Monday, November 28, 2005

Me thinks she doth share too much.

M. and I just returned from a five-day sojourn to South Carolina, where we enjoyed turkey with my sister and her family and, briefly, my parents; toured various and sundry parts of Charleston, ranging from the sublime to the less-than; and re-learned why it is that living in Manhattan is akin to living in a giant, plastic-wrapped bubble filled to the brim with equal parts open-mindedness, common sense and adequate cardiac health, and then sealed off and separated from the rest of the Bubble-at-Large by miles and miles of water and pavement and spare SUV tires and patriotic car magnets.

This being the case, I am tired.

Lest a full seven days go by between postings, however, I will reach into the cavernous bowels of my cavernous head to share 3 knee-jerk, unrelated facts which have been swimming around my skull in recent weeks, and which, if read in the correct order and with the right intention, hold the promise of shedding considerable light onto this whole wedding business.

1. My last therapy session ended with My Therapist commenting, pointedly but apologetically, "So...the question is, why does everything always have to come back to you?" In other words, why does the world revolve around me. The reason he asked this is because he has tremendous and uncanny insight into my inner tickings. I don't have the answer yet, but it feels like a step in the self-actualized direction to share, openly, the fact that I am selfcentric.

2. I have recently been pleased to find that lately, when I am provoked in the merest of miniscule ways, my face, scalp and neck have been less prone to breaking out in hives. I have recently been displeased, however, to find that said hives have now migrated to my throat. The inside of my throat.

3. One of my earliest memories - - right after the one where my mother's friend dresses up like a clown and terrorizes me on the busride to the circus - - is of my two sisters putting Clearasil(TM) on my nipples which, they tell me, are in fact pimples. My siblings also used to take turns writing on my bum with magic markers before plopping me into the tub. And when my parents had friends over for dinner, they (my siblings) would put me in a dress and shove two tennis balls down the chest before sending me stumbling awkwardly, yet delightedly, into the living room to greet my audience.

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

It Never Fails

Every time I've just about reconsidered going back to church....





The good news is that nobody will have to stop eating forty-five minutes before the wedding.

Monday, November 21, 2005

I Have a Dream

One of my favorite things to do of late, while walking through the various and sundry chaotic environments of greater metropolitan New York City, is to play music on my iPod which is at complete odds with my surroundings, effectively turning said surroundings and their inhabitants into a sort of surreal, urban ballet.

For example, Charlene's "I've Never Been to Me", while trapped in 6pm shoulder-to-shoulder commuter gridlock at the corner of Broadway and 47th.

Or Juice Newton's "Angel of the Morning", while winding my way through a sea of crass seventeen year-olds on Jerome Avenue every day at 8:30am.

This morning, it was Chicago's "If You Leave Me Now," as I dragged myself towards the subway through the thick ooze of sleepy-eyed, distracted business people and highschoolers and fruit vendors and Metro distributors.

Of course, it didn't take long before my instincts took over, and I began to choreograph.

As is wont to happen, inspired choreography soon gave way to painful disillusionment as I recalled that, because M. is a good seven inches shorter and twenty pounds lighter than me, his chances of mastering my imagined lift-and-turns and death spirals and pasa dobles by June 24th - - never mind my prospects for limbering up my own octagenarian hips enough to get my foot onto his shoulder for our tour finale - - are what one might call minimal at best.

Unless, of course, we practice very, very hard.

Hopefully the other commuters won't mind.

Thursday, November 17, 2005

Why Wedding; or, I missed my yoga class by 5 minutes tonight

On the subway home from work tonight, a coworker and I were talking about my upcoming nuptials, and she shared how she and her husband had once questioned whether or not they would even go through the formality of getting married, a dilemma which parental influences helped to resolve.

Because I am one to take a simple comment and stretch it across the room and back again, this gave me pause to consider why, indeed, I do feel it necessary to formalize my relationship with M.. After all, plenty of couples are perfectly happy in their marriage-less relationships. Our friends Demie and the Baker have been together for twenty years, with shared finances and shared residences and shared joys and sorrows and a deeply committed love, and the only aisle they've walked down together is the one at Price Chopper. And they're happy.

Of course theirs is a contextual set-up, and if they were a straight couple then perhaps, given the decade, they'd have been more likely to have gotten married. Still, though, this begs the question, Why? Why go through all the hustle and bustle and expense and headache and anxiety of planning and implementing a wedding - - setting aside the fact that certain aspects of this planning and implementation are enjoyable, in and of themselves, for certain anonymous masochists - - when one could just as easily maintain a straight (so to speak) course down the path of pure and unadulterated formality-free love and commitment?

