Alphabet Soup: Couples Edition

I've decided to jump on the bandwagon and do an alphabet post, since I love reading everyone else's so much. But first, can I just say to all you people who are getting married and commented on my last entry that you want to steal some of our wedding ideas: I think that's great, and you should totally do it. First of all, many of them are borrowed from magazines or other people to begin with. Second of all, I like our ideas. I'm glad you do too. I hope your guests do as well.

Okay, now, onto the alphabet, since that's what you've all been waiting for. I decided to do mine with an "us" theme to it. The A-Z of Jess and Torsten. Or should it be Torsten and Jess? Anyway. On with the show.

Anniversary: Tomorrow is exactly one year before our wedding. It's our minus-iversary. We don't have any plans to celebrate, but how cool is that? I will no longer have to add "2008" every time someone asks when our wedding is. I can just say, "November 1."

Bedtime: Every night before we go to sleep, Torsten and I say both "I love you" and "Ich liebe Dich" to each other.

Camera: I have loved photography since I first took a class in it in high school, but now I associate picture-taking with Torsten, mostly because my camera (which I LOVE) was a Christmas gift from him last year. And also because he loves and encourages my photography and always gives me very thorough reviews of photos he likes and ones he doesn't. And he was the one who encouraged me to finally get around to framing some of my prints and hanging them in our apartment.

Dog: We both really want a dog, especially me, as I've mentioned before. I am seriously going crazy without one. But I don't think we'll be able to have one for at least a year. And this makes me really sad.

Ears: Torsten has this thing about my ears, which is that he thinks they are incredibly small (they are on the small side, which is a huge pain when trying to find headphones that will fit in my ears) and he likes to touch them. But when I touch his ears, he yelps. Apparently he has double standards on this one.

Fish: Fish is super healthy and also tasty (especially in sushi form), so I have been learning to like it more and am attempting to learn more ways of cooking it. Torsten is very good at cooking salmon, and we eat a lot of shrimp, but I'd like to expand our fish horizons a bit more.

Germany: We're going there next week. We just bought a gift for Torsten's mom, who will celebrate her birthday while we're there. I'm a bit nervous about spending so much time with his parents, but I think it will be fine. Also, we're spending two days at the North Sea just the two of us, so that will be nice. And I understand more German now than I did when Torsten's parents came here two months ago. However, apparently all the bedrooms in the house have twin beds. I'm still not quite sure what we're going to do about this situation.

Healthy living: I haven't talked much about Weight Watchers recently, since it's pretty much just same old, same old, but it's still going well--I've lost just under 40 pounds so far. And I really don't feel like I've even given up that much. I'm just much more aware of what I eat and how much I move. And I feel so much better about everything. And I'm not even done yet. And a major reason why it's been going so well is because Torsten has been so supportive, and always praises the healthy meals I cook, and doesn't complain when they're gross or when he still feels hungry afterward, and is always encouraging without applying pressure.

Immigration: Already, just from meeting with lawyers and reviewing paperwork and procedures, I have learned so much about visas and permanent resident status and everything else. If we do adopt a child from another country and have to go through USCIS to register them as a US citizen, we will be well-versed in dealing with these people. I shudder to think about how long it will be until we're finally done with this process. It's definitely good we're starting early.

Jokes: Torsten has a fantastic sense of humour, but then he also makes these really awful jokes and plays on words, half of which don't even make sense because the words only sound alike in his native-German-speaking head. I usually roll my eyes at these puns, but sometimes they are genuinely hilarious in their awfulness, and also he is so proud of himself for thinking of them, which is really cute.

Kisses: I remember how incredibly badly I wanted Torsten to kiss me on our first date, and how I kept trying to set it up, and how at first he avoided it and then finally he caved in. And I remember exactly what our first kiss felt like. And I love that now if I want to kiss him I can just do it and not have to think about it first.

Lxxxxxx: The current favourite for a future daughter's name starts with L. I'm still not permitted to say what it is, though. Although I imagine that by the time we would actually have occasion to name a child, we'll have changed our minds.

