So... this could be -- and may eventually be, I think -- a cute story about the marriage of one of my many cousins' many kids. But the story wouldn't make sense unless you know what Tinder is. Long Suffering Spouse assumed it was just another dating app -- but, as you may or may not know, Tinder has little or nothing to do with "dating" in any conventional sense.
So... I thought, for purposes of the story, maybe I should find and link an article that explains Tinder to those who, like Long Suffering Spouse, might not understand what Tinder actually is. This morning, I found an August 2015 Vanity Fair article by Nancy Jo Sales entitled, "Tinder and the Dawn of the 'Dating Apocalypse,'" -- but, after reading it, I am so depressed I don't feel much like telling my little story.
You know how to make a man a feminist? Give him daughters -- and granddaughters. Now, of course, the 'woke' feminists (you'll have to do your own research on what 'woke' means -- I'm researched out for the day) wouldn't have me. Which is fine. I don't subscribe to a lot the ideological nonsense that so many self-proclaimed feminists espouse. But I do understand how awful I feel for the poor young women interviewed for Ms. Sales' article. I hope that most, if not all, of them have found some happiness and fulfillment in the intervening years (the article is three years old already) -- but I fear they have not.
And I realize, now, better, after reading this article, why one of my cousin's wives was giving us the Death Glare as we boys chortled at the wedding reception dinner. Her daughters are younger than mine. And still single. She has to deal with this horrifying Tinder "culture."
I still think it's a good, funny story. But the Death Glare and the linked article make me cautious about the telling.
So I'll have to come back to it.
Soon, I hope. But not this morning.
Showing posts with label Family Weddings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Family Weddings. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 14, 2018
Thursday, September 29, 2016
As I was saying....
It's a dark, damp, cool Thursday in Chicago, light rain spitting fitfully from low, leaden clouds over Chicago's Loop.
I'm almost ready to start my week now.
Older Daughter was in town last weekend---again---with her two daughters, the younger one just starting to walk, neither one of them sleeping through the night. At home or on the road.
Poor Older Daughter. She thinks I don't like it when she visits. That's not true. Admittedly, I like it better during the day than during the restless nights. When she came by with two sick children for the Labor Day weekend, I lost a week recovering from the virus the kids gave me.
Well, at the ages of 1 and 2, the kids don't have much of an allowance, do they? What other gift can they give their beloved Grampy besides a virus?
And then came the next weekend, when Hank and Older Daughter and their two kids were supposed to drive up from Indianapolis for a party with friends in Batavia, the hosts of that party being college friends of Older Daughter and her husband, and the hostess being 8½ months pregnant with her second child, with roughly 100 people coming over, and my daughter and her still-sick kids (who wouldn't have slept in Batavia either) and her husband proposing to land on their friends' doorstep the night before said party. Who does that to somebody?
I blew a gasket on behalf of the young family in Batavia, and I'm not sure I could pick Mr. or Mrs. out of a lineup.
Mind you, Long Suffering Spouse was aghast as well, but she just vents at me. But, when I said something to my daughter, I was the bad guy. And, really, what I said, albeit perhaps at the top of my lungs, was that, if you really like these people, you will not impose yourself and your children on them the night before they are to entertain 100 people---bring them to our house instead. If Hank thinks he can help them prepare, let him stay out there, I said, but there's no way you can do other than hinder.
In the end, Older Daughter didn't travel that weekend after all. Not only were the kids still sick, neither she nor Hank had made arrangements for their two humongous golden retrievers, Cork and Tipperary.
They didn't come because you yelled at your daughter, Long Suffering Spouse told me.
I didn't say anything you didn't say, I responded.
Yes, but you said it to her, she replied.
Anyway, Older Daughter was back at our house, with her kids, a week ago today. That would be last Thursday. No, Friday was supposed to be a working day in Chicago just as elsewhere in the country.
Older Daughter was back in town because (1) Granddaughter No. 1 was turning four this past Monday and (2) Younger Daughter, her mother, was turning 27 on Tuesday. They would both have parties on Saturday at Younger Daughter's house---two parties, sort of a twi-night double header. As in a 'modern' doubleheader, the house would have to be cleared between parties; the hard part was figuring how to get Younger Daughter out of her own house during what she assumed would be clean-up and recovery time. Younger Daughter knew about her daughter's party; her own was to be a surprise.
My nap time was severely compromised on Saturday, but I cheerfully volunteered to pick up sandwich trays and the cake and all sorts of other things at our local Costco, some of it for the first party and some of it for the second, taking a lot of it to Middle Son's house which lies roughly halfway between the Curmudgeon Manse and Younger Daughter's abode. Middle Son had to completely reconfigure his refrigerator to accommodate the load. And I was still bringing a lot home.
All my kids attended both parties. Youngest Son was late arriving to the first one because he was coming from baseball practice.
You'll remember, perhaps, that Youngest Son used to play baseball for a school I've called South Janesville College here. But he graduated in 2015, sort of---since he had to do his student teaching in the Fall of 2015---and he's no longer playing college baseball. He's coaching. He's not a head coach or anything---as a matter of fact, he's an unpaid "volunteer" coach (though still under written contract for some reason)---and his status as a college coach has enhanced his position as a youth baseball coach. He's even giving pitching lessons to at least one high school kid hoping to make varsity this year (the kid he coached last year didn't make it, but through no fault of his own, or Youngest Son's).
Anyway, my updates here have been so sporadic that I've barely introduced Youngest Son's girlfriend, a beautiful, leggy brunette, that Youngest Son met in college. She graduated in 2014, but they have stayed together. In fact, they went in together on a portable fire pit for Younger Daughter's birthday, and I couldn't help but notice that, on Saturday night, Youngest Son and his girlfriend were seated around their present, talking earnestly in the darkness, lit only by the flickering flames. Time, if not past time, to give the young lady a name: I think I'll call her Danica (not her real name, of course, although it is a good Croatian name, I believe, and Danica is of Croatian heritage on her mother's side).
At some point recently---you'll forgive me if I can't remember exactly when---my dear wife began searching for jewelry her mother had given to her. Abuela is still very much with us---well, mostly with us, as she is getting increasingly forgetful---and she was even at the first of the family parties on Saturday (the second being just a bit much for her). Anyway, my wife found almost everything she was looking for on the very first night. She found one stash right away. She found a second cache after I made a helpful suggestion.
No, seriously. I did.
Look, this is my blog and you'll just have to take my word for it.
Unfortunately, even with my contribution, there were still at least a couple of rings that Long Suffering Spouse could not find. One of these was her mother's engagement ring. When Long Suffering Spouse's father died, many years ago, Abuela started throwing things out wholesale. Even jewelry. When I report that she gave these items to my wife, it's true, but it's also correct to say that my wife intervened to prevent these items from just being thrown away.
I know they're around here somewhere, said an increasingly agitated Long Suffering Spouse at one point. I know they haven't been thrown out.
I tried to look concerned. Actually, I first tried to look invisible. Nothing good can happen for me when Long Suffering Spouse is anxiously searching for something. This morning it's a unit test she prepared some years back---because her classes have Spanish on a varying number of days during successive school years it's not like she can recycle tests from year to year. Sometimes it's four or five years that pass before a test becomes relevant again. If this one is for the eighth grade in October, though, it might have last been given to a seventh grade class in March. Well, there was a year---or was it two?---where she got cut back to two days a week.
Anyway, I haven't mastered the art of turning invisible. Lamont Cranston, I'm not. (Gee, I wonder if anyone will get that reference.) So when invisibility fails, I try and look concerned. And I am concerned, really. I really concerned that Long Suffering Spouse will get mad at me when she can't find something she's frantically searching for. You must have put it somewhere where you'd remember, I offer, hopefully.
Yes, I know, but where?
There was a lull in the search while Long Suffering Spouse waited to clarify with Younger Daughter that she didn't have the rings. Apparently she'd had them at one point. Well, I knew Younger Daughter and Olaf had no funds with which to buy an engagement ring when they exchanged promises of marriage---and, still, the tumblers failed to click into place as to why Long Suffering Spouse would drop everything in a search for these rings now with so much else going on.
Even when I was reminded that Danica and Younger Daughter share a birthday I did not catch on.
OK, so in some ways I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Are you happy I admitted it?
And it wasn't in the knife drawer, but in the cabinet above, that Long Suffering Spouse eventually found the object of her search.
I was dumb enough to ask why she had been looking for these rings.
Youngest Son has no money, my wife told me, using small words of few syllables and speaking slowly and distinctly so as to maximize my chances for eventual comprehension. Maybe he'll want to use this one, she said, holding it out for my inspection.
The tumblers finally clicked. For Danica, I ventured, hesitantly.
Long Suffering Spouse beamed: The idiot husband was starting to figure things out.
It was reported back to me in due course that Youngest Son was cool toward the idea of using his grandmother's ring. Unaccountably cool, in my wife's estimation.
I listened carefully and a possible explanation occurred to me. I'll handle it, I said.
When I eventually ran across Youngest Son and we were actually alone (no children or grandchildren eavesdropping) I reminded the young man that, 40-some years ago, I was the delivery boy and mail clerk in the jewelry store in downtown Boondockia. Youngest Son tried very hard not to roll his eyes as I groped toward the point---that's the major difference between 16 and 23---when a kid is a little older, he'll at least try not to roll his eyes. At least for awhile.
Well, I continued, on the second floor of the store we had as many as four jewelers. They spent a lot of their time fixing watches, but sometimes they also sized rings. Then I dropped the clincher. It doesn't cost a lot to size a ring.
How much? he asked, warily. I had to admit my knowledge of the industry is 40-odd years out of date, but it wasn't much then and it still shouldn't be that much.
Hmmmmm, he said.
Well, of course, you've figured out where this is headed a lot faster than I did. He found a jeweler and he enlisted a couple of his buddies to come with him (one had to stop to pick up the ring) and install themselves in hiding places where they could photograph the actual proposal. Danica's parents were enlisted in the plan, too. They would also be in the vicinity photographing when the big moment came. Danica's father, whom I've met only once, is apparently an ex-Marine. Youngest Son has hinted broadly that Danica's dad has seen and done some pretty heavy-duty things. I wouldn't know, of course, but I will say I was a little impressed---and alarmed---when Danica's dad assured Youngest Son that he could conceal his whereabouts during the proposal. "I could be right next to you and you'd never know it," he told my son. (Say... maybe he's mastered the Lamont Cranston technique. Who knows? I mean, besides the Shadow.)
In the event, Danica got maneuvered into position on a footbridge overlooking a small lake near the home where Danica resides with her parents and sisters. And she never suspected a thing. "She's a lot like your father, I guess," Long Suffering Spouse explained to Youngest Son.
We were actually at Younger Daughter's house Tuesday evening waiting for confirmation that the proposal had gone off successfully. We'd brought our daughter some birthday gifts on the actual day, you see.
But we hadn't breathed a word to her or her sister (who finally went back home to Indiana on Monday afternoon). Operational security had to be maintained, we were told. Besides, said Youngest Son, do you think my sister would have left if she knew I was doing this? Long Suffering Spouse did not disagree. It occurred to me, however, that if I'd said that, I'd have gotten into trouble....
When word came that the proposal had been made and accepted there was great rejoicing. Granddaughter No. 1 was ecstatic. Uncle [Youngest Son] and Aunt Danica are getting married, she lilted, taking about 10 seconds to dreamily pronounce the word 'married.'
And I've had stuff to do, too, throughout all this---but I've gone on far too long. Half of Thursday is already shot, and I really need to get this week started.
Isn't that where I came in?
I'm almost ready to start my week now.
Older Daughter was in town last weekend---again---with her two daughters, the younger one just starting to walk, neither one of them sleeping through the night. At home or on the road.
Poor Older Daughter. She thinks I don't like it when she visits. That's not true. Admittedly, I like it better during the day than during the restless nights. When she came by with two sick children for the Labor Day weekend, I lost a week recovering from the virus the kids gave me.
Well, at the ages of 1 and 2, the kids don't have much of an allowance, do they? What other gift can they give their beloved Grampy besides a virus?
And then came the next weekend, when Hank and Older Daughter and their two kids were supposed to drive up from Indianapolis for a party with friends in Batavia, the hosts of that party being college friends of Older Daughter and her husband, and the hostess being 8½ months pregnant with her second child, with roughly 100 people coming over, and my daughter and her still-sick kids (who wouldn't have slept in Batavia either) and her husband proposing to land on their friends' doorstep the night before said party. Who does that to somebody?
I blew a gasket on behalf of the young family in Batavia, and I'm not sure I could pick Mr. or Mrs. out of a lineup.
Mind you, Long Suffering Spouse was aghast as well, but she just vents at me. But, when I said something to my daughter, I was the bad guy. And, really, what I said, albeit perhaps at the top of my lungs, was that, if you really like these people, you will not impose yourself and your children on them the night before they are to entertain 100 people---bring them to our house instead. If Hank thinks he can help them prepare, let him stay out there, I said, but there's no way you can do other than hinder.
In the end, Older Daughter didn't travel that weekend after all. Not only were the kids still sick, neither she nor Hank had made arrangements for their two humongous golden retrievers, Cork and Tipperary.
They didn't come because you yelled at your daughter, Long Suffering Spouse told me.
I didn't say anything you didn't say, I responded.
Yes, but you said it to her, she replied.
Anyway, Older Daughter was back at our house, with her kids, a week ago today. That would be last Thursday. No, Friday was supposed to be a working day in Chicago just as elsewhere in the country.
Older Daughter was back in town because (1) Granddaughter No. 1 was turning four this past Monday and (2) Younger Daughter, her mother, was turning 27 on Tuesday. They would both have parties on Saturday at Younger Daughter's house---two parties, sort of a twi-night double header. As in a 'modern' doubleheader, the house would have to be cleared between parties; the hard part was figuring how to get Younger Daughter out of her own house during what she assumed would be clean-up and recovery time. Younger Daughter knew about her daughter's party; her own was to be a surprise.
My nap time was severely compromised on Saturday, but I cheerfully volunteered to pick up sandwich trays and the cake and all sorts of other things at our local Costco, some of it for the first party and some of it for the second, taking a lot of it to Middle Son's house which lies roughly halfway between the Curmudgeon Manse and Younger Daughter's abode. Middle Son had to completely reconfigure his refrigerator to accommodate the load. And I was still bringing a lot home.
All my kids attended both parties. Youngest Son was late arriving to the first one because he was coming from baseball practice.
You'll remember, perhaps, that Youngest Son used to play baseball for a school I've called South Janesville College here. But he graduated in 2015, sort of---since he had to do his student teaching in the Fall of 2015---and he's no longer playing college baseball. He's coaching. He's not a head coach or anything---as a matter of fact, he's an unpaid "volunteer" coach (though still under written contract for some reason)---and his status as a college coach has enhanced his position as a youth baseball coach. He's even giving pitching lessons to at least one high school kid hoping to make varsity this year (the kid he coached last year didn't make it, but through no fault of his own, or Youngest Son's).
Anyway, my updates here have been so sporadic that I've barely introduced Youngest Son's girlfriend, a beautiful, leggy brunette, that Youngest Son met in college. She graduated in 2014, but they have stayed together. In fact, they went in together on a portable fire pit for Younger Daughter's birthday, and I couldn't help but notice that, on Saturday night, Youngest Son and his girlfriend were seated around their present, talking earnestly in the darkness, lit only by the flickering flames. Time, if not past time, to give the young lady a name: I think I'll call her Danica (not her real name, of course, although it is a good Croatian name, I believe, and Danica is of Croatian heritage on her mother's side).
At some point recently---you'll forgive me if I can't remember exactly when---my dear wife began searching for jewelry her mother had given to her. Abuela is still very much with us---well, mostly with us, as she is getting increasingly forgetful---and she was even at the first of the family parties on Saturday (the second being just a bit much for her). Anyway, my wife found almost everything she was looking for on the very first night. She found one stash right away. She found a second cache after I made a helpful suggestion.
No, seriously. I did.
Look, this is my blog and you'll just have to take my word for it.
Unfortunately, even with my contribution, there were still at least a couple of rings that Long Suffering Spouse could not find. One of these was her mother's engagement ring. When Long Suffering Spouse's father died, many years ago, Abuela started throwing things out wholesale. Even jewelry. When I report that she gave these items to my wife, it's true, but it's also correct to say that my wife intervened to prevent these items from just being thrown away.
I know they're around here somewhere, said an increasingly agitated Long Suffering Spouse at one point. I know they haven't been thrown out.
I tried to look concerned. Actually, I first tried to look invisible. Nothing good can happen for me when Long Suffering Spouse is anxiously searching for something. This morning it's a unit test she prepared some years back---because her classes have Spanish on a varying number of days during successive school years it's not like she can recycle tests from year to year. Sometimes it's four or five years that pass before a test becomes relevant again. If this one is for the eighth grade in October, though, it might have last been given to a seventh grade class in March. Well, there was a year---or was it two?---where she got cut back to two days a week.
Anyway, I haven't mastered the art of turning invisible. Lamont Cranston, I'm not. (Gee, I wonder if anyone will get that reference.) So when invisibility fails, I try and look concerned. And I am concerned, really. I really concerned that Long Suffering Spouse will get mad at me when she can't find something she's frantically searching for. You must have put it somewhere where you'd remember, I offer, hopefully.
Yes, I know, but where?
There was a lull in the search while Long Suffering Spouse waited to clarify with Younger Daughter that she didn't have the rings. Apparently she'd had them at one point. Well, I knew Younger Daughter and Olaf had no funds with which to buy an engagement ring when they exchanged promises of marriage---and, still, the tumblers failed to click into place as to why Long Suffering Spouse would drop everything in a search for these rings now with so much else going on.
Even when I was reminded that Danica and Younger Daughter share a birthday I did not catch on.
OK, so in some ways I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Are you happy I admitted it?
And it wasn't in the knife drawer, but in the cabinet above, that Long Suffering Spouse eventually found the object of her search.
I was dumb enough to ask why she had been looking for these rings.
Youngest Son has no money, my wife told me, using small words of few syllables and speaking slowly and distinctly so as to maximize my chances for eventual comprehension. Maybe he'll want to use this one, she said, holding it out for my inspection.
The tumblers finally clicked. For Danica, I ventured, hesitantly.
Long Suffering Spouse beamed: The idiot husband was starting to figure things out.
It was reported back to me in due course that Youngest Son was cool toward the idea of using his grandmother's ring. Unaccountably cool, in my wife's estimation.
I listened carefully and a possible explanation occurred to me. I'll handle it, I said.
When I eventually ran across Youngest Son and we were actually alone (no children or grandchildren eavesdropping) I reminded the young man that, 40-some years ago, I was the delivery boy and mail clerk in the jewelry store in downtown Boondockia. Youngest Son tried very hard not to roll his eyes as I groped toward the point---that's the major difference between 16 and 23---when a kid is a little older, he'll at least try not to roll his eyes. At least for awhile.
