City Wendy

Meet Me In St. Louis

Tomorrow, Drew and I are flying to Missouri for a long weekend with my entire family. Everyone will be there — my sister Allison is flying in from Austin, my dad, who's been staying with her as she's recuperated from an accident, flew in earlier this week, and so did my mom, who's spending her summer off in the states like always. On Saturday we'll meet up with the whole extended family to celebrate my grandparents' 60th wedding anniversary. For Drew, who has only met some of the extended family once or twice and hasn't seen my immediate family in a year, it should be a sort of crash-course experience in what it's like to be related to these people. I hope they don't disappoint.

This'll be the first time I'm seeing my Mom since I got engaged in February and I expect the weekend to double as a sort of last-minute wedding prep session extravaganza. It'll be like all the emails she's sent me in the last few months come to life. And it should be double the fun, really, because, in addition to the wedding in New York, my parents are throwing us a reception in St. Louis the following weekend, mostly for the benefit of my grandparents who are too feeble to fly out east. But to be honest, it's been kind of a relief to have that second reception in my back pocket, because any time my Mom has a suggestion for the wedding, I can just say, "Oh, that sounds great — why don't we do that for the reception in St. Louis?" You want to be indoors for the ceremony? We'll be indoors in St. Louis! You want to hire a wedding DJ? Let's get one in St. Louis! You want a triple-tiered yellow wedding cake with chocolate fondant and a traditional topper that can be passed down to your grandkids? ST. LOUIS!!

Speaking of grandkids, I'm already prepping myself for the endless questions about when they're coming. Yesterday I was IMing with my mom and I mentioned that I'd weighed myself for the first time in a couple months and I'd apparently lost 7 pounds. "But I don't look any smaller, and my clothes don't fit any differently," I said. "ARE YOU SURE YOU AREN'T PREGNANT?" Mom quickly replied. Um, yeah, I'm pretty sure, but then again, I didn't realize that weight loss was a symptom of pregnancy, so what do I know.

Last summer when I was visiting the family in Missouri, I made the mistake of offhandedly saying something to effect of how one day, when I have kids, I might like to drop them off with my parents for part of the summer, so Drew and I could have, like, a break and my kids could put down some roots in the midwest. My mom heard that and ran with it. "Oh!" she exclaimed between bites of her breakfast, "Oh! I could take them to the library! And check out books for them! And teach them how to read! And! The pool! Your father and I could take them to the pool! And the zoo! And minor league baseball games!!! Oh, you'd like that, wouldn't you, Ed?" she said to my dad. "Whatever you say, Becky," he repIied, wiping up his fried egg with a piece of toast. I quickly changed the subject, but every few minutes, just when I thought we'd dropped it for good, my mom would pipe in: "And bible school! So they could learn all about Jesus! Even though they're going to be Jewish! It doesn't hurt to learn about him at least!" and "And shopping! For school clothes! Just like your grandparents did with you girls every summer!! Oh!!!"

I mentioned it's going to be a long weekend, right? Friday through Monday. ...Wish us luck.

Mind Over Madness

I've heard plenty of women, who, when they get pregnant or become brand new moms, go on about how forgetful they've become, like their brain cells are all going straight to the baby, and I have to wonder: if I feel like that now — like I've sort of lost part of my mind — just from planning a wedding, how on earth will I function when I get knocked up? With one month and one day to go, I've never felt more scattered or distracted. Even with my mega to-do list, I keep wondering what I've forgotten to write down, what I've neglected to think about. Moving across the country didn't require so much attention to detail.

And so, because I'm incapable of writing a thoughtful, coherent post on one topic, here's a list of random things just as scattered as my head:

1. As the wedding gets closer, the my mom's emails are getting crazier and more frequent. She's already warned me to double-check and triple-check that I don't need a slip for my wedding dress since people will be looking at me IN DIRECT SUNLIGHT. "And what about a special bra?" she's asked several times, "And what are you doing for shoes? A veil? Your purse?" Now that she's figured out what she's wearing and has micro-managed every detail of my 26 year-old sister's outfit, she's able to focus more clearly on my wedding ensemble, LUCKY ME. I've been warned to have my dress professionally pressed NOW so in case anything happens to it in the process, I'll have time to replace it, because, clearly, having a dress ironed a month before it's going to be worn makes a lot of sense.

