Family Fragmentation, or How Do We Get Down the Aisle?

Okay, guys – there is a topic that I have been avoiding in all this wedding talk: parents in the wedding.

We are sort of a fragmented family, and we have not always been this way. Fancee’s and my families are fragmented in different ways, too, and that makes it hard to always understand where the other person is coming from. I have two parents who have recently separated, and are undergoing the painful process of examining their marriage through a new lens, and figuring out how to handle their relationship. Of course, this also affects our (my siblings’ and my) relationships with them, and our relationships with our significant others. I’ve talked about this a little before, so I won’t go into it too much here.

Fancee has one parent. She has her mother, and her only other family is her grandfather.

Fancee's Family: Mom, Grandpa, Fancee

Here’s how this all relates to our wedding (besides, you know, weddings are about family, blah blah blah): I would love to have our families walk us down the aisle. I love the symbolism and ritual not of “handing off” from father to husband (um, obviously not applicable here), but of branching off of one family to form a new family. I love the idea of walking in with the family that raised you and walking out with the family you are creating. I love inviting your community to affirm and – in whatever way is appropriate for them – bless this change, and to show the change, to really have a representation of that in the ceremony.

Parents walking their daughter to her new family.

(source)

The thing is, we’re just not sure how to do it.

We could walk ourselves down the aisle, and I suppose that has some symbolism – coming from our own individual places and then joining together as a family… I could get behind that. We could walk in with our moms – but then does Dad feel left out? Walk in with siblings? Well, Fancee doesn’t have any siblings.

Who better to ask than the diverse and wedding-invested members of the internet? What have you done? If you haven’t done it, what are you thinking of doing?

On the plus side: someone asked recently if one of our families was the “primary” family and it made me realize how much we are making ourselves the primary family. We are definitely supported by all three of our parents, and by my siblings, and by our close friends. But now I feel like we are pulling each other closer – this is where our family will be, and this is the sturdiest place to lean on right now. And I think that that is something of a blessing in itself.

Photo by Bette Yip

(Uh, yes, we did have professional family photos done with our dog. We are so dorky! And cute, right? Right? Doesn’t Daphne look good at least?)

Detail Nemesis

Okay, I know – I know! – I’ve said plenty of times that the details don’t matter, it’s about the relationship, blah blah blah. And it is. I absolutely do not rescind that sentiment. However, one still kind of needs the details.

As you know if you’ve read anything about me, met me, or probably seen a picture of me, my Detail Nemesis is clothing.  Luckily, I’ve got that whole wedding dress thing figured out, and my custom-made-from-Etsy suit should be arriving in the mail in a couple of weeks.  In the meantime, my Detail Nemesis is more specific: shoes.

I have written many a post on shoes, and “is this one okay? How about this? Here is what I really like.”  And I am always met with someone saying, “THAT IS THE WORST IDEA YOU EVER HAD” or “They have to be white!” or “Do what you want, but I think those don’t go,” or “I’m saying they’re fine with my words, but my wrinkled forehead and sneer indicate that I have other feelings.”

I bought these shoes, because I loved them…

(source)

and then I realized that the heels were just too much for me. Luckily my sister also loved them and she is their new proud owner.

Then I found these shoes…

(source)

… and then I saw their price tag.  Oh well.

But you guys – I finally did it. I found some shoes.

I was being stubborn and insisting that I could find one pair of shoes to wear with both dress and suit.  This was hard because 1. I have no idea what my suit actually looks like, and 2. No one approved of any of my choices for both outfits.

Then, in a freak occurrence, I found some shoes that I liked and of which various family members approved:

And I was all prepared to be happy with these. They’re nice enough, they’re comfortable, they were only $30… and then I found these:

Oooh Pretty Shoe!

Shoe, I find it pleasant to look at you.

You make me feel silly and happy, Shoe.

Friends, readers, friendly or less-friend people of the Internet, please don’t tell me you don’t like these shoes.  I am too faint of heart to continue my search, and honestly? I really, really like these shoes.  They are a little bit oxford-esque, which I really like, and still feminine.  They have the teeniest, tiniest wedge (see picture here) and they’re way comfortable.  I am so happy.

