Wait, what's going on?

So, I've been feeling lately like I've become an adult, and I don't like it.

I've been working hard at this new job.  I often feel at sea.  Sometimes I like it, sometimes I hate it.  Sometimes I wish I could lie around at home and do nothing.  It is not yet a habit, the way my job in New York had become.  It's work.  Sometimes it's fun, and I expect (hope) it will become even more fun as I get my feet under me, but right now, it's work.

My sweetie and I spent a huge amount of money in Italy, and so we are trying to be good.  It's hard to be good.  We were used to a carefree, high-living, high spending life in New York.  I mean, we were never huge spenders, but we didn't worry about money.  Now, we worry about money.  A friend of mine recently sent me the menu of an extremely fancy meal he recently ate, and my major reactions were: I used to have meals like that and I can't afford meals like that.  If my sweetie and I blow $60 on dinner for two we feel guilty.

Then, this weekend, we bought a house.  This is wildly exciting, and I will do an excited, squeeing post later (with pictures), but this has turned our worry about money into full-fledged panic.  Don't worry--we can afford the house, but....it's a lot of money!  And, though I owned a condo in New York, owning a house is a whole different animal.  There's the sewer line, and the yard, and the roof, and the pipes, and the electrical systems to worry about.  There's the water heater, and the furnace.  Every one of these things either needs work or needs to be monitored until such time as it will need work.  And that means even more money!

So, now I have a job that is work (and pays less than I'd like), I worry about gas prices and the cost of groceries, we're about to assume a mortgage and a house, and we're thinking kids, maybe in the next year or so.  Heck, we bought the house because of its yard and its sidewalks and the fact that it's around the corner from one of Seattle's top-rated elementary schools, so we've just committed a heck of a lot of money to the just the idea of kids.

I miss my carefree single days!  I got married and life became, well, difficult.  I know it's what I want, I love my sweetie, I'm excited to be doing all these new things, but....but geez, I think I wasn't ready to grow up just yet.....

Say cheese!

This weekend I volunteered at the Seattle Cheese Festival.

It was utterly gorgeous weather, and so the festival was packed.  I was assigned to the booths of two different cheese distributors, handing out samples and selling $5 blocks of cheese.  Yes, I snuck some tastes.

I also attended a couple seminars.

This is the plate from my second seminar, "From Curds to Consumer."  Yes, both seminars featured a plate of cheese and complementary wine.  Even turophilic me was cheesed out by the end of the weekend!

We've been back from the honeymoon for two weeks now, and have not had a moment's rest since, what with various obligations.  

I started my job the Tuesday after we returned, so I have been working and learning.  It's been interesting so far; I am not sure it's the job I hoped it would be, but it did not suck as much today as it did Friday :-).  So for now, I am sticking with it.  We are coming into the busy season, which will mean I will be working insane hours for about three weeks in June--including overnight--so that will be a trial by fire if nothing else.

The Italy trip seems very long ago now, but we had a lovely, lovely time.  I offer this photo as proof:

Yes, I am in an Italian cheese cellar.

Gulp!

Well, surprise, surprise, I accepted the first job I was offered. My streak continues.

However, I did cancel an interview with three hours notice at company #2, because I had decided to take job #1. Company #2 sounded quite disappointed, tried to persuade me to come in anyway and hear what they had to offer before making my decision, and then asked me to call them if my "plans change." Leading me to think I would have been offered job #2, also, if I had gone through with it.

I.....am freaked, actually. Job #2 would have been the safe, well-paying job with a big corporation in a business very in line with my career to date. Very familiar, very doable, very boring. Job #1 is the poorer paying job (although they offered me more than I expected, which made me happy), at a small business (15 permanent employees!) with very very few benefits. I've never worked for a small business before, and am quite boggled to hear, for example, that they don't offer any kind of paid maternity leave (yes, I asked. Just speculative). No retirement benefits, either. This is going to be a very different world.

And, did I mention, I have zero experience in the job they've hired me to do? Yikes.

My stomach is doing crazy flip-flops. I am not a risk-taker. And it has been a very, very long time since I have gone into a job with absolutely no idea of what my day-to-day work life will look like. My last four jobs were all pretty similar to the job I had before. Sure, each company had its own idiosyncratic way of doing things, but the basic activities, the way the contracts read, the way meetings were held, the way fairs were run, the way sales were made, recorded, serviced--these were basically the same. With this job, I know what the job is, but I have no idea how it gets done. I will be learning everything.

But this job is in an area I am very interested in getting into, and didn't know how I was going to convince anyone to hire me in. Just like that, I've got the entry, and I'm pretty excited, when I'm not terrified.

My sweetie and I are heading off to Italy for our delayed honeymoon tomorrow. When I come back, I will be a working woman.

Wow. I totally should have enjoyed my free time more!

Some nonsense

Meet Howard:


A few years ago, I acquired a couple random balls of fun fur yarn. I had an idea that I wanted to make my sweetie a fur lined hat. However, none of the fun fur yarns were sufficiently fur-like to realize my vision, and I also found that I hated knitting with fun fur--it's utterly impossible to find or fix mistakes or dropped stitches, and don't even think of trying to frog the stuff!

