I'm not uploading a lot of them because they have other folks who I'm not sure would want to be making an appearance on my blog. But here are a few...
A____ and I getting married in our living room.
My sister brought us ring pops.
My siblings showed up with a florist bucket full of flowers...
...which when you split them up don't look anywhere near like as many as there were.
Hey I got married yesterday! I gotta say, small and casual is definitely the way to go. My siblings were down, A____'s siblings (some) were up. We had the ceremony here in our apartment (and Skyped to some of A____'s out of state family), then we went out for chinese food. It was much lower stress than the big frufru wedding and really nice - even with scorpion bowl/zombie induced mayhem (we think all that differentiates a scorpion bowl from a zombie is whether the shitload of rum and "fruit juices" are served in bowls or a tiki cups...yes BW, there were tiki cups!). I'll post pix later. Now I'm off to bed so I can get up early tomorrow because I have TWO job interviews tomorrow! I'm cautiously excited. Man I hope I get one of these jobs. That would be a super nice wedding present.
Over this summer, Massachusetts and New York have made same sex marriage more accessible. NY governor Paterson ordered that same sex marriages be recognized in NY and the MA state legislature repealed an old law forbidding out of staters to be married in MA.
A Milestone for Gays, A Boon for Massachusetts
Nonresidents' Same-Sex Weddings Bring Economic Boost
By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Staff Writer
September 3, 2008
....
The two steps, taken independently by New York and Massachusetts within about two months, marked an unexpected summer milestone for proponents of same-sex marriage, even as more than 40 other states have enacted constitutional amendments or statutes limiting marriage to a man and a woman. California is the only other state that has legalized same-sex marriage, though that decision by the state's highest court will be subject to a statewide referendum in November.
...
The recent changes have prompted a flood of gay New Yorkers coming to Massachusetts to get married -- and that seems to have made same-sex marriage big business for the Bay State.
There are no firm figures on how many gays from New York have come here to marry in the few weeks since the law took effect. But anecdotal evidence suggests the numbers are huge and likely to grow. Hotel rooms are full, flower shops are doing a brisk business, and everywhere, it seems, pedicabs adorned with "Just Married" signs are hauling gay couples down the town's main strip.
...
Town Clerk Doug Johnstone said Provincetown has become "the premier destination for gay marriage." He said the town first saw a boom in same-sex weddings after they became legal here in 2004, even though out-of-state couples had to express an intent to reside in Massachusetts -- although how to define that intent was left vague and was often at the discretion of local officials. "Now, with the repeal of the 1913 law, we're seeing another little boomlet," Johnstone said.
For the town, that boomlet means an influx of cash at a time when the state is suffering from high unemployment and the effects of a sluggish national economy. "There's got to be some residual economic benefit," Johnstone said, considering the meals, the hotel rooms for family members and friends, and the rings -- a bonanza for local jewelry companies.
...
A report prepared for the Massachusetts economic development office estimated that 32,000 same-sex couples are likely to come to the state to marry over the next three years, pumping about $111 million into the economy. The report said the state stands to gain about $5 million of that from sales taxes and the cost of marriage licenses.
A____ and I applied for our marriage license today. It's officially down on paper and stuff. A friend who is a justice of the peace is officiating and the venue? TBA (tbd, actually...gotta pick a wall of my apartment to get married in front of).
Also, did I mention I really need a job?! Still nothing. Man, this is starting to make me feel like a total loser...
Well Thursday wasn't too bad. I was on campus, did what needed doing, and got my tooth filled. Turns out I have another filling due next week - gah. But hey, fillings and not root canals, so there's a bright side.
On the down side, I've been feeling like shit lately. I mean physically. I don't post too much about that stuff here anymore but weeks like this one make it impossible to write about me without this coming into it. I am in pain and feel sick every frikkin time I eat. Aside from losing weight again (yeah, this is why I dread buying expensive clothing...the yo-yoing weight issue), I'm feeling drained and angry. The anger come from exasperation, a lack of validation, and too many limitations. This anger is potent and it's in the form of a blank check, just waiting for some fool to stumble across it and write his or her name in the "Pay to the order of" line. Currently, I'm fighting to keep my primary care's office out of that line because I don't need to be any more surly with them if I want to maintain functionality of my relationships there. But it's not easy. I had an ultrasound on Thursday and was told by the tech they'd have results that day. No calls. No calls on Friday either. I had planned to give them most of Friday and then call around 4:00 but I forgot about it until about 20 minutes after I ate dinner Friday night.
Ok, enough of that. Thursday was good. I was energetic despite eating so little (no food for two hours after the filling and only being able to chew on one side of my mouth kept my food intake, and thus pain and nausea, down). One of the prof's whose house we were at offered for A___ and me to get married there. They have a nice place and it was a nice offer. But knowing him, I told him he should make sure that weekend works with his wife. Come to find out that no, it does not. So we're back to the justice of the peace at someplace pretty and then out for dinner/lunch somewhere plan. This isn't too bad, not just because it was what we had originally figured we'd do but because having it at the faculty home was starting to put it into the more formal category. I wanted to avoid that for some good reasons that will nonetheless sound jaundiced and jaded to some. Then again, most of that kind of person doesn't read my blog so fuck it. The reasons have to do with the fact that once you open that door, it's like you invite in all the expectations about "real weddings". E.g., my brother's reaction after I told him we might have this at the faculty house, which he's been to and knows is pretty and a slightly more formal venue.
