Month: August 2010

X and I journeyed to Connecticut this weekend. We went to see my parents and also make the rounds with some friends who we didn’t get a chance to really catch up with at the wedding. In an effort to continue my path of post-marriage change and in the spirit of “growing up,” I am continuing my focus on an area of my life which needed scrubbing. The Friends. I’ve continued to make unfortunate but necessary decisions in the way of some relationships and I had to really shakedown what I consider friendship to be. And instead of allowing Gloom and Doom to guilt my every single visit into being an audience for their sparring, I’m going to focus on getting X and I out in the world of Connecticut so we can hang out with my friends up there.

Nothing changes at la Casa Gloom and Doom. Every time I go up there my mother has pulled out “a box” I need to go through. Usually this task waits until I’m about to get in the car on Sunday, and she says, “Oh, you forgot to go through your stuff!”   This time though, I remembered early and asked her what and where these boxes were.

Kiddie books. Great.

Considering that X and I just got married, and that we’re no spring chickens, I would think maybe she would wait a year or so just to see if there’s a Baby-Velvet to become the owner of the books. Right now, I have absolutely no idea if I want these books or not.

I started pulling the books out, one by one. Then my mom came over and started pulling books out too, and making piles, and then I had absolutely no clue what I’d gone through already and what still needed attention. I made my focus the “give to nieces” pile, as I would ideally like to put most of the books there. The reason being, it gets them out of her house so I’ll stop hearing about them, and there is a remote chance a would-be Baby-Velvet might get the books back if/when she/he/it arrives. But is it this easy? Oh, nooooo. She has to pull every. single. book. out. And inspect it. And, she has to ask questions. OMFG!!!

Gloom: You don’t want this?
Me: No. I don’t even remember that book.
Gloom: Well, you should take 2 books with you every time you go see the girls and spread it out.
(I ignored her because I only see my nieces twice a year.)
Gloom: Oh, I remember this book! THIS is a “donate?” I paid good money for this book!
(The sticker from Caldors, which closed over 20 years ago, indicates someone spent $1.34.)
Me: JESUS MOM! What are all these piles? STOP taking books out of the boxes!!!
Gloom: Well, I want to see these books!
Me: Seriously, stop. You want me to go through them, I’m going through them.   Another for the nieces pile.
Gloom: When you see the girls, just bring them two books.
Doom: Are you two getting anywhere?
Me: No, because she’s a pain in the ass! She keeps pulling the books out that I am trying to donate and trying to save them, and she is making 10 piles of books I haven’t gone through. You can’t throw anything away in this house because you guys rescue it from the garbage and make me go through it again next time I come up here!
Doom: That’s your mother. I don’t do that.
Gloom: I just like looking at the books.
Me: You live here and you have all the time in the world to look at these books. Now that I’m here, you need to let me do this.
Gloom: This box is heavy. Are you bringing all these to the girls? Just bring them two.
X: The kids will be 40 by the time she gets all the books to them.
Me: Yeah, seriously, stop saying that. I’m dumping this whole box there the next time I see them.

Ding dong!

Me: Who is at the door?
Doom: I’ll get it.

After a few minutes, my dad came back in the room with two t-shirts. He said their neighbor won them at a golf game and doesn’t want them so he gave them to my dad. He probably bought them at the mall because he’s sick of having to watch my dad mow the lawn shirtless. My mom got totally distracted and starts touching the shirts and asking if they are cotton and the two of them are cooing over the shirts. You cannot cure them of their packus-rattis-itis. Their motto is “more stuff is better than less stuff, and free stuff is the best kind of stuff to have.” I took this opportunity to quickly plow through the books without her TSA-like security inspection.

Then I looked at X and tried to telepathically say “Do you see the irony of them making me throw out this crap and someone shows up at their front door to give them more crap?” and X looked at me and tried to telepathically say “If you fucking turn in to your mother this marriage is over.”

I swear to Gucci, those two shirts will be in my next box of shit to go through.

The two big questions everyone seems to ask me now are “So are you selling your place?” (OMG STFU NO I AM NOT, GET YOUR GOD DAMNED MITTS OFF!) and “So is it different being married?”

Huh. Well, no. It’s not.

At least, not for X and I. Our relationship remains exactly the same, with a bit of a twist. I think I’m exactly the same. Granted, we’re only a month in, but yes, this is what I thought it would feel like. X keeps saying he’s on Cloud 9. I had to rationalize to him that he has something to compare this marriage to – another marriage. I have nothing to compare it to. I have lived my life knowing I wouldn’t get married unless I felt the way I feel about X. So when that happened, there you go. Married. No change. Just as I expected.

X married someone who was close but no cigar. Right time, wrong person, wrong decision I guess. When that went horribly wrong, he thought he would never get married again. Now that he’s entrenched in our marriage, he says he has such a different feeling. So okay, it’s different for him, but no, nothing has changed for me.

