http://themessage-board.blogspot.com/

Sweet Jesus, why am I not friends with this woman?!  Hat tip to Suzzanne!

In an attempt to blog again, regularly, and to get myself writing, I will be finishing up the wedding stuff here, but I will be transitioning over to here.  I think of it as my life returning to normal operations.  (As John and I spent Monday saying, “We must normalize household operations!” as we did laundry, groceries, and tried to recover.  God we’re weird.)  I think of it as also returning (moving forward?) to a place where once again I write, have a life, enjoy my job, and cook and knit and read, and the blog is a place where I document all of that.  I’m so excited about not having to tick things off my to-do lists (or sit around and worry about those things) when I come home at night.

We made it!  We made it!  We made it!

I do aim to go over everything in depth, at some point, but more important is that we. made. it.  Despite some very last minute unnecessary drama, and despite my firm belief that my head might explode, we pulled off our Friday night ceremony and dinner, our Saturday barbecue, and our Saturday night afterparty with grace, aplomb, and little-to-no drama (albeit a few points where I caught my breath and went “pleaseOHpleaseOHpleaseOHpleaseOH what the hell it’s not my problem.”

A few highlights:

Photos at the Spanish Steps and dinner at Nora’s. (I tried to rewrite our vows at the last minute to say, “And every week we have to go to Nora’s” but it didn’t happen.)

My mother being the hostess with the mostess.  (Really.  It was almost disturbing, but in a good way.)

My grandmother also being the hostess with the mostess.  (She turned into Emily Gilmore, minus the Connecticutness.)

My friend Mary lifting up her cake plate, smiling, and saying, “I would roll around in this!”

My friends and family all being in one place and having a good time together.

Awesome music thanks to my brothers-in-law, father-in-law, and Bernie (and therefore McAlister).

And a whole bunch of other reasons.

We had fun.  I think other people had fun as well.  That’s all I wanted, and for once, I had my cake and ate it too.  (Literally.)

The term starts and I go MIA, naturally.  The BBQ is in three days.  Right now I’m positively ill.  I let my guard down and bam! My mother  swooped in to find the most innocuous, harmless detail and made it a huge effing deal.  And of course, I responded in kind despite my best efforts not to, and then John got involved, and now we’re going to hear about how we ruined the wedding–her only daughter’s wedding, and not even the real one because she didn’t get to go to the real one–for the next twenty years.

I can’t even get more into it because my stomach lining might just dissolve completely in the vat of battery acid that has become my GI.  Luckily, other friends and family are being awesome, and John is more than awesome, so hopefully I can lean back on them and coast through this without, you know, breaking a handle of liquor and waving it at anyone in particular.

I had the best intentions of blogging all this, but it’s just not funny to me now.  It’s just crappy.

Hi.  I’m back.  I’ve been back for about ten days.  I’m overwhelmed right now with starting the semester and going through 10 million kajillion photos and tending to our wily overgrown garden and planning the event in October.  BUT…. you can go here if you want to see all the photos that the wonderful McAlister took (and compiled from M&T and Dr. Rock Girl & Francis).  (Francis is not his real name.  In fact, it’s probably not my place to call him Francis.  But I can’t think of any nicknames for him, other than The Dude, and that one’s already taken for one of John’s best friends  Dr. RG?  Thoughts?)

Basic rundown:

The ceremony took place (stealthily!) at Ft. Funston.  It was 20 minutes long.  Then we had cocktails at Top of the Mark and Dinner at Greens.  I will post about that later.  (The lesson of that post, however, is don’t drink on an empty stomach when you know you have a nervous stomach in the first place.  Sorry, Greens.)  Then we went to Thailand and Cambodia.  (Pics to come later.)

Was it precisely what I wanted?  You bet your ass it was.  Would I have done anything differently?  See the above parenthetical note.  Would I have done anything substantively differently?  Nah.

And now on to The BBQ.

Dateline: San Francisco.

We. Are. Here.

I love being in a city where government offices are a) useful, b) friendly, and c) efficient.  DC seems to forget that, both in terms of city and federal level offices.  The man who checked my purse and walked me through the metal detector?  Super nice!  The people at county clerk’s office?  Quite friendly!

That aside, we swore earlier today before a clerk that we didn’t lie about our names, birthdates, parents, and that we’re not married nor have we been married before.  Done and done.

While we picked up our license, we were in the same place that all the ceremonies were being held.  All over City Hall–and what a place to do it!  I have photos I will post to Flickr eventually.  What really got me weepy and mushy, however, were all the gay- and lesbian-couples having the ceremony with friends and families.  Two women wore the most beautiful vintage ivory dresses–different, but similarly long and rather art-deco–carrying bouquets of roses.  And everyone was so blissfully, ecstatically, uniquely, unobnoxiously, deliriously happy.

That’s the way to start your wedding weekend.