"Do you have a theme?"
"Ah, a theme? Well we were thinking everyone could wear hats."
"..."
"You know, like I was going to get one of those ridiculous sun hats they sell at the drug stores in the summertime and A____ can wear this plastic party hat bowler thing because it will go with his tuxedo t-shirt."
"Oh no no no. He needs to wear a suit. We'll go shopping."
"We don't have money for that. Plus, A____'s wearing the tux T, we already bought it. He wanted to get one for you but I said you wouldn't wear it.
"I'm wearing my Calvin Klein suit."
"Go right ahead."
"What about cake? Are you doing cake?"
"I was thinking of asking our sister to make one."
"No. No no no. I'll go to my bakery (my brother has a bakery?). We'll get something, I won't say wedding but lots of flowers and a cake topper. You're having a cake topper."
"If you must put something on top, can it be a unicorn?"
"..."
"A___ would love a unicorn."
"A unicorn?"
"Yeah...oh and rainbows. Put a unicorn leaping over a rainbow on it."
To be realistic, it's likely to be more the former than the latter. Regardless, A___ and I have decided to seek government sanction for our union. Yep, that's right. Marriage.
Pragmatics, finances, and other whatnot dictate that the actual event will be sooner than later. We've spent a good deal of time talking about this decision. It's held up to many discussions, recastings, and even some arguments. And so we come to now, today, when we sat down to print out the marriage license application and talk actual real details. Pending a bit more information from the government about what is required and when (etc.) the event will be possibly as soon as within the next two weeks - although we are both leaning more toward the weekend of September 13th so we can indulge a romantic whim or two. Oh and families. Brothers and sisters, since they all are local.
The September date unfortunately puts our anniversary quite up near my birthday. To counter the bunching that would otherwise occur, we've decided we will celebrate an actual anniversary in May, which is when we finally stopped talking about this decision in hypotheticals and started discussing it as a future reality. Cinco di Maio looks like a good candidate for celebrating as our anniversary because, well, why not?
I finished (I think) the wedding mix I'm making for my friend. Here's the playlist and cover art.
The Taco Bell Canon (artist unknown, CD lost)
Spam Song - Monty Python
Heart of Glass - The Bad Plus
Willimantic USA - (artist unknown, recorded before 1950 I think)
Connecticut's for Fucking - Jesus H Christ and the Four Hornsmen of the Apocalypse
My Generation rx - rx
Big Balls - Hayseed Dixie
Seasons in the Sun/Hustle - The Squirrels
Flower Girl - Joe Henry
Herbs, Good Hygiene and Socks - Lovage
Love You Madly - Cake
Gopher Mambo - Yma Sumac
A Hard Day's Night - Peggy Lee
You Oughta Know - Richard Cheese
Always on my Mind - Lewinski
St. Paul's Mix - me (sort of - I mixed it. The artists are Eddie Izzard, clips from Airplane, the Simpsons, the Marx Brothers, Pat Boone, and an anonymous MIDI composer who made a version of Mama Told Me (not to come)).
Now, I just need to hope I still have a date for the wedding Saturday. A____'s family stuff is looking grim.
As you can perhaps surmise from the title of this post, today was not a good day. The list is just sort of depressing crap, some trivial and some not trivial. While I'm a fan of venting, putting it all down here isn't going to help right now. I know because I just started to and realized it was only winding me up more. So here's the abridged version.
- A____'s parents can't afford their house and are moving under less than exhaustively planned circumstances next week. Everyone's sick, so A____'s doing a very large amount of the work. Just what he wanted, another move. He's so damned busy and stressed over this (understandably) that he probably can't go to the wedding this weekend with me, which makes for the not super pleasant prospect of going alone. I tried calling some pals, but no one is up for it, or more to the point, everyone's out of town, chronically unreliable, or sick.
- Along the everyone's sick theme, my cat Max is sick. The only thing that was odd in his bloodwork from last week was an elevated calcium level. The vet told me today that this can be a sign of a particular kind of cancer that attacks or affects the intestine, which his symptoms are consistent with. We were really hoping it was thyroid, not because that would be great but because it would be less bad.
-In about two weeks, I will be unemployed and nothing (zero) has come of all the applying I've been doing. Last night, between the cat and the prospect of joblessness, I couldn't get to sleep. This hasn't helped my mood. Not one bit.
So it's officially Dump Day here in Connecticant.
I'm hoping tomorrow is better.
Well only one I'm going to, so properly that should read "wedding", however it is wedding season and thus the plural. Maybe it should be a mass noun, like oatmeal or brick. I'm going to a wedding at the end of the month. Unlike many joyous unions I hear of, this is one I approve of. The participants, that is the blessed couple, are both fully self-aware adults for starters. Moreover, the bride (B___) and hubby (R____) to be have wonderful senses of humor which I'm sure will influence the ceremony. E.g., they have titled the wedding "The Motorcycle Marriage of the Martians" and sent B-movie themed invites. Excellent. They also requested no presents unless they are d.i.y. and out of sentiment, like a pair of knit socks - no seriously, this was in their invite. They're very cool people. So I made a special Letters to the Corinthians mix for them since B____ and I have a running joke about this being a necessary part of ANY wedding ceremony. As in "so how was the wedding?" "Oh you know, Letter from Paul, dyeable shoes, chicken polka, oh yeah and Pachelbel's Canon."