So the plan is to wear these with my suit (which is dark brown and will be here in a few weeks/a month) and wear the Rocket Dogs with my dress.  Though I strongly suspect that I will end up barefoot, and I am quite happy with that.

What is your Detail Nemesis?  Or even your clothing nemesis?  Guys, I can do tanktops, I can do shorts, I can even do dresses, but if they’re not Chacos or Keens, shoes are not my friends.

day o’ puppies

omg you guys we got a puppy!

her name is macaroni, and she and daphne are in love.  she is a catahoula leopard dog/bulldog mix and she is six months old.

oh, and also, we only got her for the day.

really, she is not ours.  she belongs to my coworker kim, who kindly lent us her puppy so that our dogs could wear each other out, and we could be happier people at the end of the day.

so, daphne and macaroni are best friends.  they play at a similar level and are right in the same place as far as dominance/submission go – communication was awesome, and fun was had.

kiss on the cheek

this made me feel a lot better after an incident a couple of weeks ago that i did not blog about – but better late than never, right?

so what happened is that we have a bad dog.

vicious beast (just playing here - even play looks scary sometimes)

except not.  seriously, daphne is the best dog ever, as long as you don’t want to hang out in public with your dog or let people pet her or go to places where there are other dogs. or people. or inanimate objects. i’m exaggerating, but not by much.

anyway, we went to a dog park that we used to frequent regularly with the Beast.  There was an 11 month old pit puppy there (cute!) and two older yorkies.  when daph sent the signal that she was nervous (ears back, showing teeth, tail between the legs, cowering), the puppy backed off.  the two yorkies, however, kept jumping on her, their owner watching from a distance.  finally, daph jumped on one of them and was snarling, but not hurting it – i grabbed her around the waist and pulled her away, fully expecting the yorkies’ owners to do the same. of course, she didn’t – and now two little dogs were jumping on my restrained dog.

and then my restrained dog did a bad thing: she swung around to tell that dog to GET OFF HER, and i leaped back – letting go – and there was a scuffle and when it seemed safe, i pulled daphne away, and we got her out of there right quick.  and i said, “is everyone ok? is everyone’s dog ok?”  and the yorkies’ owner had finally managed to find the time to come over and said, “i don’t know who did it, but my dog is bleeding.”

to shorten the story, her dog was bleeding from its ear – very superficial wound, but bleeding quite a bit.  it didn’t seem to bother the dog. in all likelihood, it was my dog who did it.

ugh.

anyway, she left, we left, no one wanted names or anything, but i felt shaken.  can daphne handle being around other dogs? can we take her out in public? is this one of those things where first it’s a little dog who doesn’t understand another dog saying “i’m having a hard time right now” but next time it’s a little kid who doesn’t understand dog language at all?

anyway, today macaroni came over to play.  and they were BEST FRIENDS.

bffls

so i’m feeling a little better. as i thought before, daphne is not a “dog-aggressive” dog.  she’s just a dog who is going to follow through if you don’t listen to her the first or second time around when she says she needs space; and along those lines, she’s a dog who needs her humans to make sure they give her the appropriate space and monitor her interactions better than we did then.  she needs space to get away, and she needs attentive humans around.  so that’s totally on me.

at the end of the day today – a fabulous day, might i add – i said to Turtle, “was having two dogs really as bad as you thought?” because i thought it went well, and we ended up with an exhausted dog at the end of the day (napping and dreaming at my feet as i write this).

i expected her to say, “not at all! i was surprised at the simplicity of it! let’s get a puppy soon!”  um, not so much. instead, her response was, “YES.”

turtle, all "whyyyy did you do this to me???"

oh well.

Full of Sass, or Finally Writing About Wedding Planning

Apparently, I am not talking enough about my wedding.

ugh, wedding planning. can't someone else be in charge of that?

“Blah blah blah, Bird, your relationship is good and nice job with all that work, but can we please talk about the important things?” you said, dear anonymous reader/commenter person. You said, “I want to hear about what really matters. Like the planning of your wedding.”

By which I assume, commenter of mine, you mean napkins.  You mean which chairs we picked and how we picked them, and what our invitations look like.

