Smells Like Happy

One Year

And a very good one at that.

iLove My Husband

Here's some typical holiday conversation in our house:

"[Our birthday/Christmas/Elephant Appreciation Day/National Hairball Awareness Day] is next week. Are we doing presents?"

"I don't know... We DID just [go on that trip/buy that couch/cash out our 401(k)s to support our Velvet Elvis-collecting habit]. Maybe that should count as our gifts?"

"Agreed."

Valentine's Day usually fits into that scenario. But this year, I suggested that we use it as an excuse to buy each other gifts, because I love buying people gifts and I also don't entirely mind being on the receiving end. So we set a price ceiling and then went about our secret planning, which basically amounted to me scouring the web and wishing that The Mouse actually wanted something -- ANYTHING IN THE WORLD -- that fits within the set price range. The only things he wants are a Vespa, a Kindle, a MacBook Air, his own luxury hotel, an African safari and a supermodel.

I got the closest things I could find: two books showcasing luxury hotels, which was meant to be a cool gift but could actually come off as meaning here are two beautifully bound keepsakes of stunning photographs of the things you will never be able to afford. XOXOXO.

But at least I followed the rules. He did not. And for that, I am eternally grateful:

It's so much better than I could have imagined. I wish I could tell you that it's not great, because that's what I wanted to hear. Every time my friend Sharon pulled out her iPhone and offered to let me take it for a spin, I could only stick my fingers in my ears, squeeze my eyes shut and repeat, "PUT IT AWAY, PUT IT AWAY, NO NO NO I CAN'T LOOK." Because I knew I was dangerously close to the edge, and even a taste would send me careening over the cliff into the Cult of iPhone.

I wish I could tell you that it's OK, it's just a phone, and does it really need all of those goddamned buttons? But I can't lie to you. The truth is that it's a phenomenal feat of computer engineering, it's thirteen thousand times more than just a phone, and all of those goddamned buttons are TOUCHSCREEN GATEWAYS TO HEAVEN that make me repent sins I haven't even committed just so I can be bathed in their beautiful LCD light.

Don't hate me. I've already spent the afternoon begging my beloved WG to come back to me because iPhone envy, no matter how understandable, should never destroy friendships. Save that kind of friendship-destroying envy for when I purchase my third luxury hotel.

But keep in mind, that's exactly the time I will need you most. Because by then, my husband will be able to afford his own supermodel.

Pretty Little Things

In addition to writing three articles, revising three datasheets and pitching three article ideas to a new editor, my list of tasks to finish before we leave town includes this very nagging item: "FINISH THANK YOUS." The difference is that on my private list it's followed by five exclamation points, but I'd like to maintain some modicum of punctuational decency in this public blog.

I know. Our wedding reception was at the end of October, which means I am approaching the three-months-later mark and still haven't finished thanking everyone who so graciously attended and gave us gifts. The etiquette guides are unclear on whether this is a gross injustice and abuse of people's generosity, but if Emily Post comes a'knocking on my door with a stern look, I will go a'knocking out her teeth. Because in all, we have to write nearly five hundred of these things. Of course, it doesn't help that I also insisted on making every one of them by hand, including lining my own envelopes.

What's that you say? Emily Post has been dead these forty-some years? Now I'm really feeling a surge of bravado.

My love affair with paper began when I was able to grasp and manipulate a pencil, leaving scribbly thoughts in its wake. After that came all the other tools -- the scissors and glue and crayons and paint -- that could turn plain paper into pretty vessels of personal expression, so tactilely satisfying. Not that I amounted to anything in Friday art class; I have absolutely no talent when it comes to drawing, and art class always seemed to be about who could most accurately draw someone's or something's likeness. Even when I draw my best stick girl, she still doesn't look anything like Kate Moss.

My love affair with paper intensified this summer when I decided to make our wedding reception invitations. I can't show those to you because they have all kinds of personally identifiable information, but I can tell you that they were brown and golden yellow and lovely. I also can show you one of the envelopes, which featured the story of our relationship, told in the third person, in a very faint, pretty script on a shimmery golden-yellow liner.

