Susans on our walk to the lake and was braiding their stems into a wreath. She barely needed to touch the flowers; they arranged themselves because Emily wanted them that way. That was part of her grace making everything pretty like her. My hands were quickly blistered from the effort of the climb up the sharp bark, and I was thankful I’d worn jeans instead of short, or my knees would have bled into the wood.

The image of giving my blood to the tree suddenly caught in my mind. “Hey, if I pricked my finger and fed three drops to the tree, do you think the dryad in it would wake up?”

“Dryad? I can’t remember, what’s that?” Emily looked up at me, but her fingers continued to lure the flowers into place.

“Dryads are forest nymphs, kind of like fairies. I read about them in Daddy’s Bullfinch’s Mythology.” I scrambled to a thick branch to catch my breath. “They can turn into trees when they want to hide from satyrs chasing them. Satyrs are half man, half goat, I think.”

I watched her turn this thought in her head. “Wow, I’d run from them too, I’d bet.” Her hands slowed. “Do they have goat’s heads or legs?”

“They have human heads and chests, but from the waist down is all goat, so they run really fast. Nymphs can run too, but dryads can turn themselves into trees so they don’t have to run.”

“That’s clever of them.” She held the completed wreath between her slender fingers. “This would be a perfect crown for a dryad, wouldn’t it?”

I nodded, “It would, but only as long as you didn’t pick the flowers from the trees they’re hiding in. It would be like pulling off one of their fingers.”

“Eeew, Sarah!”

“It’s true.” I tried to bring the exact story to the front of my head. “A woman picked a flower from a tree that was really a dryad in hiding. The dryad was so mad that she turned the woman into a tree and wouldn’t turn her back.”

Emily’s forehead creased in a frown. “That isn’t fair. Did the tree have a sign that said, ‘Warning: Dryad’? I’m sure the woman didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”

I shrugged and ran my hands along the bark. “I didn’t make up the story. It’s the way things were. It just doesn’t happen as often now that it isn’t ‘once upon a time’.”

“Is that why people don’t believe the stories as much as they used to? Because ‘once upon a time’ was so long ago?” She looked up at me while placing the wreath on her own head.

“Once upon a time was probably a much better time for the dryads, the satyrs and everyone else.”

Me To You (an older poem of mine)

You are to me the full moon,
Sometimes shrouded in clouds
Only around once in a while.
But when you are here with me,
You are clear and bright
Illuminating the right path
With just a touch of lunacy.

What, then, am I to you?

You are to me the exotic,
The combination of the Orient
With its grace and rhythm
And Italy’s brilliant colors.
I can count the many trips
Your heart takes between them.
I watch but dare not follow.

What, then, am I to you?

Am I the innocent child
Who amuses you for a while?
Or maybe the wide-eyed student
You wish to fill with wisdom?
Calm and patience flow from you
While I am so coltish and wild.
There is little I can offer
There is less you can use.

You are to me a sorrow,
A dream I can never have.
Only a shadow of what jewels
Lie outside my weak grasp.
You are so tantalizing.
You keep so distant
As we stand under the full moon.

What, then, could I ever be to you?

A Book Review (of sorts)

Reclaiming Icarus: Reading The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky

I had never heard of David Dornstein until days after his death. It was Mr. Stefanisko, my 11th grade history teacher, who gave this person life and death in my mind. It was the last class of the day, shortly before Winter Break, when Mr. Stefanisko came into the room. His beefy face was damp and his eyes were unnaturally puffy and red.

After a few moments of catching his breath, he spoke. “I am assuming everyone in this classroom has paid enough attention to current events to know about the explosion of Pan Am Flight 103.” We all nodded, but our teacher stared beyond us all. “The school has just received the news that David Dornstein, one of my very best students, was on that flight. He was flying home from Israel, and he apparently had a copy of his first novel with him, the only copy.” Mr. Stefanisko’s voice broke with the last of his control, and he sobbed openly in front of the room. I sat in the front row, close enough to touch him, but I sat still in my seat, taking in the current event that was the explosion of an airplane over Lockerbie, Scotland, and giving it a name. It was then that I realized that this David Dornstein must have been Ken Dornstein’s brother.