Howard is made from the last ball I had left (I turned a few others into a potato chip scarf), and as it lost its ball band long ago, I have no idea what it is, who it's made by, or even how much yarn I had. I discovered, too, that the very things that make fun fur annoying to knit with are kind of advantageous when you're making something a bit haphazard like Howard: you can make mistakes and no one will ever know :-).

This took me maybe six hours to make; I had a tiny bit of black yarn left from my long-ago alien scarf, and his eyes are buttons from my button box (consisting entirely of spare buttons from clothes I've owned), so Howard is a true scrapyard monster. I wish this picture were sharper, because his button eyes are some sort of shell, and therefore somewhat bloodshot with pink streaks.

I think he's kind of cute, actually.

Job hunting

I've been job hunting. Job hunting is my least favorite activity in the world. I would rather go to the dentist every day. I hate it.

For some reason, I have always been absolutely convinced that I am unemployable. When I was in college, I went to a group interview for Cutco knives. I honestly don't remember why I went to this interview, but I did, and I was offered the job. My mom made me turn it down, because it involved going into people's homes and demonstrating the knives. She thought this was unsafe. I remember crying, and saying, "But I got the job! No one will ever hire me for anything!"

To date it remains the only job I have ever turned down.

It's not that I don't think I'm capable or smart. I actually feel fairly confident that I could do most any job that does not require specialized education (like a doctor or rocket scientist or something). The problem is convincing someone to hire me. I absolutely believe that I am incapable of landing a job for which I am not the obvious candidate because of my experience. No one will think creatively about me. No one will even interview me to give me a shot at convincing them.

After I left grad school I spent several months in London. I had a 6-months work visa, and so was trying to find a job. I interviewed all over the place, generally for retail jobs, and couldn't land one. I was either overeducated or underexperienced, or both. Finally I got a one-month temporary Christmas season job. I took it. After it was over, I didn't even try to find another job. I goofed off for another month in London, and then continued traveling.

When I moved to New York, I found a job fairly easily, because I had gone to a publishing course over the summer. This was a way of getting a short track into the industry, a leg up on finding a job. I absolutely believe I would not have gotten a job otherwise. As it is, I only got offered one job, after I had interviewed at half a dozen, though of course this could be attributed to the fact that I took the first job I was offered.

Some years ago I was desperate to get out of my job, and I tried to apply to jobs outside of publishing. This was a miserable failure: I never even got an interview.

Every job I've gotten after that first job in publishing has been because I had directly applicable experience and, eventually, a network of people who knew me. Publishing is a relatively small world.

Now, though, I am looking for a job, outside of my little world. My sweetie and I are leaving for our honeymoon at the end of next week, and he has been encouraging me to relax until we get back, to not look for a job now. I haven't been able to listen. I am convinced I am unemployable. I got started early, because I figured this will take a very long time. I figured I would have to apply to a billion jobs to get even one interview.

Well, this week I have had interviews with two companies.

One is a job where my publishing experience is actually relevant. The other is a job for which I have absolutely no experience, but they like my resume and they are happy to train me. (Who knew companies with that attitude even existed any more? Everyone wants directly applicable experience these days; they figure if they get someone who already knows how to do the job, they won't have to train them. this is a total fantasy, but it's pervasive.)

The first job would probably pay me in keeping with my last job, and with my years of experience. The second job will pay me an entry-level salary, well below half what I was making at my last job. But the first job seems like it could be quite boring, and the second job new and interesting. I am torn.

Of course, I have not yet been offered either job, but I'm pretty hopeful about both. And, for the first time, I'm in a position where I might actually have to turn down a job. This is weird. I've always been so grateful to be offered a job, any job, that I've always said yes. But here, I'm actually a little worried that I will take the first job that offers itself just to have a job. But if I turn down both jobs, what are the chances I'll find another?

God, I hate job hunting.

Useless rant #18

It happened again.

My sweetie and I went out for sushi tonight. I opened the menu, looked at the list of a dozen or so "special rolls." I went down the list, reading the ingredients of each roll, and rejecting those which included avocado. I hate avocado.

As usual, there were only two rolls which did not list avocado. I shouldn't say "as usual"--this is actually pretty good. Sometimes there aren't any rolls without avocado.

I chose one of the avocado-free rolls. I said to the waitress, "It doesn't have avocado in it, does it?" She said, "No, I don't believe so."

The roll arrived. It had avocado in it.

This has happened more times than I can count. Avocado has apparently become a standard ingredient in sushi rolls, so standard that it doesn't even warrant mentioning on the menu. Like rice and nori, you can expect avocado in your roll. However, no one has bothered to alert waitstaff to this fact, because I am always assured that, if it doesn't say avocado on the menu, there is no avocado. Depending on my mood, I have been known to send the damned things back. Otherwise I just pick it out, grumbling the whole time.