Well, I continued, on the second floor of the store we had as many as four jewelers. They spent a lot of their time fixing watches, but sometimes they also sized rings. Then I dropped the clincher. It doesn't cost a lot to size a ring.
How much? he asked, warily. I had to admit my knowledge of the industry is 40-odd years out of date, but it wasn't much then and it still shouldn't be that much.
Hmmmmm, he said.
Well, of course, you've figured out where this is headed a lot faster than I did. He found a jeweler and he enlisted a couple of his buddies to come with him (one had to stop to pick up the ring) and install themselves in hiding places where they could photograph the actual proposal. Danica's parents were enlisted in the plan, too. They would also be in the vicinity photographing when the big moment came. Danica's father, whom I've met only once, is apparently an ex-Marine. Youngest Son has hinted broadly that Danica's dad has seen and done some pretty heavy-duty things. I wouldn't know, of course, but I will say I was a little impressed---and alarmed---when Danica's dad assured Youngest Son that he could conceal his whereabouts during the proposal. "I could be right next to you and you'd never know it," he told my son. (Say... maybe he's mastered the Lamont Cranston technique. Who knows? I mean, besides the Shadow.)
In the event, Danica got maneuvered into position on a footbridge overlooking a small lake near the home where Danica resides with her parents and sisters. And she never suspected a thing. "She's a lot like your father, I guess," Long Suffering Spouse explained to Youngest Son.
We were actually at Younger Daughter's house Tuesday evening waiting for confirmation that the proposal had gone off successfully. We'd brought our daughter some birthday gifts on the actual day, you see.
But we hadn't breathed a word to her or her sister (who finally went back home to Indiana on Monday afternoon). Operational security had to be maintained, we were told. Besides, said Youngest Son, do you think my sister would have left if she knew I was doing this? Long Suffering Spouse did not disagree. It occurred to me, however, that if I'd said that, I'd have gotten into trouble....
When word came that the proposal had been made and accepted there was great rejoicing. Granddaughter No. 1 was ecstatic. Uncle [Youngest Son] and Aunt Danica are getting married, she lilted, taking about 10 seconds to dreamily pronounce the word 'married.'
And I've had stuff to do, too, throughout all this---but I've gone on far too long. Half of Thursday is already shot, and I really need to get this week started.
Isn't that where I came in?
Friday, May 29, 2015
At work on the day before Middle Son's wedding
This wasn't the plan at all. I was hoping to take today off and rest up for the events of the coming weekend. Heck, I need to rest up if only so my hand doesn't shake too badly when I present the charge card at the end of the rehearsal dinner tonight.
The rehearsal dinner is going to provide one of those Circle of Life moments: There are a lot of people standing up for Middle Son and Margaret tomorrow, and they all have spouses or Significant Others, and there are a number of visitors from out of town to be accommodated. So smaller, closer venues were eliminated as candidates for tonight's event. That left a restaurant in not-quite-as-nearby-as-would-be-optimal Lincolnwood -- OK, maybe not in Lincolnwood, but across the street therefrom -- the same restaurant where, believe it or not, Long Suffering Spouse and I had our rehearsal dinner 33 years ago.
A lot of memories are coming back as tonight's event approaches. I remember, for example, how bemused I was that my father took the day off before my wedding. I remember thinking, why does he need to do this? I'm the one getting married. I worked all day the day before my wedding, barely making it to the church in time for the rehearsal. I had to turn in my timesheets at the wedding reception to our office manager. I remember being up early on my wedding day filling them in; they were folded up in the jacket pocket of my tuxedo during the Mass. Time off before the wedding indeed! Who gets that? I wondered.
Well... Middle Son does, for one. I think he worked some, possibly from home, on Thursday. Margaret has been off work since Wednesday, because that's when her family arrived from Michigan. And the kids will be going on a 10 day (or is it two week?) honeymoon. It boggles my mind. But, then, they are his and her CPA's now (Middle Son passed his last test earlier this year; his license just arrived in the last month) and they are traditionally accorded some serious slack after tax season.
But here I am in the office. I was here to 7:00 last night setting up stuff to be filed in court this morning and I will start running just as soon as I hit the "Publish" button.
Thirty-three years ago I couldn't figure out why my father thought it necessary to take the day off before my wedding. Today I'm wondering, how in the world did he get away with it?
The rehearsal dinner is going to provide one of those Circle of Life moments: There are a lot of people standing up for Middle Son and Margaret tomorrow, and they all have spouses or Significant Others, and there are a number of visitors from out of town to be accommodated. So smaller, closer venues were eliminated as candidates for tonight's event. That left a restaurant in not-quite-as-nearby-as-would-be-optimal Lincolnwood -- OK, maybe not in Lincolnwood, but across the street therefrom -- the same restaurant where, believe it or not, Long Suffering Spouse and I had our rehearsal dinner 33 years ago.
A lot of memories are coming back as tonight's event approaches. I remember, for example, how bemused I was that my father took the day off before my wedding. I remember thinking, why does he need to do this? I'm the one getting married. I worked all day the day before my wedding, barely making it to the church in time for the rehearsal. I had to turn in my timesheets at the wedding reception to our office manager. I remember being up early on my wedding day filling them in; they were folded up in the jacket pocket of my tuxedo during the Mass. Time off before the wedding indeed! Who gets that? I wondered.
Well... Middle Son does, for one. I think he worked some, possibly from home, on Thursday. Margaret has been off work since Wednesday, because that's when her family arrived from Michigan. And the kids will be going on a 10 day (or is it two week?) honeymoon. It boggles my mind. But, then, they are his and her CPA's now (Middle Son passed his last test earlier this year; his license just arrived in the last month) and they are traditionally accorded some serious slack after tax season.
But here I am in the office. I was here to 7:00 last night setting up stuff to be filed in court this morning and I will start running just as soon as I hit the "Publish" button.
Thirty-three years ago I couldn't figure out why my father thought it necessary to take the day off before my wedding. Today I'm wondering, how in the world did he get away with it?
Thursday, April 02, 2015
This was the week that was, and I wish it weren't
Technically, I realize that the week isn't over yet. It's only Thursday afternoon, but I'm done for the day. I never really got started.
I got the office bills paid today and my portion of the rent deposited. I made a payment on a charge card (I have a 0% promotion on this card, which is good, but it expires next month, which is really bad, particularly because there's still an $18,000 balance on the card -- although that's down from $23,000). I spent a good chunk of yesterday figuring out where my personal finances are going. I was downloading updates and security software on my new laptop so I can work more efficiently yesterday, too. But I never actually made it into the office.
I started the day at Younger Daughter's house. She had to get a blood test; I had to babysit Granddaughter #1. There are worse ways to pass the time.
But the reason I was there -- the reason for the blood test -- stinks. Just a week ago Tuesday Younger Daughter told Long Suffering Spouse and me that she was expecting again and we were over the moon happy. Wow, we thought, what a 2015 -- Youngest Son graduates college (he still has to do student teaching), Middle Son gets married, and both daughters have babies....
But Younger Daughter miscarried Monday. I'm in a fog. I know I should just muscle through this -- hey, it was really early -- these things happen -- she's still young -- and, besides, I've been through this before with Older Daughter and, before that, with Long Suffering Spouse, and you know what? All of that's true -- and none of it seems to matter.
Long Suffering Spouse is coping better than me. As usual. (The weaker sex! Ha!) In addition to comforting her daughter and trying to keep her own mother from dumping her recollections on Younger Daughter (Abuela had five miscarriages 50 years ago -- and she insists on reliving each one, in gory detail, with whoever goes through a similar loss), Long Suffering Spouse is trying to buy a dress for Middle Son's wedding (to Margaret) next month.
Next month already!
The department stores are full of fancy dresses -- it is prom season, of course -- and if you're 18 and in prime physical condition, tall, taut and rail-thin -- you can find a fairly flattering dress without too much trouble.
If you're over 18, though, and if your figure is more womanly than girlish, you are SOL. (You can look up that abbreviation on your own.)
This has left Long Suffering Spouse incredibly depressed. She started looking for dresses a while back -- before we went on vacation. She had Younger Daughter and Granddaughter #1 with her on one of her first outings in this quest. She found a number of dresses, tried them on, and burst into tears. (Younger Daughter ratted her out to me.)
There have been several outings since. I've gone with her three times -- which, to the female readers of this blog, may seem like nothing -- but any male will tell you that we would rather do anything -- and I do mean anything -- teeth cleaning, colonoscopy, prostate exam -- rather than accompany our Significant Other on a Quest for The Dress. I went questing with Long Suffering Spouse once on vacation (if you read closely, you may remember I mentioned the Macy's in Winter Haven) and again yesterday (we went to Woodfield, visiting Lord & Taylor's, Macy's, Nordstrom's, and a few other places besides). There were no tears on these outings -- none that I saw -- but Long Suffering Spouse was, by last night, beginning to despair. "Maybe I just won't go to the wedding," she said at one point, after we'd come back empty-handed once again. (No, she doesn't mean it.)
The Eventual Dress (really, we have to capitalize the object of the Quest) must have sleeves. Long Suffering Spouse did not like the way her arms looked in Oldest Son's 2010 wedding pictures. ("Why didn't anyone tell me?" she complained.) It can't have too low a neckline. ("I'm going to be bending over all day as it is, scooping up kids," she pointed out.) It can't be too gathered in the middle. ("I look like a cow," she says.) And The Dress must be sufficiently fancy. The bridesmaids' dresses are short -- tea length, I think, is the term -- and the bride's mother has already bought a shorter dress. Therefore -- my wife says -- she must also buy a shorter dress. I don't remember reading this in Leviticus or anywhere else but -- my wife insists -- the entire universe of long dresses is closed to her here.
I have, from time to time, ventured suggestions, pointing to this dress, or that one, but -- although I think my wife appreciates my bravery -- she hasn't liked any of my suggestions so far. "That might be a nice dress to wear to a wedding," she's told me, "but it won't do at all for the mother of the bride or the mother of the groom." I have tried to ascertain what "fancy" means in this context. It appears to involve (a) a solid color, (b) sparklies, and/or (c) lace.
Long Suffering Spouse plunged back into the retail jungle today. She has sent out pictures from the changing room of possible candidates to me and/or Younger Daughter. I liked one -- it had sleeves and everything -- and, although it was blue, it appeared sufficiently lacy, and therefore, within the criteria established for The Dress. I said so, in response to a text. But the sales clerk had already vetoed it as not adequately "fancy." Recent communiqués from the mall (Old Orchard today) have been encouraging and I maintain a degree of cautious, if probably unjustified, optimism that an acceptable garment will soon be found... if only because Long Suffering Spouse is going to have to turn her attention soon from The Dress to Middle Son's wedding shower on Saturday the 11th.
Meanwhile, the work piles up on my desk. I took a briefcase full of files with me to Florida to work on -- and I actually did get some work done. It just wasn't enough. And new crises have arisen on my return, meaning that much of what was undone when I left is still undone.
Weekends are supposed to be catch-up time, right? But two weeks ago we went to Michigan for a wedding shower put on by Margaret's family (this was a very proper wedding shower in a tea room -- no menfolk allowed -- but it was five hours' driving each way and I really had to go along to keep my wife company). Last week, Long Suffering Spouse and I both had birthdays -- and we had kids in the house, and grandkids, from Friday afternoon through Monday morning when we left for work. In between, we went to an 80th birthday party for my one "surviving" aunt. I use quotation marks there because the poor woman has Alzheimer's -- she doesn't know anyone anymore, poor thing, and can't even speak. She's been in a home for years -- but this was the very first time her daughters asked any of the extended family for anything. How could we not go? It was nice to see my cousins at something besides a funeral.
Anyway, I can't count on catching up much this weekend -- it's Easter.
I think when I was younger I could handle a lot of outside distractions and still keep on working efficiently. Maybe I'm lying to myself again. I don't know.
But it's Thursday afternoon. And, although my insides are churning with Paleolithic fight or flight adrenaline and my arms are actually numb from stress, I'm done. If I could just tough my way through a couple more emails, I'll get out of here.
I got the office bills paid today and my portion of the rent deposited. I made a payment on a charge card (I have a 0% promotion on this card, which is good, but it expires next month, which is really bad, particularly because there's still an $18,000 balance on the card -- although that's down from $23,000). I spent a good chunk of yesterday figuring out where my personal finances are going. I was downloading updates and security software on my new laptop so I can work more efficiently yesterday, too. But I never actually made it into the office.
I started the day at Younger Daughter's house. She had to get a blood test; I had to babysit Granddaughter #1. There are worse ways to pass the time.
But the reason I was there -- the reason for the blood test -- stinks. Just a week ago Tuesday Younger Daughter told Long Suffering Spouse and me that she was expecting again and we were over the moon happy. Wow, we thought, what a 2015 -- Youngest Son graduates college (he still has to do student teaching), Middle Son gets married, and both daughters have babies....
But Younger Daughter miscarried Monday. I'm in a fog. I know I should just muscle through this -- hey, it was really early -- these things happen -- she's still young -- and, besides, I've been through this before with Older Daughter and, before that, with Long Suffering Spouse, and you know what? All of that's true -- and none of it seems to matter.
Long Suffering Spouse is coping better than me. As usual. (The weaker sex! Ha!) In addition to comforting her daughter and trying to keep her own mother from dumping her recollections on Younger Daughter (Abuela had five miscarriages 50 years ago -- and she insists on reliving each one, in gory detail, with whoever goes through a similar loss), Long Suffering Spouse is trying to buy a dress for Middle Son's wedding (to Margaret) next month.
Next month already!
The department stores are full of fancy dresses -- it is prom season, of course -- and if you're 18 and in prime physical condition, tall, taut and rail-thin -- you can find a fairly flattering dress without too much trouble.
If you're over 18, though, and if your figure is more womanly than girlish, you are SOL. (You can look up that abbreviation on your own.)
This has left Long Suffering Spouse incredibly depressed. She started looking for dresses a while back -- before we went on vacation. She had Younger Daughter and Granddaughter #1 with her on one of her first outings in this quest. She found a number of dresses, tried them on, and burst into tears. (Younger Daughter ratted her out to me.)
There have been several outings since. I've gone with her three times -- which, to the female readers of this blog, may seem like nothing -- but any male will tell you that we would rather do anything -- and I do mean anything -- teeth cleaning, colonoscopy, prostate exam -- rather than accompany our Significant Other on a Quest for The Dress. I went questing with Long Suffering Spouse once on vacation (if you read closely, you may remember I mentioned the Macy's in Winter Haven) and again yesterday (we went to Woodfield, visiting Lord & Taylor's, Macy's, Nordstrom's, and a few other places besides). There were no tears on these outings -- none that I saw -- but Long Suffering Spouse was, by last night, beginning to despair. "Maybe I just won't go to the wedding," she said at one point, after we'd come back empty-handed once again. (No, she doesn't mean it.)
The Eventual Dress (really, we have to capitalize the object of the Quest) must have sleeves. Long Suffering Spouse did not like the way her arms looked in Oldest Son's 2010 wedding pictures. ("Why didn't anyone tell me?" she complained.) It can't have too low a neckline. ("I'm going to be bending over all day as it is, scooping up kids," she pointed out.) It can't be too gathered in the middle. ("I look like a cow," she says.) And The Dress must be sufficiently fancy. The bridesmaids' dresses are short -- tea length, I think, is the term -- and the bride's mother has already bought a shorter dress. Therefore -- my wife says -- she must also buy a shorter dress. I don't remember reading this in Leviticus or anywhere else but -- my wife insists -- the entire universe of long dresses is closed to her here.
I have, from time to time, ventured suggestions, pointing to this dress, or that one, but -- although I think my wife appreciates my bravery -- she hasn't liked any of my suggestions so far. "That might be a nice dress to wear to a wedding," she's told me, "but it won't do at all for the mother of the bride or the mother of the groom." I have tried to ascertain what "fancy" means in this context. It appears to involve (a) a solid color, (b) sparklies, and/or (c) lace.
Long Suffering Spouse plunged back into the retail jungle today. She has sent out pictures from the changing room of possible candidates to me and/or Younger Daughter. I liked one -- it had sleeves and everything -- and, although it was blue, it appeared sufficiently lacy, and therefore, within the criteria established for The Dress. I said so, in response to a text. But the sales clerk had already vetoed it as not adequately "fancy." Recent communiqués from the mall (Old Orchard today) have been encouraging and I maintain a degree of cautious, if probably unjustified, optimism that an acceptable garment will soon be found... if only because Long Suffering Spouse is going to have to turn her attention soon from The Dress to Middle Son's wedding shower on Saturday the 11th.
Meanwhile, the work piles up on my desk. I took a briefcase full of files with me to Florida to work on -- and I actually did get some work done. It just wasn't enough. And new crises have arisen on my return, meaning that much of what was undone when I left is still undone.
Weekends are supposed to be catch-up time, right? But two weeks ago we went to Michigan for a wedding shower put on by Margaret's family (this was a very proper wedding shower in a tea room -- no menfolk allowed -- but it was five hours' driving each way and I really had to go along to keep my wife company). Last week, Long Suffering Spouse and I both had birthdays -- and we had kids in the house, and grandkids, from Friday afternoon through Monday morning when we left for work. In between, we went to an 80th birthday party for my one "surviving" aunt. I use quotation marks there because the poor woman has Alzheimer's -- she doesn't know anyone anymore, poor thing, and can't even speak. She's been in a home for years -- but this was the very first time her daughters asked any of the extended family for anything. How could we not go? It was nice to see my cousins at something besides a funeral.
Anyway, I can't count on catching up much this weekend -- it's Easter.
I think when I was younger I could handle a lot of outside distractions and still keep on working efficiently. Maybe I'm lying to myself again. I don't know.
But it's Thursday afternoon. And, although my insides are churning with Paleolithic fight or flight adrenaline and my arms are actually numb from stress, I'm done. If I could just tough my way through a couple more emails, I'll get out of here.
Monday, February 09, 2015
Middle Son registers for his upcoming wedding; something begins to register with Curmudgeon, too
Middle Son is getting married at the end of May.
(Thank you.)
He and Margaret, his fiancee, were at Macy's yesterday filling out their greed list -- the selection ritual having been postponed a week by the Super Bowl Sunday Blizzard -- and Middle Son called from the store in the course of his ordeal.
"I see what you meant when you said I'd want to shoot myself in the face rather than do this," Middle Son began. Actually, I think I said I would gnaw off my right arm in order to get out of such an adventure -- a sentiment which did not endear me to Long Suffering Spouse at the time I voiced it, but there you are.
