To backtrack just a bit, during that week when we were sticking to Plan A, I got one of the sweetest and most generous phone calls of my life. Mike & Mindy Grimes, two of my favorite people on the planet, called me (on a three-way call so that they could both talk) to offer us The Basement as a potential wedding venue. The Basement is a wonderful music venue (underneath Grimey's Record Shop), and it's definitely one of our special places. I thanked them both so much and said I hoped that we wouldn't need to take them up on their offer.
So after I got off the phone with Paul the caterer, fourteen days before the wedding, we sat on the couch in a daze and started to brainstorm Plan B. The Basement was easily at the top of that list. We tried to picture it, the party we'd originally planned, transplanted to this (admittedly small) venue, and it just could almost work. We talked through the possibilities: ceremony on the porch, dinner in the parking lot, dancing on the patio. Casey and Trent drove straight over there to give us an estimate of the size of the parking lot. It seemed like enough room. I called Grimey and he said we could make this happen, that we'd meet on Monday and go through the details.
I called an emergency summit at Shan's house the next day (on her birthday, bless you, Shan...) and all the best ladies gathered around to brainstorm. Everyone left with newly assigned duties and the hope that we were going to pull this plan off. There were some details that were going to be a stretch, for sure. We'd have to hire parking shuttles and try to find a nearby parking lot to borrow for the evening. There would no longer be a traditional processional; most likely we'd just walk down the fire escape from the back door of the record shop. Space was going to be tight for the dessert buffet and the bars. We kept reasoning, people will be understanding, they'll be forgiving if it isn't very convenient or graceful.
Sunday night I went to bed feeling overwhelmed but hopeful. Monday afternoon I met with Mike at the Basement, and it was clear that we had an uphill battle ahead of us. I measured the parking lot and it was just never, ever going to fit 240 guests seated family style. We tossed around ideas for bistro tables or benches. Maybe some tables could go in the (gravel) alley? I started to realize how much of our original vision for the wedding would fall by the wayside if we had the party here. I went back to work after taking some pictures of the parking lot and pretty much fell apart.
I've said that between 4 pm that day and 11 am the next morning was my worst time of the entire wedding-planning process. I was despondent. If someone had poked me gently in the shoulder I would have burst into tears. I was trying so hard to not be a drama queen, to not waste a generously offered last-minute venue when that was what we needed most. That night we went bowling with our Emma league and I tried to shake off my big black cloud, kept telling myself that we'd work it out, that whatever we ended up doing, it would be okay. But in my heart I knew, if someone had told us a year ago that we'd pay $20,000 for a crowded buffet wedding in a parking lot, we'd have walked away.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Thursday, June 3, 2010
The Wedding Story
The truth is, it was all coming together beautifully. The details, the plans, the vision, all there. So much work and time had already gone into the whole process. Many hours of manual crafty labor from so many generous and clever people. There were some days when there was so much to do that I couldn’t even start. And other days where we were in such good shape, I could just waste time.
And then, on Saturday, May 1, it started to rain. Nashville in May is a generally rainy place, but I’d never seen anything like this. None of us had. Ever. It rained all day and all night and on Sunday morning, Digby walked through the living room leaving wet paw prints behind him. This was because our basement was filling with water, groundwater, soaking in through the walls, under the fireplace, around the pipe that leads to the water heater. Water everywhere. We were lucky, it was simply flowing out of the basement through the garage door, so we never got more than a few inches. Some worthless old furniture was soaked; boxes of family keepsakes made it up to the attic without any important losses.
The rest of the city was not so lucky. Thousands of homes were damaged or ruined. The Opryland Hotel sustained destruction at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. And both the Bicentennial Mall State Park and the Nashville Farmers' Market were under water. A lot of water.
I just scanned back through my blog history and I guess I never really confirmed this: our wedding ceremony was going to be on stage in the amphitheatre of the Bicentennial Mall, and the reception right next door in the Market House of the Farmers' Market. It was a done deal. We'd paid for the venues, had a solid plan for the setup and the decorations, etc. I'd walked through both locations with the photographer, the video dudes, Tracy (our coordinator and dear friend), Agnes, etc. We'd sent the invitations. There was a vision. It was gonna work.