Yesterday I got an email that went on and on about how, if I don't have a spare pair of contact lenses, I really better order one. "It is a very nerve-wracking time for you now," she wrote, explaining that I never know how my nerves could attribute to me dropping a lens and then I might have to wear glasses to my wedding — or! on my honeymoon-- or! "suffer the alternate of not being able to see anything IF I lost a lens and decided to forgo the glasses."

2. Drew and I got our marriage license Friday afternoon at the City Clerk's office, which is now my favorite place in all of New York City. Honestly, if you've never been, I totally recommend spending an hour or so checking it out. You don't have to be getting married or anything. Just show up, find a seat, and watch the action. Bring popcorn! We were there for maybe 45 minutes and saw 3 weddings. One chick getting married was so freaked out, she kept laughing nervously and making these loud, sort of awkward, inappropriate comments, like: "Oh, ha, ha, my days of boozing it up and going home with random strangers is over now, ha, ha!" And, as she made her way to the little chapel to make it official, she did this kind of a nazi march, kicking her legs up in her long ivory dress and said: "Ha, ha, dead woman walking! Ha, ha, ha!" Meanwhile, her groom looked totally relaxed and chilled out. I bet he took something before hand.

It was really fun to watch all the different couples and see how well-matched everyone was. There was this one aging hipster couple — well, aging, as in, you know, MY age — and the woman was in these horrible, awful 80's glasses that magnified her eyes, like, 10 times their normal size, and she wore her hair in two, long, greasy pigtails, and carried a canvas tote bag and wore super-skinny jeans and ballet flats and walked in small, pigeon-toed steps, which I'm sure was an affected thing, with her thin, gangly arm looped through her fiance's. He wasn't nearly as memorable as she was, but his floppy hair definitely matched hers in terms of greasiness, and he wore ironic glasses, too, and I couldn't help but wonder if either of their moms were sending them emails suggesting they order contact lenses NOW, and warning them to wear appropriate undergarments on their wedding day.

3. After seeing some very unflattering photos of me taken at my bachelorette party last weekend, I've decided to kick up the exercise and make some radical changes in my diet. For example, no more booze!! Well, not no-more, no-more, but close to no more. Like, I'll drink a glass of wine now and then, but the beer, margaritas, and nights of 4 or 6 drinks are OVER (at least until the honeymoon — you can't go to Spain and not enjoy pitchers of Sangria, come on). Also, I've started doing yoga again. Well, I've done it twice — Sunday (at the annual Summer Solstice Yoga in Times Square) and yesterday, but I can already feel a difference, both physically and mentally. And I found a studio 3 blocks from my apartment that I really like, so I think I'm going to make yoga a habit — something to help me get in shape quickly for the wedding, yes, but I plan to continue it well after that. Now that i'm giving up margaritas, I'll need something to help me deal with my mother's emails, after all.

No Penis Products Here

I had such a great time in Chicago that I came *this* close to extending my trip a few days, but the I remembered that, holy shit, my wedding is in 5 and a half weeks, and I started thinking about my to-do list and had such terrible anxiety dreams, I decided I better get back to town and get down to bizniss. Seriously, I had one dream that I lost my engagement ring and went crazy looking for it and when I finally found it, it was shattered in a million pieces, which, obviously, is a metaphor for my MIND because nothing makes you more insane and scatter-brained than worrying about wedding details, except maybe being pregnant, but I wouldn't know about that. Yet. And then I had a dream that my hair started falling out in clumps and it was so vivd and realistic, I woke up and searched my pillow for signs of stray hair.