While the Letter from Paul mix (called "Love is Patient" and featuring Pat Boone, Eddie Izzard, Airplane quotes, and the Marx Brothers) is hand made, I have a prefab but still totally excellent version of Pachelbel called "the Taco Bell Canon". I have it somewhere. Somewhere in the boxes. I hope to unearth in it time to burn to the cd for B___ and R_____. Time's a ticking though, and speaking of, it's bed time for pfg, so I leave you with this google gem I found while leaning how to spell "pachelbel".
This was about a month ago now, but I was thinking about it since one of my aunts called recently. The polite one. I still haven't heard from the other one, my aunt Maria. She's told my sister she'll call me but I think perhaps she is putting this off.
Aunt Maria called me while I was walking to the parking garage on a December afternoon. As the crowded old buildings along my path opened onto the sweeping vista of the business school diag, I could see the entrance to the garage. It hadn't been a long day, not in hours at work, but I was wiped out. If I remember right, I had been meeting with students. The garage was like a beacon - nearly there! - in what looked like almost enough light to make it home before dark. My night vision sucks, and it sucks more in CT, a state where darkness apparently lends a rustic charm to the already deadly winding and narrow country roads. I calculated that I could make the haul down one such charming road and at least onto and off of the unlit highway, if not all the way home, before it got completely dark. I could make it if I didn't break my stride and if I wasn't tied up in campus area traffic for some esoteric sporting event.
That's when my father's sister Maria called.
Maria is the second youngest in the family and the one closest to us by virtue of youth and a strong relationship she and her not yet dead husband had fostered with my brother when we kids were little. Maria was widowed young, well young-ish. Certainly prematurely. When she calls, I can hear the ice tinkling in her glass. Probably a high ball. Maria is from a generation where is was important to masquerade one's vulgar habits with posh names. Highball, martini, gimlet - drinks just this side of a double boozey, neat. Or in layman's terms, a whole lot of booze with nothing between the drinker and it but a small amount of glass and the moment of inertia of the drinker's forearm.
Maria has impeccable timing, in the inverse sense. She tends to call just as you're going out, as you put the rice into the pot of boiling water, or were thinking of turning in early. It's usually a lengthy call. I had called her the day before when I had a spare hour. I'd recently heard from my brother that another family member was ill. The ailing relative was our aunt Keiko, one of Maria and my dad's sisters in law. Keiko was the wife of Frank, one of my father and Maria's older brothers. Frank and Keiko lived in Nevada my whole life. I visited them once. They have no kids and I was engaged to a doctor at the time. Being with Keiko and Frank for a day was like having my own private pep squad. Everything I did or said was just awesome, great, excellent. My uncle seemed to approve that I had struck out on my own for Michigan. In his generation, which I think I am to assume is something like the average of Hemmingway and Kerouac, the striking out on one's own ungodly young and entering the workforce without a college degree in hand was something to be proud of. A sign of character, assuming of course you aren't lead away from the real work-a-day world and back into the academy for a decade of futile student-hood, and your too young marriage doesn't end in a whimpering divorce.
I remember my aunt less clearly and specifically from that trip than from the visit she and my uncle made back east years later. At that point, I had moved back to New England and was up visiting from CT. My dad's oldest brother Freddy had hosted "a time" (my family's word for any get together involving second cousins) and everyone was there. Everyone but my brother and possibly my mother. My sister and I were there. My dad and Maria. Keiko and Frank. Aunt Clara and her husband, still alive then. Clara was heard to remark numerous times "Oooh my whole family is here! All my family!" throughout the day, picking up in frequency as we gathered in the family room for a big group picture. Clara had hired a photographer. The thing is, the whole family wasn't there. Who wasn't there was my brother, the only boy in the generation in a family of Irish and Italian catholics. My brother who the Italian relations at least used to give money to simply for existing, who was named while my sister and I were universally referred to as "the girls" or more directly, "you girls". The only relative to mention my brother at "the time" was Aunt Maria, who did so surreptitiously over a back door cigarette and a gimlet.
To make matters worse, the hostess, Ilene (the Irish-American Freddy had married) had invited a good number of the Irish side of the family, most her relations and some relatives of Ilene's mother in law, the Irish American mother of the lot of them....Freddy, Frank, my dad and the three "Aunties" Clara, Maria, and Pauline. These people, the extended Irish side of the families, were not close family. These were people who had never been at "times" for this side of the family before and thus they were folks I didn't know. They acted like they owned the place - hogging the pool table and the television. They seemed to interact only with certain other people I knew by sight alone, if at all.
Aunt Keiko was among the people not spoken to. She spent the day cleaning up after everyone, and I spent a good amount of the day trying to talk her out of that. It seemed every time I saw her, she had a stack of paper plates in one hand and a pile of crumbs or bottle caps in another and was slowly making her way to a garbage pail.
When Maria called this December afternoon, she was returning my request for information on Keiko which I’d left on Maria’s answering machine. I'd heard Keiko was seriously ill and I wasn't sure when I'd get a chance to talk to any of the family if not now, so I took the call. I tried to walk fast and talk while the garage got darker.
