do they read obituaries in hell?

resolution? um, don't skip making the swatch

2012-01-07T22:35:00.001-06:00

Happy 2012, people. I miss this blog. I promised myself that I wasn't going to post until I had one very important task completed, one that has been a sore point for almost three months. So that's what's up with the radio silence. I hope to have that taken care of as soon as possible.

In the meantime, enjoy photos of the little dress I made for my goddaughter, which she will probably be able to wear when she is FOUR (she turned one in October). Trust me, this is a vast improvement on the last knitted item I made for her--it was supposed to be a baby-bag-thing that didn't have defined legs to make it easy for the new mom and dad. What I ended up with was a sweater that I was able to get into MYSELF. Not cute. This time I followed the directions for the 18 month size to the letter* and it still is ginormous. I did the swatch, but bored of it and quit before the requisite stitches; I just jumped into the project.

It has little froggy buttons:

In true Cadiz fashion, I ripped out a good six inches before I was through and modified the Tora Froseth pattern a little bit.

Jon picked out the buttons. Obviously, he has impeccable taste.

*You know, except where I changed the design and the pattern to suit my tastes.

anger. pride. fear. relief. gratitude. guilt.

2011-12-10T23:27:00.001-06:00

They say that when you're about to die, your life flashes before your eyes. They also say that when you're involved in very serious situation, you may find yourself thinking of something random instead of something important.

I don't know much about the first one, but during the car accident Friday night while I was hanging upside-down by my seatbelt and calling for my brother, I kept thinking to myself, "Wow, those people who made the movie Crash got that one scene pretty damn true to life!"

***

Let me start at the beginning.

I had Friday off because I was working Saturday. Jon always has Fridays off because he works long shifts Monday through Thursday. He was doing his thing and I was doing my thing, and suddenly we were snippety at each other, over something so trivial I can't remember what it is. I was getting all worked up on the inside about how he has yet to help with the thank-you cards and if he had just admitted to me that he didn't really want to, I'd be annoyed but they'd have all been done months ago and I wouldn't still feel guilty and is he going to pull this with changing diapers and giving time outs and homework--omg am I going to be the bad cop for life!?! On top of that, I thought he was taking too long getting ready. He said maybe I should go without him and I stormed out the door without so much as a look backward.

I had never done that before. I tell the guy I love him at the end of every phone call even if it's a 2.5-second conversation to say that he's arrived to pick me up. I ALWAYS kiss him goodbye like I saw my parents do all those years. We've even stuck to the whole "don't go to bed angry" thing. But I had let the simmer turn into a boil and was so angry. It was inane. And I knew it even before the door was closed behind me, but was too proud to turn around.

***

I went over to my parents' house--I had wanted to set up the Christmas tree before my mom got home because she always complains that no one helps her anymore. I've put this thing together like six times; a 10-year-old could do it. She got home, shook her head and pointed out that the middle part was never going to fit in the stand no matter what I tried. I then assembled the entire thing in 45 seconds. I had been struggling with it by myself a whole hour--checking the phone every five minutes to see if Jon had messaged me.

I was upset about being angry and I just wanted to hear Jon's voice. My mom called me out on it as soon as she walked in the door, and later my dad said I didn't seem myself. He warned me that it was a full moon that night and to be careful (he says that a lot). I left to go pick up my brother from the airport. Apparently they assumed I went to get Jon first and wasn't going alone.

***

It was 20 degrees out. There had been a dusting of snow in the morning, more like a layer of fake cobweb that people put out during Halloween all over the grass and the trees. The streets seemed fine. I knew I was off because of the argument, plus dad's moon thing, so I was driving extra carefully at the speed limit. Plus this horrible thought kept creeping into my head, "Just watch, self, you acted like a fool and didn't say goodbye to him, what if you got into an accident? He'd have to live with that." I know that sounds like something people say after something happens, and I admit that I have these morbid thoughts ALL the time and nothing happens, but it really was going through my head the whole day. Stupid spotted tongue.

***

My brother drives a fancy car that beeps at him if he doesn't have his seatbelt on. Oh, how I loathe that sound, and I had to hear it every time he'd call me on speaker when he was driving in Alabama. HATE. I always lectured and yelled, but he would never put it on--something about how it chafes. Seriously, it's a really annoying sound, I don't know how he could stand it. I got out of my car when I got to the airport, hugged him hello and slipped my phone into my coat pocket as he was putting his bags in the trunk. On the drive home, we were discussing dinner, the new-but-really-from-Madelyn's-wrecked-car stereo Jon had put into my car last week and other random stuff. I remember noticing that my brother put his seatbelt on as we were pulling away from the terminal and being thankful I didn't have to nag him.

Everything was normal. I was still driving at the speed limit. I was in the left lane, there was a semi tractor-trailer next to my right and the shoulder to my left. The truck seemed like it was coming closer, my car drifted toward the shoulder--was there ice there?--I pulled it back to center. I heard my brother yell my name as it swerved back and forth a couple of times before I wasn't able to regain control. We swung around and hit the solid concrete median head-on, and my little black Altima flipped over onto its roof and slid, parallel to the median. The scraping of top of the car was such a distinct and disgusting sound. It all happened in less than five seconds.

Everything was foggy. There was this rancid, chalky smoke in the air. I had glass in my mouth. The airbag had knocked my glasses into my eyeballs so hard the lenses were smeared from the inside and they were hanging down at a weird angle. I kept asking if my brother was ok over and over, until he yelled at me to snap out of it. He was surprisingly calm, asking if I was hurt handing me my purse. I couldn't get the seatbelt off, but he was able and fell into the crushed glass on the inside of the roof. Something like eight people stopped to help us, one of whom yanked the door open, and--I'll never forget this--said, "It's pretty smoky, we didn't want you to choke. Plus this car could catch on fire any second. You guys better get out NOW."

I couldn't get my seatbelt off. People kept yelling for me to turn off the engine, but I couldn't get the key to move. The steering wheel and dashboard seemed a million miles away, as if I were fully reclining in my seat with my hair sticking straight up. I had no concept of the space where my legs were. I pushed against the roof to hold myself up so someone could unbuckle me, I don't know who. I was staggering around and couldn't stop checking to see if my brother was ok. He crawled back into the car to root around for his phone while I was panicking that the car would catch on fire with him inside. A very nice man named Pete who was on his way home to Indiana from his job in Wisconsin let us sit in his car until the police came.

***

As I was sitting there, all I could think of was what kind of horrible person could let this happen with someone else in the car, especially someone I love more than my own life? My God, the things this boy has had to face, how hard he's had to fight for his life, and it could have all been gone in a second? My brother had a pretty bad laceration to the temple, his left eyelid was purple and swollen to ten times its size, there was a burst vessel in his eye that made him look like it was bleeding, his shoulder, neck and leg were hurting. My face was bruised from the airbag, I was sore here and there, and I had glass in my mouth. Neither of us wanted to go to the hospital, but I knew that I couldn't force him to go if I didn't too.

I called Jon. He's not stubborn in a fight like me, he answered. He didn't have a chance to say hello before I apologized. The poor guy didn't have a car, or I'm sure he'd be on the road before I got past the word accident. I asked him to call and tell my parents gently and ask them to get him and come to the hospital.

I don't dare imagine the agony my mom was in, trapped at home, knowing both her babies were headed to the hospital in an ambulance.

The firefighter who looked like a caucasian version of my dad when he still had a mustache was so kind. He got me some water to rinse and spit out the glass, he took me where my brother wouldn't see so I could cry a little, then he reminded me that we both walked away from what looked like terrible, horrible wreckage.

I refused to go in a separate ambulance, so my brother was strapped to the stretcher and I was strapped to a board on the bench. My brother knows his very complicated medical history, but so do I--they were asking me all the same questions but I kept waving my guy off and interjecting in my brother's interrogation: "Don't use tape on him, only paper tape, he's allergic! And advil! He has a pacemaker! Be careful with that leg, he had surgery there!" I was incredibly annoying. My brother gave me a look and I focused on my own questions, which were done pretty fast. Then the tears started rolling.

"If I see one more tear, I swear to God I'm going to punch you and give you a real reason to go to the Emergency Room," he said, and then asked if they could please get his suitcase and laptop out of the trunk--that's his work stuff.

Before we took off, the kind caucasian dad firefighter said Jon and my actual dad had arrived. But we'd have to see them at the hospital. I sniffled the whole way over there.

***

Again, as we were rolling into the emergency room of this foreign hospital, it seemed like a scene from a movie--for as much as they get wrong, they manage to get this stuff eerily correct. I didn't know where my brother was, and I was as antsy as you can be when you're immobilized on a hard plastic board with a C-collar around your neck. And then Jon came in the door. Later, my dad.

I was fine, essentially just knocked around and shaken up pretty badly. My brother has a few pretty big bumps--they did lab work and X-Rays because of his medical history, and we were there a long long time before they'd clear him to leave. It's always hard to explain what his deal is to new doctors, but I was so impressed by the how in command he is about everything. As much time as I spent worrying, he spent joking with the staff.

Essentially, we are both OK. It very well could have gone VERY differently.

***

Here is what I know:

I am alive, typing this instead of lying in a hospital bed or a surgical table or the slab of a morgue.
My brother is alive, and insisted on going to Wrigley Field today to upgrade his season-ticket seats, but his friend kept an eye on him.
It was one car vs. a median wall; no other cars were hit or hit us.
The exact same accident happened down the way about 30 minutes before our crash.
A lot of people in my life care about me--50+ Facebook comments.
The car is completely totaled, but it protected me to the very bitter end.

My brother posted this on the FB:

"Wear your seat belts!! They save lives including mine. Last night."

I don't think I would have been able to go on living if the seatbelt hadn't saved my brother last night.

the dress

2011-12-06T10:54:00.001-06:00

I had wanted to wear my mom's wedding sari, but she was adamant that it was too old and homemade-looking (she had put it together herself with a border and some lace appliques). She wasn't budging.

The selection of white saris are either totally plain--in fact, white is generally worn to funerals--or SUPER ornately decorated. My aunt and cousin were going to try and find a sari for me in Mumbai, but they were feeling a lot of pressure to find one I'd love. At the same time, we made so many trips to Devon looking for one, too. I wanted something understated with a little embellishment and everything we were seeing was highly blinged out. I was ready to give up in frustration and started bugging my mother to just let me wear her wedding sari.

Of course, that's exactly when I saw something peeking out from under a huge pile of saris someone else had been looking at. The corner had the same color maroon-brown border of my mother's sari and the delicate gold-wire flower work was just perfect for me. I knew it was the one before I'd even tried it on.

The work on the bridesmaids' saris also has a golden floral design.

It was exactly what I'd wanted. My mom would have never chosen that pink color for herself, but she has this sweater in the same color that looks great on her; I told her that's what I'd like her to wear. We were preparing to search for it for weeks, but found her sari within 15 minutes of being in the first store.

So many people who wanted to be at our wedding weren't able make it. My bracelets don't really match because I'm wearing one from each of my aunts (as well as my godmother and one cousin). Something Borrowed. I even got one from my dad's grandmother, but it's so fragile and tiny, I didn't want to try to get it over the bones in my hand. I was carrying it in a small crocheted bag that my nani made decades ago. Something Old.

My mother wore this ballerina brooch on her wedding day. Something Blue. My father's father had the necklace and earrings set made for me "to wear on my wedding day" a few years before he passed away.

My cousin and aunt bought this maangtika (it was supposed to be hanging lower down on my forehead but the weight of my pallu pulled it back quite a bit).

The back. You can't really see them, but I had peacock-blue shoes on.

Mfm made gorgeous bouquets for me and the bridesmaids (she got the hydrangeas fresh from her neighbor's yard, with permission of course). My Vinu Moushi (mom's younger sister) sent a few yards of handmade lace my nani had made for a slip long ago, and mfm used it to wrap the handle of my bouquet. My mom had carried the "Thinking Of You" handkerchief on her wedding day, too. I was so glad to have it with me; it was soaking wet by the end.

I didn't see it until I was getting dressed that day, but my mom had cut one of the lace appliques from her wedding dress and sewed it to the inside of my pallu--right at the spot at the top of my head. Even though the sari was Something New, I sort of got to wear a family heirloom after all.

malas

2011-12-04T11:16:00.003-06:00

Despite the unfortunate meaning en Espanol, malas are the lei-like garlands used in India for all kinds of important occasions to celebrate winners and overall happiness. My mom's people have a tradition of using them at weddings--family members from each side welcome their new family with a beautiful garland of flowers.

Jon and I decided we didn't want to do a unity candle or sand or spices or any of that stuff, but our mothers brought the malas up at the end of the ceremony for us to put on each other before the kiss, essentially welcoming each other to our respective families. Officially.

I had planned on making them myself (shocker) on the day before the wedding by going to the florist, grabbing whatever was available and stringing it up. So the day before at the mehndi, when my godmother's 89-year-old mother said she had something for us, I was beyond touched. She and a bunch of her grandchildren had made these malas for us by hand. It's something they do in their tradition: Take strips of cotton and carefully remove some of the woven threads, making a very very soft fringe. It must have taken a very long time. I was teary.

These are so much better than what I would have slapped together. And they'll last a long time, too.

Jon loves orchids. We definitely would have used our own orchids (we have a couple very impressive plants) if we could, but of course this is the year they're both dormant.

another one bites the dust

2011-12-01T23:47:00.002-06:00

Another year of NaBloPoMo hits the archives. Big ups to Jon, Madelyn, Syar and velocibadgergirl, who made it through like champs.

I know that my wedding-themed-posting wasn't for everyone (and weddings can be a snoozefest right quickly, too). But it all seemed like a blur so it's nice to have it documented somewhere while the memories are somewhat fresh. Plus, I can't tell you the amount of arguments my blog has resolved (my brother was trying to convince us all at Thanksgiving that we sat out in the cold on Black Friday in 2005. Nope, as I said, it was 2007).

There is one person who repeatedly mentioned how much she has enjoyed the wedding coverage. So, for her, I will continue beyond the requisite 30 days until I can't come up with anything else (don't worry; that's going to happen pretty soon).

The rest of you are off the hook. That said, as always, your comments are coveted.

the mehndi II

2011-11-30T22:35:00.002-06:00

My godmother found the fastest mehndi artist in the west to do my designs. She didn't take any breaks longer than 30 seconds, either, and we both were sitting there for a little more than four and a half hours. I had henna on the front and backs of my arms, from elbow to tips of the fingers, as well as around 75 percent of my legs and the tops of my feet. She didn't even skip the backs of my heels.

See all those tiny dots? Each one done by hand. She was really good.

My mom has always said my most beautiful feature is my feet. I get them from my dad, who got them from his dad. I always meant to take a picture of all our feet together because they're all so creepily the same. My hands are my mom's and my nani's in the same way. I can't get that picture anymore, either.

Tradition calls for the name of the groom to be hidden somewhere in the mehndi of his bride's hand. Then the guy has to try to find his name. My mehndi artist was very clever and Jon wasn't able to find his name for more than seven minutes until I had to drop some pretty big hints. But then again, she had thrown in an extra H to make it "Johnathan" instead of Jonathan.

It's in the curve between the fingers and thumb of my right hand, and way easier to spot before she did the top of my hand.

Arms done. Shiny. They put this sugary stuff on to keep the dried mehndi from fallling off, so it would stay in contact with the skin and give a nice deep color.

I liked the feet the best.

It was great to be able to get up and walk around after nearly five hours, trust me. But I still couldn't move too much. EB fed me a bunch of watermelon and another heaping helping of fried rice at the end of the night. People had been coming and going all day, and at the end of the night Jon left to have pre-Bachelor Party dinner with his family. My family trickled back home bit by bit until it was just my mom and I, EB and a couple of their other family members and my godmother's house, sitting around and resting after a wonderful day. There's that bit of time at the end of your party where you sit back and take in just how great it went. To me that's even better than the actual party, which I usually spend worrying about how everything is going. I was so overwhelmed by everything people were doing for me, I couldn't do anything but just absorb it. Sort of like the henna dye on my skin.

It's hard for me to believe I didn't take any pictures of the mehndi right after I washed it off, but there were still about 50 bajillion things left to do, so it's easy to think it slipped my mind. They say that the darker your mehndi comes out is an indication of how much your man loves you.

I already know how lucky I am to have Jon, but it's nice to get a little confirmation. This photo was taken the day AFTER the wedding--a full three days after the mehndi party. And it stayed nice and dark until about a month after the wedding.

Jon had set up a tripod with his camera to take a photo every minute. My friend A.A. also took a bunch of supplemental photos with his other camera (a lot of which were in these last posts). Thanks, A.A.!

the mehndi

2011-11-29T21:29:00.002-06:00

Two days before the wedding, after I was showered and fragrant from my Ros, we headed over to my godmother's house for the mehndi*. My mom had bought a very lovely outfit from Devon for me to wear to the event, but it was obvious this was the first mehndi in our family, because it was floorlength and would have been a huge hassle to keep up over my knees with both my hands and legs unable to move. Good thing my godmother's daughter-in-law had the perfect short and pretty kameez at the ready for me to wear with leggings. Problem solved.

My godmother and her family rounded up a ton of saris in varying shades of green and blue, big paper decorations, and they even put up a tent on their front patio by the water fountain. It was so beautiful, I was sad that the weather was chilly so we couldn't set up our stations outside. And she had a ton of food--including this fried rice my godfather makes that I can't seem to get enough of. I knew that I wouldn't be able to use my hands or even move that much, so I was inhaling as much of everything as I could before I had to take up the spot I'd be in for the next four hours.

I love plants almost as much as my godmother does. I don't know how she knew that I love gladiola (gladiolas? gladioli?). So pretty. I really wish I had taken more pictures of the decor. It must have taken a lot of work and the whole place looked wonderful.

For years when I'd go to their house, I saw loveseat-like bench that has an indoor arbor over it and thought, "Self, this would be an awesome seat for a bride and groom." Guess where Jon and I were sitting? My godmother's 89-year-old mother said a prayer for us and then we all got down to business. Personally, it means a lot to me to have her blessings, and of older people in general, mostly because aside for that one year I had with my nani when I was seven, mine have always been so very far away. And now they're all in Heaven, where I'm sure they're sending their blessings. But it's always nice to hug a grandma in real life.

My godmother hired two mehndi artists--one dedicated to do mine--to do the mehndi for most all the women. A lot of my family, friends and parents' friends came at different times throughout the day and evening. You want to let the dark green paste dry to black and let it flake off to get the best dye on your skin, and the palms have more keratin (thanks, s, for that tidbit) so the color comes out better there. But it's a huge inconvenience not to be able to use your hands for so many hours, so many of them only got a design on the back of one hand. You know, so they could drive home.

Here are some highlights of their mehndi:

Tomorrow: Jon made a time-lapse video of mine.

From wikipedia: "Mehndi is a ceremonial art form which originated in ancient India. Intricate patterns of mehndi are typically applied to brides before wedding ceremonies."

the ros II

2011-11-28T23:29:00.003-06:00

After all the praying and the crying, we got down to the business of anointing. In the back yard.

Each person dipped their hand in the ros and put some on me with their blessings. It started out very subtly.

Then they busted out the raw eggs. To be fair they really weren't sure about this, but I remember how wonderful my hair was after my cousin's ros and I demanded the eggs in the hair. I had just forgotten how weird and slimy it felt.

My cousin took the whole "preparing the bride for her husband" thing very seriously and wanted to make sure my skin was soft "all over," ha ha. If you can't tell, this took me by surprise. Mostly because the stuff had come right out of the fridge.

I think my brother-in-law (in India, your cousins are considered your sisters and brothers) had a lot of fun with this, too. He dumped what was left of the ros on my head.

Jon was busy taking photos, but he didn't totally get out of it. I must say they went really easy on the guy; this was the worst of it, by my dad.

After I showered, my hair and skin felt AMAZING throughout my wedding festivities and for about a week into my honeymoon. And it smelled good, too. My brother couldn't get off work and fly in until that evening--otherwise these photos would look a lot more like Nickelodeon.

the ros I

2011-11-27T23:42:00.000-06:00

Not a lot of Americans know that--beyond that stupid "red dot or feather" differentiation Jay-Z made famous in "Girls, Girls, Girls"--there are a LOT of different types of Indians. As you cross the border into different states, you may as well be in another country because each has its own language, food, clothing and customs. And that's not even taking into consideration Indians who have settled in different parts of the world. You know, like the Midwestern part of the United States.

My mom and dad are from different places in the Motherland, so each brings their own wedding customs to the table. Where my mother is from, they prepare a bride and groom for their wedding with a haldi ceremony by having family members give their blessings then put turmeric paste on their skin (supposed to condition it and make you "fairer"). Where my dad is from, they do a Ros, which is the word for the coconut milk/paste they use to do essentially do the same, but with a lot of signs of the cross. Also, coconut makes your skin soft and smooth and your hair lustrous. And it smells great, too.