Ken Dornstein graduated from my high school just as I moved to CHS to start my sophomore year, but my parents were teachers at the school and had given me copies of Ken’s work from the school newspaper. His final piece comparing writing the perfect college essay to eating frog’s legs was a study in pretzel logic. My grief in hearing about the older brother was the thought that he may have been as brilliant a writer as the younger one.

These were the thoughts that went through my mind when I found Ken Dornstein’s The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky on the shelf at Barnes and Noble. I quickly made the purchase, ran home and flew through the first section. The emotional recall that Ken was able to bring from himself pulled out that memory of Mr. Stefanisko breaking down in class, and I left the book on my shelf for over a year.

This was a mistake.

There are many lessons to be learned in this memoir of two intertwined brothers. From the stoic standpoint of a writer, this is a brilliantly researched and faithfully written piece of nonfiction. Every quote made in the book is substantiated by an immediate source, most often David’s own fanatical journal writing. Ken makes much in early sections about how David wrote about his predictions of an early death in an air accident. This unsettling but almost romantic image is tempered by the remembrance that David’s predictions coincided with the death of a beloved local celebrity in a skydiving accident. The link is substantiated in David’s journals, and Ken is able to move forward in his research rather than being bogged down in the tragedy.

Ken’s connection to own his grief and his obsessive need to “find” his brother lead the surviving brother to start “The David Project”, where he spent years reading through David’s journals and interviewing those who had any kind of influence on David’s life. Through a chance encounter on a train, Ken became reacquainted with Kathyrn, David’s college girlfriend. This meeting would lead to a complicated relationship that runs parallel to “The David Project”. Ken’s mixed feelings of love for Kathryn and guilt for stealing her away from a brother who could not claim her made for a story equally compelling as his emotions regarding the truths he continued to uncover about that brother.

Simply put, there was no novel.

This truth was one that had me run to the phone to call my parents. Did Mr. Stefanisko read this book? Did he know that “The Tragic Twist” reported about his star student was an unfounded myth? Sadly, they let me know my favorite history teacher is in a nursing home with dementia and probably would not even remember that David, Ken or I ever existed. Mr. Stefanisko had always had a touch of madness to his teaching persona, so this did not surprise me.

The madness of the teacher may also explain his emotion connection to his student. While Ken moved through David’s journals, he was able to piece together a story of a mentally tortured older brother he did not know. David suffered as he felt an artist should, but his writing did not grow as he thought it would. The elder brother’s mental health devolved over time, which the younger brother traced back to a possible molestation in David’s childhood. In this passage from David’s journal, he realized that he needed professional help:

YOU NEED TO STOP WRITING IN THIS NOTEBOOK, DAVID… Your life is not the biography of your life that you imagine. You can’t live a book. You can only live a life and if you’re lucky on day you will write the book of your life. But it needs to be done in that order…

Ken continued to research and write David’s life while living his own. He graduated from Brown in his brother’s footsteps and moved to California, then to Boston, where he moved in with Kathryn. His search for remnants of David took Ken to Lockerbie, The Hague and Israel, where he spent time with Rina, David’s last love before he boarded Pan Am 103. What Ken found was the real tragedy in David’s life was not his shocking death, but that he left Israel and Rina behind.

I emailed Ken Dornstein shortly after reading The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky:

When your book about David came out, I bought it immediately, but it took much time for me to get past that first chapter. I picked it up again on Monday and dealt with people asking what was making me tear up, then giggle. For me, it answered the biggest question about the Dornstein Family: would Ken keep writing after he left CHS?

Within a few days, Ken wrote back, remembering my family and our high school teacher:

Thanks so much for this thoughtful, sweet message. Just thinking of Mr Stefanisko being hit with that awful news creates such a sad scene in my mind. I'm glad you got some amusement from the book, among all of the bittersweet parts of it--most people don't know it's okay to laugh in some spots because of the gravity of the topic.

I'll do my best to keep writing, although my day job keeps me quite busy.

All the best,

Ken

Ken is definitely busy. Aside from being a Senior Editor and Producer for Frontline, he and Kathryn married and have two children. Neither are named for their late uncle.

