Tag: Marriage

Family, Friends, Humor, Life, Marriage, Wedding October 26, 2009March 31, 2010

By Popular (Loud and Incessant) Demand

You demanded, Small Dog complied! Our wedding, in slideshow form, we apologize in advance for the crazy format:

With just a couple months away, C. and J. take pictures and try not to take everything too seriously.

L'Artiste tells C. to practice looking "sultry," C. bursts out laughing after the camera flashes.

C. is just glad she got veil and shoes figured out. J. is just glad C. can stop agonizing about it.

The whole clan meets up (the day before The Day), luckily everyone seems to get on well! It'd be a shame to back out at this point.

...Although...all this family can be a little overwhelming. Meeting/marrying into a clan, not for the feint of heart! — ...Although...all this family can be a little overwhelming. Meeting/marrying into a clan, not for the faint of heart!

No, not their six secret illegitimate children, C.'s newly acquired nieces and nephews!

Atticus, Darling, J., C. (who can't look at the right camera), Mama, Dad

J. chills with Scotticus, Cakes, and Bear...

...while C. gets fixed by Venice and Peregrine (AKA, 2/4 the greatest bridesmaid team ever)!

The complete gang: Snickers, Venice, Marie, Peregrine

Dad cracks guests up with the parents' viewpoint into our relationship.

Ring Ceremony, close up of my pretty engagement ring. Green!

The gorgeous spread...which we didn't get a bite of...

Good thing we got cake (red velvet!) to tide us over...but we still had to get fast food on the way to the carwash to get rid of our mutual brothers' handiwork in decorating it.

Speaking of! Here are mine, goofing off with the flowers.

Godfamily in the foreground. Early in the evening. Hostess said we had over 400 people, glad I didn't have to herd them!

Unfortunately, you don’t get to see the video of my dad completely showing up J. in the dancing section of the evening. But it didn’t matter so much because after I tossed the bouquet and we cut the cake, the real party started! Dancing, mayhem, the usual. Apparently we were partying too fast to be seen, because half of those pictures didn’t turn out at all! But there, your insatiable appetites must be satisfied by now!

Family, Home April 13, 2009

The Ties That Bind

“His family is so laid back and relaxed, very cool with no drama. I can’t relate at all!”
“Yeah, sorry about that.”
-C. and Mom

Although they turn me into a quivering mess of fear and anxiety, I have to admit J.’s family is pretty nice. His parents are very generous and kind, his sibs are nice and friendly, and they are the least drama-filled group of people I’ve ever met. A totally foreign concept to me!

313 Now, my family is fantastic, but I’d have a nose the length of London Bridge if I said we were healthy and normal. We’ve had a lot of problems, not that other families don’t of course, and they have spanned generations and decades with a lot of resentment built up. Hey, we make it work, but my family has always been a major hold-up for me in relationships; my parents’ marriage and our dynamic as a family worked, per se, but it wasn’t what I wanted for myself. But it was the only example of marriage or family I grew up with, so I didn’t really expect to be able to break the cycle. I have higher hopes these days but I still get nervous about thinking of being a wife (and MANY years down the road, a mom). I have this awful fear that one day I will be the one sitting in a psychiatrist’s office casually reading a magazine to hide the inward guilt gnawing at me that my kid is in the next room having his brain picked apart to undo the damage that I have done. Ghastly!

Wise and I were comparing thoughts on this, she’s been married a while longer than me, but she had a similar home situation growing up and had the same trepidations. Unfortunately, she said with a laugh, she still has them. Great. Hope. Seriously though, I don’t think there’s a cure for the common family, but I do think there’s treatment.

Home, Humor, Marriage March 17, 2009March 17, 2009

Homesteading

“I prefer the word homemaker, because housewife always implies that there may be a wife someplace else.”
-Bella Abzug

I have, alas, discovered the one tiny little downside to getting married: moving from a really nice condo where I split rent with three other people, have a washer and dryer in house, and a dishwasher, to an apartment that is easily older than I am with none of the aforementioned perks.

