Little Bride and the happy Groom

Today is a wedding day.

Not *my* wedding day of course. My doppleganger is getting married. It's funny that I think about it that way, because I only met my doppleganger because she decided that she liked my friend Pat enough to date him. And my friend Pat is one of the first people I met when I moved to Texas a million (or 8) years ago.

Pat was sort of my boss, just like Dan was sort of my boss, at this haunted house in Allen, TX where I learned that I just can't be inside a haunted house without screaming--even if I'm the one supposed to be doing the scaring. So I worked in a part of the...house, except it was outside, so it was more like a park with several haunted attractions. Anyway, I worked in a part where we loaded people up into big open trailer things on the back of pick-up trucks & drove them around the woods for a bit while they shot paintballs at monsters. It was actually pretty fun, except for the time I got shot by accident.

Anyway, Pat & Dan were good buddies and they eventually stopped thinking of me as my brother's little sister and I got to be my own person, and they introduced me to their friends, and ta-da! I made friends in Texas. Pat & Dan are my staples, my go-to guys. They can get anything done... or blown up.

Many years later, Pat met Lisha. Well, actually, I don't know when they first met, as they have a mutual friend, but many years later, Pat brought Lisha to a Christmas party that I attended and I met Lisha. Ok, another 6' redhead with a weird L name? Awesome! And she is. Just like when Dan got married all those years ago, somehow his wife became just as good and close a friend to me as he is. Same with Pat & Lisha. I met Pat, and got a Lisha. Pretty good deal if you ask me.

Pat is... he's not one to gush and squee and run around like a chicken sans head. He's a planner, even if the plan is just, "Show up, do stuff, go eat." His wedding is like that too. It's organized, but there's plenty of room for things to go sideways and everyone will still be just fine. He's got the important part nailed down--at the end of all of this, he'll be married.

So today, Lisha is a little bride. A 6' tall redhead with hair down to her hiney, in a beautiful & classy gown--who embroidered her own handfasting cloth. There will be a reading about dinosaurs, and one where multiple references to prostitution had to be edited out for the sake of one 87 yr. old grandmother. Her 19 month old godson will be led by his parents down the aisle as a ringbearer, and the flower girl is 5, blonde, and too cute for words.

That's the wedding part.

The real good stuff comes after. The marriage part. I love the way Pat & Lisha love one another--there's lots of laughter and fun and waffles. I can't wait to see where married life takes them, but hopefully no farther than Plano. I like having them nearby!

Melissa Muhlenkamp of Squawk Box Design took this fabulous picture--it suits them perfectly!

The spaces in my brain are full of fluff. There are so many things bouncing around my brain at the moment. Things I'm thinking about, want to talk about, need to write about. Not a stampede of ideas really, because that implies a force of motion that I'm not sure I've got. Maybe a swarm... tiny little thoughts that don't stay still and buzz around, getting in my way and annoying me. There are so many changes going on along the peripherals of my life while things essentially float on apace at our house. A new house, a wedding, a baby all on the doorstep of the season of holiday entertaining. These are the times I wish for the ability to focus with clarity instead of multi-tasking myself into a mess. But, this won't be a post about the things I want to post about, because that seems pointless beyond the level of pointlessness I usually promote here.


So, some moments of joy and peace amongst all the frenzy around me:

I have a new niece. She is a week old, not quite 8 lbs, and precious. I was lucky enough to meet her on day 1, and her very trusting mother even let me hold her when she was just hours old. (I think this being her 6th baby, she’s not quite as nervous about the handling of newborns as I am, who has only ever held 3 fresh babies.) She has blonde eyelashes, and what I could see of her hair poking out of the ubiquitous blue-and-pink stripped hat looked to be in the strawberry blonde range, which keeps all things even at that household when it comes to kids: 3 boys, 3 girls. 3 blue-eyed redheads, 3 brown-eyed brunettes. Anyway, darling niece #3 is tiny, precious, and has already learned how to scare the crap out of her aunt with only a sneeze. It seems like babies shouldn't sneeze for at least a couple of days, but no one told my niece that. Suddenly, this tiny, warm, adorable, squiggly mass of baby went from cute & cuddly to making a noise I didn't think possible from something that size. I'm sure my face must have been quite the sight as I tried to figure out what I'd done to break the baby...

One of my Nebraska Girls* is getting married on Saturday. All the planning is coming together as the sheer momentum of events keeps things moving forward. We assembled favor boxes last week, and last night—as her things are being transferred from her current home to her new home—prepared the thank-you gift bag things for out-of-town family, including a personalized Christmas ornament. I have to say, I’m rather pleased with the way those came out, and our little bride was such a trooper! The original idea was a complete failure, and yet, she never even batted an eyelash at it. She just picked up and kept going, trusting in the shared knowledge of her friends and family to make it all come together. So, I put my craftiness to work and that’s one more thing for her to cross off her list. Now, I've got an outfit figured out for the rehearsal dinner, but I've changed my mind at least fourteen times about what to wear to the wedding. Black, because the bride doesn't think black at a wedding is tacky. Red, because it's Advent at a Catholic church, so it's the primary wedding color. Khaki, because together with black, it's the bride's favorite color... Or a black dress that has a khaki ribbon trim at the empire waist with something to cover my bare arms and red shoes... or try to fight holiday crowds to get a new cocktail dress that I can then wear to my husband's swanky work party... oh, the decisions!

Moving isn’t fun. Last in the lengthy list of friends who have moved this year are some of my oldest friends here in Dallas. New houses can be fun, but the process of going from one to the other is rarely fun. Add into that the purchase of the new home, holiday travel, bank rules and regulations that seem arbitrary at best, and perhaps the cutest nearly-8-month-old baby I know, and you get a lot of stress. I subscribe to the “one less thing to worry about” club, in that if there’s ever anything that I can do to have one less thing to worry about, I love to delegate that responsibility out. So, now I can add house-sitting to my pet-petter and animal-feeder resume. While my friends were off trotting the globe (or at least the country), I had the pleasure of getting to see the new house, check the mail, play with the thermostat and faucets, and some other stuff… like stand in the kitchen and look into the other rooms and imagine making jam there with the lady of the house, or picture where the man of the house would be fixing me a killer Manhattan… I can’t wait for the settling-in process to start and see how they make that amazing house into an amazing home.

So that’s the life of the Bean, on this day.

*Nebraska Girls being my fabulous friends who attended UNL with me and then let me talk them in to moving to Dallas with me