Previously on A&A's Adventures in Cohabigorgistation: Our (W)right heroes returned from the far Birdlands abutting the Nation's erstwhile capital (we are now just a loose confederation of tribes and feudal powers now, right?). Swimming through the tempests of equinox, they resumed their rightful place amongst the yippies and sock-and-sandlers in time for more eating. A new arrival to the (W)right household!! A beautiful bouncing bag at roughly ten pounds, nine ounces! Adella's world gets tumbly as follow ups yield rabbit-holes straight into the land of hormonal unbliss. In desperation she turns to seasonal succulents for support. The delicatas come up sere, but her newly reinventied garnet YUMS come through in a pinch as Socktober evolves and howloween draws nigh! And it all led up to the first head to head weigh in of Socktober: Adella is up and Andrew is down as they race towards the middle mark. To celebrate, both immediately high fived and then scurried off to separate but equally masochistic work outs.
Coming up: Cue the wedding march! Wait are we in a time loop? Wasn't that six months ago? Six months? How did that elapse so quickly and yet not at all? Who are we and why is that Adella Thompson person still stealing our heroine's mail? A wedding echo endured... for a while. Will our plucky couple manage to beat back the hordes of yuppie beer crafters and survive long enough to view the buffet line? Will any wedding ever measure up to the sheer awesome that was the (W)right dance party of 2013? A return to Seattle with Twyla Tharp. Will the father make his train? Will Sinatra songs be sung? Will the Isaac Mizrahi costumes amaze and adaze? Will Andrew stay awake for an entire ballet on a warm day?? Adella tips and tops her world a bit more with attorney SPRING BREAK!!! Will she make it through her rolling run and onto her very important date? Will those shoes ever find a home or will they languish in Metropolitan foster care for all eternity? And pants get snug. Will our heroine finally give and start showing up to work in a fleece hooded onesie to avoid future shopping trips??
All that and more coming up...
Socktober 6th Flashback -
On this day last Socktober I was attending an engagement party in San Francisco with my lovely boyfrianceband. Yesterday, to properly mark the occasion, I attended another "highly celebratory and social scene with scads of chit-chat, action .... etc." except this one was a wedding and not all about me (and/or Andrew!)
It was, instead, the wedding of Macy's excursion fame. To wrap up on that little story, I did eventually buy a Macy's gift card without the help of any consultants or complicated registry computers. There was no absence of teeth gnashed over this little endeavor either, as the cards came in $25 and $50 values. I cringe at fifty, but twenty-five seems like it doesn't even cover the cost of our place at the table. As such, I waffled for several weeks right up until yesterday's grocery run to Fred Meyer's. Freddy's - despite once again shifting the sands of all locatable and desirable grocery items in their ongoing game of "remodelling Hell" - made it easy for me by only carrying the $25 gift cards.
Dogged propriety will out, though.I guiltily threw in a bottle of wine about thirty minutes before our departure in a left over gift bag from our wedding. See, this is why I keep things! That and neglect. Mostly neglect.
It was a nice bottle, too. A client brought it in to the office as a thank-you several months ago. Leslie and had I kept it in the office fridge for a long time idly speculating that we would drink it at some point... we did not. Turns out we don't even have a bottle opener at the office. Nor did we have a stopper. So, unless things got really bad and one of us was ready to just break-neck the bottle and finish it of with only minor helpings of glass shards in one sitting, it probably wasn't going to happen at the office. Eventually, I brought the bottle home with the idle speculation that I - in my weight gain 3000 mode - would definitely drink it. And, actually, I probably would have. I'm nearly through with the bottle of wine Daddy Dubya left after his visit in July. But, hey, weddings take perverse priority over all else, and I'm hardly enough of a wine snob to suffer the loss of a bottle of free good wine when I could purchase perfectly passable cheap wine in its place.
Wedding gift acquired, our next task was enduing ourselves in a sartorially appropriate manner for the occasion. After checking the website to ensure that no theme costumes were required, we purdied ourselves up (we do clean up nicely) quite well if I do say so myself. I stuck with sparkly pants and a drapey top, which was quite subdued if you don't count the sparkly dance shoes and orange and blue polka dot socks blaring flamboyantly from my open-toed sparkle shoes. The shoes also were made for dancing indoors (preferably on ballroom competition circuits in rhythm events), thus requiring my very dapper husband to carry me from the car while I shrieked like a giddy child. Naturally, we almost ran smack dab into some other wedding guests.
The wedding guests were... not from around here. Most of the attendees had traveled to attend, and it showed: cocktail dresses and coifs worth of Saturday night clubbing were popular, for instance. And nobody in this part of Whatcom County has that kind of tan or dedication to painting themselves two steps shy of pop-art. I will note that there was one lanky gentleman in a pepto-bismal suit with a blue tie. I wanted to sit near him. But mostly, we weren't exactly kin and kith of the general wedding population.
The ceremony was short and sweet - a fusion of Jewish traditions and secular personalized encomiums from a friend/officiant. I rather liked the wine-box ceremony they included: They had a bottle of wine, and each added sealed notes to the other about why they were there that day, their hopes and dreams, and what they loved about the other. All these were sealed in a box. The idea being that if there were ever a rocky point in the marriage, they committed to opening this box, drinking the wine, reading the letters and talking about where to go next.
