Saturday, 14 July 2012
Today I officiated wedding #3 of 4 this month.
As far as commutes go, this was the best one: it was only about five miles from my front door to the event center. All in all, I was away from home for less than two hours. But with Jennifer spending the day at the cabin with all the other ladies in her family, I still had to find something to do with the kids.
Enter my mom. She’s been in town for about a week now, and when I asked her if she’d like to spend the day with us, and watch the kids for a couple of hours, she accepted.
I gotta admit, I felt a little strange leaving my mom’s presence to go perform a wedding ceremony. The reasons are varied, but they stem primarily from the fact that, as a Witness, I had wanted to perform wedding ceremonies, but was denied. So, first of all, performing a wedding ceremony is kind of an act of rebellion against my mom’s religion. Second, it’s a reminder that I’m not a Witness anymore; if I was a Witness, I wouldn’t be performing weddings and, even if I was performing weddings, I surely wouldn’t be performing weddings for non-Witnesses. Third – and this one’s the biggest – my mom remarried back in 2009, and I was not invited. Actually, I was invited, then I was un-invited, then I was re-invited with the condition that I sit in the back, don’t talk, and leave immediately after the ceremony. So I didn’t go. So – and maybe this is all in my head – but leaving to attend a wedding today was a reminder of my mom’s wedding; a wedding I did not attend. How funny that I should attend – and officiate – a wedding of two people I just met earlier this year when I didn’t even go to my own mother’s wedding. So, you know, that’s all weird.
When I returned this evening, I of course began talking about the details of the ceremony: how beautiful the landscape was, how hot the sun was (yep, it was another outside ceremony), and some other observances. My mom was detachedly involved in the conversation, probably just out of courtesy. But she left to drive back to her sister’s home less than five minutes after got in the door.
Like I said, weird.
Sunday, 15 July 2012
Being as today is the only day on our wall calendar between July 6th and July 21st that we don’t have anything written down, I was hoping to get a lot of housework and yardwork done. Alas, we are currently in day #20 of shitty weather, so it was hot, even in the house.
We didn’t get much done in the house, either (though I did manage to replace the showerhead in the bathroom), due to Jennifer’s computer. Turns out, it’s dying. It’s six years old, and it’s time for the planned obsolescence to kick in. She spent last night trying to finish up a home video she’d been working on before the computer crashed and she lost all her hard work. And today she had to figure out how to create a birthday party invitation for Isla’s upcoming birthday. This is trickier than you might think.
For one thing, we don’t buy those generic fill-in-the-blank invitation cards. We make our own. And Jennifer has such demanding standards of quality, that basic image editing software, such as iPhoto or Paint aren’t sufficient. She has 9or would that be had?) Adobe Photoshop on her computer, but with that one out of commission, she had to resort to mine. Not only do I not have Adobe, but I don’t even have the newest Mac operating system (I don’t care about updating), so my wife couldn’t just pop in the disc and load it onto my computer. She found an older version and managed to download that onto my computer. Success!
Anyway, the video is done, Isla’s card has been uploaded to the printing shop, and now we just have to get a new computer. Yuck.
Pingback: Honey? | Verbisaurus Blogicus