"I'm sorry for your troubles," I responded. I figured the kid would get around to the point soon enough.
"Yeah, well, I was wondering -- why would anybody need fine china?" Apparently, Margaret and my son had been given an enthusiastic sales pitch on the translucent virtues of fine bone china, but neither he nor Margaret could see any practical value in getting this sort of stuff. "I was hoping Mom would pick up," he confessed -- he did call the house phone first -- but Long Suffering Spouse was on the line with Abuela. Abuela had a full head of steam up about the pastor's latest outrage (which, as it turned out, was really nothing at all -- and I hate the guy). Long Suffering Spouse covered the phone for a moment long enough to tell me that Middle Son was trying to call, so I called him back on my cell phone.
I understood Middle Son's instinctive desire to speak with his mother on the subject of china, crystal and flatware. That's girl stuff, right?
Wrong.
I used to work in the local jewelry store, back in Boondockia, back in the day -- over 40 years ago now -- and, among my duties was delivering china and crystal and flatware -- and the occasional sterling silver tea service -- to local brides. I had inventory responsibilities, too, and sometimes -- though, obviously, I was never allowed to play with the diamonds -- I was obliged to pitch in on the sales floor and sell some of these fine gifts. I developed some definite likes and dislikes -- I even picked up four place settings of a beautiful, but discontinued, Hutschenreuther china pattern for my own 'hope chest' during the jewelry store's sidewalk sale my senior year of high school. My grandmother helped find four more place settings and the survivors sit, right at this very moment, in my dining room gathering dust.
I reminded Middle Son that I knew something about that stuff.
We chatted in circles for awhile -- I pointed out that, really, a wedding is the last time you can ever expect anyone to buy fancy stuff like this, stuff you will have forever, stuff you could never justify buying for yourself. I told him how, in my day, buying a place setting of someone's china as a wedding gift was a really good present, covering one's plate and then some at the reception. I went on in this vein, but Middle Son kept coming back to his original question... why would anyone need this stuff?
Well, I said, you might pull it out if you invite the boss and his wife over for a fancy dinner, or when you have a real, grown-up party with your close friends, or --
Middle Son cut me off. "You've never done any of those things."
"Well, no. But I could have." If the occasion ever arose.
Which it never has.
Long Suffering Spouse had waited out Abuela's latest indictment of the pastor by this time and came into the den.
She took over and covered the same ground -- Middle Son still couldn't answer that why question to his satisfaction. "I don't want a lot of stuff I'll never use," he said. "I'd rather have the cash." And we could explain all night that the cash will go away, but, looking into the china cabinet, even decades later, you can see proof of Aunt Martha's generosity, and be reminded how your college roommate bought four crystal wine glasses, and on and on for each object.
"Yes," said Middle Son, "but why would I want all that stuff I'll never use?"
And... slowly... I think slower and slower these days, I suppose... it began to dawn on me that the boy was right: The world has become an informal place. Sixteen ounce red cups have replaced crystal goblets, paper plates have replaced china (on state occasions, perhaps, Chinet might be used).
I don't know if that's a net gain or a net loss for the world. I miss the thought that, occasionally, even middle class people could aspire to a little glamor.
But no one, I think, misses the obligation of polishing the silver.
(Thank you.)
He and Margaret, his fiancee, were at Macy's yesterday filling out their greed list -- the selection ritual having been postponed a week by the Super Bowl Sunday Blizzard -- and Middle Son called from the store in the course of his ordeal.
"I see what you meant when you said I'd want to shoot myself in the face rather than do this," Middle Son began. Actually, I think I said I would gnaw off my right arm in order to get out of such an adventure -- a sentiment which did not endear me to Long Suffering Spouse at the time I voiced it, but there you are.
"I'm sorry for your troubles," I responded. I figured the kid would get around to the point soon enough.
"Yeah, well, I was wondering -- why would anybody need fine china?" Apparently, Margaret and my son had been given an enthusiastic sales pitch on the translucent virtues of fine bone china, but neither he nor Margaret could see any practical value in getting this sort of stuff. "I was hoping Mom would pick up," he confessed -- he did call the house phone first -- but Long Suffering Spouse was on the line with Abuela. Abuela had a full head of steam up about the pastor's latest outrage (which, as it turned out, was really nothing at all -- and I hate the guy). Long Suffering Spouse covered the phone for a moment long enough to tell me that Middle Son was trying to call, so I called him back on my cell phone.
I understood Middle Son's instinctive desire to speak with his mother on the subject of china, crystal and flatware. That's girl stuff, right?
Wrong.
I used to work in the local jewelry store, back in Boondockia, back in the day -- over 40 years ago now -- and, among my duties was delivering china and crystal and flatware -- and the occasional sterling silver tea service -- to local brides. I had inventory responsibilities, too, and sometimes -- though, obviously, I was never allowed to play with the diamonds -- I was obliged to pitch in on the sales floor and sell some of these fine gifts. I developed some definite likes and dislikes -- I even picked up four place settings of a beautiful, but discontinued, Hutschenreuther china pattern for my own 'hope chest' during the jewelry store's sidewalk sale my senior year of high school. My grandmother helped find four more place settings and the survivors sit, right at this very moment, in my dining room gathering dust.
I reminded Middle Son that I knew something about that stuff.
We chatted in circles for awhile -- I pointed out that, really, a wedding is the last time you can ever expect anyone to buy fancy stuff like this, stuff you will have forever, stuff you could never justify buying for yourself. I told him how, in my day, buying a place setting of someone's china as a wedding gift was a really good present, covering one's plate and then some at the reception. I went on in this vein, but Middle Son kept coming back to his original question... why would anyone need this stuff?
Well, I said, you might pull it out if you invite the boss and his wife over for a fancy dinner, or when you have a real, grown-up party with your close friends, or --
Middle Son cut me off. "You've never done any of those things."
"Well, no. But I could have." If the occasion ever arose.
Which it never has.
Long Suffering Spouse had waited out Abuela's latest indictment of the pastor by this time and came into the den.
She took over and covered the same ground -- Middle Son still couldn't answer that why question to his satisfaction. "I don't want a lot of stuff I'll never use," he said. "I'd rather have the cash." And we could explain all night that the cash will go away, but, looking into the china cabinet, even decades later, you can see proof of Aunt Martha's generosity, and be reminded how your college roommate bought four crystal wine glasses, and on and on for each object.
"Yes," said Middle Son, "but why would I want all that stuff I'll never use?"
And... slowly... I think slower and slower these days, I suppose... it began to dawn on me that the boy was right: The world has become an informal place. Sixteen ounce red cups have replaced crystal goblets, paper plates have replaced china (on state occasions, perhaps, Chinet might be used).
I don't know if that's a net gain or a net loss for the world. I miss the thought that, occasionally, even middle class people could aspire to a little glamor.
But no one, I think, misses the obligation of polishing the silver.
Friday, December 14, 2012
Curmudgeon violating one of his own rules?
For many of you, this is the Christmas Season. It's Christmas for me, too. But, this year, as in several recent years, this is also Ring Season.
Some years back, our children began reaching the age where they would and should, in the ordinary course of things, begin pairing off.
As the reality of this life stage sank in, I formulated a simple rule -- don't become too attached to anyone that any child brings home, not, at least until a ring is proffered. After all, I'm already married -- who the kid marries should be his or her own business, unpolluted by my making unfavorable comparisons between the current candidate and the one who was hanging around the house a couple of Christmases past.
I resolutely did not warm overmuch to Hank, Older Daughter's Boyfriend of many years (and several blog posts) until they decided to wed a few years ago. In fact, he was underfoot for so many years, I admit I was beginning to chafe a bit about whether he'd ever make up his mind to say the hard word.
I didn't have much opportunity to warm to Abby, whom Oldest Son married in 2010. Oldest Son didn't really bring her around a lot. But, then, he was never a homebody. He made this life decision on his own, with neither prompting nor interference from us. Abby is as independent as Oldest Son, but she has been a calming influence on him, and we like them together.
I'll admit to having become fond of Olaf when he was courting Younger Daughter. Last year at this time Long Suffering Spouse and I were speculating that these two might exchange promises during the coming holiday season. Instead -- well, you know what happened if you've been following along this year. Being already fond of the young man made that a whole lot easier for me, at least.
The object of speculation this Ring Season is Middle Son's girlfriend, Margaret. I probably shouldn't have given her a name. When you give animals names, they start to become pets; why should it be that much different here?
Long Suffering Spouse asked Middle Son last night whether Margaret might be joining us for any of the upcoming Christmas festivities. No, he said, she'd be going to her family home in Michigan. He'd be coming to our family functions by himself.
Long Suffering Spouse related this news to me this morning with a grim countenance.
"He'll lose her if he doesn't act soon," she said.
I am inclined to agree; there is a window of opportunity on these things.
I hope Middle Son understands this. I'm trying hard not to develop a rooting interest here -- but, while it may be argued (theoretically) that Middle Son could do better, it is surely true that he could do much, much worse. I like Margaret. They seem good together. Long Suffering Spouse likes Margaret. Older Daughter likes Margaret. Younger Daughter likes Margaret. I'd be thrilled for Margaret and Middle Son both if Middle Son gets off the snide.
But I'm dangerously close to abandoning one of my sounder rules.
Some years back, our children began reaching the age where they would and should, in the ordinary course of things, begin pairing off.
As the reality of this life stage sank in, I formulated a simple rule -- don't become too attached to anyone that any child brings home, not, at least until a ring is proffered. After all, I'm already married -- who the kid marries should be his or her own business, unpolluted by my making unfavorable comparisons between the current candidate and the one who was hanging around the house a couple of Christmases past.
I resolutely did not warm overmuch to Hank, Older Daughter's Boyfriend of many years (and several blog posts) until they decided to wed a few years ago. In fact, he was underfoot for so many years, I admit I was beginning to chafe a bit about whether he'd ever make up his mind to say the hard word.
I didn't have much opportunity to warm to Abby, whom Oldest Son married in 2010. Oldest Son didn't really bring her around a lot. But, then, he was never a homebody. He made this life decision on his own, with neither prompting nor interference from us. Abby is as independent as Oldest Son, but she has been a calming influence on him, and we like them together.
I'll admit to having become fond of Olaf when he was courting Younger Daughter. Last year at this time Long Suffering Spouse and I were speculating that these two might exchange promises during the coming holiday season. Instead -- well, you know what happened if you've been following along this year. Being already fond of the young man made that a whole lot easier for me, at least.
The object of speculation this Ring Season is Middle Son's girlfriend, Margaret. I probably shouldn't have given her a name. When you give animals names, they start to become pets; why should it be that much different here?
Long Suffering Spouse asked Middle Son last night whether Margaret might be joining us for any of the upcoming Christmas festivities. No, he said, she'd be going to her family home in Michigan. He'd be coming to our family functions by himself.
Long Suffering Spouse related this news to me this morning with a grim countenance.
"He'll lose her if he doesn't act soon," she said.
I am inclined to agree; there is a window of opportunity on these things.
I hope Middle Son understands this. I'm trying hard not to develop a rooting interest here -- but, while it may be argued (theoretically) that Middle Son could do better, it is surely true that he could do much, much worse. I like Margaret. They seem good together. Long Suffering Spouse likes Margaret. Older Daughter likes Margaret. Younger Daughter likes Margaret. I'd be thrilled for Margaret and Middle Son both if Middle Son gets off the snide.
But I'm dangerously close to abandoning one of my sounder rules.
Saturday, June 23, 2012
Younger Daughter's wedding: Tales from the front of the house
We conclude this series of reminiscences about Younger Daughter's wedding weekend (beginning here) with today's installment. But don't worry -- Olaf and Younger Daughter are under our roof now and I suspect you'll be hearing about them plenty in future posts....
I've written so much about the many, many things Long Suffering Spouse did to bring the event off that, perhaps, you may be wondering what I might have done -- indeed, what was left for me to do -- besides sit around and take notes.
Actually, there was quite a bit for me to do, and not just tote that over here, or carry that over there.
In my house, I'm the techno-guy. My first major assignment was to prepare the invitations. No disrespect to printers, but word processing software long ago advanced to the point where very presentable invitations can be created. Hobby shops sell card stock that is just as nice as anything. An inkjet printer can't duplicate the 'engraved' effect of professional printing, but it can look just as nice. When Long Suffering Spouse added blue ribbons to the top of each invite, ours looked pretty fancy indeed.
Of course, that was long before the wedding. Immediately prior to the wedding, though, my techno-skills were called upon again: I had to do the brochure for the wedding (can't tell the players without a scorecard) and set up the music.
I wasn't just the host for the reception; I was the emcee. Remember when I told you how the custodian had entrusted me with the wireless mike? In that stressful week before the wedding Younger Daughter became increasingly concerned about whether the best man would give an appropriate toast. Well, he wouldn't give a toast at all if I never let on I had the microphone, would he? I didn't tell anyone I had it (it fit comfortably in the pocket of my sport coat that Friday, and it slipped easily in the pocket of the tux as well.
Of course, I did have to park it at the hall during the Mass. (I could hide it behind a curtain.)
But that was fine -- because, despite my best efforts to persuade you that my jobs were more than fetch that here or carry that there, that's really what it came down to.
I was off early on the morning of the wedding to pick up 20 lbs of roast beef and two kegs of beer (a ½ barrel of Miller Lite and a ¼ barrel of Miller Regular) and various and sundry other potent potables. We had to get all that set up (read: on ice) before the Mass. Food had to be brought over, too.
But, there we were, finally, at the reception and, of course, I'd have wanted to stay out of that kitchen even if there'd been nothing for me to do in the front of the house.
But there was. I'd mentioned the bread crisis, and the butter crisis. At one point, I tucked a bottle of wine under each arm and went from table to table refilling glasses for the bridal toast -- or, in many cases, filling them in the first place.
Remember I told you that there were a lot of teetotalers on Olaf's side. I had to do some serious selling in several cases.
(Apparently I sold pretty good. I've heard since that Olaf's family wasn't much for dancing either -- I thought that was a Baptist thing, not Lutheran -- but most of the folks out there on the floor were from Olaf's side.)
I stayed within grabbing distance when the toasts were being made. I wasn't really worried about Older Daughter's toast... but you gotta maintain symmetry. My mike work was extremely limited (which, come to think of it, may explain why I received praise for it). Someone told me I had a very good radio voice. I've long been told I have a face made for radio....
I don't know exactly when people started cleaning up, but everyone pitched in just wonderfully.
Well, almost everyone.
Some kid who'd gone to school with the happy couple was passed out on the bathroom floor. He'd lost his company manners in the receptacle most suitable for that purpose, however. After an hour or so flat on the bathroom floor, he made it out to the steps of the Parish Center -- a distance of at least five or six yards.
The journey took a lot of him. Well, more out of him, not that he had that much more to lose. Youngest Son hosed down the sidewalk around where the kid had been sitting. A couple of girls drove him home. We wound up with his suit coat.
Maybe it was the wine. Maybe it was the disco music (well, they are Norwegian -- and Abba turned out to be really popular). But even Aunt Floofy wasn't quite so severe as we knocked down the tables and gathered up all the napkins and tablecloths. We didn't even have to put the darn things back on their hangers.
Younger Daughter and Olaf got to their hotel. The rest of us returned home -- but only for awhile. Everyone but Hank and Older Daughter went back to Middle Son's -- along with the beer kegs -- even Youngest Son, who had a doubleheader scheduled in the morning. Well, his coach was willing to drive him, so I guess I couldn't complain.
I don't know that I could have complained much if I'd wanted to. And when a Curmudgeon can't complain, that's when you know he's really tired....
I've written so much about the many, many things Long Suffering Spouse did to bring the event off that, perhaps, you may be wondering what I might have done -- indeed, what was left for me to do -- besides sit around and take notes.
Actually, there was quite a bit for me to do, and not just tote that over here, or carry that over there.
In my house, I'm the techno-guy. My first major assignment was to prepare the invitations. No disrespect to printers, but word processing software long ago advanced to the point where very presentable invitations can be created. Hobby shops sell card stock that is just as nice as anything. An inkjet printer can't duplicate the 'engraved' effect of professional printing, but it can look just as nice. When Long Suffering Spouse added blue ribbons to the top of each invite, ours looked pretty fancy indeed.
Of course, that was long before the wedding. Immediately prior to the wedding, though, my techno-skills were called upon again: I had to do the brochure for the wedding (can't tell the players without a scorecard) and set up the music.
I wasn't just the host for the reception; I was the emcee. Remember when I told you how the custodian had entrusted me with the wireless mike? In that stressful week before the wedding Younger Daughter became increasingly concerned about whether the best man would give an appropriate toast. Well, he wouldn't give a toast at all if I never let on I had the microphone, would he? I didn't tell anyone I had it (it fit comfortably in the pocket of my sport coat that Friday, and it slipped easily in the pocket of the tux as well.
Of course, I did have to park it at the hall during the Mass. (I could hide it behind a curtain.)
But that was fine -- because, despite my best efforts to persuade you that my jobs were more than fetch that here or carry that there, that's really what it came down to.
I was off early on the morning of the wedding to pick up 20 lbs of roast beef and two kegs of beer (a ½ barrel of Miller Lite and a ¼ barrel of Miller Regular) and various and sundry other potent potables. We had to get all that set up (read: on ice) before the Mass. Food had to be brought over, too.
But, there we were, finally, at the reception and, of course, I'd have wanted to stay out of that kitchen even if there'd been nothing for me to do in the front of the house.
But there was. I'd mentioned the bread crisis, and the butter crisis. At one point, I tucked a bottle of wine under each arm and went from table to table refilling glasses for the bridal toast -- or, in many cases, filling them in the first place.
Remember I told you that there were a lot of teetotalers on Olaf's side. I had to do some serious selling in several cases.
(Apparently I sold pretty good. I've heard since that Olaf's family wasn't much for dancing either -- I thought that was a Baptist thing, not Lutheran -- but most of the folks out there on the floor were from Olaf's side.)
I stayed within grabbing distance when the toasts were being made. I wasn't really worried about Older Daughter's toast... but you gotta maintain symmetry. My mike work was extremely limited (which, come to think of it, may explain why I received praise for it). Someone told me I had a very good radio voice. I've long been told I have a face made for radio....
I don't know exactly when people started cleaning up, but everyone pitched in just wonderfully.
Well, almost everyone.
Some kid who'd gone to school with the happy couple was passed out on the bathroom floor. He'd lost his company manners in the receptacle most suitable for that purpose, however. After an hour or so flat on the bathroom floor, he made it out to the steps of the Parish Center -- a distance of at least five or six yards.
The journey took a lot of him. Well, more out of him, not that he had that much more to lose. Youngest Son hosed down the sidewalk around where the kid had been sitting. A couple of girls drove him home. We wound up with his suit coat.
