Le maudit Mo D.

honeymoon

...is over. Pearson Airport in Toronto gets a solid FUCK YOU from this international traveler. Having spent six hours yesterday quarantined in their American Flights Only concourse, which is separated by a long glass wall from gates leading to Canadian domestic flights, we were forced into what felt like a holding pen for convicts while the locals got to snack on Tim Horton donuts while we were stuck with the American detritus that is TGI Fridays! That experience really boiled my blood and was a crappy way to end such a lovely trip. Then our luggage didn't arrive with us, but magically appeared in our backyard this morning. American Airlines has luggage fairies.

TO RECAP:

Halifax and other parts of Nova Scotia: fun

Moncton, New Brunswick, and other parts of SE NB: No Funswick can suck it. We only went so we could say, "We've been to Moncton." Unsurprisingly, NB is like the Louisiana of Canada. Which makes sense, because the Acadians left NB for LA.

PEI, Charlottetown, Lobster Supper:breathtakingly beautiful.

Toronto: I liked TO a whole lot and could see myself living there. It's like the nicer, Canadian version of NYC. I particularly enjoyed the ethnic neighborhoods.

Fuck You, I'm Married

Bitch.

A list of things:
1) The bridesmaids, and their candy pink dresses, were lovely.
2) There was a point during the rehearsal, which took place in the restaurant parking lot, where I turned to walk up the "aisle" and I saw Bob and our officiant and the maids and groomsmen and I was like, "whoa, this is it!" Shit!
3) It took two stylists to twist my thick, plentiful, heavy hair into a French twist, which fell apart before the night was through.
4) Couldn't sleep worth shit last night.
5) We did "I Will Survive," which was fun and ceremonial, despite my previous statements about it.
6) OMG: J-Rat and T-Square.
7) Sang Journey songs with Boss Hogg.
8) I was surprised by the presence of J. Zep. Yay Zep!
9) We forgot the champagne flutes.
10) Bob's parents got their late, thinking the ceremony was half an hour later than scheduled.
11) My brother gave a loving toast fit for a 15-year-old. (I had to yell, "It's about US!" when he started listing the states he's visited)
12) I cried during the ceremony.
13) Other people cried during the ceremony.
14) We smashed a plate. Or rather, Bob smashed a plate.
15) We danced to "Tijuana Taxi" as we exited down the aisle.
16) People laughed during the ceremony. As well as cried.
17) I failed to consume enough food, having taken dainty-sized servings and worrying about incurring a tummyache. A few hours of mayhem later, I was starving, and the caterers had left and taken all the food with them! Bummer. I must say, the brisket was melty and tender and better tasting than what I've had in their restaurant.
18) The cake kicked ass. Tres leches with blue frosting. Word.
19) The Geegsters did a dance diamond to "Dancing Queen."
20) My poor mother and my stepfart slow danced and it was really awful. It looked like my mom was trying to move a corpse rather than dance.
21) Pussy Control.
22) Warning: polka-ing with Bob's legendary polka machine Uncle Donny is hazardous to your health. The man IS a polka machine. He zambonied me around the dance floor to a 3/3 beat, spun me around, and made it very difficult for the already breathing-challenged me to breathe. I was out of breath and out of sorts for at least four songs afterwards, worrying I was going to die of an embolism or a collapsed lung. All from about a minute of polka dancing.
23) Everyone loved Cassi's daughter, Coco. Coco even got to dance with Omar. As did my mom!
24) I did not get enough mac 'n cheese, and I'm mad craving it right now.
25) The above photo was taken by me, but I got the same one done by my photographer. As well as one with chewed up meat in my mouth. Hey, they're my wedding pictures!
26) I am very grateful to all my friends and family who made this wonderful day possible. Exhausting as it was.
27) I love Borpe.

Indignities

Terrorists have chosen MY WEDDING WEEKEND to wreak havoc on the friendly skies. Fuckers. I guess they felt slighted by my lack of invite or something. Now my guests, my nice friends and family, are suffering the indignity of having their water bottles and toothpaste seized. What a pathetic historical moment this is: you're not allowed to fly with a bottle of mouthwash, because that mouthwash might be an explosive. I guess this is what the air raid drills of the 1950s felt like.

I, for one, am opposed to fear. My mom today busted a nut when I announced to her that I let my 15-yr-old bro take the city bus from my house to downtown rather than me personally escort him and idle the car outside making sure he gets in safely, without any bad person trying to kill him on the walk from the car to the door. Her response was what I might expect had I called and told her that Sam had been killed in a freak motorscooter accident, not "was on the #5 bus during rush hour, with all the boring people going home from their jobs." My mom is being all high-strung and freakoid, and I'm not appreciating that.

The onslaught of friends and well-wishers has begun, and while I am usually an attention whore and a show-off, I'm finding this particular brand of attention to be unsettling, because everyone is happy for me and I didn't have to write a damn thing. I'd rather be complimented for my writing skills than for my ability to be a pretty bride. I have a honker nose and a belly and an in-chest swimming pool and all these people are sprinkling me with joy and love because I happened to meet a guy I want to live with the rest of my life. We have sex and share insurance. We live together in a house and sleep in the same bed. Sometimes we bicker. He is expected to eat dinner with me most evenings, but if he doesn't that's okay. We are having a party because we've gone to the county clerk and paid $41 and signed a sheet of paper that homos aren't allowed to sign.