This has happened to me many times in New York. It has now happened to me in Seattle. You know where it never happened to me? Japan. Never. Even though I could not read the menus and was often ordering by pointing, or not ordering at all, just eating whatever was put in front of me. In two weeks traveling in Japan, I ate a lot of weirdo things, but I never had avocado ever, at all, period.

It isn't authentic, and it bugs the crap out of me that it is so utterly unavoidable. My sweetie says I should just order everything "no avocado" even if the menu doesn't say it has avocado. That way, the waitress will write down "no avocado" instead of assuring me incorrectly that I needn't worry.

But for some reason, to me, it's the principle of the thing. I don't want to accept that avocado is as much a given as rice in sushi. I want to believe that avocado is an ingredient which must be listed. It baffles me that it can go unheralded, because most people like avocado; you'd think if a roll has it in it, it would be worth advertising.

Consider this useless rant #18. Actually, given how often I have cause to use it, I could move it to position #1, but I hate to admit is pisses me off that much :-).

Magic

This is Elizabeth Zimmermann's Baby Surprise Jacket:

Elizabeth Zimmermann is something of a legend in the knitting world. She wrote books in the 60s and 70s that approached knitting in a very relaxed, no-nonsense way, and she's regarded as kind of a mother of the craft as it's known today. I admit I haven't read much of her work, but I have heard about the Baby Surprise Jacket for some time, and have been determined to knit one.

I have to say, the thing is a marvel. Look at that picture above. It's a blob, right? You can't imagine how it's going to turn into a jacket, right? It's knit all in one piece; in fact, if you have a length of yarn long enough (I didn't), you could knit it all in one string--at no point do you need to cut and reattach the yarn; that in itself is cool. Not only that, even though you know it's not the case, you feel like you're knitting a big rectangle, and that both cuffs are knit on one side of the rectangle, and the buttonholes are on the other end, and you have no idea how the thing is going to rearrange itself. I consider myself fairly good with spatial visualization, but I have to admit, the jacket is well-named: the "surprise" is that it makes a jacket at all.

Voila! Here is the Baby Surprise Jacket, properly folded up:

There are only two seams on the thing, running from the neck to the cuff on top of each sleeve. There are no seams under the arms or at the sides. Furthermore, if you examine the thing, you'll find that the cast-on edge runs across the back and around each cuff, while the bind-off edge runs around the hem and up each front edge. This is cool because the cast-on edge is always stretchier, just the thing you'd want to have at the cuffs. I swear, after I finished the thing, I spent about twenty minutes just looking at it, marveling at the design.

Seriously, it's magic.

Stupid cute

I know that, according to the last post, I am knitting a yellow sweater. However, I must confess I became disenchanted with the project this weekend, and I have frogged it ("to frog" = to unravel knitting, so called because when you unravel knitting, you "rip it, rip it") and begun something else with the yarn. To console myself for a week's worth of wasted knitting, I turned to a small project, for the new baby of one of my sweetie's coworkers:

These are Old World Booties from Interweave Knits. They took about three hours each to knit, and then 30 minutes in the washer to felt. They shrank, also: they were over 5" long when they went in, huge, even for the son of a man over 6 feet, but now they are about 4" long. Still big, but not laughably so.

I am utterly enchanted with them. They are my very first felted project (finally, I live in an apartment with a top-loading washer), and they're little and fuzzy and stupid cute. I am fighting the urge to dig up every random scrap of wool in my stash and knit up another dozen.

I've already started counting the expected babies in our social circle. There will be more.

Notes from Seattle

My friend Brian sent me this:


with a note reading, "So plant 'em yourself!" A friend in need is a friend indeed.

However, check out the view from our balcony today, March 28:


Yes, yes, I know the cherry tree is lovely. But look, look to right, where I have drawn a very very dim circle (I still haven't mastered Photoshop). I know it's hard to see, I know the tree is pretty and distracting. But let me tell you: it is snowing. Hard. Big, fat, wet flakes that aren't sticking, but it's snowing. Last night I slept with three comforters on me.

I would plant the seeds anyway, since they say to plant them 6-8 weeks before last frost, but we'll be leaving on our honeymoon soon, and there will be no one to water them.

Oh, and one last shot:


I've begun knitting again. No, my shoulder isn't any better. But the latest Vogue Knitting arrived, with a pattern I had to try. And I had the perfect yarn for it. And I have nothing to do but sit around the house, unpack, job hunt, and twitch about being unemployed. And do my taxes, but doing my taxes would involve finding my files. And, you know, doing them. My hands needed occupying. This picture represents about a week's worth of knitting. I tell myself that knitting is better for my shoulder than sitting on the computer all day.

Yeah.

Miracle pill

My eyes have been itching a lot lately. I have allergies, hay fever, mostly, and the way it most affects me is in terribly itchy eyes. If it's really bad, the inside of my mouth and my tongue also itch. Sinus problems are either less severe or less annoying, I don't know. I notice the eyes the most.

