Oh Happy Day

Saturday last, my sweet girl got married.  I have gone through a lot of emotions this week, to say the least.  Here's a little snippet.

Her BFF snce the age of four threw her a bachelorette party, which was just going out to dinner at Macaroni Grill, then back to Corri's house for games, thanks to Seth's girlfriend Elaine.  One of them was a "how well do you know Jill" game, which surprisingly,  I won, with three points.  I mean, who knew that Jill would most like to kiss Liam Neeson before she got marred?  At least she has good taste.

Afterward, she and Corri went to the garage to get the tree stump her dad had carved for Jill's wedding cake stand.  I pulled the car around, and my eyes laid on these beautiful young women, and I was suddenly carried back to when they were about ten.  It was a flash that nearly got me, and I had to catch myself.  Jill hates it when "grown ups" cry.  I told her that all bets were off for her wedding day.

At the rehearsal, Thomas dscovered that the more serious the situation requires him to be is in direct proportion to how badly he behaves.  Walking Jill down the aisle, I looked over and Seth was dancing, waving his arms over his head -- which is pretty normal for him -- and Thomas was dancing wildlly in place.  Oddly, the priest did not say anythng, but Jill and Michael were met with a firm "NO SKIPPING" admonishment when they left the church improperly.  I'm sure that the rather Napoleonic priest was blaming the Protestant bride under their breath.  I, of course, laughed and high fived her as she skipped by.

Saturday morning came along, and off she went for a bridesmaids' breakfast.  I met her at the church later to get hair and makeup done.  She had bought monogrammed robes for the girls as their gift, so in I walked to the girls giggling like little girls in their pink robes, in various states of hair intervention.  Jill went and laid down on a table at one point while she waited.  I'm pretty sure that in that couple of hours, I saw some part of each of the bridesmaids undergarments.  Not sure how that happened, but yeah.  Suddenly, it was time to get over to the church NOW -- as in, we were late getting Jill over there so that no one would see her -- so the flower girl grabbed one end of her dress and I grabbed the other, and we basically ran across the parking lot, straight to the basement room where she was to hide.  A few minutes later, I had sweat dripping down everywhere, thinking that I was in the midst of a menopausal power surge, when the photographer realized that the heat was on full blast.  I can't imagine how hot Jill was under all that tulle, but she looked beautiful.
Contrary to her earlier warnings, she did NOT throw up.

The ceremony went off without a hitch, though it contained an overly long homily in which the priest a) said "Jill and Michael" at least twenty times, as if he was reminding himself of who he was marrying, or filling in the blanks on his standard speech, and b) he seemed to have a fixation with talking about the marriage bed, and consummating the marriage, both of which were met with wide eyes by the bride.  She rolled her eyes more than once.  The sweetest moment for me was when they lit the unity candle, and the soloist was singing "You Are Mine."  I looked over and saw that my Jillie, who never can seem to stop singing, was singing to Michael -- and he promptly joined in and sung to her.   It was just a perfect display of Jill and Michael. Then I realized that the priest was singing too, and it was just kind of funny.

I didn't cry.  Not even close.  I was just so happy.  Her brothers, however, both professed later that they had trouble holding on and both almost lost it.  That was a real revelation to me, after watching those three grow up at each others' throats a fair portion of the time.  Ah, it's nice to see things come full circle, and realize that these parts of your DNA turned out to be just. so. nice.  And man, they clean up well too.

Maybe I'll remember to tell about the reception, but given my proclivity for forgetting to finish two part blog entries, I make no promises.  So I will just leave you with this, which warms my heart more than I can say:

When You're Gettin Married In The Morning..........

When I got married the first time, we didn't do any premarital counselling.  Perhaps it's because my dad was performing the ceremony, so that would be weird, but we didn't have to do any.  Well, I take that back,  we did get counselled on one thing: the "nuptual" kiss.

My dad had, at that point, done a lot of weddings, and had probably seen just about everything, though ministers, like nurses, never claim to have actually seen everything.  There's always something out there to surprise us.  Heck, he even did a funeral once where the gravedigger fell into the grave, causing a rather pregnant pause, followed by a firm "I'm OK" to filter up from the depths.  So yeah, stuff happens.

Apparently, one of the things that can happen is that the bride and groom linger a bit too long at the "you may kiss the bride" booth.  My father was rather clear on it, saying something to the effect of "it doesn't have to be a peck, but don't get carried away.  It's a nuptual kiss."  I've sometimes wondered if he said this to everyone, or if it was a fatherly boundary being set by a man who was getting ready to marry off his youngest child.  In either event, I listened.

The other thing he said was for me to hang onto my veil when we blew out the unity candles, because there apparently was some kind of a fire hazard involved.  Whether or not he actually saw a bride self immolate, I have no idea, but he was concerned.  I haven't watched the video in years, but I do believe that you can see him take a small lunge toward me when he realizes that I completely ignored his advice and was, in fact, briefly in danger of becoming The Human Torch.  Oh well, it was the heat of the moment (no pun intended), and I survived.  The marriage, not so much.

