One year later
4:08 PM |
0 comments
Ideally, we would have spent our first wedding anniversary by fluttering off to The Keg for some massive steaks, asparagus and garlic mashed potatoes and some dessert at Memories Café. But we are not in Ottawa or any metropolis, and so we were required to settle for what options are available: Option 1- I make dinner for us at home. This happens every night and is not a treat for me.
Option #2- Go to the TND Motor Inn Lounge, aka the town’s restaurant. Off we were in the cold dark night (-25!) to eat greasy food and celebrate a year of marriage and all that’s come with it.
(Option #3- The husband makes dinner at home. This is hardly an option as his culinary skills extend to about toast and peanut butter, cereal and oatmeal.)
We arrived in the restaurant, and were pleased to see it wasn’t too busy, as this decreased the likelihood of us receiving some other tables’ meals.
We waited at our wooden, flip-out-legs style table for about 20 minutes while three high school aged-girls and some elementary students lingered at the cash register calling their friends on the phone and talking about us (subtlety isn’t their forte).
The girl that evidently drew the short straw and had to come serve the white cop and his wife sauntered over and mumbled something that indicated it was time to tell her what we wanted to drink.
“What kinds of milkshakes do you serve?” I asked.
Silence. Rolled eyes.
“Um, cappuccino.”
No strawberry? Chocolate? Vanilla?
“I’ll have water please.”
Eventually, the waters made their way back to our table, a safe bet as they came in bottles with sealed lids.
We each gave her our orders, me a personal size Hawaiian pizza with a side of poutine (high living in Ross River, bon appetite!) and for him a BLT sandwich. The girl, who suffers from severe Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, struggled to remember our order then walked over to the group of girl and audibly messed up our order to the greasy line cook. Husband is struggling not to get up and correct it, but I didn’t want to soil our evening with spit in our food, or worse.
The girl eventually got it right and while we waited, husband filled me in about how this 15-year-old girl had just had a baby boy and continued to drink heavily all day and night long, having dropped out from school. He had arrested her a number of times for being drunk. Standing out for being drunk in this town is quite a feat, let me tell you!
We ate our greasy meals that came with surprising accuracy, albeit after 45 minutes of waiting and a tad cold. We have learned to get what we are given!
Then we returned home and I was asked to wait in the bedroom while the husband created some surprise for dessert. After a few minutes, he led me out by the hand to show me the kitchen table. It had our wedding album, some tea light candles and 2 plates with toaster strudels, each decorated with hearts icing. It was so sweet and a perfectly Ross River anniversary!
Labels: Ross River, wedding
My hands, they are my own
12:18 PM |
1 comments
I got my nails done--or DID--(as the wannabe ghetto suburbanites wearing Phat Farm say) for my wedding, almost a month ago now. I had never had gel nails before, but was advised to go for the smelly fake stuff because they are hard and resilient and therefore will not chip like nail polish. It was my wedding, I was down with pulling out all the stops. Even if it meant filing my real nails down to a harsh, grainy surface, and sitting in a chemical, cancer-smelling room for an hour.
We all went together, me, my sister, my ant, my best friend and my grama. Well, grama and my aunt had to leave cuz grama couldn’t handle the fumes. I was amazed by their teeny tiny brushes and applicators, like I was watching someone play with Polly Pocket toys instead of grooming me.
They looked weird, not like my nails that I had been growing out. The whites were very white and the gel part was thick and kind of heavy. But people do it all the time and suck it up and really? Was I complaining? It hurt a little the first couple days, but I ended up really liking the final production on my hands (minus the little red nick the nail lady gave me on my right forefinger. C’mon! I’d been nursing those hands for a whole month and you nick a finger?)
Wedding day came and went and I honestly didn’t think about fingernails the whole day through but they did look really nice, I can reflect now via photos. I’m glad I did it. Edit: I was glad I did it until the first one started coming off. The bottom half of my left middle finger chipped away so that every time I washed my hair, individual strands would get caught under this fake gel fingernail.
I was back in Whitehorse and not sure there even was a place to get them touched up. I talked to my mum on the phone and she was going to get hers redone, “just once because they aren’t looking very good.” She’ll be a gel nails addict now, I’m sure.
I knew I didn’t want to be. They don’t feel very “me”-ish and I had grown to like the nails I found myself capable of growing, once I quit biting them nervously. (A habit so hard to break and ingrained since I was little it took husband’s moving away for 6 months to give me the solace and reflection to beautify my nails).
Today, still only 3 or so weeks after getting my fake gel nails applied, all but the thumb ones have come off, and now I have short, brittle boy-looking fingernails all over again. The surfaces scarred with weird white specks and stripes from the glue, I guess.
