Preparations

The Beatles, really strong coffee, and a bucket of mop-water go together really well. :-)

Wedding-ey

To my loyal readers,

I'm still here. Really. The best word for the time since I last posted would have to be "wedding-ey."

I've been rounding up helpers, buying sheet cakes, finding suitable shoes for tromping about during the honeymoon, measuring the church, watching Mom sew banners, requesting my friends to rent a car when they fly out, figuring out what to do for my hair and makeup, working on the program, and doing many other such essential tasks. So my time online has been somewhat erratic. I hope to resume regular posting...eventually!

In the meantime, I leave you with some relevant quotes.

"Hundreds of clerks sat at ivory desks all day, writing out invitations with gold ink on parchment. Hundreds of pages heated gold sealing wax to seal the envelopes, and hundreds of the King's messengers put spurs to their horses and rode away east and west and north and south to deliver them to the invited guests. The list of invitations was so long that it took the Lord High Chamberlain from before breakfast until after suppertime to read it, while the roll it made was so large that it took six men-at-arms to carry it."

"But in spite of all the preparations, and the ordering of a most magnificent trousseau, the Ordinary Princess thought that the winter passed slower than any winter had ever done before. ...When she was not looking out of the window, she was being fitted for new dresses, or sitting at a desk writing hundreds of 'thank you' letters for all the wedding presents that kept arriving at the palace."

"The Ordinary Princess wore a wedding dress with a train that was seventeen yards long and took twenty pages to carry it."

"In the royal kitchens two hundred and twenty cooks, four hundred scullions, as many servingmen, and five hundred kitchen maids worked like mad, baking cakes and pies and pastries. They stuffed swans and peacocks and boars' heads and wonderful sweets--marzipan trees hung with crystalized cherries, and castles and dragons and great ships of sugar candy."

"So Peregrine and his Queen drove away from the palace in a crystal coach, and everyone threw rice and rose petals and satin slippers and waved their hands and their handkerchiefs and cried good wishes."

Lavendar's blue
Rosemary's green
When you are King
I shall be Queen!

Grace and coffee

Ruhamah once told me a story about how, in a sense, when she was getting ready to graduate, she could feel God's grace for her college time lifting. It was just time for her to go, and His grace for her was going elsewhere, and she better not try to hang on without Him. I can't come up with an exact Scripture for that, but the principle seems sound.

And when I graduated, something of the same thing happened. There was enough grace for as long as I was supposed to be there, but it wouldn't have been good to stay longer. As a nice little extra, I got an illustration. I had precisely enough coffee grounds to last me and Kay through graduation morning, and none left over.

This afternoon I was setting up my pot of pinon coffee for my last day of work tomorrow, and once again I had enough in the package and finished it off. The grace and the coffee are sufficient.

I'll buy more coffee in Virginia. :-)

Song of the day

Today we introduced Susie to "Dragostea Din Tei," also known as the "Numa Numa Song." We showed her the fat guy and the Lego guys, and it was a beautiful thing. But does anyone know if that video of David got posted publicly? :-)

Alo, Salut, sunt eu, un haiduc,
Si te rog, iubirea mea, primeste fericirea.
Alo, alo, sunt eu Picasso,
Ti-am dat beep, si sunt voinic,
Dar sa stii nu-ti cer nimic.

Vrei sa pleci dar nu ma, nu ma iei,
Nu ma, nu ma iei, nu ma, nu ma, nu ma iei.
Chipul tau si dragostea din tei,
Mi-amintesc de ochii tai.

Te sun, sa-ti spun, ce simt acum,
Alo, iubirea mea, sunt eu, fericirea.

Alo, alo, sunt iarasi eu, Picasso,
Ti-am dat beep, si sunt voinic,
Dar sa stii nu-ti cer nimic.

Hope

....but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees? Romans 8

"How shall we end the letter?"
"In hope. Love should always end in hope." A Knight's Tale

Small-talk questions seem to go in spurts. For about four, five months, everyone asked how wedding plans were coming. The current question everyone asks is whether I'm starting to get excited. Small-talk, know you, has been a learned skill for me, and I still struggle with the urge to be strictly honest rather than conventional.

The true answer is a resounding "kind of." This is not a reflection on Jonathan, or even cold feet on my part.

It's just, the wedding is still very much in the "hope" category, and not in the "here" category. My fiance is not in town; I haven't seen him since March; I'm not going to see him for another two weeks. Right now, all I see are goodbyes, partings, packings, and more organizing to do and decisions to make and people to mobilize. I don't like leaving my job, town, or people. I don't feel like dealing with music choices. I'm going to miss Mexican food something awful, not to mention mountains. A sweet patient even gave me a wedding present today--a patient. Do I want to leave? No, I don't want to leave.

But that's where the hope comes in. For I consider that the present trials are not worthy to be compared to the glory set before us. It's quite Scriptural, really: store your treasure and send it away in a plain van to collect it later. Give all you have, and receive something much better. Lose this life, and gain another.