For years my allergies were at their worst in May and June. But the last two years or so, I've noticed I have symptoms all year round. Since I've moved to Seattle, they've been pretty bad, especially the eyes. I'd blame it on Seattle and its plethora of flowering trees (there are two outside our building, but I am not complaining: I love flowering trees), but I have to admit I first noticed it getting unseasonably bad in New York before I left. I thought it was all the dust kicked up by my moving, but who knows? Anyway, it was so bad that on my very last day in New York, I came up with the following song celebrating my #2 Drug of Choice (#1 being Excedrin), Benadryl.

(Sung to the tune of "Spiderman")

Benadryl, Benadryl
It's my favorite miracle pill.
Clears my nose,
Clears my head,
Nothing else will do instead.
Oh yeah! Bring on the Benadryl.

Is it strong?
Listen, bud
It courses through your allergic blood.*
Takes on cats,
Takes on dust,
It's an absolute musty must.
Oh yeah! Bring on the Benadryl.

When your eyes, in Spring,
Drive you wild, 'round the bend,
You don't need a thing
But your pink little friend!

Benadryl, Benadryl
It's my favorite miracle pill.
Clears your nose,
Clears your head,
Nothing else will do instead.
Oh yeah! Bring on the Benadryl!

* This line provided by my friend Laura.

Hey, nothing else is going on right now: unpacking, unpacking, unpacking. Ugh!

Toto, we're not in NYC anymore

Photo from gourmetsleuth.com

This is broccoli rabe, also known as rapini or broccoli di rape. It's an Italian vegetable, bitter, leafy, with flowers that kind of look like broccoli. According to Wikipedia, it's related to turnips. It's an acquired taste, as it is quite bitter; for many years I didn't like it, until I learned the secret: blanch it first.

My sweetie loves broccoli rabe, and it was a staple in our New York diet: easy to cook, readily available year-round, not expensive, healthy. Saute it with garlic and olive oil and you've got a side dish; toss it with some pasta and you've got a quick and easy meal. It goes well with Italian sausage, peppers, chickpeas. When I don't have a lot of creative energy but want a tasty meal with vegetables, I choose broccoli rabe. It is a vegetable I can cook without a recipe.

For my first cooked meal in Seattle, it seemed natural to use some broccoli rabe. Imagine my astonishment, then, when I went to two grocery stores and was unable to find it. In the second grocery store, I even asked the produce guy for it, and he asked a second guy, who asked a third guy, and they all agreed that, not only did they not carry it, they'd never even heard of it. Flabbergasted would not begin to describe it. Broccoli rabe is something you can find in the crappiest grocery store (and there are many crappy grocery stores) in New York. Not having it is almost equivalent to not having spinach.

Have I mentioned there are a lot of Italians in NYC as well as Jews?

One of the fun things about moving to a new place is seeing what is different in the grocery store--in my wanderings looking for broccoli rabe, for example, I saw bok choy, something you can't get in the average store in NYC--but, wow. No broccoli rabe. I learned to love broccoli rabe in NYC, so I honestly cannot say if it was readily available in California. And I'm not saying NYC is so much better because it has broccoli rabe; I'm just...stunned. I had not realized the extent to which broccoli rabe had become my go-to vegetable until I could not go to it.

I bought mustard greens instead. They're bitter, too, but not as yummy, or as substantial, as broccoli rabe. Sigh.

The end of an era

I have moved out of my apartment.




















I feel sad.























With all my stuff moved out, the place echoes in a very lonely way.








































When I moved into this apartment, I was 29.

I lived in this apartment 8.5 years. Other than the house I grew up in, where I lived until I was 13, this is the place I have lived the longest. In many ways, I became an adult in this apartment.

It was the first place I lived alone, without roommates. Now that I am married, it may remain the only place I ever lived alone. I hope so.

It was the first place I owned.
It was the first place where I had doormen--a staff that, in a sense, worked for me.
I bought real furniture for it.
I painted the walls bright colors, because white walls scream "rented apartment" to me.
I bought shades for it, and new faucets, and a new toilet, and other things homeowners do. I caulked the bathroom sink.

While I lived here, I changed. I lost a significant amount of weight. I started to care about fashion and shoes. I read less. I exercise more. I learned to knit. I go out to eat a lot. I became a New Yorker.

While I lived here, I achieved a certain success in my career. I was no longer the assistant, I became a boss. I was an expert. I was asked for my opinion. I was considered very valuable to my employer.

While I lived here, I met a lot of men; I dated a lot. I met the man who broke my heart, and I met the man who is the love of my life.

While I lived here, I enjoyed NYC, I grew to consider it home. And I grew quite tired of its unique pressures.

On September 11, 2001, I brought my boss home with me, because she couldn't go home: the trains weren't running to the suburbs. My boss was a nasty woman, but I couldn't leave her alone in the office, so I took her home. We sat on the couch and watched the TV all day, until about 4:30 when they announced the trains were running, and she could leave. For years afterwards, people would say to me, "I heard you took so-and-so home on September 11! I couldn't imagine having her in my personal space!" But honestly, she was never nasty to me again after that.