Jeffro sent me this link. In my non-freak-out-freak-out that’s ongoing, I’ve decided to waste some energy hating on this. IMHO, this embodies the worst of the worst of what’s wrong with weddings today. A simple list of what pisses me off:

• 4-for-2 breast implant deal. Do you really want surgery–however routine–on a deal basis? That’s so Dr. Nick Riviera.
• Giving a “gift” of body modification (botox, implants, etc.–not piercings or tattoos, which I find much less offensive), when really it’s a test of how “loyal” your friend is.
• Demanding a tan so that two of your friends opt out of the wedding because they are claustrophobic and probably wrecking the friendship forever.

All of this boils down to one. Fucking. Day. The botox won’t last, you might be giving your friends future medical problems, and in the end, all you got is a stack of photos that don’t look like you or your friends. Fucked! Totally!! Fucked!!

Recently, people (including store dude from the post below, and my hair dresser, and various sundry others) seem to get *so* confused about me not having bridesmaids. Like, they can dig the sort-of-elopment, the not-white-dress, the party back east later on….but people cannot wrap their heads around not having bridesmaids. And it’s not that I’m militantly against bridesmaids for all women having weddings past, present and future. But why is that label so important and yet so loathed at the same time (as in, “always a bridesmaid, never a bride” or “ugly bridesmaid dresses”)? Because this article in particular, and some really horrible stories from a friend’s recent trip to a shower weekend for another friend’s wedding, strengthen my argument that this stuff just encourages the Queen Bee/Mean Girls model of women interacting with other women. Only it’s one thing when you’re 14; quite another when you’re 35. More and more it’s seen as expected, even acceptable, that women behave like this in groups. GROWN WOMEN. What are you teaching your daughters?

I hate the competitiveness and self-loathing and meanness that some of these wedding traditions foster, which is why I’m having none of it.

Even without labeling my friends as bridesmaids, I had a badass Saturday night out with my girlfriends in D.C. to celebrate that included cupcakes with doinks on them, a lot of Prosecco, some gawking at drunk people engaged in sexual acts on a dance floor, and NO DRAMA. I think that’s made me the happiest of all in terms of wedding prep–that, while I have friends in disparate circles, many of them came together and even as a group they rock. (Yes, all of you!)

I love entering a “new” stage in my life knowing that my friends, like me, have all grown and changed into the people we all knew we could be–and better–even when some of us were particularly terrible 22-year-olds.  And by “some of us”, I mean “me.”

few weeks ago I became obsessed–OBSESSED–with what makeup I should have and what perfume I should wear. Please note that I gave up wearing anything but tinted moisturizer and a little mascara years ago. (I partially blame What Not To Wear, which I watch daily during my lazy days of summer right now. Damn you Stacy and Clinton! Oh wait, I kinda want to get martinis with you guys.) At any rate, I called up Reporter Girl–both a sound, reasonable woman who rarely wears a lot of makeup and knows one shouldn’t spend $30 on lipgloss, and at the same time, a woman who will squeal over super sparkly, glassy lipgloss that costs $30 but is perfect–and said we had to go shopping. She squealed.

We headed to Georgetown on a bloody hot Saturday morning. Now, both of us hate Georgetown but also know you’re not going to go many other places that have a Dean and Deluca for a quick bite and ten cosmetics shops. The MAC store there freaks me out, because the stylists there always try to get you to buy precisely what you don’t want (thank you, no, I don’t want shiny blue-black lipstick right now, but yes, fabulous concept), so we dodged that store. Then we went to Sephora. I love Sephora for when I need specific stuff; it’s like a huge department store of things to make you smell and look better than I did on that Saturday morning. However, this particular location is hit-or-miss. The selection seems to have been whittled down, so I left with some fancy-pants body scrub that smells like sugar and lemons (twee!) and some gorgeous perfume.

Yet, I still needed color: eye shadow, lipstick/gloss, etc. For someone who wears so little make up, you may find it shocking to know that I once sold a certain cosmetics line via parties. (No, I never wore a little pink suit.) I know my makeup. I know what looks good on me, I know what each of those crazy-ass brushes does and why you actually DO need all those crazy-ass brushes if you want to make your makeup look nice and not slathered on, and I know what I like and I don’t like. As the prospects for finding what I wanted dimmed, we made the executive decision to go to a certain high-end boutique.

Mmmkay. So, I’ve been really low key and all that, but within the past week, I’ve started getting a tad compulsive. In another post, I’ll document my trip to cosmetics shops known for it’s cuntiness, and how my friend The Reporter and I navigated it with ease and aplomb.

But today’s little tale: I had gone bathing suit shopping for a few weeks earlier. Apparently, by mid-summer, stores no longer sell bathing suits. I know this and should have thought about it earlier. At any rate, I’ve got about a week before I leave and I needed a damn swimsuit. I ordered it, received it, and realized that the size I thought I was wasn’t the size I am. (For those that I care, I went up a size. That’s not going to be what I obsess over right now, since I can’t do shit about it in the next week unless I go on an Amy-Winehouse-esque coke binge. And really, who needs a wedding day nosebleed?)