The story continued all the way to the bottom of the envelope, where anyone curious enough to tear it apart would find a secret message. (I was surprised at how many people did go exploring.)

When I realized that I could customize envelope liners with pretty much anything I could imagine, I really started having fun. Geeky fun. On Saturday nights.

This is a liner with an image of my brother, age 7, holding me, age 6 months, holding a little bear that I still have. I used it to send him a thank you for standing up in our wedding.

Then I started making cards for just about any reason. Here's a "congratulations" card to my youngest niece when she decided to go to cosmetology school.

So now I'm down to the last 45 thank yous, wondering what the hell I was thinking (which is the same question The Mouse has been asking me for months), because the volume, my god, the volume. But there will be no excuses for not getting every last one out the door by Saturday morning. I'm hoping that coming in just under the three-month mark is somehow acceptable. For what it's worth, I immediately sent thank yous to anyone who sent gifts in advance -- usually the next day -- and all of the closer family and friends received their thank yous quite promptly.

I've attended weddings with 700-plus guests, and some of those brides and grooms sent pre-printed, generic "dear friend" thank yous. Surely it's nicer to get a personal note, even if you have to wait a little longer?

You can tell me what I want to hear. Really, you can.

Brief Notes on A Young Year

It's 2008, and I still can't tell you about the subtle differences between Argentinean chocolate and Australian chocolate because I never found the international chocolate sampler that was supposed to be the star of last night's party. But I can tell you about the taste of tiramisu that has been stuffed into tiny plastic cups for mass serving: still pretty darned good.

The Italian Embassy looks nothing like you would think. If you're imagining St. Peter's Basilica or anything with grand Roman arches and columns, you are mistaken. The results of some Googling indicate that the building is something like a post-modern palazzo, which means nothing to me other than "not ornate" and "not super old/cool looking."

So it was no Renaissance, but the food was extremely good, the drinks were included and the people-watching was prime. The best fun was seeing guests emerge from the chair after having their caricatures drawn, disproportionate renderings in hand. One girl smiled politely and thanked the artist, then quickly turned her back to him to hide her horror.

"Does my nose really look like this?" she asked a friend, her voice full of apprehension.

People with shaky confidence should not pose for a caricaturist.

I started out dreading my choice of New Year's Eve activity, mainly because it did not include pajamas or closed eyelids, and I ended up braving the cold weather and resolutely ignoring my brain-numbing congestion and fever just to GO OUT. MUST GO OUT. And we had a darned nice time, which is more than I can say for the next seven to ten days of anyone who came into close contact with my germs last night. (Just kidding! I didn't sneeze on anyone without their informed consent.)

I would post a photo of us, but why post a photo when I can post a video of us waiting for someone to take our photo? It's far more amusing than the photo itself. It also shows what happens about every time I ask my husband to PLEASE SMILE FOR THE CAMERA LIKE A NORMAL PERSON IS THAT SO HARD.

That is me, sans six inches of hair. I'm sure that my hair still looks long to some of you seasoned shorties, but it represents a fairly significant change for me. Significant enough that my stylist, scissors suspended in mid-air before their attack, said, "Are you SURE? Did you tell your husband about this?" I quickly produced a signed, dated and notarized "Permission to Make Independent Decisions About Hair Style" form; she shrugged and went to work.

The only notable development since midnight's mumble-through of Auld Lang Syne was the arrival of an email from my landlord. You remember her -- the happy, smiley ray of golden sunshine? Well, she responded to my request that we be allowed to foster a helpless, lonely, downtrodden, orphaned kitten with a resounding NO. I can only imagine that she's worried that a kitten might pee on the nice hardwood floors but that fear seems to rely on the assumption that I won't pee on the hardwood floors, a course of retaliation currently under consideration.

That's all I have for you, people. It's 2008, that's fabulous with me, and I have a pan of warm brownies and a warm husband waiting for me in the living room. No warm kitten yet, but 2008 is young.