So this time around, a dear friend of ours performed the ceremony.  As I mentioned, it was intended as a private affair, so there was no pressure.  No pressure, that is, till he said that he pretty much insists that everyone he marries take a premarital test, and then have some counselling before the wedding.  Oh dear.  No, Jill and Michael had just taken their test a few weeks before, and she was sure that they had "failed."  I had been assuring her that you can't really "fail" a premarital test, but she, The Voice Of Doom, was sure that they had failed.  She didn't say what was on the test, and since neither Jim or I had ever done counselling before, we went into it blind.

Let me tell you, some of those questions were HARD.  It was one of those "rate this from 1-5, with 1 being strongly disagree, and 5 being strongly agree" tests.  I hate when they say that, because you just KNOW that there are going to be questions that require an asterisk.  But there is no asterisk (reminder to self:  tell the story of the greatest April Fool's joke I ever did), so you just have to commit.  I guess that's why it's a premarital test -- they must want you to commit -- but I cheated and was asking one of my friends "how would you answer this" on Facebook while I was testing.

Take, for example, the statement "I believe I know everything about my future spouse."  Well honey, I was married long enough to know that you NEVER EVER know everything -- and frequently you know NOTHING -- about your spouse.  But I paused, worried about what it means to answer with a disagreement to this question.  Would that mean we aren't compatible?  That he has secrets?  That we haven't been together long enough?  That he won't fold the towels right?  Oops, forget that last one.  Well, I really grappled with that question, finally asking my friend - who has been married for thirty years, and has known her husband even longer -- what she thought about that question.  She stated rather matter of factly that even she learns new things about her husband from time to time.  I calmed down and finished.

Jim took his test a couple of days later, and then the fretting began.  By now, I was calm and knew it was gonna be fine -- though some counselling topics could get weird when doing it with a close friend.  Jim worried that we had failed.  Oye vay, I'm surrounded by voices of doom.  He finally had me text the pastor, who replied that we had done fine.  "What does THAT mean," Jim asked.  He dialed the phone, and jumped right in, asking how we had done.

Well, it turned out that we had done well.  As in, we showed more compatibility than almost anyone the pastor had ever married.  This is no small accomplishment, since he's been a pastor for over fifty years.  Even he sounded surprised.  I'm not sure why that is, but it is what it is:  we always knew from day one that it was right.  (Yes, I have a story about that too, but it will wait for another day.) We ended up doing our counselling the day before the wedding, and found out that we had no areas for improvement, and even scored 100% match on several areas.  We had, indeed, done well.  It led, nonetheless, to some interesting discussions on that day.  We found that we had just misread a couple of questions,  and would have done even better had we read them correctly, but it didn't matter -- interesting discussions were had, as well as some laughs.  The wedding was ON.  We planned to have a brunch together before the wedding.  Yes, if you plan your wedding right, the minister and his wife will feed you before the wedding.

The next morning, we got up and started getting ready.  My phone dinged a text notification, and I went to check it. It was from the minister, who said, and I quote:

"This is the day that the Lord has made.  Let us rejoice and be glad in it.  Do you have any white wine with you?"

Gotta love that man.  We took the Riesling we had with us, had a nice little wedding, a wee dram o' Scotch, and it was all over.  As in, no nuptual kiss.  He never told Jim to kiss his bride.  I'm not sure if he forgot or, more likely, that since we were using a new template of the ceremony that didn't have him pronounce us as husband and wife (WE did, in the vows), that perhaps the nuptual kiss was left out too.

My dad would be proud.

Some Things Are Just Plain Hard

Once upon a time, there was a girl who was engaged.  She (kind of) jokingly said to her fiance that he should take HER name when they got married.  Her name was, after all, easier for people to pronounce.  And it didn't consist of a part of a female cow's anatomy.  The fiance stared at her silently.  She pled her case -- again (kind of) jokingly, they laughed about the idea and moved on.

Three days later, the fiance came to her and said, quite seriously and totally out of the blue, "I just want you to know that if you don't want to take my name, then we aren't going to get married.  A man waits his whole life to give his name to a woman, and if my name's not good enough for you, then we aren't getting married."  Whoa, Dude.  JOKING.  (Kind of.)  She took his name, forever banishing their children to a life of harassment about dairy cows and women's reproductive organs.

Over time, she found that the name was somewhat useful.  When you have a name that starts with M, you always have to figure out what line you get in, or where in the seating chart you are, or where to look on the list of names up on the wall, because you're smack in the middle.  But when your last name starts with U, it's all pretty simple -- you're always at the end.  Your film (back in the day) or your prescriptions are easy to find, because there aren't many things in the U bin.  Having a U name can be rather useful, she found.

That girl was me, and I eventually made piece with the name.  The kids, except the Bratty Gurl, basically did, after putting up with the harassment from time to time.  It fit well into our life of Utter Chaos, so it was ok.  And the Bratty Gurl would get married one day and lose the name that she hates so much.