Mess: Somehow, even though neither of us likes it this way, our apartment always winds up being a mess. We go on kicks where we clean the kitchen immediately after dinner each night, and toss the paper as soon as we're done reading it, and put our dirty clothes straight into the laundry basket. And then... it ends. And our beautiful apartment descends into squalor until one of us can't take it anymore, we clean the whole thing up, and then the cycle starts again.

Nationals: I tried to be a Nats fan when I moved to DC, and I am, moderately. But really, I love the Red Sox. And Torsten, fairweather fan that he is, got sick of the Nats in August when he realized they weren't going to make the playoffs (shocker) and planted himself firmly in the Red Sox camp. He picked the right year, apparently. But since he's a new fan, he doesn't understand certain things, like that Jason Varitek is NEVER to be insulted even if he had an off year. Nicknames like "Jason Losertek" are simply unacceptable.

Of course: What I said to Torsten when he asked me to marry him. Apparently, I'm too cool for the standard "yes" that most people say. But hey, it's what came out. And it got the message across.

Purple: I don't think this one really requires an explanation. It's just beautiful. That's why it will be everywhere at our wedding. One of the reasons why Torsten and I work so well together is that he is extremely understanding and tolerant about my extreme love of purple.

Questions: This is an interesting one, I think. I am the over-analytical type and in past relationships I've been teased for asking too many questions, almost all of them trying to force the other person to specify exactly what they meant by pretty much everything they ever said. With Torsten, I don't do that and I've never done it. I'm not quite sure what changed. I think it's a combination of us being in tune with each other (so I don't have to ask) and me being totally at ease around him (so I don't feel the need to seek out ulterior motives). Hey, looks like I have a little bit of the cra-a-azy that's been going around recently, too.

Redhead: Torsten's hair is a reddish brownish non-colour (this was extremely inconvenient when we had to pick a hair colour for his driver's license application), but it was red red when he was a kid. Apparently his whole family was the same way. I'm hoping our child is no exception. How cool would it be for our kid to have red, curly hair?

Senegal: This is the only country other than France and the US that I've ever lived in for any significant amount of time (read: more than a couple weeks). I still feel a strong attachment to it and would love to adopt a child from there, which Torsten totally supports. I looked into it a little bit and at the moment it doesn't seem like they have any real laws about international adoption, which makes it quite complicated. But maybe that will change.

Thailand: We're thinking about going there on our honeymoon. I really want to see all seven continents, and I haven't been to Asia yet, and this seems like a good excuse to go. And everyone I know who's been to Thailand loves it, and it's cheap (except the flights--but hey, we have those vouchers), and November is just the beginning of the high season there. But the flights would be really long, and we don't know how much time off we'll have, so we're thinking of doing something like Mexico instead. We're torn.

United States: We fully plan to settle here in the US, much to the chagrin of Torsten's parents. We still want to live in San Francisco, but we also want to look very carefully at lots of options before we pick a place to move. Including places like Scottsdale, Arizona. All we know is that we want to move west. But hey, for all we know, we could wind up moving to Europe. Since we're both EU citizens and we now both have the passports to prove it, it would be feasible. I don't think I want to move to Europe, but apparently I change my mind a lot. Torsten is my one constant, and he'll be there no matter where we decide to live.

Vacation: The last time I took a vacation without Torsten was when I went to France without him for two weeks in April. The only reason this happened was because the trip had been planned way in advance, before I'd met him. It sucked so much to be away from him for that long. I never want to go on vacation without him again.

Wedding: Okay, I'm sure nobody is surprised at what I chose for W. What can I say? I've finally snapped out of that two-month lull of non-planning and now I have all these concepts and ideas and plans and I want to meet with florists and pick a DJ and buy a dress RIGHT NOW. Actually what I really want to do is go to like Target and Michael's and peruse for little inexpensive detail-y things that I might not have thought of that would be a good extra little touch. So far, I'm resisting the urge.