Oh, but being in Chicago was so relaxing and pleasant and made me feel homesick all over again. On Saturday afternoon I drank too much tequila at the Andersonville street fest and ended up doing that ugly drunked snot-cry with a friend of mine right there in the middle of everyone. "I just miss you SO MUCH!" I sniffed, throwing my arms around her. "GOD! You don't even KNOW. SO MUCH!!" And she was crying, too and wiping my face with the back of her hands and it was all pretty ridiculous. Another friend said he saw us walking through the park later that afternoon and we were a rambling, wobbling mess. I guess it wasn't any surprise I woke up with a killer hangover the next morning.

My hangover was so bad, in fact, that after I met a friend for breakfast I apologized and said I didn't think I could make it to the beach like we'd planned because I needed to go sleep for an hour or two before I could even think about carrying on with life.
"But..." she said, wrinkling her forehead and narrowing her eyes, "but..."
"Are you mad?" I said, "I'm really sorry, but I feel like shit. I drank too much last night -- I really need to go lie down for a little bit or I might DIE. Really."
"But you have to go to the beach!" she said.

Suddenly she whipped out her phone and started texting away, telling me she was giving her roommate a message she forgot to tell her earlier. Then I got a text from another friend who said he was at the beach with his dogs and I should stop by, so I turned to Katy and said, "Fine, I'll go to the damn beach if it's such a big damn deal for everyone, but I'm not staying long!" And of course, you know where this is going. I got to the lakefront at Foster and a bunch of my friends were gathered under a canopy for a surprise bachelorette party for me. There were cupcakes and gourmet sandwiches and pasta salad and plenty of champagne and vodka lemonade, and after a litlte hair of the dog, I was good as new. Better than new! I was so happy and touched by the whole thing and loved every minute of the afternoon. It was the perfect bachelorette party — my best friends at my favorite place with perfect weather and no dorky penis products. I felt completely loved and supported and it was what anyone would want before she gets married.

Ironically, an article I wrote on the "death of single-girl friendships" made the homepage of CNN the next day and the comments were fucking outrageous. The essay was about the difficulty of moving away from my friends and about transitioning into a new chapter of my life, one that doesn't leave as much time to invest in friendships like I was able to when living the single life in Chicago. People went insane -- calling me horrible and immature and the "epitome of everything wrong with women today." One person called me a "succubus," someone else called me the scum of the earth. Dozens, if not hundreds of people, weighed in on the likelihood of my marriage disintegrating within two years and how I'd "deserve it" when it happened because I have such little respect for anyone but myself. One person even said she wished my husband would die and I'd be all alone because I'd dumped all my friends as soon as I found Mr. Right. And, wow, there sure are a lot of angry, bitter people out there...and apparently they all hang out on CNN.com all day. Anyway, I'm glad the people I love know how I feel about them. And now, thanks to a little tequila and a beautiful afternoon, everyone at the Andersonville street fest knows, too.

These Are The Days

If you're a longtime reader of this blog, you may remember about 3 years ago when my youngest cousin was in a terrible car accident that killed his friend and left John in a coma for several weeks. He was 16 at the time, an awesome kid, and was driving just five minutes away to his friend's aunt's place to mow her lawn. As John merged onto a 4-lane road, his view was obstructed by cornstalks and he didn't see the big Dodge Ram speeding towards him he until it plowed right into his car.

My aunt, John's mother, saw the accident that evening on the local news as she was talking on the phone to the mother of the other boy. Neither one of them had heard from their sons in hours and they were trying to figure out where they might be. I'm not sure my aunt even realized it was her car in that accident on the news, but moments later there was a knock at the door and John's older sister, who was home from college, saw a cop car outside their window, and my aunt, who suddenly put all the pieces together, started screaming, screaming at the cop to please go away. When she finally let him in, she said: "Just tell me. Is he alive?" 

He was alive, but for a while, just barely. It was weeks before he woke up, and several months before he went home. And since then he's been through a shit-ton of surgeries and physical therapy. He's not back to how he used to be and the trajectory of his life was forever changed in that moment, but this weekend he's graduating from high school, an accomplishment he must surely be proud of.