Until the flood. And I know we got off so lucky here. I heard flood war stories about weddings that were cut short when guests had to be rescued off the roof of the church. Or where the groom had to drive through three feet of water to get to the ceremony, where neither the officiant or the musicians arrived. At least we didn't try to get married on May 1.
So for the week of May 3-8, we didn't know quite what was going to happen. My boss sent me a photo of the Bicentennial Mall Amphitheatre, filled with water like a giant pond. We (just barely) weighed some options for Plan B. We were temporarily distracted from even remotely considering the wedding on the Monday after the rain when I got a call that our street was being evacuated. We rushed home to find the water still steadily rising, all the way up to the stop sign at the end of our street. Our house is on a hill and we were very much out of any immediate danger, but so many in our neighborhood were not safe. People were taking boats down Cooper Lane, helping people out of their houses. It was like another world.
We heard many conflicting reports and opinions about whether or not either of our chosen wedding venues were going to be clean and ready by May 22. I went and walked around Bicentennial one morning, and cleanup crews were spread out throughout the park, and it just didn't look that bad. The grass in the amphitheatre was dying, but they were pumping out the last of the water and it was just not clear when everything would be normal again. The Market House was still chained up tight, waiting for Metro Health officials to prescribe a cleanup regimen. But we were holding out for Plan A. Surely in three weeks everything would be back to normal.
Something I'll always remember about the weeks following the flood: Apparently Sprint lost a tower in the Berry Hill area, because for several days, my phone wouldn't ring if I got a call when I was at work. It would direct straight to voicemail. So while we're rushing around trying to figure everything out, trying to confirm that our home and family are safe, and then planning and re-planning every detail of the wedding, I would just get a benign little chime indicating that I had a new message. Each time I almost had a heart attack.
Another (more pleasant memory): on the Wednesday night of that long uncertain week, we snuck out and saw The Losers at the movie theater. It was terrible. And the perfect distraction. For two explosive, streaking bullet-in-slo-mo hours I didn't think once about the flood or the wedding. Bliss.
So after a week of (stubbornly) optimistically sticking with Plan A, I got the call on Saturday night, May 8th, that changed everything. It was Paul, our dear and wonderful and patient and encouraging caterer, who also runs a restaurant located in the Farmers Market. He said he'd spent the day attempting cleanup in the Market House, and flat out told us to find a new venue, stat. He explained how slowly everything was moving under Metro government and that he saw zero likelihood that the space would be ready in two weeks.
So that's how it came about that, two weeks before our wedding, we had to move the whole damn thing. On to Plan B...
And then, on Saturday, May 1, it started to rain. Nashville in May is a generally rainy place, but I’d never seen anything like this. None of us had. Ever. It rained all day and all night and on Sunday morning, Digby walked through the living room leaving wet paw prints behind him. This was because our basement was filling with water, groundwater, soaking in through the walls, under the fireplace, around the pipe that leads to the water heater. Water everywhere. We were lucky, it was simply flowing out of the basement through the garage door, so we never got more than a few inches. Some worthless old furniture was soaked; boxes of family keepsakes made it up to the attic without any important losses.
The rest of the city was not so lucky. Thousands of homes were damaged or ruined. The Opryland Hotel sustained destruction at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. And both the Bicentennial Mall State Park and the Nashville Farmers' Market were under water. A lot of water.
I just scanned back through my blog history and I guess I never really confirmed this: our wedding ceremony was going to be on stage in the amphitheatre of the Bicentennial Mall, and the reception right next door in the Market House of the Farmers' Market. It was a done deal. We'd paid for the venues, had a solid plan for the setup and the decorations, etc. I'd walked through both locations with the photographer, the video dudes, Tracy (our coordinator and dear friend), Agnes, etc. We'd sent the invitations. There was a vision. It was gonna work.
Until the flood. And I know we got off so lucky here. I heard flood war stories about weddings that were cut short when guests had to be rescued off the roof of the church. Or where the groom had to drive through three feet of water to get to the ceremony, where neither the officiant or the musicians arrived. At least we didn't try to get married on May 1.
So for the week of May 3-8, we didn't know quite what was going to happen. My boss sent me a photo of the Bicentennial Mall Amphitheatre, filled with water like a giant pond. We (just barely) weighed some options for Plan B. We were temporarily distracted from even remotely considering the wedding on the Monday after the rain when I got a call that our street was being evacuated. We rushed home to find the water still steadily rising, all the way up to the stop sign at the end of our street. Our house is on a hill and we were very much out of any immediate danger, but so many in our neighborhood were not safe. People were taking boats down Cooper Lane, helping people out of their houses. It was like another world.