Xylophone: Possibly the only instrument that Torsten hasn't yet suggested as a possibility for wedding ceremony music. He keeps changing his mind because his piano is so versatile and can sound like pretty much anything. We still have made absolutely no progress on this issue. We don't even know if we're using the piano.

Yarn: Last spring I bought tons of yarn to knit Torsten a scarf. It felt silly because the cold weather had just gone and wouldn't be back for so long. Now it's here again... but I haven't made any progress on the scarf since April. It's about a foot long, and sitting in a drawer, along with several skeins of untouched yarn. Whoops.

Zest: One of the only things that Torsten and I squabble over is the use of actual lemons vs. bottled lemon juice in cooking. I like using real lemons and he tells me I'm silly because bottled lemon juice is the exact same thing in more convenient form. My way around this is to find recipes that also require lemon zest. That way I have to buy the lemon anyway so I might as well not put it to waste and use the juice as well. And he can't complain.

What We Want in a Wedding

Our concept of how we want our wedding to be is definitely still fuzzy, but it's starting to take shape, so I want to formulate some of the thoughts we've had so far. Also, by the way, I totally bought three wedding magazines to read on the plane to Austin and Martha Stewart Weddings is by far superior to any other wedding magazine I've seen. I can't wait for the next issue to come out. In fact, I briefly considered ordering back issues on Amazon. Is that sad, or should I just go ahead and do it?

• An evening wedding with the ceremony at six and the reception going until around midnight
  
• Formal photos before the wedding, with us seeing each other for the first time in a private place
• Possibly some fun photos of the two of us in our wedding clothes at some photogenic spot in DC, like the Lincoln Memorial or somewhere else that's a clean white colour with nice lines--since it will be November, we can't really go for charming nature shots
  
• An emphasis on candid shots capturing moments and emotions and little details from throughout the night
  
• Torsten in a classic black tux and me in a white dress, possibly with some subtle purple detailing somewhere
• The bridesmaids in purple dresses, all different
  
• The groomsmen in black tuxes
• Me with a purple bouquet and the bridesmaids with either white or mixed-colour bouquets
• Approximately 75 guests in attendance
  
• An intimate, personalized ceremony, with a reading written and read by a friend; a song sung by a friend; possibly a sand ceremony like Shauna's; us speaking to each other with words we've written ourselves before taking simple, traditional vows; and a secular officiant
• A cocktail hour between ceremony and reception with a full bar, passed hors d'oeuvres, and us there, talking with our guests
  
• Soft lighting at the reception, including lots of candles, fires in both fireplaces, maybe some Chinese lanterns or twinkly lights around the room, and some lamps with nice shades
• An open bar throughout the evening
  
• Music by a DJ who is good at reading the crowd and gets lots of people on the dance floor
• A basket of flip flops and/or slippers for women whose shoes are hurting them, either for dancing or for going home in
  
• Favors at every place setting on the tables, possibly a plant in a pretty pot--although we may have to find an alternative favor as most of our guests will be from out of town and might have trouble transporting their plants home
• A coffee/cappuccino bar that includes alcohol such as Kahlua and Bailey's for people to make their after-dinner drinks a bit more interesting
• A three-tiered cake in white and purple with different types of cake in each tier, possibly with a super-retro ceramic bride and groom from the 1950s (or earlier) on top
  
• Quiet music played by the DJ during the meal so that people can actually hear each other talk; us walking around during part of the meal, talking with our guests
  
• Tables of different sizes and shapes without giant floral centerpieces that block people's views of each other
• A guestbook that is basically a big blank book with either a Polaroid camera or a digital camera with a printer and a friend manning it--so each guest gets their photo taken (with outfits showing), then has their photo glued in book and writes their message next to it
• Couches and armchairs by the fireplaces for non-dancing guests to sit in, chat, and relax

What do you think of this? Are there things that sound totally off, or things that you think should definitely be on that list (whether or not they are currently there)? If you're planning/have already had a wedding, what are/were the most important elements for you?