My cousin's especially close to our grandparents, being the youngest of all their grandchildren, the only boy, and our grandfather's namesake. Those first few days and weeks after his accident, I prayed for John, of course, and for his parents and his sister and the family of his friend who was killed, but I also prayed for my grandparents that they'd never suffer something so terrible as losing a grandchild. And so I'm beyond grateful that they're both still around to celebrate John's graduation this weekend, especially considering their health issues in recent years. And I'm grateful we all get to celebrate their60th wedding anniversary at the end of the month, "God willing" my grandmother continues to say in earnest as she has for the last year. 

My cousin's graduation, my grandparent's 60th wedding anniversary, and ME actually getting married. It's what my grandmother might call a Summer of Miracles. God willing.

Mom's The Word

Yesterday I had my weekly call with my mom wherein I listened to her freak out about the most important details of my wedding, like where she'll find a purse to match her dress and how she'll manage to find time to get her hair done before the ceremony. I didn't dare ask her about jewelry or shoes, but I'm pretty sure if she doesn't find something that's just so, my whole wedding, not to mention my entire marriage, will be doomed. "It's all just so complicated," she sighed, a sweeping statement about the entire state of her summer, but a sentiment I'm sure my wedding is fairly responsible for.

Meanwhile, over on my end, plans are clicking along. Drew and I managed to cross some big things off our to-do list in the last week, including meeting with the officiating rabbi, hiring a string duo, ordering custom-design rings, and yesterday I even settled on a wedding dress. It's a simple dress from JCrew that I'm buying on eBay (new, with tags) for less than half the retail price (because I'm cunning like that). Total price of the whole thing will be about what Drew and I spent on a sushi dinner last Friday night. 

I ordered the dress from the store first to make sure I knew what size I needed, and after I tried it on I sent a photo to a few people to get their opinion. My mom told me it was pretty, but "too tight in the bust," which is how I knew it was the one. With 8 weeks or so to go, I still haven't figured out what I'm doing about shoes, jewelry, veil, hair and makeup, which, if the Martha Stewart wedding checklist is to be believed, means I'm destined for a life of poverty and misfortune, if not a special place in hell. 

Little does Martha understand -- it's not the bride's attire that dictates the course of her entire future, it's her mother's.

China Doll

This is my grandparents' china cabinet. Actually, it first belonged to my great-grandmother, but for as long as I've been around, it's been in my grandparents' possession, and now it's in mine. I inherited it from them around 6 or 7 years ago when my they moved out of the house they'd lived in for the last 4 decades. They were downsizing from a 4-bedroom home to a small, 2-bedroom apartment and had a lot to get rid of. 

In addition to the cabinet, I also took a cherry wood bedroom set from the 50s and one of those old buffet-style tables that folds down on the sides so you can push it against the wall and it hardly takes up any room at all. The table came with three leaves and could sit up to 14 people. I served Thanksgiving dinner on it twice in one of my old apartments. This was back when I was living with a former boyfriend and we'd have our neighbors and random Thanksgiving orphans over and everyone would pitch in with the meal. We'd cook the turkey in Pepsi because that's the way our neighbor friend's dad had always cooked theirs growing up. 

I sold the table on Craigslist before I moved to New York — it really wasn't worth anything. My grandparents had painted over the beautiful mahogany wood several times -- first in forest green and then in peach. I was ambitious when I first took the table off their hands and thought I'd strip it back to it's natural state, but I didn't get too far on that project. That's what tablecloths are for, anyway. 

The people who bought the table from me were a newlywed couple who'd just moved to Chicago for graduate school. I told them about the table -- how I remembered sitting at it in my grandparents' basement when I was kid and putting together puzzles on it with my sister and cousins. I remembered when my grandparents painted it peach, painted the walls and the door frames to match.

I hung on to the cherry wood bedroom set, as well as the china cabinet. The cabinet's my favorite piece of furniture and I'm always grateful when it successfully makes it from one of my apartments to the next. It's been in four of them now. I don't remember what my grandparents kept in it when I was a kid, but I remember the way it smelled -- a mix of Pledge and wood and my grandparents' musky basement. I don't know how it's possible, but it still smells exactly the same way —on the inside, I mean. Whenever I open it — which is often since that's where I keep my wine glasses — I smell a little bit of my childhood, a little bit of how things used to be. It's something I don't think I'll ever let go of.