To be fair we have two backrooms in addition to the large front, the rent is fantastically low, and Venice and I will be neighbors, but I have discovered an inner interior designer that I previously was unaware of, and she does not approve of chipped, smudged, or dirty walls! She cried out in dismay when she saw them, actually.

The (grossly exagerated and in now way remotely accurate) reality. — The (grossly exagerated and in no way remotely accurate) reality.

Funnily enough I don’t care two straws about the walls when I hang out with Venice or when we were meeting with our prospective landlord. But suddenly walking into the place where I will be living as a renter, to say nothing of wife and therefore “homemaker” (see above quote, even though I’m still sort of protesting the title in my feminist soul. I console myself by saying that I can’t possibly be a true homemaker until I’m no longer working, so that gives me some buffer years), my internal designer tapped a stiletto and said, “Oh, this simply will not do.”

I’m sure they’re not really as bad as my ultra-managerial-these-days mind makes them out to be, and for all I know the paint job my Designer is clamoring for isn’t actually necessary. I am going to attack the walls with a magic eraser and see what sort of difference that makes. Hopefully this quiets her down. If all else fails I’ll just pain anyway, and then weasel the cost of the project off of our rent!

Family, Humor March 2, 2009March 2, 2009

Adventures in Family Planning

“Contraceptives should be used on every conceivable occasion.”
-Spike Milligan, The Last Goon Show of All

I was rushed on Friday so I didn’t get to share the full glory of my anti-pregnancy adventures. Let me tell you about the ghetto fabulous place I went to! I had a couple of friends recommend Planned Parenthood as a convenient and relatively inexpensive place to go for birth control consults, but I very nearly backed out when I saw the “clinic” (and I use that term very loosely).

Emphasis on the "hood" part...don't let pink and happy fool you! — Emphasis on the "hood..." don't let pink and happy fool you!

It was housed in an old apartment complex place that I would go nowhere near after dark, if it had even been cloudy outside it would have looked like a set from a slasher movie. Dark and crumbly are two words that spring to mind, with just a dash of menace. What really almost cinched it was the sign on the front that said, “No Cell Phones Allowed, Please Leave in Car.”

“So no one can hear you scream?” I thought, “Oh hell no!”

I just put mine on silent and nervously walked in. Thankfully the inside was much better and my panic abated somewhat, but still I will laugh in the face of anyone who recommends PP to anyone else. Upside is the pill there is about $10-15 cheaper than a pharmacy.

The rest of my weekend was taken up with family planning of a different variety. My little godniece Elle’s blessing was on Sunday and the preparation for the whole shindig took the better part of two days! GS and GBIL moved into their new apartment while she was heavily pregnant and never really got settled in before baby came. So come Saturday Fairy, Brando, Pieter and his girlfriend Benz, and I all decamped to GS’s house for a major overhaul. Painting, washing, hanging drapes, you name it we did it. And then on Sunday, after the blessing in church, what seemed like half the population of this side of the Rockies descended on us ALL bearing food. It was a sight to behold! Little kids, cousins, second-cousins-a-couple-dozen-times-removed, grandparents, great-grandparents, friends, and almost-family were everywhere, we eventually had to spill into the front yard to clear room in the house for people to eat.

This will not be me, this will not be me, this will not be me...

And then on Sunday night, we had dinner with J.’s family at his sister’s house. Two parents, three kids, two in-laws, five grandkids (with one more on the way), more Tickle-Me-Elmo dolls than I have ever seen at once in my life, and me: incumbent daughter-in-law. It was fun, but a little weird. My family doesn’t really have a relationship with grandparents etc., I can count the times I’ve seen my cousins on one hand and here I’m going to be an aunt half a dozen time over the second I say, “I do.” I don’t even know how to be a grand-daughter, how am I supposed to be a daughter-in-law without horribly offending someone?!