Maria told me Keiko had multiple myeloma. I told Maria I had had no idea. Maria dug in with more details. I listened and felt sort of like a heel for not knowing. Keiko was now in the hospital for the second or third time in recent months and the verdict was that she was likely going to die soon. Maria filled me in on all this as I sat in the garage and watched my options for a not nerve wracking drive home dwindle. Maria mentioned that my aunt Clara was with her. Clara's husband had died a few months before, in August. Since then, Clara had kept herself quite busy with visits to out of state friends and nights with more local family.
The holidays were coming up. How was Clara going to handle this first Christmas without her husband? I remembered visiting Clara and her husband at christmas time. They lived downstairs from my grandparents, Clara's parents. They had a tree with candy on it. No kids, but candy on the tree. While I do recall the candy, I don't remember how it tasted. I mention this because what taste memory I retain from Aunt Clara's house was in fact the strangely bitter taste of the corner of one of her lacquered, inlay topped coffee tables. I assume this is a very old memory. But it is part of the package. Candy on a fake christmas tree and the taste of expensive, shiny wood.
That flash of considering Clara alone for the holiday made me think of my aunt Maria's recent wedding, which had happened sometime after the funeral of Clara's husband and before the most recent hospitalization of Keiko. I hadn't seen Maria since Clara's husband's funeral, and then not more than a few glimpses across the overwarm church during the Mass. However, I had spoken to Maria on the phone around the funeral. She had told me that she was getting remarried. Ice tinkled. "Can you believe it? Me at my time of life!" she'd said, laughing, giddy. Whether her upcoming wedding or her husband to be was the proper source of this moment of effervescence or if Aunt Maria's emotions were simply being jerked around by one of those relieved-to-be-talking-about-something-nice-and-not-a-funeral was hard to tell. It also was not my place to ask. She had been so in love with her first husband, I couldn't imagine her remarrying. I was happy for her though. I congratulated her then, intending to speak to her at the funeral and to meet the man who would be my new uncle, but by the time the Mass was over and family was gathering for coffee and snacks in the lunch room of the tiny saint something or another's school just behind the church, Maria had been engulfed in a crowd of family, unknown Irish and Italian relations, associates of Clara and her now dead husband, and worst of all, my parents. I made minimal appearances at the post funeral snack time, then left in what I hoped was a discreet if hurried exit.
I had felt a little bad about leaving without speaking to Maria so when our phone conversation about Keiko was wrapping up and the light was gone anyhow, I said "Hey, by the way, I didn't get a chance to say congratulations on your wedding." She said thank you haltingly, then explained in a rush that she was sorry she hadn't invited me and my sister but that she had wanted to. "It's ok," I said. I knew that this side of the family sometimes has a crude way of dealing with limited funds or space. Lines will be drawn along something more like political alliances than blood relation and my having been fixed in the minds of most of the family as a child since I had little to do with them as an adult made me expendable. I understood this. I had planned a small wedding myself and knew that sometimes awkward choices were made.
Maria went on. "It's just that your father said if I invited you girls, that if I invited you then your mother wouldn't be able to come. And that if she couldn't, then he wouldn't come." I didn't even try to hide the disgust in my voice when I told her how tacky I thought it was for my father to have put her in that position. She went on for a while, saying something about how my father had said my mother was so upset at Clara's husband's funeral, how my sister and I ("you girls") hadn't spoken to my mother and this had apparently made our mother even more upset. I clarified "Maria, I did speak to my mother. I saw her sitting at the table with (my cousins) and I said hi." Maria told me that my father hadn't mentioned that. This pissed me off because it was a pretty massive concession on my part to even speak to my mother. Had there been no family there, I would certainly not have bothered.
Why did it matter? It wasn't that I felt I'd done "the right thing" in saying hello to my mother. I had said hello to her because I had found myself at the same table as her. Looking up there seeing her a soft booze puffy tear streaked lump had made me feel ill. If I felt sick looking at her, I reasoned, my aunt Ilene and her kids (whose table my mother had improbably stuck herself at) must have felt overwhelmingly uncomfortable. They certainly looked that way. Ilene had glanced up at the end of the table while she and I were speaking and it was in following her gaze that I even noticed my mother in the first place.
Also, I'm pretty acutely aware of the social mores governing things like mother-daughter relations. They are codified in and informed by the hallmark movie of the week kind of reconciliation which people expect is always possible even in the most fractured family scenarios. I knew instinctively was that if I said nothing to my mother, as would have been my better personal judgment to do, it would have lead to poor assessments of not just me but my brother and sister as well by the entire family. I knew it would be communicated, Ilene and her daughter's less than charitable discomfort at hosting my quietly weepy mother at their table would have been channeled into some chastisement of all of us for having left her there for the rest of the family to deal with. Essentially, we would have suffered ill repute for the sobby mess of a show our mother was forcing her inlaws to put up with.