Maybe it was the wine. Maybe it was the disco music (well, they are Norwegian -- and Abba turned out to be really popular). But even Aunt Floofy wasn't quite so severe as we knocked down the tables and gathered up all the napkins and tablecloths. We didn't even have to put the darn things back on their hangers.
Younger Daughter and Olaf got to their hotel. The rest of us returned home -- but only for awhile. Everyone but Hank and Older Daughter went back to Middle Son's -- along with the beer kegs -- even Youngest Son, who had a doubleheader scheduled in the morning. Well, his coach was willing to drive him, so I guess I couldn't complain.
I don't know that I could have complained much if I'd wanted to. And when a Curmudgeon can't complain, that's when you know he's really tired....
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Younger Daughter's big day -- even if she didn't have a license
You'll have to have been following along to catch the reference in today's title. Scroll down to this post and work backwards if you need to keep up.
Long Suffering Spouse was enthusiastic, even triumphant. "The dress works!" she said repeatedly.
Younger Daughter's wedding dress had a high waist (fashionistas will cringe as I struggle through this description) -- an empire waist, I've heard it called, and it was pleated so that, as it draped, it looked like it was but was not in fact clingy. If I was selecting costumes for a sword and sandals epic, this dress could have been the costume for a temple priestess. Does that suggest a picture? There was no train. But with the veil it was unquestionably a bridal gown.
The most important feature of all this from Long Suffering Spouse's perspective -- the thing that made it 'work' -- was that the dress did not emphasize the fact that Younger Daughter was about 5½ months pregnant. Oh, you could see the bump, if you knew to look for it. But if you didn't know, you might not figure it out. Not for awhile. We had to coach Younger Daughter to keep her hands holding the bouquet above said bump -- which rendered the bump nearly invisible, especially looking straight on. When she'd slip, letting her hands drop below the bump, you couldn't help but notice.
The most important feature of the dress -- what made it 'work' -- from my selfish perspective was that this dress cost nearly $2,000 less than Older Daughter's. But Long Suffering Spouse was right, as always. Younger Daughter looked beautiful in the dress.
I've already mentioned that Long Suffering Spouse claims to have dressed in approximately five minutes. I admit: I took longer. It took me five minutes just to press the studs through the tuxedo shirt. And I had trouble adjusting the bow tie.
And it took all day to get the bridesmaids ready. Most of them had gone off with Younger Daughter to a hair appointment first thing in the morning (courtesy of Oldest Son's wife, Abby) and most of them showed up at our house after (Abby came later) to put on their faces. But maybe putting on the dresses really did take five minutes, even for them. I know that, at one point, the bridesmaids were in shorts and t-shirts, sprawled all over the living room, working their lotions and potions and brushes and whatever else you call the many make-up tools and then it seemed that -- in an eyeblink -- they were all in their dresses.
We weren't even that late getting over to the church; in fact, according to Catholic wedding time, we were even arguably early.
The wedding was supposed to go off at 3:00; I dropped the bride off by a quarter to.
I contrast this with my experience with Older Daughter. She got married at Hank's church in Indianapolis -- an Episcopal church. Everyone -- even the guests -- were expected to arrive hours before the ceremony was supposed to start. Their invitation even specified that the music program would begin an hour and a half before kickoff, or something like that.
This was crazy stuff as far as I was concerned. But I've been around enough to know that not everyone does things the same way.
I remember once, many years ago, taking my wife to the wedding of one of my high school friends. It was (if I recall) at a Methodist church. The exact time doesn't matter, but if the wedding had been set for 3:00, we were arriving no later than 3:10. My good wife, raised Catholic as I was, could see the bride in the vestibule as we pulled up and was relieved. "Oh, good," she said, "she hasn't gone down the aisle yet."
Actually, we were seeing the receiving line.
Protestants are punctual people, apparently.
Another thing I remember -- now -- about Older Daughter's wedding was that the ushers were actually expected to seat people.
Now, yes, I understand that this is the function of an usher -- but, in my experience, at Catholic weddings, no one stands around waiting to be guided to a seat. The bride's guests sit on the Mary side of the church, the groom's guests go on the Joseph side. (Modern churches, with just a single 'Holy Family' side altar didn't really pose a problem -- it's still bride's guests on the left, groom's on the right, right?)
Naming someone an usher was just something that one did to keep peace in the families. Everybody's brother or favorite cousin then had something to do -- and the best part was that most of them didn't have to do anything.
But Younger Daughter was angry before she got out of the car because the vestibule was packed with Olaf's family and friends, Protestants all.
"They're just here to gawk at me," she said angrily, "they want to see how big I look." Long Suffering Spouse tells me that Younger Daughter expanded liberally on that theme in the privacy of the bride's room at the back of the church. In fact, my wife had to remind her (a) to stop shouting lest she be overheard and (b) it's probably not a good idea to drop f-bombs in church.
But it may not have been quite that sinister. I think they were actually waiting in the back to be ushered in. When we sent Middle and Youngest Sons out to handle this duty, the crowd quickly dispersed.
Someone will have to tell me if I'm guessing correctly.
Olaf was stuck up at the front of the church, in a storage closet across the altar from the Sacristy. I went up front to bid him good day. Here was another contrast with Older Daughter's wedding: Hank had been ensconced in a rather ornate conference room. Olaf's experience was closer to my own. The soloist walked in and we introduced ourselves to each other.
Having satisfied myself that Olaf was in place and accounted for I found Fr. Ed and pulled out the readings that I'd typed up and got them positioned on the lectern. After the license fiasco, Fr. Ed wasn't counting on me: He had readings and some generic Prayers of the Faithful lined up just in case.
If anyone had rolled past our church at 3:10 on the day of Younger Daughter's wedding, they'd have seen her and me waiting our turn in the vestibule. We didn't start more than a few minutes after 3:00 -- and we had to get the bridal party down the aisle first, you know. (But -- seriously -- this was pretty darn punctual for a Catholic service. Honest.)
I'd already been down the aisle once, to guide Long Suffering Spouse to our pew. Olaf's parents followed. Then I was to double back and do my fatherly duty.
Older Daughter (functioning at this event as Matron of Honor) had been careful to remind me to remove her sister's blusher before turning Younger Daughter over to Olaf. "Otherwise it's supposed to be in your face the whole ceremony and it itches. You almost forgot to do that with me, remember?"
Actually, yes, I'm sure I did forget. I'd forgotten the incident too.
It's hard enough to get down the aisle with one's daughter without crumbling. Older Daughter had been cracking wise at the back of the church at her wedding -- but fell silent as we marched in. Seeing all those faces, turned to look at us -- well, it's a little overwhelming. I know I'd gotten misty eyed back then.
At her wedding, Younger Daughter started bawling. This wasn't sniffle, snorfle, snuffle stuff either; this was full-blown Niagara Falls. ("Thank goodness I had waterproof makeup," she said later.)
This was unexpected. She wasn't unhappy, you understand; it was just all the emotion burbling to the surface at once. And, in that situation, crying, like yawning in most other settings, is contagious. You can imagine what that would have done to my Curmudgeonly-credibility if I'd started bawling too. I told her to knock it off.
Surprisingly, she did.
When we got to the front, I tried to remember what Fr. Ed had said about gripping which elbow with which hand and passing Younger Daughter over to Olaf. As I struggled to recall, the pssssting started from the front pew and the altar both.
"The blusher!" hissed Older Daughter.
"The blusher!" hissed Long Suffering Spouse.
Was it left hand on right elbow? I was still puzzling on this and not listening.
Long Suffering Spouse jumped out of the pew. "The blusher!!" she hissed again.
I gave up on the elbows and pulled up the blusher.
Crisis averted.
But this may have been the chattiest Mass I've ever attended. The stage whispering about the blusher was just the beginning.
It turns out to be difficult to kneel for an hour while 5½ months pregnant. Younger Daughter started to sway. We started buzzing back and forth, worried that she was going to topple. Older Daughter was halfway out of her chair on the altar ready to do her nurse thing on her sister. Fr. Ed eventually caught on and chairs were procured.
The two of them were very cute up there. The priest told them to join hands. Younger Daughter grabbed Olaf's mitt like she was shaking hands.
But for all the informality -- and the near-fainting spell -- and all the table talk -- I thought the Mass had gone quite well.
We were supposed to stay in our seats when Mass ended. The bridal party was to walk to the back of the church and keep walking right back down front to get the pictures over with. Fr. Ed was concerned about timing because our parish has an anticipatory mass at 5:00 p.m. on Saturdays -- and we needed to be out before that crowd came in.
But not everyone at the church was coming to the reception. I made an executive decision.
I followed the bridal party out and tried to line them up in some semblance of a receiving line. It was like herding cats, of course, and I encountered some resistance along the lines of "Fr. Ed said...."
The receiving line formed slowly -- but moved slower.
At Catholic weddings, most receiving lines I've seen have moved right along. You shake hands with each person and, literally, hand them into the outstretched paw of the next person in line. Conversation is minimal. The bride gets kissed and hugged, of course, but no guest can get a drink in the receiving line. So guests move quickly.
But I hadn't counted on the teetotaling tendencies of Olaf's family. Some of them abstain entirely; others frown on anyone who doesn't. So these sober-sided people felt no urgency in the receiving line. They wanted to share their life stories with Younger Daughter. Neighbors of Olaf's parents wanted to make sure that Younger Daughter knew just which house they lived in. "No, not the red brick house with the white siding; we're just south of them."
Some of the early crowd was starting to come in for 5:00. (Granted, it was only 4:25 or so by this point -- but these are the holy rollers who wanted extra time to pray. We'd be getting the stinkeye from them certain sure if we didn't quickly vacate the premises.) I made another executive decision and started moving the receiving line back toward the altar.
Fr. Ed was obviously not pleased.
"We have 10 minutes, people," I announced. "Let's get to it. Mr. Photographer, it's your show. Move us along."
The photographer was a college classmate of Olaf's and Younger Daughter's who hopes to make a living at this trade. He didn't expect to be ordering around old people like me under such pressure-packed circumstances. But he did pretty well.
Really, everybody did pretty well.
We eventually got over to the reception -- I've told you about the kitchen stuff already -- but now I want to give you a couple of stories from the "front of the house."
Is that OK?
If so, stay tuned.
Long Suffering Spouse was enthusiastic, even triumphant. "The dress works!" she said repeatedly.
Younger Daughter's wedding dress had a high waist (fashionistas will cringe as I struggle through this description) -- an empire waist, I've heard it called, and it was pleated so that, as it draped, it looked like it was but was not in fact clingy. If I was selecting costumes for a sword and sandals epic, this dress could have been the costume for a temple priestess. Does that suggest a picture? There was no train. But with the veil it was unquestionably a bridal gown.
The most important feature of all this from Long Suffering Spouse's perspective -- the thing that made it 'work' -- was that the dress did not emphasize the fact that Younger Daughter was about 5½ months pregnant. Oh, you could see the bump, if you knew to look for it. But if you didn't know, you might not figure it out. Not for awhile. We had to coach Younger Daughter to keep her hands holding the bouquet above said bump -- which rendered the bump nearly invisible, especially looking straight on. When she'd slip, letting her hands drop below the bump, you couldn't help but notice.
The most important feature of the dress -- what made it 'work' -- from my selfish perspective was that this dress cost nearly $2,000 less than Older Daughter's. But Long Suffering Spouse was right, as always. Younger Daughter looked beautiful in the dress.
I've already mentioned that Long Suffering Spouse claims to have dressed in approximately five minutes. I admit: I took longer. It took me five minutes just to press the studs through the tuxedo shirt. And I had trouble adjusting the bow tie.
And it took all day to get the bridesmaids ready. Most of them had gone off with Younger Daughter to a hair appointment first thing in the morning (courtesy of Oldest Son's wife, Abby) and most of them showed up at our house after (Abby came later) to put on their faces. But maybe putting on the dresses really did take five minutes, even for them. I know that, at one point, the bridesmaids were in shorts and t-shirts, sprawled all over the living room, working their lotions and potions and brushes and whatever else you call the many make-up tools and then it seemed that -- in an eyeblink -- they were all in their dresses.
We weren't even that late getting over to the church; in fact, according to Catholic wedding time, we were even arguably early.
The wedding was supposed to go off at 3:00; I dropped the bride off by a quarter to.
I contrast this with my experience with Older Daughter. She got married at Hank's church in Indianapolis -- an Episcopal church. Everyone -- even the guests -- were expected to arrive hours before the ceremony was supposed to start. Their invitation even specified that the music program would begin an hour and a half before kickoff, or something like that.
This was crazy stuff as far as I was concerned. But I've been around enough to know that not everyone does things the same way.
I remember once, many years ago, taking my wife to the wedding of one of my high school friends. It was (if I recall) at a Methodist church. The exact time doesn't matter, but if the wedding had been set for 3:00, we were arriving no later than 3:10. My good wife, raised Catholic as I was, could see the bride in the vestibule as we pulled up and was relieved. "Oh, good," she said, "she hasn't gone down the aisle yet."
Actually, we were seeing the receiving line.
Protestants are punctual people, apparently.
Another thing I remember -- now -- about Older Daughter's wedding was that the ushers were actually expected to seat people.
Now, yes, I understand that this is the function of an usher -- but, in my experience, at Catholic weddings, no one stands around waiting to be guided to a seat. The bride's guests sit on the Mary side of the church, the groom's guests go on the Joseph side. (Modern churches, with just a single 'Holy Family' side altar didn't really pose a problem -- it's still bride's guests on the left, groom's on the right, right?)
Naming someone an usher was just something that one did to keep peace in the families. Everybody's brother or favorite cousin then had something to do -- and the best part was that most of them didn't have to do anything.
But Younger Daughter was angry before she got out of the car because the vestibule was packed with Olaf's family and friends, Protestants all.
"They're just here to gawk at me," she said angrily, "they want to see how big I look." Long Suffering Spouse tells me that Younger Daughter expanded liberally on that theme in the privacy of the bride's room at the back of the church. In fact, my wife had to remind her (a) to stop shouting lest she be overheard and (b) it's probably not a good idea to drop f-bombs in church.
But it may not have been quite that sinister. I think they were actually waiting in the back to be ushered in. When we sent Middle and Youngest Sons out to handle this duty, the crowd quickly dispersed.
Someone will have to tell me if I'm guessing correctly.
Olaf was stuck up at the front of the church, in a storage closet across the altar from the Sacristy. I went up front to bid him good day. Here was another contrast with Older Daughter's wedding: Hank had been ensconced in a rather ornate conference room. Olaf's experience was closer to my own. The soloist walked in and we introduced ourselves to each other.
Having satisfied myself that Olaf was in place and accounted for I found Fr. Ed and pulled out the readings that I'd typed up and got them positioned on the lectern. After the license fiasco, Fr. Ed wasn't counting on me: He had readings and some generic Prayers of the Faithful lined up just in case.
If anyone had rolled past our church at 3:10 on the day of Younger Daughter's wedding, they'd have seen her and me waiting our turn in the vestibule. We didn't start more than a few minutes after 3:00 -- and we had to get the bridal party down the aisle first, you know. (But -- seriously -- this was pretty darn punctual for a Catholic service. Honest.)
I'd already been down the aisle once, to guide Long Suffering Spouse to our pew. Olaf's parents followed. Then I was to double back and do my fatherly duty.
Older Daughter (functioning at this event as Matron of Honor) had been careful to remind me to remove her sister's blusher before turning Younger Daughter over to Olaf. "Otherwise it's supposed to be in your face the whole ceremony and it itches. You almost forgot to do that with me, remember?"
Actually, yes, I'm sure I did forget. I'd forgotten the incident too.
It's hard enough to get down the aisle with one's daughter without crumbling. Older Daughter had been cracking wise at the back of the church at her wedding -- but fell silent as we marched in. Seeing all those faces, turned to look at us -- well, it's a little overwhelming. I know I'd gotten misty eyed back then.
At her wedding, Younger Daughter started bawling. This wasn't sniffle, snorfle, snuffle stuff either; this was full-blown Niagara Falls. ("Thank goodness I had waterproof makeup," she said later.)
This was unexpected. She wasn't unhappy, you understand; it was just all the emotion burbling to the surface at once. And, in that situation, crying, like yawning in most other settings, is contagious. You can imagine what that would have done to my Curmudgeonly-credibility if I'd started bawling too. I told her to knock it off.
Surprisingly, she did.
When we got to the front, I tried to remember what Fr. Ed had said about gripping which elbow with which hand and passing Younger Daughter over to Olaf. As I struggled to recall, the pssssting started from the front pew and the altar both.
"The blusher!" hissed Older Daughter.
"The blusher!" hissed Long Suffering Spouse.
Was it left hand on right elbow? I was still puzzling on this and not listening.
Long Suffering Spouse jumped out of the pew. "The blusher!!" she hissed again.
I gave up on the elbows and pulled up the blusher.
Crisis averted.
But this may have been the chattiest Mass I've ever attended. The stage whispering about the blusher was just the beginning.
It turns out to be difficult to kneel for an hour while 5½ months pregnant. Younger Daughter started to sway. We started buzzing back and forth, worried that she was going to topple. Older Daughter was halfway out of her chair on the altar ready to do her nurse thing on her sister. Fr. Ed eventually caught on and chairs were procured.
The two of them were very cute up there. The priest told them to join hands. Younger Daughter grabbed Olaf's mitt like she was shaking hands.
But for all the informality -- and the near-fainting spell -- and all the table talk -- I thought the Mass had gone quite well.
We were supposed to stay in our seats when Mass ended. The bridal party was to walk to the back of the church and keep walking right back down front to get the pictures over with. Fr. Ed was concerned about timing because our parish has an anticipatory mass at 5:00 p.m. on Saturdays -- and we needed to be out before that crowd came in.
But not everyone at the church was coming to the reception. I made an executive decision.
I followed the bridal party out and tried to line them up in some semblance of a receiving line. It was like herding cats, of course, and I encountered some resistance along the lines of "Fr. Ed said...."
The receiving line formed slowly -- but moved slower.
At Catholic weddings, most receiving lines I've seen have moved right along. You shake hands with each person and, literally, hand them into the outstretched paw of the next person in line. Conversation is minimal. The bride gets kissed and hugged, of course, but no guest can get a drink in the receiving line. So guests move quickly.
But I hadn't counted on the teetotaling tendencies of Olaf's family. Some of them abstain entirely; others frown on anyone who doesn't. So these sober-sided people felt no urgency in the receiving line. They wanted to share their life stories with Younger Daughter. Neighbors of Olaf's parents wanted to make sure that Younger Daughter knew just which house they lived in. "No, not the red brick house with the white siding; we're just south of them."