Once you strip the wedding event of its lucre, of its grandeur, of its Victorianness, it becomes a parody of itself.

I hope we have an okay time getting to Halifax next week. That's the sad state of being an American: we hope for things to be "okay." Airlines are no longer service oriented. Now, everyone's a suspect. We have to change planes twice because Texans generally don't go to Nova Scotia, although TX and NS are the two places where there are grackles. Grackles are awful.

I am very excited about seeing the Canadian candy wrappers. They are different and mention grams.

The First Day of the Rest of My Non-Archival Life

Reader, I am officially unemployed.

I got me the golden boot today. And a party with a yummy cake and champagne punch, and a wedding gift in the form of Julia Child's most famous cookbook. I was sad to leave my job. It was a good job. Nice people. Smart people. Comfy, like the ergonomic high-backed chair I bamboozled out of someone who makes more money that I did, which I then gave to my coworker. But I'm going to be a Writer now.

Please kick my Writer ass. Hard. Thank you.

I am so overwhelmed right now, I feel both tired and high, simultaneously. I dropped 200 dollars on internet shoes to celebrate the fact that I will not be earning a constant paycheck for the next couple of months. Perhaps I will get a job at Fart Town or Doug's Shit Palace. Or sell my used panties on eBay. There is a world of opportunity out there.

I just realized: we are out of stamps. I have to go to the posty this coming week anyway.

Eight days until weddening. Ten days until Canadian honeymoon. I'm also 30 5/12 as of tomorrow, too.

Love: exciting and new!

i take thee, soap character

During college, I watched a lot of soaps. This activity, of which I have not a trace of shame about, was brought about by Mara, the undisputably most controversial, scandalous, and influential person to enter my life, ever. At present, Mara is a soap journalist and talks to famous soap figures about as often as she visits the can. Back in college, Mara was a nascent soap opera flower ready to burst from its seed. Having spent the entirety of her adolescence obsessively viewing and reading about every show in the entire genre, Mara was eager to spred her love for melodramatic daytime TV like the gospel. And if you know Mara, you'll understand that her Clintonesque charm and personal magnetism easily charmed the feminist throng into agreeing with her on anything, soaps included.

During the spring of 1997, I was deeply entranced with the Patrick/Marty storyline on One Life To Live. Marty, after being raped, kidnapped, beaten, diagnosed with lupus, and dumped in the proverbial dumpster, was engaged to Dylan, your standard-issue soap opera hottie with not much of a storyline. I was not a Dylan fan, and I'm sure at the time I had one heck of a witty line about how bland he was as a character, about how his long auburn hair and sharply chiseled features made him look like a gussied-up white-trash exotic dancer picked up by some Park Avenue septuagenarian with a lot of money and extremely high self-esteem, but it wasn't that.

Patrick, on the other hand, (played by Mara's close personal friend Thorsten Kaye) was a burly Irish poet, a character so over-the-top he may as well have been dreamed up by a midwestern high school sophomore who didn't realize that James Joyce was a skinny motherfucker with a pencil mustache. Patrick (like St. Patrick!) was IRISH! He had connections to the IRA! He was almost KILLED! And of course, when he met Marty on that fateful night in Ireland, Patrick's theme song, a wistful flute-heavy number performed by the Chieftains, he was SHOT and nearly DIED IN HER ARMS, but not before falling HOPELESSLY IN LOVE with young, beautiful, doomed Marty.

Back home in Llanview, Dylan, bland, chiseled Dylan, awaited his bride's return (I don't remember why Marty was in Ireland, other than it had something to do with alluring villain/rapist TODD), but no one was rooting for them as a couple anymore. Everytime Marty entered a room that Patrick was in, the flutey Chieftains song would play, and the camera's focus would soften Marty's face and Patrick would get that shamed, tragic look that quoted Morrissey, "I want the one I can't have," only we all knew that this was a soap opera, and that this Irish dude, with his burly physique, and ORIGINAL POETRY WRITTEN BY THE ACTOR would net him his woman.

I mention this story not only because it was a very important part of my Seven Sisters education, but also because it speaks to my latest irrational fear, namely, that I will say some other name besides "Bob" during the ceremony. As I recall, during Marty's lackluster and awkward nuptials with cuckold Dylan, she uttered the name "Patrick" instead of "Dylan," foretelling their inevitable demise. Network TV fans will also remember that Ross said "Rachel" instead of "that forgettable temporary woman he married for two miserable episodes back in '99." I am worried that these dramatic television hooks, designed to bash viewers over the head with the information of future infidelities and re-pairings, have seeped into my psyche and I'll accidentally call Bob "Terrance" or "Jack" or "Dad" and I will be horrified beyond recognition and will be forced to avail myself of the services of the grill of a truck traveling at 50 mph.

I love Bob.

Still, as the date approaches, and I get squirrelier, and less Mo-like, and more stressed and given to requesting prescription downers from my doctor, I cannot help but be worried about minor embarrassments, revelations that my mental real estate's got a squatter right now, but that like all those arty-farty French writers whose papers I've spent the last 2.5 years processing, all this shit has made me feel like the mad brilliant writer I've always knew I could be.

IN OTHER NEWS:
I purchased my first iPod today, with only two days left on my UT staff discount at the pooter store. I'm late to this piece of technology, but now I've got the latest, tricked-out version, so bully for moi.