How you're doing

For a week or so after you return, you're grateful that you work from home. That's the only way you could fly back at a moment's notice, on a one-way ticket, and spend three weeks in the warm nest of your family. It's the only way you could come back home when it's all over and spend a week choosing pajama pants over jeans, scruffy ponytails over a hairbrush, sitting behind closed curtains. Remaining exempt from the awkwardly doled-out sympathy of colleagues and from your own awkward reactions to the people who offer none.

Eventually, though, you realize that this "working from home" thing is morphing into a "sitting at home" thing, and it's neither therapeutic nor enjoyable. And this is the point at which things get really complicated because you will find, to your great dismay, that you have neither the energy nor the desire to do anything different.

And that? Well, that pisses you off. Because the numbness is gone and now you are angry. Oh, you are angry. You can't really place the cause of your anger, because -- although it seems to stem from the source of your sadness -- it can be set off by something as disconnected as the way your husband is chewing his gum. (And believe me, your husband wishes I were joking. He told me so.)

What's the deal? It's not like you didn't know that life can end so goddamned miserably, so goddamned early -- don't you read the news? haven't you read Hemingway?? But it's one thing to know that life can end miserably and early, and it's another thing entirely to experience that fact. To participate in it. To provide the "comfort measures" that say, Yes, death, you win. You win and we concede. We'll stand out of the way. Now would you just take it easy, for christ's sake?

You feel an indescribable hatred of cynicism because it seems so safe. If somebody is a cynical asshole, he obviously doesn't remotely understand what you and your family just went through, surely has never gone through hospice, and feeling misunderstood makes you angry. But cynicism, like anger, is a perfectly legitimate response to the grimmer facts of life. So maybe you're just a little jealous, maybe you'd sometimes like to be the kind of person who could say, "Oh my god, you mean to tell me that people DIE? NO SHIT?" and then go about your day. Your angry self thinks that must be a decent enough armor.

You get so tired from being angry -- which is different from getting tired of being angry -- that your muscles finally have no choice but to release their tension.

You sleep until 11 a.m.

For a while, you want nothing more than to be back there, in the middle of that lost city of meaning. Because when someone is going to die imminently

we give her a day or two

likely tomorrow

has to be tomorrow

well, she keeps surprising us, but surely today or tomorrow

hours

every minute is filled with meaning. When you spend those minutes counting short, sparse breaths, wondering whether each will be the last

how many respirations?

ten

eight

ten

oh my god six

every second is filled with purpose.

Far too much purpose.

And it's the kind of purpose that starkly contrasts with the normal purpose that awaits you in normal life. The purpose that says you must floss your teeth to avoid cavities and buy food at the grocery store to feed yourself when you are hungry. The purpose that says you should leave the house because that's what healthy people do.

It's true -- healthy people leave the house pretty much every day, you know. Why, look our your window! Don't you see those healthy people down there? That one is walking home from the train. He works in an office, and he got a truly awful Secret Santa gift today. That one in the sparkly coat is going out to dinner with her friends, and she's carrying a new bag. She got a great deal on that bag, and she totally loves it. That lady walking her dog -- all those people down there are living, because living is what living people are supposed to do.

And suddenly, it all makes sense! You need a new bag. You need dinner with friends. And you wouldn't want to go back to that nightmare, are you crazy? In fact, you want to board a plane right now, alone, and fly to... Santa Fe. Nobody knows you in Santa Fe, right? Nobody is going to screw up their face into a pitiful frown and say, how you feelin' today, huh? You OK? They won't say anything to remind you of November or take you back to that epicenter of hurt in Illinois because they won't even know that it exists! They will only smile at you, take your order, give you directions, tell you that's a nice bag. And you will grin and say thanks, I totally got the best deal on it.

But it's Christmas. And that means there's no avoiding, no pretending, no forgetting. It means Family Minus One. And in a lot ways, it's going to suck.