REPOST: The Chicken Incident

This is one of my assignments from my Nonfiction Writing Class. Please enjoy, even if it's at my expense...

The problem with family folklore is that the story gets so terribly drawn out and exaggerated. In my case, I am the victim of The Chicken Incident. This is a story that happened when I was a toddler, so I can't exactly give my side of the story, but that doesn't stop everyone in my family, including my little brother who obviously wasn't there, from telling the legend. It wouldn't be so horribly bad if they would pick better times to retell it. The guests at my rehearsal dinner just HAD to hear about The Chicken Incident? I'm just relieved my husband didn't simply stay out after his bachelor party after the sheer terror of the tale.

So what WAS The Chicken Incident? To be honest, I'd heard the story told by so many people that I wasn't quite sure of the details anymore. It was time to swallow my pride and go to the source. I had to call my parents and get the cold, hard truth. After all, they were the ones who allowed The Chicken Incident to occur. My father, sadly, was of little help remembering details other than he thought it was the fall. He quickly passed the telephone to my mother, who had already started giggling with her memories.

It was the autumn of 1974, the last full year of my reign as an only child. We had gone through almost the entire area of the Philadelphia Zoo with me kept off my feet and close to them. This was a good idea considering my unique style of exploring the world. Even at the age of two, I had a voice that could be heard for several city blocks. I also had skipped learning to walk and went straight to running on tiptoe. It was in my best interest to keep me from running headlong into the lion pit, so I am grateful in retrospect that I was not allowed to play with the pretty kitties.

Finally, they brought me to the petting zoo. There were already children my own age running around excitedly, playing with the goats, sheep and other animals. Released to stand on my own two feet, my arms shot into the air and waved wildly as I barreled past the smaller creatures and stopped before the largest cow I could find. Once I was nose to nose with the cow, I screamed with delight! The cow mildly turned her dark eyes on mine, and then licked me from my coat collar to my hairline. I screamed again, and then ran over to a goat to continue the process, my arms still waving, my feet still on pointe. I screamed at a sheep, and then ran over to a chicken I had passed at the entrance to the petting zoo. The chicken and I were almost the same height, but she had a half inch on my small, compact frame. We stood no more than a foot from one another.

I screamed happily at the chicken.

The chicken fell over backwards without a sound, her feet straight up in the air.

The denouement, according to my mother, was that a young man working in the park came running over, looking extremely upset. He insisted I be removed from the petting zoo immediately because I was upsetting the animals. My parents looked around at all the animals that were still standing and decided to not take their chances. We went home, my parents laughing the whole way and long into the evening. Of course, they had to tell everyone about The Chicken Incident. As my mother put it, "What are the chances your kid can do this? It was incredible!"

REPOST: My 2008 Top Ten Goals

These were from January. I do this instead of resolutions, as I can assess them and review them on a regular basis. Here they are!

1. Audition for Opera Columbus. I've chickened out twice now. I have my audition pieces picked now so I'll know them too well to be nervous in the spring.
2. Write a little every day. How can I get published if I'm not writing? Hell, I have a computer on my lap a majority of my time at home.
3. Get at least two interviews for a full time teaching job. I've already had one in a large school district, but I need to get more practice! Time to get proactive.
4. Pay at least a third off my credit card. It's only one card, but ugh, I've wracked up a high debt.
5. Get some quality time with my niece. This one may be tough since we live a good distance from NYC, but it'll be worth it when she recognizes me from one time to the next.
6. Write a will. Maudlin, no? Well, Pros and I have been married for a while, and we're both getting older.
7. Take better care of Pandora. The guinea pigs are pretty self-sufficient, but I've manage to overfeed the cat into diabetes. She's doing much better, but I worry that I've cut her life span dramatically.
8. Cook with my husband. I've found that we get along really well in the kitchen when we work together. He's patient in showing me the best techniques to avoid slicing off a finger. Now, if I can only get him to wash a dish…
9. Restart my training schedule. I've been working with an amazing trainer, but I had to put that on hold while we got our income situation improved. Hopefully, this will pass.
10. Go out with friends at least one night a month. This follows up on my goal from last year of making new friends. I love Pros, but I need to have my own life as well, or we'll both resent each other.

I have decided...