We heard many conflicting reports and opinions about whether or not either of our chosen wedding venues were going to be clean and ready by May 22. I went and walked around Bicentennial one morning, and cleanup crews were spread out throughout the park, and it just didn't look that bad. The grass in the amphitheatre was dying, but they were pumping out the last of the water and it was just not clear when everything would be normal again. The Market House was still chained up tight, waiting for Metro Health officials to prescribe a cleanup regimen. But we were holding out for Plan A. Surely in three weeks everything would be back to normal.
Something I'll always remember about the weeks following the flood: Apparently Sprint lost a tower in the Berry Hill area, because for several days, my phone wouldn't ring if I got a call when I was at work. It would direct straight to voicemail. So while we're rushing around trying to figure everything out, trying to confirm that our home and family are safe, and then planning and re-planning every detail of the wedding, I would just get a benign little chime indicating that I had a new message. Each time I almost had a heart attack.
Another (more pleasant memory): on the Wednesday night of that long uncertain week, we snuck out and saw The Losers at the movie theater. It was terrible. And the perfect distraction. For two explosive, streaking bullet-in-slo-mo hours I didn't think once about the flood or the wedding. Bliss.
So after a week of (stubbornly) optimistically sticking with Plan A, I got the call on Saturday night, May 8th, that changed everything. It was Paul, our dear and wonderful and patient and encouraging caterer, who also runs a restaurant located in the Farmers Market. He said he'd spent the day attempting cleanup in the Market House, and flat out told us to find a new venue, stat. He explained how slowly everything was moving under Metro government and that he saw zero likelihood that the space would be ready in two weeks.
So that's how it came about that, two weeks before our wedding, we had to move the whole damn thing. On to Plan B...
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Save the Date
Except not really, because the date already happened.
Here's what our Save the Dates looked like. Once I figure out how to do that thing where we blur over the line that shows our mailing address, I'll show the nifty sticker that sealed the cards for mailing.
Thus begins my month-long recap of May 22, aka Best. Wedding. Ever!
Here's what our Save the Dates looked like. Once I figure out how to do that thing where we blur over the line that shows our mailing address, I'll show the nifty sticker that sealed the cards for mailing.
Thus begins my month-long recap of May 22, aka Best. Wedding. Ever!
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Before I get around to Starting at the Beginning
I know, I know. The wedding already happened and I'm still not spilling the lush details. I swear, it's close, I'm going to tackle the daily blogging for the month of June and slowly dole out the whole wedding story, every bit of it. We're still waiting for the majority of the photos to come in and I'll just keep rolling it all out as we go along.
But today, I just want to say goodbye to my old friend Ingrid. She's been gone for a week now and it's very sad. We all knew this was probably her last summer. Summer was never her best time. She was 12 years old, which is very old for a 140 lb. dog with bad hips and bad teeth. In fact, every summer for the last couple of years, there has come a point where Dad has mournfully predicted that she wouldn't make it through to the fall. We certainly didn't think she'd make it through all the way to twelve, which is a conservative assumption of her actual age. The adoption flyer said she was three when I brought her home in December of 2001. And that flyer had been hanging up at Petsmart for a year, so maybe she was already four by the time she joined our family.
Some observations about Ingrid: she was never, ever mad at me. She was always happy to see me (and pretty much everybody else) and she had a great sense of humor. Sometimes she'd run across the yard to me and I would think, "Oh god, she's not going to stop," and my life would flash before my eyes. But she always stopped, and always wanted to give me her big heavy paw. She hated helicopters, sirens and municipal vehicles with flashing lights. And bicycles (sorry, Patrick...). She didn't like strange men or kids walking past our house on Eastside Avenue (that's why she eventually went to live with Dad out in the country).
When she first came to live with me, we tried having her be an inside dog. She even slept in my bed, where she snored heavily and tried to spoon me. That lasted exactly one day. Brandes and Dad built her a pen (this was when I was the sole occupant of the little house out on Ashland City Highway) and it was woefully small. Eventually, after a couple of years of trial and error, we determined that the only fence that would hold Ingrid was one she didn't *want* to breach. If she could lay up against the foundation (or, ideally, the door) of the house where I lived, she would never try to leave. That's when it really worked.