I have two important responses to this:

1. This wedding is about a freakin’ relationship.  It’s not about the napkins! And I think that there are plenty of resources out there for people who want to talk about napkins and chairs, and I have little interest in being one of those resources.  I think that there could stand to be a lot more resources talking about our relationships and what is hard about them and how we get through that.  I think that there should be more emphasis on planning for the marriage, and more posts about how people wrote their vows.  We already get enough of “YOU NEED A DRESS FOR YOUR MOST IMPORTANT DAY (and it must make you flutter!).”  Give me some of the, “Here’s how we were realistic in the writing of our vows while maintaining hope and romance.” Give me some, “Here’s how to revel in this day that is one of your many important days, but for sure not the only one.”
2. Um, the other reason you haven’t really been hearing so much about the planning of our actual wedding is day is because. Um.  We haven’t really been doing any.  Ooh look a pretty bird!

this here is the *actual* to-do list I wrote this weekend. very helpful.

So here’s what happened: we hit a point where it’s just about waiting.  We are waiting for and on a lot of things, like for my muslin suit to come in the mail and then for them to make the actual cloth version of it; for our invitations to be put together; for someone to make a decision about what favors we’re going to do, and then for someone to make those favors.

Okay, so a lot of what we’re waiting for would happen if we would stop waiting for it.

But there it is, folks – the reason you haven’t heard much about our wedding planning is because we’re just not doing it.  We are still settling into our new home, which is coming along nicely.  We are trying to be nice to each other.  We are trying to stay friends with our friends, and to make enough money to get by.  You know, we are living our life, and wedding planning is fun, and being prepared for our big wedding day is important, but it is not at the top of the list right now, and that is okay with me.

There are, though, some things you can look forward to hearing about soon:

• Our invitations! They are in the process of happening. By which I mean that our designer/awesome friend Lisa is waiting (again, we’re in a waiting stage right now) to hear from us about what we want the invitation to say.  And we are waiting to be inspired? Sorry, Lisa.
  

  potential phrases for our invites... i like "our awesome life" in there somewhere.

• My shoes! I found some! This post will not be exciting, but look! Wedding related!
• Um… our chairs? No, just kidding. Not something I care about.
• Favors! We’re waiting… to have time to make them?  Whatever they end up being, they are for sure something I am excited about, and something I hope our guests are excited about, too.
• Possibly a bridal shower, but at the very least a picture of the pretty, pretty invitation I got for it.
• Bridesmaids dresses. OMG you should be on the edge of your seat by the time you get to this point in the list.

MOH sisterface *loves* bridesmaid dresses! especially this one!

Oh, and here’s a question for you, reader who did not anonymously comment but might actually have nice things to say: Are you at all interested in reading about our budget?  Because I imagine that such a post will be agonizingly boring to write, but I always found it helpful and interesting to see other peoples’ budgets. Or will you just judge me? Yes, I am spening $500 on our venue.  It’s rough leading my life. Really.

if you need me, i'll be hiding under the covers. possibly reading about marriage. but definitely not about weddings.

Feeling a little sassy tonight? Why yes, thank you.  Please comment and tell me about your favorite part of wedding planning, and, if you’re feeling ambitious, tell me something you want to read about.

Ode to my Dogwalker Three Months Before Our Wedding Day

I love you because you walk the dog.

I love you because you occasionally slip up and forget to insist that she is my dog,
rather than our dog.
I love that you are silly with her –
I love that you remind me to be silly with her.
I love that when I say I have to do something, you say,
“Wait, play with the dog first! I want to watch you play!”

I love this because while you like dogs just fine,
I’m not sure you ever wanted one – yet
you were willing to get excited about one for me.
I love you because in seeing how important this dog is to me,
you show me that you see my hopes and dreams, and
you’ll help me get them.

I love that even though you got stuck walking the dog
the day after she had that horrible meal and left a
green smelly mess all over the yard, you only complained
about “the” dog and didn’t pin it on me.

You’ve taken the dog along with my inability to dust,
my knack for making piles around the house,
and my desire to be in bed early every night. You’ve taken the dog
along with my occasional inability to tell you what is wrong,
but to take it out on you anyway.
You’ve taken this big bouncy dog even though your cat hates her.