My first (and only) car

I have owned only one car in my life, and unlike Tessie, mine was not a charming junk heap made primarily out of rust like most people imagine when they think of first cars. No, mine was a new car, and not just any new car: it was a Volkswagen New Beetle, obtained a few weeks before my 16th birthday, on March 4, 2000.

Now, lest you think I was a spoiled princess who received a brand new car for her Sweet Sixteen, let me set your mind at ease. The car was not a birthday present. The reason I got it so close to my birthday is because I got my license on my birthday, and with the license came the accompanying car. I paid for precisely one half of the car. In fact, I was in debt until my sophomore year of college because of that car.

But basically, the reason I had a shiny new car was because my mother had an irrational fear of used cars. She always liked to say that used cars aren't reliable because you never know how the last owner treated them, which I suppose is true to an extent. Thus, she did not want her young, freshly-licensed daughter driving on the back roads of North Carolina in a car that could break at any moment.

When you're living in North Carolina, you more or less need a car. Everything is very far from everything else, and there is no public transportation to speak of. My parents fully supported the idea of me having a car, because they were really sick of having to drive me everywhere. This was made worse for them by the fact that my older sister had driven me everywhere for a year when she got her license, then gone away to college, forcing my parents to once again get up early to take me to school (no school bus), drive me to see friends, etc.

God, writing this is reminding me of how much it really sucks not to be able to get places on your own. This is why Torsten and I want to have kids in a city that has a real public transportation system.

Anyway, back on track. My mother did want me to have a car but did not want it to be a used car, which would have been the only option I could afford, so she offered to pay for half of a new car for me and to lend me the rest of the money that I needed to make up my half. And when she said half, she really meant it. Half of the cost of the car, half of the tax, half of the gas, half of the insurance. My mother was all about teaching her children financial responsibility, and she kept very good records.

By the time I turned 16, I had about $5,000 in savings (from babysitting and working as a salesclerk), and it took me four more years to pay off the rest of the car because every time I got close, it would be time to pay car tax or another insurance bill would come or something, and so it was with the biggest feeling of relief ever that I finally paid my mother my last installment and took the car to college with me. (I was not allowed to take the car away until I had paid it off. This was part of the lesson on financial responsibility. On the other hand, I was not charged any interest on the loaned money. This was a reasonable trade-off.)

The decision to get a New Beetle as opposed to any other car was not based on the fact that it's a cute car, but rather on the fact that it was one of the cheapest cars that Consumer Reports gave good reliability ratings to. Still, my mother was worried that I could get stranded somewhere, get out of the car to call her on a pay phone, and get attacked by a man who was loitering near the phone, just waiting for a young girl to stumble innocently upon it. So, she insisted that I get a car phone. This was before cell phones had really caught on. The cost of making a phone call on the car phone was about 60 cents per minute. Of this, I was expected to pay 25 cents, as that was what I would have paid for a call made on a pay phone (I presume you see what I mean about her insistence on lessons of financial responsibility).

Unfortunately, I do not have a picture of that stylish car phone, but suffice it to say that it took up more or less the entire glove compartment of the car and that the only thing the screen showed was the phone number you typed in, in giant orange numbers. It also had a classic blocky look to it. I never used it, even once.

It did have a good engine, but it had tons of electrical problems. The oxygen sensor kept breaking, which caused the car to smell like rotten eggs. The check engine light kept coming on for no reason at all (and no, it was not because I didn't know how to screw the gas cap back on). Sometimes the electric window buttons stopped working (this happened at a toll booth once, forcing me to get out of the car to pay the toll. That sucked). Sometimes the CD player stopped working. I'm pretty sure Consumer Reports doesn't give it top ratings anymore, at least not for wiring.

I did love the car, though. I drove that thing as far south as Orlando and as far north and east as Maine, although I don't think it ever went further west than Toronto. When I got back from my year in France, I was afraid to drive it, but it turned out that driving is pretty much like riding a bike. That car has been up and down I-95 more times than most people I know. That car was my first step toward liberation from my parents.