But, hands are hands and as Jewel (remember her??) used to say, they are my own. So today I embrace my broke-down ugly-looking hands with two nice-looking thumbs and type at my keyboard with increased ease.Besides, I've got two beautiful rings on my finger that make it all worthwhile.
Labels: wedding
Wedding Planning Is...
8:39 AM |
3 comments
Booking hair, nails, facial, massage appointments. Making seating plans, place tags, favours and table numbers. Steaming my dress, picking up and fitting bridesmaids'. Organizing groomsmen, buying rehearsal gifts, tanning, running, sleeping, hydrating, dieting, and whitening my teeth. It is exfoliating, writing programs, buying decorations, getting sheet music, setting up rehearsal, dodging stressful people, asserting myself, being a diplomat, checking the bank, applying for marriage license, writing thank yous, buying flowergirl baskets. Meeting with DJs, photographers, videographers, reception staff, MC and acquiescing to unique and inconvenient relatives' requests.
It is missing my fiance, bonding with my mum, laughing with my friends, planning makeup and hair and music and the morning-of.
It is crazy, busy, insane, occupying, and each day finishes with a sense of accomplishment with things I can cross of my lists, and worriedly adding others as I remember them when I should be falling asleep.
It is wishing I could do it all myself, worrying when other people don't do what they said they would and hoping that magically money will appear in my bank in time for the next set of purchases needed.
It is counting down the days (12 left!) and wondering how it will all come together. It is exciting to answer questions, happy to be doing this all at home, relieving to find the support of my friends and overwhelming when I think about it all too much.
But yikes what a fun day I think it will be! If it ever gets here in one piece.
It is missing my fiance, bonding with my mum, laughing with my friends, planning makeup and hair and music and the morning-of.
It is crazy, busy, insane, occupying, and each day finishes with a sense of accomplishment with things I can cross of my lists, and worriedly adding others as I remember them when I should be falling asleep.
It is wishing I could do it all myself, worrying when other people don't do what they said they would and hoping that magically money will appear in my bank in time for the next set of purchases needed.
It is counting down the days (12 left!) and wondering how it will all come together. It is exciting to answer questions, happy to be doing this all at home, relieving to find the support of my friends and overwhelming when I think about it all too much.
But yikes what a fun day I think it will be! If it ever gets here in one piece.
Labels: wedding
Love and Marriage
8:40 AM |
5 comments
It was a humid kind of sunny afternoon where you couldn’t help but sweat unless you were in the pool. I was not, since I was waiting for fiancé’s mum to pick me up any minute. We were out back on my dad’s patio while the younger kids played in the pool. I congratulated his friends, who had been married the weekend before. They told me how the ceremony went, showed off their rings, and thought it appropriate to share this advice with me:
“Don’t worry, it’s so much easier and way more fun the second time around.” They didn’t chuckle, which would indicate they were being sarcastic or joking, but looked at me with a sympathetic smile. As if I were embarking on a stressful wedding journey where I ultimately discover that he’s not the man for me, we’ll call it quits and one day do it all over again with different people. I excused myself for a refill of iced tea.
I was sitting on my front porch, leaning against the porch frame, eating strawberries and sipping my hibiscus tea. I was lazily waiting for the rain to come and brought an Oprah magazine out to keep me company. The first article I read described how the problem with most married couples is that they are so desperately clinging to the comfort of what’s familiar, they miss out on the beauty of change and discovery/ The key, it read, was to embrace that love is not forever, and that once we are open to change, we unchain ourselves from miserable lifetimes.
I now take this literary opportunity to wonder loud, “What the eff?” Who hardwired these people to be so pessimistic and why are they trying to counsel a young bride with impeding doom?
Will this be one of those things that I look back at when I’m 45 and scoff at how naïve and wide-eyed I was, believing in true love found at age 15 and meant to last forever? Will that be because I have grown more wise with age, or more cynical? And is that destined to happen at all or can I still please believe that, even as a twentysomething, love is something I’ve found and committed to and that is true and blind to the participant’s age?
This is isn’t a cold feet post, because I am excited to live in a chaotic household run by screaming kids with syrup in their hair, I know I’ll get a rushed kiss on the cheek while we both run in different directions—him to work, me to soccer practice. I am excited to know that at one point, I will go through something that I will later call the most difficult part of my life and that he will be there going through it with me. I am actually excited to see what the universe will try and throw at us, and to conquer each obstacle with unity. I foresee love and strength unwavering during the tough times, and celebration of the good.
I’m just wondering aloud, who do you think you are to tell me I’m foolish, naïve or setting myself up for failure?
“Don’t worry, it’s so much easier and way more fun the second time around.” They didn’t chuckle, which would indicate they were being sarcastic or joking, but looked at me with a sympathetic smile. As if I were embarking on a stressful wedding journey where I ultimately discover that he’s not the man for me, we’ll call it quits and one day do it all over again with different people. I excused myself for a refill of iced tea.
