Rachael

I absolutely know that baby pictures, to people who don’t know the baby personally, just look like baby pictures. Kinda like dog pictures. Dogs is dogs, babies is babies. (Cats are different and communicate their personalities clearly, even in photos.) You seen one baby you don’t know, you’ve seen ’em all. But oh, boy, I have to show you some more of our little Dyl pickle. (I really don’t know why Joni picked us for godparents. We’ve already given him an embarrassing name and it’s fun.)

Oui, I have eyes!

I saw him three times before I believed Joni had given him eyes as well as starfish hands and a kicky little nose.

Drunk, at two weeks. Shameful, really.

Lala tells Dylan about Guitar Hero and other video games.

Joni says no video games. We nod. Of COURSE no video games. Not at OUR house. Nope. None at all. No sugar either.

This has to be a pop-up  because I’m a little embarrassed, but Lala says the accompanying text reads, "Good god, woman, if those aren’t for me, put them away!"

And because it’s a photo kind of day, here’s one of Lala checking to see if we really WILL be able to grill the elephant that we’re going to catch in Vancouver (there are wild elephant in Vancouver, right?).

What the hell? Who needs a grill that big? We’ve been all dreamy, stocking our cunning cottage with things that grownups buy (I bought a wee food processor and used it this morning to make cranberry bread), but no one needs a grill that big, yo. Scary.

Also, speaking of stocking our cottage, this is what I look like when opening gifts that arrive on the doorstep:

(My vest is a thrifted one that says "The Beavers," which I understand is a sports team up north, but which I still find hysterical, much like Alison’s vacationing at Crotch Lake.)

But yes, it’s weird. It’s odd saying, "This is what we want," and it feels like it would be sterile and cold and honestly, selfish, to open boxes that hold what we asked for, but it’s not. It’s wildly fun, but I feel greedy and strange. And I sure don’t like the greedy feeling at ALL. But it’s there. When I opened the red silicone baking pan yesterday from KT, I did a little dance. That’s what I cooked the bread in this morning. When I fondled the gorgeous wooden salad bowls from Gina, I was in heaven. Mmmmm.

Then, a mental slap! Greedy! Selfish! I shouldn’t covet so much. But we do, don’t we? Got yarn? Eh. I’m not quite sure where to put this low-level nagging feeling, so I suppose I’ll keep opening boxes and doing skippy little leaps and pushing the guilt into a corner of my mind to use in my writing later. Yeah! Wait, that’s a selfish thought……

And I’m not even Catholic.

This may have already made the blog-ring rounds last week or month, for all that I’ve been keeping up, but THIS was quite cute.

Off to sit in front of my TiVo and knit the shawl-scarf-like thing. What does one call that? Bigger than a scarf, and lacy, but not big enough to really be called a shawl. A long rectangle, worn around the shoulders. There has to be a name, and I can’t think of it. (I’m finally using up some of the old hoarded Cascade Indulgence alpaca in cream.) Yay!

** update, added later: Yes, it’s a STOLE, as in what Lala did to my heart. (Thanks, y’all.)

To those asking, I bought the dress at Macy’s. Off the rack, yo. I was just trying on back-up dresses! And then I found it. Yup.

Then I bought a veil at Lacis. (Go look at that site, really. Vintage lace shop in Berkeley, exTREMEly cool.) They had me put on my dress in their dressing room at the front of the old wooden shop, and then I traipsed over the floors in my dress through two rooms to get to the bride’s room, where all the veils were. People said, "Look! A bride!" and moved of the way. Really, they said that. The women at Lacis loved the dress, and I’m thinkin’ it takes quite a bit to make the vintage-specialists oooohh-ah over a dress.

I tried on veils. Mantillas. Long lacy ones, short sheer ones. I looked in the mirror at me, a bride. A real bride. I never really wanted this. I never pictured myself married, really, let married in white. A hand-knitted skirt or a red cocktail dress would have been good enough. Yesterday, when I called Lala to tell her I’d accidentally found my wedding dress, and that I felt like it was really bride-like, and did she think I was compromising my ideas, she said, "No! Good! You’re getting  married! That’s the way it should be."

She’s relieved, too. I guess she’d been a bit worried about my sanity and sleep pattern with the dress-deadline looming. Boy, am I relieved, too. But I prolly WILL make at least a scarf/shawl-like thing. MUST have something I’ve made, right?

I found the shoes, too. Best heel in the world, and they have cameos on them! Cameos surrounded by rhinestones! Ridiculously, so far over-the-top sweet. Bride-ish. Sigh…..