From wikipedia: "The Ros anointing ceremony, conducted one or two days before a wedding, celebrates the last day of virginity of the bride and bridegroom and involves the parents' blessing of the bride and groom, who are anointed with ros, a mixture of coconut milk and coconut oil, while a cross is inscribed on the bride's forehead."

I was so thankful to have my dad's sister and her family (husband, daughter, daughter's husband and their two kids) here for the wedding. We've never had a wedding over here, let alone a Ros. Without them, we would have been totally lost. They flew in from Mumbai and Dubai, respectively, and did a lot of shopping* for the wedding. Originally, they were going to buy my wedding sari, but while I'm sure I would have loved whatever they had chosen, I found one I liked here so I let them off the hook. My cousin found complementary jewelry for the set I was to wear, she had dresses made for the three flower girls (including her own 4-year-old), and also brought a bunch of other stuff for everyone.

My aunt brought the sado I would be wearing to the Ros, a hot-pink sari that my cousin wore to hers in 2003 (I was there, too), and my paternal grandmother wore to hers, way back in 1942. It was pretty fragile. I was honored to wear it.

It's worn a different style than what I'm used to, so I needed a lot of help. Later, they added a garland of jasmine and some other flowers to my hair. You can't see it well, but I'm also wearing a long gold necklace that my grandmother had given to my mother. It's the one thing of hers that I have.

If you've ever seen a Bollywood movie, there's pretty much always a wedding (seems to be the main plot point--and usually the climax--because after the wedding, there really is nothing else to life, if you believe the film industry). And in almost every wedding, there is a scene where the girl's family is beside themselves with sobby sadness because traditionally the girl goes to live with her in-laws so the family is literally giving her away. This is called the bidaai, and sometimes includes sad singing. We didn't have that at the wedding, because we were very busy breaking it down. Besides, Jon and I live about six minutes away from my parents and I'm still at their house all the time. They're going to have to do much more than bless our marriage to get rid of me that easily.

But that didn't mean there was no crying.

My parents had to give us their official blessings. I have only seen my dad in tears twice before this. It's so unnerving, I freeze, not knowing what to do. On the day of my Ros, I was pretty much paralyzed. Both of them were a soggy mess, shakily making the sign of cross in front of me and praying for long lives of happiness for both me and Jon. And when I saw them crying, I lost it too. It was a sobfest. Poor Jon, he didn't know what to do either, so he took pictures. Thank goodness for my relatives, who made a few jokes and offered them a little solidarity; they went through this too with their daughter. If they hadn't been there, I don't know what we would have done.

I'm glad we had this opportunity to get the major sobbing out of the way before the wedding. I gave both my parents strict instructions not to cry on my wedding day. And they did amazingly well. Most of the tears that day were streaming down my face.

*One of the times my aunt and cousin were shopping for my wedding stuff in Dadar, just ONE day before the 2011 Mumbai bomb blasts. SCARY. Thank God they weren't there one day later.

our song

2011-11-26T22:09:00.003-06:00

Thank God for email. I have such a faulty memory, which is probably why I like to document everything. Apparently, Jon and I decided "our song" was Paul Simon's "Something So Right," over one of our daily marathon emails--we would essentially be having a triple-thread instant-message-like correspondence via gmail. Those missives are hard to make sense of later, by anyone else. Within that same message (which was on April 6, 2006), we were also discussing the latest episodes of The Amazing Race and LOST, and how unhappy we were with Libby, Lori and Dave. And some fratboys, apparently. The only downside to living together is that we still have these awesome conversations, but no way of preserving them or looking back to resolve disagreements later.

So what we would dance to during our first dance as husband and wife was a no-brainer:

The lyrics are so true of both of us. Which makes it even more amazing that we were able to find love from another person so different and so far away.

There was so much to pack into the reception. I wanted as much dancing as humanly possible, but I knew that neither Jon nor his mom cared for dancing. I would have loved to have dance to "Teri Pyari Pyari Surat" and then BROKEN IT DOWN halfway through, Mando-style with my dad, to "Galyan Sankli Sonya Chi" with the moves of his people. But that would take more time, and Jon's mom hadn't yet chosen what she wanted. In the end, we decided to combine the parent/child dance to one song that nearly everybody likes--we all danced out there at the same time. It's by a band that Jon's mom, my dad, and the two of us all love:

Of course it's the Beatles. I wish there were more bands out there that appease multiple generations at once. Our kids will definitely be listening to them, too.

For kicks, there's "Teri Pyari Pyari Surat." My dad loves that song, it's my nani's all-time favorite song, from her favorite movie, Sasural, and it plays every time my father calls my cell phone. I love it because it makes me think of him.

It loosely translates to "let your lovely lovely face never attract someone's evil eye," which sounds sort of silly, but some people believe that jealousy toward a successful/beautiful person/baby will end up causing some kind of harm to that person. The lyrics are both a compliment and a protective statement. Hindi just doesn't translate sometimes.

And bonus, here's a Bollywood-ized version of the Konkani classic "Galyan Saankli."

This is totally a Bolly-sampling of the original folk song trying to mimic the oldschool village-style dancing and outfits. The main phrase, "Galyan sankli sonya chi, ee poori kona chi" roughly--and I could be wrong, my dad is sleeping--means, "that girl with the gold chain around her neck, whose daughter/girl is she?" It's a CLASSIC.

It was the right decision: Jon and Mrs. M didn't have too much on the dancefloor, while my dad and I still danced our socks off the entire night anyway. Everybody wins!

blessings

2011-11-25T23:42:00.010-06:00

Above all else, Jon and I wanted this wedding to be a reflection of us. We were holding it in my hometown, and nearly all of his guests would have to travel to attend. Plus I was trying my best to get in as much Indian stuff as possible. So we were thrilled when the pastor at the church Jon grew up attending (where his parents still are very active) agreed to fly all the way out here from California to officiate.

Pastor Dave has known Jon well for a long time--his son is one of Jon's childhood best friends and former roommate. He and his wife were the ones who started asking Jon when his "bride" was coming back to town after that first Christmas party back in 2005. While my family knows several great pastors, the close ties Pastor Dave has to Jon made him a natural choice.

With the craziness of planning, we really weren't able to spend that much time discussing our ceremony with the pastor. He sent us a packet with sample services and we hemmed and hawed about it right up until the week of the wedding, which is when we chose our readings as well:

First reading (read by my dad's sister's daughter, who came out from Dubai)

Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work: If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up! Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three brands is not quickly broken.
--Ecclesiastes 4:9-12*

Second reading (read by one of Jon's very good friends from college, whose husband--also a very good friend--was in our bridal party).

Calvin: What's it like to fall in love?
Hobbes: Well... say the object of your affection walks by...
Calvin: Yeah?
Hobbes: First, your heart falls into your stomach and splashes your innards. All the moisture makes you sweat profusely. This condensation shorts the circuits to your brain and you get all woozy. When your brain burns out altogether, your mouth disengages and you babble like a cretin until she leaves.
Calvin: THAT'S LOVE?!?
Hobbes: Medically speaking.
Calvin: Heck, that happened to me once, but I figured it was cooties!
--Bill Waterson

Pastor Dave is a consummate professional. He didn't know which readings we'd chosen until we rehearsed the night before the wedding. Instead of judging us for my commitment to practicality or Jon's unbridled love for Calvin and Hobbes, he smiled and even worked it into his sermon at the actual ceremony. He made us all feel at ease with the big-ness of the day. But he won my heart forever when he calmed my mom's nerves before the wedding, saying prayer with her before it began. He's a great guy, and very good at what he does.

Later, we realized that Pastor Dave came out for our wedding even though it was the weekend of his only grandchild's first birthday. And even though they were flying out the next morning at 6 a.m., I think I even saw him out on the dancefloor.

*The Bible from which my cousin read was one that Jon found on his doorstep many years ago--it's monogrammed with his name. He's pretty sure who sent it, and he hopes that person realized it was a part of our wedding.

no words for this thank you

2011-11-24T23:44:00.004-06:00

You know how there are certain people in your life whom you don't see very often, but when you run into them at the grocery store or see them at a party, you can feel there's a deep and important connection? I have that with my godmother. Whenever I see her and the way she smiles at me when she sees me, it just seems very comforting, like that feeling you get when you show up at your childhood home after it's been awhile.

***

In August 1977 my father got on a plane to the United States from Kuwait, where he had been working. My mom had already been here a few months, and the two were getting married shortly after he arrived. Not much of that--the visas, the travel, the wedding--would have even been possible without my godmother, who (with her family) was their ally and their support through some of the toughest leaps of faith two twentysomethings can make: Leaving everything they knew and loved to make a life for themselves on the other side of the world.

***

Several years before that, my mom had come to the Dairy Capital of India to study nursing. She'd had to learn Gujarati and did so fairly easily, the superstar she is. Her feisty roommate kept things interesting, but there wasn't much to do outside of training. A bookstore nearby would rent books for a week, a per-book-fee-library of sorts. After awhile, my mom realized a girl who lived down the hall from her in the dorm was taking out the same books. They started splitting the cost and sharing the rentals. Soon they began hanging out, and it didn't take long for before they were great friends. A few years later, my future godmother went to America. And she invited my mom to come and join her.

***

On my mother's wedding day, not a single member of her rather large family was present. And, except for his bride and my godmother, my dad had only met everyone two days before. It was a foreign place where everyone spoke their second language, so far from the comforts of home. I can't imagine how scary that must have been. My mom said she cried the entire day.

My godmother and her family arranged everything. It was a simple ceremony at the Bretheren Church in town (the first Indian wedding there, I believe). People brought food. My mom made her own wedding sari from white fabric, a bronze-brown/red/green border she attached and lacy appliques she sewed on by hand. And my godmother and her sisters were at her side the whole day. They helped her get ready, did her makeup and hair and pleated and pinned her sari, surrounding her like a warm, comforting circle, stepping into the spots her sisters would have had on such an important day. I have no doubt they wiped away her tears.

I know this because they were there on my wedding day, too. They showed up early, armed with no-nonsense expertise and vivid memories. None of my mom's sisters were able to make it for my wedding, either (not for lack of trying, stupid Visas). Even though cc and pp arranged for coffee, breakfast snacks and bottled water for everyone, Mom mentioned to my godmother's sister, who was in the car and almost there, that she had a headache from not sleeping the night before and that auntie turned around, made breakfast and a thermos full of tea. She showed up with all that stuff, wearing the same sari she'd worn to my parents' wedding 34 years ago and a solid gold necklace with a flat, wide charm that spelled her name--decades before it became a trend in the '90s. My dad had them made in Kuwait all those years ago, and brought one for each of them two days before his wedding.

When the bridal party and I were beautified and ready to leave for pictures, I went back up to the suite to grab my lipstick. I opened the door and saw them all, half laughing and half crying, standing around my mom. Same warm circle, fussing with pleats and pins, cracking jokes. I could just see how it was 34 years ago.

***

After I was born, my godmother was always there to help. From what I've heard, she came over every day to help with the laundry, cooking and taking care of us while my dad was at work because my mom had surgery to remove the grapefruit-sized cyst they had thought was my twin (before ultrasound was so common). She even washed my cloth diapers (I was allergic to disposable). Later, apparently I would only eat if my godmother was feeding me.

She is vivid in my memories. I can still feel the warmth of her hug, and remember sitting in her lap pulling on her long long fingernails. I remember her old house, on the street that has the same name as her oldest son; hunting around in the backyard for fallen walnuts and peeking through the posts of the banister; only liking drumsticks the way she made them.

***

I have only one regret about my wedding day. After an awesome performance by my godmother's sons, nieces and nephews as well as the speeches, I grabbed the microphone to say a few words. I started by thanking everyone for coming, some from as far as Hawaii and Dubai, not to mention my dad's sister and her husband from Mumbai. And then I turned to look at my parents. I attempted to thank them for all the sacrifices they made so my brother and I could have the amazing lives we have today, but I could hardly get any words out. And as soon as the tears came, my brain went blank. My voice started crackling and sort of faded out. Just like my mother, I cried throughout my wedding day, but my tears were from being overwhelmed by feelings.

For months I had envisioned what I'd say at that moment; I'd allotted time to tell my godmother how much I appreciated everything she's done for me and my family, in front of everyone so they would all know just how amazing she is. I mean, there's a chance I wouldn't even exist without her--my parents could have lived out their lives on different continents. On top of that, her extended family was so generous with their time, their talents, their love. They gave me a gift that day that I have always dreamed of: A boisterous, big-family celebration. We're not even technically family, but no one could tell. I cannot express how much that means to me. When I had the opportunity, microphone in hand, I blew it.

Later, in the disco-light darkness and bumping music, I found where my godparents were sitting and said the thank-you that everyone really should have heard in my speech. She said she didn't need for me to have said it in front of everybody. She knows how I felt, because I'm her daughter, too.

the singing

2011-11-23T23:10:00.011-06:00

My mom grew up as one of seven kids. As it goes with every family, each person is known for their special qualities. There's the artist, the actress, the one who loved to play with dolls, the mischievous one, the stick in the mud, the momma's girl, the baby, etc. But they each have special talents, too. And while they're all excellent singers, my mom's is known for her gorgeous voice.

In India, most of the movies are musicals. They put out three a day, and when one is released the soundtrack is EVERYWHERE. I can pinpoint my trips to the Motherland more easily by what movies were out at that time (Mohobbatein was popular during that winter after college). Back in the day, my mom's family didn't have a tv. They didn't even have a radio until later. But they had my mom. Nani loved the movies, so they'd always see the new release right away, and then my mom would memorize the best songs and perform for the family. She started winning singing competitions. The principal would even pull her out of class just to hear a little something in the office.

When she was a teenager, my oldest aunt snuck away to Bollywood and was actually featured in a couple of movies before my nani made her come back home. Someone heard my mom singing and was begging nani to let her train to be a playback singer (almost none of the Hindi film actors do their own singing, just lip synching to a few very talented playback singers' soundtracks. It's weird, but it works). She said no, my mom was still a kid and had to finish school.

Even in nursing school, my mom would distract people from studying just by puttering around her room and singing with the window open. Everyone knew her for her voice, and there may have been talk of a proposal from one of her many fans on campus.

***

When she moved across the world to the United States, there weren't many opportunities to enjoy Indian things, but my mom was always singing. Her beautiful voice has been in my ears since before my ears were even formed. She sang when she cooked, she sang when she cleaned. And I can't even describe how unbelievably warm, safe and blissful it feels to lay my head on her lap and fall asleep to one of her lullabies. Maybe that's why I never want to go to sleep.

She sang at Indian church, often up at the front but almost always in a group. It was always easy to pick out her voice; she could hit those impossibly high Hindi notes so sweetly, like a violin. I've never admitted this to anyone, but not once have I sang along to the benediction at the end of the service in all my life--I love to bask in the the way she does it. And I may not be the only one--sometimes it felt like she was the only one singing. So many invitations to perform, but she never took it to the next level.

Unfortunately, my mom doesn't sing so much anymore. She's fallen out of practice the last several years. Of course she's still good, but obviously not the same as when we were both much younger. For decades now, I've been begging her to record her voice somewhere so I can hold onto it forever. I'm obsessed with these kind of things, like photographs. But she never has. And that breaks my heart.

That didn't stop me, however, from making one more request. That she sing at my wedding. She didn't say yes right away, but she gave in.

photo by SecondPrint Productions

Walking down the aisle with me and my dad, she was stoic, her jaw set so she wouldn't cry. She seems almost angry in those photos. And she wouldn't look at me the entire time she was singing. It was a church song that I had never heard, but one she grew up singing back home, "Aashishon ki baarish (showers of blessings)." She did, however, turn toward my brother right before she started. He smirked and got her to smile.

She began softly, her voice wavering, and it was a little shaky the entire time. But she made it through the whole song without a single tear. I wish I could have said the same for myself.

I was so proud of her. I am so proud of her.

dresses

2011-11-22T22:11:00.001-06:00

Early on, we decided that a trip to India to shop for the wedding was just not going to happen. We figured cost of trip/time off work would easily trump the markup--ridiculous as it is--on what we'd buy here. Plus it's been established that when I have more than several things to choose from, I become paralyzed (I stand by my statement that I would gladly plan anyone ELSE's wedding so I could do all the fun creative stuff but not have to make any decisions--or pay for it).

So we made several trips to Devon Avenue, or "Little India" or the "Desi Corridor."

All I knew was that I wanted everyone to wear Indian clothes. Hey, my family is Christian, so I wasn't going to be tied to Jon and get to walk around a fire or other Hindu* stuff everyone assumes you'd have if you're marrying an Indian. So I had to get the Indian in wherever I could get away with it. Which was apparently in the clothing, but only for the girls. Ah, compromise.

My mom and I had been to Devon several times looking for my own outfit, and we quickly realized that getting six of the same sari--the most universally flattering of all outfits, in my opinion--was going to be really difficult. I had been combing the online shops, and every real-life shop kept saying they'd order for us, but I didn't feel comfortable ordering something I hadn't gotten to see in person. You just never know what you're going to get when you find something on the Internet, right?

We decided to get *complementary* saris in the same color family. I'd seen it done and it was awesome. But finding six individual pieces that went together without looking disjointed was a near-impossible task. We started with one that had thick gold stripes of flowers, but the next one wasn't nearly as blingy. So then who would get which one? I could smell the disaster coming a mile away.

One place we kept going (and making the shop guys dig out everything in any sort of blue-green color time and time again, two of which we ended up buying for the backdrop), finally had enough with us. They knew my mom and I as soon as we walked in after a few months. On our third trip, when I was in the dressing room trying stuff on, cc and pp started talking to the girl our age behind the counter. She pulled out some bright pink saris with peach borders that had been special-ordered and just arrived from India. We were sold in about five minutes.

Granted, it was pretty hastily wrapped (there was hardly anything hanging off the back), but you get the idea. The detailing goes really well with my wedding dress, to boot.

A sari has three parts: the blouse, the petticoat (skirt you wear underneath and tuck it into) and the actual sari, which can be six or nine yards. People wear them all sorts of ways, too. The blouse and petticoat are handy in case of a wardrobe malfunction, which is always a possibility (and quite possibly may have occurred,) when there is alcohol at an event. We were going for the pinned-over-the-left shoulder look with the end hanging down the back.

We decided that because there were going to be girls and boys on both my side and Jon's, it might be nice to differentiate by color. So I went with a royal blue that I thought would go well with the lighter hair and bring out the blue eyes in Jon's sisters, and a "peacock" not-green/not-teal that went really well with the girls on my team. Because I was feeling so productive, and we were getting a deal, I also picked up all the petticoats and the jewelry for the girls, which included necklace, earrings, bracelets and a maangtika (a jewel that hangs from your hair onto your forehead). I made some really sophisticated drawings to share with the girls who couldn't make it out to Devon.

I know, I have mad drawing skills.

Each sari came with a little extra on the end, from which the tailor** makes the perfectly matching blouse. All of the girls got to choose their own blouse styles, of which there are OH SO MANY. This drawing doesn't even come close to the books the tailor had to choose from.

I also sent them a video on how to wear a sari so they knew what they were up against. Then I followed that up with a promise that a whole team of Aunties would be present to help them.

I know you just scrolled through to look at the pictures [insert TLDR here], which is fine. Here's what you really wanted to see anyway. Photos are cropped to protect the innocent, but it really is a shame, because we had the most beautiful bridesmaids I've ever seen. Keep in mind that I'm only going off the few photos so generously shared with us, so I don't have all the angles.

Team Cadiz, minus the captain.

Team Jon, including the captain.

Team Jon from the back.

Trust me, these people looked AMAZING. I know I'm biased, but everyone keeps telling me. And five out of five doctors agreed; that's better odds than toothpaste.

*Hindu is the religion, and Hindi is the language. You can speak the latter without being the former. Or vice versa.
** By the way, our tailor, Dilip Uncle (not my real uncle), was great--for no extra, he found this great georgette fabric for the long-sleeved blouse that not only matched perfectly, it was light enough that she wasn't going to be hot. At least I hope she wasn't hot.

chandelier

2011-11-21T23:16:00.002-06:00

To say I like Internet browsing is a serious understatement. I'm the type of person who will find a blog I like, and then go back to the BEGINNING and read every single post. Granted, because I have no time, this happens rarely, but I wish I could do it more often. So it's not an exaggeration that I spent a LONG time looking around the Interwebs for wedding inspiration.

Months before the wedding, I stumbled upon a photo of a beautiful flower chandelier. Granted, it was all fresh flowers and crystals, but I thought I could put my own spin on it, and not have to break the bank--or hire a professional florist. Of course I was going to make it out of paper.

