Friday, July 27, 2007

Registry Items

Due to the great generosity of you, The Readers, I am, as you are well aware, now the proud owner of many canisters and a sewing machine and a margarita pitcher, all of which will make for a highly interesting, potentially illegal party at some point in the near future.

Josh The Pilot and I, as instructed by a person wearing an official Target polo shirt and holding a raygun, registered for twice as many items as there people were on our guest list. We attempted to cover only what we absolutely needed to scratch out a daily existence, and word proceeded to circulate forth that we also wished to register for an off-shore banking account.

Several of our guests bestowed upon us gift cards and checks, many--especially when their proportion to the givers' incomes was taken into consideration--that made us bury our heads in our hands and feel like total and complete losers for ever whining about the price of high-speed internet access.

So I went to my matron of honor, who also serves as my accountant, and twisted my hands together and asked her what on Earth I could write in a thank-you note in the face of such tax free, England manor-style generosity.

She stared at me a second, then said, "You say, 'THANK YOU FOR THE MONEY' and then you go to the bank."

Julie The NephewsMama was an excellent matron of honor.

I was told to expect at least one registry-departure present that would sit next to me on my desk, daring me to thank somebody for it. One friend received a creamer shaped like a cow that vomited milk; another, an economy-size basket of kumquats. I'll refrain from naming my own Very Special Present out of gracious respect for the giver, who is still alive and may yet be of some use to us, but the Most Unexpected And Yet Awesome Wedding Present Award goes to Flip and his heterosexual life partner, Perpetually Angry Sam.

Flip and Perpetually Angry Sam rolled up on the wedding with a gift bag containing four taper candles. Also? Gin.

"This is top shelf," Country The Brother-In-Law said just before I departed for the honeymoon. Given that Country had just risen to admire my gin from the kitchen table, where he had been mashing Play-Doh with a merely semi-angry three year old for the better part of an hour, this was quite possibly the highlight of any wedding he had ever been involved with, including his own.

I have been on a hugging basis with Flip and Perpetually Angry Sam for well on a decade, and they know better than to trust me with fire-related products and a liquid with a very high alcohol content. But I realized, as I peered into the bag containing my top-shelf martini basis, that perhaps this was their way of granting my adulthood. Our adulthood. The bag was a real live gift bag, without a trace of biodegradable plastic or Walgreen's logo in sight.

"See," Sam said in the hotel lobby the next morning when Josh The Pilot and I ran into him, Flip, and four other wedding guests in the World's Most Determinedly Non-Uncomfortable Meeting, "I looked all over for candles that would fit in the neck of the bottle, so you can use it as a holder later on when the gin is gone."

Oh, Sam. The first credit card bills from the honeymoon came in yesterday. The gin is already gone.

straight, neither shaken nor stirred at: mbe@drinktothelasses.com

Thursday, July 26, 2007

Welcome MSNBC.com Readers

Maybe you can explain The Check Game.

moon over A NEW CAR!!!! at: mbe@drinktothelasses.com

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Wifely Duties

I had an MSNBC.com deadline today but passed a disturbingly large portion of the afternoon fashioning 36 deviled eggs, and am now at work on a large philosophical essay entitled "Paprika: Why?"

Therefore, I don't have time for a proper post, so here is a picture of my new husband's great regard for the solemnity of cutting the groom's cake instead:


Discuss.

yet another SuperTarget run at: mbe@drinktothelasses.com

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Casualty List

Herein are the injuries resulting from my nuptials:

-One bruised ringbearer

Jim The Small Child Nephew was having such a good day. An apparently no-strings attached Dirt Track McQueen, hair looking good, fries for lunch. Then the man with the big camera made him stand next to Mommy on a set of absolutely huge slippery steps, and oh, snap. This was the trigger for an extremely long pronouncement that he was not putting up with our $@#& anymore, which made for slightly more interesting pictures than the set with his finger up his nose.

"I fall down the steps," he will say balefully if you ask him about his battle scar. Well, you can't gain a husband without banging up a nephew or two, I suppose.

-Four fingernails

You know those Ring 'n' Hand wedding pictures, the ones in which the bride gracefully rests her palm upon her groom's in a way she never ever will again because she'll be too busy driving the barfing cat to the all-night vet office at 2 AM? This is ours:

We immortalized our hands here not to showcase our new wedding rings, but because for the first time in my entire life I have fingernails that had not been apparently gnawed off by rabid wolverines. They are fake, of course, and demanded registration with the Transportation Security Administration.