The rest of the wedding was less short and not so sweet. There was about an hour and twenty minutes of down time between ceremony and dinner, for instance, and not a whole lot of room to do much with this time. It seemed like this was mostly reserved for people to get handily inebriated while the bride and groom finished up their wedding photos and otherwise not really being around. The hall was small and an acoustic nightmare. The dining area, when it finally opened up, was no better. In fact, it was also quite stuffy to add to the din and roar.
We couldn't hear anything except our table-mates, who were jocularly blathering about their favorite beers and home renovation projects (relentlessly detailed, I think, although I could only hear every third or fourth word so I'm honestly not entirely sure what was up for discussion). Something to note: the bride is a rocket scientist, so most of her friends are engineers. Many engineers are an obstreperous brand of yuppies with fitness instructor wives, tricked out silly cars, and boundless materialistic obsessions. I know we are yuppies now, but we're not quite at that level just yet. They all seemed very nice, but with neither of us being blissfully buzzed, the noise, and the impossibility of relating to much of any of the conversation... well, we ended up pulling out our smart phones and chatting with each other for a large portion of the evening.
So downtime... there was the hour plus before we were allowed into the chamber of echoes. And then dinner. Dinner didn't really seem to happen. There was a buffet line. I'm pretty sure that people were being selected by table to go stand in this moebious strip of a meal line (I heard something echoing around about that over the speaker), but an hour after we had been called up to dinner, we still hadn't eaten anything other than a few slices of bread and an eensy salad served on a plate made for dolls.
Andrew had done some kind of insane work out, so he was both somnolent and starving. I hadn't really eaten much either and was reaching a collision between hungry irritability, surging introversion and my general aversion to stuffiness. We eventually determined (via chat) to bail, and drop by Taco Time on the way home. The best part of the wedding by far!
But back to the engagement party: at the engagement party, one of Andrew's aunts pointed out that it was exactly six months away from our wedding that evening. Which consequently means it is again exactly six months from our wedding on the other side. We've apparently been married for six months. I find that kind of odd, but I can't decide if that's because it seems like it was soo much longer ago and we've always been married or because it seems like it just happened and I still giggle when I call my loverboy my "husband" and/or introduce myself by my married name.
And, of course, far more significantly. It is coming on a year since I got LASIK. Now that deserves a party. Or a follow up eye exam. One of those!.
Afterglowing from the 6th Month Commemorative Date Day
Six months, huh? Rather amazing! I may still get mail addressed to Ms. Adella Thompson (the evil associate whose YMCA membership I've also been riding on for as many months), but the bike and chain and I have been oh-so-very-(W)right for six months as of yesterday! I know that doesn't qualify us for any marriage endurance awards, but I'm happy to say that we've at least outlasted the typical Hollywood marriage at this point! Andrew still has outstanding thank you cards to send (there's a reason I insisted on starting ours during our Honeyday at the Chrysalis, and had all of mine done and mailed within the week - momentum lags after that first rush). We were speculating that it would be a good time to send cards saying "well, since we're still together after six months, we think we can call it good on keeping all the gifts and calling it a success; so thanks." Because we're snarky little bastards, we also thought of contributing a special thank you to our attendees for being way better wedding guests at a way better wedding than the last one we went to (hey, this is the Wrights, here, we're going to be competitive).
Thanks or no thanks to the general community, we've made it far enough to definitely be through with the honeymoon, if not quite the wise old married couple period just yet. I don't know when one stops being a newlywed, but we're definitely transitioning into the more intermediate stages of married life. Pretty soon we'll be marriage pre-teens or something. Oh they grow up so fast!
To celebrate - or actually entirely by coincidence - we had a rather delicious date-day at the Pacific Northwest Ballet's first production of the season: AIR TYWLA. Turns out that "air" wasn't a theme of her works or anything, as much as an acronym for Twyla Tharpe having been the Artist in Residence this past year. The performance was a trio of pieces, a premier book-ended by classics.
The premier was a collaboration with Allen Toussaint (who actually performed with the orchestra for some of the performances) called Waiting at the Station. It was expectedly all bluesy and rag-timey; a bittersweet thematic periodish piece that had a choreographed stream of consciousness involving father-son dynamics, final goodbyes, mortality, setting things right, something to do with two married couples, and the eponymous train station. The exact narrative wasn't essential, but the themes were clear and intermingled with some fantastic contemporary performance and design.
Something that always strikes me about Tharpe is that her pieces inevitably capture an indelible joy and jouissance even when themes are dark or melancholy. Many contemporary pieces are so strikingly evocative that they use music and movement to rip your heart straight out of your mouth with the first quivers of strings and legs. Tharp's works never have that intended clarity of catharsis. There's always a celebratory note and a sly nod and wink to even the most mournful of moments. Perhaps that's why her Nine Sinatra Songs works so darned well, particularly That's Life and My Way, which also bridge the divide between profoundly sad and joyful.