When I bought the apartment, I had never had a serious boyfriend. I hadn't even dated much, really. Throughout my twenties, I thought I wanted to be alone for the rest of my life. When I bought the apartment, I thought there was a decent chance I would live in it until I died.

I am on such a different path than I envisioned coming to when bought this apartment.

It feels different moving out of this apartment, different from moving out of every other place I've lived. Every other place before this was temporary. I knew I would not be there long. This place was mine, it was home.

I am a little sad to leave it, even though I am excited to start the next phase of my life. I was happy here. I was, by some measures, successful here. The life I lived here was a life I knew I could do, was a person I knew I could be. It was safe. It was comfortable. I am a person who likes safe and comfortable.

It makes me wonder what I will think 8.5 years from now. What life will I have then, that I never saw coming from this end?

Times have changed

These are Ess-a Bagels. Ess-a makes my favorite bagel in NYC, and I will miss them. Today I ate what I believe will be my last Ess-a Bagel, a sesame, my favorite.

When I first moved to New York, I lived right around the corner from the Ess-a on 3rd Ave. I went there a lot, and usually got two at a time. Nowadays I go by only when I am nearby, and I only get one. They are huge, some bagel purists might say too huge, but for me they are the quintessential bagel. No other bagel in NYC is as satisfying and--I am sorry to sound like an obnoxious New Yorker, but it's true--no bagel I've had outside of NYC is even a bagel.

When I went in today, I noticed that Ess-a Bagels now cost $1. I think they were $0.95 last time I went in, but I could be wrong. Back when I lived around the corner from them, the bagels cost $0.60. I guess I have been in NYC a long time that I can track such significant inflation!

Other things that have gone up: movies. Movies were $7.50, I think, when I came to NYC in 1996. Now they are $10.50, $11 in some theatres. I remember when they went up to $8.50 (about six months after they'd gone up to $8) I was so annoyed I boycotted movies for a year. I go occasionally now, but nowhere near as often as I used to.

The subway was $1.50 when I first came here; now it's $2, and they're talking about raising it to $2.25. I actually think the subway provides a heck of a lot of service for a relatively small fee (heck, compared to Ess-a, the inflation rate on the subway is only 33% versus 67%), so I don't mind this. While I appreciate the NYC mindset that vocal complaining keeps city agencies on their toes, I do think the people who squawk loudest about how much the subway sucks and how outrageous it is should take a trip outside of NYC once in a while.

The suggested entrance fee for the Metropolitan Museum of Art was $8 in 1996. Today it is $20. Seriously. I blame MOMA: they renovated the MOMA a few years ago and reopened with a ticket price of $20, to much outrage from all sides. But people are paying it, so how could the Met not follow suit? The Guggenheim is $18. I've never been there, and will not go before I leave.

Do I sound like a crotchety New Yorker yet? Boy am I old, complaining about how much things used to cost! I mean, while I'm at it, I might as well complain about postage ($0.32 compared to $0.41), although like the subway, the post office provides a service that is easy to complain about, but is pretty darned impressive if you really think about what is provided for the price. But they might have done better to increase the rate all at once instead of bringing out another increase so soon after the last one. It's a PR problem as much as anything.

Finally, to get back on the subject of round bread, even more than bagels, I will miss bialys. Bialys are kind of a cross between English muffins and bagels, and they are pretty unique to New York. I once read that bialys are not made anywhere else in the world but New York; no one really knows where they came from, but the theory is they were brought here by Jewish immigrants, possibly from Bialystok, Poland. But if you go to Bialystok today, you will not find bialys, because, well, the bialys were lost along with the Jews. But if you go into any deli in NYC, even ones run by Koreans, you will find bialys.

In some ways that are not always obvious, New York City is very, very cool.

Reviews

It is customary on bridal websites for brides to review their vendors for others' information. Here are my reviews of my major vendors:

Venue/Battery Gardens: A+
I can’t say enough about Battery Gardens. First of all, the space is gorgeous, with spectacular views of the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and New York Harbor. It was also very affordable, by NYC standards, because we chose a date in February. Finally, the food is terrific, Asian-influenced and very well presented. And, they have the option of having Peking Duck, which I adore. With just these things I would have been happy, but in addition, their staff is excellent, and extremely professional. Alex, the Catering Manager, made sure he knew all of the details I wanted, and took care to arrange everything the way I requested. Eddie, our Maitre d’ for the evening, kept everything running smoothly and on schedule. The wait staff was unobtrusive and kept my water glass filled (my major criteria for table service, since I drain water glasses at a rate of about one every ten minutes). Most of all, I really felt that they wanted the wedding to be exactly as I wanted it—that it was a point of pride for them that everything ran seamlessly without causing me any grief or worry. They succeeded in this, and I appreciated it so much. I can’t recommend them highly enough.

