tactfullyblunt

disappointment cake

This past weekend I picked up our complimentary one-year anniversary cake from the bakery who did our wedding cake. I was really looking forward to this cake because I thought for sure I'd be able to finally get to taste the almond mocha cake I didn't receive on the day of the wedding because they decided not to make the cake I wanted any more and never called to give me a second option. Round two: still wrong. In fact, once again they gave me raspberry vanilla. I hate raspberries. I would never have gotten it.

What a disappointment.

In the realm of disappointments I've experienced, it wasn't really all that big of a deal. Cake is cake, and Bill loves raspberries so he's thrilled. It's not like it won't get eaten.

And yet...

And yet, for a person who sees the symbolism in every speck of sand, this ever-so-wrong-for-me-cake just hit me hard (thankfully I had gotten drunk with visiting family and had a full meal of Maryland crabs beforehand). I just couldn't help but see it as a metaphor for all of the things that have happened in the first year of marriage that I really could've probably lived my whole life without. Oh, sure, it's not like I caught Bill with the post woman or like we lost everything in the Dust/Catfur Bowl, but there have been times when I have honestly questioned the sanity of anyone who actually says that marriage is satisfying for all parties involved.

I suppose given my complete hesitance about getting married in the first place, it probably doesn't come as any big surprise that I would experience marriage in a similar manner. Lord knows that there have been MANY times when I have wondered why The Sky Pilot didn't see fit to leave the blinders on and allow me a more blissfully ignorant life. Alas, I came into the world with my volume turned up too loud, and a raspberry cake is the thanks I get for putting up with, well, marriage for a whole year.

Which I guess just goes to prove even further my theory that TSP has such a sense of humor that he doesn't reward hard work and perseverance with even the slightest bit of chocolate. Nooooo, instead you get exactly the opposite cake you want, the stuff you'd never choose for yourself, and then you're expected to eat it and like it. At least you got cake.

I've got your raspberry right here, Big Guy.

happy anniversary, baby

It's hard to believe it's been a year since we got married, but it's true. The last week has been a blur, given the planning which has gone into making sure everyone is here for my sister's graduation today, and that no one wound up injured on the side of the highway. But I guess it's apropos given that the last year has been so full of life events.

Yes, I would have to agree with the common wisdom that the first year of marriage is one of the most difficult, given everything that we've been through. There have been days when we've been at our wit's end with the everyday living of life. There have been many days when I have been thankful just to make it through a 24-hour period without either of us facing a jail sentence related to the death of the other. But there have been just as many days when I have gone to sleep knowing that, despite how much I might be fantasizing about how easy it would be to do you in during your sleep, you are still my best friend, more than I ever could've hoped for, and that we are definitely blessed to have shared whatever time the gods have offered us, in whatever state that time comes.

I love you, you bastard.

one month ago today, I was crying on my front lawn

May 21 we had our rehearsal dinner.

For those of you who are sick of me talking about my blubbering tendencies, I'll keep this short: I warmed up for the big show the following day. I am hitting the point now where I can look back wistfully and remember the rehearsal dinner happily, and not as the evening before the gallows.

As I looked over the wedding photos yesterday, these were my thoughts:

There's a good reason why it should always take at least a month before you can see the photos of your wedding. Any sooner and you're still dealing with the post wedding depression. I couldn't look at Bill's digital photos for at least two weeks after the wedding. It was more than I could handle, and the sheer thought of it set me to blubbering all over again.

There were whole tables of people I don't remember talking to, and this fact makes me sick to my stomach every single time I look at photos of the right side of the tent. Where was I the whole time? Who was I talking to that I couldn't make it over there to talk to them more? You know who you are, and I take this moment to say publicly:

I sucked as a bride--please forgive me for not being as gracious as my husband. Where was I?

I need to keep bubbles on hand for every family occasion; my mother was actually laughing with my dad. In fact, they were laughing together like children.