I sold it when I graduated college and moved to DC, after having had it for just over six years. I made a pretty decent amount of money from selling it, and that money helped me pay my deposits, move-in fees, and rent and support myself for a month until I got my first real paycheck. Now I use the Metro, the bus, and Zipcar. So I don't miss my car. And I definitely don't miss having to take it to get the check engine light turned off at least once a month.

But still. Wasn't it a pretty shade of blue? It looked purple in the sun.

Photos from Austin

As promised, photos from the weekend. First, what may possibly be my favourite photo ever taken of Torsten:


I only this weekend figured out how to use my camera in macro mode, so please excuse the extreme close-ups of food.


Torsten's dessert:


The wedding program:


Matt smiling at his bride as she walks up the aisle toward him:


All the stoplights in Austin are sideways:


Me in the crosswalk:


The Texas state Capitol from the outside:


And from the inside:


A cannon on the grounds outside the Capitol:


You can see the full set here. But lastly, since I figured out the macro mode, I figured as a bonus I'd finally show you all a picture of my ring:

Go Red Sox!

When we left for Austin on Thursday afternoon, it was cool and raining--and now we're back and it's clear and cold. I'm wearing boots! And I wore a coat on my commute this morning! It was amazing. Although not quite as amazing as the weather in Austin--sunny and around 70 degrees during the day, and in the 50s at night. We did not see one single cloud the whole time we were there.

The trip was fun--it definitely started off well, because the first thing that happened was that we were given a free upgrade from our crappy compact car rental to a PT Cruiser convertible. Torsten LOVES convertibles with a fiery burning passion, so he almost peed himself with excitement when the rental car guy told us we could pick any car we wanted off the lot. There was only one convertible, and believe me, there was not even a discussion about which car we would pick--it was just understood.

Austin was fun, although I have to say that it was not as interesting as I had expected it to be. I guess that's because I had really high expectations, but after three days there, we pretty much felt as though we had done everything we wanted to do. This included some time spent at the outlet mall (where I got four sweaters and a dress for under $100--it was great, because it was the real kind of outlets where things are actually cheaper than in the mainstream store, and that doesn't always seem to be the case with outlets anymore). It also included a day spent driving around some of the farm roads in the convertible, and now my nose is sunburned. But it was worth it. And it included time spent downtown, which was very pretty and atmospheric.

And of course, there was the wedding. It was definitely different from how we want our wedding to be. For one thing, the ceremony was very religious and did not feel incredibly emotional, although still sweet. And also, they had about twice the number of guests that we plan to have. It definitely helped both of us get a clearer idea of things we do and don't want from our own wedding. And the bride looked gorgeous and both of them seemed very happy, and it was great to see them get married, knowing how much they really love each other.

Then on our way home yesterday, our flight out of Austin was overbooked and we had a two hour layover in Dallas anyway, so we offered to take the next flight to Dallas and were given $600 in American Airlines vouchers as a reward. And we still made our connecting flight no problem, so it was basically free money, which we are very excited about. We may use the vouchers for something practical like our honeymoon, or we might use them to go somewhere fun on a quick trip we wouldn't otherwise have taken. We are still undecided. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? I have never been good at the Practical vs. Fun debate when unexpected, good things happen to me, so advice would be appreciated. And if you fall on the Fun side of the debate, suggestions of where specifically to go would be appreciated.

I took lots of photos during the weekend, but we didn't get home until about three o'clock this morning, so I haven't uploaded them yet. I'll try to post them this evening. In the meantime, my Google Reader is displaying the unprecedented number of 182 new posts for me to read, so I think I had better get on that. I hope everyone had a great weekend.