The way you love this dog tells me, over and over, that you love me
and you’ll take what comes.

Let’s get married three months from today, okay?

We’ll leave the dog at home.

P.S. I don’t really think of you as my dog walker. I just thought it was a clever title. And I knew it would get you a little riled up.

Quick, I have to lose 30 pounds, I’m getting married!

Once I finally agreed to tell facebook that I was female, I began getting weight loss ads on my sidebar.  Do any of you remember the muffin top ad?  It said something like, “Look like this? You should probably stop eating, you horrible, horrible person.”

Well, ever since I admitted on facebook that I am engaged, it has gotten worse, because now there’s an in.  Of course the way I look right now is not good enough for my wedding.  I desperately, desperately need to lose weight. Desperately.

zomg, clearly way fat.

But seriously, I know I’m not fat to start with.  Really, I know this.  But you hear it enough and you’re like, well, maybe I do need to lose a little weight.  Because you were already kind of thinking about it.  You’re happy and in love, and therefore you’re fat.  That’s why you hear about “fat, happy, and in love.”  You’re not trying to impress anyone anymore, and you’re eating reguarly with someone else.  Where before you might have skipped dinner or had a bowl of cereal, now someone else will remind you it’s dinnertime, and then you’ll eat real, horrible food, like pasta. And bread. Oh the carbs.

Okay, who am I kidding?  Two nights ago we had broccoli for dinner, and I think the night before that we had ice cream.  Delicious Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.  Being in love is awesome.

Let’s back this up, say, five years or so.  Five years or so ago, I weighed 127 pounds, steady.  On skinny days where I forgot to eat meals or was trying to lose weight for coxing, I would weight 126, and on fat days I would weight 128.  The point is, 127 was a healthy weight for me.  It’s at the higher end of the spectrum for my height, but it was clearly the right weight for me.

Last time I went to the doctor, I weighed 11 pounds more than that.  I can tell you, 138 pounds is not healthy for my height.  Sorry, self – this will not do.

So here’s the thing, stupid Facebook ads – I do need to change my body.  And fine, my wedding is a good motivator.  But I refuse to lose my muffintop, if I have one.  I refuse to take before-and-after pictures.  But I want to feel good.  I want to feel healthy, and I want to feel like I look good.  So here’s the plan:

My goal is to reach my healthy self weight sometime before I get married.  Because without a timeframe, a goal feels less achievable. And really, it doesn’t matter what size I am, as long as I feel good.  So ice cream for dinner is okay, sometimes, as long as I’ve eaten well the rest of the day.  And eaten well doesn’t mean skipping meals, it means eating intentionally – when I’m hungry, I’ll have veggies  or fruits, or a deliberately put-together meal.  When I’m not hungry, I won’t eat.  I already ride my bicycle to work every day, but it’s only 1.8 miles round trip, so I’m going to try to add in 20 minutes of exercise three times a week. Right now I get up and poke around the internet for 40 minutes while I eat and drink tea.  Self, you can eat and drink tea in 20 minutes! The rest of the time is not for sleeping anymore – it’s for running or bicycling (or rollerskating!).

exercising is fun, remember?

I know we all get this pressure in a million different ways from a million different places, and it’s so not fair that so much gets piled onto this “one day” that is “the most important day of our lives.”  Because while it’s up there on the list, I’m not willing to put that much stock in it, and I also think that no one but me and possibly Turtle will be able to tell if I lose two inches from my waist.  But I think people will notice if I’m comfortable, and confident, and if I am those things, I don’t need to worry about how my hair looks or what color my shoes are*.

How are you responding or how did you respond to the pressure to “be better” for your wedding?  What are your thoughts?  A lot of people are talking about it recently, but no one is saying, “Screw it all, I’m going to be exactly how I am right now!”  I wish I could be the one to say that, but instead I’m letting my wedding motivate me to achieve goals I half-assedly set awhile back.

*ugh. I still don’t have shoes. Someone please find me some, thanks.