But in another way, maybe it's just what you need. Just what you all need. You're all different now, and when you're together, you don't have to explain that you're different or how you're different. You just... are. And until you can properly balance life's tedium with its meaning -- which will happen, it just takes time, you're completely normal, blah blah blah -- the less you have to explain, the better.

Besides, no one moment accurately defines the sum of how you're doing. Not even this post, which you're writing in a fog. Just last week, you went to Petsmart and held the littlest, warmest kitten in your hands for 20 minutes as she dozed and purred on your arm, her eyes squinted into tiny, contended slits -- could barely hand her back after that -- and you felt happy, calm. Relieved. This morning you did a little yoga and when you moved into that stretch -- that one stretch, whatever it's called -- you were consumed by how alive and lucky and aware your body felt. In a few minutes, you're going to turn on the TV and fire up some dinner, maybe a noodle dish with peanut sauce. Your husband will be home shortly, and you might sit on the couch with him, read your book. Maybe you won't even yell at the poor guy for no good reason.

And right now, that sounds... nice. For tonight, that sounds like a modest return to living.

We now return to our regularly scheduled lives.

The title refers to me. You, on the other hand, are about to get sucked into a long post.

From the moment The Mouse and I agreed to have this big wedding reception, despite having eloped, I knew that much of it was going to be about the differences between who we are -- as individuals and as a couple -- and who people expect us to be. In some ways, I think this theme has been ever-present in The Mouse's life because he's a first-generation American. But then I came along, with my gay friends and liberal politics, with my godlessness and kindly views on cohabitation, and I elevated the mild case of culture clash to something chronic. Like leprosy.

We dealt with little conflicts at every turn, and I'm not going to judge my in-laws harshly here. They come from a different world than I do, literally and figuratively. Each of us unconsciously catalogues our experiences into our own Reference Book for Life, and when you look up "marriage" in their book it says things like "we must serve three meats" and "can you at least pretend that you changed your name?" My very presence has thrown them a lot of curve balls, and they did remarkably well considering their total unfamiliarity with my wily kind. In the end, they were nothing but gracious and kind to my family and friends, and they threw us a day-after-reception party that was nicer than most receptions I've attended.

I also knew that I was marrying into a family and culture that takes that whole "marrying into" phrase just a bit too literally.

Drunk Mouse Relative: Welcome to the famileeeeeee! I looove you. You are the best. I love you. You know that I love you?

Me: Thank you, I love you too. And welcome to my family.

DMR: [confusion, silence]

Wife of DMR: Ahem. It does go both ways, dear.

DMR: But... but... No. Welcome to OUR family. You are in OUR family now.

And when my parents left the in-laws' house the next day, there was some confusing conversation about whose daughter I was now, and who would be taking me home. I quickly announced that I am my parents' daughter and nothing would change that, thankyouverymuch, and that I would be taking myself home. In the Old Country, the wives are absorbed into the husbands' families. But this isn't the Old Country, which is also why I'm lucky enough to still have all of my teeth, indoor plumbing and smooth hands that have never slaughtered a pig.

The week leading up to the reception was one of the best parts about it: just me, my mom and my dad working together. My mom came through like she always does -- staying awake until quiet hours of the early morning to strip the leaves from flowers, while still managing to make dinners and cakes and muffins and responding to ambulance calls when anyone happened to need a good life saving. My dad was incredible -- cutting ribbon for hours and using this fascinating method called math to determine that I had dramatically underestimated how much ribbon I would need. (Have you heard of this math? I think it may be the way of the future. It really works.)

The flower project was completely crazy. Every day, more flowers arrived. This was after only the first day, with about a third of the flowers:

Each night, we had to monitor the temperature on on the porch to make sure it wouldn't dip too low. We had to cut and re-cut and strip leaves and change water. Lukewarm or tepid? Are the buds opening? Don't let them open too much. PUT THEM OUTSIDE. Why aren't the opening? GET THEM IN HERE. Make the water warmer. NOT THAT WARM.