While we did spend the day gallavanting around an unseasonably gorgeous Seattle, worry not: Andrew got his ride in last night (not intended to be a euphemism, you dirty bastards). He pretty much arrived home and hopped into his cycling kit (at my prodding - also not a euphemism - since I figured the faster he got that ride out of his system, the faster we could eat dinner and cuddle with our mini-bottle of champagne). I, in turn, had time to ... oh I'm not really even sure what I did, but I think maybe zoning out and not doing anything was rather important. Oh read! I did read half of Mark Richards memoir House of Prayer 2: A Writer's Journey Home. It's been on the kindle for a while waiting for another burst of literary enthusiasm. I feel appreciably Southern for having begun the reading.
But yes, back to six months. Take that Kardashians! This also means that Mr. (W)right is coming up on six months at the job. In theory this means some more of his benefits package kicks in (benefits package being yet another thing not intended to be some kind of entendre). This "package" includes a potential raise, but more importantly it includes actual vacation, so the next time we go travelling he doesn't have to work extra long hours every day surrounding any day he takes off!) Me, I'm just enjoying the impending anniversary of having no need for prescription lenses.
And trying to figure out where the heck everything is at work. The cleaner has been here and continues her reign of terror. Nothing is where I thought it might be. I think she's in collaboration with Fred Meyer's to drive me mad(der than before).
Happy Adopt a #shoesday !!
Today my world is turvy-topsy-tipsy (only a dash of whiskey with my morning coffee, really, and even that only in my head). I am continuing my legal education , or CLE-ing as nobody else in the business has ever said (I am the Shakespeare of the legal profession, meaning most of my legal briefs are nonsensical word plays with totally obscene sexual puns and innuendos, and most of my work product is ghost written by Francis Bacon via ouija board). It's Adoption Law 2013!! WHOOOOOOOO. This is my version of a lusty teenager's spring break... with more clothing and less booze (but far more coffee).
Since the CLE runs all day, my usual Tuesday activities have been strewn to the winds. Since "all day" is a normal person's version of "all day," I actually don't start the CLE until 8:30. That has left me with a very good chunk of time to reapportion my Tuesday workout to brighter and earlier than ever (set socks to stun mode). Yes, as+Andrew Wright pointed out, I am one step closer to ultimate yuppiehood: morning workouts. As I pointed out, I used to do the morning gym routine regularly when I interned at PeaceHealth and it is my absolute preferred time to do it. Meaning, of course, that I've been a yuppie all along.
So far so good. I am continuing the momentum of Saturday's vergingly masochistic interval thing and did a nice thirty minute hills workout. Mostly, I think it's just that treadmills are really boring if you don't do something to make them more interesting. Since my nullity of investment in rediscovering headphones that will actually stay in my ears while I run, I need to amuse myself by seeing what bizarre things I can do to my poor heart. Besides, starting the day all sweaty and endorphined up is a great preparation for being lectured and taking notes, in my world.
Say what you will about chocolate milk, I would counter that a grande latte is the perfect recovery drink. Carbs, protein, and caffeine (which apparently does actually boost recovery according to some study I happen to like because it supports my pre-existing behavior). Who cares that it costs as much as a gallon of milk and some instant coffee? I'm on CLE today! (attorney SPRING BREAK! WHOOOO!)
In other news, I noticed yesterday that my favorite pair of work pants were actually a bit snug. Good news, bad news, really. This is a new one, since I spent about four years looking like a bag lady (because I was just planning to gain weight anyways, so why buy new pants!) before FINALLY relenting and going pants shopping a few months back. Now that I'm heading back towards being a size something, I get to experience all the other vacant joys of pants. Like being too tight in the thighs and hips for my waist and still probably being too short. I do remember one pair in law school that would duly inform me whether or not I was retaining water. Very helpful pair of pants, I assure you, at least as an early warning sign of impending mood alterations. As now, I must just have a slightly more muscular right leg, because when it feels snug, it's right around my right thigh.
So good news is the weight gain thing may actually be working or hey the lady-pills that are making me all spacy and irritable are also altering my body composition in ways consonant with the aches and general sensations I feel. And, of course, every one else around me is totally lucky to see my fabulous figure well displayed and exposed to all the world.
The DUN DUN DUUUUUN of it all, though is that eventually, they might be a little smaller than snug. Oh god, I finally found a pair of pants I liked and now I'm going to have to do it all over again??? The horror. I may set myself some kind of fund and goal. Like putting some amount of my paycheck in a separate shopping account every time I meet my weight goals. And then setting a time to use that money to buy myself some new clothes. In the meantime, they will go beautifully with my totally messy hair and my work out shirt. Yeah I brought a change of pants, but no shirt. Whatever. If I could live exclusively in athletic clothes, I would do it in a minute. I drool over the target workout area. The word "wicking" makes me tingly in a far more pleasurable way than this estradiol nonsense.
But yes, shoes! Bright, beautiful shoes! Including some of my favorites from past weeks. The 27th is a particular favorite, although I feel like the 15th would be more appropriate for today.
Whatever else, I bid you a happy #shoesday #socktober as I head off to my CLE WHOOOOOOOO!
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