Annnnnnnnnd here is my right hand. You stick a hand holding a paddle into the Lower Yough River at summertide, this is what happens to your fake nails. Ah, woman, thine polymer resins art no match for the power of nature.

fill at: mbe@drinktothelasses.com

Monday, July 23, 2007

Wedding FAQ

Monday, July 16 marked the greatest number of hits this site has experienced without an MSNBC boost. People love a wedding, but not a marriage; this morning I arose at 6:15 AM, started a load of laundry, made my husband's lunch, then sat eating a breakfast of celery while reading a terrifyingly efficient binder-bound book entitled Making a Home, written by a woman whose sons named Forrest (no... really) and Dallas (no... really) sautee vegetables and set up easels to paint by the morning light. Post-nuptial inadequacy crises, sadly, do not photograph well.

But brides and grooms do.

Q. The day before your wedding, you wondered if marriage would somehow make you competent or otherwise fundamentally change you. Has it?

A. Allow me to share a story from the reception.

Towards the end of the afternoon, I found myself very, very thirsty, but the groom and I had stayed so long that the serving staff had packed it in. This was the first rude awakening of married life: Once the wedding is over, nobody brings you things on command or otherwise focuses every molecule on celebrating the wonder that is You anymore.

In search of water, I discovered a half-full decanter sitting on the head table. Awesome. The water was halfway down my throat before I realized... that's no decanter. That's the vase that was holding my bouquet.

So the answer is: I'm way, way smarter than I used to be.

Q. How's married life?

A. Fine.

Q. No, we mean-- how's maaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrieeeeeeeed liiiiiiiiiiife?

A. Fine.

Q. And was the wedding the happiest most glorious most wonderful most Cinderellaific day of your life?

A. Yes, I enjoy days which are 78% dedicated to dry heaving.

Q. How did the City of Cincinnati celebrate your marriage?

A. With my very own four-hour traffic jam on I-75. Man, ain't nothin' like being married for 40 minutes and folding breathlessly over in the getaway car because you are positive that the entire guest list is currently sitting in various rental cars, suspended somewhere over the Ohio River, and if everybody did make it to the reception, the mashed potatoes would be goo and the cake all moldy and the whole entire day and subsequently the rest of your life just ruined, ruined, ruined.

Or, okay, not.

Q. We're girls and we want to see your pretty dress.

A. Here:
This was taken in the Blonde Bachelorette Pad by the seamstress to whom I gave a hem-dusty, off-the-rack clearance strapless poof fest and said, "I'm weird, and require humoring."

There were two veils, one for the wedding and one for the reception, because I could not decide between the Deluded Suburban Princess model and the MegaDork RenFest Attendee model.

The entire ensemble cost about 2000% less than the version that inspired it, and is also 2000% more awesome.

Q. Oooooooo, who designed the necklace you're wearing?

A. Oscar de la Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky Regional Airport Gift Shop.

Q. How did the ringbearer do?

A. Jim The Small Child Nephew bore the rings like a total godmother lovin' champ.

I saw this only on the instant pictorial replay, as at the actual moment I was hiding in the vestibule, clutching at my father with one hand and my equilibrium by a very, very thin thread with the other. Flipper, G-Force, and Oogie, program overseers and general bridal calmers, gave me continuous thumbs-up updates as Jim wove his way down the aisle at the side of Mommy, Matron of Honor.

People were placing bets on whether or not this entire ringbearer business would fly with The King, even though the wedding was presented to him as a visit to church followed by a party with a great deal of cake ("Make a wish?" he clarified. Well. Among other things.) As late as one week before the wedding he stormed into his big-boy room, furious with these horrible people he lives with who make him undertake such awful tasks as taking a nap, and flung his darling little ribbon-encrusted pillow at the nearest wall, pronouncing, "NO RINGBEARER!"

But see, this is why Julie The NephewsMama got the brains and I got the chronic depression tendencies: She presented Jim with a brand-new Dirt Track McQueen, for which he didn't even have to go potty to earn, slipped it under the organza ribbon of the pillow, and shipped him down the aisle to show it to Poppy, who was stragically located in the first pew. We will probably have to do this for his own wedding.

Q. And what--

A. No more questions, please. Behold, the marital dryer has buzzed. I shall return with further details, including:

-Bridesmaids dresses, and why they suck
-Curtains, and why they also suck
-A full casualty count
-An accounting of wedding gifts, including a bag of candles and gin
-What walking down the aisle was like (Synopsis: Really, really tulle-y.)
-A set of bowls and dishes apparently teleported from another dimension
-A thorough discussion of fingernails
-The presence of a checkers board and a shouting person named "Burt" on our honeymoon
-Why marriage makes hanging up a polo shirt and getting up off a couch extremely significant

dip photo (literally, in the case of the bride) courtesy of my cousin Missy, because she is awesome like that at: mbe@drinktothelasses.com

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