Remember those paper and pipe-cleaner flowers we used to make in girl scouts back in the day? You know, the ones where you take tissue paper, fold it up accordion style and then pull apart the layers?

Yep, just your everyday gift-bag stuffing, all dressed up.

Jon and I were conceptualizing this chandelier for quite some time. He made a wonderful schematic, got the supplies (chicken wire, pvc pipe) from the hardware store and put it all together. He even made a wooden stand of sorts so make it easy to take the pipes apart and get them in/out of a car--there's one thing you learn after living in the Midwest for awhile: It can rain at any time, and at any severity.

Unfortunately, while he and my dad were assembling the pieces out in the backyard, a pvc/chickenwire piece got entangled in the drill, spun around sharp-edge out and nearly took off one of Jon's fingers--the fourth finger on his left hand. It was a deep and gory cut, but I thank God it wasn't worse. It healed before the wedding, and now his wedding ring covers the scar.

Looks innocent, but chickenwire can be deceptively deadly.

As you may remember, in August we were in the throes of paper-rose sweatshoppery. I was beginning to realize that even if I pulled 15 allnighters in a row (like that's even physically possible), I couldn't get everything done without some serious assistance. Lucky for me, I have fabulous friends who kept offering to help. I took them up on it, and threw myself a Sweatshop Birthday party.

Cc, pp, angel07, ri, mfm and a few others who I don't have cool blog-code names for (feel free to request one in the comments) Madelyn, my parents and my godmother came to my parents' house on my birthday and made 200-some paper flowers of all sizes in varying shades of blue and green, with a few hints of orange here and there. And if their manual labor wasn't enough, they brought me presents! Pp even brought her laptop and was sharing potential songs for the wedding playlist. She had to come later, but eb attached nearly all of them to the wire frame. We never would have been able to pull off such a feat in a week, let alone a day!

The venue for the wedding said we could only use magnets to secure our chandelier. Good thing my man is very handy and creative. The chandelier only weighed about 25 pounds and he ordered high-powered magnets--four did just the trick.

We positioned it around a *real* chandelier right above the center of the dancefloor.

I was very happy with the way it turned out. Sadly, the day after the wedding (as well as the day before) it was pouring outside, so we didn't even bother bringing it home.

This would be a much better picture if I didn't have to crop out so many beautiful faces (you know, to protect the innocent). We were going for a The Cosby Show season 5 "island" opening vibe.

Samosas, presents and ice cream cake (my mom always gets me an ice cream cake)? Check.
Being surrounded by awesome friends and family? Check.
Making something out of a random concept that Jon and I dreamed up based on something we saw on the Internet? Check.
Getting a big project done in one Sunday afternoon? Check.

The greatest birthday gift was being able to cross that chandelier off the list. It was so much better than I had hoped.

Best birthday ever.

the club can't even handle me right now

2011-11-20T19:01:00.003-06:00

The best thing I have in my life is the love from family and friends. Because I really do think I have the best anyone could ask for. I've always felt lucky to have them, but throughout the chaos of this wedding, I was overwhelmed by how generous and thoughtful these people are. There's a very good chance I don't deserve them. But there's no way in hell I'm ever going to give them back.

Just one of a hundred examples? The Bachelorette Party

My team, captained by my brother as the maid of honor (whose ideal idea of Vegas is surely spending the weekend with his sister and a bunch of her girlfriends), put together an amazing weekend in Las Vegas. While I cannot divulge details of what happened (keep your minds clean, people), I will give you some of the highlights:

adjoining suites at The Venetian
fabulous pools
phenomenal food at Mesa Grill
chilling at Tao pool (apparently the same spot they took Kim Kardashian for her bachelorette the weekend before)

The deejay at TAO pool started playing "Party Rock Anthem" by LMFAO and when it got to the chorus, they launched all these beachballs (probably about 50) off the roof of the cabanas onto all of us in the pool. It was a very nice touch.

walking around the strip
the spa at Encore--omg
Cirque du Soleil's Ka
a very interesting scavenger hunt at the clubs (let's just say I had my picture taken with a guy wearing a pinkie ring and managed to find an off-duty police officer) of which I got 95% of the items checked off the list
Tabu*
making international friends from places as exotic as Canada
grilled cheese at 6 a.m.--next to a table of passed-out asian boys who wouldn't even sit up for their eggs
Bloody Marys at Mon Ami Gabi (at Paris), with the second-best server I've ever met
Doritos mac n cheese and Philly cheesesteak dumplings with a view of Treasure Island fireworks
JABBAWOCKEEZ (awesome surprise, and even better than I thought they'd be)
scandalous peoplewatching at brand-new Brand (let's just say that VIP is a section I'll be passing on in the future, thankyouverymuch)
more hanging at the pool
Deep-fried oreos on the biggest ice-cream sundae I've ever seen
Dim Sum, with congee (everyone except my bro was a good sport about trying new stuff

AMAZING. I cannot convey just how spoiled and loved I still feel just thinking about it.

People flew in from all over just to celebrate with me, and some who weren't able to make it set up another trip a few weeks later, to New York. It was considerably different, what with Hurricane Irene and all, but also a wonderful time. And while I was freaking out about missing a weekend of wedding prep, I think the mandatory break saved me from a breakdown of other sorts.

Spoiled. And very very grateful.

*In Las Vegas we discovered a delicious drink that didn't *taste* that strong, called L.A. Water. It may or may not have played a part in the festivities. Let's get a look at the ingredients, shall we?

1 1/2 oz Absolut® vodka
1 1/2 oz gin
1 1/2 oz white tequila
1 1/2 oz white rum
1 1/2 oz triple sec
1 splash sweet and sour mix
1 1/2 oz Midori® melon liqueur
1 1/2 oz Chambord® raspberry liqueur

It was a great time.

elephants

2011-11-19T22:19:00.002-06:00

Jon's older sister, M, in all her crafty genius, made the decorations for our gift table. All I had said back last year sometime was that I'd love to have some elephants somewhere around the place. She said she'd take care of the gift box.

They're a lot bigger than they look here.

Originally, I believe, they were supposed to be glued to the box, but I think they are way better as a background--that way you can see them both at the same time. The details are really where the awesome is. And everyone knows how much I love details.

Sheer dupatta-like fabric, detailing. little stars.

The gold ribbon helped distinguish them--I love the way it twists and folds over itself.

Those little elephant-toe mirrors are so Indian.

On A's recommendation, M glued this golden rocky stuff all around the edges. The elephants are now standing sentinel in our room, but I can't manage to keep the stuff from falling off. Unfortunately in the transport back home they got a little bumped around, but they're still beautiful, and obviously made with a lot of love. Thanks, A and M.

If there's any doubt, give instructuons

2011-11-18T23:18:00.002-06:00

For the end of the ceremony, we didn't want to use rice or bubbles--Jon's cousin did sparklers but we were getting married in the afternoon and they're somehow suddenly illegal in Illinois.

EB had an idea of using dried jasmine instead. I would already be wearing jasmine in my hair (a very Indian thing), so we thought it'd be a nice touch of continuity. So I bought a couple big bags of the dried stuff, some tulle in different shades of blue and asked my dad to make little bundles tied with ribbon for guests to throw as we walked back down the aisle as husband and wife. He got tired of it pretty quickly so my mom helped him get the job done.

On the day of the wedding, I assumed people would be told what to do if they didn't know already, but we were so busy, everyone sort of forgot. People held them in their laps, reverently. Not a single dried jasmine bud flew in the air that day.

After we got back from the honeymoon, one of my friends from work asked me on Facebook what those little bundles were about--if they had some sort of cultural or religious significance. I told her nope, people were just supposed to throw the stuff at us but it was an epic fail in our part for not having a sign or some kind of instructions.

They don't smell very strong, but if you sniff up close, there's a very nice fragrance.

I'm keeping one of these pinned up to my bulletin board at work as a reminder of how people are not mind readers and I have to make sure and communicate what I want or risk disappointment. Another reminder is the basket of 200 tulle bags of jasmine flowers sitting in the basement.

But not all of them went to waste. Pp's boyfriend has been keeping them in his shoes.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

escort cards

2011-11-17T22:13:00.002-06:00

When Jon proposed, we didn't set a wedding date right away (savings draining away into the condo on the market). You'd think I would still be thinking about it, or at least gathering ideas, right? Nope. Through the end of 2009 and most of 2010, before we actually started planning, I had only decided on one thing: How I was going to make sure Jon's mistress got a prime spot at our wedding.

Sports, people. SPORTS IS HIS MISTRESS. Between work, hanging out with me and friends and fueling the devotion to his teams, the man doesn't have time for an actual mistress. And I like it that way.

Escort cards are generally how people figure out where they're going to be sitting when they show up to the reception. They differ from placecards in that placecards tell you which specific seat you'll be occupying at the table. Some people make one big sign, some people combine the cards with favors, some people skip the numbers all together--some friends of ours named their tables after places around the world that they'd visited together.

Here's what we did: Each table was named after one of our favorite professional sports players. We put the jersey icon displayed at a table on the back of the name card for people sitting at that table so they could match it up. Jon was worried that because the numbers weren't going to be sequential, people would be confused. But when we made our grand entrance, it looked like everyone got to where they needed to sit just fine.

Henry Ellard is Jon's favorite athlete of all time (Rams). He wore the numbers 80, 85 and 17. Anyone who has emailed Jon will note the significance. Michael Jordan (Bulls)? Well, duh.

Kai came over a couple days before the wedding to help us get some "conceptualizing" done about how we were going to decorate the space. She and her husband have been gutting their new house and re-doing it for the last two years, so she's pretty practiced at mocking up her vision. I wanted the escort cards pinned up on glassless frames with a fabric background* kind of like this. Here's the mockup for the escort card table, just outside the doors of the reception area. I designed a poster based on our wedding invitation so that we'd have a nice even number of frames. I think that was a nice touch.

My brother and his M couldn't stand the frames up against the wall because of some pillars, so they just laid them on the table. Honestly, I didn't even get to see what it looked like. I hope it was nice.

Three nights before our wedding, I was typing out all the guests' names and printing out the little cards. Jon and my sisters-in-law and Steve were wrangling it all together, gluing the correct tables with the correct jerseys, punching the holes and making sure everything was going to work out, mathwise.

Steve (Jon never goes without socks) did a great job with quality control.

My mom had helped me figure out the whole who can sit with whom thing (very tricky when you're dealing with the Auntie Patrol, in which some people cannot be sitting at the same table together). I agree, this is clearly the hardest thing to do when you're planning a wedding, floral tape notwithstanding. As you can see, we had a very sophisticated method of Post-It Notes cut into strips to designate who was sitting at which table.

The batik fabric was not half bad, though.

These are the escort cards. The table numbers were simple orange cardstock with a jersey image. Each of those was meticulously cut out by my dad, my cousin's husband, my dad's sister and her husband. You know, because when you fly all the way here from Dubai and India, you really want to be sitting at a kitchen table in suburbia with a pair of child safety scissors all night. God bless them all.

Thank goodness some of my friends took pictures of the decorations/elements--we have about a billion photos of ourselves, but slim pickings of the rest of the stuff. Which is why there aren't a lot of detail shots for me to put up here. We haven't gotten photos back from the photographer yet, and we want him to take his time with editing.

During the reception when Jon and I were sitting on a raised platform and looking out into the crowd, I realized that I hadn't really given my crew much direction as to where to put which table. Our parents and immediate families were very close, but everyone else was sort of scattered around randomly. I think it's funny that the two people involved were the ones with the least idea of who any of these people are, my brother's M and Jon's sister's husband. But I guess it doesn't matter; there wasn't a bad seat in the whole place.

Oh, and if you're wondering which players we chose, here they are in no particular order:

Jon's guys: Henry Ellard (Rams, 80), Kobe Bryant (Lakers 24), Derek Fisher (Lakers 2), Marshall Faulk (Rams 28), Eric Gagne (Dodgers 38), Steven Jackson (Rams 39), Earvin "Magic" Johnson (Lakers 32), Matt Kemp (Dodgers 27), Clayton Kershaw (Dodgers 22), Kurt Warner (Rams 13), Lamar Odom "Kardashian" (Lakers 7)

My guys: Michael Jordan (Bulls 23), Walter Payton (Bears 34), B.J. Armstrong (Bulls 10), Scottie Pippen (Bulls 33), Andre Dawson (Cubs 8), Patrick Kane (Blackhawks 88), Derrek Lee (Cubs 25), Greg Maddux (Cubs 31), Jim McMahon (Bears 9), Mike Singletary (Bears 50), Jonathan Toews (Blackhawks 19), Brian Urlacher (Bears 54)

*When I made a quilt for Ale's baby at the beginning of the year, I just fell in love with one particular square: the not-teal-not-green-sort-of-peacock-feathery one. Of course, when I went to the store to get it for the escort frames, I found out that they stopped printing it. I had to settle for some Indonesian batik print that was nice, but not nearly as cool as the original. Oh well.

the cake

2011-11-16T22:02:00.001-06:00

There's a girl at work, Brenda, who bakes. In fact, back in the day she made cakes for events until it wasn't fun anymore. Her stuff is AMAZING, guys. I pretty much love most any type of dessert, unlike some people [cough, mom*, cough] whose praise peaks at "it was okay" for pretty much anything. Even she says Brenda's stuff is "pretty good" (read: blue ribbon!). It's sweet without being cloying, fluffy but still has substance and it's just all-around scrumptious. She makes her own frosting that's so light I never want to scrape any off before digging in. And the cakes look amazing, too--she's got a fat binder with all these "Ace-of-Cake" type photos and letters from people who love her stuff as much as we do. I've known I wanted her to make my wedding cake long ago, even before she created that awesome underwear graduation cake for my brother.

I'd seen Brenda turn people's requests down. She's in nursing school and working and has a family and lots of stuff going on. And I can only assume that the kinds of cakes she makes take a LOT of tender loving time. I was worried she'd say no. Somehow, my mom got her to do it.

Unfortunately Jon and I like things very simple, which can come off a little boring. We were thinking a really small, one-tier cake with maybe a ribbon around it for us to cut in front of everyone, and then a couple of sheet cakes the back (made by her, of course). We wanted to make the least work for Brenda as possible. But she wanted us to have a much bigger and fancier cake, with different layers in different colors. She convinced us to go with a three-tier cake featuring a white-on-white design that Jon liked. And then she made two extra sheet cakes as well. Yellow cake with strawberry filling. If anyone knows about the Jewel strawberry shortcakes around this area, it was better than that. And she made chocolate cake, too.

Before the wedding, Brenda had gone with me to the floral shop at the hospital. In a flash of reality a few weeks before the wedding, when mfm was trying to explain to me how far gone I was, I made the smart decision to have the florist make our boutonnieres and corsages because we were teetering on the precipice of too much DIY (before this wedding, I would have said there was no such thing, but I HAVE SEEN THE EDGE, PEOPLE, AND IT IS TERRIFYING). I had picked out some orange spray roses for Brenda to work with.

From the four or five bites I was able to inhale that day, this cake was every bit as good as I had hoped.

As per Syar's request, here is a clearer view of the detailing on the cake. I hope it's a little better.

You noticed the oddly misshapen stick figures on the front of the cake's middle tier? Yep, another sign the DIY train had been way too close to the cliff without a guardrail. My plan was to make a stick-figure caketopper out of floral wire as a callback to our invitations. It was a decent idea--just not one I should have been executing THE DAY OF OUR WEDDING WHILE SITTING IN THE MAKEUP CHAIR. I rave about my photographer not only because he does awesome work and has a great personality; he whipped up the "bouquet" the stick-figure bride is holding while I had to put down the pliers and look to the ceiling for mascara.

I realize that caketopper is not my best work. Another lesson I learned with this wedding is to just let things go, so I got over it. In fact, I'm just happy it was on the cake all: Jon and I were standing behind the cake when we cut it, so when I didn't see it on top of the cake, I assumed it wasn't there and was sad. I never should have doubted my sisters-in-law, cc and pp; they made SO much happen that I didn't even hear about until later. I only realized the stick figures had been on the cake all the time when we went to pick up the top tier and they were there in the box.

Don't take my word for it: There was a three-tier cake, plus two sheets in the back. And, aside from the top we got to save for next September 17, there wasn't a single piece of cake left over.

Brenda, if the nursing thing doesn't work out, please open a bakery.

now wouldn't that be something to talk about while we cut the cake?

2011-11-15T23:49:00.001-06:00

My parents are from India. And one thing Indians know how to do are MUSICALS. As luck would have it, my parents enjoy Hindi music, and my father in particular loves him some Bollywood jams*. So the stuff was always on at my house growing up. And LOUD.

Ever since I can remember, on the weekends my parents would play (read: my dad would blast) Hindi music videos while making breakfast. If you want to give me a perfect Saturday morning, wake me up with the smell of fresh parathas and the sound of "the Indian show." Then follow it up with an episode of "Saved By The Bell." I'll be your best friend. For life.

One of my favorite songs of ALL TIME is this 1980 gem from Qurbani, sang by 15-year-old Nazia Hassan:

Dude, this was NINETEEN-EIGHTY. Before the Internet. And 1980 India was more like 1973 in the states.

I distinctly remember being about three and singing this song ad nauseam at the top of the stairs with a hairbrush. A lot. In 1995, I taught my friend Kai how to sing it, even though she's Taiwanese and doesn't know more than a few Hindi words. She can still sing it to this day, but I'm pretty sure she's forgotten that it loosely translates to "If someone like you were to come into my life, that would be something to talk about/make news." Hindi never translates well. Which just adds another layer of entertainment when you stop to read the subtitles.

I wasn't sure how to go about asking Jon if we can have this cheeseball Indian Disco jam play as we'd cut the cake. I mean, in all the episodes of "Namaste America" I've made him sit through these last six years, I'm pretty sure "Aap jaisa koi" was not featured (though it REALLY SHOULD BE. Are you reading this Obaid?). I finally managed to make my request and Jon says, "Ok, but on one condition, okay?" [Dramatic pause.] That this is the final answer and we WILL NOT BE SECONDGUESSING THIS DECISION."

We didn't. And I was happy.

People came up to me later professing their love for the song, too. You like it? Maybe you'll also enjoy this:

The part that anyone can ever remember starts at about 0:55. And ends at about 1:10. I didn't even bother watching the rest.

unexpected

2011-11-14T22:57:00.001-06:00

I'm sure you've noticed, but I never talk about work. A) Maybe I would if I were an astronaut or cowboy or pirate or something that warrants a "way of life" B) It's a liability C) I don't really share this blog with that many people (unless you count the 260-ish people who came to the wedding*).

Anyway, so I don't talk about what I do. But I will make an exception today.

I'm sort of a middleman, a fixer, a person whom they send in when people are angry and screaming and they're pretty sure are going to write a letter. I run around among many departments to try to solve some of the problems. And for some reason, they think I can. But here's the secret, which I learned in my old career: You don't actually have to know anything. You just have to know whom to ask.

There's a department I don't technically work in; it isn't even in the same building. But they call my office a lot. And while I haven't even met many of them in person (and those I did meet, just for a few minutes when I wanted to build credibility and went over there to introduce myself), I know all their voices. They called me over to their department the day before I went on vacation for the wedding to give me this:

It's a wedding cake.

Made out of bath towels.

I think I love the little white flowers the best.

The woman who made it was fairly new to the job. And look at how much work she put into this; gluing down all the little flowers and pearls and the ribbons. Some of them were on recon, trying to figure out our wedding colors and when I'd be there. It was very very sweet. They all chipped in and got us the towels plus a giftcard to Macy's. You know I'm a sucker for thoughtful and handmade. I don't even work in their building.

I was so surprised and touched, I can't bring myself to take it apart.

*Please don't count all those people, because we shared the blogs with all of them and in the week after the wedding, I believe ONE new person visited it. Yes, we're lame enough that we checked. How could we not? This is how we met, for goodness' sake.

except without the half-naked male models. and more personal

2011-11-13T22:10:00.001-06:00

I come from some pretty crafty stock, and as luck would have it, I have married into a very talented family. You've seen a little of what Jon's older sister, M, can do, and I'm sure you've heard of Madelyn's craftastic endeavors. No? Well I'll let her share her stuff with you as she wishes, but know that it's pretty legendary, all across the country.

Three nights before our wedding, the apartment was a veritable sweatshop (Hello, have I EVER finished a project with time left to spare? Ok, that was only because everyone was on my case). Jon's immediate family from California and Ohio had flown in that day, so his sisters and Steve dropped in to lend a hand.

They got to work helping Jon and I get the escort card situation going, which in a shocking development was complicated (that's another several posts all together). But then Madelyn suddenly disappeared. Then M. Then A, and finally Steve. Apparently there was a convention going on in the bedroom and Jon and I weren't invited.

