13 posts tagged “wedding”
I've just managed to force myself to sit down after twenty solid minutes of pacing around my apartment like an insane person. This wasn't aimless pacing per se -- I very much wanted to do one of the eight thousand things there are to do around here -- but picking a task and sticking to it proved impossible. My mind was like an agitated fly, settling on something for just a moment before taking off to haphazardly land on something else. I fear that nothing will be accomplished tonight.
My apartment looks like a wedding bomb exploded in it, followed shortly thereafter by a smaller travel bomb. The debris is substantial, to say the least: a backlog of mail, unused Hefty ziplock baggies, a heating pad, leftover wedding favors, a guest book, a mostly-empty shopping bag from Edward's Luggage, a half-unpacked suitcase, a crumpled dress shirt, a damp case of assorted booze, a stack of partially-opened gift boxes, a still-pristine (because Richard, not I, read it) copy of Shadow of the Hegemon, bits of ribbon, a souvenir DVD that our DVD player won't play, a list of owed thank-yous, a shell lei snaked around the handle of a 2007 Semantic Technology Conference bag ... and this is just what I can see from where I'm sitting at the kitchen table.
I feel softer than I have in a great long while (not using softer as a euphemism for fatter, though while we're on the topic I did eat like pig right up until the moment I couldn't keep any food in me). After leaving it behind for only a week, my life seems daunting and unnecessarily hard. I'm not sure how I go about doing the things I normally do, how I handle them all, or if I'm cut out for any of it. Granted, now is not the best time for such weighty considerations. It's my first hour apart from my new husband in over a week, and my first full day back from my honeymoon in the South Pacific. I've been away from the office for two weeks. The events I just spent the past four months planning are over, and everything I put off during that time is waiting at my front door. I suppose I should give myself the space to feel a bit spacey.
So I decided to sit down, eat a bowl of Simple Chicken soup from Zao Noodle Bar, and think about things. First, I thought about how the Simple Chicken dish seems to have gotten a bit more complicated. And by "a bit more complicated" I mean "with fatty and gristly weird chicken bits in it". Perhaps I'm hypersensitive given my tender tummy, but the eating was replaced with idle poking nonetheless.
In the past, I've spent a lot of time marveling at how resilient people are. We can take so much -- much more than we imagine we can take -- and we often emerge stronger and better for it. It's an easy observation lacking in any profundity, but I've always been stricken by it nonetheless. Today I noticed the somewhat the murkier counterpart instead: just how vulnerable we are, and how little it takes to shake us out of our comfortable, complacent spots in the world. All it took was a beautiful wedding, an idyllic vacation, a messy house, and a messier stomach bug to utterly incapacitate this once capable woman, and send her, cowering, to her little blog.
This time in a week, I won't even be able to imagine why it was so... and had I not decided to write about it, eventually I would have forgotten completely. I still might, in fact. I'm trying really hard not to put it all under a lens, because by the time I've looked at it closely enough, whatever I see won't matter... even to me.
About 30 hours to go. While there are very obvious discrepancies, this is what's playing on loop in my head:
p.s. Don't ask about the Portuguese subtitles. That's one of the aforementioned discrepancies.
... has just been added to my neighborhood, and will be sending me 10 fun, voxy cards... for free. Well, they don't HAVE to be voxy, but why not? No one remembers my damn blog URL when I tell them. I didn't help matters by misspelling my own name.
Anymoo, details here for interested parties: http://moocards.vox.com/library/post/moo-loves-vox.html
I've been in love with Moo for quite some time now. The card-creating tools on the site are a blast to use, the FAQs are irreverent and funny, and enabling folks to print their own cards and and include their flickr photos is just plain nifty. And it's super cheap, too. I paid $25 for 100 cards and international shipping.
As an aside, R and I had some printed up for our save-the-dates, which I think worked incredibly well. We basically took a series of silly photos, wrote up our date and location details on the back, punched a hole in the cards, and tied them to matching index cards. Then we stuffed the whole lot into matching envelopes. About 1/10th the price of any other save the dates, and so dang cute.
In sum: hooray for Moo! And hooray for free stuff!
My mind is like a busted sieve lately. Everything and anything that isn't written down or lying in the middle of my living room floor simply doesn't exist.
The only exception to this rule happens in the wee hours of the night while I'm attempting to sleep. In those moments, the tiniest nuances of everything I need to do come flooding back with alarming clarity. Chairs kept me up until about 2 AM last night. That's just not healthy.
Any questions?
My friend Tim was kind enough to capture a few mortifying moments of karaoke splendor with his cell phone, as the rest of us failed miserably and forgot our cameras. *Can we take a moment here to note the modern marvel of technology? Video on a cell phone?! Observe the wicked awesomeness (awfulness?) of it all:
Yours truly singing Love Shack with Jenny and Eric:
Billy Idol channeling through my friend John:
Emrys, who claimed she couldn't sing, giving us a little Madonna action (which she dedicated to our fallen soldier and true blue Madonna fan, Chelsea):
Eric gives us a little Mr. Roboto:
I deliver a little Jackson 5 with my 4 (confirmed!) backup singers:
Richard, Tobin, and Mark the Red explain that Billie Jean is simply not their lover. Don't ask why they're upside-down in the beginning:
... and our combined Stag Party and Hen Do now tucked neatly under our belts. Or in my case, flushed neatly down the toilet at 1 am. I knew I shouldn't have taken that blue shot that smelled like Listerine (which I believe contained Everclear, blue curacao, and peppermint schnapps... regardless, it was foul).