Some of the early crowd was starting to come in for 5:00. (Granted, it was only 4:25 or so by this point -- but these are the holy rollers who wanted extra time to pray. We'd be getting the stinkeye from them certain sure if we didn't quickly vacate the premises.) I made another executive decision and started moving the receiving line back toward the altar.
Fr. Ed was obviously not pleased.
"We have 10 minutes, people," I announced. "Let's get to it. Mr. Photographer, it's your show. Move us along."
The photographer was a college classmate of Olaf's and Younger Daughter's who hopes to make a living at this trade. He didn't expect to be ordering around old people like me under such pressure-packed circumstances. But he did pretty well.
Really, everybody did pretty well.
We eventually got over to the reception -- I've told you about the kitchen stuff already -- but now I want to give you a couple of stories from the "front of the house."
Is that OK?
If so, stay tuned.
Monday, June 18, 2012
Aunt Floofy and the wedding napkins: Decking the hall for Younger Daughter's wedding
I'm sure I must have must have mentioned that Younger Daughter is part crow. I do not refer to the indigenous people of the American west but, rather, to the large black bird that covets shiny things.
Younger Daughter has been inordinately fond of sparkly, shiny things since infancy. Glitter on everything! Faces, textbook covers, folders, pens, you name it, if Younger Daughter had it, it would be made sparkly or have glitter added.
This is something that almost anyone would notice about Younger Daughter on very short acquaintance and Olaf's family was, of course, no exception.
When they took on the responsibility for decorating the Parish Center (they insisted on doing something you'll remember) it was therefore a lock-cinch certainty that sparkles would be part of the decor.
When it was determined that Olaf's family would take on the decorating responsibilities, they insisted on inspecting the locus in quo. As a teacher in the parish school, my wife has been entrusted with a prodigious collection of keys. There are some foreign cars that weigh less than my wife's key set. But none of these, however numerous, open the Parish Center. Access to the shiny new facility is strictly controlled (we actually had one of the first private parties in the place; after Older Daughter got married in Indianapolis, we had a second party here so that we could celebrate with our friends and neighbors -- that was the occasion on which my wife first field-tested the spinach lasagna).
The point, however, is that my wife can't always get in there. She is in there, nearly every day, during the school year, because there's a track around the perimeter of the room, on a mezzanine level -- 17 times around is a mile -- and Long Suffering Spouse walks it during her lunch hour. But she can be there then only because the gym teacher has the place opened up at that time. The gym teacher has keys; the gym teacher is, I think, the only teacher with a key.
So when Olaf's mother began pestering my wife for a site inspection, Long Suffering Spouse was unable to instantly comply. I'm speculating, of course, but I think the logic train may have run like this: She works in the building; she should have keys to things in her building; she's not letting me see the room -- sabotage!
Logic trains, like real trains, sometimes run completely off the tracks.
My wife did find a Wednesday when she could get in there after school in between classes and the start of the afternoon's athletic practices. She passed word to Olaf's mother -- who showed up with her husband and sister in tow.
Olaf's mother's sister, of course, would be Olaf's aunt. Olaf is an only child but his mother comes from a large family. This particular sibling was at the top of the birth order (Olaf's mother was the baby of the family); she'd never married. She'd worked in some technical field for many years. Her job was a casualty of this never-ending Recession we've been in for, oh, seemingly forever at this point. She did find another job -- in retail. So she's underemployed and bored. And she loves to decorate. I'll call her Aunt Floofy.
I wasn't at this summit meeting (I'm smarter than I look) but, as it was related to me, Olaf's father drew a floor plan, Olaf's mother supervised, and Aunt Floofy poked into every nook and cranny, looked in every closet, and asked every possible question she could think of. Long Suffering Spouse returned from the encounter slightly shell-shocked. I just caught snippets of dialog, mostly from listening to her mutter in her restless sleep over the next few nights....
But Long Suffering Spouse was in Costco when they were selling "footies" (perhaps you'd know these as "foot peds") in carload lots. She bought a gross or so. We'll have an old-fashioned sock hop! Crisis averted.
Now I feel compelled, at this point, to depart from the narrative thread here -- as a public service. If anyone should happen upon these essays and be foolishly inspired to put on a soiree of their own using our experiences as a template, I feel I must warn you, don't plan on solving a similar problem, should one arise, at your own neighborhood Costco.
This is not a knock against the chain. It's just... well, Costco has kind of a perverse twist on Harry Potter's "Room of Requirement." I don't refer to the obvious fact that Costco charges for all their neat stuff while Hogwarts students can find what they need need for free in the Room of Requirement. Rather, at Hogwarts, kids can find what they need by looking for it. If you go to Costco looking for something specific -- even something you've seen there before -- yesterday, even -- it will not be there. Costco has a very sophisticated computerized inventory system that gives you one chance, and one chance only, to get what you need when you see it, whether you know (then) you need it or not. That's why Costco customers routinely come home with all sorts of treasures they didn't intend to buy when they went in. And if you go in looking for your own giant box of foot peds, it simply won't be there.
And now back to our story....
Younger Daughter would occasionally bring rumors back about decorating plans. She'd been interrogated thoroughly about the wedding colors at first. Later, she was shown fabric samples and asked to choose favorites. (She liked something with sparkles, she told us. We pretended to be surprised.)
But the one thing that was uppermost in our minds about the decorating was that, whatever we put up, or whatever they'd put up, we'd have to take down.
True, we had the hall for Saturday afternoon and evening -- but there was a men's basketball league that played there on Friday nights and a Zumba group that met there on Saturday mornings. (If you watch a lot of TV, you've probably heard of Zumba. It involves dancing as exercise -- not Sweating to the Oldies, but jumping around to a Latin beat. Long Suffering Spouse had to participate in a Zumba workout at the end of a teaching seminar once. She said it hurt her joints, all that jumping. When the joint's jumping, that's a good thing; when the jumping hurts your joints, that's not so good.) And there was still another group that had the room reserved for Sunday morning.
And none of these groups required the floor covering, tables or chairs that we'd need.
Setting that up was going to take some time all by itself -- without any ornamentation -- and Long Suffering Spouse was dreading the prospect of trying to round up half-crocked family and friends to take everything down at the end of the party.
Then, one day, Younger Daughter and Olaf came home and told us that Aunt Floofy wanted to wrap all the chairs.
You've probably been to wedding halls where they wrap the chairs. Me too. I know it's supposed to look really fancy. It reminds me, however, more of an estate sale.
So I would have hated that idea even if the prospect of wrapping 100 or 150 folding chairs in the limited time available wasn't absol-freaking-lutely out of the freaking question. What the freaking, freakity-freak freak was Aunt Floofy doing? She must be out of her ever-loving, cotton-picking mind.
I went on in this vein for several minutes, blood vessels popping in my eyeballs, and, I must confess, I probably didn't say "ever-loving" or "cotton-picking" either.
I might not even have said "freaking."
When I subsided, and the windows stopped rattling, Younger Daughter was crying for some reason. Something about not wanting to be in the middle of all this. All what? I was just expressing my opinion.
Long Suffering Spouse -- who was plainly less than pleased with my manner of expression -- nevertheless concurred in my judgment on the matter, and (judging by her countenance) was equally determined that there would be no chair wrapping.
Olaf seemed to catch on to our position on this issue. "I told them I didn't think this would be a good idea," he offered. "I'll tell them again."
I'm not certain what Olaf told his folks, but he was persuasive. Thus it came to pass that Aunt Floofy's chair-wrapping was confined to the wedding shower.
And we had even better news in the last couple of days before the wedding.
The school custodian decided he'd be willing to set up the floor and the tables himself. Since he and his assistant wouldn't be working on Saturday, they'd have to do it on Friday -- and the men's basketball league and Zumba would have to use the old gym for their respective meetings.
The best thing about this news was that it came late enough that Aunt Floofy's plans were sufficiently advanced to preclude revival of her chair-wrapping ambitions.
Olaf was over at the house a couple of days before the wedding. "It's crazy at my house," he told us. "They're decorating the napkins."
"Napkins?" asked Long Suffering Spouse. "They're using cloth napkins?"
"Oh, yes," said Olaf, "my aunt bought them special. But don't worry. Her basement already looks like a party supply store. I'm sure she'll find something else to use them on."
Long Suffering Spouse was surprised to hear about cloth napkins because she'd already had the conversation with Olaf's mother about renting plates and silverware. My wife had persuaded her, after some delicate and lengthy negotiations, to abandon that idea in favor of using plastic plates and utensils. We have to clean up the hall that night, she kept reminding Olaf's mother, and if we have to wash dishes we'll be there all night. I think the clincher may have been my wife's solemn assurance that there was no dishwasher on the premises.
There are some very nice plastic plates out there, my wife told Olaf's mother. Eventually, Olaf's mother accepted that as a challenge -- and a quest. But word that Aunt Floofy had come up with cloth napkins -- napkins that they were decorating -- only served to revive my wife's concerns. "What are they up to?" she fretted.
We were about to find out.
We had to tell the in-laws, eventually, the happy news that they could get in the hall on Friday -- before the rehearsal -- instead of waiting until 10:30 on Saturday morning (and the wedding was set for 3:00 p.m.). Since the rehearsal was set for 6:30 Friday evening, my wife suggested we all rendezvous at the Parish Center around 4:00 p.m. That way, we could get the room set up and go directly down the block to the church for the rehearsal.
Olaf's mother suggested they get in there at 11:00 a.m. instead.
You'll remember that the Friday before the wedding was also my wife's last day of school. There was only a half-day scheduled -- but even that wouldn't be over at 11:00.
And you'll remember that I've told you (as if you couldn't figure it out for yourselves) that, by this point, my dear wife was dangerously, exquisitely, entirely fatigued. She somehow found the strength to point out that she was still working at that time and had a mandatory luncheon following and to persuade them to come at 2:00 p.m. instead. She ended the call -- and screamed. Five hours! What do they think they're going to do in there for five hours? No one was going to question her math at this point.
The Curmudgeon clan descended on the hall as soon as Long Suffering Spouse got back from her brunch -- and she'd been the first to leave, about 1:00 p.m. She'd signed out the key for the room that morning; she'd asked the custodian to meet me at 2:00 to go over the lighting and sound system instructions.
The floor was down. The tables were all set up. My wife had us move some hither and thither. We extended the head table to accommodate the attendants and their escorts. Long Suffering Spouse even accepted one of my suggestions (one of mine!) -- that we could seat people on both sides of the head table as long as we kept the space across from the bride and groom clear. That way, everyone in the room would have an unimpeded view of the happy couple -- if they ever sat down -- and the head table would not take up one entire wall of the room.
I met with the custodian as planned -- and got the wireless microphone -- and got instructed on how to plug in the iPod to the sound system. Penny and Carl were here by that time and their 16-year old daughter plugged hers in, just to make sure it worked. She had a lot of country music on the iPod. We kept the volume down, despite Youngest Son's protests. The girl kept running back to it, trying to keep one jump ahead of any curse words in the songs. She succeeded, mostly.
By 3:00 we'd accomplished just about all we could without the decorations themselves -- and there was still no sign of Olaf's family.
They finally showed up shortly after 3:00 -- traffic was terrible, they said -- and on a Friday afternoon in Chicago, too. Who'd have ever guessed?
We trooped out to the parking lot and began unloading boxes and tablecloths. The tablecloths were on hangers.
Hangers.
Really.
There were to be two to a table. A dark blue circular cloth was the first layer, then a lighter blue rectangle, covered in silver sparkles, was to be put on over.
The Curmudgeon family, supplemented with Penny and Carl, bent to the task. A couple of times someone put the undercloth on seam side up -- but one disapproving glare from Aunt Floofy was enough to make the guilty party correct the error.
Then the utensils box was opened. I've seen plastic silverware in my day, some better than others. I never, until the day before Younger Daughter's wedding, ever saw silver plastic silverware. It looked nicer than the metal stuff we use at home.
And then the napkin boxes were opened up. Each "napkin" was about the size of a kitchen towel, carefully folded, and tied up with a blue ribbon. There were three large plastic diamonds tied to the ribbon on each. We set about putting one at each place. Aunt Floofy followed us around, floofing the napkins to some internal specification we couldn't possibly appreciate or understand. It was at that moment that I named her. It was either that or deck her -- and I didn't think that would go over well with my new in-laws.
Of course, you never know....
They brought big bowls for each table. And two big, decorative bottles of water -- from the Norwegian hometown of Olaf's father's family, we were told, and that (I admit) was kind of interesting -- and marbles for the bowls and five candles for each table. We helped put 'em all out.
The box of clear plastic plates was opened. Long Suffering Spouse wanted these at each place, too, but Aunt Floofy vetoed that idea. (We'd probably have had to put the plates underneath the napkins and then she'd have to re-floof the napkins all over again.) My wife argued that, if they were in the buffet line, people would take more than one or take a second plate when they came back for reinforcements and, either way, that would increase the danger of our running out.
And these were such nice plates. None of your flimsy stuff here. These were substantial plates that were (probably) dishwasher safe. And they were clear, but grayish-tinted. But Aunt Floofy had the last word and they were stacked up at the beginning of the serving line.
It was just past 4:00 now. We'd done everything -- and had two and half more hours to kill before the rehearsal. And I wanted to smack Aunt Floofy. There was no time for the in-laws-to-be to go home and back. They decided to change clothes at the hall, then go shopping for an hour or so before we'd all meet again at the church. We waited while they changed... then went home. Olaf came with us. The kids all poured drinks. Since one of them handed me a beaker of scotch, I did not complain.
And that brings you, now, to where I started with these reminiscences. (Hey, it worked for Homer, didn't it?) Anyway, now I can tell you about the wedding and the reception itself.
But not today.
Younger Daughter has been inordinately fond of sparkly, shiny things since infancy. Glitter on everything! Faces, textbook covers, folders, pens, you name it, if Younger Daughter had it, it would be made sparkly or have glitter added.
This is something that almost anyone would notice about Younger Daughter on very short acquaintance and Olaf's family was, of course, no exception.
When they took on the responsibility for decorating the Parish Center (they insisted on doing something you'll remember) it was therefore a lock-cinch certainty that sparkles would be part of the decor.
When it was determined that Olaf's family would take on the decorating responsibilities, they insisted on inspecting the locus in quo. As a teacher in the parish school, my wife has been entrusted with a prodigious collection of keys. There are some foreign cars that weigh less than my wife's key set. But none of these, however numerous, open the Parish Center. Access to the shiny new facility is strictly controlled (we actually had one of the first private parties in the place; after Older Daughter got married in Indianapolis, we had a second party here so that we could celebrate with our friends and neighbors -- that was the occasion on which my wife first field-tested the spinach lasagna).
The point, however, is that my wife can't always get in there. She is in there, nearly every day, during the school year, because there's a track around the perimeter of the room, on a mezzanine level -- 17 times around is a mile -- and Long Suffering Spouse walks it during her lunch hour. But she can be there then only because the gym teacher has the place opened up at that time. The gym teacher has keys; the gym teacher is, I think, the only teacher with a key.
So when Olaf's mother began pestering my wife for a site inspection, Long Suffering Spouse was unable to instantly comply. I'm speculating, of course, but I think the logic train may have run like this: She works in the building; she should have keys to things in her building; she's not letting me see the room -- sabotage!
Logic trains, like real trains, sometimes run completely off the tracks.
My wife did find a Wednesday when she could get in there after school in between classes and the start of the afternoon's athletic practices. She passed word to Olaf's mother -- who showed up with her husband and sister in tow.
Olaf's mother's sister, of course, would be Olaf's aunt. Olaf is an only child but his mother comes from a large family. This particular sibling was at the top of the birth order (Olaf's mother was the baby of the family); she'd never married. She'd worked in some technical field for many years. Her job was a casualty of this never-ending Recession we've been in for, oh, seemingly forever at this point. She did find another job -- in retail. So she's underemployed and bored. And she loves to decorate. I'll call her Aunt Floofy.
I wasn't at this summit meeting (I'm smarter than I look) but, as it was related to me, Olaf's father drew a floor plan, Olaf's mother supervised, and Aunt Floofy poked into every nook and cranny, looked in every closet, and asked every possible question she could think of. Long Suffering Spouse returned from the encounter slightly shell-shocked. I just caught snippets of dialog, mostly from listening to her mutter in her restless sleep over the next few nights....
Do we have to use these chairs?There was a later crisis involving the floor covering -- the parish has plastic runners to protect the gym floor. They completely cover the floor, but there are seams and the parish was worried about dancing -- people, especially ladies in heels, might trip over the seams and be injured.
These are nice chairs. What's wrong with them?
Folding chairs, really?
* * * * * * * * *
Are these the only tables?
Round tables and long ones, yes. We can use the long ones for serving.
But these are the only tables? Really?
But Long Suffering Spouse was in Costco when they were selling "footies" (perhaps you'd know these as "foot peds") in carload lots. She bought a gross or so. We'll have an old-fashioned sock hop! Crisis averted.
Now I feel compelled, at this point, to depart from the narrative thread here -- as a public service. If anyone should happen upon these essays and be foolishly inspired to put on a soiree of their own using our experiences as a template, I feel I must warn you, don't plan on solving a similar problem, should one arise, at your own neighborhood Costco.
This is not a knock against the chain. It's just... well, Costco has kind of a perverse twist on Harry Potter's "Room of Requirement." I don't refer to the obvious fact that Costco charges for all their neat stuff while Hogwarts students can find what they need need for free in the Room of Requirement. Rather, at Hogwarts, kids can find what they need by looking for it. If you go to Costco looking for something specific -- even something you've seen there before -- yesterday, even -- it will not be there. Costco has a very sophisticated computerized inventory system that gives you one chance, and one chance only, to get what you need when you see it, whether you know (then) you need it or not. That's why Costco customers routinely come home with all sorts of treasures they didn't intend to buy when they went in. And if you go in looking for your own giant box of foot peds, it simply won't be there.
And now back to our story....
Younger Daughter would occasionally bring rumors back about decorating plans. She'd been interrogated thoroughly about the wedding colors at first. Later, she was shown fabric samples and asked to choose favorites. (She liked something with sparkles, she told us. We pretended to be surprised.)
But the one thing that was uppermost in our minds about the decorating was that, whatever we put up, or whatever they'd put up, we'd have to take down.
True, we had the hall for Saturday afternoon and evening -- but there was a men's basketball league that played there on Friday nights and a Zumba group that met there on Saturday mornings. (If you watch a lot of TV, you've probably heard of Zumba. It involves dancing as exercise -- not Sweating to the Oldies, but jumping around to a Latin beat. Long Suffering Spouse had to participate in a Zumba workout at the end of a teaching seminar once. She said it hurt her joints, all that jumping. When the joint's jumping, that's a good thing; when the jumping hurts your joints, that's not so good.) And there was still another group that had the room reserved for Sunday morning.