They were gone a LONG TIME. We were wondering if someone had fallen into a coma and the others were trying to revive him or her but didn't want us to be alarmed. Just what could they be cooking up in there?

His and hers personalized t-shirts.

Apparently, the iron-on lettering was NOT cooperating, and Madelyn had to call in for backup to try and get them to behave. They just couldn't get them to cooperate. So they decided to fill in the blanks with marker. How I would have loved to have taken a peek into the room and seen them all crowded over the shirts, scribbling furiously.

This is the most even coloring I have seen in a very long time.

Jon and I wore the shirts the next day; I had to change for my Mehndi party, but he kept his on. Not a single person made a comment about the shirt until I pointed out that my sisters-in-law made it and one for me. More than three people at the party remarked that they had just assumed the shirt came from somewhere like Abercrombie & Fitch because it looked trendy and distressed. I love that people think that, yet no one else would be able to buy anything like it anywhere.

Detail of the front upper left chest.

the food

2011-11-12T22:32:00.001-06:00

Jon has said that the best wedding meal he ever had was at his sister A's wedding. Apparently every single person at the reception was served their meal at the same time and it was warm, cooked well and delicious. So he really wanted a sit-down meal. I really wanted Indian food, which generally consists of a buffet. So we compromised on serving our wedding meal family-style: 18 items laid out on a big square table for 12, so people had plenty of stuff to choose from and didn't have to get up or stand in line.

The place where we held the reception (and the wedding itself) is owned by the restaurant who catered the meal. It's been nearly two months since the wedding and people are still commenting about how much they loved the food. And because people had been telling me for years that the meal is one of the few things guests actually remember about any wedding, that makes me very happy. Especially because the food Jon and I had tasted before making our selections was good, but not phenomenal. However the dishes served to us at the sweetheart table were some of the best Indian food I've ever had outside of my mother's house. We were wondering if our meal was extra scrumptious because it was our wedding day, but hearing everyone's rave reviews, I'm very glad to say it was all very good.

Indian food is not for everyone. Cc's son b enjoyed the Penne Alfredo, and some of Jon's family members who weren't so sure about the ethnic options seemed to like it, too. A family-style meal (when someone else is choosing the selections) is a great place to try it if you haven't had the opportunity. It was the first time for the husband of my coworker who made our phenomenal cake, and he enjoyed it so much that he's asked his wife to start trying out recipes. My mom has been sending some samples home for him with her.

Of course, there's always something that gets lost in translation. The day after the wedding, the boyfriend of a coworker facebookposted this picture of our menu, describing the gulab jamun dessert.

His caption: "@ a wedding and has Golden Fried balls of milk!!! WTF!!"

I commented that I knew how that was going to look when I made the menus, but it's really hard to describe them any other way (there isn't!). She was worried I was offended, but I think it's just as funny. That said, one of my brother's best friends here asked my mom if she would make him the "sweet balls" the next time my brother came to town. Now that he's moved back home, I'm pretty sure she'll be making them all the time.

I made Jon get up during dinner so we could visit all the tables. But then we got to talking and only made it to about four before it was time to get on with the program. I felt sad about not being able to greet all our our guests personally after not having a receiving line (though my parents did manage to make it to every table; they didn't eat much) before the dancing. If I had known that I wouldn't be able to say hello to every guest, there's a good chance I'd have gotten myself some golden fried balls of milk.

11/11/11

2011-11-11T09:27:00.002-06:00

Happy Veteran's Day, everyone.

Thank you to all the servicepeople out there--and their families--who sacrifice so much to make sure we all have the lives we have today. I'm especially thankful for my new brother-in-law, who came home from his undisclosed location just a few days before Jon and I got married and could celebrate with us. He was key in ensuring our outdoor wedding space was decorated properly (with my father-in-law), held us to strict quality-control standards while we were scrambling to get the escort cards together the week before the big day, and he was absolutely tearing it up on the dance floor. Plus, he's an all-around wonderful person.

We love you, Steve.

shower

2011-11-10T22:53:00.002-06:00

Somewhere in July during the flower madness, our friends and family threw us a beautiful wedding shower. Penelope's Press made the invitations--taking the gazebo detail from our invites and making it the focus, and they even put it on the cake.

It was at this little Italian place down the road from my parents' neighborhood that I had never really thought about, but my brother's friend worked there and the food was DELICOUS! Angeli's on Chicago Avenue, people. It's good.

I've been to wedding showers, and played a lot of games, but these guys had me guess Jon's answers to important questions. Easy ones like favorite color (duh, orange); favorite movie (Ocean's 11) or "What would you name your firstborn child?" (something Indian); ones that would be impossible for me to answer such as favorite vacation spot: His answer? " I've never really been on a vacation." How was I supposed to get THAT right? Also biggest fear? His answer: "Horrific knee injury like Napoleon Mccallum." What gives, Jon?

I really blew it when I missed "What is Jon's favorite food?" I said Fettucine Alfredo, and immediately realized the correct answer was peanut butter and grape jelly. And that's a shame because by that point I was practically choking. You see, for every wrong answer I gave, I had to add another piece of full-size grape-flavored chewing gum into my mouth and continually chew it. That makes for very difficult recall.

Jon and I are arguing about what his favorite food really is. Notice the half-empty pack of gum in his hand--the guy couldn't give me more sticks to chew fast enough.

To be fair, we flipped it around and he had to guess my answers. In the end, both of us got eight out of the 20 questions correct. I'm sad it was such a low number, but happy that we got the same score.

One of the oddest-but-best moments of the day was when Ri asked me to guess what Jon said to the question "When did you know that Cadiz was the one?" I had no idea. His answer: "The second time I had to get on a plane to fly home and I seriously considered not getting on."

diy flowers III

2011-11-09T23:29:00.000-06:00

By far, the most torturous portion of the flowermaking ended when we could put down the floral tape, but we still had a lot of work ahead of us before we could get to the final product.

First, we had to open up all of the tightly wrapped flowers. Any lazy floraltaping was certainly discovered when the centers fell out or petals started falling off.

This was another stage where they were pretty nicelooking and we considered just leaving them that way. But we were too committed by this point.

Then, the painting--by watercolor. Madelyn and pp had a talent for this step and risked sore backs and stiff shoulders to help us get through it.

There's a reason tattoos are used to identify criminals; they're pretty distinctive.

This is pp. It's only fair to out her, too.

Coffee filters are very absorbent, but they also take a long time to dry. Jon devised a very complex "station" consisting of two folding chairs and some twine, but it worked fabulously.

No two were painted exactly the same.

Jon had always said he wanted the orange to be used sparingly throughout the wedding stuff, just a pop of it here and there. I like the way monochromatic looks, so we decided the flowers would all be tones of green-blue--one good thing about making faux flowers is that you can have any color at any time of the year, even roses. Everyone seemed to think that a little variation was nice, so the painting got purposely splotchier as we went along. Madelyn even went so far to paint a few of them orange, just for kicks.

The orange ones were gorgeous, especially when wet.

After they were dried upside down, the petals were all sort of stuck together and misshapen.

I love the way that texture looks with the paint.

So that meant re-forming them again. And topping that off with giving each and every petal a signature roselike curl.

Jon did the bulk of the curling, with help from a few people like my parents. I did some, but dang it wasn't my favorite part of the process by far. I'd rather tape, if that says anything.

Everyone was right, the ones with more variations of color really were the best looking.

Mfm and Angel07 were INSTRUMENTAL in arranging these badboys into the vases. I won't bore you with all the things we tried before we decided on tulle and foam for innards, but there was plenty of discussion and trips to the store. Jon and I just prepped the vases for them, and these two went to work, making sure the dozen or so roses in each vase were secure and lovely to look at.

These two did a much better job than I would have. You'll see more of Mfm's work when you see our bouquets.

We thought it needed just a little something. So we added some orange ribbon. And then the ribbon wouldn't stay put, so we used some of the big return labels left over from the invitations to seal the deal.

Doesn't seem like much to show for so much work, does it?

Oh my goodness, was this a labor of love. I will forever use this flower project as a yardstick against which I will measure the insanity of any other project I try to undertake. There is NO WAY Jon and I could have pulled this off (with seven days to spare!) without the love and support we got from our family and friends. Even the people who continually checked in with me to make sure I was on track were essential for me not to have lost my mind over this.

And I'm happy with the way they turned out. Which is something I never say.

How one of the finished pieces looked at the end of the night.

The materials for each of these centerpieces cost $7.00. That is a STEAL. If we paid my mom, my dad, Madelyn, cc, pp, mfm and Angel07, as well as myself and Jon $10.00 per hour (and that would be a very low wage considering the occupational hazards of tape, skewers, hot glue and sheer fatigue) that was spent on these, each of these centerpieces cost around $1,800.00 apiece. THAT IS A CRIME.

That said, I won't be subjecting my loved ones to this kind of torture anytime soon. I thank each and every one of them from the bottom of my heart.

Aren't you all glad I'm only planning on doing this once?

diy flowers II

2011-11-08T23:59:00.002-06:00

Before I get to the highlights, let me say this: Planning a wedding is a good test of how your marriage is going to go (or so I suspect, with the infinite knowledge that nearly two months of marriage has given me). And this flower project would test the limits of anyone's sanity. God bless the guy, he went with me to so many stores and gave insight constructive criticism and, most importantly, he helped a lot. One thing my mom always says about us is that Jon and I work well as a team. You can't get a better endorsement than that.

Onto the show.

So to make each flower, you need eight pieces in varying shapes and sizes. You cut each out of coffee filters and then somewhat painstakingly (for some reason this really made my left thumbnail sore) attach them to floral wire with floral tape. My mom, Madelyn, cc, myself and Jon cut out some 3200 pieces and separated them out into plastic baggies; we still have a ton of them left. Jon and I taped together nearly 300 roses--that's 2400 individual pieces for those of you not interested in doing the math. Most of our other helpers weren't excited about trying the flower construction, because working with floral tape for any length of time is a serious beeyatch.

If the devil had a torture tool, this would be it.

Utilizing floral tape takes some finesse to start with, because you have to draw out the stickiness by pulling on it, but not pull too hard or it will break. Plus you don't want your stems to be too bulky; you want to get the job done with as little as possible. Oh, and you'd better pencil in about half an hour after you're done to clean off the residue from your hands. And prepare for them to feel weird for the rest of the day, too. Dawn dish soap is effective on oil-slicked ocean life, but only works so-so for victims of floral tape abuse. The only good way to get it off is to scrub some really crunchy pots and pans.

I had been lulled into a sense of security with that first rose I made, because I started with a crusty old roll of floral tape from seventh grade when we made boutonnieres for all the dads at church on Father's Day. Apparently, the older and crustier your floral tape is, the better it works. We found that out the hard way when we ran out and had to buy some new stuff. It sucked! It was slippery, wouldn't stick to itself and generally was a ginormous pain. One night after a long day of struggling with it, that last rose was taking more than an hour (I was supposed to have finished getting all the petals on each one within 15 minutes to stay on track) and kept falling apart. I'd had it. I threw it on the floor, chucked the devil's spawn tape at the wall and had a good old-fashioned temper tantrum, stomping and all. Jon was there to witness that and still married me.

Soon after, it was with great luck that we happened to find a fabric store that was relocating to a bigger space and getting rid of all their merchandise. Not only did we clean up on floral stem wire, but got a huge pack of really old and crusty looking floral tape. The box it was in had yellowed a bit, so we knew it was going to be good. Thank God for that store!

My original plan of being done with the flowers long before the wedding was ludicrous--we dragged out cutting pieces until June and didn't really start the factory until July. But for most of the summer, the apartment looked something like this:

At the completion of each step, we were tempted to just leave them as they were.

M had brought us a few beautiful Pilsner glasses that she'd found--at the dollar store of all places--that would be just perfect for what we were looking for in our centerpieces. I spent the summer trolling dollar stores all around Chicago looking for more (we needed 24), but couldn't find the same ones! I just didn't want to have to order them online because we were already having bad luck with fragile items being delivered (several of our gifts arrived having broken during shipping). By the end, we were getting down to the wire and I saw some vases that would work at a great price at IKEA--I could get 30 of them and take the home in the trunk that day. Unfortunately, they were a little bigger, so instead of 8-10 flowers a vase, we'd need 12 or more. Which meant cranking out more flowers.

diy flowers I

2011-11-07T23:05:00.000-06:00

Somewhere along the line I convinced myself that we could *fairly easily* make our own flowers for this wedding. This very typical behavior for me. I see something in a magazine or in a store and say to myself, "Self, you could totally make that!" So I don't buy it. And then I either forget about it all together or spend WAY too much time trying to figure it out and replicate it at home, spending three times as much money in materials and God knows how many hours making it happen than it would have cost to just purchase the perfect thing right then and there. But I had never fully understood the lunacy of my ways until I got the idea for these wedding flowers.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves--this is obviously going to be a multi-parter. My eldest sister-in-law M (not Madelyn) is supercrafty and makes really beautiful things just for kicks, like lifelike flower arrangements and wreaths and really awesome Halloween decorations. Her table settings seem like setups for home decor photoshoots and she asked for a jigsaw for her birthday. I really wish she lived closer (not just for the jigsaw). Last fall, she heard we were considering paper flowers and suddenly a big package arrived in the mail from Ohio, full of sweet little prototypes of all kinds.

I especially loved the rolled-up roses, but we couldn't figure out how to make them work for what I thought I wanted: a smallish centerpiece that would leave enough room for a family-style dinner and all the place setting stuff for 12 people per table.

She included a couple tissue-paper flowers, and I really liked the look of them, like this one.

Pay no attention to my poor camerphone-focusing skills.

Then I started doing more research into tissue-paper flowers, and of course I stumbled onto Martha Stewart's website. I tried a couple of them out.

Not too bad for stuff-in-a-gift-bag tissue paper, eh?

My main reasoning for doing paper flowers was to be able to start working on them way ahead of time and have them all done long before the wedding. (Yes, I actually believed that would happen--what a joke.) With this style of flower, I could just picture six months worth of work taken out by some sort of freak accident where they'd all get crumpled or become a wet, soggy mess. We needed something sturdier.

And then I saw them, the coffee-filter flowers featured on the martha stewart show. It took a bit of finesse, but I was able to put one together pretty quickly:

We had a winner.

you can't always get what you want

2011-11-06T23:38:00.002-06:00

Our photographer was awesome, but obviously he and his second shooter couldn't be everywhere. So Jon and I wanted to have a photobooth at our reception, too. We check out the price tag for those things as well as saw one break down during a wedding we attended, so in what will probably come as a shocker to anyone who knows us, we decided we could build our own.

Jon had it all figured out, from how we'd build the "booth" frame to a one-push-button system combined with a laptop and software connected to his less-fancy-but-still-very-sweet camera to make a very viable alternative to the expensive booths out there. The printer was an issue, however we thought people would just enter their email addresses to send the pics to themselves, but our laptop wouldn't support it and we'd have to get a new one....

Long story very short, we had to skip the photobooth.

After that, I just wanted to create a photo "area" where people could take pictures of themselves. We signed up for this thing, Guest Shots, where guests can upload the photos they took on their cameras/phones after your event and the company will put them all together in an album for you. As part of the deal, you "borrow" a handheld (waterproof) video camera, so people can record personal messages at their leisure--we even took that camera on the honeymoon--you mail it back and then get a dvd of all the footage.We're still trying to get all the photos people took uploaded to the website, so we haven't seen the final product yet, but we think the video aspect of it alone made the whole thing worth it.

The photo area went from a place where there would be a great backdrop painted by me of some beautiful Indian archway to two simple iridescent saris hanging all the way down from the high ceiling. They're actually the first saris I had considered for the bridesmaids way back during preliminary shopping, and I had always liked them, so I went back to get them for the backdrop.

I didn't see anyone posing for pictures in our photo corner the entire night, so I figured it was a giant bust. But when we saw what was uploaded to Guest Shots later, apparently some people did take the bait. Plus, people are adorable in general.

***

Way back in 2005, a month after Jon came out to Chicago to meet me for the first time, I flew to California to visit him for the first time. And to be his date to the annual work Christmas party. It was at a hotel and there were all these crazy clowns on stilts and animal-costumed acrobats--even a fortuneteller walking around giving advice. I met the pastor who would eventually officiate our wedding (his wife worked with Jon), and from that day on they'd always ask Jon when his "bride" was coming back to town. At the time I thought that was a little forward, but I guess they could see something that we weren't willing to say out loud yet.

That Christmas party also had a "photo area" set up with a professional photographer, with a cheesy backdrop of fancy fabric and fake flowers arranged in a few tall vases. Jon and I didn't know each other well, but the camera guy made us hold hands and strike one of those tried and true Homecoming/Prom poses. All that was missing was wrist corsage. We looked so young then. And a little apprehensive.

Jon's mom scanned the photo and sent it to inquiring minds (when someone meets a random girl off the Internet and then starts jumping on planes, it's a justified cause for curiosity, if not concern). We always refer to that picture as our Prom Photo. In honor of that, we added this sign to our photo corner at the wedding:

It's no photobooth, but for our constraints, I think it worked out just fine.

the playlist

2011-11-05T22:32:00.001-05:00

Most every time I go to a place where there's a deejay I make a request. And I am often disappointed. About 95% of the time I will ask for anything by A Tribe Called Quest just to see if s/he has it or will actually play it, knowing that most partygoers these days have no idea who that group is. Once, at a wedding when I saw the dj was in his mid-50s I requested Al Green's "Let's Stay Together." He said he had NEVER HEARD OF AL GREEN. I don't even know what to say about that.

When the dj seems to have special something, I will ask for Musto and Bones' "Dangerous on the Dancefloor,"* It's a treat if they know it, better if they have it and then amazing if they actually play it. I can only count the number of times that's happened on two fingers.

I didn't want that to happen to our guests, so we let them make requests ahead of time, on our postcard RSVPs:

Despite the "dancefloor will ROCK" language, for some reason a fair number of people thought we were only looking for slow songs. But the ones who got it requested some awesome jams, including my mom's friend, who asked for Salt N Pepa's "Push It." I've got a newfound respect for her.

We submitted a MONSTER list of songs, so I wasn't surprised our djs couldn't get to them all. In fact, people were breaking it down so much that I only heard one slow song the entire evening; I cried the entire time it was on. But I'll save that for another post.

Here's the back of the postcard:

That's a drawing done by both Jon and myself. We were just doodling one day and thought it'd be a nice touch, plus it carried the whole stick figure theme on our invites. He did the faces and I did the bodies. Some of you know may already be familiar with Jon's drawings. If not, check out last November, when a lot of his 30 posts were sketches.

This is a bit of a spoiler, as way too many of our guests have yet to receive theirs, but we also used the drawing on the thank-you cards. We're hoping we get them all out before the requisite year of forgiveness is up.

*I searched for lyrics to this song for YEARS, and someone posted them on this blog. Even after six-some years, that is one of the most popular reasons people stumble onto this web site. I am not kidding.

Invites, part III

2011-11-04T22:04:00.001-05:00

I am no stranger to wedding invitation calligraphy, so of course I was going to address all our envelopes myself. We wanted the peacock envelopes, so the lettering had to be white to show up properly. I tried about seven different types of pens, but finally decided the only way to do this was to break out the old pot of ink and calligraphy nibs.

As you can see, that pen nib and I are old friends.

The "studio."

This is likely not even half of them.

After we'd chosen the envelope colors, I'd really had my heart set on the polar bear stamps that had the same kind of green background. Too bad they were from 2009 and the P.O. only had a few left. However, these were an even better match, have pretty floral designs and say LOVE on them. Couldn't have been more perfect.

I think the one with the birds is my favorite.

I almost didn't want to give them to the post office; they looked so nice all together.

I tried to be fancy with the spaced-out zip codes--we had quite a variety of them.

We sent out the wedding invitations two months before the wedding, which some people said might be too early. But we had decided not to do Save the Dates*, so we wanted out of town guests to have time to make arrangements. Unfortunately, about 15 people never received their invites, including Jon's parents (they got another one, obviously). One of my mom's friends got hers one day before the wedding, but of course she had already made other plans. That was really heartbreaking, both because people might have felt slighted and because we had put a lot of love and effort into those invitations. The only thing I can think of that may have hindered the delivery was my calligraphy. Cue the sad trombones.

*I immediately regretted it when I was at a birthday party of a good friend, went to get a frosty beverage from her boyfriend's fridge and saw a wedding announcement magnet staring back at me for another couple with the same date. They wouldn't have been able to come regardless (the boyfriend was in the bridal party), but my friend was sweet enough to attend our ceremony and the reception for the other couple.

Invites, part II

2011-11-03T22:32:00.001-05:00

Everything I saw in the magazines and the blogs proved that I'm drawn to the style of a small, intimate wedding. You can personalize everything and put a lot of time and thought into the details. Unfortunately, I wanted to invite everyone I know to our wedding--I have a huge family but most of them live on the other side of the world, so there have been enough four-person Thanksgivings and Christmases for me to long for the fun that a big celebration brings. We were shooting for a "small-for-an-Indian-wedding," with about 250-300 guests.