Late in the week, we loaded the completed centerpieces into two cars, along with the hundreds of candles and votive holders and favors and cranberries and candies, and headed out.

 

That night was spent with some of my dearest friends in the world and my family, all crammed into a crappy little hotel room constructing brown Chinese takeout boxes with yellow ribbon handles and stuffing them full of candy. And that was the other great thing about the weekend: watching (most of) the people I love most finally meeting each other, and being instantly smitten. My parents loved my friends! My friends loved my parents! My friends loved my brother! My brother loved my friends! It was a big goddamned lovefest, and I felt like some mad, brilliant scientist for combining all of these human ingredients in one room and getting such a lovey, fuzzy result. Eureka, indeed.

The reception itself was a strange mix of good friends and people I've never seen in my life. And while I was saying, "Thank you for coming!" I was often thinking, "Who are you?"

And before I knew it, the hour hand was nearing midnight and the peep-toe heels -- which seemed so comfortable when I bought them -- were causing excruciating pain in some parts of my feet and eerie numbness in others. I realized that the people I most wanted to spend hours and hours and hours with --  preferably while in pajamas and drinking something warm, but at a reception would have sufficed --  were starting to filter out the doors. One of my brothers didn't even show up in the first place. And I still smiled and felt content because this was never going to be the Best Night Ever. And piss on the people who looked horrified when I said that out loud.

Yeah, I said it, and yeah, people looked at me like I was insulting their mothers or like my marriage was doomed. And I wanted to say, wait, I'm fine with this not being the Best Night Ever, I'm good with this -- what were you expecting?

If you've never gotten married but plan to have a traditional wedding, let me tell you something: You are absolutely out of your mind if you expect it to be the best day of your life. I don't even understand people who approach weddings like that, honestly. And why would you even WANT that? If that's your ideal, what will you think of all the days and years to follow?

The commitment and the day may symbolize the best decision you ever made, sure. But weddings are gatherings of people, and complications arise when people gather. Some people hate each other. Some people used to date each other, and maybe it didn't end so well. Some people are smiling at you while thinking that your dress is ugly. Some people are scamming on your hot little cousin, either unaware of or indifferent to the fact that she is underage and OFF LIMITS. Some people are talking about how shameful it is that you didn't change your last name and obviously don't honor the institution of marriage, or that you did change your last name and obviously don't honor the accomplishments of Gloria Steinem. Some people are staring at you and imagining your seemingly perfect life while getting sloppy drunk and mourning their own crumbling marriages. Others are trying to avoid looking at all of the beautiful babies in the room, who are painful reminders of the babies they aren't having. And that's where bridezillas come from: They have so carefully constructed this fairy tale day in their minds, and when they realize that people and circumstances aren't turning out the way they wanted, they freak out. They demand control over everything, anything, and shut out the things they can't control. And they are unhappy.

This weekend, I was so happy. But it was because I had proper expectations.

Our wedding was a simple, quiet affair between the two of us. The reception was the opposite. It was a pretty fun party with kickass centerpieces, if I may admit, but it was a gathering of people with all of the resulting complications. Still, there were bits of perfection. In having parents who stayed up late to help me with crazy projects that involved thorns, despite the throbbing pain in their backs from hunching over flower buckets all day. In having friends who came to our party from all over the country and told us our speeches were good when they really weren't. Perfection was in having someone love us enough to fly to our reception from Tokyo and be on American soil for only 24 hours before flying back. It was in having most of my family members decide to direct their gazes a little higher than any rifts that may separate them, even for just a night, so we could all be together. There was perfection in watching my brother and The Mouse's brother and cousins sway with their arms around each other while stumbling through songs from the Old Country. It was in watching my hilarious, loyal, and very hot husband walk into our hotel room that night, pull off his tie and collapse on the bed, exhausted and happy and relieved.

"It's over," we both said, and we smiled ourselves to sleep.