A Chapter Ends, A New One Begins

For two months, from the end of February until just last week, my dad had been staying in Austin,Texas, in my sister's apartment, while she recovered from an injury. He stuck around to help her, and he may go back again if she needs him, but last week he flew home to Germany so he could wrap things up at work and attend his retirement party this weekend. After over 35 years of service, my dad gets to retire from his job and he's having a big party in a castle to celebrate. 

My dad's been working in education since, like, his second or third year out of college. When he met my mom, who was a senior in college, he was teaching science at a local middle school in Indiana. But the boy from Illinois always wanted to see the world, so he applied and was accepted to the Department of Defense Dependent Schools (the schools for American military brats overseas) and a few weeks after my mom graduated, they got married and moved to Okinawa. That was in 1973. They haven't moved back to the states since.

When I was in kindergarten, we lived on a tiny Navy base on the southern tip of Korea, where my dad was the principal of my small, 3-classroom school. In the mornings, each class would stand in a single file line in front of the flag pole as my dad raised the American flag and we recited the Pledge of Allegiance. Shortly before I started first grade, we moved to an Air Force base in Japan, just outside Tokyo, and my dad became the Asst. Principal of my new, much larger elementary school. He used to wear keys to all the classrooms on a ring attached to his belt and his old, familiar jingle would alert me whenever he was close. 

I was generally a pretty good kid, but when I was in 4th grade some boy pulled one of my braids and I called him an "asshole" really loudly and was sent to my dad's office for discipline. My dad's a big guy — 6'4" and broad. Back in Japan, when my whole family did a little modeling for side work, he once got a gig playing Bluto in a Popeye print ad. At his imposing size, all he had to do to discipline a poor kid was stand next to him. After I was sent to his office, I don't think I cussed again for at least two years.

For the last, oh, 22 years or so, my dad's worked outside of the school in the superintendent's office. He retires from the position of Asst. Superintendent, and I'm really proud and happy for him that after all this time he doesn't have to wear a tie anymore. My mom plans to continue teaching for a couple more years before my parents move back to the states, so in the meanwhile, my dad's going to be a full-time house-husband — he's going to cook, clean, and even write a new blog called Retired-Ed (sounds kinda like  "retarded" if you say outloud...). If he starts drinking before noon and puts off showering until after lunch, our lives will pretty much be identical. 

Anyway, I wish I could be there this weekend to celebrate, but I'll just send my well-wishes from here. Congrats, dad — now you finally have time to clean out the attic just like you've always wanted.

Apple and the tree

My mom's going to kill me for saying this, but her emails are pretty much off-the-chart cray-cray. I can usually ascertain the level of crazy an email is going to be simply based on the time of day it's sent. Because my mom lives in Germany, where the time is 6 hours ahead of New York, anything that's sent later than, say, 5 PM my time is gonna be around a 7 on the crazy scale of 1-10. Anything after 6:30 is an 8; anything after 7:30 is a nine, and if I get an email past 8 PM my time, I basically just pop some popcorn and settle in for a bumpy ride on the crazy-coaster. Last week she sent an email at 10 PM my time (4AM in Germany) which really threw me because I didn't know if it meant she was STILL awake or awake ALREADY. Either way, that shit was insane.

Since I got engaged, I've been receiving a lot more emails and phone calls from my mom in general, but specifically more of the level 9-10 variety. These emails are generally 10 meaty paragraphs long, take about half an hour to read, and often leave me so confused and head-achey I have to take 3 Tylenol PM and a shot of whiskey just to make my head stop spinning. Usually somewhere in those emails is a request of some sort — to look at websites of two venue possibilities for the St. Louis reception and let her know which table setting I like better, or read the reviews on Amazon and tell her which book I think Drew would prefer for his birthday — but these requests are so hidden, so wrapped in nonsequitors and excessive adjectives I can never find them on a first read. Sometimes I can't even find them on a second or third read and then, 4 days later when I get an email from my mom that cryptically says "Have you had a chance to do that thing I asked?" I have to admit that I no, I haven't, because I have no idea what it is she's talking about and can she please just come out and ask for what it is she needs me to do?!