It also, I think, arose out of a guilty need for a kind of restitution, not to my mother but to the extended family - Aunts Ilene and Clara especially since on the day of the "time" many years ago, when Keiko was playing Geisha and the Irish relatives were busily snubbing the rest of us, when everyone pretended my brother didn't exist, I had been a rotten kid. I had gotten mouthy, loudly referred to one of Ilene's daughters as ugly, and had intentionally rammed my pool cue into the guts and groins of distant relatives who couldn't be bothered to move away from my hard won shot. I topped it all off by flipping off the camera in one of the "whole" family portraits. This wouldn't have been a big deal except that it turned out the one photo where I had discretely rearranged my hands (which I had been instructed to fold demurely on my husband's shoulder as I stood behind him) was the only picture where no one was closing their eyes. In the context of my aunt Clara's excitement and subsequent severe disappointment (which was conveyed to me in a late night tinkling phone call from Aunt Maria), and with Clara's current grief as the backdrop to my mess of a mother peering soggily at me from the end of Ilene's table, I felt snubbing my mother would have been a little bit of discord which they deserved not to witness. I'd never stage a reconciliation for the Aunts' benefit, but it seemed I could at least muster up a little polite appearance for their sake.
And still, this. "And then that turned out to be the weekend your brother was in the hospital and your mother didn't end up coming anyhow!" Aunt Maria had concluded with a shorter version of her characteristic whiskey voiced laugh. I apologized for my father's thoughtlessness again, then spoke briefly with my aunt Clara. She was her usual proper self. Sympathetic to her brother as his wife was dying. Recalling her husband's long battle with cancer and time in hospice. The topic turned to the issue of the culture of medicine in general, which touched too close to politics and drove the always polite Clara from the phone with sweetly said "Good bye, dear." I thought of saying "I love you" but it always feels wrong. I said it one time while talking to Clara the week after her husband had died and she seemed very thrown by it. Northern Italians, they are not warm people.
As I was getting off the phone as unawkwardly as possible with Aunt Clara, I imagined Maria waving in the background. I heard some talking and thought for a moment that I could hear the tinkling of ice in her hands as she returned her attention to the nonspecified old man she had married, who was probably watching golf on TV and feeling thankful that he hadn't yet been exposed to this fucked up side of his new bride's family.
It was very dark by the time I left the garage. It's just as well as it kept my mind more or less on the road instead of indulging the thoughts of my father's voice in the familiar clipped meter it takes on when he imagines he's righteously laying down the law. Dirty Harry Dad saying to his older sister things like "The girls...they didn't talk to their mother. She was upset. They're selfish." I wondered if he used the phrase he had often called us at home, "selfish little shits" Trying to pick out the road from the ditches helped me drive off the thought of my father saying smugly "She doesn't need that. Their mother and I have more than paid..." It helped me not dwell on wondering if he'd add "...for what we did" or if he'd leave it hanging, agency unstated.
By the time I got home that night, I had nearly put it out of my conscious mind. I remembered a while later and mentioned it to my sister when we talked. She was horrified. She told our brother, who then railed against our mother for it. I've since learned that our mother wrote some one of her soppy letters to Aunt Maria. That our mother had told my brother she was "shamed in front of my god and my family!" Her family? They never even fucking liked her. Her god? Well, catholic church isn't exactly the fare she was raised on but in her magical world any judeo-christian god will fit the bill for the big male cheerleader in the sky she has fabricated for herself out of popular religion.
My sense is that this is a good thing, or at least a just thing, her shame and all. That she wrote to Aunt Maria is, well, that's questionable. That my aunt mentioned it to my sister, closing the topic with what I imagine was a huskily spoken plea "Can't you just put your anger behind you?" is cause for my great annoyance. This certainly isn't shit any of us need. I plan on sharing that sentiment with my aunt Maria the next time she calls. She's gonna need a lot of ice for that call.
Among the many (many) things that make sense but we don't as a culture condone is this one. Nap Day. What a great idea. I didn't even know about it and I was participating today during the talk. That makes me feel all happy inside.
I'm still waiting for a chance to promote my suggestion for a celebration with presents like a wedding but for grown up people who aren't married. I'm feel quite certain that we as a society need this, and almost as certain that the best chance of it catching on is if it were promoted by a commercial entity. I don't have a snappy name for it but I think I've blogged about it before so I might have proposed a name then - though obviously not anything snappy or I guess I'd rememgber it.
Any suggestions? Something to cover "hey you've been living on your own for a while and you aren't married but you sure could use some home stuff" day. It'd be on a person's 29th birthday, maybe 30th although that has its own quasi rituals of hazing associated with it, especially for single 30s. To try to usurp that might be difficult. Hence my proposal for 29, but it's flexible. Really.
Really?
Yeah.
It's one of those days. I find I am writing and speaking as if I were being cross examined. Wtf. Guess I need another nap.
Wedding season is here and I still have not gotten my shit together to try to sell my old wedding dress. I considered e-bay but it scares me. I keep saying I'm going to have a good old fashioned tag sale (that's what the yokels in CT call what the rest of the world who share this concept call garage or yard sales).
As I get older I dislike weddings more and more. I am a big fan of celebrating things. Life sucks enough, it makes you stop and deal with the bad. The good should be celebrated, always. But traditional weddings are just out of control. They often are bad inherently and only get worse when you add in things like pre-existing family tensions, a miserable economy, and an apparent belief that worth is measured in extrinsic symbolic values (like money spent) rather than real ones (like love, happiness, romance, good sex).
I've been to some weddings that were nice, where it didn't seem like the cost and stress of doing this event hurt the couple and their families more than it helped. But even those involved so much stress for the couple and their families/friends. Anything approaching a traditional wedding in the US is exceptionally expensive. Having been to a pretty good number at the ripe old age of 34, I gotta say, with a few rare exceptions, it just doesn't seem worth the cost and hype.