I was sitting on my front porch, leaning against the porch frame, eating strawberries and sipping my hibiscus tea. I was lazily waiting for the rain to come and brought an Oprah magazine out to keep me company. The first article I read described how the problem with most married couples is that they are so desperately clinging to the comfort of what’s familiar, they miss out on the beauty of change and discovery/ The key, it read, was to embrace that love is not forever, and that once we are open to change, we unchain ourselves from miserable lifetimes.
I now take this literary opportunity to wonder loud, “What the eff?” Who hardwired these people to be so pessimistic and why are they trying to counsel a young bride with impeding doom?
Will this be one of those things that I look back at when I’m 45 and scoff at how naïve and wide-eyed I was, believing in true love found at age 15 and meant to last forever? Will that be because I have grown more wise with age, or more cynical? And is that destined to happen at all or can I still please believe that, even as a twentysomething, love is something I’ve found and committed to and that is true and blind to the participant’s age?
This is isn’t a cold feet post, because I am excited to live in a chaotic household run by screaming kids with syrup in their hair, I know I’ll get a rushed kiss on the cheek while we both run in different directions—him to work, me to soccer practice. I am excited to know that at one point, I will go through something that I will later call the most difficult part of my life and that he will be there going through it with me. I am actually excited to see what the universe will try and throw at us, and to conquer each obstacle with unity. I foresee love and strength unwavering during the tough times, and celebration of the good.
I’m just wondering aloud, who do you think you are to tell me I’m foolish, naïve or setting myself up for failure?
Labels: love, marriage, wedding
Where's Your Head At?
8:38 AM |
2 comments
The last 3 or 4 weeks have been, in no sensical order, DJ meetings, cake tasting, Sens game watching, moving stuff to my place form my parents, packing, running, phone calls from fiancé, graduating, swimming, buying a truck like a grownup, negotiating a rent contract with people 5,000 km away, remembering to paint my toenails when they start chipping (for not to is a sin), planning my lasts (last day, last party, last dinner, last beach day…), planning futures (future visits, future trips, future wedding…) and of course catching up on Dr Phil reruns. I know its lame to say I blew off writing for Dr Phil reruns, but it felt so indulgent to turn my brain off and let a Texan and his insane guests entertain me.
I am counting down the days until I get to see my man again after being at cop-training school ½ way across the country for the last 6 months. We’re down to 18 days now, which feels so unreal considering the countdown started in the hundreds. I’m as excited to see him as I used to be when I counted down the days to vacations. Knowing that in xx amount of days, my cares will slip away, I’ll be taken somewhere new and exiting and be surrounded with all things good that I have convinced myself I am thus far missing. It won’t be a vacation this time but I am excited to see my man again and in a way we are escaping to a new place, albeit for keeps this time. The catch is, to get there and finally see him again, I have to leave my family and the only life I’ve known behind me and fly far, far away. But with him, so that’s awesome. But without my friends and family, so that’s tough. See what a catch-22 je suis dedans?
So that’s what my head’s been dancing around this last little while. It’s been tough to grab it out of the clouds and keep it down long enough to formulate written thoughts.
I am counting down the days until I get to see my man again after being at cop-training school ½ way across the country for the last 6 months. We’re down to 18 days now, which feels so unreal considering the countdown started in the hundreds. I’m as excited to see him as I used to be when I counted down the days to vacations. Knowing that in xx amount of days, my cares will slip away, I’ll be taken somewhere new and exiting and be surrounded with all things good that I have convinced myself I am thus far missing. It won’t be a vacation this time but I am excited to see my man again and in a way we are escaping to a new place, albeit for keeps this time. The catch is, to get there and finally see him again, I have to leave my family and the only life I’ve known behind me and fly far, far away. But with him, so that’s awesome. But without my friends and family, so that’s tough. See what a catch-22 je suis dedans?
So that’s what my head’s been dancing around this last little while. It’s been tough to grab it out of the clouds and keep it down long enough to formulate written thoughts.
Current wedding fun: Halved
12:03 PM |
5 comments
As I child born anywhere in the western world in the last twentysomething years, I was always likely to become a member of the halfves-y club. Statistically, 51 per cent of you are as well. We are all kids of parents who divorced and who subsequently divorce our family time in two, hence a life of the halves-ies.
I watched Kramer Versus Kramer the other day when it became free on my TV and by the time the elevator door closed on Merryl Streep at the end, I was so sad. My eyes were a-tearing and my nose was starting to run.
“Why couldn’t my parents be like that,” I whined in the vast echoing room that is my inner monologue. “It’s not fair,” I continued, now stomping my inner monologue feet and holding my breath for attention.