Yesterday I got a level 8 email that went on for 2 paragraphs on the questionable quality of beds in New York City hotels with a correlating spreadsheet of their Trip Advisor rankings and links to their respective websites. She pointed out that the reviews for one particular hotel said the beds were comfortable, but she thought they looked weird in pictures on the website, like they were "very, very lumpy with lumps" and wondered if maybe the springs were actually poking through the bedspreads in some of the photos. "I'd like to talk to you about this in a couple of days," she wrote. But, see, I really don't know is she wants to talk about the lumps in the beds, the likelihood of hotels posting photos of beds that have springs poking through the bedspreads, or that she'd like me to go to the hotel, ask to see a room and then lie down on one of the beds to test its lumpiness, something I've already done not once, but twice, in two other neighborhood hotels. And if that's what she wants me to do, why doesn't she just come out and say it? While I'm checking the quality of the hotel bed, I'll make sure to see if the rooms have 24-hour intenet access, too, because what in the world would my mom do if she couldn't send crazy, rambling emails to her daughter at 3 in the morning? SHE MIGHT HAVE TO ACTUALLY GO TO SLEEP, something I don't think she's done since the Carter administration.

White Winter Hymnal

I had one of the most physically and emotionally exhausting times of my life this past weekend in Austin where my sister's been in the hospital. As complicated as things are, I keep reminding myself and my family that no one's life and no one's family is without a certain degree of hardship. People get sick, accidents happen, addictions are formed, hearts are broken, jobs are lost, savings dwindle, feelings change, words are said in anger, mistakes are made, people die. It's all just part of life and debating whether certain things are fair or not is just sort of fruitless. There's a lot of shit that isn't fair.

Anyway, I can't go into the details, but I can say that my weekend involved a few tears, a little bit of laughter, a lot of anxiety, and a ton of back-breaking hard work. Most of all, though, it involved love, and that's something I'm always happy to cultivate more of in my life. Best of all, yesterday in Austin it was super sunny and 73 degrees with a light warm breeze. It reminded me that no matter how shitty a winter is, it's always followed by spring. That, and I'm going to Costa Rica in 4 days, bitches!!! Now, if only I were bikini ready...

You Take The Good, You Take The Bad

Last night Drew and I and a couple of our friends went to see the big band I've mentioned before, Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks. It was the first time we brought our friends and they loved it as much as we thought they would. When we weren't looking, they even sneakily asked Vince to play us a song in honor of our engagement, and so he did. He played a Fats Waller song — Drew's a big fan — and said, "Happy engagement to Drew and Wendy. This song's for you," and the 11-piece band played and we cheered and toasted and drank our wine and life was good.

Generally, life is pretty good. I feel luckier than I even know how to express that I found someone to marry who loves me for me and loves doing the same kinds of things I love doing and believes, like I do, that the only way to make the unbearable parts of life a little less unbearable is to enjoy the hell out of the good parts. And that's what we do, and we do it as much as we possibly can.

But life is funny. And sometimes — a lot of times — it throws the bad parts right in with the good parts and it's hard to even know how to feel when that happens.

This weekend I'm going to Austin, Texas for a sort of emergency trip, not of the pleasure variety. My sister's in the hospital and will be out of commission for quite awhile. My dad will be there (for an indeterminate amount of time) — he flies in from Germany on Friday and I'll meet up with him on Saturday and I'll try to help him as much as I can for a couple days. Neither one of us has ever even been to Austin before — my sister just moved there a few months ago. I was supposed to go in late March for a visit, but all that has changed. So I'll go this weekend instead and I'll help my dad and visit my sister and try to make a bad situation maybe a little more bearable for everyone. And then when I come home, I'll turn around a few days later and fly off to Costa Rica for a week with this guy I'm going to marry (I still can't bring myself to say "fiance," it just sounds so silly).

Life is funny like that.