Month: May 2010

I Can See Your Expression When the Phone Rings

Thursday, May 27, 2010 / Velvet / 5 Comments

Maybe it was a bad idea to let my parents pick the Justice of the Peace. It’s no secret that the Velvet family likes to shop for price.

This past weekend, X and I went to Connecticut to work on some more details. I’m not sure why I thought a “small” wedding of just family and a few friends would be any easier. Damn. You still have to do all the same crap, you just mail less invitations and make less place cards. Yes. Sigh. Place cards. X thought that since it’s such a small group we could let people decide where to sit. Um. No. Have you met my family? We need to make a very strategic plan on who sits where. If we can keep my sister-in-law in a different city from my mom, we’ll be in good shape. When I was first making phone calls for a venue, every Venue Manager said the same thing at first: Describe your perfect wedding.

“Oh, that’s easy. One where my mom doesn’t punch my sister-in-law and one where my dogs can be a part of it.”

This did make everyone laugh. I think they thought I was joking. I wasn’t.

We went to the town hall to apply for the marriage license. Lucky for me, my BFF from high school works there and did the whole thing for us on the spot. No waiting! No blood tests! No proof of X’s divorce! No charge! Thanks Divorcee!!!! (Funny, I know. Even funnier she changed her status on Facebook to “engaged” this morning.)

As she was filling out the license, her co-worker, sitting at a desk behind her, said, “Is Larry marrying you?” I said, “Um, yeah, I think that’s it.” She said, “You’re not getting married at the Motel 6* are you?” I said, “Uh, yes.” She starts shaking her head. “He called here the other day to see if you had applied for your license yet. He said someone called him and said his daughter was getting married and asked if he would perform the ceremony and he couldn’t remember your names, the location, the date or the time.”

X and I looked at each other and started laughing. Divorcee said this was sort of par for the course with this guy and suggested we keep calling him to remind him. Then she said we should plan to send someone to pick him up. Jesus. Christ. She told me stories about people we went to high school with who never picked up their marriage licenses and she had to run them over to their wedding. Fuck DC, I love small towns.

When we went back to my parents house we told them what happened with the JP. My dad called him right then and gave him the info all over again. He said that the JP lost the paper where he wrote everything down. Wow. Just, wow. I was like, “Um, Dad? We sort of need him.” He kept saying “Don’t worry, don’t worry.”

Yeah. I think we need a Plan B. I told X since we have zero connection to this JP and he might not even show up, maybe we should consider just finding a Greek Orthodox priest to marry us. X is working on that today. Yikes. The only problem is that Greek Orthodox weddings last like three days.

We did get a cake last week. Devils food with cannoli cream. Devils food cakes and cannolis are my two favorite desserts in the whole world, and whoever thought of putting them together is a god damned genius. As opposed to us picking a JP name out of a hat, at least getting the cake at this bakery felt right. It’s from the same bakery where my mom got my cake for my baptism.

We’re down to 8 weeks people.

*I’m not really getting married at the Motel 6. I promise.**

**It’s Super 8.

Til What Do Us Part?

Tuesday, May 11, 2010 / Velvet / 11 Comments

It is totally unintentional that my last post title deviated from my usual song lyric clip to part of the traditional marital vows, and that this one is another vow. But why “Til Death?” Are you no longer married after a death? Aren’t you always married in your heart?

My dear friend Lily, whose husband has been battling cancer for several years, passed away this morning. I am so very heartbroken and sorry for my friend.

In the last few weeks, she has sent me various texts or emails with thoughts and concerns she has about living a life solo, without her husband and sidekick of the last 20 years. I hope if and when she ever reads this that she’s not upset that I am sharing the content of something she texted to me late one night.

She said, “I wish I could go back and do the last 19 years over, and cherish every moment.” I responded and told her that just isn’t possible in reality. We always wish we could go back and do something over again, but the truth is that life sometimes gets crazy and busy and we forget to cherish the time we have. Or we don’t have time to. We have to leave our loved ones to work. We argue with our loved ones. We spend time apart for one reason or another. It’s just how it goes. We do our best to outweigh that with the positive and the moments we do cherish.

Perhaps this makes me less of an atheist than I think I am and more agnostic, but I prefer to believe that Lily’s husband is with his mommy right now, and that it’s way better there than it could ever be here.

Kisses to you Nick. Your impact on my friend’s life and the incredible, compassionate, loving husband you were to her and father to Nicholas will leave an imprint on their lives and hearts forever.

For Better For Worse

Sunday, May 2, 2010 / Velvet / 14 Comments

It’s been a rough weekend. I’m not going to get into all the details but I had a bit of an operation on Friday morning. X brought me home with all my pain meds and antibiotics, and took the pups for me so I didn’t have to walk them while feeling like a truck drove through my insides. The pain meds I had – Lortab, weren’t cutting it. Eau. Cutting. I should have picked another word. And so I pulled the big guns Oxycontin out of the back of the medicine cabinet. This is where the whole story goes horribly awry.

Saturday morning around 5:45 a.m., I woke up for a quick pee. When I was sitting on the toilet begging my bladder to wake up and get going already, I started feeling the hot then cold flash, then started to sweat instantly, then dizzy. Then bam! Nothing.

I woke up on the bathroom floor with my pants around my knees. Now, I know that this isn’t the first time I’ve woken up with pants around knees, but this wasn’t exactly the outcome I preferred. I crawled back to bed and texted X, who promptly came over and made me eat yogurt. Wow was I sick. Wow.

He left so I could sleep, then later in the day my neck started killing me and I got a ripping headache. I was scared I was going to die, so we started texting about what to do. We used to work with this guy who I hated, who was like 500 lbs. and last summer the guy fell in the middle of the night, after an operation, hit his head and died. So X says, “Even though we made fun of him, you’re going to the hospital.” Freckled K was at the restaurant across the street though and I had already texted her that I was in peril and she came running over. In under 3 minutes she had my doctor on the phone and told them I was in bad shape. Bitch don’t waste no time. He said I needed to go back to his office right away. X arrived and we get in the car on our way back there.

I got car sick on the way up and had to get out of the car and walk the last block while X parked, but averted the vom. We went inside and the doctor removed all the bandages, said I probably just bruised my head and I should be okay. X said “She got scared because we have an old co-worker who died last summer after an operation when he fell.” So my doctor said, “What happened?” I said, “Oh, I don’t know, we never found out what happened when he hit his head.” It seemed like perfectly logical answer to me but X and the doctor both were like, “NO! WITH YOU! NOT THAT GUY!” Forgive me for not keeping up with you girls, but I’m working on a 3 day empty stomach and Courtney Love’s prescription plan.

Anyway, we left and we’re driving back and of course it’s like All-Embassy Open House day. I got sick again and told X I had to vom. He said, “We’re on Massachusetts, I can’t pull over, look at all the people!” There were tons of people everywhere. Of course this would be my luck. X was trying to turn left on S Street and I stuck my head out the window and projectile vomited orange gatorade all over the place. Just as it was flying out of my mouth, cars started to pass X on the right. Because all these people had parked on the side of Mass, and because it’s only 2 lanes right there, they were squeezing by between our truck and the parked cars. And there I am, spraying vomit all out the window. I swear there was splatter inside someone’s 5 series Beemer, as well as the car behind it. X pulled over after we turned the corner and I finished the vomiting and we went home.

X was like, “My favorite part of today was you throwing up orange vomit in front of like 1000 people in line at the Embassy of Zambia and getting some into the cars passing by.

Let that be a lesson to all. Passing on the right? Illegal!