Rock Bottom, and Coming Up for Air

Last night I dreamt that I was terribly, horribly depressed. I couldn’t quite pick up my head, and I was so embarrassed about letting myself get to this point that I refused to go to therapy. Luckily, my fiancee, awesome even in my dreams, made me go, and in my dream I just sat there, resting my head on the arm of the couch, feeling miserable… and yet, already feeling better, because I was working on it.

This isn’t too far off from my actual experiences, and it’s something I’ve talked about a little bit before.  As Angie points out,”We’re not just people planning weddings, we have so many other things going on (from the fun stuff like derby to the not so fun stuff like the feelings).”  Because this is so true, and because it took me so long to finally find and start seeing a therapist, I want to talk about it a little bit more.

Two things happened that made me start therapy:

1. I really, really felt that I needed to see someone; and
2. Two nice, normal, sane people mentioned that they had fantastic therapists.  And they mentioned it casually, off-hand… like, of course they have therapists! Of course they are fabulous!  And I remember a little hiccup in my mind, like, “Wait, what? You can do that? How can I do that?”

I should admit that I didn’t just one day up and go because suddenly it seemed normal and I was brave.  I had been thinking for awhile that I should see someone, that things probably weren’t quite right with my brain or my hormones or my memories, and that I had things to talk about with someone who knew something.  But there was no catalyst, nothing to make it really okay (to myself) for me to go, until I was working at the rape crisis center.

Oddly enough, I started reading wedding blogs right around the time I started therapy.  What? Happy things, people! Take what you can get!

I found the person I found on a friend’s recommendation, and I liked her from the start.  We talked about the things that came up at work for a good four months before we were able to move onto other things, life things, history things.  In November, I suddenly became incredibly depressed.  It lasted for a week or two, but it seemed much longer than that.  When I think back to it, everything in my memory seems dark, everything in shadows.  I remember riding my bicycle through a busy intersection and considering turning into an oncoming car.  Not a thought that I am proud of, in retrospect, but a thought that crossed my mind and speaks to the darkness of that brief period.

And because I had been seeing my therapist for months before that, she saw it.  She saw right away that I was not myself, and she drew connections that I had been incapable of seeing, and she told me to stop the birth control I had started a month or two earlier… and within days I things were light again.

The point of that story is that I set this whole thing up for one reason and it possibly saved my life when something unrelated came up.  Seriously, kids, therapy is awesome.

Here are my big therapy points (taken only from my personal experience):

1. It can help anyone, for any reason. If your reason is that you feel sad on Mondays, go. Talk about how Mondays make you sad.  That may morph into some professional insecurities, or concerns you have about your best friend, or wondering why you always end up wearing just one sock, underwear, and a sweatshirt every morning – your therapist can help you figure these things out.  It’s like magic.  It’s like going to the gym for your brain.
2. FIND SOMEONE YOU LIKE. I liked my therapist from the first visit, even though it took me a long time to get comfortable enough to talk about a lot of things.  I have no clue what I would have done if I didn’t like her and kept going.  Along these lines:
3. If you don’t like the person you find, that doesn’t mean therapy sucks. See #2.  Keep looking.  Ask friends for recommendations; ask friends to ask their therapists for recommendations.
4. In my experience, therapy won’t give you the answers. Really, I’ve asked.  I think I said, “Okay, so that’s what’s going on.  Now fix it. That’s your job, right?”  Um, my therapist laughed at me.  And then helped me to figure out how I could best handle the situation.  It’s not about getting someone to understand you, necessarily – I think it’s about getting someone who can help you understand yourself.

Going to therapy has helped when things are horrible: it helped when I couldn’t handle another conversation about rape, it helped when I couldn’t think of a single thing in my life that seemed good, it helped when my parents separated, it helps every single time I am frustrated with Turtle.  And the thing about it is that for me, it helps even when I’m not there.  Knowing that I can go, that it is an option, makes things a little bit easier.  When things are really hard, I know there is somewhere quiet and safe where I can go and sort them out.  It also takes a bit of the weight off of Turtle, and off of me, when we fight or when one of us is having a hard time; sometimes we say, “Well, here’s what I think, but I think you should talk to [therapist] about it, too.”  We both know we have another outlet, and if things get really hard with us, we’re both willing to go see either her or my personal together and figure things out.