Even though she spent the last few years as the galloping snowbear of Leiper's Fork, where she was doted upon by Dad and Lynn, she remained my big dog. We just went out to visit Dad in April and got to spend some quality time with the Biggest. I'm glad for that. I'm grateful that she was loved and fussed over up until the end. Thanks to Dad and Lynn for that.
RIP Biggy Bigrid, the Biggest Ingrid. Missing you today, my happy happiest.
But today, I just want to say goodbye to my old friend Ingrid. She's been gone for a week now and it's very sad. We all knew this was probably her last summer. Summer was never her best time. She was 12 years old, which is very old for a 140 lb. dog with bad hips and bad teeth. In fact, every summer for the last couple of years, there has come a point where Dad has mournfully predicted that she wouldn't make it through to the fall. We certainly didn't think she'd make it through all the way to twelve, which is a conservative assumption of her actual age. The adoption flyer said she was three when I brought her home in December of 2001. And that flyer had been hanging up at Petsmart for a year, so maybe she was already four by the time she joined our family.
Some observations about Ingrid: she was never, ever mad at me. She was always happy to see me (and pretty much everybody else) and she had a great sense of humor. Sometimes she'd run across the yard to me and I would think, "Oh god, she's not going to stop," and my life would flash before my eyes. But she always stopped, and always wanted to give me her big heavy paw. She hated helicopters, sirens and municipal vehicles with flashing lights. And bicycles (sorry, Patrick...). She didn't like strange men or kids walking past our house on Eastside Avenue (that's why she eventually went to live with Dad out in the country).
When she first came to live with me, we tried having her be an inside dog. She even slept in my bed, where she snored heavily and tried to spoon me. That lasted exactly one day. Brandes and Dad built her a pen (this was when I was the sole occupant of the little house out on Ashland City Highway) and it was woefully small. Eventually, after a couple of years of trial and error, we determined that the only fence that would hold Ingrid was one she didn't *want* to breach. If she could lay up against the foundation (or, ideally, the door) of the house where I lived, she would never try to leave. That's when it really worked.
Even though she spent the last few years as the galloping snowbear of Leiper's Fork, where she was doted upon by Dad and Lynn, she remained my big dog. We just went out to visit Dad in April and got to spend some quality time with the Biggest. I'm glad for that. I'm grateful that she was loved and fussed over up until the end. Thanks to Dad and Lynn for that.
RIP Biggy Bigrid, the Biggest Ingrid. Missing you today, my happy happiest.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
muted
Austin has pointed out that I shouldn't talk about the wedding details in case some of my readers aren't invited to the wedding. That seems to assume a lot about my readership (as in, it's more than just my mother, and you know she's totally invited), but he's probably right. Instead I'll overshare when it's all over and just say that the invites have gone out, the rvsps are flooding in (boy is THAT aspect of wedding planning gratifying!) and we bought our wedding rings today. So I guess we really HAVE to get married now.
Just kidding. I'm so excited about getting married. I'm excited about the party, I'm excited about our families and friends coming to visit, I'm excited about the dress and the paper flowers and the place cards and the corn muffins and the playlists and the pizza party the night before. But mostly I'm excited about BEING MARRIED! It seems like the whole time we've been together, I've known this is where we were heading, and it's finally here, and it partially feels like we've been married for years, and it partially feels like the big step that it legitimately is. I'm going to share his name. He's going to be my guardian. It's big. And it's exciting. And it's lovely.
How's that for non-wedding wedding talk? I know, weddingweddingwedding, right? I'm trying not to be that girl. What else is going on? Charlie Murphy is still peeing on things in our home. Like the dog beds, if we leave them on the floor unoccupied. Or a stack of papers in the office that needed to be filed. Or my brown boots (dammit). Austin's done plenty of research into possible causes. The vet suggested that we let him go outside, which is of course never going to happen. Instead we started letting him go into the basement unsupervised, which he'd been vocally begging to do since we bought the house. We've also tried giving him ample doses of catnip, with the hopes that he'd chill out. Oh, he chills out alright, laid out spread eagle on the kitchen counter in a patch of sun, drooling.