And God has a way of sending what you need when you need it. Last Sunday, I talked to a guy I grew up with. We were never close, but he was like a cousin, always there. He said getting married was the greatest earthly happiness he'd ever known. This, from a guy who had never obviously been what you might call romantic.

Oh.

I can start to be getting excited about "greatest earthly happiness." That gives me hope.

Quote of the day

"Wouldn't it be interesting if, while I was knocking on this, a little door opened and the office gremlins came out?" Amelia

"You know to remember sine-cosine-tangent--sohcahtoa? I realized that "sohcahtoa" fits anywhere in a song that "Hallelujah" goes. So you could sing the Sohcahtoa Chorus." Amelia

Song of the day

Bye, bye, lunch
Bye, bye, sandwiches
Hello hungriness
Think I'm gonna cry.

(Additional lyrics courtesy of Amelia and yours truly. They do not reflect reality--at least we hope not--we just thought they were funny because today's schedule says "Goodbye lunch.")

Appointment at Tooth-Hurty: the Superhero

Kind of a fun morning

It's only 10:00, and it's been quite the morning already. Not bad, just strange.

It started about an hour and a half past schedule, when Daddy woke me up as he was leaving for work. This would be great, except I generally try to leave work at the same time as he does. Whoops! I dress quick like a bunny, like a flash of lightning, and try to get into my car Olwen. Only, the white car in the driveway isn't my car Olwen. It doesn't know me or answer my little button call. It's... what car is that? It's not the Intrepid Peabody. Oh! Right. It's my grandparents' car. Gotcha. So I figure Daddy must have taken Olwen to work today, which he's never done before, but oh well, and I start to go inside for keys to another car, when I find mine parked around the corner on the street. Very good. I now remember that late last night, after the wedding shower, I parked at the outside of the driveway and he must have had to move it in order to get Peabody out. Nice Daddy.

It's a lovely cool wet morning, very pleasant, and I get to work and make a beeline for the coffee pot. The good doctor asks, "Did you see the snow on the mountain this morning?"

Snow? On our mountain?

"Yes, it was snowing as I left for work this morning," he says. "Go outside and look! I've never seen it snow here in June before!"

By George. There was fresh snow on the ski hill--on June 5.

June 5, which is Dad's birthday. And I didn't think to wish him a happy birthday when he woke me up. So I emailed him and remedied that.

I finally got my coffee, and watched Susie work for about an hour, and then headed off to the MVD.

Ah, yes. The MVD. I went there yesterday too, because the day before that I'd gone to put my renewal sticker (good through May 2009) on Olwen's license plate and discovered the numbers didn't match. Yesterday I went to see what could be done about it, and knowing how MVDs work, I took a book. But unfortunately the only book I had in my car was Brothers Karamazov, which I felt bad about carrying in because it looked like a reflection on how long a wait I anticipated! But there wasn't anything to do, since it was all I had, so I read Ivan talking about the Grand Inquisitor while I waited. Anyway, after about half an hour, Andrea told me she couldn't do anything and directed me to the Santa Fe office, armed with a refund request sheet.

I wasn't sure why I was requesting a refund, and didn't know where the Santa Fe office even was, so I did some judicious Googling and called them. I found a real live person, Donna, who told me not to mess with refunds but just go back and ask them to change my number in the computer to match the plate I really have, and print me out a fresh sticker at no charge. Yay!

So this morning I went back. I'd provided myself with an Amelia book and read about her camel troubles. I also read the foreign license plates. There were two with Arabic script, so I puzzled them out. One read "Al-Iraq Baghdad" and had those cool Farsi numerals on it. :-) I got up to the counter and explained Donna's instructions, and the lady said, "What, Andrea didn't do that for you yesterday??" and zip-zip-zip, printed my new registration and sticker. Yay!

While I was out, I dropped by Ruby K's to pick up a cup of coffee and a to-go menu so the office can order takeout on Tuesday, because our supply representative drew us as Office of the Month and will bring us lunch; and then I stopped to get snacks. I went to Daylight for doughnuts first, but they were out, so I got scones from Coffee Booth instead.

Back at the ranch, I discovered that someone (young Joe) had brought a round of breakfast burritos from that haven of burritoey goodness, Chili Works. Food does that around here; it comes in bunches. Did I mention this office has really good eating?

AND Lisa-here-at-work talked her husband into letting her drive their new sportscar to work, so we went out and admired it. It's very blue and very fast. How fun!

So that was my morning, consisting of a birthday, a delinquent alarm, four breakfast places, the DMV, some coffee, several cars, and very little work. Kind of fun.

Word of the day

Today's word is "reduplicate." You get a point if you actually manage to use it in conversation, two if your interlocutor tries to tell you it isn't really a word. Do comment and let me know how many points you use today. :-)