So there you are, a long, possibly rambly, definitely personal post on what I think of therapy.  Please tell me your thoughts, your experiences, and ask your questions – I’m so curious about what other people think of all this.  Did I just start thinking it was normal and okay because I worked with a bunch of social workers and counselors?  Does it turn out that everyone secretly goes to therapy?  Please share.

Aparguments

Oh, you guys.  I know I’ve sort of disappeared.  I know I don’t call or even answer text messages.  No one has died, I’ve just been busy.  Busy aparguing.

Aparguing has taken over much of the time I spend outside of home and nearly all of the time I spend in our apartment.  What is aparguing, you ask?  It must be fun, enchanting really, if you are willing to dedicate so much of your precious, precious time to it.  Well, let me tell you! Aparguing is arguing about your apartment (apartment+arguing=aparguing).  And it turns out that Turtle and I are pretty darn good at it.

Turtle, ready to apargue with me and/or the color of the walls.

The thing about it is that it’s just a starting point. It brings your ability to be snippy and rude right to the surface, and there it rests until someone says something like, “Are you going to make dinner tonight?” or “How was your day?”  And then the only rational response, of course, is “Why would you ask me that?!” followed by a flood of tears.

I’m exaggerating a little bit, but not too much.  We come from completely different places on this apartment thing.  I want things organized, and then we can clean them; she wants to clean everything before we put anything anywhere.  I think we’re both at pretty extreme ends of our spectrums; a coworker recently said, “Of course you should clean the floor before putting the couch there!”  Oops.  I just want the room to look like home as fast as possible.  Turtle, on the other end of things, washes the wall before we hang a picture up.  So we end up with either a cluttered, but clean home if she gets her way, or a tidy but filthy home if I get mine.  The other option is that we argue about it and then crash and we end up with a cluttered, dirty home. Fun times.

What’s hard about this right now is not only the arguing itself, but the proximity to the wedding.  My stupid little ticker countdown thing was cute and fun until it hit Day 100 and we argued about which corner of the room the TV should go in and whether the cats got their dinner in a plastic bowl or a glass bowl.  Big, important arguments, you guys.

angry faces

I suppose if we can get through this chunk of stress, we’re just getting stronger.  We’ve gotten through worst in the past, and I’m sure we will again in the future.  It’s just frustrating to argue over such trivial things as where to put a chair or who left a magazine in the middle of our excessive counter space.  Really, me? You need to use all that counter space at the same time? You can’t move that magazine all by yourself?

we are mad! ready to apargue! (photo by Ellie Leonardsmith)

I just finished reading Kate Braestrup’s book Marriage and Other Acts of Charity and she talks about how she and her husband used to argue.  And by argue I mean fight, I mean break a coffee table or a window.  And they are having a really hard time and they go to counseling, blah blah blah. And then she realizes something:

Cringing beneath the merciless gaze of my own eyes, I realized how utterly I had failed to do something simple.  I had refused to love the one I loved, the one I had vowed before God to love, the one God had placed not only in my path but in my own damned bed! Remedial Goodness was clearly in order.  I could be good to Drew… I love him…nothing matters more than this.

While Turtle and I are not breaking things by any means, we are certainly quicker to anger than we have been in the past.  We are slower to apologize and less willing to cross the line and walk to the other person’s corner.  But I don’t think I realized that until I read this.  It’s only been a day, but every time I find something that I might normally grumble, “Oh, Turtle,” about, I try to say to myself instead, “I love her…nothing matters more than this.”

Braestrup points out that when you marry and vow to love each other, “you aren’t really promising to feel love. You are promising to do love.”

So what does that mean?