And then he pees on the green blanket when it falls off the bed. The apparent conclusion is that we have too many pets and he's being territorial, although damned if I know why this suddenly came on when we've been a 6 pet household for over two years. And we're not about to start getting rid of the others just because Charlie Murphy thinks he needs to assert himself. In the meantime, I have to figure out how to get cat urine out of leather. Which is awesome.
The troubling thing is that he doesn't act like he's having a hard time at all. He gets along fine with the other pets, except for when he pushes Mackenzie's buttons, which can be done pretty much by breathing. He and Mischa wrestle and chase each other, and he's very patient with her. He'll rub his head under Bridgey's chin and it's too sweet. On the weekends or sometimes in the evenings he comes and snuggles us on the couch, and it's the most gratifying feeling in the world. I don't want him to be mad at us, or at war (inside his head) with the rest of the pets or our home. Because that's what it feels like: piss warfare.
In other news, Casey and I went to NYC for a long weekend to visit Jenny. It was gorgeous and delicious and we shopped and ate until our faces fell off (nearly). I loved just walking around with my sisters, that immediate natural flow of conversation and interaction that kicks in whenever it's the three of us. Some things I observed: My sisters still think of me as being a terrible traveler. That is fair, because I truly was, for years. I overpacked, I lost shit, I got lost, I procrastinated, I got flustered. I'd like to thank Austin (and also just traveling a whole, whole lot in my mid 20s) for having made me a better traveler. I still get nervous during takeoff and landing. I also still have to compulsively repack every time I take something out of my suitcase. But I've managed to plan ahead for this quirk and try not let it affect anyone else that I might be traveling with. Still, my sisters wanted to make sure I woke up early enough every day to be ready to leave the house at the same time as they were, and I ended up just waiting on them a lot and feeling smug. I also observed that my sisters' patience and stamina for shopping has gone inversely up in relation to my own decline. They used to refuse to shop with me because I'd take so long, liked to be thorough and look at everything. They were always On A Mission. This trip to New York, I ran out of steam in the first 10 minutes of each new store we visited, and wound up sitting on the floor by the front door of H&M, totally over throwing elbows in the name of cheap clothes. I bought six shirts, only because I didn't have to try them on (I refused to enter that hellhole of a dressing room) and figured that if they didn't fit I'd give them to someone they would. The girls completely racked up, happily for them.
I'm running out of steam and thoughts tonight. Remember when Myspace would play a song when someone visited your page? Mine was Fake Palindromes by Andrew Bird for forever. If my life were a song tonight, it would be this: Young Folks by Peter Bjorn and John. It's the new dancing-in-pajamas song in the Gill-Gray kitchen. Mom, you'll like it! Be ready to dance to it with me and my groom in 6 short weeks and two even shorter days...
Just kidding. I'm so excited about getting married. I'm excited about the party, I'm excited about our families and friends coming to visit, I'm excited about the dress and the paper flowers and the place cards and the corn muffins and the playlists and the pizza party the night before. But mostly I'm excited about BEING MARRIED! It seems like the whole time we've been together, I've known this is where we were heading, and it's finally here, and it partially feels like we've been married for years, and it partially feels like the big step that it legitimately is. I'm going to share his name. He's going to be my guardian. It's big. And it's exciting. And it's lovely.
How's that for non-wedding wedding talk? I know, weddingweddingwedding, right? I'm trying not to be that girl. What else is going on? Charlie Murphy is still peeing on things in our home. Like the dog beds, if we leave them on the floor unoccupied. Or a stack of papers in the office that needed to be filed. Or my brown boots (dammit). Austin's done plenty of research into possible causes. The vet suggested that we let him go outside, which is of course never going to happen. Instead we started letting him go into the basement unsupervised, which he'd been vocally begging to do since we bought the house. We've also tried giving him ample doses of catnip, with the hopes that he'd chill out. Oh, he chills out alright, laid out spread eagle on the kitchen counter in a patch of sun, drooling.
And then he pees on the green blanket when it falls off the bed. The apparent conclusion is that we have too many pets and he's being territorial, although damned if I know why this suddenly came on when we've been a 6 pet household for over two years. And we're not about to start getting rid of the others just because Charlie Murphy thinks he needs to assert himself. In the meantime, I have to figure out how to get cat urine out of leather. Which is awesome.
