Lawnmowers and wedding ponchos

Blogger just redid its format so I can see all the drafts of posts that I've started without publishing or deleting over the years and I just found this line from November 2009: I may be in denial but I still refuse to believe that I need a binder to plan a wedding. God, I'm stubborn sometimes. Enough people tell me I need a binder and I will steadfastly refuse to buy (into) it. My wedding was a still screaming success but that binder represented something much larger to me, as do lawnmowers.

I can't remember ever consciously thinking about lawnmowers but when we rented this house in Nashville with a yard and Matthew mentioned buying a lawnmower, I FLIPPED. I instantly hit a wall of hatred for lawnmowers and I straight-up refused to buy one, or at least a large, loud, gas-powered one. "Fuck lawnmowers," I believe I put it. Because I'm not completely irrational, I admitted that our house is attached to a yard, a yard we'd been thinking would be awesome for Patsy, and that it needed to be mowed but I would only consider a hand-pushed rotary blade mower. Or scissors. "I will get down on my hands and knees and cut every blade of grass in sight with scissors before I buy a big lawnmower."

Matthew was intrigued by my vehemence and probed at my reasoning: Was it the expense? The environment? The noise? Did the lawnmower represent the suburbs and I was recoiling out of some sort of urban principle? No, yes, yes, and yes again. I don't care for big yards. If I'm going to have a yard, I'd prefer some trees, flowers, vegetables and rocks to keep it from being so grassy. And if I do have a lot of grass, I'd prefer to also have some sort of grazing animal who keeps that shit in check. Note: Patsy has been grazing. She bites at the grass with an OCD-like tic when she gets excited but then she comes inside and pukes so the positive is outweighed by the vomit. In the end we didn't get any lawnmower because our landlord gave us the number of a guy who will cut the lawn for us. Matthew's allergies have kicked in so badly here that he can barely breathe at times and I'm rarely home so this is the best option for now.

Now, back to weddings! Everyone knows that when I got engaged, I dreaded all the fuss. I was extremely self-conscious about telling people at first because the news often elicits a lot of squealing and "let me see the ring"s and it made me uncomfortable. If I were in a rom com, I would be the friend of Jennifer Aniston who rolls her eyes and smokes a lot of cigarettes. Mandy once likened me to Miranda from Sex in the City. My close friends all get it and buffered their comments like this, "I know how you are but I'm soooooo excited for you!" And that was just fine. People who don't know me quite as well have told me not to be "too cool for school" and that I'm "trying" to be some way. I can usually brush it off or explain myself but every now and then it totally gets to me and I've cried to Matthew, literally tears rolling down my face, that I'm not trying to be anything. I'M BEING MYSELF. Ask my mom. I was like this in f'ing preschool. I declined her offer to go to Disney World when I was ten. Sometimes I wish I knew how to be more gushy. I wish I loved costume parties, board games, team sports, and lawnmowers but I just don't.

HAVING SAID THAT

Sara gave us a framed photo for our wedding, a photo of a fence. Handwritten in cursive underneath is something along the lines of tearing down our heart-fences and how we will not be safe but we will be saved. We didn't put it up in our Kentucky home but it hung in the hallway in Oceanside and it's in our bedroom in Nashville. I sent her a photo of it the other day when I was lying in bed looking at it. She wrote back and said she was happy I liked it, that she thought it might be too cheesy for me when she bought it. "Even I let the cheese in sometimes," I wrote back.

Two of my friends were recently engaged. I heard about Casey first and I pretty much started jumping up and down and had to call her because I was in Tennessee but if we'd been in the same city, it's possible that I would have squealed right in her face. How's that for a turn of events? I'm really, really happy for her. A bit later I called her back and left a long message on the topic of engagement photo shoots and how so many people not only do them but seem to find themselves picnicking in their shoots. I'm guessing, but I doubt most of these couples ever go on picnics until they get engaged and the next thing you know they're sitting on a blanket in a field, cracking up, holding hands, and feeding each other grapes. Because Casey's sense of humor is similar to mine, I think her and Bob's engagement picnic would be hilarious so I offered to fund the shoot. She hasn't gotten back to me on that. She did, however, send me an incredible photo the other day. A few months back we had a long, protracted Facebook exchange on the subject of ponchos when I bought a poncho on impulse and was still grappling with the implications. Yes, ponchos have implications. Casey was all for the poncho even though it was vaguely reminiscent of the baha circa 1995 and when she got engaged I said I'd get her a wedding poncho.

WELL, THEY EXIST. Who am I to make jokes about a wedding poncho? Or bridal cape as this Etsy shop calls it.