My Dad rocks. I love my Dad. I love him so much that the photographer pointed out, after my crying for the fifteenth time over yet another photo of my Dad, "You're really attached to your dad".

Every time I've thought of Dad since the wedding I get all...misty. Thought I was going to say blubbery, didn't you? Since I was a kid, every time Mom talks about her father, she gets misty. Now, while I can't say I understand her any better, I'm in the same boat.

Where was I? Who was I talking to?

Where has the last month gone?

I love my dad.

something blue

I've been struggling for a few days to figure out what to write when there are so many things to say. Thanks to Dave, Rob and Todd for writing about our day so well that for now I'm just going to leave their words to do the talking.

What I'm unsure of how to approach is how I feel now that it's over. Bill has been wonderfully eloquent in explaining my own discomfort to me, and if I were ready to share those little security blankets with the world I would...but I'm not ready to let them go just yet. In brief, yesterday my new husband gave me all the permission I didn't even know I needed for it to be ok to feel the way I do, despite my dislike of feeling whiny about something which is supposed to be so durned happy an occasion.

Still and all, I know I need to begin to leech out this poison, so I'm going to apologetically steal from an email I wrote the other day to a beautiful woman who knows whereof I speak. I'd have come up with something more original if I felt more up to it. Or at least something a bit more coherent.

...I don't know what the heck is wrong with me, but this whole thing is hitting me pretty hard. I find myself wondering if the stereotypical Aggie Elementary Ed majors find themselves in this place when they are done with their weddings and honeymoons? Do you think they are? Because in my mind I just see them all being Stepford wives and being so damn happy and perky and so in love and thrilled to be Mrs So-and-So [that they don't have time to feel anything but peachy]...I mean, the wedding was perfect, the honeymoon was beautiful, so I have nothing to complain about. So why am I home now, after having behaved myself fairly well among the delicious Italian cuisine, eating pizza and ice cream like it's going to somehow save me?

och, it burns

tired. nervous.

but ready for the wedding to be over.

maybe that's why this thing has become what it has: so I don't have time to breathe, let alone think clearly about what it is that I am preparing to undertake with this self-named "skinny man".

I am going downstairs now to have half the vodka tonic that we are sharing in preparation for bed tonight. Lord knows we need it.

christopher walken says "it was...a misssssstake"

After drinks back at the house, and some jokes from Sara and Shelly, we all stayed up until 3am laughing and talking about Sara's toy catalog. For that happiness I am desperately thankful.

Let me just say from the beginning that nothing my life has thrown me in the way of parties prepared me for Saturday night. And yet, nothing was really all that different about it from any other party that's been held in my "honor".

I really don't know how to get out how I feel about the weekend, especially knowing that some people who read this were either there, decided not to come, or couldn't have known any more than I did the way it would go. The dark side of conflicted doesn't even begin to scratch the surface.

It was a painfully small group (my three sisters, mother, Sara and Shelly), which left me feeling my worth just about like sandpaper on a third-degree sunburn. I'm telling myself that maybe it was because it was a last minute thing, and that people would obviously have felt more like coming if they'd had six months to prepare themselves for the event.

While I am thankful that Sara took on the awkward responsibility that she didn't need to take on, I can't say the evening went the way she'd expected either. About fifteen minutes into arriving at Lucille's in the Power Plant Live area, I had to ask her to turn around to take my mother, who was feeling about like a .5 on a scale of 1-10, home. About that time, Shelly showed up, which turned out to be a good thing, because after we got through the dinner, I requested that she just take me home. Trying to entertain a very worldly 30something and three very NOT 20somethings was more than I cared to take on by myself. I just didn't have it in me, for reasons that are too personal to mention.

I can't say that I was surprised that it turned out that way. What I can say is that I felt it deep in my bones, like an old friend that I really don't care to know any more. Events throughout the weekend just kept ramming it home to me that there are things that must have a certain order to them, and these things are immutable in Life du Jen.