Even though Dustin Hoffman and Ms Streep’s characters are divorced, they arrive at the film’s conclusion in the apartment lobby agreeing to do not what the court had ordered but what was best for their son and what was easiest on each other. They hugged each other and Dustin Hoffman told Meryl Streep she looked “terrific” even though she had the red-face cry going on.
Maybe I’m alone here, but I was like, “What the eff?” I’ve never seen my parents hug since the split. And if one of them were to actually compliment the other, I think I’d slap my own face and shake my cheeks to test if I’d woken up in some weird parallel universe.
I made it all the way to 17 before I became part of the 51 per cent halves-y club members, so for more than half my life, my parents were a cohesive unit who made Saturday breakfast together listening to the Beatles and kissing each other just to gross us kids out. I’m still testing the waters, a tourist in this land of divorce kids. I am overwhelmed by how mature and well-versed in all this I am supposed to be now that I am planning a wedding.
If I was the kid of Kramer and Kramer, I wouldn’t have to worry at all because my divorced parents would probably invite each other to hip New York cafés to discuss their daughter’s wedding and how it will all work out wonderfully. Their kid would probably say something about how lucky they were to have two parents who love them so much and two step-parents who only add to the love of their family and other blah blah crap like the movies are made of.
I, on the other hand, am learning to sink or swim between two parents whose feelings are on the line with every decision I make, wedding-wise, not to mention a big one of whether or not to invite The Other Woman. Self-help book answers don’t cut it when the only answer I want to hear is, “Whatever you decide, we support you and love you very much,” instead of sideways glances and raised eyebrows at what the repercussions to my decisions could be.
Eloping sounds awesome.
What’s a twentysomething to do when she just wants to have a fun wedding where everyone dances and smiles and tells me after what a wonderful time they’ve had? When I think I should be smiling till my face hurts at how awesome it is to find true love and marry the man of my dreams, why instead am I getting sinking feelings in my stomach about what to do with my divorced parents? It's so anti-wedding and backwards. The countdown list I am following to make sure the wedding is adequately prepared does not list when I am supposed to explode like a volcano and tell my parents to grow up. It appears that is beyond what I can ask for with the cards I’ve been dealt. Maybe I should watch a movie about drug-addicted parents so I can cry feeling bad for their kids.
I watched Kramer Versus Kramer the other day when it became free on my TV and by the time the elevator door closed on Merryl Streep at the end, I was so sad. My eyes were a-tearing and my nose was starting to run.
“Why couldn’t my parents be like that,” I whined in the vast echoing room that is my inner monologue. “It’s not fair,” I continued, now stomping my inner monologue feet and holding my breath for attention.
Even though Dustin Hoffman and Ms Streep’s characters are divorced, they arrive at the film’s conclusion in the apartment lobby agreeing to do not what the court had ordered but what was best for their son and what was easiest on each other. They hugged each other and Dustin Hoffman told Meryl Streep she looked “terrific” even though she had the red-face cry going on.
Maybe I’m alone here, but I was like, “What the eff?” I’ve never seen my parents hug since the split. And if one of them were to actually compliment the other, I think I’d slap my own face and shake my cheeks to test if I’d woken up in some weird parallel universe.
I made it all the way to 17 before I became part of the 51 per cent halves-y club members, so for more than half my life, my parents were a cohesive unit who made Saturday breakfast together listening to the Beatles and kissing each other just to gross us kids out. I’m still testing the waters, a tourist in this land of divorce kids. I am overwhelmed by how mature and well-versed in all this I am supposed to be now that I am planning a wedding.
If I was the kid of Kramer and Kramer, I wouldn’t have to worry at all because my divorced parents would probably invite each other to hip New York cafés to discuss their daughter’s wedding and how it will all work out wonderfully. Their kid would probably say something about how lucky they were to have two parents who love them so much and two step-parents who only add to the love of their family and other blah blah crap like the movies are made of.
I, on the other hand, am learning to sink or swim between two parents whose feelings are on the line with every decision I make, wedding-wise, not to mention a big one of whether or not to invite The Other Woman. Self-help book answers don’t cut it when the only answer I want to hear is, “Whatever you decide, we support you and love you very much,” instead of sideways glances and raised eyebrows at what the repercussions to my decisions could be.
Eloping sounds awesome.
What’s a twentysomething to do when she just wants to have a fun wedding where everyone dances and smiles and tells me after what a wonderful time they’ve had? When I think I should be smiling till my face hurts at how awesome it is to find true love and marry the man of my dreams, why instead am I getting sinking feelings in my stomach about what to do with my divorced parents? It's so anti-wedding and backwards. The countdown list I am following to make sure the wedding is adequately prepared does not list when I am supposed to explode like a volcano and tell my parents to grow up. It appears that is beyond what I can ask for with the cards I’ve been dealt. Maybe I should watch a movie about drug-addicted parents so I can cry feeling bad for their kids.