I’m glad I won’t be bride-giddy like this for much longer. Three weeks is about all I can handle. But it’s intense, and fun, and romantic, and rather all-consuming. I’m so GLAD I refused to think about the wedding until the first of this month.

We got our first gift off our registry! (Target, under Rachael Herron, since a couple of people have asked.) A toaster! A red toaster! We were very, very, very excited. Never knew I could feel like that about a toaster. Thank you, Sara. We love it, and I love that you can tell it the bread is frozen. That’s cool.

We also have the red coffee-maker which we bought ourselves, and just got the red microwave from sister Bethany. Lala is a widow, so that necessarily means she’s been married before. She was registered then, too, and she brought into our relationship not only music  and cute little dogs but really great cookware, so we don’t need things like forks and heavy-duty pans.  But dude, red appliances. Those were fun to register for.

See? All-consuming. I’m enjoying every minute of this, but when it’s all over, I will sit on the couch and knit and catch up on the L-Word and Lost. And I will be married. We will be married. In California, unlawfully, in Canada, legally, and in our hearts, happily.

Yay.

Tonight, by chance, I bought my wedding dress.

Yep. You read that right.

This afternoon, I finished the skirt of the dress I was knitting. (More than a year, and not even a bodice yet.) I held it up, and knew. Then I tried it on, and knew it even more. Just not Right. Sure, it was cute. It looked hand-knitted, and god knows that’s a good thing, usually. Okay?

But maybe not in a wedding dress. Or maybe not in MY wedding dress.

I still hadn’t given the idea up, not yet. My sister Christy and I went shopping — I needed shoes for the big day. We looked and didn’t find anything. We wandered into the dresses, browsing. We called our other sister Bethany, who had had a terrible, horrible, no-good, very-bad day, and told her to meet us. Bethany found us in the dresses, flinging fabric over our arms, giddy with sequin-lust. Just having fun. A lark. We brought piles of dresses into the fitting rooms and starting trying things on.

The first dress. Oh, my god. Awesome. Fun. Retro. A dress I could wear again to a fancy party.

The second dress. How do I get INTO this thing? A costume fitter, who happened to be helping her friend try on dresses, got me zipped up, and bam. Holy cow. I looked like a bride-bride. Princess neck, gold details, full floor length skirt.

Just having fun. These are inexpensive dresses, by the way. Off the rack. Not in the fancy-schmancy section, just out on the dress racks.

Then I tried on The One. Know what I did when I got it zipped up? Laughed my ass off. I felt like the top part of the wedding cake, that fancy piece that you’re supposed to keep. I glanced in the mirror, howled, and went to show my sisters. The costume designer said, "Oh! That’s my favorite." I said, "Are you kidding me?" Then Bethany gasped. I took a real look, for the first time.

Yes, it’s the kind of dress that makes me feel like a bride. I have no idea why I fought that for so long. I’m getting MARRIED. It’s good to look like a bride. It’s definitely unique, and vintage-looking, and it looks like me, but it’s still a wedding dress. You couldn’t wear this to the opera and call it fancy. Nope. This is a dress to dance the first dance in. You know? I won’t describe it, because I’m not going to show Lala until the day itself (although we’ll see each other that day — non-traditional that way), but suffice it to say that it’s a vavoom dress. Lots of vavoom. Lala likes my voom.

And now I don’t have to hurry up to finish the knitted dress! I know I will finish the knitted dress, because we’ll have a wedding for it eventually (we want to get married in every country that legalizes gay marriage — we’re up to five on our list now). But there’s no hurry, and less stress, and I’m so relieved. I just wasn’t sure, and I want to be SURE on the big day that I look like a million in-love dollars, and this dress will make sure of that.

I’m pretty damn thrilled. Here’s a peek:

Lala blogged! And it’s way longer than anything I’m going to have time to do, so go enjoy yourself over there, okay?

I have neither knit nor spun in this house yet. And oh, my god, I’m getting married in, like, three weeks. I have a dress to make. I guess with a fifteen month engagement, there’s still nothin’ like the last minute. Jeesh.

https://rachaelherron.com/lala_blogged_an-2/

I just really, really, really like saying "my godson." I am astonished at how many times I’ve already talked about how proud I am of my godson, how perfect he is, how he, at three days old, looks like he’s thinking at at LEAST a seven-day-old level.

I mean, really. With a fiddle-accordian-playing song-writing sailor for a mother, and godmothers like us, he’ll get his first tattoo by twelve. And it’ll be a GOOD one, too. We did offer to try some designs out last night with a Sharpie, but Joni just shook her head in what was probably exhaustion, but what we took as mild encouragement.

And at the risk of sending our mothers into joint tailspins of grandmotherly dreams, I have to share this picture of my godson and my girl.