The troubling thing is that he doesn't act like he's having a hard time at all. He gets along fine with the other pets, except for when he pushes Mackenzie's buttons, which can be done pretty much by breathing. He and Mischa wrestle and chase each other, and he's very patient with her. He'll rub his head under Bridgey's chin and it's too sweet. On the weekends or sometimes in the evenings he comes and snuggles us on the couch, and it's the most gratifying feeling in the world. I don't want him to be mad at us, or at war (inside his head) with the rest of the pets or our home. Because that's what it feels like: piss warfare.
In other news, Casey and I went to NYC for a long weekend to visit Jenny. It was gorgeous and delicious and we shopped and ate until our faces fell off (nearly). I loved just walking around with my sisters, that immediate natural flow of conversation and interaction that kicks in whenever it's the three of us. Some things I observed: My sisters still think of me as being a terrible traveler. That is fair, because I truly was, for years. I overpacked, I lost shit, I got lost, I procrastinated, I got flustered. I'd like to thank Austin (and also just traveling a whole, whole lot in my mid 20s) for having made me a better traveler. I still get nervous during takeoff and landing. I also still have to compulsively repack every time I take something out of my suitcase. But I've managed to plan ahead for this quirk and try not let it affect anyone else that I might be traveling with. Still, my sisters wanted to make sure I woke up early enough every day to be ready to leave the house at the same time as they were, and I ended up just waiting on them a lot and feeling smug. I also observed that my sisters' patience and stamina for shopping has gone inversely up in relation to my own decline. They used to refuse to shop with me because I'd take so long, liked to be thorough and look at everything. They were always On A Mission. This trip to New York, I ran out of steam in the first 10 minutes of each new store we visited, and wound up sitting on the floor by the front door of H&M, totally over throwing elbows in the name of cheap clothes. I bought six shirts, only because I didn't have to try them on (I refused to enter that hellhole of a dressing room) and figured that if they didn't fit I'd give them to someone they would. The girls completely racked up, happily for them.I'm running out of steam and thoughts tonight. Remember when Myspace would play a song when someone visited your page? Mine was Fake Palindromes by Andrew Bird for forever. If my life were a song tonight, it would be this: Young Folks by Peter Bjorn and John. It's the new dancing-in-pajamas song in the Gill-Gray kitchen. Mom, you'll like it! Be ready to dance to it with me and my groom in 6 short weeks and two even shorter days...
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Commemorating the End of February
Things I want to do this afternoon:
1. Take a nap
2. Watch My So-Called Life
3. Read The Help
4. Reread Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Things I need to do this afternoon:
1. Trial of the tapas dishes I'm making for the beer-and-tapas throwdown next weekend.
2. Send an email to all the wedding guests letting them know that we've got the website updated.
Things I have to do this afternoon:
1. Manually cancel about 100 Emma accounts.
Oh, procrastination, my lifelong frenemy. Just when I think I'm really and truly a grownup, I find myself playing Mind the Blox instead of just getting my damn work done. I blame Sunday.
1. Take a nap
2. Watch My So-Called Life
3. Read The Help
4. Reread Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Things I need to do this afternoon:
1. Trial of the tapas dishes I'm making for the beer-and-tapas throwdown next weekend.
2. Send an email to all the wedding guests letting them know that we've got the website updated.
Things I have to do this afternoon:
1. Manually cancel about 100 Emma accounts.
Oh, procrastination, my lifelong frenemy. Just when I think I'm really and truly a grownup, I find myself playing Mind the Blox instead of just getting my damn work done. I blame Sunday.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Developments
Some exciting recent occurrences in the Gill/Gray (soon to be All Gray) household:
1. Wednesday night, in the midst of hosting a very lovely little dinner party, I managed to neatly slice off the end of my left thumbnail. About a half an inch in. Whilst slicing up a chiffonade of basil with my chef's knife. I managed to not freak out, since our dinner guests were watching me prep dinner. Just wrapped it up and quietly dug the piece of thumbnail out of the pile of basil and continued on with supper. But oh man, it hurts like a mofo. I can't put any pressure on that thumb at all, making me a single-finger texter and incapable of putting on my own necklaces.
2. Last night we installed the HDMI cord on our new Toshiba 32" HD 1080p flat-screen television. We'd put the tv in on Tuesday but didn't have the right cable to make the HD channels show up. Got it all set up last night and watched the NBC shows and it's just astonishing. It kind of gives me a headache to watch because the picture is so precise. I'm sure I'm the LAST person on the planet to come to this realization. But it's a fun treat and just in time for March Madness...