Officiant/Julie Laudicina: A+
Julie is a secular celebrant, and she proved that a wedding needn’t be religious to be meaningful. Everyone was raving about our ceremony throughout the night, something I don’t think I’ve heard at other weddings I’ve been to. She created something very personal and moving, and that captured our personalities perfectly. Many, many guests told us it made them tear up, because she really made it clear what it was that we felt for each other and how special the day was to us. Julie began writing the ceremony back in November, when she sent us a detailed questionnaire for us to fill out separately. Then we reviewed drafts of the ceremony, refining it via email and a phone conversation until it was pretty good. Then, she delivered it in such a way that it became perfect: I was struck by how much more special the ceremony sounded when she spoke it over how it had read on the page. It really was exactly what we wanted, and it set the tone for the entire evening of celebration with the people we love. I actually think, now that I’ve gone through it and heard the feedback from our guests, that nothing personalizes your wedding more than a personalized ceremony done right. No one commented on any of the details I slaved over—the Blurb guestbook, the postcard table names, the travel mug favors, etc.—the thing they all talked about was the ceremony.

Flowers/Antheia Floral Design: A
When I started calling florists for the wedding, I quickly realized that my demands were going to be challenging: I wanted red flowers three days after Valentine’s Day, and I did not want to spend more than $2,000. Only three florists did not laugh at me, and only two had proposals that did not look like they were cheap. I chose Angie at Antheia because she seemed calm and her aesthetic suited my style better. I wasn’t disappointed. Not only did she do very pretty centerpieces and a bridal bouquet I loved, she came in more than $200 under budget. Angie was hugely busy in the week before my wedding because of Valentine’s Day, but I never felt that she had forgotten about me or that I was an afterthought. Because I ended up with fewer guests than I had originally expected, we made some last minute changes to the plan and she was accommodating and helpful. Furthermore, when I was really not sure what I wanted the bridesmaids’ bouquets to look like, she offered some great suggestions and created something pretty with very little guidance from me.

Hair/Stacy Pitt: A
Stacy gets lots of raves and they are deserved. I had two trials with her, one almost a year ago when I first hired her and one just a few weeks before the wedding. She is so calm and cares so much about making her brides beautiful, not just for her own professional reputation but I think because she wants brides to be beautiful. My hair was not behaving on the day of the wedding: Stacy had to take it down and start again three times, and we got very behind schedule. I think she was more upset about stressing me out than I was stressed. In the end, because the style we had decided on in the trial just wasn’t working, Stacy created a fallback style on the spot, and it looked great and stayed perfect throughout the night. You would never have known it wasn’t what we had planned. In addition, Stacy made my mom and my bridesmaid Laura, who both have short hair and figured there was nothing to do with their hair, look elegant and flirty and terrific.

Makeup/Laura Nadeau: A+
Laura also gets lots of thoroughly deserved raves. Like Stacy, I get the impression that Laura loves brides and loves being able to make them beautiful. She’s also a lot of fun to have around when you are getting ready. She was faced with four women (me, my mom, and my two bridesmaids) who rarely if ever wear makeup (she was astonished that my mother, at 72, had never used any eye makeup. Ever), and she handled the task perfectly and made all of us look beautiful but natural. She hung around well after the makeup was done to help however she could in the last moments before the ceremony. When my MIL’s corsage broke, she sat down and tried to fix it with a safety pin. It was like having another girlfriend around to gossip and laugh and help. She was great.

DJ/Expressway Music, David Swirsky: B+/A-
This is tough review to write as I think there were a few things with the space that made the music challenging. Battery Gardens is a huge room, and we had only 100 guests, so the dance floor felt very far away. Dave had to work pretty hard to keep anything going on the floor, and mixed it up quite a bit. It was a great mix of Motown, 80s music, hip-hop, a little big band, and everyone felt included. Several of our guests commented that the music was great. Dave absolutely respected our “do not play” criteria (no line dances, no breakup songs, no “Celebration”). However, there were a couple songs we specifically requested he play that he didn’t, and we were a bit disappointed, though he explained that these were decisions he made in an attempt to keep the dancing going, and we had emphasized that dancing was our biggest priority. As far as the guests were concerned, the music was great and helped create a good party atmosphere. Alas, I think because of the space the music was more of a background, and I'm not sure how we could have fixed this, honestly. I do want to say that Dave himself was great, my husband and he really connected, and he obviously loves music and what he does.

Photographer/Agaton Strom: A
This is a provisional grade, since I haven’t yet seen any of the photos :-). But we were really, really happy with Agaton, who was there from early in the day until the end of the wedding, traveling from Battery Gardens where the groom and groomsmen were decorating, to the hotel where I was getting ready, and back to Battery Gardens for the wedding. He was very professional and unobtrusive, but whenever I turned around he seemed to be there, capturing the action. The bunch of us piled into two cabs to go from the hotel to the venue, and Agaton was in a different cab from me, yet when I got there, he was waiting to catch me emerging. He even offered, at the end of the night, to pop in to our brunch the next day for half an hour, since it was just a few blocks from his studio, to sort of capture the end of the wedding, and when we arrived he was there, shooting us coming down the street. He was generous and good humored, and we were really happy to have him. I can’t wait to see the pictures!