The Carlos Club, where we hosted our event, was divishly awesome. The first things I noticed behind the bar was a Jägermeister tap and a Jet Fuel dispenser. The bartenders and cocktail waitresses had fabulous coifs of bleach blond hair, very heavy pouring hands, and loose ideas about enforcing rules like the CA smoking ban (or at least that seemed the case for the early, "regular" crowd). The staff was alarmingly friendly, and went way above and beyond the call of duty. They each introduced themselves and told me to let them know if there was anything they could do to help our party go more smoothly. Our cocktail waitress, who has been doing her job for 19 years, bought us our first drinks and sincerely wished us as happy a marriage as her own. That's what I call service.
Tommy, our KJ, had an amazing singing voice and did a great job reading the crowd. Pity that halfway through the evening "the crowd" was infiltrated by a beer bus of full of folks who wanted to dry hump on the dance floor to songs by The Pussycat Dolls and The Black Eyed Peas. I don't want anything to do with your lovely lady lumps, thank you very much. After 10:00 or so, he had to keep other parties in the rotation and play little snippets of sex-on-the-dancefloor music. Forsooth!
Even though our group was clearly the best (*grin*), we were perfectly happy to share... but sharing got old after about 45 minutes. Although we had dominated for a solid hour an a half earlier in the evening, we were desperate to get back into the rotation. It's just not as fun watching strangers humiliate themselves up on stage as it is watching people you know and love do the same.
Our friends rock -- I'm hard-pressed to say which performances I enjoyed the most. Pretty much everyone in our group got up there at some point, and they were all equally delightful to watch. My personal favorite may have been my friend John's riveting rendition of Rebel Yell. It was extra impressive because A) he couldn't have possibly been drunk at that point in the evening, and B) he looked like he might snap and kill someone at any moment. I also found the trio (Richard, Tobin, and Mark) performance of Billie Jean quite stirring. They earned about 500 Elaina Style points between the three of them.
I'll try to get some videos up at some point (read: when my friend Tim sees fit to send them to me).
As for me, I was incredibly drunk and sang all kinds of things. I probably had the most fun singing Jackson 5's I Want You Back, but that's because I had 3 (or 4?) beautiful backup singers dancing behind me. :0) My voice is a bit on the rough side this morning, and feels vaguely like I gargled rubbing alcohol and the contents of an ash tray. I think that's the sign of a good send-off.
Thanks for an amazing night, all. You folks are the best.
P.S. Thanks so much for organizing, Chels. I'm so sorry you couldn't be there. Emrys dedicated her rendition of Like a Virgin to ya, though. ;0)
... which means my wedding is 10 days away.
| Sat May 26 |
 |
Mostly Sunny | 78°/53° | 10 % |
Holy crap.
I have been... absent. And with good reason. My wedding is imminent, the office is chaotic, and the stuff of life like laundry and grocery shopping is needy and unrelenting.
You know what they say about the busy bee, though. Or maybe you don't. "They" is Blake, and he says that the busy bee has no time for sorrow. Turns out the busy bee also doesn't have time for Vox.
*bzz bzz bzzz*
I miss you all. The little sneak peeks into your lives has become an integral part of mine, so I feel quite disconnected without them. I hope to be back on my normal schedule soon, so try not to forget about me in the meantime.
This time in two weeks, it'll all be over. The event that took months to plan (and months to fund) will be a fast-fading memory. Unless, of course, I end up with a wicked hangover. *calculates white sangria and mango mojito factor... hangover=probable* Perhaps the memory of the day will linger into Monday. ;0)
This time in two weeks, I'll be someone's wife. Freaky. With a bit of luck, I'll be packed for the honeymoon and sound asleep by this hour.
So... since I've been gone (and in no particular order):
- I became a Microsoft employee
- I fired a handgun
- I finished reading another book
- I researched all there is to know about Bora Bora
- I decided that I hate my wedding dress
- I bought and sold stock
- I found out that I will have a chocolate rum wedding cake with a so-hideous-it's-great plastic bride and groom on top
- I spent 8 hours looking for photos of made-up people
- I got a sunburn on the back of my knees
- I did a pull-up
- I knit most of a turtleneck sweater for my stuffed dog
- I watched several movies, both good and bad
- I figured out a way to un-hate my wedding dress
- I dug through the trash for glue sticks
- I made two lolcats
- I went to Phoenix
- I got a zit on my eyelid
- I nursed two drunks at once
- I played one of the best games of indoor of my life
- I stopped using Splenda
- I baked even more sweet cuppin' cakes
Very busy girl, no? Up next... my last soccer game for two whole weeks, meeting my future husband's identical twin for the first time (freaky X2), and sitting through a day-long Microsoft orientation.
= percentage of the total number of items on our wedding gift registry that my mother and grandmother have single-handedly (double-handedly?) purchased for us.
How many trees have a I killed in the past two weeks? How many more will I kill before I am wed?
My mother and grandmother have gotten us way too many wedding gifts. Way, way too many. The second haul arrived in the mail today, each gift with a thoughtful little note from Mom. My initial reaction to these gifts, of course, is excitement. Typically it involves a little dance and singing of a randomly made-up "I have a gift!" song. The excitement quickly spills over into gratitude.
And then, invariably, a gut-turning feeling and an urgent desire to cry.
My family buying too many gifts, and being too wonderful... that's just how they roll.
Flying 3,000 miles...
...to the place where, very much against their will, I've made my home...
...to be a part of the special day, which -- to their chagrin -- will not be held in a church...
...to be genuinely excited about my marriage to a man whom most of them have never met.
My family loves me more deeply and selflessly than I can hope to understand. I am completely humbled by it. No matter where I go, no matter what I do, I suspect that I will never ever feel worthy of that kind of love.