3. Honeymoon in Ireland: Booked! We bumped it ahead to a month after the wedding (so June 18-26). Initially I liked the romantic idea of heading straight off on this big adventure trip right after the wedding, but the more I thought about it, I've come to terms with the fact that I'm an OCD asshole right before a vacation. And this is the biggest trip we've ever taken, and I didn't want to transfer any of those nerves/preparations/chaos to the wedding week. This way we can get back to life as we know it, post-wedding, and then be ready to take off a few weeks later. To Ireland! Holy cow! We're doing two nights each in Galway, Kinsale and Dublin. Taking an (expensive) train from Cork to Dublin, and otherwise knocking around in a rental car. Flights in and out of JFK, so we can see Jenny and Patrick for a day before we leave. We'll be there during the World Cup, so we can watch some games in Irish pubs and bash England with the locals.
4. Save-the-Dates: Sent! Later than I had originally planned, but they look gorgeous, of course. Designed by my future husband, the most talented man I know. We've also set up our wedding website, with just a placeholder now and a spot to sign up to be alerted by email as we add more info. We need to get the hotel stuff finalized (I'm kind of horrified by how hard this part has been...) so we can share that info on the website and help our guests get their travel plans in place. It doesn't look like we're competing with any major events or conferences in Nashville the weekend of the wedding, which is a relief. Downtown can be a madhouse sometimes.
5. Last night, we were woken at about 4 am by the sound of an elephant herd in the front of the house. This turned out to be Corvinius, who had caught a MOUSE and was zooming around the house torturing it. Austin got up, chased the situation down the hall and eventually lost the mouse in the office closet. He gave up and came back to bed, figuring it had gotten into the ductwork and there wasn't anything to be done. The cats held their vigil, though, and I was woken up a half-hour later by squeaking, thumping and fluttering on top of me in the bed. Corvinius had found the mouse and brought it to us in bed. I flung the covers off and heard the mouse hit the wall, then leaped over to the other side of Austin and started shouting. Austin understands the basic principle of our relationship, which is that if it *might* be a mouse, he has to deal with it, so he finally managed to get the damaged-and-traumatized-but-still-alive mouse into a box and out the front door. Not the greatest night's sleep for either of us. Luckily the dogs had gone out at about 3 (yeah, that part is awesome too) so they weren't around to further complicate the animal kingdom showdown. Good GRIEF.
----------------------------
Okay, so I missed a month or two here. I missed talking about the absolutely amazing night when I came home from work to find 19 of my favorite ladies in the entire world wearing hideous bridesmaid dresses shouting "Surprise!" We feasted, we opened an obnoxious number of lingerie-related gifts, and we danced in the dining room until we were about to drop. It was pretty much the best thing ever.
I skipped the holidays, too. They were mostly low key; Mom and Kam were gone before Christmas and Jenny and Patrick left the day after. Austin and I laid around a lot and cooked a lot. It's been a particularly productive cooking month for us. I've been inventing a few recipes, which I don't do very often (Peppermint Panna Cotta! Spicy Sticky Asian Baby Back Ribs! Grapefruit-Vanilla Bean Sorbet!). Basically, I get a vision for a taste I want, and then research to see if the recipe already exists, and if it doesn't, I cobble together concepts from related recipes until it makes sense. No disasters yet!
And if it hasn't been clear before this, now is the time for my Wedding Brain to take hold and not let go for the next four months. Last Thursday, I woke up wide awake at 5 am with a specific vision of the text for our invitations. Got up, went to the living room, wrote it all down exactly as I pictured it, and went back to bed. It's sort of like wedding autism. My mind is constantly clicking with To Dos and ideas, I can't turn it off. I never wanted to be one of Those Brides, but I guess if I'm honest with myself, I know I have always been. I've got my big binder and my lists and my calendars and I'm ready to get this show on the road.
1. Wednesday night, in the midst of hosting a very lovely little dinner party, I managed to neatly slice off the end of my left thumbnail. About a half an inch in. Whilst slicing up a chiffonade of basil with my chef's knife. I managed to not freak out, since our dinner guests were watching me prep dinner. Just wrapped it up and quietly dug the piece of thumbnail out of the pile of basil and continued on with supper. But oh man, it hurts like a mofo. I can't put any pressure on that thumb at all, making me a single-finger texter and incapable of putting on my own necklaces.