After we got the letterpress invites back from Debbie, we had to figure out how to put it all together. My main struggle during this whole planning process was to rein in my devotion to all things Indian and find a happy medium. So when it became clear that there just wasn't any room for Hindi script on the invitation, we opted for an orange band to hold all the pieces together within the envelope. But we wanted to keep each envelope as small and light as possible, essentially the opposite of the ornate and sizable Indian-style invites we're used to getting in the mail.

My friend EB has this amazing cutting machine that can help make all kinds of beautiful fonts/shapes cut out of cardstock. But Hindi doesn't smoothly flow together like D'Nealian (which, did you hear, they are no longer teaching in schools!?). The Hindi-ish font was really nice, but if we had to pop out the letters for every single invite, people wouldn't get them until after the wedding. So we had to lose the orange band.

Here's the prototype, a little beat up after the chaos of planning. Another reason it wouldn't work: With the belly band around everything, the invite wouldn't fit into the envelope.

I wasn't giving up on getting some kind of Hindi in there. I was researching having our names in the script printed on ribbon, and seriously considering writing it out on each envelope, when an express package came in the mail from my Vinu Moushi (My mother's younger sister).

She had someone make two custom Hindi-script wooden stamps that say "Karen Nedita D'Souza with Jonathan Henry Muller" and airmailed them to us. I don't even want to think about how much that cost her. The guy forgot to add a tiny dot. I just added the dot (which is the difference between a "z" sound and a "j" sound) with a pen. No big deal. But my aunt went back and chewed him out just the same.

Jon made envelope liners for each card and stamped our names on each one before cc, madelyn and I glued them in. I'm not sure any of our guests even noticed the stamp, but I knew they were in there. And that's all that matters.

the invites

2011-11-02T23:27:00.000-05:00

A lot of people say they dreamed of their wedding day since they were little. They could picture the dress, the church, the flowers, all in full detail. Me? Aside from a few key things*, I couldn't really see much past the paper.

In a past life I was paid to put words and pictures together to tell stories. In another past life, I played around with paint and pencils. I really miss doing that stuff, so it's not an exaggeration to say that Jon and I spent A LOT of time on our invitations.

It was a given that we'd design them ourselves. We're pretty simple people who appreciate clean lines. Someone saw how we decorated my condo for showings and called our style "kick-ass contemporary." I am proud of that. And each detail of our invitation (and wedding) has a meaning--both Jon and I are very sentimental. The first gift I gave him, for Christmas 2005, was the interactive board game Scene It--sports edition. It's also what his mother gave him that year. He kept them both because he didn't want to choose which to return. Silly boy.

***

CC has a friend who started her own letterpress business, Penelope's Press, which she runs out of her home. Debbie's so good she's attracted clients all over the country and the world, often sending orders out as far as Japan. Last Christmas CC got me letterpress notecards with my name on them, and I was so impressed I had to meet the woman who had printed them in her garage. No powwow at Debbie's kitchen table was shorter than 2 hours. We bonded over books, Anne of Green Gables and how people either understand blogging or just don't get it (here's her post about us). She's personable, fun and really creative. Plus the lady makes beautiful products. I knew our design was in good hands.

Jon's favorite color is orange. If that wasn't one of our colors, anyone who has known him for more than five minutes would think he'd had nothing to do with the planning--which couldn't be farther from the truth. My favorite color is green, but I kept coming back to blue (my high school, my college, my favorite NFL team all have the same orange and blue scheme). Back when CC was getting married, she said that I could wear whatever I wanted. We shopped and shopped, but I never could decide. But I did have this swath of flowy fabric in a gorgeous shade of not-quite-teal-not-quite-green that I just adored. I ended up making the dress out of that fabric, finishing just as we were about to hit the beach for the ceremony. I still love that color, and it's a lovely complement to orange. Paper Source calls it "peacock," but everybody seems to have their own idea of what color that means.

***

Jon and I went through about 50 sketches, a ridiculous amount of time turning the winner into a proper-looking file, and I-don't-even-want-to-admit how much nitpicky tweaking before we got this:

It's pretty obvious, but Jon's from near L.A. and I'm near/in Chicago. We've been on a long journey and we were finally getting married. Outside, in a gazebo.

The "peacock" is all the same color, but seems to look different depending on the light. Each piece was hand-inked by Debbie with two passes through her letterpress, one for peacock and one for orange. She mixes the colors by hand.

One thing we spent an exorbitant amount of time on that essentially NOBODY looked at? This directions insert. Jon took great pains to research and create a QR code, and I slaved over making these maps accurate yet easy to follow (which wasn't easy because the place is a bit of a hideaway). Also, we spent time creating an entire wedding website that no one visited. Sigh.

***

The first time I looked at the files after I'd sent them to Debbie, I wanted to kick myself because I didn't feel like I'd tweaked the spacing enough. I couldn't look at the invitations for weeks. But months later, I'm really happy with the way they turned out. I wouldn't want them any other way. Isn't how it always goes?

*I always knew I wanted to wear a sari, and that I wanted an outdoor wedding.

previouslies

2011-11-01T23:42:00.000-05:00

So here we are at the beginning of NaBloPoMo for, what is it, the sixth year (?!?) of posting every day during the month of November. This year, I've promised to talk about the wedding. Now is a good a time as any to give y'all somewhat of a recap, LOST-style.

In March 2005, I was working crazy hours in Chicago and missed my friends. I started this blog.
So did a bunch of other people; we started commenting on each others' blogs and got to be pals.
A lot of us did "100 things about me" posts. It was a thing.
Back then it was still a little creepy to be "meeting people off the Internet."
As skeptical as I was, I took the risk. And one of those people turned out to be my husband, Jon. Here are the details about how we met.
We dated long-distance for nearly three years. It was tough.
My industry took a nosedive. I was laid off, then got a great job only for it to be dissolved. A couple of times. In fact, once I got laid off on my birthday and Jon was laid off the very next day. Sad.
We took it as a sign. He moved to Chicago.
Both of us started at the bottom in new careers.
He proposed to me on September 20, 2009, in my condo downtown.
It took us two years and four months to sell that condo--we told people we couldn't get married until 2013.
We entered a contest. And we actually came fairly close to having a shot at the dream wedding.
We moved to suburbia and weren't hemorrhaging money anymore, so we saved ruthlessly and moved up the date to September 17, 2011.
There was a LOT of do-it-yourself stuff to this wedding. And perhaps some very optimistic deadline-setting. But everything got done.
Jon's sister Madelyn moved here in May, 2011. She lives with us.
We had an amazing wedding. It's one of the best days of my life, and a celebration of all that we've been through since I started this blog. Madelyn and my brother were the best man and maid of honor, respectively. Yes, you read that correctly.
My brother got a job in Chicago and moved back home on October 31, 2011. He lives with my parents.

This is a great time of year. The commitment to posting brings out what I love most about having a blog, especially when people make comments. If you have time, check out some of the other people who have promised to post every day this month.

You never know just who you'll end up meeting.

well i thought this was pretty appropriate

2011-10-31T21:08:00.003-05:00

On a couple of levels, don't you think?

Happy birthday, husband. While your name is Jon, you will always be H to me.

why bust a streak now?

2011-10-22T23:49:00.001-05:00

By now, you've heard of NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month=November or whatever month you want it to be). I've wrote a post for each day of November for the last five Novembers, and for this November I've decided to bore my two readers with the details of our small-for-an-Indian-wedding DIY wedding--which is the direct cause of my lack of posting for the last 12 months or so.

Anyone else in? Husband? Madelyn? Syar? Jasmine? OMAR*?

*granted, you're going to have to create a new blog, but I thought I'd ask anyway.

birthday girl is a realist

2011-10-14T14:29:00.001-05:00

"Are you excited about your birthday?"

"Nah, I feel like there's a lot of pressure to do something amazing."

"Well, being alive is pretty amazing."

"People say that because they don't know what being dead is like. What if we were in bliss before this and we're only here because we made a mistake in heaven?"

"Hmmm, good point."

-- Posted From My iPhone--everybody needs an editor.

my husband, the doughnut king

2011-10-11T10:07:00.000-05:00

For years, Jon has complained about how there are no good doughnut places in Illinois (he refuses to talk about Dunkin'). Apparently, in Southern California there are a ton of mom and pop operations that serve delicious fried goodness that beats the pants off the corporate chain even on their worst day. I've had stuff from those joints, and I have to agree that they're pretty good. That said, my man's one exception to doughnut snobbery has always been the powdered mini doughnut. These he can enjoy even when they've come from a vending machine.

Behold, the first photograph I ever saw of my future husband, in March 2005:

I spent a good 20 minutes on the phone with Ale when I saw this, his second post ever, trying to determine if he would be cute without the six powdered donettes in his mouth all at once. Also, I came to the conclusion that he he has the softest hair in America. He didn't see a photo of me for another three months.

Here we are, six years later. The guy still likes his powdered mini doughnuts, but not all at the same time.

He could only get five in there at once, and Madelyn and I are pretty sure that he was chewing and swallowing some. He's still got the softest hair in America*, though, it's just a little longer.

*That's just a visual estimation. I don't go around touching random people's hair.

blink of an eye

2011-09-20T11:55:00.000-05:00

Wow. So obsessed over one day that was over as soon as it started. My husband (!) and I are sitting at the airport terminal and trying to plan/prepare for this Costa Rica trip, which we hadn't even thought much about until yesterday. We both have colds.

If you're interested in the wedding, trust me, you'll get more details than you ever wanted when we get back. Heck, I will have so much time on my hands in a week, I can post way more. In fact, that is a promise.

In the meantime, our phenomenal photographer, Albert Yau at SecondPrint Productions posted two teaser pics on his blog. I couldn't have asked for a better fit for us--his style is so what we were looking for and both he and his second shooter, mike, were really sweet and fun, talented and professional.

I am so grateful to everyone who sent blessings and good vibes our way. I can never thank the people who pitched in and helped out immensely. I was so touched by everyone's generosity and thoughtfulness.

It was cloudy and cold the day before, and rained the entire day after, but our wedding day was gorgeously sunny and 70 degrees. I can only assume God was looking out for us with help from our loved ones up there. It was a wonderful day.

http://secondprintproductions.com/blog/2011/09/chicago-wedding-photography-karen-jonathan/

-- Posted From My iPhone--everybody needs an editor.

T-27.5 hours

2011-09-16T12:19:00.001-05:00

And here we are, the day before the wedding. I am SHOCKED that I only a few more things to do instead of running around like a chicken. This could never be possible without the help of our wonderful friends and family who all stepped in and helped so much every step of the way. Love you guys!

My brother and M are on the floor next to me, arguing about the alphabet (they're alphabetizing the escort cards). All I have to do is make a banner, the cake topper and print out the table numbers. WOOHOO!

Jon is having an exciting last-minute bachelor party with his people--indoor skydiving!--as we speak.

I am getting so excited!

Yesterday was my roce* (there was a lot of crying during the blessings and then they broke a couple of eggs onto my head) and mehndi. I'll post more stuff about that later. My mehndi came out pretty dark (the darker it is the more your man loves you, apparently).

Here is the back of the RSVP card that Jasmine (without whom we never would have even met) sent in. She added a little personality to our simple drawing. :)

Yep, that's pretty much how it went.

*The Ros (anointing) ceremony, conducted one or two days before a wedding, celebrates the last day of virginity of the bride and bridegroom and involves the parents' blessing of the bride and groom, who are anointed with ros, a mixture of coconut milk and coconut oil, while a cross is inscribed on the bride's forehead.

you're truckin' out of your twenties, kid

2011-09-12T09:04:00.003-05:00

Happy 29th birthday to my baby brother, the guy who may be the slightest of build in most groups, but usually manages to be the one in control.

My brother on a Ford tractor in India, 1986.

what we miss

2011-09-11T01:11:00.000-05:00

"After this wedding, can we watch 'Friends' from the beginning?"

"We can watch whatever you want."

"Really?!!"

"As long as it's tv."

thank goodness for this extra day off

2011-09-05T13:37:00.000-05:00

So remember how I was sort of freaking out? Here's the thing: Now--a dozen days to it--I am at peace amid the chaos.

This makes no sense to normal people, but for someone who procrastinates as a way of life, it perfectly clear: I'm in the zone, people! 300 flowers to finish in 24 hours? We can do it! (Emphasis on the "we." Some AMAZING people are helping us get all of this done.)

So while there are about 462 things left to do, I'm happy. I sincerely believe it'll all get done. And then in the coming weeks, I'll tell you guys all about it. But for now, enjoy your Labor Day! I hope you're not stuck at a computer reading this.

Handmade, baby!

batteries charged

2011-08-29T23:14:00.000-05:00

As soon as this knot is tied, I will (in addition to watching copious amounts of television) write some much-needed descriptions of how the wonderful people have spoiled me with their kindness and generosity. Seriously, there is no way to describe how touching it is to feel so very very loved. I cannot say that enough.

This past weekend, highcon and ri (and her husband, c) flew me out to NYC (with Jon) to hang out as a last hurrah before the wedding. This was planned way before Hurricane Irene was even on the radar, but last-minute enough that I had to scramble to get a day off. Yes, we still have twelve kajillion things to do and had no business going anywhere, but I'll be honest, I think I was so overwhelmed and a little burnt out that I wasn't being very productive at all.

The fact that Irene kept us inside and playing cards all weekend really gave Jon and I a break from me: freaking out about, and he: having to hear me freak out about all the stuff that has yet to be done.

We did venture out a couple of times for provisions, and ended up standing in superlong lines to scrounge for stuff on shelves that looked like this:

All the stores were pretty much like this.

And the lines at the registers were out the door.

Manhattan didn't end up getting any severe damage aside from flooding, but I understand there are areas of the east that bore the brunt of the storm. I am sending those people many good vibes, especially the ones whose homes washed away. Mother Nature can be so cruel sometimes. My brother is still angry with me because I essentially had made him drive out of Alabama to Houston during their last hurricane threat and yet I pretty much flew into the path of Irene. He says I have lost the right to order him to evacuate when he is in potential danger. I don't think the boy understands the rules of Older Siblings. Do as I say, brother. Do as I say.

The day after they lifted the evacuation ban, we walked (or rather we were blown there) down to the Hudson in some SERIOUS wind that we would have expected during the "tropical storm" that it got downgraded to, not after it. So we seized that opportunity to take some cheesy pictures.

So, in sum: We are recharged and ready to face the challenges ahead!

apparently there is a word for this

2011-08-24T01:12:00.000-05:00

And it is Decision Fatigue.

The New York Times had an article about it that came out last week, exactly a month before we're supposed to do this whole knot-tying thing.

Here's a small excerpt that particularly spoke to me:

The idea for these experiments also happened to come in the preparations for a wedding, a ritual that seems to be the decision-fatigue equivalent of Hell Week. At his fiancée’s suggestion, Levav visited a tailor to have a bespoke suit made and began going through the choices of fabric, type of lining and style of buttons, lapels, cuffs and so forth.
“By the time I got through the third pile of fabric swatches, I wanted to kill myself,” Levav recalls. “I couldn’t tell the choices apart anymore. After a while my only response to the tailor became ‘What do you recommend?’ I just couldn’t take it.”

As I've taken to saying (btw, theknotdotcom tells me that there are some 24 days left), I would gladly plan anyone else's wedding because it would be up to somebody else to DO THE DECIDING.

Finally we have some sort of scientific proof that I haven't completely lost my marbles.

33

2011-08-14T23:59:00.000-05:00

On a normal day, I'm extremely reluctant to go to bed (which often leads to my falling asleep unwillingly in the middle of a conversation/a compelling program/dinner). But today was one of those days that I REALLY don't want to go to bed, for that would mean this day would be over.

Truly, I am one of the most blessed people out there. So much so that I'm paranoid something terrible is coming my way to counterbalance how wonderful the people in my life are.

But you can't predict the future, and I'm trying not to worry too much about things beyond my control. So in the meantime, I'll just appreciate how great it is to be spoiled ROTTEN. I love you, everyone. Thank you so much for your love and kindness, today and every day.

photo by Jonathan Muller

Angel 07 made me this very special cookie. It's too cute to eat!

updates--details to come another day

2011-08-03T19:53:00.000-05:00

I think about blogging often. And then I feel guilty about not doing other stuff that *needs* to get done asap. And then I either fall asleep or get distracted and don't do any of that.

Things have been go go go lately, so I don't even have much time to think, let alone put a coherent post together. But I love all two of you who read here and I miss you terribly.

on to the updates!

1) Jon had two weeks off, during which we had planned on getting everything done. oh, how naive we were.

2) Our roommate, madelyn, is cool, especially since her *room* is a cordoned-off dining area. The three of us work in shifts, so it works out pretty well.

3) Some of our wedding invitations are coming back and not being received, so that's heartbreaking, because the person who printed them did a fabulous job and we want everyone to get them! We have not heard from the majority of our guests, and I keep thinking a handful of people are going to have to find room in their stomachs for A LOT of Indian food.

4) We are very nearly through with all the booking/contracting portions of this wedding-planning business. Which is great, because having to depend on other people pretty much guarantees that you have to have your stuff together at a reasonable hour. Let the procrastinating begin!

5) CC moved to Chicago! She was originally going to be here just the summer for a freelance gig, but they obviously realized how awesome she is and begged her to stay for a salary. She has been instrumental in making sure I'm not procrastinating too much.

6) We had our engagement photos taken last week. Our photographer is so awesome that he was battling a 102+degree fever and still did our shoot because the weather was bearable that day. I really appreciated that, because I think my coworkers are going to start taking toes for all the days I've requested off in the next two months. But nothing is worth sacrificing your well-being. His fever went to 105, but he's seen a doctor and is feeling better, thank God.

7) We had the most awesome shower ever. Seriously. PP, CC and Ri helped my mom and together made such a wonderful day. We were absolutely overwhelmed by everyone's generosity. Unfortunately, there was one gift that had no card and I'm trying very hard to try and thank someone for it and no one is stepping forward.

It came in this. Anyone? I'd love to send you a thank you card.

8) It's REALLY FREAKING HOT outside. Even for tropical people like myself.

9) Team Cadiz and friends are taking me to Las Vegas this weekend. I cannot convey how excited/touched I am at all the trouble everyone has gone for to make me smile. I love you all!

10) Regular posting should commence soon. I really have missed you guys.

for the record, there will be no elephants

2011-07-13T01:36:00.000-05:00

A little while back, I compared wedding planning to the third circle of Dante's hell. That was a little dramatic. And a little premature.

I actually LOVE thinking up creative ways to make things/make things look pretty; which is essentially what wedding planning is--finding the best way that you can afford to make the show of you and your love promising to love each other forever, in front of God and everybody, be a nice experience.

What I do NOT enjoy is calling fiftymagillion people to get the best deal on xyz tiny portion of the festivities, then meeting with another eleventyhundred people to think about what you want. THEN you have to figure out how to let the not-quite-as-good vendors down easy after you find one you like best. Then you MUST have everything picked out and ready to go WAY BEFOREHAND when there's all this time that you might find a much-better idea. Oh and all the while you have to figure out how the eff to PAY for it all. A little background:

a) I don't like shopping: I mean for myself, when I need something (ugh, it seems wedding shoes I'd like do not exist). However, when cc needs a birthday gift for her aunt/blazer for work/new boots I will happily skip along to 20 stores hold up hundreds of items for her perusal. And enjoy it.

b) I am a perfectionist procastinator: If I leave it until the last minute, then I have an automatic reason for why it's not the bestest ever.

c) I cannot function without a deadline. If I have an open-ended date to finish something, it won't happen. The tweaking never stops.

d) I cannot have too many choices: I read somewhere (probably WIRED) that if human beings have something more than a few options, they will have a really hard time choosing, if at all. The Internet makes this almost always the case.

e) Because of that last one, I am a HORRIBLE decider.

That all said, when I've completely made up my mind, then it really is made up. Case in point: the groom.

I never was the type of person to sit around as a little kid and dream about why my wedding would be like. Instead, I spent time thinking about what cool way The One was going to propose to me. I always knew two things: 1) I didn't want to wear a gown like most everyone else's and 2) I wanted to get married outside. In fact, I told my mother those things before I was in junior high and now it's happening.