Humor, Marriage February 27, 2009March 4, 2009

First Comes Love, Then Comes Marriage, THEN Comes…Other Stuff

“Never go to bed angry. Stay up and fight.”
-Phyllis Diller

Sooooo, the fun part about getting married when you don’t want kids and haven’t been sexually active? Screwing (no pun intended) with your hormones. Time for birth control. I did my research and decided to start with The Pill first. I’ve always wondered why those letters get capitalized, but I digress. I also told J. to DIPLOMATICALLY inform me if my mood or weight decides to to freak out.

Fun Facts! There is a 8/100 failure rate, something I initially panicked over and asked the doctor about and she laughed. “Pills generally fail when you don’t take them,” she said. “The failure rate when taken correctly is less than 1%.” Good. Now let’s just pray that I’m not extremely fertile. And apparently, most women who gain weight on the pill do so not because of drastic chemical changes, but because they start eating more. Feeling pregnant makes you eat. Huh. Geniuses, in the medical community, geniuses.

Home, Humor February 26, 2009February 26, 2009

Sugar Mamas, Inc.

“Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and serve them one’s self?”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

A storage receptacle, NOT our future home, yeah!

Once upon a time Venice got married (while I was out of the country and couldn’t come to the party!) and moved into an amazingly inexpensive apartment. A year later, C. was proposed to by J. and thought, “Gee, not only would it be awesome to live by somebody we actually know instead of moving into a new complex surrounded only by perky, happy newlyweds whose major life ambition seems to be reproduction as soon as possible, but it would also be awesome to not have to spend nearly twice as much on a place as I do now while halving the space. I wonder if there are any openings in their building?” And behold, there were! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we are not going to kick off our married lives in a cardboard box under a bridge somewhere, we will be card-carrying adults with a place of our own!

Pity our respective men, we’ll be living two doors down from one another!

Now, the moral dilemma. I have a rather nice tax return this year and no computer, do I use part of my return to buy myself one, or do I put it all towards outfitting my newly acquired flat? The correct answer of course is, “furnishings,” but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss having a computer.

rain1 There are other options as well, should I use the money to help my parents out with the wedding? Pay for at least part of the photography J.’s parents have very generously offered to take care of? Sleep on an air mattress and use crates for furniture, and investing the money in a valiant attempt to stimulate the economy? Turn on a really big fan and dance around in a rain of cash? (The first two have obvious karmic potential, the third I’m nixing for obvious reasons, the fourth is oddly appealing…)

Humor February 9, 2009February 9, 2009

Reader, I’m Marrying Him

“Another brother?! I already have two!”
-Snickers, my 11 year old sister

J. asked, I said yes. And ever since then I’ve had a perma-grin plastered all over my face. Plus a Miles-ian litany of “I’m getting married. To this man. Isn’t he handsome? And smart and funny? Mine, mine, all mine!” running through my head on a non-stop basis.

Since J. and I have tended to be rather closed mouths about the whole thing (see Fig. 1), here’s a few useless facts : we’ve been dating almost 11 months, known each other for 3 years, have about 50 mutual friends, have 7 siblings combined, and have a foot height difference between the two of us. There, now you know us.

My big crazy, problematic, globally based, hyper family. J.'s is much more sedate, thank goodness!

J.’s family was quietly happy when he broke the news, mine shrieked the roof down. J.’s the youngest in his family with three married older siblings, so this sort of occasion is more or less family business as usual…I’m the oldest child, oldest grandchild on both sides, the oldest female cousin, and the only one legally old enough to get married. I have no idea what I’m doing throwing a wedding together and my family is on another continent, unable to be press ganged into service.

Now, your millions of questions:
1) The ring is fabulous! It’s an EMERALD solitaire (for all of you who didn’t know, I don’t like diamonds)
2) Date is tentatively July 1st
3) Yes, I know what the dress is going to look like (don’t you wish you did!)
4) I have no idea what I’m doing but have determined to fake it charmingly!
5) No, I don’t know what “our colors” are going to be, nor do I much care. Stop asking.
6) Mine, mine, all mine!

Small Dog Syndrome