I just typed "weddings" into google and this is the featured hit - Weddings at the Balsams (grand resort hotel)
At The BALSAMS Grand Resort Hotel the destination wedding you've always dreamed of (I didn't dream of my wedding which might explain why I was such a bad, bad bride) becomes the wedding you'll always remember (Oh I remember mine, but does memorable necessarily imply dreamy? I don't think so. I will always remember that my mother bought "favors" which were little stuffed chicks (it was easter weekend) that emitted loud electronic PEEPING sounds when you squeezed them. She handed them out during the toasts).
Planning for the big event is easy with our all-inclusive packages, experienced wedding planning staff and convenient layout of indoor and outdoor settings. Keeping your guests entertained is even easier with our array of on-site resort activities. You can rest assure (I can "rest assure"? That you people will take care of every last bloody detail, but you can't proof read your damned website. Now that's just sad) your wedding day pictures will turn out gorgeous thanks to the breathtaking backdrop of sweeping mountains, sparkling lake and lush woods. For the proverbial icing on the cake, (eeek, they've rolled out the puns) our renowned culinary staff will ensure that each and every guest leaves satisfied (the staff are extremely well hung). Contact us today and let us begin planning an event you'll never forget.
Why is "you'll never forget" the catch phrase for wedding shit? Does anyone really believe you will forget your wedding day? If you stay married, even if you stop really celebrating anniversaries (at least the little ones), you still will find yourself turning to your spouse and saying "My god, do you remember at our wedding when my mother took of her shoes to dance and her extra long toenails had torn through her nylons and were hanging out like tallons?" If you get divorced, like me, you will find yourself saying to your sister or brother "Do you remember at my wedding when mom took off her shoes..."
I think it might be more accurate to say "A wedding you'll want to remember". But embedded in this is an denigration of the fine and expensive institution of weddings, which would be a no-no. It makes sense that when you are selling something that is so likely to be ultimately regretable as an expensive wedding package, you are also selling the concept of great big fluffy expensive weddings in general. I'd guess if I were selling shit like this, I wouldn't want to say anything that might make the happy couple think once let alone twice about whether this is really going to be worth all the expense.
If you think I'm overstating how hard on the couple the traditional US weddings can be, just look at this quote from one of the testimonials on the site:
"The setting of The BALSAMS, in the White Mountains overlooking a lake, is very calming."
She did not write "romantic", "charming", or "fairytale princess perfect". No. She wrote "Calming".
This rather strongly suggests she needed sedation.
Here's my best advice if you're thinking of getting hitched and you want to celebrate it. Elope. I don't recommend getting married at the town hall, it isn't romantic. Run off and get married someplace you can afford to go that is pretty and nourishes your spirit. When you come back, have a big party at the local Elks hall or something, backyard BBQ, big ass mo-fo family and friends pic nic in a park. It'll be more affordable, you won't freak out from the stress, your family and friends get to celebrate your union, and you get presents (which do serve a useful purpose that shouldn't be reserved only for newly weds, but that's another rant for another day).
Hey, here's a great idea to help defray the cost for those romantic fools who simply must have the fairytale princess perfect wedding. See if you can get a drug company to sponsor part or all of the wedding. A small and tasteful graphic or logo advertising the newest in anti-anxiety/anti-depression medications can appear on the programs, napkins, napkin holders, and whatever other junk the couple has emblazoned with their names and cartoon doves or bells. In compensation for this, the drug company can pay for something like dinner, a couple of hours of the open bar, a block of hotel rooms for the wedding party, or music and photography.
This favor is a pack of tissues. Because people cry at weddings.Now that I've spent far too long playing with photoshop, it's time to do some work. But I do think the result was worth the humor. This picture is more than simple heartache. This one is a reminder of some of what sucked. Let me tell you the story of Very Secret Santa.
It was christmas 2004. My ex (Tom, played by Ashton Kutcher) and I were together for what would be our last christmas. The year before we had spent a financially, emotionally, and physically draining christmas in Vermont for his brother's ski wedding extravaganza. I had told Tom that this year I really wanted, no, needed to keep christmas low key. He assured me he did too. I reminded him that this meant with his family. He agreed with me, but somehow we still had a fight about why I was so critical of his family.
Some time in the Fall of 2004, Tom's family had decided that it was too expensive for everyone to buy everyone else a present. They weren't broke, not by any means. His parents took about 6 vacations a year. Past vacations have included Hawaii, several caribbean islands, Iceland, Alaska, various boat trips on a friend's yacht, and ski trips to Aspen as well as the small nearly weekly side trips to ski in Vermont throughout the winter. I however was broke and didn't really like christmas all that much anyhow. Christmas downsizing sounded like a marvelous idea to me so I was pretty happy when Tom told me that his family had decided we'd all pick a name at Thanskgiving for Secret Santa.
Soon after this announcement, I was told Secret Santa had been amended so that you got three things for the person whose name you drew. One homemade present (cookies, pie, etc), one small present, and one larger present. Um...ok. It seemed a little complicated but I figured if this was what they wanted then I'd go along with it. Then some time later, after he had been on the phone with his Gram, Tom told me that Secret Santa had been canceled, mostly because Tom's father and uncle had been upset at the thought of not getting the usual tons of presents from other people. Tom was annoyed, I was annoyed, Tom was annoyed that I was annoyed. We had another argument about his family.
