Over the mountains and through the woods

Actually, it's a day of prairie, a day of mountains, and a day of desert. Tomorrow M and I start our 1900-mile journey to the new place. It's roughly the distance from London to somewhere in the Ukraine. I fully intend to see Carhenge.

The movers come in the morning, and I'm not really ready. QSU is reimbursing me for $3000 for this move, which will cover about 2/3 of the expense. Both of our computers died this week, so I'm at a cafe right now trying to do business like setting up bank accounts and signing lending documents while fending off local teens who want to use the machines to shop for handbags and watch YouTube. It's a little stressful.

Back to packing. I'll let you know when I've arrived in the great quadrilateral-stated West.

A brief debrief

The wedding was all right, as it happened. The reception could have gone smoother from my point of view, but as I kept telling myself, the reception wasn't my party. We never asked for it, we didn't pay for it, so there's no complaining. So when a stranger in a kilt with a fake Scots accent and a sporran made from a dead badger (I'm not exaggerating...he had a lap full of badger head) played "Taps" on his bagpipes and chained a bowling ball to my foot in an offensive yet allegedly charming and spontaneous communal theater moment, I played along. When the DJ with the silver cowboy hat refused to play any of the music I had painstakingly compiled for the dance, I took the opportunity to chat with the few people at the reception I knew. When M's mom's line-dancing club showed up to dance to what the DJ was playing instead, I went outside. And when the reception was nothing but the line dancers, I made a short announcement that the bride and groom were leaving. No one seemed to notice by that point, which, given the bowling ball thing, was probably okay. I have a certain empathy now with King James I's grumpiness at his accession ceremony. It ain't your show, but you have no option but to play along. It's like the actor's nightmare.

We did, however, manage to subvert the heteronormative cliches of the event by getting married on a stage, with a hastily-draped set of Biloxi Blues and by having attendants of the wrong gender. My brother-in-law made an excellent maid of honor.

I think despite not saying goodbye when they left the reception, my parents had a pretty good time. Mom danced as much as her recent heart attack would allow her, and she smiled a lot. They weren't particularly effusive at any point, and the presence of my nephew kind of hampered the participation of my family in the proceedings. Still, I'm trying to put a good face on the occasional laconic grimacing of my parents: it was the long drive; it was being overwhelmed by the numbers of M's family; it was the grandson; it's their age...anything but what I suspect is the truth, that according to the sermon on the mount, their son's second marriage counts as adultery and my hellboundness is now beyond question. Good thing they like M and that their politeness is the only thing as strong as their religion.

T-minus three days

Disconnected observations:

• Given the fact that everyone in M's parents' house knows we're already legally married, it's all the more absurd that they insist on us sleeping in separate rooms. Argh.
• Nevada: even the postal abbreviation is a deadly sin.
• After watching 118 minutes of evenly matched, if flawed, football, I shouted myself hoarse at the TV yesterday when Italy avoided penalties in the closing seconds of extra time. Holy great galloping Yahweh, I love the World Cup. It was, of course, the Fourth of July, and deserting the in-laws' picnic for such an unAmerican thing as watching two former Axis powers play some faggoty foreign sport for two hours when I should have been celebrating blind patriotism and eating sausage was clearly a suspect decision.

Speaking of the wedding, it just might be endurable. There will be a bagpiper. There will be a bunch of the hag-in-law's dance club people line-dancing every other song at the vaguely-bean-smelling reception. There will be Chex Mix and fake flowers. Nevertheless, I think the ceremony itself will retain some of our voice. I slapped an extremely dense Donne passage onto the back of the program almost as much as a gleefully highbrow jab of contra-vulgarity vengeance as a celebratory gesture of love. Metaphysical poetry and Chex Mix are like matter and antimatter.

I'll be happy when this weekend is over, but I will also enjoy myself immensely. My sister and I will finally realize our dream of having matching black pinstripe suits. We've decided to go with a summer stock Guys and Dolls look for the wedding party. What the hell; maybe I'll break into "Luck be a Lady."