And none of these groups required the floor covering, tables or chairs that we'd need.
Setting that up was going to take some time all by itself -- without any ornamentation -- and Long Suffering Spouse was dreading the prospect of trying to round up half-crocked family and friends to take everything down at the end of the party.
Then, one day, Younger Daughter and Olaf came home and told us that Aunt Floofy wanted to wrap all the chairs.
You've probably been to wedding halls where they wrap the chairs. Me too. I know it's supposed to look really fancy. It reminds me, however, more of an estate sale.
So I would have hated that idea even if the prospect of wrapping 100 or 150 folding chairs in the limited time available wasn't absol-freaking-lutely out of the freaking question. What the freaking, freakity-freak freak was Aunt Floofy doing? She must be out of her ever-loving, cotton-picking mind.
I went on in this vein for several minutes, blood vessels popping in my eyeballs, and, I must confess, I probably didn't say "ever-loving" or "cotton-picking" either.
I might not even have said "freaking."
When I subsided, and the windows stopped rattling, Younger Daughter was crying for some reason. Something about not wanting to be in the middle of all this. All what? I was just expressing my opinion.
Long Suffering Spouse -- who was plainly less than pleased with my manner of expression -- nevertheless concurred in my judgment on the matter, and (judging by her countenance) was equally determined that there would be no chair wrapping.
Olaf seemed to catch on to our position on this issue. "I told them I didn't think this would be a good idea," he offered. "I'll tell them again."
I'm not certain what Olaf told his folks, but he was persuasive. Thus it came to pass that Aunt Floofy's chair-wrapping was confined to the wedding shower.
And we had even better news in the last couple of days before the wedding.
The school custodian decided he'd be willing to set up the floor and the tables himself. Since he and his assistant wouldn't be working on Saturday, they'd have to do it on Friday -- and the men's basketball league and Zumba would have to use the old gym for their respective meetings.
The best thing about this news was that it came late enough that Aunt Floofy's plans were sufficiently advanced to preclude revival of her chair-wrapping ambitions.
Olaf was over at the house a couple of days before the wedding. "It's crazy at my house," he told us. "They're decorating the napkins."
"Napkins?" asked Long Suffering Spouse. "They're using cloth napkins?"
"Oh, yes," said Olaf, "my aunt bought them special. But don't worry. Her basement already looks like a party supply store. I'm sure she'll find something else to use them on."
Long Suffering Spouse was surprised to hear about cloth napkins because she'd already had the conversation with Olaf's mother about renting plates and silverware. My wife had persuaded her, after some delicate and lengthy negotiations, to abandon that idea in favor of using plastic plates and utensils. We have to clean up the hall that night, she kept reminding Olaf's mother, and if we have to wash dishes we'll be there all night. I think the clincher may have been my wife's solemn assurance that there was no dishwasher on the premises.
There are some very nice plastic plates out there, my wife told Olaf's mother. Eventually, Olaf's mother accepted that as a challenge -- and a quest. But word that Aunt Floofy had come up with cloth napkins -- napkins that they were decorating -- only served to revive my wife's concerns. "What are they up to?" she fretted.
We were about to find out.
We had to tell the in-laws, eventually, the happy news that they could get in the hall on Friday -- before the rehearsal -- instead of waiting until 10:30 on Saturday morning (and the wedding was set for 3:00 p.m.). Since the rehearsal was set for 6:30 Friday evening, my wife suggested we all rendezvous at the Parish Center around 4:00 p.m. That way, we could get the room set up and go directly down the block to the church for the rehearsal.
Olaf's mother suggested they get in there at 11:00 a.m. instead.
You'll remember that the Friday before the wedding was also my wife's last day of school. There was only a half-day scheduled -- but even that wouldn't be over at 11:00.
And you'll remember that I've told you (as if you couldn't figure it out for yourselves) that, by this point, my dear wife was dangerously, exquisitely, entirely fatigued. She somehow found the strength to point out that she was still working at that time and had a mandatory luncheon following and to persuade them to come at 2:00 p.m. instead. She ended the call -- and screamed. Five hours! What do they think they're going to do in there for five hours? No one was going to question her math at this point.
The Curmudgeon clan descended on the hall as soon as Long Suffering Spouse got back from her brunch -- and she'd been the first to leave, about 1:00 p.m. She'd signed out the key for the room that morning; she'd asked the custodian to meet me at 2:00 to go over the lighting and sound system instructions.
The floor was down. The tables were all set up. My wife had us move some hither and thither. We extended the head table to accommodate the attendants and their escorts. Long Suffering Spouse even accepted one of my suggestions (one of mine!) -- that we could seat people on both sides of the head table as long as we kept the space across from the bride and groom clear. That way, everyone in the room would have an unimpeded view of the happy couple -- if they ever sat down -- and the head table would not take up one entire wall of the room.
I met with the custodian as planned -- and got the wireless microphone -- and got instructed on how to plug in the iPod to the sound system. Penny and Carl were here by that time and their 16-year old daughter plugged hers in, just to make sure it worked. She had a lot of country music on the iPod. We kept the volume down, despite Youngest Son's protests. The girl kept running back to it, trying to keep one jump ahead of any curse words in the songs. She succeeded, mostly.
By 3:00 we'd accomplished just about all we could without the decorations themselves -- and there was still no sign of Olaf's family.
They finally showed up shortly after 3:00 -- traffic was terrible, they said -- and on a Friday afternoon in Chicago, too. Who'd have ever guessed?
We trooped out to the parking lot and began unloading boxes and tablecloths. The tablecloths were on hangers.
Hangers.
Really.
There were to be two to a table. A dark blue circular cloth was the first layer, then a lighter blue rectangle, covered in silver sparkles, was to be put on over.
The Curmudgeon family, supplemented with Penny and Carl, bent to the task. A couple of times someone put the undercloth on seam side up -- but one disapproving glare from Aunt Floofy was enough to make the guilty party correct the error.
Then the utensils box was opened. I've seen plastic silverware in my day, some better than others. I never, until the day before Younger Daughter's wedding, ever saw silver plastic silverware. It looked nicer than the metal stuff we use at home.
And then the napkin boxes were opened up. Each "napkin" was about the size of a kitchen towel, carefully folded, and tied up with a blue ribbon. There were three large plastic diamonds tied to the ribbon on each. We set about putting one at each place. Aunt Floofy followed us around, floofing the napkins to some internal specification we couldn't possibly appreciate or understand. It was at that moment that I named her. It was either that or deck her -- and I didn't think that would go over well with my new in-laws.
Of course, you never know....
They brought big bowls for each table. And two big, decorative bottles of water -- from the Norwegian hometown of Olaf's father's family, we were told, and that (I admit) was kind of interesting -- and marbles for the bowls and five candles for each table. We helped put 'em all out.
The box of clear plastic plates was opened. Long Suffering Spouse wanted these at each place, too, but Aunt Floofy vetoed that idea. (We'd probably have had to put the plates underneath the napkins and then she'd have to re-floof the napkins all over again.) My wife argued that, if they were in the buffet line, people would take more than one or take a second plate when they came back for reinforcements and, either way, that would increase the danger of our running out.
And these were such nice plates. None of your flimsy stuff here. These were substantial plates that were (probably) dishwasher safe. And they were clear, but grayish-tinted. But Aunt Floofy had the last word and they were stacked up at the beginning of the serving line.
It was just past 4:00 now. We'd done everything -- and had two and half more hours to kill before the rehearsal. And I wanted to smack Aunt Floofy. There was no time for the in-laws-to-be to go home and back. They decided to change clothes at the hall, then go shopping for an hour or so before we'd all meet again at the church. We waited while they changed... then went home. Olaf came with us. The kids all poured drinks. Since one of them handed me a beaker of scotch, I did not complain.
And that brings you, now, to where I started with these reminiscences. (Hey, it worked for Homer, didn't it?) Anyway, now I can tell you about the wedding and the reception itself.
But not today.
Friday, June 15, 2012
Fools rush in where angels fear to tread: Part II -- thankfully, a tranquilizer dart was not required
I didn't mention yesterday, in my seemingly exhaustive catalog of what Long Suffering Spouse did in the days and weeks leading up to last Saturday's wedding, that school was in session that entire time.
My wife had a half day of school on Friday, before we went to decorate the parish hall, and the graduation Mass was held on the morning of the wedding.
Long Suffering Spouse missed exactly zero time from work during all of this (OK, she didn't go to the graduation Mass -- but that's it). So, amidst the flowers and the cakes and the souvenir cookies and the potatoes and the chickens and the potatoes and the potatoes and the chickens, my wife was also grading papers, creating and grading tests, calculating report cards and doing all of the other end-of-term stuff that a teacher does.
I hesitated to mention that yesterday because I figured I was straining your credibility already: I was afraid you'd turn away, saying no one could do so much.
And, yet, in truth, she did more.
But, as Saturday neared, Long Suffering Spouse began to realize that she'd not be able to appear in the wedding photos and start the food. She'd have to have help.
Charlotte and Penny and Mrs. Lork all stepped up to volunteer.
They knew they were entering into a tough spot, but I don't know if any of them, despite their years of friendship with Long Suffering Spouse, could really have understood what they were getting into.
You see, something had to be sacrificed in order to accomplish all of these tasks.
That something was sleep.
Years ago, usually during the Christmas season, my wife and I would put names to our increasing levels of fatigue. I can't remember them all now -- I think at one point we had as many names for exhaustion as Eskimos allegedly have for snow (which, by the way, is largely a myth -- but I won't digress). After "tired" came "exhausted"; after "exhausted" came "cranky"; after "cranky" -- probably several steps after cranky (I just can't recall them all now) -- came a very dangerous stage called "charming."
And Long Suffering Spouse had reached that phase well before Saturday. I'd say she'd reached "charming" by Friday morning. I think it was the flower arranging coupled with Younger Daughter's bachelorette party on Thursday night that pushed her over. By that time, Older Daughter had arrived, of course, with husband Hank and their dog, Cork.
Cork descended the basement stairs for the first time Thursday night to see what Long Suffering Spouse was up to. My wife was in the basement because that was the coolest area of the house and she needed a large table to work on. All large tables on the first floor had been commandeered by blenders and sissy drinks and paper umbrellas.
(Younger Daughter couldn't drink, of course, but that didn't stop her sister and sister-in-law from outfitting her in a feathery pink boa and a plastic, red-blinking tiara. They'd gone out to dinner, but had returned for the aforementioned sissy drinks by 10:00pm or so.)
Meanwhile, in the basement, Long Suffering Spouse had to expend energy she didn't have trying to keep the dog from eating small pieces of rose stems that had fallen to the floor. The dog had a liberal policy for determining what was, or what might be, food. In the dog's view, anything that fell from a table must be food.
Nor was there any way for Long Suffering Spouse to 'ditch' the teachers' brunch following the dismissal of the last class. Yes, the in-laws were about to descend en masse on the Parish Center for the decorating binge, but Mrs. Lork was retiring that day -- and my wife was determined to go.
And then came the decorating itself (I'm teasing the decorating post as long as possible) and the rehearsal (at which the failure to obtain a wedding license added no stress whatsoever -- ha!) -- and the wedding itself.
My wife says she dressed in five minutes. I was otherwise engaged, but, based on what I did see, I don't think she can be exaggerating by much, if at all.
Accordingly, even the very dangerous stage of "charming" was long since surpassed by the time my wife arrived to take command in the Parish Center kitchen.
I tried to be available at the beginning. There were things that had been forgotten, or not anticipated, and there was a shuttle of kids back and forth to the house to obtain that which needed obtaining. My job was to phone or text them and update the list as directed. But I could see the dangerous light in my wife's eyes.
It is not literally true that lightning came out of my wife's eyes or flames shot out of her flaring nostrils. That would be an exaggeration -- at least until it was discovered that the potatoes were taking longer to warm than expected and, worse, that they weren't warming equally.
It is literally true that Penny, Charlotte and Mrs. Lork were working like heroes. Penny burned her arm checking on the potatoes. At one point, during the crisis, I stopped for a nanosecond to ask Mrs. Lork how she liked being retired so far. "I haven't noticed much of a difference yet," she told me, but then I felt the electric discharges coming from my approaching spouse and quickly started moving again.
The one thing one could not be in that kitchen was still. My sister Betty apparently wandered into the kitchen at one point and interrupted my wife. She says she merely asked whether there was anything she could do to help. I didn't see what happened. But I saw Betty moments later, heading for the bar, shaken, and perhaps even singed. "Maybe I can help later," she stammered. "I don't mind getting yelled at. I'm used to getting yelled at," she continued, "but I'm not going in there again."
My wife has no recollection of the incident. Neither, thankfully, does she recall what happened when Olaf's mother strayed into the kitchen with a similar request.
I blame it entirely on the potatoes.
I was in there again, briefly, because some guests ran out of bread. I got bread to pass around. Later, I had to go back because other guests were unable to find the butter on their tables, so I grabbed a bag of butter pats and went out to distribute these. As long as one had a clear purpose, or could respond instantly to orders, one was relatively safe. Make the coffee, I was told, but don't plug it in. I made the coffee.
At one point things must have gotten really stressful in the kitchen. Penny turned to my wife and said, "What are you going to do? Fire the help?" That -- believe it or not -- relieved the tension considerably. At least for awhile.
I never heard any shouting in the kitchen, but I'm told that others did -- those potatoes again! -- and, at some point, my friend (and Charlotte's husband) Steve decided that what my wife needed was a drink.
Steve and I used to put away mass quantities of liquor together. Steve hasn't had more than a sip of ethanol, however, in something like four or five hears because of medication he has to take for a chronic condition. But he doesn't mind when his friends enjoy themselves and he'd appointed himself a bartender Saturday. It was in this capacity that he braved the kitchen, holding a drink in front of him that he'd made for Long Suffering Spouse.
He got her to take a sip somehow. "This is awful!" she said, lightning starting right up again. Steve had meant to bring her a vodka and tonic. Instead he'd brought a gin and tonic. He made an immediate retreat.
Penny's husband, Carl, volunteered to bring in the replacement as long as I watched the twins, Tim and Tom. I readily agreed.
Carl retired from the Marines as a major some years back. Although he's a lawyer by training and never had a combat deployment, he has received specialized training. It was a good match of man and mission.
We conferred briefly before he went in. "Do you think we'll need a tranquilizer dart?" I asked.
"I hope that won't be necessary," Carl said grimly. And he marched off bravely.
Carl succeeded in his mission. Long Suffering Spouse took the drink.
It may have been training; it may also have been timing. The potatoes were finally done.
I shooed the bridal party to the head table and grabbed Olaf and Younger Daughter and parked them in the vestibule. I turned on the wireless mike to introduce them. The party was really underway now.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
So I'm doing the stories out of order. So sue me. Next, however, when I get a moment, I want to talk about the decorating. There's a reason (I think) why I should get to that at this point in the retelling. Stay tuned.
My wife had a half day of school on Friday, before we went to decorate the parish hall, and the graduation Mass was held on the morning of the wedding.
Long Suffering Spouse missed exactly zero time from work during all of this (OK, she didn't go to the graduation Mass -- but that's it). So, amidst the flowers and the cakes and the souvenir cookies and the potatoes and the chickens and the potatoes and the potatoes and the chickens, my wife was also grading papers, creating and grading tests, calculating report cards and doing all of the other end-of-term stuff that a teacher does.
I hesitated to mention that yesterday because I figured I was straining your credibility already: I was afraid you'd turn away, saying no one could do so much.
And, yet, in truth, she did more.
But, as Saturday neared, Long Suffering Spouse began to realize that she'd not be able to appear in the wedding photos and start the food. She'd have to have help.
Charlotte and Penny and Mrs. Lork all stepped up to volunteer.
They knew they were entering into a tough spot, but I don't know if any of them, despite their years of friendship with Long Suffering Spouse, could really have understood what they were getting into.
You see, something had to be sacrificed in order to accomplish all of these tasks.
That something was sleep.
Years ago, usually during the Christmas season, my wife and I would put names to our increasing levels of fatigue. I can't remember them all now -- I think at one point we had as many names for exhaustion as Eskimos allegedly have for snow (which, by the way, is largely a myth -- but I won't digress). After "tired" came "exhausted"; after "exhausted" came "cranky"; after "cranky" -- probably several steps after cranky (I just can't recall them all now) -- came a very dangerous stage called "charming."
And Long Suffering Spouse had reached that phase well before Saturday. I'd say she'd reached "charming" by Friday morning. I think it was the flower arranging coupled with Younger Daughter's bachelorette party on Thursday night that pushed her over. By that time, Older Daughter had arrived, of course, with husband Hank and their dog, Cork.
Cork descended the basement stairs for the first time Thursday night to see what Long Suffering Spouse was up to. My wife was in the basement because that was the coolest area of the house and she needed a large table to work on. All large tables on the first floor had been commandeered by blenders and sissy drinks and paper umbrellas.
(Younger Daughter couldn't drink, of course, but that didn't stop her sister and sister-in-law from outfitting her in a feathery pink boa and a plastic, red-blinking tiara. They'd gone out to dinner, but had returned for the aforementioned sissy drinks by 10:00pm or so.)
Meanwhile, in the basement, Long Suffering Spouse had to expend energy she didn't have trying to keep the dog from eating small pieces of rose stems that had fallen to the floor. The dog had a liberal policy for determining what was, or what might be, food. In the dog's view, anything that fell from a table must be food.
Nor was there any way for Long Suffering Spouse to 'ditch' the teachers' brunch following the dismissal of the last class. Yes, the in-laws were about to descend en masse on the Parish Center for the decorating binge, but Mrs. Lork was retiring that day -- and my wife was determined to go.
And then came the decorating itself (I'm teasing the decorating post as long as possible) and the rehearsal (at which the failure to obtain a wedding license added no stress whatsoever -- ha!) -- and the wedding itself.
My wife says she dressed in five minutes. I was otherwise engaged, but, based on what I did see, I don't think she can be exaggerating by much, if at all.
Accordingly, even the very dangerous stage of "charming" was long since surpassed by the time my wife arrived to take command in the Parish Center kitchen.
I tried to be available at the beginning. There were things that had been forgotten, or not anticipated, and there was a shuttle of kids back and forth to the house to obtain that which needed obtaining. My job was to phone or text them and update the list as directed. But I could see the dangerous light in my wife's eyes.
It is not literally true that lightning came out of my wife's eyes or flames shot out of her flaring nostrils. That would be an exaggeration -- at least until it was discovered that the potatoes were taking longer to warm than expected and, worse, that they weren't warming equally.