... it's time to resurrect this blog. I am heavily considering killing my MySpace account within the next month, but I love having an outlet for some of my writing. Besides, now that my intensely talented brother is on board the Blogger train, perhaps it is a sign that I need to punch my ticket again.

Sorry, bad metaphors there.

I'll probably have to update a few things, perhaps move some choice stuff over from the old blog, but I can handle a little less comment traffic for a little more contact with those I care about.

I'm BAAAACK!!!

Loss

Sorry, taking a diversion from talking about the wedding to think about how everyone is going bonkers over the five year anniversary of the terrorist attacks in NYC and DC. I've made the decision to work for Pros' mom rather than go into school and sub. There is going to be a lot of lip service and pageantry tomorrow, with several moments of silence and a lot of emotion. It's just not how I want to spend the day.

Pros and I have different feelings on the subject of mourning loss. He thinks noting the anniversary of a bad event is plain stupid. I can see his point. Why bring up a bad feeling on what happens to be a perfect span of time from when it actually happened? Good times, sure, mark them. But why dwell on the bad times?

For me, it's something I do on rare occasions. I mark the anniversary of when Mur died. When I remember, I light a Yartzeit candle. It's a traditional way of marking the death of someone special in our lives. The difference between 9/11 and 12/ 3 (about the day Mur's body was found on a houseboat at St. Johns) is that I had no personal connection to the attacks. I lost nobody. Mur's death was a great loss, one that I feel almost every day. It's felt a little more on the anniversary because I can still hear my own voice, screaming that it just couldn't be true.

It's a middle of the road way of grieving, I guess. We'll see what it'll be like in two weeks. I promised Mama Hyde that I'd take her to the Flight 93 Memorial, since we're meeting back in Somerset at that time.

Wedding Saga Part V

Saturday, June 24th, evening

Doc and I indeed made the drive from the hotel to Green Gables faster than anyone at the Jennerstown Speedway could have managed. By the time we ran upstairs to the Bridal Room, Cats and Laurali were ready for me to start throwing things at them to press and nonesuch. Unfortunately, it was hot and humid in the room, so we’re all trying to steamer. I was fine with the photographer coming in once I had my “foundation garment” on, especially considering it more closely resembled a bulletproof vest than a sexy bra, but my mother guarded the door as we fussed.

Grampa was allowed in once the skirt was pressed and on me and as I was being strapped into my corset top. With him was a pair of diamond earrings and a matching brooch on a pearl necklace. These were originally my Gram’s. I was told the earrings were mine to keep but the brooch was going back with him until I had a house with a burglar alarm, t not sweat despite thehus giving me the Something Old and Something Borrowed. Between them and Gram’s favorite orchids in my hair, I felt that the best of her spirit was with me even if she was too incapacitated to be.

Doc finished my hair and makeup like a pro. If she weren’t one of the best endocrinologists in Ohio, she’d be a killer soup-to-nuts wedding planner. Brad, the photographer, was eventually allowed in to take as many pictures as possible of me finishing my lipstick, adjusting the bodice of the corset so it wasn’t dangerously overflowing, and walking down the stairs without falling flat on my face. I stood in the lobby for a minute, letting the restaurant patrons stare at me, until Teresa forced me into the lobby of the reception room so she could bring Pros to me. I kept peeking around the corner. Omigod, he looked so gorgeous in that tux! We had a few minutes to just be silly, and then it was off to take a metric buttload of photos.

Brad decided that the first pictures were to be of me standing on a narrow stone footbridge in the middle of a small waterfall. I was NOT happy with this plan, as I am a klutz and was positive someone or something was going to get wet. He assured me that this was the best location possible and had his awesome assistant Cinnamon help me arrange myself in as comfortable a position as possible. Must admit, the photos turned out great, although Pros almost wound up falling in when it was his turn to join me on the footbridge. We then took another gazillion photos in the gardens around Green Gables, and I was starting to wonder if we’d ever bother to stop the photos and start the wedding. Thankfully, mercifully, Teresa called time and Brad warned us that he’d want more photos during cocktail hour. So much for a little alone time with my new husband and a cheese plate!

