thirty weddings and....I can't remember

Profoundly stupid things I've done while conducting a housing search.

1) Read in-law suite in basement as in law suite in basement. Ie, I understood the in law suite to be an area in your basement specifically designed for a law office. In my defense, which, lets be honest here, no defense really makes up for such mass stupidity, the first picture I saw was of some office chairs and a desk in a basement, and I'm thinking, oh yeah, I could see someone sending a fax from there, and I'm wondering what hours they keep and if it makes it harder to walk around upstairs during the day/sing along to Mariah Cary with the sort of verve that she deserves/commands. By my seventh house with in-law suite I figured out that it probably meant something besides what I thought or that DC had an incredibly high density of lawyers in a very small area all living in basements.

2) Confused crown moldings and trim. This is also really inexcusable, and probably a sign that I need to be watching far more HG TV than I am currently. I bet they have all sorts of stuff about crown molding, and light fixtures, and medallions, and other things that homeowner's need to know about in order to feel superior to those who don't own homes, which is the point of owning a home as far as I understand it.

I'm in Maine now, making my way up the Eastern seaboard. I really have just always wanted to say Eastern seaboard.

Highlights from the wedding
1) A one and a half year old running up onto the stage in the church hall despite his father's protests followed by the father saying to the child, who has only mastered dada and mama at this point, "Do you want a time out? Because we can accommodate that?" I'm not entirely certain how he expected the child to respond, most one and a half year olds not having quite made it up to the accommodate portion of the dictionary. I believe his answer was somewhere between "Can you rephrase that?" and "What the hell did you just say/dada."

Aside: I always loved my own father's questioning "Do you want spanks?" before applying a healthy does of TLC to rear ends. I think this is one the greatest practices ever invented, asking children if they would like a time-out or a spanking. Shockingly, in my many years as a child-care worker not one child ever said, "Yes, I'd love it if you could give me a time-out. I was sort of thinking I deserved one, but I was really just waiting for someone to ask." Not once.

Listening to the wind blowing through the trees around the church, which sounds like the ocean, or traffic, or just plain old wind going through trees. Watching the light fall between the small black lattices to make rectangles of light on the floor bisected by shadows. Feeling an overwhelming and indeterminate sadness as the now newly weds practiced for the big day, and thinking about how selfishness is the most natural thing in the world, but sad.

2) I'm nearly thirty years old as has been well-documented in this blog. Thirty being the age where you either acquire old-man strength from lifting obscure objects or fall into some sort slow and irreparable bodily decline. Shoulder surgery here I come! Anyhow, I'm thinking that the weddings will be scarce in my future or I'll just be some old hanger on who young people call cute. The sort of person who retires after the cake cutting to watch episodes of Macgyver (sp) loved that show! And though I'm happy to be moving into that stage of life I'll miss dancing at weddings, which is only permissible while you're under the age of thirty according to certain strict by laws laid out by the Adam's brothers at the outset of our fine nation. Ergo; if you're getting married in the next year be sure to invite me so that I can do some dancing before I retire to the buffet table for life, trying to pick off food that the caterer's are packing up.

Congratulations to Katie and Pete on getting married and doing the whole Lord of the Rings tour while in New Zealand! Enjoy levensies! (No idea on how to spell this/they aren't actually doing the whole tour just the trip to Mordor to get rid of their rings in a lake of molten lava. Don't ask).