2. Last night we installed the HDMI cord on our new Toshiba 32" HD 1080p flat-screen television. We'd put the tv in on Tuesday but didn't have the right cable to make the HD channels show up. Got it all set up last night and watched the NBC shows and it's just astonishing. It kind of gives me a headache to watch because the picture is so precise. I'm sure I'm the LAST person on the planet to come to this realization. But it's a fun treat and just in time for March Madness...
3. Honeymoon in Ireland: Booked! We bumped it ahead to a month after the wedding (so June 18-26). Initially I liked the romantic idea of heading straight off on this big adventure trip right after the wedding, but the more I thought about it, I've come to terms with the fact that I'm an OCD asshole right before a vacation. And this is the biggest trip we've ever taken, and I didn't want to transfer any of those nerves/preparations/chaos to the wedding week. This way we can get back to life as we know it, post-wedding, and then be ready to take off a few weeks later. To Ireland! Holy cow! We're doing two nights each in Galway, Kinsale and Dublin. Taking an (expensive) train from Cork to Dublin, and otherwise knocking around in a rental car. Flights in and out of JFK, so we can see Jenny and Patrick for a day before we leave. We'll be there during the World Cup, so we can watch some games in Irish pubs and bash England with the locals.
4. Save-the-Dates: Sent! Later than I had originally planned, but they look gorgeous, of course. Designed by my future husband, the most talented man I know. We've also set up our wedding website, with just a placeholder now and a spot to sign up to be alerted by email as we add more info. We need to get the hotel stuff finalized (I'm kind of horrified by how hard this part has been...) so we can share that info on the website and help our guests get their travel plans in place. It doesn't look like we're competing with any major events or conferences in Nashville the weekend of the wedding, which is a relief. Downtown can be a madhouse sometimes.
5. Last night, we were woken at about 4 am by the sound of an elephant herd in the front of the house. This turned out to be Corvinius, who had caught a MOUSE and was zooming around the house torturing it. Austin got up, chased the situation down the hall and eventually lost the mouse in the office closet. He gave up and came back to bed, figuring it had gotten into the ductwork and there wasn't anything to be done. The cats held their vigil, though, and I was woken up a half-hour later by squeaking, thumping and fluttering on top of me in the bed. Corvinius had found the mouse and brought it to us in bed. I flung the covers off and heard the mouse hit the wall, then leaped over to the other side of Austin and started shouting. Austin understands the basic principle of our relationship, which is that if it *might* be a mouse, he has to deal with it, so he finally managed to get the damaged-and-traumatized-but-still-alive mouse into a box and out the front door. Not the greatest night's sleep for either of us. Luckily the dogs had gone out at about 3 (yeah, that part is awesome too) so they weren't around to further complicate the animal kingdom showdown. Good GRIEF.
----------------------------
Okay, so I missed a month or two here. I missed talking about the absolutely amazing night when I came home from work to find 19 of my favorite ladies in the entire world wearing hideous bridesmaid dresses shouting "Surprise!" We feasted, we opened an obnoxious number of lingerie-related gifts, and we danced in the dining room until we were about to drop. It was pretty much the best thing ever.
I skipped the holidays, too. They were mostly low key; Mom and Kam were gone before Christmas and Jenny and Patrick left the day after. Austin and I laid around a lot and cooked a lot. It's been a particularly productive cooking month for us. I've been inventing a few recipes, which I don't do very often (Peppermint Panna Cotta! Spicy Sticky Asian Baby Back Ribs! Grapefruit-Vanilla Bean Sorbet!). Basically, I get a vision for a taste I want, and then research to see if the recipe already exists, and if it doesn't, I cobble together concepts from related recipes until it makes sense. No disasters yet!
And if it hasn't been clear before this, now is the time for my Wedding Brain to take hold and not let go for the next four months. Last Thursday, I woke up wide awake at 5 am with a specific vision of the text for our invitations. Got up, went to the living room, wrote it all down exactly as I pictured it, and went back to bed. It's sort of like wedding autism. My mind is constantly clicking with To Dos and ideas, I can't turn it off. I never wanted to be one of Those Brides, but I guess if I'm honest with myself, I know I have always been. I've got my big binder and my lists and my calendars and I'm ready to get this show on the road.
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