My first answer is because, personally, I want to formally declare my love for this man.

Response: OK, so why can't you do that in your living room over a nice bottle of chianti? Oh and also, bullshit, you just want the presents.

To which I clarify, I want to formally and publicly declare my love for this man.

Response: So take out an ad in the Village Voice. Or go down to the courthouse and register as domestic partners. Or take a few friends out to dinner. I'm sure they'd pitch in for a Kitchen-Aid (TM) mixer in Pistachio.

To which I respond, I want to formally and publicly declare my love for this man in front of a lot of our friends, with a party, and food, and dancing, and a talent show and, yes, presents.

Is that what it all boils down to? I want to register? Or maybe I just want to make one of my - - keep the vomit down - - biggest dreams come true.

At the risk of being redundant, I'll say it again. I want a wedding. Pure and simple. Some people are fine with chianti in the living room, or elopements to Bora Bora, or a candlelit dinner for eight, or punch and cake in the Most Holy Name recreation room.

Me, I want a wedding. I've always wanted a wedding. Since I can remember. I want the vows, and the suits, and the hors d'oevres, and the dancing, and the cake, and the tears, and the laughs, and, yes, okay, the presents. Maybe even particularly the presents.

My conception of what that wedding would look like has transitioned over the years - - and continues to transition, sometimes bumpily, which M. will attest to, having suffered through more than his share of shocked and defensive responses to his insinuation that I, me, Groomzilla!, would have ever even considered a traditional white wedding with roses and mother-of-the-groom dancing and cutting-of-cake and a spotlight song by Celine Dion or maybe Michael Bolton - - but the basic premise has remained the same.

I'm getting married, having a wedding, because I want to get married and have a wedding. And because I have a boyfriend who is nice enough to humor me through some of it, even when it makes his blood run a little frigid. And because it is my inalienable right to do so, or at least it should be. Everyone should have the freedom to publicly - - perhaps even legally - - declare their love, the freedom to throw a big party, the freedom to register.

Some of won't make use of that freedom, and that's okay, too. But some of us have far too great of an urge to stand up and bare our hearts in front of a hundred people, far too great an urge to plan and design and perfect, to play hostess, to choose flatware, to cut cake, far too much innate compulsion to do all of these things that not ever doing them would be akin to not ever fully breathing oxygen or feeling sunlight or being alive.

Given all of the above, I, for one - - having held my veil to the side, arched my pearl-buttoned spine, and tossed my bouquet into the crowd - - will certainly not be looking back.

Except to steal one last glance at my new Kitchen-Aid (TM) mixer in Pistachio sitting on the gift table.

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Corpse Bride

The good news is that tonight is the second night in a row where I have spent exactly zero dollars on my dinner, having just polished off a sad peanut butter and jelly sandwich with the pitifully scraped remnants of M.'s Simply Jif, followed by a Nissin Cup Noodles (TM) in what is advertised as "with SHRIMP" flavor, begetting an abundance of questions which will have to be put aside for another day.

The bad news is that I have since learned that Nissin Cup Noodles (TM) contains 31% of my recommended daily Saturated Fat intake, and 60% of my recommended sodium intake.



Which means that, given my recent predeliction for/dependence on 3-egg omelettes and Nissin Cup Noodles (TM), if I somehow by God's grace even make it to the altar alive on June 24th, I will do so in an arterially-clogged, immobiled, saturated state, surrounded by the tongues of one hundred baby deers.

In other news, I decided to Go Gay today and hence found myself sitting at the kitchen table at 7:30am this morning, downloading the new Madonna album onto my iPod. Needless to say - - although there are a couple of duds and she had better have a loooooooong thank-you list for all the samples and lyrics she's cribbed - - I now find myself with the daunting task of having at least eight new songs to commuto-choreograph.

Monday, November 14, 2005

Future Perfect

According to this week's issue of Time Magazine, the very near future will be one dominated by life-like robots that can mop the floor, learn how to dance and follow you around from room to room. Plus genetically cloned people.



Seeing as I enjoy, shall we say, holding the remote in a relationship - - not to mention my longstanding dream fantasy of marrying myself - - it seems that no good can come of this very near future, and I should probably push the wedding up to February.