Tuesday morning marked the return of normal life. Of my creative writing. Of feeling in my toes. No more seating charts or RSVPs or hemorrhagic spending. And we vastly prefer this life to pomp and circumstance. What can I say? The party was nice, but marriage is great. And that's why we got married in the first place.

(Photos, snapped by the talented Sam and her talented partner Rachel, to come.)

This is why I let him take his arguments to their own natural conclusions.

"Teej, I start work tomorrow! Can you believe it?"

"I know. Crazy."

"Man, I am never going to be home."

"Right. And why do you keep reminding me of that?"

"I'm just saying. I have to leave early, then go to practice, then I won't be home until late... You've gotten pretty used to having me around, you know?"

"Have I?"

"Yes. We'll have to wean you off of my presence. It's like a baby being weaned from breastfeeding."

"So..."

"Oh. Right. So I guess that makes me the big boob."

"Yes. Yes, it does."

Hello from... Boston.

When I look back on our Chicago-to-Boston move, I feel warm and fuzzy. The movers were so nice! And helpful. And punctual! Communicative. Even our San Francisco-to-Chicago move in 2004 -- the one in which some 20 boxes came open and spilled their contents throughout the moving truck -- was a dream compared to this move to D.C.

I'll spare you the play by play. Boring! Complicated! Instead, I'll share some pieces of wisdom that I have learned over the last week.

1. When the movers arrive six hours late -- and quite possibly drunk -- and toothless quite possibly because, well, meth will do that to you -- and you have only five hours to empty your apartment of all items, you will smile and remind yourself that they are only possessions, only things. You will be as kind to the movers as possible, force a laugh when they tell you how much money your items "will fetch on the auction block," and decide that if your prized, ergonomic desk shows up in one piece, that will be really nice.

2. When you buy a car, you must not buy it from a private party. Just don't, 'kay? And if you do, you must not attempt to buy it immediately prior to moving to a new state and immediately prior to the date when the seller will move to another country. Just don't. You'll find yourself back in the city you just left five days prior, in the middle of a logistical and bureaucratic mess. STOP ASKING QUESTIONS. Just buy from the dealer and enjoy your life.

3. Two days after your move, when your husband suddenly loses the ability to walk and develops a blazing hot knee -- not, like, sexy (although his knees are lovely), but hot to the touch -- and all signs point to a repeat of the the time he wound up in the hospital with MRSA, you must take him to the E.R. right away. Yes, even if this happens during the tiniest of windows when he happens to be without health insurance. And after two doctors spend 30 minutes jamming very large needles into his knee joint in unsuccessful attempts to extract some material for testing, you must be at the ready with the Vicodin. Everything you say will be the wrong thing and he will think that having to hear words or say words or think in words is going to make him die just a little faster than he is already dying, and that's what he will mean when he says JUST GIVE ME THE GODDAMNED FUCKING PILLS NOOOOW.

He'll apologize later and you'll say hey, no problem, you had large needles in your joint, and someday when I am pregnant and laboring with contractions, you will be repaid in full.

4. Stop wearing button-up shirts. They're either perfectly sized in the chest and too big everywhere else, or too tight in the chest and perfectly sized everywhere else. You will not like the feeling you get when you look down at the end of the day and see that the all-important boob button has relieved itself of its burden. But at least you will have solved the mystery of why the 15-year-old boy in the drive through ogled you as though you were a Big Mac.

5. Stop sitting under trees. The United Association of Birds has obviously released a memo to all members advising that your head needs fertilization.

There! Have we all learned something of value?

Tomorrow night (if all goes well), I'll be driving back to D.C. for the second time in a week, but this time to stay. And this time behind the wheel of our first big purchase together. And then I'll spend the weekend writing 10 corporate web pages and a 1000-word article and unpacking a billion boxes. I'll battle with the moving company over our final cost and bug my husband to remember to take his antibiotics. But most of all, I'll be glad. Because... well, why not?