Video

Darn, do I hate myself in video. But if you are curious, my fabulous makeup artist, Laura Nadeau, has a short video of me on her blog. We are discussing my necklace(s), which were eBay purchases and hung on my neck backwards :-). You may recall my necklace obsession. This is what came of it.

Laura Nadeau

We're married!

Well, we are married. Funny, I don't feel much different :-). My sweetie leaves for Seattle again tomorrow, so I think it might not really hit me until I get to Seattle myself.

I think the wedding went really well, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. *I* certainly had fun!

Here are a few pictures taken by the husband of our officiant.

All pics by Joe Laudicina






The last pic is with our officiant, Julie Laudicina, who was wonderful. She created a ceremony that was very personal, funny, touching, and really captured us. All of our guests were raving about it all evening. She was great.

New friends?

My sweetie has finally arrived for the wedding. One week to go: I can't wait!

(For the curious, the 10-day forecast predicts morning clouds and afternoon sun for the day. Whee!)

Tonight we worked on the seating chart. What a bear! We will have tables of ten, and we kept producing logical groupings of seven or nine. Then there's the question of whether we should seat people entirely with people they know, or if we should mix it up? And what about the people who know nobody? What about the handful of people we don't even know? And, of course, you never want people to feel like they're at the boondocks table, so far from the head table that they are obviously second class. Since our wedding is small and we are truly happy to see pretty much everyone, we don't want anyone to feel slighted. We mitigated this problem (somewhat), by seating ourselves smack in the middle of the room :-).

We arrived at a "final" arrangement three different times, but I think we are done now, if only because we're both sick to death of the task. Some tables are logical groupings of my people, some of his people, and we're pretty pleased that we've come up with several tables which are a nice mix of both sides.

The funny thing is, we are having a buffet dinner, so I honestly think people will be sitting at these tables for, at most, an hour. Seriously, can't anyone make stupid small talk in a group of ten for an hour? So I don't know why this was such a struggle. I guess we just want everyone to be happy. But, as with most things with this wedding, I could only sweat so much over the task before I called it done. Bridezilla, I still am not.

But I am soooo excited! It finally hit me three days ago that I am getting married. This isn't just some big party I've been planning, it's, well, a wedding.

I've started checking the weather

Happy Groundhog Day! Apparently Staten Island Chuck and Punxsutawney Phil disagree on whether we will have six more weeks of winter. In less than six weeks I will be Seattle, so: I really don't care :-).

I do care, though, about the weather on my wedding day. Here is what I would consider ideal: clear days for the two or three days leading up to my wedding (so that people who are traveling have no trouble), and then a freak snow once the wedding starts, with big, fat, photogenic flakes. I even bought myself a red Asian paper umbrella just in case: if it snows, I am going outside for pictures!

Alas, I think it is far more likely that, if we have precipitation, it will be rain. It doesn't snow terribly often in NYC--I really think the city produces so much heat it changes the weather. New York in the rain is a pain in the butt, so I definitely don't want rain. Happily, February is the driest month in NYC, so our chances are decent. How do I know this last fact?

Weather.com, of course:

Average monthly temperatures and precipitation
Averages highs and lows for every day in February
The forecast for the next ten days

When we first booked a February wedding, my dad expressed concern about the weather. But he has lived in California for twenty years, and his formative experiences of a city winter occurred in Chicago. I can understand why it scares him. I was not overly concerned. I considered getting wedding insurance just in case a large number of our guests missed the wedding because of weather, but decided it wasn't worth it.

This doesn't stop me, though, from checking the weather. I just want to know, you know? What will the day look like? Will I have to bring my galoshes? Which coat will I have to wear? Will we have a glorious sunset or just clouds?

I wish it were the 7th so I could get a (highly inaccurate) ten-day forecast that covers my day. Seriously. I wanna know.

The three-veil bride

If you spend any time on wedding blogland and on wedding message boards, you eventually run into the concept of the "two-dress bride." This is bride who buys one dress, then, in the course of her planning, realizes she hates it/doesn't look good in it/wants a ivory dress, not a white one. So she buys another dress. If you've ever wondered why there are so many unworn, unaltered designer wedding dresses on eBay, offered by normal people instead of sample sale liquidators, that's one of the reasons.

I have to say, I'm appalled by the idea of the two-dress bride. Wedding dresses are not cheap. This is a world where a $1,000 dress is considered "budget." Sure, you can get dresses for less, but these two-dress brides are not usually shopping at David's Bridal. If I spend that much money, I am a) going to be damned sure I love the dress before I put down any money, and b) going to keep loving the dress, I don't care how many other dresses drape their temptations before me.

However, I now must admit that I am a three-veil bride. You might remember the lovely cathedral-length veil I scored back in June. But I was never fully committed to it: I wasn't sure I wanted a veil, and I really feel a cathedral-length veil is really appropriate for, well, a cathedral.

So I started thinking about what I really wanted in a veil. My primary requirement was that it not cost a lot. As I've mentioned previously, I just can't justify spending a lot of money on a bit of tulle and lace that I am going to wear for an hour at most.