I returned a bikini top last week to exchange it for a new one, to a Well-Known-Catalogue that I hate myself for loving. I blame it on my blue-blood college career (much like my secret appreciation for some Vera Bradly prints. There, I said it.) I had received no confirmation, no nothing on the exchange.

So I call the place I ordered the suit from to check on the timeline. The very nice customer service man informs me it’ll be about two weeks. Very calmly, and very calculatedly, I said, “Oh. Is there any way to expedite that? Because I leave for Thailand for three weeks next week. On my honeymoon.”

Yup, I pulled the honeymoon card. All for a damn bikini top.

The very nice man immediately says, “You know what, I’m sure we can figure something out. Let me put you on hold for a moment.” He gets back on the line, transfers me to the special ops of the biz, and my bikini top will be in my apartment no later than mid-day tomorrow. They even gave me overnight shipping for the price of regular shipping…. on a top that was down to $23 from $44.

When used wisely, the h-word (or w-word, or b-word, or m-word) can be your best friend.

but hopefully still a good person.

We are 17 days away from tying the knot, as the kids say. People who don’t know me very well and hear this go “oh my god, how are you so calm?” Because I’m more nervous about taking a however-long flight to Thailand? Because when you eliminate the need to worry about color-coded napkins, you save a lot of energy? Because I’m just not?

Thinking back over the course of this blog, I had all intentions of making myself care about a wedding by poking fun at all the wacked-out shit people say when you’re getting married and lack a bridal gene (or just don’t squeal). But I realized as I went on that most people were pretty down with us doing our own thing.

However, the process has reiterated some points to me. One, I am nothing if not inconsistent. (Mmm triple negatives.) I don’t write every day, I don’t blog every day, and that level of non-dedication to one single topic has proven, among other things, that I should probably not go on to doctorate-level studies, and has me questioning my self-image as a writer. But part of me was freaking out a little that if I’m this inconsistent about blogging about my wedding, something I’m supposed to care about deeply, than what the hell am I doing getting married? And, that reminded me that once again, I care more about the marriage than the party. I’m more excited about spending my life growing and being with John–something I knew long before we even got engaged–than any of the outward markers that “prove” that to the world. I have never been good with those “outward markers.”

The other thing that this process has brought to my attention is my lack of a central circle of friends. On and off since probably kindergarten, I’ve wrestled with knowing that I don’t do well in groups. I’ve momentarily had strong groups of friends, that only fall apart later. This is not to say I don’t have close friends, but increasingly, I’m aware of how fractured my friend groups are. I take joy in that because all of my friends are so different, but at the same time, it can make for some really awkward and strange group interaction (maybe, like, the BBQ in October…). In looking for information and support online, I found great groups–only to realize that I don’t interact frequently enough with them to benefit fully, and/or care enough about online dynamics to put forth the effort to interact. Same with past blogs I’ve done. But it really hit home when my mom was talking about throwing me a shower in September. All the showers I’ve been to focus mostly on that core group of girlfriends that every bride seems to have. And while I’ve had several friends offer to plan something, I politely declined. Now my mom really wants to do something, and while I’m not particularly thrilled, it means a lot to me that she wants to do it so I figured, sure. I know of lots of people who fly cross-country for these things–engagement parties, showers, etc.–but it all feels superfluous to me. When I go visit friends or attend these things, I feel really on the outside since I’m not part of the “core”, however close I may be to the person. But now I think I might have a few people mad at me for NOT doing these things, and NOT inviting them to shit, even though they couldn’t come or it would be a hassle for them to come. In the end, if I just had a core group of girls, all of this would be so much easier.

It’s one of those weird gender role things that heterosexual weddings and marriage seem to reinforce. Whenever we hang out with the marrieds we know, the room will tend to split along male/female lines. The girls press me for wedding details!!!!!!!!!! and they don’t know how to respond when I don’t know how to answer that.  The guys think seem to I’m a bit of an endearing tomboy for not being like their wives/fiancees. And John claims this doesn’t happen, only sometimes he admits it does, and he doesn’t really know what to do, and neither do I, and then we’re this weird little diatomic entity spinning in our own orbit.

So what am I trying to say here?  I don’t really know, honestly.  The past year has made for interesting sociological and anthropological observations, both online and in real life.  I don’t know if I’m going to continue blogging here, or on another site.  I share JP’s recent blog-break reasoning, in that I feel like sometimes I spend too much time blogging rather than writing, but other times I feel like the only way I write is when I blog.  And ultimately,  in a complete reversal of how I’ve felt the past few years, I feel like there’s too much living to do right now to spend a significant amount of time holed up writing.

At least right now.