Fast forward to the part where I divorced his lying, cheating ass.  I thought seriously of taking back the maiden name but didn't, because Bratty was so anxious to change HER name that the only way to chill her out was to say "hey, NO ONE gets to change their name till I do."  She agreed, and I didn't change my name.  Moms have a way of winning, always.  It's a gift that is delivered before the first placenta, I think.

And so it was, that after a heartfelt New Year's Eve proposal a couple of years ago, and many settings and changings of dates, we took the plunge last month and got married in a private, very personal ceremony in Florida, complete with Scottish tartan, a quiach, and some Scotch whiskey, to boot.  It was lovely and simple and perfect.  We had a great honeymoon, full of relaxation, margaritas, sand, and not a care in the world.  And then everything got complicated.

Men will never understand what a pain in the butt it is to change your name.  Jim was really sweet in asking if I was going to change it at all, or if I perhaps wanted to go back to my maiden name.  I asked him -- as I've asked a number of male friends over the years -- if a man does indeed live his whole life waiting to give a woman his name, because the thought intrigued me.  He, like every other man I have ever asked, looked at me crazy and said an emphatic "NO.  Why would it matter?"  Just as I thought.  But I told him that I planned to take his name, which seemed to please him, nonetheless.  Plus, the commonality of his name means going into the Witness Protection Program is all that much easier, should the need ever arise.

And so it was that I found myself in Anderson, Indiana last week, clutching all the documentation proving my names over the course of the past half century or so.  I spoke with a very nice gentleman who told me that my new card would appear in about 2 weeks, and I set out to wait.  You know, you can't change anything till that Social Security card arrives. It's very annoying, because in the meantime, what IS your name?  Everyone congratulates you with one name, but you sign everything with the old name.  It's all a bit confusing.
 
Lucky for me that the new card arrived on Friday, a mere five days after I applied for it.  Yippee!  Me being me, and last week being as nutty as it was (cleaning up from the great flood, unpacking from the trip, painting the closet where the flood started, and work was off the chain busy, so little sleep was had), I opened the envelope and then put it aside to deal with it later.  When I went into my office, I decided to go ahead and scan it for Human Resources, then just sat and looked at it.  Lack of sleep meant my rheumatoid arthritis was pretty bad, and my hands were extremely painful.  And cold.  And stiff.  Last week was chilly, and my hands are always really cold when the temperature dips.  So the card just sat there next to me while I started my workday.

It turned into a bit of a process.  I decided to let my hands warm up, because once you sign that card, you have to look at that signature forever.  It needs to be a good signature, not one like what you sign on the credit card machine at the grocery.  It needs to be neat and legible, and one to be proud of, not unlike how you'd write it for your kids' teacher when they send home a permission slip.  Yes, the hands needed to warm up, because when they warm up, they aren't as stiff.  Or painful.  Limber fingers make pretty handwriting.  By the by, the fingers felt better, and I decided it was time to take the plunge.  I picked out the pen.  Nope, not that one.  Got another one that flowed freely.  Tested it to make sure it was working -- I didn't want to have to trace over part of the signature and make it look tacky.  Yep, pen was working great.  I took a big breath and wrote my name.  Sat back and looked at it, thinking to myself "wow, that looks really  GOOD."

Then I realized that I had signed my old last name.

I am pretty sure that life came to a standstill for about two minutes while I regained my composure.  I mean seriously, NOW what?  I couldn't turn it in as ID to get my driver's license if it had two different names on it.  Heck, if I tried to use it at the bank, I might get up close and personal with the security guard.  All thoughts of name-changing came to a screeching halt.  All I could think was "DAMMIT."

Jim got home, and I started to tell him the story. He interrupted me midstream and said "you signed the wrong name, didn't you" before I could even finish.  He may or may not have laughed to the point of tears.  He informed me that I should've waited till he got home, cause he had wanted to have a little ceremonious signing of the card, and HE would've made sure that I didn't sign the wrong name.  ::sigh:: I mean, really.  I've been signing that name since 1987.  This name change thing is HARD.  Men just don't get it.

And so it was that the dog and I popped into the convertible, put the top down, and drove to the Social Security office again this week.  I waited.  They called my name.  The girl asked how she could help me.  I just handed her my card and yes, she burst out laughing.  Now, I don't know for certain, but I'm fairly certain that federal government employees are not supposed to laugh at people, much less people in the Social Security office.  I mean, most of the people there are either senior citizens or people on disability.  It would seem unkind, and perhaps a bit confusing to the customer, for clerks to spontaneously guffaw.  But then again, I was in Anderson -- home of the only restaurant sign that hawks "Pastries, Barbecue, and Bail Bonds."  Political correctness may not be their forte. But I digress...........

So here I am again, back to square one, waiting for the new card.  Fortunately, I had already scanned the first one before I signed it, so I was able to change my name at work -- but to add to the confusion, I can't change my nursing license yet, so I still have to use the old name when I'm working.  I walk around confused most of the time.  Hopefully, by next week, I will be able to start the name changing process in earnest, and put the old name to rest, once and for all.  And trust me, if anything happens to my dear husband sometime in the distant future, and some man tries to say that he's waited his whole life to give me his name, I'm gonna tell him where he can shove it.