I bought some tulle and started fooling around. With some lace I bought off of eBay, I produced this:


This was actually a pain in the butt to sew. It took several days, a broken machine, and a lot of cursing. Fitting a straight lace to the edge of a circle involved a lot of careful cutting and pinning and fussing. But it turned out kind of nice.


The funny thing is, trying on a veil over street clothes just isn't helpful. I put on this lacy thing, and it was too much. It looked stupid and oddly like a communion veil.

So last night, after all the work I'd put into veil #2, I made myself a third veil, a simple square of tulle. Muttering to myself, "Geez. I'm a three-veil bride."

But, see, I decided to make it last night because I had my final fitting of the dress today. I took both the lacy circle veil and my plain square with me. And while I was standing there on Kiki's dais resplendent in gorgeous silk, I tried them both on.

And what do you know? The plain square was too plain. My dress has no embellishments--no beads, no lace, no pintucks or pleating. It's just a smooth fall of silk. The plain square just disappeared next to it. But the lacy circle looked beautiful. Even Kiki said so, even though I'm sure she could see it had been sewn by an amateur :-).

So, we have a winner. Maybe I can stop my obsessive veil-making. Though I do still have enough tulle for maybe two more.....

Next up: I take the veil to my second (yes, second--I may be committed to my dress, but other components are still up for grabs) hair trial.

Let's get physical

I've never been someone who loved exercise. Never.

You remember those Presidential Physical Fitness tests we had to take in gym at school? I always regarded those as a vehicle for gym teachers to express their contempt for out-of-shape kids. It literally never occurred to me as a child that these tests were meant to actually measure something and perhaps be used as a teaching tool. Certainly they were never used that way: when I couldn't hold that flex-arm hang for the minimum-to-avoid-being-labeled-dead 4 seconds, the gym teacher's lip curled, he looked at me with contempt, and turned his back, never to speak to me again. I used to be vaguely puzzled and hurt that President Ford thought it was a good thing to single out weak kids for sneers and ridicule.

When I was in sixth grade we had an Assistant Teacher in gym. She was crazy, one of those fitness freaks who thinks screaming abuse at you will motivate you to work. She would shriek at me and my weak friends, "No pain, no gain!" I remind you: we were 10. One day we had to run a mile. At the end, I was tired. No, I was exhausted. I was also walking. She ran up to me, leaned into my face, and began screaming abuse at me, about how I should run, how I shouldn't be lazy fat cow. Pushed to my limits after days or weeks of this, I muttered, "Shut up." She flipped out. She ordered me to go straight to locker room. As I left the gym, she apparently thought I had stuck my tongue out at her (I hadn't) because she screamed, "If I see that tongue one more time, I will rip it out of your head!"

I got detention for telling her to shut up. She, no doubt, continues to verbally abuse children to this day. Unless the cutting of school funding has resulted in her being unemployed and homeless.

One can only hope.

Anyway, I've flirted occasionally with exercise since then. In 2002 I lost a large amount of weight, and tried to incorporate exercise into my efforts. But I never enjoyed it, and when it didn't seem to have any weight-loss effect (I didn't lose weight any faster when I exercised than when I didn't), I stopped.

But, with the wedding looming, like many brides I began to think maybe some toning might be in order.

In September, I took up Reformer Pilates. I'd tried mat Pilates before, and hated it, but I had long been curious about the reformer machine. To my amazement, I love it. It is the only exercise I have ever tried where I come out of it energized. I had always thought this was a myth, because exercise had previously only made me exhausted and miserable. Pilates energizes me; it soothes me. When I am stressing out about my life, it's the only thing that calms me down.

Still, though I definitely started developing abs (abs!), my body shape wasn't changing. Pilates is not cardio. It's about flexibility and strength training, not about weight loss. Then in December I visited my seamstress Kiki for the second fitting on my dress, and she is making it fit like a second skin. Don't get me wrong: it looks gorgeous, but I cannot gain a pound between now and the wedding, and if I can do something about that lower belly pooch, now would be the time to do it.

So when I read this article about Physique 57, which promised to reshape my body in no time flat, I decided to try it out.

I can't say I love it, I'll be honest. I find it exhausting. I leave class with shaky legs, and my muscles are sore for days after. It doesn't soothe me so much as distract me. But, despite the fact that it doesn't energize me, I have apparently become addicted. I go three or four times a week (so far--it's only been two weeks :-), and I get anxious if I have to skip too many days in a row. I am clearly obsessed with looking good in that dress! I haven't lost any inches yet, but that pooch is looking a bit flatter. Even my sweetie noticed when he was visiting last weekend. Yes, I find it hard to believe it did that much for me in a week, but combined with months of Pilates, I guess my stomach really is getting tightened up.

I've got 25 days between now and the wedding to turn myself into a sleek, elegant bride. I know it's not possible. I know elegant is not my look: the best I can do is cute. Still, I aspire to elegance, and I am going to come the closest I've ever come on my wedding day. I am determined.

I still can't do that flex-arm hang, though.