Thanskgiving came. Later in the evening, I found myself stranded in the living room with my ex's sister, mother, grandmother, and various aunts and female friends of the family. I was tucked into the couch between Gram and Tom's sister when Gram said to me "Oh! You haven't drawn a name for Secret Santa!"
This provoked flurry of discussion among the women present about whether or not I had drawn a name, whether or not names had been drawn in general, and when other people would be or had been drawing names. I was confused and said so to Gram. It turns out I should have just smiled and made a non-committal noise because Gram reacted as if I had jumped up onto the coffee table and hollered "Fuck Secret Santa!" She was offended but tried to come across as concerned. "If you didn't want to do it, why didn't you say something? Tom didn't tell me you didn't want to do Secret Santa," she exclaimed, placing her hand on my arm. I tried to explain "No, it's not that I don't want to. I do, I mean it's your family. It's only that Tom told me, I mean, I thought Tom said you guys weren't doing it and that everyone was just going to get everyone presents." Gram's eyes widened and her grip tightened. Other people stopped talking and were paying attention to the drama on the couch. I continued, addressing the room as a whole, "I mean I thought everyone who normally gets everyone presents would, I mean, I'm not trying to tell you what to do..." Oh god. Now I felt like I was saying I wanted every single one of his family members to buy me a present. Picture Meet the Parents. I was like Greg. Everything I did made it worse.
Tom's grandmother said loudly "If you don't want to do Secret Santa (PFG), we don't have to do it. We didn't know you didn't want to exchange presents!" This started another round of discussion among the women about whether or not we should do Secret Santa, who wanted to originally, who wanted to still, and an evolution of the entire decision process by way of a reiteration of all the private arguments presented (mostly by the men) for and against Secret Santa which had been communicated through the network of women. "If (PFG) doesn't want to do it, maybe we shouldn't." "Oh but Wes really wanted to." "Mom, I can't afford to buy you ALL presents. It's not fair for Allen and me to have to buy presents for everyone." "(PFG) and Tom didn't get a present for Marilyn and Richard last year..." "Brian always gets presents for everyone (awwww he's so sweet yes he is isn't he) and he really doesn't have much money." "We just thought that with Dave and Aimee buying a new house it would be easier on everyone if we did it this way" "But if you don't want to..."
This was perhaps one of the more socially uncomfortable situations I've ever been in. Mostly because my normal tendency is to meet this kind of escalating foolishness with a proportionally increased level of blunt decisive discourse in order to cut through the bullshit. But with these people, direct speech only made things worse. Finally I couldn't take it. I nearly yelled "NO! I'm fine with doing it. Really, it's ok! I just didn't understand because...Look, please, everyone - just do whatever you want. It's your christmas - I'm just along for the ride."
More discussion. More gripping of my arm. More subtle accusations that I wanted to hijack the family christmas with my grinchy selfish ways.
Finally, Tom's mother had the sense to retrieve Tom from the kitchen where he had been hanging out with the men folk. He was brought in like some witness for the prosecution. "Tom!" his grandmother said shifting her attention from me but keeping her hand firmly clenched on my now sore forearm. "Why does (PFG) think we aren't doing Secret Santa?" Tom looked horrified. "Oh shit," he turned to me "Oh babes, I'm sorry. I forgot to tell you. They decided to do it." Later, Tom explained to me that the family decided to do Secret Santa as well as get presents for everyone. "So what does the name drawing mean?" I asked. "Well if you draw someone's name you get that person the three special presents" he explained. "So basically, I have to get three presents for whoever I pick and I have to get presents for everyone else, same as usual, in addition to those presents. Wow. That's fucking great. Thanks for telling me." And so Very Secret Santa, a new tradition, was born.
I drew and got Tom's mother. For the rest of the night and all through the holiday season, I was asked repeatedly by Tom's female relatives if I was ok with Secret Santa and told that if I didn't want to do it they could always tell everyone who wanted to that I didn't want to and we wouldn't do it.
Tom and I fought about his family at least once a week in the run up to christmas. I had an epiphany after so much forced contemplation about why I was so critical of his family. I realized I was mad at them for having dropping the ball repeatedly and in big ways when Tom had been sick the year before. That alone would have been ok I guess, I could have seen them as a hands off kind of family. Except that they expected nearly precognitive adherence to the constantly shifting manifestations of family convention and expectation when it came to stuff like buying christmas presents. As each new round of family Simon Says came up, it only reinforced my perception of them as largely selfish people who mistook control for intimacy and who believed unquestioning conformity to trivial superficial details was a sign of affection and respect.
The realization hit me one day while Tom and I were driving to school together and arguing about his family. After we had finished up for the day, we met at the coffee shop near the campus garage. We were having the usual reconcilliation talk, the one where we were genuinely apologetic for hurting one another's feelings, where we tried to explain what we really meant and not what we sounded like we meant. I communicated the gist of my epiphany to Tom. I was quite happy that I had realized the source of my frustration with his family because I felt like it put it in perspective. I hoped talking about it would be a first step on the path to putting our relationship back together again after the serious shake ups it had gone through. Tom was not impressed. He told me "It sounds like you're saying you didn't get thanked enough."