Still, I had some major realizations while trying to hold it all together this weekend, and I hope that I can grow from them.

One of them directly affects next Saturday: The twins are perpetually late. They must be corraled, against their will, at the church at least an hour before the event. Otherwise, Christi will be walking up the aisle halfway through the ceremony, with that ditzy expression on her face saying, "oooohhh, you meant I actually had to be on time? I didn't know I was expected to actually give a crap about anyone else besides myself today...."

little havana bloody marys

In a world such as mine, I am thankful that I am thankful.

...and so it begins...

Our wedding favors have arrived in force today, covering the grape vines and the plants in thick blankets of buggy wonders.

I'm working on the program, hacking my lungs out, and I have just heard the first LOUD chirruping coming from the cedar tree in the front yard.

is it zen or is it sinus meds?

Despite feeling like total ass, I actually got quite a bit done on the side of the house near the garage on Saturday--it's actually weeded, spaded, and planted. I'm actually going to use the word 'awesome' to describe how it feels to see it starting to look like someone gives a crap about the house (from the outside, Bill, from the outside). I also weeded the sunny side of the house, Bill edged, and right now the sun-loving plants are awaiting planting. My sister, Annie, and I are going to do some gardening today (how much, I'm unsure, since I still feel like ass with this cold).

Bill and I have been out to the "shade garden", as we're calling it now, several times each day, admiring it from every angle. I can't tell you how wonderful that feels! I was stuck in a decision-making vortex and needed the input of a fellow gardener to help get me out of my funk, and Sara Smith ably came to my rescue. Given how easy it is for me to get stuck in my own addledness, I'm more thankful than I can say. Plus, she kicked me into picking plants I'd never have picked before (pink splotched plants? in MY garden? get out!), and made me feel like the yellow begonias were actually a good idea (begonias, another plant I've never really gravitated toward, and yellow? please).

It was good to get that support, because yesterday my mother snuck in that it wasn't too late for me to call off the wedding. Obviously, this is not the kind of "support" that I am in need of at this time, and it just goes to show how little she knows about me. I talked to Annie about it on the way back up here, and she was very supportive, angry in all the right places, and told me several times that she doesn't understand how anyone can't see how much Bill and I love one another.

That's why Annie is so cool. Well, one of many reasons why she's so cool.

Too Busy to Be Selfish

I suck.

No, truly. I suck.

There have been people in the last few weeks that have had to fall by the wayside, with nary a phone call, nary an email, nary a visit due to my schedule of late.

First, let me apologetically say that I'm sorry for bitching about my busy-ness. I've never before been one of those people whose conversations have been full of phrases like, "I've been soooo busy", "I just don't have the time to...", or "You just can't believe how busy I've been". Mostly because I haven't been that busy, but even in times when I was, I just felt like it was obnoxious to say things like that. I know when I hear other people repeatedly talk about their lives that way, it's usually an attempt to make themselves feel more important, more successful, more...well, alive I guess. Besides, in today's world, who isn't soooo busy?

Of course, the world has conspired against me, giving me a lifetime of busy in a few months' timespan. I try to pack as much in to each day as I possibly can, even having gotten up at 5:30am on more mornings than I care to mention just to make sure everything got done. Unfortunately, every day I wake up with a list of people I have to get in touch with to thank them for various reasons...and most days that list stretches into weeks and even months before it gets handled.

This is my long-winded way of saying thank you to all those people.

But right now, especially to Heather C., who has made me the most beautifullest diadem to wear on ye olde wedding day. She didn't have to do it, but she did, and she did it quickly (!!) which is even more amazing to me.

---------

And now, I am signing off so that I can give some time to the one person who has been with me through it all, who knows exactly what kind of pressure I've been under--including the pressure I've been giving myself with the guilt, the worry, and the guilt about the guilt--myself. For the first time in months, I am going to spend the majority of today, god willing (because yesterday I got called in for freelance at the last second), doing whatever the hell I want to do.

Because I am a rockstar. I rock out.