The thing I was looking forward to was invitations. We designed them ourselves, and I hand-calligraphed each one. Also, I was super annoying about trying to get names and addresses right because in another lifetime it was my job to make sure the nittygritties were correct. People who know me in real life are sometimes scared to email for fear that I'm going to point out some mistake. Pshaw, what they don't know is that I make more than plenty myself. For example, forgetting to put the date on a portion of the invitation. The badump-chhhh is that, while cc saved my butt reminding me to put the date on it before sending it to the printer, she unfortunately had to break it to me that when I'd added it, I had put on the WRONG date. After they all hit the mailboxes. So now I have to call up a bunch of people and say that yes, I know Thursday is not the 16th, it's on THURSDAY, not on the16th (which is a Friday).

It was during the madness of psychotically trying to get invitations in the mail that I wrote the Dante's Inferno post last week. My loved ones were calling every day, asking if I had gotten them out already or what. My mom finally said, "OK beta, you need a deadline, TOMORROW is your deadline. GET TO IT." So Madelyn and I frantically stuffed envelopes and licked them shut, having a contest at 2 a.m. to see who would get sick of the envelope-glue taste first (Neither, we're both toughguys. Jon was sleeping).

After everything was sealed, I thought some of the inserts might not have return postage. I also worried that I hadn't fixed the tiny little typo (missing a dot in a language only about 1/8 of attendees can even read) on the stamp on the liner on some of them. Hello, can we say micromanager? Also, I had been told by several magazines and a friend who recently got married to put a tiny penciled number on the corner of each RSVP that corresponds to each person on your guest list so you know who it is if they forget to write their names on the card before sending it back.

Within 12 hours I worked myself into such a frenzy because it had been so much work just to screw it up in a rush at the end. It would ruin the envelopes to open them all. I just had to do what I never seem to muster enough courage for, which is to LET IT THE EFF GO. In fact, that's probably the point when I wrote that post. Because I got home and totally broke down about it in a mess all over Jon. Poor guy handled it like a champ. He stayed calm, made me dig up the wax paper the stamps came on and we used simple arithmetic (!) to figure out that I probably didn't miss any postage on RSVPs*. I felt a little better.

I think I was just smooshed under the pressure. Jon doesn't seem to get as many questions: How's it going? How's the planning? Did you get the dress? Did you get the cake? Did you get the invites out? Do you have the rings? Do you have the DJ? Did you taste the food? Did you book the limo? Are you even having a limo? What about a photobooth? Are you doing a videographer? Wait, so you waited too long and all the videographers are booked? Are you already finished with the fourteen million flowers you're purporting to make yourself? There's only 2 months left and you've only completed six!??! Do you have a backup florist? Are you doing your own vows? Did you book a honeymoon? Did you even get that requested time off of work? Are you going to have a band? Are you having a signature cocktail? Are you having junior bridesmaids? Are you having a helicopter bring you in? Are you having a white horse? Are you having elephants? ARE YOU EVEN HAVING A WEDDING?!?

Seriously, people, I don't mind talking about it, but I really wouldn't mind if you threw some questions Jon's way to ease the load a bit. It's his wedding, too. Sometimes I wonder if he even realizes how much stuff we have yet to do in the next 66 days.

Writing this makes me realize just how frakking ridiculous I sound. I am aware of this. But for some reason, after those invites went out, I felt a rush of calm. It doesn't matter that we're two months away and still haven't checked off a bunch of things we were supposed to have done four months before (get off my back, theknotdotcom!). I guess after doing the one thing on the prep list that I was most invested in, the rest seems like not SUCH a big deal.

Plus, with the majority of the deciding taken care of, I can get busy with the part that I like best of any project, which is staying up till 3 in the morning making stuff that, hopefully, will create a nice experience for us all.

*Except for Jon's older-younger sister. Sorry, A, I'm pretty sure I missed the 29-center on yours.

if i had written Dante's Inferno

2011-07-05T10:56:00.001-05:00

I would have made wedding planning* one of the punishments in the third circle of hell.

But that's just me.

*Let me clarify: planning MY wedding is a nightmare. It would so much fun to work on a wedding for a friend or family member, where THEY would be the ones making all the decisions and I could come up with thousands of cool ideas and then pull a few all nighters making them happen. But when it's me answering for why stuff isn't done (YET!?!) when I spend basically every moment on it that I'm not eating, asleep or at work, then that there is where this earns a spot in the Inferno.

happy birthday, eileen. I wish you were still here.

2011-06-16T02:12:00.000-05:00

I don't even know what to write. My coworker and friend, Eileen, with whom I shared crappy hours and a very small office for almost two years, passed away unexpectedly last Thursday night. Today she would have turned 34.

To make a long story short, Eileen had medical issues, the most significant being multiple sclerosis. But sickeningly, what actually took her away were complications (two blood clots in the lung and three more in her leg) of routine knee surgery. The technical term is Pulmonary Embolism, and it happens extremely quickly. She was complaining of severe pain, called her doctor and got her checkup appointment moved up from two weeks after the surgery to one. Then her husband went to the bathroom, and when he returned she wasn't breathing. CPR did not help.

I'm still trying to make sense of this. Every time someone opens the door to the office and just stands there without making an announcement, I turn around thinking she's ready for the day with her purple water bottle in one hand and her Disney lunch bag in the other. We spent a lot of time together in that office, and got to know each other very well.

* The smell of hard-boiled eggs/egg salad makes her gag.
* She's the only person I know who uses the word "boob" in a non-anatomical sense--to describe her husband when he forgets to do something.
* If there's ever an option to choose a color, she always picks purple, no hesitation.
* She loves Dave Matthews Band as much as my brother; they were often at the same concerts.
* She is a wonderful stepmom--it's a shame she never got to have a child who could live with her for more than a few weeks at a time.
* She puts ketchup on everything; the whole year I've been waiting for her birthday to give her a huge bottle to keep in the office fridge. Now it's just too late.
* She always remembers when something was going on with your family and asked how they were doing the next time she saw you.
* She'd been working on a puzzle of Cinderella's castle and it was driving her crazy.
* Last fall, she'd wanted to see the comedian Brian Regan but her friend got tickets for something else. She recently got to see him, at a show that Jon and Madelyn were also attending.
* Every time I went to California, she'd ask me to take pictures of palm trees to show her. She got married in the Bahamas and wore a jeweled palm tree necklace that her husband gave her every day.
* She is a really good friend, and suffered a lot when her best friends were going through tough times.
* She is so great with the patients, especially the really young and the really old.

Eileen loved flowers. She made the bouquets for her own wedding and we were looking forward to downtime in the office for her to help me with mine this summer. This past mother's day, her husband/stepdaughter got her a bouquet of "rainbow roses." I'm still unclear on how people get each petal to be a different color, but it looks stunning. One bud from the bouquet just snapped off, so Eileen brought it into the office so we all could enjoy it. Her husband sure wasn't a "boob" that day.

I was going to take a picture of it every day, but unfortunately it didn't even last a week. Eileen kept pulling the dying petals off.

I tacked them onto my bulletin board, next to the postcard from Madelyn and a picture of Jon. And my phone list. I look at them a thousand times every day.

Unfortunately, now I have a mass card pinned up next to it, with a picture of the sun setting over the ocean. Rest in peace, Eileen.

scrubs scrubs scrubs

2011-06-09T00:31:00.000-05:00

So for the last two years, I've been working at the hospital. For the last 15 years or so, I have worn scrubs as lounging-around-the-house-wear/pajamas. So if you do the math, these days I'm pretty much wearing scrubs 350 days a year. I get home from work, take off the official navy scrubs and put on the unofficial, washed-so-often-they're-satiny-soft not-navy scrubs and go about my day.

I don't have a problem with this.

EXCEPT

When you wear scrubs all the time and 99% of your scrubs are a) way too big, b) kept on your body via drawstring or c) a combination of both, then it's easy to overlook where all that junk food and sweets have been accumulating all this time. And realizing the dire necessity to visit the gym frequently and intensely comes as somewhat of a punch in the rather soft gut.

So yeah, this summer I'm going to have to find something other than scrubs to work out in.

be careful what you tell people at a bar

2011-06-08T00:41:00.001-05:00

So I'm taking a break from freelancing. Also trying to keep from freaking out over how much wedding crap I have YET to do (staring at this pile of to-do stuff is making me want to jump off the balcony, and frankly the last thing I need is a broken leg--we only live on the second floor). It's the perfect time to procrastinate.

Two weeks ago, my brother and his friends drove to Augusta, GA for the wedding of a good friend. The night before the nuptials, the wedding party and close friends gathered at the bar for a few last rounds. During the evening, a random guy wandered over to the group and started chatting up one of the bridesmaids.

After a few minutes, this guy proved to be in big trouble because a) he was wearing a wedding ring and b) he claimed to be a cardiologist who studied/is studying at [university program I can't quite remember, but let's just call it UPenn as a placeholder].

As you might imagine, the second he overheard the word "cardiologist," my brother was instantly inclined to get involved in the conversation. After hearing a little of the garbage this guy was spouting, my bro decided to take him down a notch or two. But first, he did a little research. My brother sought out the husband of another bridesmaid who is currently studying to be a physician. He and threw his very lengthy and one-in-a-million *official* diagnosis at the guy. The med student was able to decipher it for the most part.

Satisfied, he made his way into the original conversation and casually asked the offending "cardiologist" more about his specialty. Right away, the guy started throwing out credentials that fall flat. Apparently the school where he claimed to study cardiology doesn't even have a cardiology program. Then my brother started asking specific questions any med student should be able to answer even if s/he were completely wasted. Dude did not pass.

***
Let me take a break here to say that the Monday after this weekend, my brother called my mom up at work and told her he'd gotten into a fight. He routinely gets her to believe the most ridiculous things, and even worry over them. I can't believe she bought the bit about how there were two hits: my brother hitting the guy, and the guy hitting the floor. My poor mom fell for that cheezeball line and came to me, worrying about how hurt my brother must be after a fistfight (he is most certainly not a large man by any means). He was delighted to hear this.

***

Anyway, so my brother was trying to get this pretend cardiologist to trip up. And even after it had become evident that he was a fraud AND married, the guy continued to maintain his lame story. Finally my brother (who had had several drinks by now) had enough. He untucked his shirt, lifted it up to show the entire establishment the long white scar running from his breastbone to his navel, the two U-shaped scars curving under his armpits and the various other reminders of having been opened up for 11 open-heart surgeries. And he says, "Diagnose THIS, bitch." Everyone at the bar turned and stared. The guy had no other choice but to give up his game and leave.

I have never heard of my brother showing his scars to anyone. He even goes to the pool with a t-shirt on. That guy must really have been a sleaze.

snapshot

2011-05-29T00:38:00.000-05:00

Sometimes when I'm out and about in life, I wish I could freeze time and have a photograph of whatever is in front of me, because it so completely captures the essence of the moment.

Yesterday, Jon and I went to the wedding of a friend of mine from college. The ceremony and reception were beautiful, and the bride looked stunning in her white gown. The skirt was pinned up on itself all over with little decorative details, and it swayed so gracefully when she was walking. At the party, she traded the veil for a white feather fascinator and just looked like an all-around princess. Her man didn't look too shabby either.

The bride has a 9-year-old from a previous relationship, and it was so obvious that her new husband and her son get along like lifelong pals. It was clear that the three of them have already been acting like a family for quite some time now. I got teary during the Unity Candle lighting, when instead of joining two flames, the couple and the son joined three.

We didn't see too much of the son at the reception, however. When introduced, he sprinted across the room and to his seat at the head table to avoid as many cameras as possible and shielded his face as if he were going to jail. I don't even know where he was for the majority of the evening while we all broke it down--even getting up as a table to shout out the lyrics to "Ice Ice Baby" to get the newlymarrieds to kiss (glass clinking was strictly forbidden).

But somewhere toward the end of the evening, after many guests were heading out, the girls yelled along to "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" (someone didn't know who sang that song and was reprimanded accordingly), Michael Jackson's "Beat It" video was haphazardly recreated, and we twirled around to a merengue or two. Somewhere in the middle of all that, a few groomsmen were evidently coaxing my friend's son back toward the dancefloor by getting him to do the moonwalk. He was attempting it, in slow, deliberate motion. And soon enough he was in the middle of the crowd, moonwalking back and forth in his own world. Suddenly, without even looking up from the floor, he began to do the robot.

The crowd, who'd formed a circle around him, exploded in cheers. He was the center of attention for the rest of the night. He even hit the floor a few times, attempting to do the worm.

At one point, the gorgeous bride, the dapper groom and their son were surrounded by a dance circle of their friends and family, bouncing to the groove. The lights were flashing. The beat was bumping. And the bride took a second. She knelt down, her fancy skirt spread out in a fan around her, and tied her little boy's shoes.

If only my camera battery hadn't died.

and i CANNOT stress this enough

2011-05-24T23:59:00.001-05:00

Today, as I was about to send the images of our invitations to the printer, Jon mentioned that I should ask cc (as in COPY chief) to give them a once over for any errors.

On one of the insert cards for a secondary event, I had arranged all the letters perfectly to spell out who it was for, what it was, where it was, what time it started and what time it ended. Cc gently pointed out that I had left off the FRICKING DATE. I cannot imagine my mortification if they had gone out that way. I know, there are way bigger problems in the world than that, but when you're running around correcting people all the time, it's hard to play it off when you've missed something that big yourself.

Plus it became clear that I've been sending all Birthday, Mother's Day, Christmas correspondence to my godmother with the incorrect postal code on it for more than 20 years.

I'll say it again, though I've said it eleventybazillion times: everyone needs a copyeditor.

picking up speed

2011-05-17T10:23:00.001-05:00

Madelyn is somewhere in Iowa, driving a car packed full of her worldly belongings, moving here. I am frantically trying to get everything in order. Because the last thing a person needs after driving thousands of miles is to find a place for her stuff among piles of half-finished centerpieces, magazine cutouts and crafting supplies all over the place. Plus there's a big deadline tomorrow for which I am not nearly as prepared as I should be, 24 hours out.

So as much as I would love to spend an hour writing a post to get me motivated, I should really get going. That bathroom is not going to clean itself.

Drive safe, Madelyn!

all i can say is that he'd better be just as devoted to me

2011-05-07T23:59:00.198-05:00

My fiance doesn't drink. He's never done drugs. He doesn't look for a thrill in gambling. And when we pull up to a red light next to a car in which someone is smoking, we have to roll up the windows because he gets a headache. But everyone has a vice. And Jon's has to do with sports.

This evening we went to a very nice restaurant in Bucktown, a gelateria and a Wrigleyville bar, dressed pretty respectably. I even had on a smidge of makeup. Jon had a full beard. On exactly HALF of his face. For that, I blame the Los Angeles Lakers.

Let's start at the beginning.

I grew up in a pretty typical Indian family. Except for the fact that we all gathered in the family room for football every NFL Sunday even though roughly half of us could not care less about the score. My brother would run around in front of the tv wearing t-shirts he'd marked up with a Sharpie to replicate his favorite players' jerseys, throwing a nerf football to himself and calling the play-by-play in an increasingly higher-pitched voice. When Jim McMahon hurt his shoulder, my brother would suddenly need to have his shoulder wrapped with an Ace Bandage. In fact, one time when he was four he snuck upstairs and called our pediatrician in tears to ask him to fix a quarterback's injuries. When his team was close to playoff elimination, he'd scoot all the way up to the screen, drop to his knees and start praying. His devotion was undying. And to be honest, it was sort of cute. But we're talking every single weekend. A few years later, just in time for the three-peats, he got really into basketball without losing any of his football fervor. And then he added baseball to the mix. At that point I was safely away at college, far from the madness.

And yet somehow, among all the men in the entire United States and abroad, I managed to procure for myself the one that is just as insane as my brother. In September Jon is going to marry me, but he and sports are celebrating their 30-something-th anniversary.

Generally, this is all right by me. I'm happy to sit on the couch with my sports-obsessed loved ones as long as there's something else I can do. Perhaps the reason I have such an affinity for knitting is because that is what my mother did on those neverending Sunday afternoons of timeouts and scrimmages. You're "spending time with them" while they generally just scream at the television; you might as well make some headway on that baby blanket for your friend. Don't get me wrong, I actually like sports (basketball especially). It's just when Major League Baseball season overlaps with National Football League season, which overlaps with National Basketball Association season (please don't let him get into college football or else there goes Saturdays), there is no such thing as an offseason. Sometimes a girl just needs a breather.

Things have been tense around here for the last week. While the Los Angeles Lakers have had their fair share of Championships, they weren't expected to sail right into the final round this year. And that was making my number-one L.A. fan very nervous. So nervous, in fact, that he vowed to the whole world (Okay, just on Facebook) that he was going to shave off the right side of his beard if the Lakers didn't pull out a victory on Friday night.

I'm sure you know what happened. As the yelling and gnashing of teeth grew louder and stronger, I steeled myself for the inevitable grumpy mood that would linger for at least a week, making food not taste as good, television not as funny and smiles nowhere to be seen--and nothing I do will fix it. I posted my own lament on Facebook about how the Lakers essentially ruined my weekend. People think that's an exaggeration, but when one of his teams doesn't perform up to par, there truly is a palpable dampening in the zest for life around these parts. It's kind of a downer.

Suddenly, the buzzing of the electric razor started up in the bathroom. Initially I thought okay, so he will Victor/Victoria the beard, take a picture, post it and then shave the rest. Right? Nope.

But it actually didn't bother me. What, were people going to stare? Don't they already because we're sort of an odd couple? Nothing new there. We went about our evening and the next day. My mom didn't even notice right away. All he had to say was that he'd lost a bet. He didn't mention that it was with himself. We met up with his sister M and her husband in the city, going to three separate places. Nobody said a thing. I didn't even see anyone notice. He wanted to prove that he doesn't go back on his word, so he had a picture of us taken in the restaurant (where we were sitting at one long community table, by the way) and posted it on the Internet for all to see. And I'm there, smiling right next to him. No big deal.

Except now I can't help but feel like it was sort of big. I'll never know for sure, but I wonder if he was gauging my reaction to being out and about with him looking a tiny bit ridiculous. To see if I'd look around sheepishly or make him shave before leaving the house. Sort of a test.

I hope I passed.

six years ago he said he wasn't too sure about Thai food

2011-05-02T22:30:00.000-05:00

"Here, I got this for you--it's still pretty warm, I think just your temperature."

"Wow, this is so good I'm eating green beans."

"WHAT?!?"

"Or maybe it's that I'm just really hungry."

just get to the president already, guys

2011-05-01T22:17:00.000-05:00

" 'Where were YOU when you heard Osama bin Laden was dead?' "

"Seriously. These guys are so dramatic. Especially that guy with Wolf Blitzer."

"And they're repeating themselves so much, too! If I have to hear 'THIS IS SUCH A HISTORIC MOMENT AROUND THE WORLD' again within the next thirty seconds..."

"Too bad it's Sunday or we could do a drinking game."

no turning back now

2011-04-18T09:09:00.000-05:00

"So...I see you still haven't responded to my request on Facebook."

"What, that relationship status thing?"

"That's the one."

"Um, [holds up hand with ring on it] I think it's pretty clear what my response is. 'Til death do us part."

"Yes, but how about making it official? You know, where it really counts. On Facebook."

be sure to check on me if i ever have a kid

2011-04-14T03:07:00.000-05:00

A long time ago when people used to make fun of me for knitting (before it was a trendy hipster thing to do) and making clothes and other crafty stuff, I used to laugh and say I'm honing those skills "to prepare for the depression." That might have gotten a snicker in the heyday of the '90s/early-'00s, but it sure isn't funny now.

Another thing I always say is that I must have used up all of my allotted all-nighters writing papers in college. Tonight I'm really really praying that's not true. Because if I wake up in a puddle of drool at this desk at noon tomorrow, I AM SCREWED.

except now it's 3 p.m. instead of 3 a.m.

2011-04-10T15:03:00.000-05:00

On Friday, I switched shifts so I could get together in Greektown with my girls from college for dinner. This was remarkable because a) in the TWELVE years they've been celebrating every year in April, I believe this is the first time I'd been able to make it b) despite having gotten up at 5 a.m., taking a nap after work, Friday-night traffic and circling for parking, I managed to get there on time, and c) the organization for which we were celebrating the anniversary technically doesn't exist at our university anymore. That last part broke my heart a little bit to hear.

We were seated at a very long rectangular table at Rodity's. On my left were two people expecting babies this summer. On my right were three girls I had never met that are the latest to join the group. Across from me was my roommate for the entirety of college, pp, and one of the first friends we'd made during our freshman year.

So of course, the reminiscing began even before the saganaki went up in flames.

pp tried to deny that she'd ever worn overalls in the '90s. Sorry, pal. I found some photographic proof. We talked about how we pretty much dressed like Rachel, Monica and Phoebe on Friends back then, down to the high-waisted jeans and the children's-size tshirts (which, in some cases, are now being worn by a six-year-old nephew). We recalled those crazy parties in falling-down houses and the inexpensive winecoolers that went a long way. The new girls mentioned people they're infatuated with and the drama that comes along with that. Old-schoolers shook their heads and smiled: What's that my professor used to say about how college is like a tollbooth? Yeah, that the people are constantly changing but it's generally always the same.