Today it means that when I come home from work and find Turtle asleep on the couch, I don’t grumble and drop my stuff loudly, because we are supposed to go to Ikea and she knows that.  Instead, I kiss her on the forehead and when she asks for five more minutes, I give her twenty.  It means giving, and letting go, and hoping that what I’m giving is returned.  And while it’s scary to be doing so much aparguing only 98 days before our wedding, if it’s making me stop and think and slow down and remember why and how I want to be with Turtle, then it’s perfect timing.

photo by Ellie Leonardsmith

Woe is Not Me

I came out the first time in middle school. Sort of. I was in seventh or eighth grade and I told my mom I was bisexual. I remember exactly where we were, in the car on the way home, near my brother’s daycare. She took a deep breath and said something very diplomatic, of which the only thing I remember is, “It might be a phase.” I ignored that and told a couple of close friends in school that I was bi, and they were all fairly nice until one person told me that she thought I was just trying to get attention, and let’s just say that she did not say it nicely.

So I went back into the proverbial closet and shut the door behind me.

This is not to say that I went along thinking I was straight, really. I mean, I wouldn’t really answer the question if someone asked. My sophomore year school picture shows me with my pretty long hair and a rainbow necklace; I was dating a boy at the time, and continued to date him into college.

Anyway, long story short(er), I finally heard myself think it my junior year of college, walking across the quad on campus from the dining hall to the library. I was taking a class called “Bioethics and Reproduction” and we were talking about assisted reproduction technologies, blah blah blah, how to make a family, and I thought to myself that I wanted to adopt kids, not make them, and went from there to “Oh – I am not going to have a traditional family,” meaning, of course, husband, one dog, two and a half kids.  And from there: I’m gay. Hah, or something.

And still I didn’t say too much about it, struggled with it, spent a summer debating with a gay friend of mine who insisted that I wasn’t gay, I was just drunk (admittedly, I had been drinking every time we actually discussed the issue, but what? It’s a hard issue to discuss when you’re still figuring it out).

As I said, long story shorter, not long story short.

The point that I’m getting to (eventually) is that coming out for me was just not that hard.  It took a long time, but when I finally did it, I still in a (quite liberal) college, two of my roommates were a lesbian couple (one of whom kept saying things like, “I know and you know and it’s fine” – especially on Coming Out Day) who brought me to various lesbian-geared functions as the “straight friend” (ha!), and once I started telling people they were like, “Oh yeah, I’ve known for years.”

So I’ve had it pretty easy.  I mean, it’s not all a walk in the park, but I’m not struggling the way people were years ago.  There have only been a couple of instances where I’ve been nervous about my safety, and few if any times where I haven’t been comfortable coming out.  I was all, “This gay thing is fun! It’s easy! Why doesn’t everyone do this? (Cause ladies are pretty, you guys, seriously.)”

With all of that in mind, it’s funny that it’s now, now that I’m getting married, and people are planning to come and are excited and supportive and even a big-name wedding blog has me, a lesbian!, writing for them, that it’s getting hard.  It is hard to deal with vendors who are absolutely not expecting both women who show up to be really in the wedding.  It’s hard to get comments telling me I need to stop being worried about being “the gay couple” and suck it up – really, that’s almost harder than the vendors themselves.  It’s hard to realize the benefits that we won’t get once we’re married, and the benefits we don’t get now.

Right now I get taxed on not only the portion of health insurance that I pay for (for Turtle) but also the portion that my employer pays for.  That’s at least $350/month, which is a little more than $4000 a year.  That is a significant amount of money on my current salary, and I haven’t been able to figure out if this will change once we get married, because my awesome health insurance comes out of California, good ol’ Prop8land.  Love you, CA, really, truly, but WTF?

If anything happens to either of us, we don’t get each other’s social security benefits.  Good thing we don’t want to have kids, cause that would throw another wrench into it.

What has been surprising to me is that I thought I was done with the coming out, with the challenges of it all.  I mean, I know we’re never really done coming out – we come out in little ways all the time, to insignificant people and to significant people.  But I knew that already.  I thought I was done with these hard parts, I thought I found my person and we could be safe and protected and together, because at the very least we live in MA – thanks, MA.

I don’t mean to be all “Woe is me, my life is s hard, so sorry I’m gay.”  I’m not sorry, and I wouldn’t change it if I could (side note: can’t change it. Not a choice. moving on.).  But I have spent a lot of time being grateful for how easy the process has been for me, how much support I’ve gotten from my friends and family, through college, and now living in my funny little liberal town near Boston, working at a cat hospital (do you know how many lesbian couples have cats? a lot, you guys.  and I think I know all of them).  I guess while the hard parts haven’t been shocking on their own, the fact that there still are hard parts has been.