Typhoon Season

First, thanks to each and every one of you who commented and emailed me about the tense standoff between my ovaries and my brain. Your empathetic words had the effect of a hostage negotiator skillfully stepping in and reassuring both sides -- Insistent Ovaries and Frantic Brain -- that we'll do the best we can to make sure everybody is happy, as long as we all just CALM DOWN and don't do anything rash. You were in the nick of time; Frantic Brain was creeping down a dangerously irrational path, and believe me: She had no idea how to use that pistol in her shaky, sweaty hand.

But had you not intervened, I suspect that the situation would have remedied itself because I am now in the middle of a situation that I never wanted to be in the middle of, much less in a fifty-mile radius of, and it is consuming my time. It's a situation that looks benign on the surface -- oh, how straightforward it all seemed just a few short weeks ago! -- but has proved to be so rife with hidden perils that I have been reduced to huddling at my desk, eyes wide as a those of a Lesser Bushbaby on a nocturnal hunt, paranoid at what unseen dangers lurk around the next corner.

You see, I am planning a wedding reception for 550 people.

This is not my doing. I am not Bridezilla material, someone who thinks the event of her marriage is so important in other people's lives that she must force hundreds of people to find something to wear for it. I also am not a billionaire, for whom a 500- or 600-person affair would be more appropriate or, at least, predictable. I am simply a girl who married a man who comes from a culture that celebrates weddings in a very, very big way.

Don't get me wrong; the reception will be a blast. I have always loved being a guest at these giant receptions, which are raucous and rich with culture (read: alcohol and ethnic line dancing). But if planning a giant wedding and/or reception is a typhoon (and it is), then eloping was the equivalent of me packing up my humble shack and moving the hell away from low-lying coastal areas to a higher elevation with an enlightened view.

People are pelting me with their opinions. There are the gentle, blown-bubble suggestions of people who truly want to help, and then there are the violent, splattering, raw-egg expectations of people who want things their way, right away. Once I think I've gracefully sidestepped a torpedoing egg, SPLAT! And then I take a deep breath, wipe the yolk off my cheek and pick the shells from my teeth, and say with a smile, "okay, how about this compromise?" as if it's all going to pay off someday in the form of a cushy diplomatic assignment -- an ambassadorship, perhaps?

I might be exaggerating a little. But just a little.

The way I am keeping my sanity through this process is by making my own invitations. I know for many people such an undertaking would exponentially increase the stress, but I love such projects. The invitations are beautiful and personal and unique and I feel deep satisfaction and calm when I am measuring and cutting and printing and affixing. Forget my mixed emotions about having kids; I am ready, right this minute, to have babies with Paper Source, were such a thing only possible. Pretty little card-stock children with Japanese-paper clothing, vellum hair and acid-free smiles.

To whom are these invitations going? I asked The Mouse for his complete guest list, and after several perfect entries of the first-name-last-name order, the list dissolves into something that resembles the roster of a street gang. A sampling:

• Beast
• Machine
• Hammer
• Dentist
• Too Tall
• Scammer
• Hammer
• Gumby

Dentist is not actually his dentist -- perhaps not even a dentist -- and I'm not sure I want someone named Scammer coming to my reception. (What are my obligations to other guests? Warn them? Ask them to sign a liability waiver in case they inadvertently leave the event $1000 poorer?) And do I remind him that he forgot to include Waffle?

Ah, boys and their nicknames. I find it charming.

So Invitation Detail is keeping my life pleasant and productive. I honestly am so contented about the next three weeks of paper creation that I'm not even fazed by the fact that we have to move to a different region of the country in a month and I still have no idea what will adorn the centers of 50 tables -- or what will adorn me, for that matter.

And do you all realize what takes place July 29 through August 4?

SHARK WEEK, baby. Li'l Teej doesn't leave the house. Communication will be sporadic.

This Is How Much He Loves Italian Ice

"Slow down."

"Why?"

"I want to see if he's out today."

"Who?"

"My dealer."

"Your dealer?"

"My Italian ice dealer."

"Oh. I don't think he sets up his cart when it's raining like this."

"Or when the cops get him. That stuff is lethal."