Not thanked enough for doing everything that I did to take care of Tom while he had been in and out of the emergency room and hospital during a lengthy diagnosis of gallbladder disease the year before. Not thanked enough for taking care of him in his extremely demanding post-op state while I myself was still recovering from neuro-Lyme. Not thanked enough for trying repect his parents' stated desire to "help out" and be kept up to date on his progress through what seemed like one medical mishap after another only to find that when I called them, they had left on another vacation or couldn't come to the phone because they were too drunk. Not thanked enough for listening while he complained about his family and being supportive of his building early adult conflicts with them. Yeah Tom, I thought, I didn't get thanked enough. That's what this is all about.
It sounds corny and cliche, but here's what it felt like. When he said that, I felt a cold wind blowing through me. I felt like someone had opened a window inside me and the ice and snow had come blasting in, coating everything with brittle sparkly frost. Grief came late to warm me up. At that moment though, I was all and only cold.
Which brings me to this picture, taken only a few days after that conversation. It was one of the most excruciating christmases I've ever had. I removed myself from his family as much as possible. This picture is of me and Tom (played by Mr. Kutcher) at his parent's house in my very brief christmas appearance that year. I spent most of the party outside smoking, listening to the snow squeak and crunch beneath my feet, and counting the sparkly far away stars. Before I left that night, Tom's parents insisted on a picture of me and Tom in front of the family christmas tree. While I was working with this photo today, I noticed two things. One is that Tom looks very stiffly posed. The other is that I look less like I'm smiling and more like I'm clenching my teeth.
"Number 20!"
The numbers are not in any particular order, just given so that when the party’s table is open, the restaurant manager can yell the number out and not have to try to pronounce a possibly difficult last name.
I had too much wine last night at the wedding and too little sleep. My hair is held back by a handful of multicolored butterflies, flowers, and a leopard print clip barrette. I will not take off my sunglasses in the super bright Sunday morning Bickford’s. Not only is it Mother’s Day, it is also (the newly wed couple just informed me) First Communion Day. But so far I have not seen any cherubic children with pious parents. Just lots of women with flowers.
Bob is doing better than I am. He wasn’t as bored as I was at the wedding so he didn’t drink as much as I did. Also, he didn’t have nightmares about tornadoes and other natural disasters. After we’ve been seated and ordered our coffee, he asks me what kind of jelly I want then he diligently searches through the stacks for the strawberry. The table is a little sticky we notice as we choose our breakfasts. I watch the families around me. I build a fortress with menus to sheild myself from the glare of the sun reflecting off the shiney SUVs and minivans in the parking lot while I wait uncomfortably for my omelet.
No one has flowers at that table. The mother has dark brown hair and a thin mouth that looks accustomed to scowling. The father has a striped shirt, big oversized stripes, and short sandy hair. He likes to point and gesture. Right now, he is pointing and gesturing at his daughter. The mother accompanies his motions with deeper degrees of frowns, and the occasional quiet word of parental support. “If you don’t want them, then why did you order that?!” the father is practically shouting. Or maybe it’s not the volume so much as it is the manner, his face looming too close to the girl’s as he barks his rhetorical question. She is flanked by her brothers, a little one on her right and a slightly older one on her left. All of the kids’ backs are to me, but I can see the slightly older brother’s face from the side as he is at the end of the booth. He is drawing on the placemat with crayons. The mother smiles warmly at this boy for a moment then resumes frowning when she returns her attention to her daughter. The waitress finishes taking their order and the table is relatively quiet for a while.
The girl and the older boy are playing some game, heads leaned close together over the placemat and crayons in hand. “You’d better think of something, or he’s gonna hang you!” the mother says smugly to the daughter, beaming a smile at her son, who I am thinking is
probably cheating or misspelled the word. More silence. The newly weds are seated far away from us , me, Bob, and the unhappy family. They are poorly matched and I wonder how long it will take for this to dawn on them. Bob and I chat about various forgettable topics while my attention wanders over to the claw machine, trying to imagine what it would take to actually snag one of the tempting beanie baby prizes.
What am I thinking? I hate beanie babies.
The waitress has staggered up to the table bearing a tray full of fresh and fruity breakfasts. A moment later, the father addresses his daughter in an exasperated tone, “You’d better just eat them. You can scrape it off, but it’s too late now to change it. Why didn’t you ask before you ordered them?!"
I inspect a menu but my attention is drawn back when I hear the father’s disgusted voice, “Are you crying?! Are you crying? Great, now she’s crying,”
I can’t hear the daughter’s voice at all although I know she is speaking. Her head is down and her posture is more defeated than defiant. I wonder if her disappointment at the mile high pile of whipped cream on top of her waffles might have gone unnoticed if it weren’t for her parents’ scrutiny. "You’ve ruined mother’s day. You’ve ruined everything!” I hear her father say.
And so another perfectly good mother’s day is ruined.
I am happy for my sunglasses, happy that they are hiding the direction and nature of my gaze. If the mother and father saw it, it would only 
serve as further evidence for how much their daughter ruined the day by drawing unwanted negative attention to their otherwise perfect family. I fight the nearly overwhelming temptation to ruin it more by flinging an open grape jelly at the man. I want to see jelly oozing down the father’s face. I want to pour my pulpy orange juice over the mother’s head for crippling her daughter. I want to make the daughter laugh, send back the waffles she felt pressured into ordering, and tell her to order whatever the fuck she wants. I want to dance on the table and kick fruit and whipped cream onto the father’s LL Bean jersey. I settle for stabbing jellies with my fork.