A couple of years ago some friends invited me to go to Gay Pride.  I was like, “Why? What’s to be proud of? It’s just a thing! There’s no ‘Brunette Pride’ or ‘Short Person Pride’.  Why should I have to celebrate this one aspect of myself?”  It was such a little (in some ways), easy (in other ways) thing to be gay.  I really didn’t get it.  This year I’m going for the first time; my mom has asked me to march with her and her church, and I’m really looking forward to it. 

Deep thoughts by Little Miss Roughit.  Speaking of LMR, did I mention that I kept my mouth closed about how I liked the ladies when I first started roller derby?  I totally thought everyone was straight and that I would freak them out. Umm soooo off on that one.

Tell me your stories. Thank you.

Anxiety ball

Tonight, I am one big ball of anxiety. Ugh.

This may have to do with the stupid wedding map I spent two hours this morning trying to make and am still not happy with. What would make this happier? Someone suggest something, please.

What is a Wedding Map, you ask?  Why can’t people just use Google maps, you say?  Well, a Wedding Map, my friends, dear readers, patient, wonderful people, is a map that happens on paper. Oh my, the novelty.  You can pick it up, touch it, turn it over, and you cannot change the route by dragging that little dot over to where you want it!  Because this is a Wedding Map rather than a regular old Get-Where-You’re-Going map, the directions go where I want them to go, because I am the bride and these are the rules.

If you didn’t sense sarcasm anywhere in there, you soooo don’t know me at all.

The Wedding Map is a little map showing where our events are, and we include it in our lovely little packet of invitation, RSVP card, and, uh, wedding map.  Mostly, it is for older people who have no sense of where things are, or for guests who are simply not interested enough to Google where the post-wedding farm-hangout is.

The Wedding Map is the first and possibly only thing that has made me hate wedding planning. Seriously, guys, weddings are for losers who just want to be the center of attention and have an excuse to make POINTLESS ART PROJECTS. LIKE WEDDING MAPS.

Ugh.

Okay, let’s back this up a bit.  Remember up there when I mentioned post-wedding farm-hangout?  Let’s talk about that.

What, you ask, is a post-wedding farm-hangout?  Well, dear reader, a post-wedding farm-hangout happens when two beautiful, wonderful people get married to each other in the morning, eat, dance, and have a fabulous time with their loved ones, go back to their hotel and rest and giggle over the fact that they are married, and then go to a farm.  At that farm, they hang out, and in-town guests and out-of-town guests who want to see the newly married couple and spend some time with them in non-fancy clothes come and hang out at the farm and play mini golf and play in bumper boats.  There’s even ice cream!

This is one part of our wedding that I am really, really looking forward to.  Here’s why: a lot of people are getting up early in the morning (um, sorry if you didn’t know this yet and you plan to come: we’re getting married at 10am.  woo hoo!) to see us get hitched, and then we’ll all hang out and be married and be merry and I’m sure it will be wonderful and loving and amazing and also chaotic.  I am expecting to remember little about this event.  But afterwards, I really, really want to see all the people who came to see us and who came to support us, and this low key, delicious, fun place seems like the place to do it.

creepy smile + two thumbs up for wedding weekend fun

And then the next day, we are having a potluck!  And call us crazy, but the potluck is going to be at our house. It may be messy and it will probably be full of wedding paraphernalia.  I fully expect a few people to be staying with us, so I do not expect to be tidy.  Turtle, you probably should have stopped reading a couple of paragraphs ago. Take a deep breath and close this window.  What I hope is for our house to be filled with people we love, and to have the opportunity to spend some time with them in a meaningful way.  And if they traveled from across the country and are bringing beer from the wine and beer store down the street…well, I finally love beer.

our awesome yard, ready for a september potluck

It may not be a “destination wedding” but it is, I hope, going to be a weekend of love and family and friends and fun.  And telling you all of this has made my anxiety ball shrink a bit – so thanks for reading.

Now, how can I fix my map?

Or, um, how can you fix my map? Just kidding, just kidding. Sort of.