I would have left there feeling old and lame, but toward the end of the night, there were updates. In the last year there were at least two new babies, three new pregnancies, four weddings. Three people are now doctors, several are successful businesswomen (pp will soon get on a plane, go to a meeting and then fly back all in the same day). People are traveling the world, saving the world one charity function at a time, and still rocking the world at the club. We really have come a long way.

And yet, just as I used to do all those nights back in college when I'd write lengthy, descriptive emails to all of them about the freaks in the computer lab with me at 4 a.m., I'm here, tip-tapping away when I should be working on my freelance project. The more things change...

for Maxy and Belle: two dogs i feel like i knew

2011-04-04T10:29:00.000-05:00

When my brother and I were kids, we really wanted a dog. Like ready-to-bargain-on-Christmas/Birthday-presents-really-wanted-a-dog. There were all sorts of promises about how we'd take care of it in every way ourselves and my parents would never have to worry about a thing. There's a chance my mom would have eventually caved, as she is wont to do, but my dad simply wouldn't relent. He always says that the pain of losing a beloved pet is just too much to handle. And that he never got over the sadness of his dog, Maxy, dying in his arms.

Maxy was an energetic golden retriever that my dad found when he was a kid in Bombay. Dad holds his hands out like the AllState logo to show us how he "raised that dog from when he was this big." He was completely my dad's dog, sleeping next to him every night, waiting for him at the door every day. And Maxy wouldn't obey anyone else. I see how attached my father got to our neighbor's dog here a few years ago, and I can only imagine what he must have been like with a pup of his own.

Unfortunately, back in the day Maxy kept getting into the neighbors' yard, digging around the flowers while my dad was at school. And one day he came home to find the dog vomiting and shaking uncontrollably. It was impossible for a 13-year-old to carry a full-grown golden retriever all the way to the vet, but my dad tried. And when he physically couldn't go any further, no taxi or rickshaw drivers would allow such a sick dog into their vehicle. So my poor dad did the best he could to make the dog comfortable where they were in the street, and he watched as Maxy died in his arms. From rat poisoning.

***
My brother's roommate, Mark, bought his grandparents' house in Mobile, AL, and while it's off a major road, the neighborhood has a lovely house-in-the-woods kind of feel. Almost everyone has a huge back yard, and the street is flanked with so many beautiful old, tall trees it's actually cooler because of all the shade. You can hear birds and crickets, and it's just a peaceful place to be.

A little less than three years ago, this small brown puppy came to the door. No tags, no collar. She just arrived and didn't show any intentions of leaving. Mark and my brother went around the neighborhood trying to find out if anyone had lost a dog; they may have even put up signs. No one ever came forward, and they started to suspect someone just dropped her in off the neighborhood in the hopes people would take care of her. So they got her checked out and gave her the necessary shots, and the little chocolate lab mix became their dog, Belle.

Neither one of the guys had ever had a dog growing up, so everything Belle did was a novelty, from the never-faltering excitement when one of them came home, to tearing up the laundry room and all the clothes in it, to the lazy weekends just playing in the yard. My brother was terrified of dogs when he was very little, so the loving tone he'd use to call her or coax her to do her business in the yard while he was on the phone with me was really sweet to hear. You only really get to hear him speak that tenderly when he's just had surgery and is high as a kite on pain medication. I know he loves that dog very much. And, while I'd only seen pictures, he talked about her so much that I feel like I knew her.

My brother is in some town 30 minutes west of Austin, Texas right now, working evenings through the weekend. Yesterday he sent me a text message that Belle had died. My brother can never just give the full story in one go, so after some prodding, I found out that Mark had let her out and when he whistled and she didn't come, he began to worry. Apparently she had wandered out to the street and was hit by a car. She probably heard his whistle and tried to make her way back, but only made it as far as the grass, where he found her, bleeding. Mark called a neighbor, took her in his arms and was rushing to the veterinarian when the neighbor looked down and said, "Mark, I think she's gone."

When I talked to him later, my brother said he's never been this depressed in his life. He said now he understands how dad must have felt, and other friends he's seen have to put their pet down after having them be a part of the family for years. When he worked in town, my brother came home during lunch to let Belle out and play with her. He said that sometimes Belle would pull his slept-in pajamas out of the hamper and into her crate to sleep on while he was gone more than a few days. And when he would leave for a project, he made a point to give Belle a special treat and a kiss goodbye before he went out the door. This time he had to take off mid-week when Mark was at work, so he had to feed her, let her out and he was in a hurry to get to the airport. So he didn't have a chance to say goodbye in the usual way.

It's true, losing a pet is brutal. Hell, I've been sitting here crying over this dog that I never even met. But is having one worth the pain? I think maybe it is.

everyone thinks their kid is the cutest

2011-04-01T23:31:00.001-05:00

I don't have any kids. But I do think my parents are the cutest. I had Pandora playing on my phone during an especially crazy night at work. I had to stop and laugh when I got this text message:

I can sympathize; I've been trying to get three stars on all the Angry Birds levels for weeks. And now I feel guilty because I introduced him to the game. He's probably even more determined than I am to beat it.

best first mate

2011-03-18T00:57:00.010-05:00

Long, long ago I knew a person who watched me take four months to knit a sweater and said, "why would you go to all that trouble when you can just buy a sweater from Target for ten bucks?" That statement was the equivalent of hocking a fat, yellow loogie and spitting it directly at my face. Looking back, that particular relationship should have been over right then and there.

I knew that Jon was something special when he recognized how much I love to make stuff and began asking thoughtful questions about my craft du jour. He has come to give excellent logistical advice and opinions, and nowadays I almost don't want to start a project without consulting him. When I'm so bored at the electronics store with him that I want to take a quad-core processor and knock myself unconscious, I try my very best to remember how patient he is with me at the craft store when I take six hours deciding on fabric colors.

Recently a dear friend overseas had a baby. All she had said was that the nursery was going to be turquoise and black and that it would have a pirate theme. I decided to make the baby a quilt. Jon came with me to the fabric store and helped me choose a variety of turquoise and other blue colors. And then he came up with an idea that he justified with, "no self-respecting pirate goes around without his own pirate flag."

Here is the front, with its watery theme:

Two of our wedding colors have come from swatches of this quilt. Photos by Jonathan Muller

Here is the back, a cutesy pirate flag for an adorable pirate:

I was really afraid my friend would be offended by the skull on something for her baby. Especially after the violent reaction my mom had: She decreed that no grandbaby of hers would wear anything with a skull on it. But Jon insisted that if you're going to do pirates, you should go the full jolly roger or just stay home.

staying up late

2011-03-15T02:36:00.000-05:00

Today is my mother's birthday. 6-0. For real this time.

Last year, her friends took her out and made her wear a plastic tiara and gave her a bunch of joke gifts. She didn't have the heart to tell them that official documents say she was born March 15, 1950 instead of 1951 because she was precocious and the family wanted to get her into school early. She never tells people that she went on to skip two more grades before high school. The only reason she even told me was because she wanted to deter me from skipping during elementary.

"The kids your age won't play with you because they think you're oversmart, and the kids in your class won't play with you because they think you're a baby." I guess book learning isn't all that counts after all.

I went over there after work with two gifts: a humongous one wrapped in a plastic bag with a bow and a small one in a gift bag with a fat rose printed on the side and decorated in glitter. The latter is for her, I was very clear to explain, and the former is for the house. I learned this lesson the year my father presented to her on her birthday a brand-new microwave and couldn't understand why she didn't take it out of the box for a month.

The smaller bag had another bag in it, one she can take to the gym after work every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I've been hunting down gym bags for weeks, and most of them are big enough for my mother to climb into--but all she needs is a place where her little T-shirt, yoga pants and size 5.5 wide-width New Balances can go for the 12 second commute from work to the fitness center. So I purchased a general craft-supply bag from the fabric store that's the perfect size (individual pouches for shoes!). It has a cute flowery pattern in cream and light blue, which are her favorite colors. I had carefully removed the tag because I was certain she would make me take it back because the promotional backpack embroidered with Hinckley and Schmidt suits her just fine and I ought to save my money, especially this year. I was right.

When she opened the big bag with the gift for the house, I mentioned that all of us pitched in together for this and got it on a tremendous sale. It's the 14-piece stainless steel cookware set a coworker had seen her looking at in the Macy's catalog. I made sure to find the exact one she had lingered over. She started going down the I'll-just-to-give-this-to-you-and-I'll-keep-the-old-stuff road, but I could tell she's thinking about maybe hanging onto this one for herself. I've got the receipt, just in case.

She says that the fact that I come home and let her feed me and watch Sasural Genda Phool* with her most evenings is a way better gift to her than anything I could buy at the store. I know she means that, because I feel the same way. I tried to explain that my trying to find a gift for her that will inevitably turn out to be something she doesn't need or even really want is my lame attempt to show her how much she means to me. Then the calls from India begin. I kiss her forehead and let myself out.

***

During the last couple of years, I've been listening to the podcasts from This American Life. From the beginning. In order. Tonight, as I stir the mushrooms and the onions at 12:30 a.m., I happen to be on the episode from September 14, 2001. It's the first show they did after the 9/11 terror attacks, and listening to how shell-shocked everyone sounds just takes me back to how I felt after it happened. One of the people interviewed had been on a floor directly hit by a plane and had somehow, by the light of someone's cellphone, found her way down the stairs and out of the Twin Towers. She had called her boss, her boyfriend and her mother from the office when the the door to the emergency stairs was locked, but after someone opened it and they were rushing down, there was no way, and no time, to contact them. What struck me hardest was that her family in Pennsylvania gathered with their minister and watched the towers fall on television--in their words, they had "watched her die." Her brother had even brought a suit and white shirt and tie with him because he expected there to be a memorial or funeral.

What kind of nightmare that must have been for so many people: To see the building where your loved one was sending a fax or typing an email just crumble to the ground right before you on your living room tv. And to truly believe they were dead, even if it was just for half an hour. I've never had to deal with a major loss. But I catch myself thinking about it all the time. In fact, the fear of someone I love being snatched away from me is like a shadow, constantly following me around, tapping me on the shoulder every time people talk about something tragic on the news or in the lunchroom. I don't foresee myself being able to keep on living, let alone get out of bed if something like that were to occur. I was made aware of how fragile life is when I was four years old; and I don't care if I tell them 400 times a day but the people I love will never wonder how I really felt about them.

***
It's 1 a.m. and I'm stirring the vegetables. Jon has likely been eating beef stew for lunch every day for the last week. He can wake up to something new. If the chopping sounds haven't awoken him already. Ira Glass is talking about how everyone is United We Stand right after the terror attacks, but it's weird how in a few years things will get closer back to normal. Ten years later, they have.

The phone rings. My aunt is calling my mom from Mumbai, where she's in the store hunting for wedding outfits for me. I had thought, oh I'm going to be all Indian-y for my wedding, my aunt can get the stuff from India! No brainer, right? Except I don't live in India, so I conveniently forgot that the Hindu-to-Christian ratio there is pretty much exactly the same as the Christian-to-Hindu ratio in the United States. Translation: Not a lot of white saris available in India because Hindus wear them to funerals and Christian Indian brides have started wearing western gowns these days. I've essentially made my aunt go looking for a needle in a haystack. I think this will have more than made up for having missed all those birthday parties in the backyard and all the birthday parties I may have in the future. She describes the outfit in general terms and I start to panic. I ASKED her to do this. She's put effort and love into the task. I am going to wear whatever she picks out, and I'm sure it'll be nice... I stopped myself from that line of thinking and said, "If my cousin approves of it, go ahead and buy." My cousin has great taste.

***
So here I am, rambling on as I used to do at 3 a.m. in college when I had a paper due the next morning. My mom is 60, but it seems like she's still 45. That would make me 17, which is about right when I stop and think about how confused I STILL AM about my career path. At this moment, my Aunt is probably in that labyrinthine mall we went to that one time with all the sariwallas sitting on cushions unfurling stuff that will probably take an hour to re-roll later. She is finding my wedding dress. And I'm totally OK with it. Because, honestly, as long as I get to marry Jon, the only thing that matters is that I have the people I love around me that day. So I can put my arms around them and tell them that I love them so very very much. And how I'm thrilled that they will be sharing my happiness, and I hope they will be there to share in my sorrows as well. Because I know those will be there, too. They're just hiding around the corner, ready to strike me down on a random Tuesday morning.

But for today, I am thankful for what I have. God bless America. And God bless my mom.

*My foreign-language soap opera is the only thing exempt from my Lenten No-TV vow this year. Jon can watch sports.

tough love

2011-03-10T09:27:00.000-06:00

Wedding planning has been frustrating. It's been well-documented that I freak out when having to make decisions. The fact that we made the biggest and most crucial decision--finding/choosing each other--makes me feel so accomplished that I want to sit back and watch the rest of this thing plan itself. Oh, it's not going to? Crap.

I've shied away from talking about the nuptials because it gets boring for other people within about 45 seconds (I feel lucky to have a whole 20-minute window with the groom before his iPhone sneaks out of his pocket). There is little to report because we only have the bare bones checked off so far. Shh, don't tell the dozens of people who continually ask me how the planning is going. And don't get me started on the-knot-dot-com reminding me that THERE ARE ONLY 191 DAYS LEFT UNTIL YOUR WEDDING! YOU HAVE ONLY COMPLETED 13 OF THE 175 TASKS THAT YOU HAVE TO HAVE DONE! YOU ARE SO TOTALLY SCREWED!

The thing is, I NEED this kind of mean personal trainer or I'd be dilly-dallying around with color swatches until the week before.

Now, don't get me wrong. Getting married? Awesome. Making beautiful things like escort cards or invitations? Super-rad. Having a big old party with most all the people I care about? I couldn't BE more excited! But calling fifty people (who are likely trying to take all my money) to get price quotes on [insert costly item here], comparing, deciding and then setting up a time to meet with them and choose? ANNOYING. And that is the limbo in which I am currently stuck.

Thank God for my friends and family, who have been so generous with their time and efforts to help. They're all ready to rock, but the underlying problem is that Jon and I still have to a) decide what we'd like to have and b) set the budgets. Sadly those two things are directly dependent on one another. And this would be a lot easier if our communication didn't consist mainly of text message, email and/or dry-erase board.

But it'll get done. Jon suggested we give up television for the next 40 days (check back with me in April to see if I'm even still alive) so that we can better manage our time and get stuff checked off the list. At this point, I'm ready to do anything to make the-knot-dot-com shut the hell up. Even give up The Daily Show for awhile.

milestone: year 6

2011-03-07T16:23:00.001-06:00

Wow, SIX years of Do They Read Obituaries in Hell. Here's what you may have missed:

The next thing I remember was that I was having a really vivid dream and woke up to one of those scenes from a movie where silhouettes standing over me were starting to become clearer. I was lying on the floor. There was an ice pack on my neck and on my belly under my shirt, they had a fan on me and the guy was telling me to rock my knees back and forth. And way off in the distance, I heard someone say, "Get me my purse! I have to call her mother!"

I get to see my mom's smile during the day, and if things are quiet enough I can catch the sound of her laugh as I'm walking by. I cannot explain the boost I get inside when I hear it--as if there IS a chance that things may turn out okay after all.

Random comments about Encyclopedia Brown vs. Nancy Drew that started it all: 2
Miles of separation in March 2005: 2039
Initial text messages—determining how all future children will be named: 6

My CSI training tells me that either you're a hacker and you're spoofing Jon's IP address OR you're at Jon's computer.

After the fraudulent votes (I guess we had three) were thrown out, we placed 70th with a total of 764 votes. AND THAT IS DAMN IMPRESSIVE, FOLKS, considering there were what I believe to be thousands of other entries to choose from.

"You know, 'Women's Sizes.' That's where all the men go to buy their women. They have them in all sizes."

As the sun came up through the floor-to-ceiling windows we got the last of our stuff out of the condo. It was sad. That place was the last remainder of my old professional life, ten years of slogging crap hours for little pay doing what I enjoyed and hoping it would eventually pay off. All those weekends not going out with my friends, of living with my parents so I could save to buy a place of my own. And it's all vapor, now.

"C'mon, you know me. I bite off more than I can chew with EVERYTHING I do. But then I somehow manage to chew it all."

And now I can add balloon-animal artist to my resume.

It's just business. But when business is about one of the most important days of your life, it's hard not to take personally.

Thanks for reading!!

it's a preference, not an orientation

2011-03-06T16:13:00.003-06:00

"Your hair is getting long, Cadiz!"

"Yeah, I guess it is. My mom and I are going to cut and donate our hair after the wedding."

"What is Jon going to say about that?"

"He'll be fine. In fact, he prefers short hair on women. And glasses."

"So he likes lesbians?"

a major award

2011-03-04T10:11:00.002-06:00

My brother travels a lot for work, and often gets assigned to towns around the U.S. I'd never heard of, such as Truth Or Consequences, NM or somewhere near Cadiz, KY (I wish I could find that pic of the "Cadiz Laundromat" he sent me). He has to dress nice. But I guess because of the flights and hotels, there isn't too much leftover to pay the employees a whole lot. I guess he racks up airline miles, so that's a plus.

At the end of 2010, he called me to say he'd won an award from his company: "Most Traveled." Apparently, my brother had spent 40 weeks on the road, at 21 separate project sites. He was out of town for most of the year, but he made the most of it by taking side trips on the weekends. He's called me from the Staples Center, Vegas, the top of the Space Needle and from the Houston Rockets' game. A few times he even made it home to see us.

I'd asked him to send me postcards. At Christmas he handed me a stack of picturesque scenes from everywhere he'd been--not a bit of handwriting on a single one. That kid. Here is the lineup* of where he was, with side trips in parentheses:

10/4/09 Clinton, MO
10/24/09 Sibley, MN
10/31/09 Schuyllkill, PA**
11/15-22/09 Benton, KY
12/6/09 Dallas
1/16-23/10 Sibley, MN (Chicago)
2/6-14/10 Winnfield, LA
3/20/10 St. Clairsville, PA (Pittsburgh)
4/17/10-5/1/10 Truth Or Consequences, NM (Las Vegas, Los Angeles)
5/15-22/10 Okmulgee,OK (Chicago)
6/10/10 St. Croix Falls, WI
6/26/10 Chillicothe, MO
7/11-24/10 Lubbock, TX (Washington D.C.)
7/31/10-8/14/10 New York City
8/22/10-9/6/10 Walla Walla,WA (Seattle)
9/18/10-10/2/10 St. Croix Falls,WI (Chicago, St. Louis)
10/10-15/10 Watertown, NY
10/17-22/10 Rosemead, CA (Los Angeles)
11/1-5/10 St. Croix falls, WI
11/7-12/10 Coldwater, MI
11/28/10-12/17/10 Monticello, AK (Chicago, Houston)

The company gave him a little certificate along with his award, which was a $5 Starbucks gift card. I'm sure he took his time to figure out just how he was going to spend it.

***UPDATE***
Apparently I overlooked this postcard, which was in the pile of blank ones:

Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX

And here was the verbose message on the back:

"This is some statue on campus in their Quad I guess."

* I tried to check the spellings, but sorry if I misspelled your town.
**he wanted it noted that it was 14 straight 12-hour shifts

it's there. people just don't say it when they can see you.

2011-02-11T22:43:00.001-06:00

A few months ago, two people in the span of a week told me that white people are becoming a minority. One in person to my face, and one on Facebook (where each Wall Update is a direct message to me, naturally). I was pretty confused by this because hello, look around. The latter discussion was about how racism is still around, but in very subtle ways. I just couldn't think of an example off the top of my head.

Today, a frustrated employee in a different department transferred to me this lady who I assumed was old (but actually isn't too much older than my dad). She didn't want to accept that X-Ray image quality on a disc is just as good as on huge, inconvenient, expensive sheets of film. She was trying to get her records from another facility to bring to our hospital and was told that the request her physician put in for was never made. Instead of asking her doc to re-request it, she put the entirety of the blame on that (city) hospital, and then made a really racist remark about the people who work there. I didn't catch the meaning at first because generally people don't say derogatory stuff about brown people TO a brown person these days, so I'd only ever heard that particular turn of phrase on TV. And I certainly never would have heard it in real life if she was talking to me in person.

So it didn't sink in until she added, "And you know what I mean."

I WANTED to say, "No, I don't, you racist beeyatch. Just WTF DO you mean?" But she was already on to the next complaint. And I am a professional. After about 20 minutes of gentle explanation I had helped her with her problems. Unfortunately it usually takes me that long to think of a comeback.

I'm still a little rattled. Is this what people believe deep in their hearts but know not to say? I keep thinking about CC and how people can't necessarily tell what her heritage is, so she hears stuff I wouldn't when I'm out of the room. From people we know. People we thought we knew.