Sunday, November 13, 2005

Mean Girl

Because I have very little to write in the way of actual wedding plans - - other than to say that we have proudly printed, cut, stuffed and sealed our way through Operation Save-the-Date and are well into our next mission, Operation Don't Get Ripped Off by a Photographer (in addition to my own personal mission, Operation Sound Like a Midwestern Bride) - - and my grapes are all withered, I will do What Jesus Would Do and add to my Official List of Mean People I Hate.

This season's winner is Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS), who - - in addition to having a moniker that elicits a modest giggle from my inner schoolgirl - - is determined to ruin my Special Day.

I have included his image in both front and profile view, so that anyone who sees him will know him and subsequently kick him in the shin.





Needless to say, he will not be receiving a Save-the-Date. Unless we have seats to fill. But I'll be damned if he gets any shrimp cocktail.

In other news, I have been thinking really hard about starting my new novel which - - unlike my first novel - - will be light and fluffy and, perhaps, more than four pages.

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Grapes

Speaking of which, has anybody had grapes lately? Delicious? Am I wrong?

Monday, November 07, 2005

Blahg

I refuse to be One Of Those Bloggers with enough self-serving, chutzpah-laden delusions of grandeur and/or readership to think that failing to post a new blog entry within one week of the prior blog entry will somehow lead to Mass Anger or Cold-Shouldering or Abandonment or Gnashing-of-Teeth, even if said new blog entry is about something trivial and pithy.

Like the fact that I, hypothetically, whilst traveling the road of poverty and penny-pinching, have recently rediscovered the joys of Nissin Cup Noodles (TM) and, as is often the case with things that I discover and/or rediscover, have now obsessively stocked both home and office with Nissin Cup Noodles (TM), and have had at least two meals in the past five days which consisted of one Nissin Cup Noodles (TM) plus one cheese omelette, a combination which has proven to be both delicious as well as cost-conscious.

Or the fact that M. and I created the cutest magnetic Save-the-Dates in the world this past weekend and, moreover, did so only mere hours after engaging in one of our two-hour trimonthly Wedding Discussion Update Extravaganzas - - during which I mainly vacillate between equal parts paranoia and defensiveness and insanity - - a feat which above all else proves to me that we are Meant To Be, even when it seems that we are Meant to Behead, or Belittle, or Be Committed to an Institution and Be Given Excess Levels of Haldol. Because we're crazy. In love. And in the head.

Thanks for reading, Mom.

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Oh Baby

I was in the middle of a Very Hectic Day at work this afternoon, rushing from the ICU to another floor, or maybe even from one ICU to a different ICU, my head swimming in a sea of death and dying and strokes and ventilators and cancers and nursing homes and heart-breaking patients and insane families, when I saw a man cradling an infant on his shoulder. Just pacing quietly in a circle, making the most minute of rocking motions, his face dominated by the most serene and contented smile I'd seen all day, maybe even all Fall.

And I thought to myself, Man, how easily do we get so caught up in the hustle and bustle of Living and Working and Moving and Shaking - whether in my line of work, or accounting, or teaching, or taxidermy - that we forget that the highest forms of contentment and fulfillment and meaningfulness can actually be gained from something as simple as holding a newborn baby?

This led quickly to the realization that I must have or adopt or steal a baby as soon as possible, and then quit my job and stay home rocking it in circles all day long. Then my social work gene kicked in and I started down the Thalidamide Amputee Crack Baby road. Then I apologized to the orderly for not hearing him the first three times he asked me to get out of the way as I stood in the middle of the hallway staring vacantly into space.

My point, though, is this. Points, actually:

1. Workplace morale would be significantly improved if there was some sort of infant rental agency that could strategically plant babies around the office, or have them pop out of the ceiling on swings at critically intense conference call junctures, or provide them in packs of twelve to hold down papers or cradle phone receivers or carry beepers.

2. I don't know that I will ever be truly fulfilled or complete until I have a baby of my own. As in, thinking about having a baby, or not having one, causes a tightness and swelling in my chest which comes and goes depending on the moon cycle or how much sleep I have gotten or how many babies I've seen on a given day, but which is always there to some degree, and which can clearly only be alleviated by the consistently applied pressure of 8 pounds of newborn baby.

3. Clearly, someone planted that baby in the hallway today in an effort to thwart my designated evening project of completing our magnetic Save-the-Dates. To which I can only say, touché.

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