Pros and Wine Guy followed Cats to their places up front while my brother, with K's help, started to play the pre-processional waltz he had written. I stayed back in the reception hall with my family and Laurali, fairly antsy to start the ceremony. For some reason, I wound up singing the bridesmaid song from Ruddigore (my favorite G&S show) to calm my nerves. Laurali chimed in with me, and I’m told the back rows were cracking up listening to us. Finally, with one parent on each arm, we started to walk outside into the crowd.

Pros looked so gorgeous with that amazing smile on his face. Cats had borrowed her late father-in-law’s prayer shawl so she could look a little more rabbinical and less pastoral. The wedding march was exactly what I had asked my brother to compose and more. There was absolutely no rain in sight. This was going well!

According to Jewish tradition, Pros and I shared a cup of wine, said our basic “I Will” stuff, and then were told to have a seat. Anyone who didn’t know Cats was in for a treat, because she had decided to give one of her world-class sermons. To quote Cats’ blog on our wedding, “Now JH and her family are Jewish. Pros, her now-husband is not. He is a geologist.” HAH! She actually based her sermon on a rock she brought with her from Connecticut as a symbol of unity and cohesion. An entire row of geology grad students were highly amused and gave her much encouragement as she forged ahead with this analogy. We were finally allowed to stand up and recite our vows.

Then, the rings were exchanged. The only problem with the ring ceremony was that the humidity had caused my fingers to swell, making it very difficult to shove the damn thing onto my hand. I forced myself to not put it on myself and just shoved from my end while hoping it wouldn’t cut my knuckle like in the Billy Idol video. I really needed that second sip of wine after that! Suddenly, Cats finished talking, Pros and I had stomped on a wine glass (okay, it was a lightbulb, but his foot alone could have managed the real thing) and I was kissing my new husband while clinging to him in amazement.

We were married! We could live happily ever after! We… had to take more formal photos.

To be continued!

Wedding Saga Part IV

Saturday, June 24th, morning

Considering I was told how anxious I’d probably be this night before the wedding, it was a struggle to get out of bed. The bachelorette party wore me out perfectly to sleep through the night. However, by 8:30 I threw on my bathing suit and shorts, kissed my almost husband as he slept off his bachelor party, and headed down to the lobby.

My original intention was to head straight to the hot tub at the pool, but that changed when I ran into Lynx. She’d just finished working out and was headed to the breakfast buffet and convinced me this was a good idea. It wasn’t as tasty as the Summit Diner but at least I didn’t have to drive anywhere. It turned out that Lynx and her husband, who was also still asleep, were in the room next to us. She promised us body work if we needed it. Pros definitely did, but I just wanted a good soak. She grabbed her suit and joined me in the hot tub for a while. It was so lovely to have a fairly normal conversation without a ton of emotion. After the rehearsal dinner, I was still a little drained and needed to recoup before the ceremony.

There was time to grab a quick shower to rinse off the chlorine and get my hair about as in shape as it would get before my dad would pick me up for a manicure appointment. Praise the SIL for making that appointment, as my hands were a disaster. Pros was just waking up as I was finished drying my bangs straight. He and the guys had found, in his words, “the cheapest bar in North America.” A bunch of the bikers were also there and kept him in whiskey and company well into the night. No lap dances for him, apparently, but that was to be expected in a town as quiet as Somerset.

SIL (here she is with my bro and K) and I had a great chat, although she was still very emotional about her grandmother’s passing. She was amazed at how much fun she’d had the night before and was already trying to plan a gathering of us all in the future. She was also doing marvelous work in keeping my parents calm and out of my hair. I marveled again at my brother’s great fortune for finding such a wife.

The time between returning from the manicure and leaving for Green Gables was a mix of napping and nerves. I wasn’t nervous about getting married, just anxious to get things started. Pros and I slept, listened to the radio, grabbed lunch with Lynx and Tony then slept some more…

By the time I was supposed to meet Doc to drive to Green Gables, I was insane to get out of the hotel. Unfortunately, Doc has never been as hyperpunctual as I am. When I worked for her and signed in patients for their 8:30am appointments, I usually knew she wouldn’t even see the front of the building until at least 9. This time, we had fifteen minutes to be at Green Gables as I’d promised my parents, but Doc was still in the shower. I simply clenched my jaw and tried to not throw the box with my dress in a hissy Bridezilla fit. It wasn’t like they’d shrug and start the ceremony without me, right? Besides, Doc drives insanely fast. We’d get there reasonably on time.