So, yeah, like I told those people, this stuff is out there. Every day. I just hope that people let go of it before my future children have to deal with it. Maybe, if these statistics are foretelling the truth, they won't have to for very long.

****UPDATE****

I saw that patient's name on the list today, and I made sure I would be in the vicinity when she showed up. In fact, I got myself involved in her situation so she would hear my voice, see my name and also *see* me. She was a meek-looking little woman who snapped up information and held it like a bear trap, not willing to listen to reason. Obviously someone along the like was trying to get her off the phone and said a generic answer (that doesn't apply to her specific case) and she was proclaiming it as law. The lady nearly turned the whole place upside-down with her arguing and inability to accept what four of us (all from different departments) were trying to explain.

And later when I called to make sure the disc situation was straightened out, the girl remembered getting reamed out by this patient a few months ago so she triple-checked that the lady's stuff was correct. Obviously this woman has issues. She told the technologist that the "reason she is the way she is" (unapologetically) is that her daughter-in-law died unexpectedly "because she fell through the cracks" of the healthcare system, so she wants to be sure no one she loves will experience the same thing, including herself. And that is a tragedy. I wholeheartedly agree that patients should take the initiative to understand and speak up about their/their family's care. But at some point, you have to step back and trust that the professionals--who have been highly trained--will do their jobs.

She's coming back to pick up her films tomorrow. Great.

on the telephone

2011-02-05T18:48:00.000-06:00

Often when my brother calls me, he doesn't really talk. He will ask what I'm doing and then has nothing to add. I'll follow up with 14 questions, to which he will have essentially the same answer: "Not much." Then I will start telling random stories, wondering if he is watching TV instead of listening. Sometimes I think he's been so conditioned to my rambling all these years that the white noise of it is sometimes soothing. Then I tire of hearing myself speak and let him go.

A few months ago, he called while we were watching the Dexter finale. If any of you have seen the show, you know that a WHOLE LOT OF CRAZY always happens, especially during the last episode. I let the call go to voicemail to call him back after I had calmed down (I'm always terrified on behalf of the hero). I figured that because my brother was in Houston for work, he must have scored tickets to the Rockets and was calling to tell me.

When I called back, I found out that my brother was in the Emergency Room. Remember that spurting blood thing he had going on with his leg? He already had surgery to fix it, but the problem had re-started at the ankle. It started spewing after he took a shower, and thankfully a coworker staying at the same hotel brought him to the hospital.

At this point, I started losing it. What kind of horrible person chooses to watch TV over answering the phone when her baby brother is bleeding profusely in some strange hospital a thousand miles away? Jon was trying to convince me that I am not a horrible person, but it still felt like it. I tried to be calm, because if I freaked out audibly, my brother would regret even telling me about it. He forbade me from telling my parents under the threat that he will never let me know what's happening again, and assured that he was fine. He was going to make an appointment with the doctor who did his other vein surgery when he got back to Mobile.

My brother's new phone thing is when I ask him a question he claims a) he's already told me the answer, b) I never pay attention/remember/listen c) that he won't repeat himself. And then he says I'm just like dad (no offense, dad, you're great). No one on Earth can get under my skin as much as this boy. And he takes sadistic pleasure in driving me batty.

So I never could determine if he had met with the surgeon again or if there was an upcoming procedure. He didn't want to tell mom, and he kept saying he'd already answered that question. I fired back that he's certainly not important enough that people take notes every time he speaks, and anyone who thinks so is on drugs. He said he'd tell mom I think she's on drugs and hung up.

Then he told mom that he was having ankle-vein surgery. The next day. And when she found out I had known about this whole situation, she was upset. For obvious reasons.

I think part of the reason my brother moved so far away is because my parents and I are consistently hovering over his eating, sleeping, partying and medicine-taking habits. It's selfish, really. We have grown fond of the little brat and would like to have him around for another 50 years or so. But my brother was taught at a very young age to live in the moment. If he wants to go to a bar and do shots with his buddies, that's what he's going to do, no matter how many cardiologists recommend against it. It makes my parents absolutely crazy with worry. But that stubborn part of his personality is likely what has helped him stay alive.

My mom got over her anger. We'd rather someone know what's going on with the kid than all three of us to be in the dark. But we spent the day of his procedure feeling a little out of sorts. We weren't there. We didn't know what has happening, hell, we didn't even understand exactly what they were doing to him. It's a blessing his roommate took the day off work to take him home and watch over him. That Mark is a good guy.

Shortly after he woke up and was able to keep graham crackers down, the phone calls began. The only upside to surgeries is the absolute hilarity of talking to my brother when he is on powerful drugs. The usual phone habits are out the window, and he's downright chatty. Unfortunately, he's also saying all kinds of brazen and ridiculous things, such as proclaiming to be able to take down a male nurse five times his size in a fistfight, or demanding an explanation from his heart surgeon as to why such a rich doctor drives a Ford Taurus. Who knows what he had said to the hospital staff this time. He called me at work about a dozen times. Later, I relayed a few tidbits of what he had been saying, and the response was, "Oh no. OH NO." It wasn't too embarrassing, but it was entertaining. But it's nice to know that--even while he was high as a kite and not making a lot of sense--he still wanted to talk to me.

Digging out

2011-02-04T07:46:00.001-06:00

It only (ONLY) took 3-4 hours to get the driveway passable. And the whole time I wanted to throw the shovel down and jump up on that size-of-a-house mound with the neighbor kids.

-- Posted From My iPhone--everybody needs an editor.

that poughkeepsie church is right: whoever is praying for snow, please stop

2011-02-02T10:38:00.002-06:00

For as long as I can remember, whenever it snows my dad never fails to bring up 1979. As in "Oh, well this is NOTHING compared to '79." Or "I was the only one on Ogden Avenue in '79. There was so much snow, you can't even imagine it!" Or "We got stuck in a drift and I didn't have something in the car, so I had to dig out that big Oldsmobile (Delta '88) out WITH MY BARE HANDS." Or "You were just a baby in the carseat, you didn't know what was happening." And "Yep, this is nothing like '79."

The newscasters say today's snowfall beat '79 by several inches. I am so glad that I can finally have something that will trump that. But I think '79 is so etched in my parents' memory because they had only recently experienced snow for the first time in general, let alone a blizzard. Nothing will probably top that one for them. But this is a doozy.

The hospital had warned us to "come prepared to stay," so yesterday morning I had a bag full of overnight stuff, books and snacks. Because of my old career, I get sort of excited whenever disaster looms, so I had been looking forward to hunkering down with books, granola bars and first-aid kits to be useful during an emergency at work. So when I was sent home at 3 p.m.--before the snow REALLY started to come down--it was disappointing. They told me to be back there by 7 a.m. to relieve the people who had stayed.

By 9 p.m., the workplace was on lockdown and leaving was a terminable offense. By midnight, they had shut down the city and by 3 a.m., no plows were even allowed on the road. My coworkers called at 6 a.m. and said not to come in but stay in touch. They are preparing to stay another night. HOWEVER, PATIENTS ARE STILL COMING IN FOR THEIR TESTS! There must be a lot more snowmobiles around these parts than I thought.

So I am at my parents' house. My mom is actually battling the flu, so it's a plus that she can rest, because no one is allowed to call off on days like this (if we were able to come in). Jon and I talked on Skype for two hours as the snow was building and building. He has set up a time-lapse video of the balcony. But because my parents live in a loop, the effects are much more dramatic here. There's about four feet of snow piled up in front of our front door, and the drifts are up a quarter of the way past my sedan's windows.

Work called again, and some crazies I work with are trying to make their way there. The police have announced that if you go out in this, you are essentially on your own. And if you get stuck, you will get a ticket. Godspeed, my friends.

This is the shot out the front door. We'd try to get out through the garage, but there's about that much snow in front of it, too--we know because the wind has forced in a good pile under the garage door.

p.s. Here is the link to the NYTimes photo of First Baptist Church's sign in Poughkeepsie, NY

from now on, Jon is in charge of letting people in

2011-01-05T00:27:00.001-06:00

Since sometime over the weekend, the outside security door (the one allowing anyone from the foyer-area to enter the building) in our 1960's apartment building has been stuck on buzz-to-let-someone-in mode. I mean constantly. As if someone was standing at his front door just holding it down or some blasted kids (and they're around, sticking their gum to the lobby wall en masse this summer) taped it down. Jon and I walked in shaking our heads. I am paranoid in general, making sure the apartment door is always double locked even when just going to get the laundry and that the chain is on when everyone is home. I was pretty irritated by this breach in security because that meant the lock, deadbolt and chain were all that separated us from all the serial killers prowling around suburbia.

Today there was a sign posted from the management company saying several people have complained about the door and there is nothing wrong with the system, except that the buzzer in somebody's unit is stuck in the down position. It asked that we all check our units to make sure it's not ours.

I went upstairs, took off my coat, put my purse on the ottoman and hung up my keys. Then I looked at our personal intercom, with its set of TALK, LISTEN and DOOR buttons that have been so well-used that the raised, once-gilded letters are worn in the center and barely legible. I gasped. DOOR was jammed under the edge of the intercom frame opening. Free-for-all entrance to our building since Sunday and it was all my fault! In my haste to let my parents enter, I didn't notice that the button hadn't popped back out after I held it down. And I hadn't thought to look earlier, because, duh, I could never be that stupid. Just to be sure, I walked all the way downstairs. The buzzer was a-buzz no longer.

There is certainly some bad karma coming my way. Because for nearly three days, I was cursing the doofus who doesn't understand how an intercom system works and put all of us at risk for intruders.

Holy crap, it's 2011.

2011-01-04T08:58:00.001-06:00

On the First of January I was talking to highcon, explaining how this year I'm not worrying about what other people are thinking, obsessing over whether I've offended somebody or being paranoid when it comes to saying the right thing at the perfect moment. Especially this year, when we have to make a lot of decisions that others will likely criticize. And as someone who is constantly trying to control things that are completely out of her control, this is a problem whether or not nuptials are on the horizon. Generally, I'm not big on resolutions, but this is something I really should work on. I was feeling pretty confident about sticking to it.

Highcon listened patiently. Then he said he wished he had a recorder to capture all the promises people have been making to play back for them later.

As a backup, I'm going with the safe bet held by nearly everyone out there: Exercise.

it's not her, it's us

2010-12-13T10:03:00.002-06:00

One of the things people have been saying to me about this whole wedding-planning thing is, Only nine months to go? Girl, you'd better lock down a photographer before all the best ones are taken! We took this seriously, because if there's one thing that we're not skimping on, it's the photography.

Last year I went with my mom to her coworker's baby shower. It was at this very expansive, luxurious home in a swanky neighborhood. And it was lovely. During the party, a sweet-looking woman came in with a big gift bag and a camera, and suddenly she was in tears. As she dabbed at her eyes, she kept saying, "It's just so beautiful to have come full circle! I shot their wedding, and now here I am to see that they're having a baby!" It was so emotional. I couldn't help but think, Wow, this photographer is really invested.

So when we started looking for photographers, I immediately thought of that woman. I asked my mom to get her info, took one look at her stuff and really identified with her style and eye for composing shots. Jon looked at her Web site and completely agreed. It was awesome that we were both so definitively on board. She was not booked for our date, so we set up a meeting with her last Saturday, just as the snowstorm was starting to come down.

She invited us to her condo in the city (on a weird side note, it was the same building I had to gone to see with Ri when she was looking to buy). It was similar in size to our old place, and cozy too. She offered us some pastries from the Greek bakery I used to go to in the city all the time--and one of them was my favorite, apricot, which you don't see every day. I was noting these small *signs* as we talked.

We were there for a little more than two hours. She explained that it's not just us deciding on whether we want to book her, but she has turned clients down because she'll "spend a lot of time staring at our faces," so she has to get a good vibe from us, too. Later on, Jon and I admitted we spent most of the meeting wondering if she was going to want to work with us or not. She showed us how much attention to detail she gives and how she personally edits every single shot herself. Then she showed us the albums and we especially liked the way one of them was done. We were sold, but tried to play it cool.

For the question-and-answer portion of the evening, she explained that she does do a lot of Indian weddings, but for this past year there was a majority of destination weddings. Of course, Jon commented on her fancy computer and she said she gets the fastest there is out there because her time is money and why wait for all those high-res images to upload when you can upgrade? We agreed wholeheartedly.

I did attempt to pitch a barter-for-upgrade idea, but as soon as it came out of my mouth, I realized that this particular method only works when both parties are familiar with the quality of the other's work. She politely declined. And then we started talking about the money. Jon and I really wanted this woman to work with us. But we are on a budget. She mentioned that some couples just sign up for the lowest package to secure the date and upgrade later. YES. And upgrade I'm sure we would.

She hugged us both and said she'd love to work with us. We headed out into the storm with a box containing the rest of the apricot pastry and the security that we'd found the photographer we'd always wanted. On the first try! And trying to figure out how we could come up with more money to upgrade to a nicer package.

We discussed it and emailed her around 7 p.m. the next day. As soon as I hit "send," Jon and I actually high-fived. We got one of our big goals accomplished!

But when I opened my email this morning, I had a message from the photographer.

It was really great meeting you both. I'm afraid I have some bad news. I had a proposal that was sent over 3 weeks ago for another couple for your wedding date. I didn't think they were going to book because I haven't heard from them. Oh course since I haven't heard from them and since the proposal was never signed, I still continued to meet with you both. Just this afternoon they signed their proposal. If I can help you both with finding another photographer, please, let me know and I'll be more than happy to send a few your way. It was really nice meeting you both and good luck with the rest of your wedding planning.

At the end of the day--and it really doesn't matter why--we're not getting this photographer. Maybe she actually didn't want to look at our faces for weeks after the wedding but wanted to let us down easy. Maybe the other people signed up for the bigger package right off the bat and it simply came down to the guaranteed amount of money. I can't blame her for that. It's just business. But when business is about one of the most important days of your life, it's hard not to take personally.

and for that, you're getting a bestselling thriller in your stocking

2010-12-06T08:45:00.000-06:00

"Did you know there's a new book out about the '85 Bears?"

"Hold up a second: Are you suggesting that I get you A BOOK for Christmas?!?*"

"No, I already bought it."

"Um, what kind of guy shops for himself right before the holidays?"

"This guy. If I want it, I buy it."

"You dork."

*As much as I don't like owning books, I love to give them. And my brother claims not to read, which is why it frustrates him when I keep giving him books. Yet somehow he's intimately familiar with the contents of certain sports books--many of which he has received as gifts. From me.

he told me to meet him directly at the mall

2010-12-02T22:58:00.000-06:00

Tomorrow my brother is flying in, and I actually have a day off! I'm really looking forward to it, because I haven't gotten to see him much the last couple times he was home. And I'm hoping he will help me with my holiday shopping.

I told him they're predicting 4-8" of snow, but I don't think he took that text very seriously. Watch him show up without any warm clothes.

tomorrow, it's december

2010-11-30T22:23:00.000-06:00

I kid you not, people, I often stop myself in mid-date-writing to say HOLY CANNOLI, SELF, IT'S ALMOST [insert something that I thought was way off but is right upon us, such as DECEMBER]!!

So all day I was in a tizzy. Because I have to deal with a lot of dates in my job.

But this also means that we've completed yet another NaBloPoMo November! Hooray! Congratulations to Syar, Madelyn, Cofo and Jon, as well as the readers and commenters, without whom this kind of endeavor wouldn't be fun at all.

The thing is, this past month I didn't really *feel* like I was producing much in the way of quality. I know time is lacking, but I think I could get back to what I think were better posting if I keep at it. So I'm going to try not to slip into the abyss of non-posting that was consuming me before. Let's see how long that lasts.

Thank you all for reading and commenting! As any blogger will tell you, it's the attention that really keeps it going. MUAH!!!

can't get you out of my head

2010-11-29T23:44:00.000-06:00

I am persistently troubled with things being stuck in my head. But worst, by far, are the songs. In fact, at my first job, a coworker and I had a contest over which of us could get a song stuck in the other's head without actually singing it. And as much as I dominated that game, it got a little close at times.

I heard somewhere that if you have a song stuck in your head, doing a little quick mental math can boot it right out. And that probably works, but I have such little patience for arithmetic that I often give up on it before I get too far. So said annoying song remains intact.

But today I was listening to a radio interview with Amy Sedaris, who is famous for her books, her comedy, her sibling, David and her show with Stephen Colbert--Strangers With Candy. She said that Colbert once told her that the best way to get a song out of your head is to think of that old SpeedStick deodorant brand-recognition jingle-ender, "By Mennen!"

They had so many commercials back in the day:

For the ladies:

And even En Espanol:

It really works!

two young kids in love

2010-11-28T14:15:00.000-06:00

Last night, Jon and I shot the wedding of the daughter of one of my work friends. It was intimate and beautiful, and we were very happy to be there. Out of the 1500 we took, here is one of the shots I especially liked:

Heather and Glenn, November 27, 2010

Photo by Jonathan Muller

tradition, modified

2010-11-27T23:55:00.004-06:00

For years, my high school friends gathered at an all-night diner every Thanksgiving night after all the turkey was put away into Tupperware and all the parents had gone to bed. Around midnight. The last few turkey days, however, the tradition has fallen by the wayside due to excessive age + tryptophan. So around 9 p.m. the text messages would start with apologies about it being late and various members of the group being tired.

This year was much the same, so we decided to cancel. I set up in the middle of the floor with this bridesmaid dress I was taking up for a friend, sort of freaking out because when I was pinning it on the person I was unaware there was a slight train on the back. Then my phone buzzed.

MFM was sitting at the diner wondering where everybody was. She had originally said she couldn't make it, but then decided to sneak out and hang with us. So I changed out of my pajamas and headed out there.

It was a much-needed break. I had been agonizing over whether to cut the dress or somehow pleat the hem on the underside. I couldn't bring myself to snip it. But MFM tiptoed into the house with me and gave me the encouragement to make the cut. And everything was great. The dress looked awesome when we shot the wedding today, and my friend was happy.

Of course, Highcon is only in town for the weekend, so a few of us got together at a bar after the wedding. It's not the same as Thanksgiving, but it's always great to see them.

That's what lack of sleep'll do to ya

2010-11-26T23:16:00.003-06:00

So last night I got two hours of sleep. And not because I was up trying to get any nonsensical Black Friday Deals, either. Remember that time my brother and I camped outside of Best Buy all night in the freezing weather for a tv my dad made us return? Yeah, we're not doing that again.

Last night I was furiously trying to alter a bridesmaid dress a coworker has to wear for her daughter's wedding tomorrow (she's both Mother Of The Bride as well as Matron Of Honor). Only after I had it all pinned equidistant from the floor did I realize there was a small train on the dress, which is why it wasn't even no matter how many times I'd repin it. I took a break to meet MFM at an all-night diner at midnight and resumed when I got back. I abut to go to bed at 8:30 am when my coworker called to see if I could come in early. Yeah, that wasn't happening.

I guess the dress came out well bc the coworker tried it on with the shoes and it looked amazing on her. Phew!!! All that paranoia was draining.

But now I'm so tired I can barely think. I almost got rejected for a Best Buy card tonight because I confused some numbers between my telephone number and my social security number.

I just don't have it in me for these almost-all-nighters anymore.

-- Posted From My iPhone--everybody needs an editor.

the laundry room is empty!

2010-11-25T13:42:00.000-06:00

I'm so thankful that I have the whole day to spend with Jon, doing laundry and basting a turkey before the folks come over. And it's not even the weekend!

I am also thankful for you, and you, and you, and you, and YOU.

Be safe, and tell the people you love how you feel about them.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

rockstar--rocking that Prius

2010-11-24T22:22:00.000-06:00

So I went to a newer branch of my bank the other day, and to my surprise, next to the spaces allotted for the disabled, there were a few other very close specifically designated spots:

See? We're talking about right up next to the door.

It says, "Reserved for Low Emitting/Fuel Efficient Vehicles."

Am I the only one who hasn't seen this before?

P.S. If you're traveling for the holiday, please be careful.

cruisin' down the street in my six fo'

2010-11-23T21:31:00.001-06:00

"Isn't it weird that some 80% of songs are about love?"

"Not really; everybody wants it."

"Yeah I guess you're right."

"That's why they're always writing songs about b*tches and hoes."

"Um, what?"

" 'Cuz they're in love. Sigh."

-- Posted From My iPhone--everybody needs an editor.

move over, martha stewart

2010-11-22T23:20:00.000-06:00

Jon's sister, M (not to be confused with Madelyn--he has three sisters), sent us a package filled with beautiful handcrafted items as an inspiration for the wedding. She makes all sorts of awesome stuff all the time, and we are so glad she's going to be helping us. Aren't these cute?