It is literally true that Penny, Charlotte and Mrs. Lork were working like heroes. Penny burned her arm checking on the potatoes. At one point, during the crisis, I stopped for a nanosecond to ask Mrs. Lork how she liked being retired so far. "I haven't noticed much of a difference yet," she told me, but then I felt the electric discharges coming from my approaching spouse and quickly started moving again.
The one thing one could not be in that kitchen was still. My sister Betty apparently wandered into the kitchen at one point and interrupted my wife. She says she merely asked whether there was anything she could do to help. I didn't see what happened. But I saw Betty moments later, heading for the bar, shaken, and perhaps even singed. "Maybe I can help later," she stammered. "I don't mind getting yelled at. I'm used to getting yelled at," she continued, "but I'm not going in there again."
My wife has no recollection of the incident. Neither, thankfully, does she recall what happened when Olaf's mother strayed into the kitchen with a similar request.
I blame it entirely on the potatoes.
I was in there again, briefly, because some guests ran out of bread. I got bread to pass around. Later, I had to go back because other guests were unable to find the butter on their tables, so I grabbed a bag of butter pats and went out to distribute these. As long as one had a clear purpose, or could respond instantly to orders, one was relatively safe. Make the coffee, I was told, but don't plug it in. I made the coffee.
At one point things must have gotten really stressful in the kitchen. Penny turned to my wife and said, "What are you going to do? Fire the help?" That -- believe it or not -- relieved the tension considerably. At least for awhile.
I never heard any shouting in the kitchen, but I'm told that others did -- those potatoes again! -- and, at some point, my friend (and Charlotte's husband) Steve decided that what my wife needed was a drink.
Steve and I used to put away mass quantities of liquor together. Steve hasn't had more than a sip of ethanol, however, in something like four or five hears because of medication he has to take for a chronic condition. But he doesn't mind when his friends enjoy themselves and he'd appointed himself a bartender Saturday. It was in this capacity that he braved the kitchen, holding a drink in front of him that he'd made for Long Suffering Spouse.
He got her to take a sip somehow. "This is awful!" she said, lightning starting right up again. Steve had meant to bring her a vodka and tonic. Instead he'd brought a gin and tonic. He made an immediate retreat.
Penny's husband, Carl, volunteered to bring in the replacement as long as I watched the twins, Tim and Tom. I readily agreed.
Carl retired from the Marines as a major some years back. Although he's a lawyer by training and never had a combat deployment, he has received specialized training. It was a good match of man and mission.
We conferred briefly before he went in. "Do you think we'll need a tranquilizer dart?" I asked.
"I hope that won't be necessary," Carl said grimly. And he marched off bravely.
Carl succeeded in his mission. Long Suffering Spouse took the drink.
It may have been training; it may also have been timing. The potatoes were finally done.
I shooed the bridal party to the head table and grabbed Olaf and Younger Daughter and parked them in the vestibule. I turned on the wireless mike to introduce them. The party was really underway now.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
So I'm doing the stories out of order. So sue me. Next, however, when I get a moment, I want to talk about the decorating. There's a reason (I think) why I should get to that at this point in the retelling. Stay tuned.
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Fools rush in where angels fear to tread: Part I - the menu for the feast
It would have been dangerous indeed for anyone, even a person with wings and a halo, to set foot in the Parish Center kitchen early Saturday evening, shortly after Younger Daughter's wedding Mass. But to explain why, I have to rewind just a bit.
Long Suffering Spouse had been preparing food during the last couple of weeks before the wedding.
There was an extensive experimentation phase prior to the time that actual preparation began.
It had been suggested that chicken cordon bleu would go over well. But could we make chicken cordon bleus without toothpicks? (Someone might bite into a toothpick, my wife fretted.) She tried making a tray with the wrapped chickens tucked next to each other so they wouldn't unwind. (They also wouldn't cook all the way through, and undercooked poultry is apparently a big no-no.) The Internet was consulted -- but were metal skewers really an improvement over toothpicks? (Harder to miss, worse for you if you did.)
A teaching colleague of my wife's -- Mrs. Lork (no, that's not her real name, but she will figure prominently in the narrative to come and deserves a name -- and perhaps a medal) -- suggested tying them with a string, but Long Suffering Spouse was not overly impressed with that idea. (What if someone didn't see the string and bit into it? How would dinner and a flossing go over?) Eventually Long Suffering Spouse found a restaurant supply store that offered frozen, premade chicken cordon bleus.
Not for the first time, we consolidated our freezer space.
The potatoes were another issue. Mashed potatoes were deemed too plain. Some sort of scalloped dish was decided upon and a tray was procured from the same restaurant supply store at which we (eventually) found the chicken cordon bleus. These were produced at a family dinner -- it may have been Easter Sunday -- but they proved to be a disappointment. Too bland. More cheese would certainly be required.
Several versions followed. As near as I could tell (and I am no foodie), the key issue was the thickness of the potato slices. Too thin and the casserole tray would dissolve into soup upon reheating; too thick and they would be too hard. Crunchy potatoes are fine as french fries, not as scalloped potatoes.
And how deep should the trays be?
We had a lot of scalloped potatoes in the last several weeks before a recipe was decided upon.
The spinach lasagna was a tried and true recipe. These were already in the freezer by the time chickens were acquired. Then came the chickens. Then, somehow, came the potatoes.
There wasn't room for anything else.
We have two refrigerators in the Curmudgeon house, the one in the kitchen and the other in the basement. The basement frig handles the overflow and, understandably, is most heavily used around the holidays or for events like this one. So we had two freezers available -- and, for awhile there, it looked like we couldn't possibly accommodate everything.
My mother-in-law (Abuela to my kids) has a giant freezer, the kind that a successful deer hunter might use to store a season's worth of venison. But she filled it long ago -- in anticipation of Y2K I think -- and she scoffed when my wife suggested that space could be found therein for at least some of the wedding feast. "It's full," she said. "There's no room."
I'm not sure anything in my mother-in-law's freezer is actually still edible -- but if it is, and if the Apocalypse comes, Abuela will ride it out in style. At least as long as she can keep the freezer cold. Somehow, therefore, we made the best of what we had.
The entrees accounted for, it was time to turn to dessert. Long Suffering Spouse found a giant wedding cake cookie mold online -- and for a veteran cookienista (I can make up words in my own blog, can't I?) like my bride, the temptation was irresistible. We tried a couple of different recipes and several frosting and decoration schemes before she settled on the final design. Each cookie was individually wrapped and ribboned. Did they come out alright? Put it this way: Strangers took pictures of these cookies and posted them on Facebook.
Making the final batches of cookies occupied most of my wife's evenings in the first part of the week before the wedding. But she'd already ordered two sheetcakes from Costco to go along with the cookies. We were to pick these up last Thursday along with the flowers.
Oh, yes, my wife made all the bouquets, too. She practiced on plastic flowers, using different color ribbons and types of floral tape and pinning schemes before deciding which to use. She would produce the bouquets on Thursday night.
But... wait! The basement refrigerator, already top-heavy from an overloaded freezer, had to be repurposed to store the flowers. The cakes had nowhere to go.
My friend Steve's wife, whom I'll call Charlotte (because this is not her real name either) said she could take the cakes. Charlotte, like Mrs. Lork, becomes a hero of this story, as does Long Suffering Spouse's old college roommate, Penny (that's a link to my 25th anniversary post in which Penny was introduced to the blog). But you'll have to stay tuned for all of that.
Long Suffering Spouse had been preparing food during the last couple of weeks before the wedding.
There was an extensive experimentation phase prior to the time that actual preparation began.
It had been suggested that chicken cordon bleu would go over well. But could we make chicken cordon bleus without toothpicks? (Someone might bite into a toothpick, my wife fretted.) She tried making a tray with the wrapped chickens tucked next to each other so they wouldn't unwind. (They also wouldn't cook all the way through, and undercooked poultry is apparently a big no-no.) The Internet was consulted -- but were metal skewers really an improvement over toothpicks? (Harder to miss, worse for you if you did.)
A teaching colleague of my wife's -- Mrs. Lork (no, that's not her real name, but she will figure prominently in the narrative to come and deserves a name -- and perhaps a medal) -- suggested tying them with a string, but Long Suffering Spouse was not overly impressed with that idea. (What if someone didn't see the string and bit into it? How would dinner and a flossing go over?) Eventually Long Suffering Spouse found a restaurant supply store that offered frozen, premade chicken cordon bleus.
Not for the first time, we consolidated our freezer space.
The potatoes were another issue. Mashed potatoes were deemed too plain. Some sort of scalloped dish was decided upon and a tray was procured from the same restaurant supply store at which we (eventually) found the chicken cordon bleus. These were produced at a family dinner -- it may have been Easter Sunday -- but they proved to be a disappointment. Too bland. More cheese would certainly be required.
Several versions followed. As near as I could tell (and I am no foodie), the key issue was the thickness of the potato slices. Too thin and the casserole tray would dissolve into soup upon reheating; too thick and they would be too hard. Crunchy potatoes are fine as french fries, not as scalloped potatoes.
And how deep should the trays be?
We had a lot of scalloped potatoes in the last several weeks before a recipe was decided upon.
The spinach lasagna was a tried and true recipe. These were already in the freezer by the time chickens were acquired. Then came the chickens. Then, somehow, came the potatoes.
There wasn't room for anything else.
We have two refrigerators in the Curmudgeon house, the one in the kitchen and the other in the basement. The basement frig handles the overflow and, understandably, is most heavily used around the holidays or for events like this one. So we had two freezers available -- and, for awhile there, it looked like we couldn't possibly accommodate everything.
My mother-in-law (Abuela to my kids) has a giant freezer, the kind that a successful deer hunter might use to store a season's worth of venison. But she filled it long ago -- in anticipation of Y2K I think -- and she scoffed when my wife suggested that space could be found therein for at least some of the wedding feast. "It's full," she said. "There's no room."
I'm not sure anything in my mother-in-law's freezer is actually still edible -- but if it is, and if the Apocalypse comes, Abuela will ride it out in style. At least as long as she can keep the freezer cold. Somehow, therefore, we made the best of what we had.
The entrees accounted for, it was time to turn to dessert. Long Suffering Spouse found a giant wedding cake cookie mold online -- and for a veteran cookienista (I can make up words in my own blog, can't I?) like my bride, the temptation was irresistible. We tried a couple of different recipes and several frosting and decoration schemes before she settled on the final design. Each cookie was individually wrapped and ribboned. Did they come out alright? Put it this way: Strangers took pictures of these cookies and posted them on Facebook.
Making the final batches of cookies occupied most of my wife's evenings in the first part of the week before the wedding. But she'd already ordered two sheetcakes from Costco to go along with the cookies. We were to pick these up last Thursday along with the flowers.
Oh, yes, my wife made all the bouquets, too. She practiced on plastic flowers, using different color ribbons and types of floral tape and pinning schemes before deciding which to use. She would produce the bouquets on Thursday night.
But... wait! The basement refrigerator, already top-heavy from an overloaded freezer, had to be repurposed to store the flowers. The cakes had nowhere to go.
My friend Steve's wife, whom I'll call Charlotte (because this is not her real name either) said she could take the cakes. Charlotte, like Mrs. Lork, becomes a hero of this story, as does Long Suffering Spouse's old college roommate, Penny (that's a link to my 25th anniversary post in which Penny was introduced to the blog). But you'll have to stay tuned for all of that.
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
How Younger Daughter's wedding went off (almost) without a hitch
The real world has crowded out the Blogosphere in recent days -- of course, the wedding has been at the top of my personal headline package at all times, but I've even had work to do at work.
Please don't be angry with me. Think of it this way: On those rare occasions when I'm forced out from behind my keyboard, I'm more or less doing research for the next series of essays here, right?
At the risk of writing a post of more or less readable length, I'll just focus, for now, on the rehearsal at the church on Friday night.
The families had been together for much of the afternoon, by this point, and tempers were beginning to fray.
To keep costs manageable, Long Suffering Spouse had obtained the use of the parish center for the reception. The parish frowns on using the hall for wedding receptions -- officially, I think it's prohibited -- and the multipurpose room had been booked for events on Saturday morning and Sunday morning both. But Long Suffering Spouse can be most persuasive -- and the parish staff has long looked forward to my wife's generous provision of Christmas cookies.
And, also to contain costs, my wife had decided to cook the dinner for the 110 or so confirmed wedding guests. We invited fewer than 30 of these, not counting the bride, and we had about 28 show up on our side, not all of them invited. The rest were about evenly distributed between Olaf's side of the family (Olaf's mother has a flock of siblings, and she invited a bunch of her neighbors, too) and friends of the bride and groom.
Olaf's family -- his mother, mostly, and an aunt (a never-married older sister to Olaf's mother) -- insisted that they must also do something for the wedding.
There are two ways to spin this: Olaf is an only child and this would be his mother's one and only opportunity to be involved in a wedding -- we'd been through this with Older Daughter's wedding, too, because Hank is an only child as well. So, on the one hand, we could understand that they'd want, even need, to participate to the fullest possible extent. On the other hand, Long Suffering Spouse is an unstoppable force of nature when it comes to events of this kind and the slightest interference would chafe considerably with her.
Younger Daughter got increasingly stressed about it, as time went on, because the groom's family wanted an assignment and Long Suffering Spouse wanted to just get things done without a lot of fuss, bother or even conversation. Finally, though, we agreed that Olaf's mother and aunt could decorate the hall for the reception. That seemed harmless enough.
Then we went to a wedding shower in an uncle's suburban backyard and saw how many of the chairs had been wrapped in bedsheets and how all the tables were elaborately decked out -- centerpieces you couldn't see around and everything -- there was a chocolate fountain inside the house, too -- and Long Suffering Spouse really began to get nervous. Did I mention that all this was in a backyard?
And there was a question of how much physical setup we'd have to do in the parish hall -- which doubles as the school gym -- and when we'd be able to do it. And when we got reports that Olaf's mother and aunt were looking at about a five hour window to set things up, we began to panic. Remember? There was another event coming in on Sunday morning. We would need to take down whatever they put up -- and we'd be doing it, presumably, in a state of inebriation and exhaustion.
But -- somehow -- we got the hall more or less done on Friday afternoon. (And, no, this is not a continuity error; I hope to have time to explain in a later essay.)
We had an hour or two to decompress and rehydrate before the rehearsal.
Now a wedding rehearsal is not really that much different from a rehearsal of any other production. All the participants need to learn their marks and cues and practice their lines. The priest needs to go over the readings, show the readers how to use the microphones, and otherwise guide the participants through what may be an unfamiliar ceremony. One can not assume that everyone who comes to a wedding Mass is a practicing Catholic.
Certainly the particulars of the Catholic Mass were unfamiliar to Olaf's family. They are not unchurched -- just the opposite, in fact -- most of them are hard-core, church-going Lutherans. One of Olaf's grandfathers had been a Lutheran pastor. Olaf's parents aren't Lutheran anymore; they have become devotees of a non-denominational congregation that has very modern services and very archaic beliefs. (Put it this way: We don't talk about evolution with them, OK?) The only unchurched one on the groom's side is the groom himself; a good student of Newtonian physics, Olaf has had an equal and opposite (and predictable) reaction to his parents' embrace of biblical inerrancy. (For further background, if you're curious, see What I wished I could have said: Science and religion can be complimentary.)
I wasn't too worried that anybody would start yelling about the Whore of Babylon at either the rehearsal or the wedding Mass itself; Olaf's family likes Younger Daughter -- and all of their awkward and discomforting questions were likely to be posed in private. They'd already asked a bunch of them. On the other hand, I'm not entirely certain that all the scars have yet healed from the Thirty Years War and I sure as heck did not want it flaring up 364 years later in Chicago.
Our pastor, Fr. Ed (no, not his real name) did a fine job navigating the cultural minefield. He had a great patter, explaining the symbolism of each action in the ceremony. He even had a prescribed procedure for me to hand Younger Daughter off to Olaf at the altar (something to do about clutching elbows -- it really did sound good at the time, I just couldn't remember a word of it when the time came to perform).
Eventually, we were all done. Fr. Ed marched the wedding party to the back of the church, and the rest of us began milling about, waiting to leave for the rehearsal dinner. We expected to be released at any moment -- but there was obviously some sort of delay.
Then there was some clearly anxious buzzing audible in the back of the church and some frantic, random milling about.
I think it was Older Daughter who came back down the aisle first. "I don't want to alarm you," she said, which only had the effect of moving us from yellow to red alert instantaneously, "but there seems to be some small paperwork problem. Fr. Ed had come down the aisle close behind Older Daughter and had overheard her introduction of the topic. "I suppose it's a legal problem, really, but I'm sure there must be some way to handle it."
Well, the family members on both sides pressed around Older Daughter and Fr. Ed, pressing physically as well as for an explanation.
"I asked them to give me the license -- " began Fr. Ed.
"And she said my dad must have it -- " injected Older Daughter, referring to her sister.
The light bulb went on.
"You mean... they don't have a license?" I asked. You know how the expression "his jaw hit the floor" seems like a bit of an exaggeration? Well, it wasn't much of an exaggeration Friday night.
Younger Daughter had fought her way into the center of the group by this point. "We didn't know -- " she started.
"Someone could have told us -- " said Olaf, coming into the group as well.
I resisted the temptation to ask if he also needed to be told to inhale and exhale.
"I thought the church had the form -- " said Younger Daughter.
"Well, you did say that it's the Roman Catholic Church and there's a form for everything." Olaf was trying to spin a new defense.
This was not the time to explain to Olaf that Jesus clearly said to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's. The county marriage license clearly belongs to Caesar.
Olaf's mother jumped in at this point. Now I realize I've given (and will continue to give) her some grief in recounting the tale of this wedding. But she genuinely tried, I believe, to spread some healing balm upon the waters on this occasion. "I'm sure this must happen all the time," she said hopefully.
"Nope," said Fr. Ed, "I can't think of this ever happening before in my 22 years here."
Sometimes a priest's cluelessness can be charming -- but, at that moment I was thinking of strangling him.
"But," said Fr. Ed, perhaps feeling the death glare I was starting to send his way, "we can go through with the ceremony tomorrow as planned. There will be a church document. I'm sure there's a way that the county paperwork can be cleaned up after."
Thus somewhat mollified, the wedding party began to disperse. As everyone else was leaving, Ed needed me to sign a document related to the rental of the parish center. I stepped with him into the Sacristy. "This will be a story they'll talk about at their 25th Anniversary -- at their 50th, too," said Fr. Ed -- and I could tell he was clearly anxious to get on the horn to someone to start telling it, too. "The farther we get from this, the funnier it will be," I agreed. "I'll see you tomorrow."
And, by now, I trust, you've figured out why I chose the title I did for today's essay.
Please don't be angry with me. Think of it this way: On those rare occasions when I'm forced out from behind my keyboard, I'm more or less doing research for the next series of essays here, right?