What is a surprise is that the marriage between X and I has changed some outside forces. I had a very extended conversation with an engaged bloggie friend, Carrie, and she mentioned that her single friends were acting weird, and she felt like a sellout. Girl. I felt your pain. Totally. I had some interesting reactions from single friends. I never was the rub-it-in-your-face-oh-my-god-look-at-my-ring type person. I was also the never I’ve-been-dreaming-about-my-wedding-since-I-was-five girl either. So when I got engaged, I didn’t exactly announce it to people. I just sort of let them figure it out.

Work was the funniest. Someone I barely see came up to me after a meeting and cooed, “I see something sparrrrrkly on your hand that wasn’t there the other dayyyy!!!” (He’s gay, obviously.) But people I see all the time, like my partner at work? Hilarious. I waved that thing in his face day after day and he never noticed.

So when I had some people over to celebrate Sammy turning 10 this past winter, one of my girlfriends who got there first saw the ring. Then as other people arrived, she asked, “Did you know about X and V got engaged?” Someone actually looked over at me, grabbed my hand to look at the ring, and said -wait for it – in front of X and his kids, “Why do I only hear the negative stuff?” Our other girlfriend hit the person on the arm as if to say “inappropriate” and instead of saying sorry and shutting the hell up, nope, she repeated it louder.

Not sure why this would be someone’s reaction. And if X were any different of a man, and had a different reaction, or a low self-esteem, this could have been detrimental for our relationship. I was pretty hurt by this comment, and therefore cut the communication until it became totally obvious by the “you’ve been ignoring me” email, so I presented my case. An apology was made, an apology was accepted, and life moved on.

I need to stop having a soft heart.

Six months later, in the throes of wedding planning, I began a systematic freak out, Velvet style. Amidst the pills, crying, and the “I should go to the Gulf and help clean the Pelicans” meltdown, I made the colossal mistake of mentioning my anxiety to the above person. While X and I were on our pre-wedding honeymoon where I was sans internet connection, I had to find out that something sat on my Facebook Wall, for all to see, for the better part of a fucking week. I believe it said something along the lines of, “So are you going to get married or not?”

Does anyone besides me see how hurtful this is?

So has anything changed at the one month and one day mark past our wedding date? Yeah. I’ve gotten smarter. I made my list of priorities and my husband is first. Friends for me are no longer half-assed. It’s all or nothing. If you can’t keep my confidences, if you’ve proven to not be a good friend to me or to someone else who I know of, if I couldn’t trust you alone with X despite the fact that he only has eyes for V, if you create unrelenting drama way beyond the garden variety nuttiness? I’m out.

I’m guessing the priority realignment happens again once there are kids. Maybe we’ll be lucky enough to find out. For now, I just know that I can no longer get sucked into drama, and I will no longer allow people to make drama for me, especially when it comes to X, who routinely asked me through the years, “Do you have any normal friends?” I kept telling him to just wait until he saw who made the very exclusive cut at the wedding. Four high school girlfriends, one girlfriend I met when I was 22 who coincidentally married my brothers best friend and his parents are best friends with my parents, and my friend from my crazy days in Atlanta. Shoot, one of my high school girlfriends witnessed our freaking marriage license for god’s sake.

X said, “I finally get it now. You’ve got an inner circle. I just hadn’t seen it before.” I like to think my credibility is restored in his eyes, once again.

I’ve come up with an ingenious idea for not having video at the wedding. The Photographer’s pictures are back, and while they are just now only online, I’m waiting for the CD so I can work on my next project: One of those videos set to music with pictures that are in a slideshow format! With the song I walked down the aisle to! Eee!

There hasn’t been a lot going on over here, that’s for sure. Everything quieted down quite a bit after the wedding and now I can focus on the other neglected areas of my life. Such as…the plan that X and I are going to move to New York. I don’t know how long this will take, but we have the wheels in motion on this. I cannot tell you what will make me happier – finally, FINALLY going back home after 12 years, or that X will be with me and can enjoy the New York I know and love.

In any case, here are my favorites from the wedding. And in case you ask where X is, I have a favorite of us, but I think I will spare X of having his face plastered up here along with mine. It might be “for better for worse”   but I don’t think I should try to make good on that so soon after being married. After all, it is just three weeks today.

“C’mon Mommy! Let’s go get married already!”

If Sammy didn’t overshoot the aisle, this wouldn’t have taken so long.

Looking back on 5 years of blog…I never thought I would see this day either.

The jury is still out as to whose hand this is. I had originally blamed the King of the Dog Park, however, I believe that that might be X’s thumb. They both fessed up right away, which means, both of them were feeding Sammy a bevy of treats from the hors d’oeuvres

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Once I introduced my sweet little niece to the dance floor, we couldn’t stop her. The funniest part is that we had an evening wedding and my brother was convinced this child would be sleeping by 7:30. Yeah. No way.

X and I are ready to go do this all over again. It was so much fun. I’m glad we didn’t elope.

Happy Weekend Everyone!