To be continued!

Wedding Saga Part III

Friday, June 23^rd, evening

The wedding rehearsal, according to my conversation with Green Gables owner Teresa, was to start at 6:30 so that we could make it to the 7:30 rehearsal dinner. Unfortunately, Theresa had written it down for 7:00 and was busy with the wedding in progress. Fortunately, this was just fine as the best man was still enroute with our officiant. They made it by 6:45, hugs were exchanged with a very tired Cats, and we got organized.

The rehearsal itself was quick and more of a logistics plot between Cats and Teresa. My one concern was location. We had originally decided the back lawn would be an ideal setting, but Pros and I had realized that the patio overlooking the lawn would be a much better idea. Dad wanted to stick with the original plan and pointed out the improving weather. Pros pointed out the standing pools of water on the lawn. I pointed out how much we had spent on my wedding dress while pointing out said pools. Cats pointed out that she could conduct the service just fine from the exact point where she was standing. Teresa pointed out that we would all fit on the patio with no problem. Point, set, match.

Mom drove Cats back to Quill Haven to change clothes before dinner while the rest of us headed back to the Quality Inn. We were a little late due to the drive from Green Gables, so we entered the room to sighs of relief and some applause. Lots of cousins, tons of teachers (including my high school principal) and my new grandfather in law were there. I was amazed how happy New Grampa was to meet me, considering I had heard he wasn’t fond of anyone of any kind of ethnic minority. My Grampa, as usual, had the camera going at full tilt. This is a man who took pictures of the buffet at my 30^th birthday party, so I just shook my head and insist that not all pictures be posed so I could get a glass of wine during photos. Thankfully, he agreed long enough to pose with me and the wine glass.

As we settled in for dinner, I realized that Lynx and her husband were still not there. I wanted to call her to make sure she was okay, but realized I didn’t have her cell phone number, leaving me to stare at her place card on the front table. Cats kept me distracted by insisting that she sit in between Pros and me through dinner. I’ve known Cats a long time. Having her for a chaperone was one of the funniest moments of the weekend.

I’d talked about the rehearsal dinner with Pros’ stepmom, The Southern Belle. Belle agreed that something Cats had done at her rehearsal dinner was a good idea, so as we finished eating, she stood and requested everyone who wanted to talk, stand up in turn (she’s also a teacher and would have called on raised hands if need be) and tell the story about how they knew us. Oy, the stories had me laughing and blushing. My mother insisted on telling about the time I screamed at a rooster so loudly it keeled over dead. Hey, I was a toddler! About two thirds of the way through, Lynx and hubby stumble into the party and are quickly fed. The poor dears were caught in yet another downpour outside of Pittsburgh!

Somehow, Cats had the last word. Cats’ speech was, at first, identical to the story I told at her rehearsal dinner, and I’ll take the time to tell the story. Cats was a transfer student to Muhlenberg College, but her brother was already a sophomore. She was fine with his pals, but wanted to make her own friends. She went to the drama club party and made the mistake of bringing her brother’s friend Mitchell, a total letch. She realized this and decided to ditch him by sneaking off into a side room, which happened to be mine. I had a single room, but there was enough floor space for a sleeping bag and nothing else. Somehow, there were at least twenty people jammed in there. Cats popped her head into this room and yelled, “HIDE ME!!!” She then JUMPED OVER several people and landed on the bed behind me. By the time Mitchell made it to my dorm room door, Cats was totally hidden and safe. Later, she commented that she’d been at school for weeks and just wanted a friend of her own. Within a minute, I had her phone number committed to memory, and within two days we were inseparable on campus.

This story may have caused the only time I cried the whole weekend.

I could say a thousand things about the bachelorette party, but I'll limit it to the highlights:

• An overabundance of redheads
• Loud and fun cover band
• Several rounds of drinks with an amazing group of gals
• One lap dance from two of said amazing gals
• Two bikers attracted by one lap dance
• One bride shipped off to bed!

To be continued!