At the risk of writing a post of more or less readable length, I'll just focus, for now, on the rehearsal at the church on Friday night.
The families had been together for much of the afternoon, by this point, and tempers were beginning to fray.
To keep costs manageable, Long Suffering Spouse had obtained the use of the parish center for the reception. The parish frowns on using the hall for wedding receptions -- officially, I think it's prohibited -- and the multipurpose room had been booked for events on Saturday morning and Sunday morning both. But Long Suffering Spouse can be most persuasive -- and the parish staff has long looked forward to my wife's generous provision of Christmas cookies.
And, also to contain costs, my wife had decided to cook the dinner for the 110 or so confirmed wedding guests. We invited fewer than 30 of these, not counting the bride, and we had about 28 show up on our side, not all of them invited. The rest were about evenly distributed between Olaf's side of the family (Olaf's mother has a flock of siblings, and she invited a bunch of her neighbors, too) and friends of the bride and groom.
Olaf's family -- his mother, mostly, and an aunt (a never-married older sister to Olaf's mother) -- insisted that they must also do something for the wedding.
There are two ways to spin this: Olaf is an only child and this would be his mother's one and only opportunity to be involved in a wedding -- we'd been through this with Older Daughter's wedding, too, because Hank is an only child as well. So, on the one hand, we could understand that they'd want, even need, to participate to the fullest possible extent. On the other hand, Long Suffering Spouse is an unstoppable force of nature when it comes to events of this kind and the slightest interference would chafe considerably with her.
Younger Daughter got increasingly stressed about it, as time went on, because the groom's family wanted an assignment and Long Suffering Spouse wanted to just get things done without a lot of fuss, bother or even conversation. Finally, though, we agreed that Olaf's mother and aunt could decorate the hall for the reception. That seemed harmless enough.
Then we went to a wedding shower in an uncle's suburban backyard and saw how many of the chairs had been wrapped in bedsheets and how all the tables were elaborately decked out -- centerpieces you couldn't see around and everything -- there was a chocolate fountain inside the house, too -- and Long Suffering Spouse really began to get nervous. Did I mention that all this was in a backyard?
And there was a question of how much physical setup we'd have to do in the parish hall -- which doubles as the school gym -- and when we'd be able to do it. And when we got reports that Olaf's mother and aunt were looking at about a five hour window to set things up, we began to panic. Remember? There was another event coming in on Sunday morning. We would need to take down whatever they put up -- and we'd be doing it, presumably, in a state of inebriation and exhaustion.
But -- somehow -- we got the hall more or less done on Friday afternoon. (And, no, this is not a continuity error; I hope to have time to explain in a later essay.)
We had an hour or two to decompress and rehydrate before the rehearsal.
Now a wedding rehearsal is not really that much different from a rehearsal of any other production. All the participants need to learn their marks and cues and practice their lines. The priest needs to go over the readings, show the readers how to use the microphones, and otherwise guide the participants through what may be an unfamiliar ceremony. One can not assume that everyone who comes to a wedding Mass is a practicing Catholic.
Certainly the particulars of the Catholic Mass were unfamiliar to Olaf's family. They are not unchurched -- just the opposite, in fact -- most of them are hard-core, church-going Lutherans. One of Olaf's grandfathers had been a Lutheran pastor. Olaf's parents aren't Lutheran anymore; they have become devotees of a non-denominational congregation that has very modern services and very archaic beliefs. (Put it this way: We don't talk about evolution with them, OK?) The only unchurched one on the groom's side is the groom himself; a good student of Newtonian physics, Olaf has had an equal and opposite (and predictable) reaction to his parents' embrace of biblical inerrancy. (For further background, if you're curious, see What I wished I could have said: Science and religion can be complimentary.)
I wasn't too worried that anybody would start yelling about the Whore of Babylon at either the rehearsal or the wedding Mass itself; Olaf's family likes Younger Daughter -- and all of their awkward and discomforting questions were likely to be posed in private. They'd already asked a bunch of them. On the other hand, I'm not entirely certain that all the scars have yet healed from the Thirty Years War and I sure as heck did not want it flaring up 364 years later in Chicago.
Our pastor, Fr. Ed (no, not his real name) did a fine job navigating the cultural minefield. He had a great patter, explaining the symbolism of each action in the ceremony. He even had a prescribed procedure for me to hand Younger Daughter off to Olaf at the altar (something to do about clutching elbows -- it really did sound good at the time, I just couldn't remember a word of it when the time came to perform).
Eventually, we were all done. Fr. Ed marched the wedding party to the back of the church, and the rest of us began milling about, waiting to leave for the rehearsal dinner. We expected to be released at any moment -- but there was obviously some sort of delay.
Then there was some clearly anxious buzzing audible in the back of the church and some frantic, random milling about.
I think it was Older Daughter who came back down the aisle first. "I don't want to alarm you," she said, which only had the effect of moving us from yellow to red alert instantaneously, "but there seems to be some small paperwork problem. Fr. Ed had come down the aisle close behind Older Daughter and had overheard her introduction of the topic. "I suppose it's a legal problem, really, but I'm sure there must be some way to handle it."
Well, the family members on both sides pressed around Older Daughter and Fr. Ed, pressing physically as well as for an explanation.
"I asked them to give me the license -- " began Fr. Ed.
"And she said my dad must have it -- " injected Older Daughter, referring to her sister.
The light bulb went on.
"You mean... they don't have a license?" I asked. You know how the expression "his jaw hit the floor" seems like a bit of an exaggeration? Well, it wasn't much of an exaggeration Friday night.
Younger Daughter had fought her way into the center of the group by this point. "We didn't know -- " she started.
"Someone could have told us -- " said Olaf, coming into the group as well.
I resisted the temptation to ask if he also needed to be told to inhale and exhale.
"I thought the church had the form -- " said Younger Daughter.
"Well, you did say that it's the Roman Catholic Church and there's a form for everything." Olaf was trying to spin a new defense.
This was not the time to explain to Olaf that Jesus clearly said to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's. The county marriage license clearly belongs to Caesar.
Olaf's mother jumped in at this point. Now I realize I've given (and will continue to give) her some grief in recounting the tale of this wedding. But she genuinely tried, I believe, to spread some healing balm upon the waters on this occasion. "I'm sure this must happen all the time," she said hopefully.
"Nope," said Fr. Ed, "I can't think of this ever happening before in my 22 years here."
Sometimes a priest's cluelessness can be charming -- but, at that moment I was thinking of strangling him.
"But," said Fr. Ed, perhaps feeling the death glare I was starting to send his way, "we can go through with the ceremony tomorrow as planned. There will be a church document. I'm sure there's a way that the county paperwork can be cleaned up after."
Thus somewhat mollified, the wedding party began to disperse. As everyone else was leaving, Ed needed me to sign a document related to the rental of the parish center. I stepped with him into the Sacristy. "This will be a story they'll talk about at their 25th Anniversary -- at their 50th, too," said Fr. Ed -- and I could tell he was clearly anxious to get on the horn to someone to start telling it, too. "The farther we get from this, the funnier it will be," I agreed. "I'll see you tomorrow."
And, by now, I trust, you've figured out why I chose the title I did for today's essay.
Monday, June 04, 2012
Younger Daughter figures something out
There was a girl whom we'll call Amelia (since that is not her real name) who was raised in our parish. She was one of about a dozen or so kids and, if she wasn't the youngest, she was close.
Amelia would be a couple of years or so older than Older Daughter, but the two of them became friendly when both of them were hired to work in the parish rectory several years ago.
Time passed. Amelia went away to school but, in this modern age, no one is ever really far from home, not as long as there's Facebook and all the other social media to tie the kids together. Older Daughter and Amelia stayed friendly, even as Amelia graduated from college and got a teaching job. Older Daughter knew all about Amelia's long-time boyfriend who, in the fullness of time, became her betrothed. A wedding date was set.
When Amelia's wedding date was set there was no particular urgency about the scheduling. But things happen.
In short, the proverbial cart got put in front of the proverbial horse, if you know what I mean. And by the time the big day arrived, Amelia was about seven months' big. And she was bitter.
Not about her husband-to-be, you understand, and not about her unborn child -- but about the nasty, wagging forked tongues of the people who were supposed to be her friends and neighbors and fellow parishioners. The surreptitious sidelong glances really began to wear on her. Eventually she heard whispers in the silence and felt eyes looking at her when there was no one there.
I know Older Daughter was upset that Amelia cut her off, too. Older Daughter couldn't figure out why. (They've only recently begun to communicate again, from what I've heard.)
Younger Daughter was still in junior high when Amelia had her problems. She was an altar server back then and she wound up serving Amelia's wedding. She knew even then how angry Amelia was, but she also did not understand why.
But that was then.
Now Younger Daughter finds herself in a similar situation, and she brought Amelia up in conversation over the weekend.
"I hate everyone at this point," she told me.
"Thanks a lot," I said.
"You know what I mean, Dad. I get so tired of people looking at me -- guessing -- speculating -- saying I'm only marrying Olaf because I'm pregnant. And most of them don't know; they're guessing because we're doing this quickly. I don't want to see anyone. I don't even want to go to the wedding."
"You don't want to get married?"
"No, I do. I just don't want anyone to be there at this point. I think this must be exactly what Amelia felt all those years ago."
I'm pretty sure Younger Daughter's right on the money, too.
And we're the Catholics -- allegedly the pro-life people.
Amelia would be a couple of years or so older than Older Daughter, but the two of them became friendly when both of them were hired to work in the parish rectory several years ago.
Time passed. Amelia went away to school but, in this modern age, no one is ever really far from home, not as long as there's Facebook and all the other social media to tie the kids together. Older Daughter and Amelia stayed friendly, even as Amelia graduated from college and got a teaching job. Older Daughter knew all about Amelia's long-time boyfriend who, in the fullness of time, became her betrothed. A wedding date was set.
When Amelia's wedding date was set there was no particular urgency about the scheduling. But things happen.
In short, the proverbial cart got put in front of the proverbial horse, if you know what I mean. And by the time the big day arrived, Amelia was about seven months' big. And she was bitter.
Not about her husband-to-be, you understand, and not about her unborn child -- but about the nasty, wagging forked tongues of the people who were supposed to be her friends and neighbors and fellow parishioners. The surreptitious sidelong glances really began to wear on her. Eventually she heard whispers in the silence and felt eyes looking at her when there was no one there.
I know Older Daughter was upset that Amelia cut her off, too. Older Daughter couldn't figure out why. (They've only recently begun to communicate again, from what I've heard.)
Younger Daughter was still in junior high when Amelia had her problems. She was an altar server back then and she wound up serving Amelia's wedding. She knew even then how angry Amelia was, but she also did not understand why.
But that was then.
Now Younger Daughter finds herself in a similar situation, and she brought Amelia up in conversation over the weekend.
"I hate everyone at this point," she told me.
"Thanks a lot," I said.
"You know what I mean, Dad. I get so tired of people looking at me -- guessing -- speculating -- saying I'm only marrying Olaf because I'm pregnant. And most of them don't know; they're guessing because we're doing this quickly. I don't want to see anyone. I don't even want to go to the wedding."
"You don't want to get married?"
"No, I do. I just don't want anyone to be there at this point. I think this must be exactly what Amelia felt all those years ago."
I'm pretty sure Younger Daughter's right on the money, too.
And we're the Catholics -- allegedly the pro-life people.
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
You think negotiating arms limitation treaties is tough? Try choosing bridesmaids....
No wedding since Adam and Eve's has been without some drama.
Just yesterday, in fact, I read online that Balding Billy, Prince of England and Duke of Cambridge, just revealed how he complained to his grandmother about the invite list for his wedding. He'd been given a list of some 777 people, apparently, including "not one person I knew or Catherine knew." The Queen advised him to rip it up and start over, he said. Start with your own friends, the Queen told Billy, and we'll add to your list as we require. (Queens love that royal "we" stuff.)
Not revealed, at least in the article I saw, was any hint of the royal negotiations over bridesmaids.
As near as I can tell (and maybe there's research out there to support this hypothesis, who knows?) the likelihood that a marriage will be of long duration increases in inverse proportion to the number of bridesmaids.
In other words, a marriage celebrated with only three bridesmaids in attendance has a far better chance of lasting than one in which six or seven participate. Maybe you've never been to one, but you've probably heard about near-Broadway extravaganzas with 10 or more bridesmaids. These marriages often don't last past the honeymoon.
But the problem is that no red-blooded American girl arrives at the threshold of matrimony without promising (on average) 36 girls that they will be in her wedding. (OK, yes, I totally made that number up -- but, based on what I've seen in my life, it seems just about right.)
It starts in kindergarten. At that tender age, boys may not yet think that girls have cooties; sometimes a boy will even tell his parents that he plans to marry Cindy Lou from the playground. Usually, though, as soon as the boy sees a neat-looking bug or a puppy, Cindy Lou is forgotten like a politician's pre-election promise. Meanwhile, Cindy Lou has asked three of her bestest friends to be bridesmaids. Twenty or twenty-five years later, when Cindy Lou has made real marriage plans, one or two of these girls will surface.
As near as I can tell, bridesmaid solicitation drops off after pre-school and kindergarten and does not pick up again until junior high. Now, although crushes come and go, Cindy Lou and her friends plan weddings in the abstract -- the identity of the groom is really unimportant (see, Kardashian, Kim) -- and mutual promises are given and exchanged among Cindy Lou and her besties that each will stand up at the others' nuptials. A dozen or 15 years later, some of these may still be in Cindy Lou's life, if only on the periphery. But when that Facebook status changes, they will demand to know: What color are the dresses?
The planning continues in high school and college. New girlfriends come into Cindy Lou's life, old ones are shed like a snake molting, but the invitations -- mutual, sincere and (thankfully!) wholly unenforceable -- continue to be exchanged.
All of them -- even ones who two weeks before the engagement claimed to now hate, loathe and despise Cindy Lou -- will confidently expect to be asked once Cindy Lou decides to take the plunge. (The ones who say they hate Cindy Lou say they want to be asked just so they can turn her down flat -- but even most of these will admit that they'd consider accepting... if Cindy Lou asks nicely.)
Meanwhile, there are others who must be accommodated for the sake of family harmony: The bride's sisters, for example, and any sisters-in-law. And what about the groom's sisters? Sometimes these alone can fill up all reasonably available bridesmaid slots -- leaving dozens of one-time BFF's feeling absolutely betrayed.
Younger Daughter, you may recall, is getting married soon -- three Saturdays from now, in fact. And, if you've been keeping up, you know why we've proceeded with some haste. One clear and definite advantage of throwing the wedding together quickly, at least from Younger Daughter's point of view, is that a dozen or more girls who were supposed to be her bridesmaids will (if our luck holds) not find out about the wedding until after it's over. As it is, Younger Daughter has five bridesmaids -- Older Daughter, Abby, a girl she's known since pre-school (you younger readers may have thought I was exaggerating for comic effect, didn't you?), a friend since grammar school, and a college classmate.
Of course, the banns were published in last Sunday's Bulletin. Anyone paying attention would now know when Younger Daughter will be wed. But only if they've gone to church.
So don't tell any of them, OK?
Just yesterday, in fact, I read online that Balding Billy, Prince of England and Duke of Cambridge, just revealed how he complained to his grandmother about the invite list for his wedding. He'd been given a list of some 777 people, apparently, including "not one person I knew or Catherine knew." The Queen advised him to rip it up and start over, he said. Start with your own friends, the Queen told Billy, and we'll add to your list as we require. (Queens love that royal "we" stuff.)
Not revealed, at least in the article I saw, was any hint of the royal negotiations over bridesmaids.
As near as I can tell (and maybe there's research out there to support this hypothesis, who knows?) the likelihood that a marriage will be of long duration increases in inverse proportion to the number of bridesmaids.
In other words, a marriage celebrated with only three bridesmaids in attendance has a far better chance of lasting than one in which six or seven participate. Maybe you've never been to one, but you've probably heard about near-Broadway extravaganzas with 10 or more bridesmaids. These marriages often don't last past the honeymoon.
But the problem is that no red-blooded American girl arrives at the threshold of matrimony without promising (on average) 36 girls that they will be in her wedding. (OK, yes, I totally made that number up -- but, based on what I've seen in my life, it seems just about right.)
It starts in kindergarten. At that tender age, boys may not yet think that girls have cooties; sometimes a boy will even tell his parents that he plans to marry Cindy Lou from the playground. Usually, though, as soon as the boy sees a neat-looking bug or a puppy, Cindy Lou is forgotten like a politician's pre-election promise. Meanwhile, Cindy Lou has asked three of her bestest friends to be bridesmaids. Twenty or twenty-five years later, when Cindy Lou has made real marriage plans, one or two of these girls will surface.
As near as I can tell, bridesmaid solicitation drops off after pre-school and kindergarten and does not pick up again until junior high. Now, although crushes come and go, Cindy Lou and her friends plan weddings in the abstract -- the identity of the groom is really unimportant (see, Kardashian, Kim) -- and mutual promises are given and exchanged among Cindy Lou and her besties that each will stand up at the others' nuptials. A dozen or 15 years later, some of these may still be in Cindy Lou's life, if only on the periphery. But when that Facebook status changes, they will demand to know: What color are the dresses?
The planning continues in high school and college. New girlfriends come into Cindy Lou's life, old ones are shed like a snake molting, but the invitations -- mutual, sincere and (thankfully!) wholly unenforceable -- continue to be exchanged.
All of them -- even ones who two weeks before the engagement claimed to now hate, loathe and despise Cindy Lou -- will confidently expect to be asked once Cindy Lou decides to take the plunge. (The ones who say they hate Cindy Lou say they want to be asked just so they can turn her down flat -- but even most of these will admit that they'd consider accepting... if Cindy Lou asks nicely.)
Meanwhile, there are others who must be accommodated for the sake of family harmony: The bride's sisters, for example, and any sisters-in-law. And what about the groom's sisters? Sometimes these alone can fill up all reasonably available bridesmaid slots -- leaving dozens of one-time BFF's feeling absolutely betrayed.
Younger Daughter, you may recall, is getting married soon -- three Saturdays from now, in fact. And, if you've been keeping up, you know why we've proceeded with some haste. One clear and definite advantage of throwing the wedding together quickly, at least from Younger Daughter's point of view, is that a dozen or more girls who were supposed to be her bridesmaids will (if our luck holds) not find out about the wedding until after it's over. As it is, Younger Daughter has five bridesmaids -- Older Daughter, Abby, a girl she's known since pre-school (you younger readers may have thought I was exaggerating for comic effect, didn't you?), a friend since grammar school, and a college classmate.
Of course, the banns were published in last Sunday's Bulletin. Anyone paying attention would now know when Younger Daughter will be wed. But only if they've gone to church.
So don't tell any of them, OK?
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