Sunny days in Texas

It rained yesterday, it's raining today, and it's supposed to keep on raining all the way through Saturday. Though I do not appreciate what the rain does to my hair, I'm still really glad it's raining--because I literally cannot remember the last time it rained like this, and the drought is just awful. Apparently in North Carolina they're on severe water usage restrictions and actually talking about closing businesses that use excessive amounts of water. And it's raining there too, now, as it is on most of the east coast.

Which is why this weekend is the perfect time for our trip to Austin. Torsten and I are flying out tonight and staying through Sunday night, to go to my (now our) friend Matt's wedding. The weather in Austin is supposed to be sunny with a few clouds, highs in the seventies, lows in the fifties all weekend. In other words, perfect.

This will be our first plane flight together, and can I say that for once I am actually looking forward to a flight? Four hours on a plane and yet when I get uncomfortable, it'll be okay because the person next to me is someone I can actually touch without it being awkward. I can lean on him if I want to sleep and he won't mind--in fact, I think he'll actually like it. Even if I drool on him. Well, depending on what shirt he's wearing. If it's his favourite sweater, he may get annoyed about the slobber.

This will also be the first wedding that we've attended together, and also the first-ever American wedding for Torsten and the second-ever wedding, period, for me. It should be good for Torsten, who expressed shock when I helped him pick out a nice outfit for the wedding, and actually suggested that the guests at our wedding wear jeans. My shriek of horror cured him of that idea, I think, along with the subsequent tirade about how this is our only wedding and it's a special occasion and it should look that way and it would feel dismissive to have our guests in jeans and most people (or women, anyway) LIKE the excuse to wear fancy clothes and the photos would look like they were taken at a rodeo and we might as well just not have a wedding at all if our guests are GOING. TO. WEAR. JEANS. Followed by several long, desperate gulps of air.

Okay, that might be a slightly dramatized representation of the discussion we had about the jeans. But suffice it to say, our guests will not be told that dress at our wedding is casual. And there had better not be anyone there in jeans. But I do think that attending this wedding together will help both of us get a firmer idea of what we do and do not want at our own wedding, especially for Torsten as it will help him visualize American weddings a bit more clearly. Although what he's really excited about is the (yes, casual dress) BBQ rehearsal dinner, to which all out-of-town guests are invited. He claims he's not going to eat between now and tomorrow night in order to be able to stuff the maximum possible amount of barbecued treats down his throat.

Also, I've never been to Austin before and Torsten has never been to Texas before, but we've heard that Austin is an amazing city, which is why we're leaving tonight instead of tomorrow night--we plan to spend tomorrow and Sunday checking out the town. I haven't actually done any research into stuff to see or places to go, though. Does anyone have any recommendations? Whether or not you've actually been there, of course. Hearsay is a totally acceptable form of advice.

In which I bore you with wedding details.

So, I got an email from our wedding site on Sunday saying that people are starting to show interest in November 2008 dates and therefore we need to sign a contract and pay a deposit, stat. This set off a whole chain of events that, in a nutshell, means that the wedding planning is officially Back On. Because, oh my god, I can no longer sit around being like, "Eh, the wedding is over a year away! PLENTY of time!" Because it seems that most people plan their weddings for about a year after they get engaged, so lots of people are now starting to be interested in our date, which means that if I want to get specific vendors at good prices, now is the time. Or really, last month was the time. Whoops.

So the first thing in the chain of events is the caterer. Since the caterer is exclusive to the venue, I want to sign the contracts for the two of them at the same time, so that we don't somehow get screwed out of one or the other and then wind up totally stuck. So I emailed our contact at the caterer, who has been ever-so-responsive and also doubles as our day-of coordinator, to say that I'd like to sign the contract with her and also to give her our dessert and pasta selection, finally (we went with the pumpkin), since that will slightly change the price that will be reflected in the contract.

I figured she'd be happy that we wanted to sign a contract and hand over a check, but no response. Given how responsive she usually is, I found that strange--so yesterday I called her, and (you might see this one coming) a strange woman answered the phone and informed me that our DOC no longer works for the caterer, as of three weeks ago.

Ha ha ha ha ha HA. Was no one going to mention this to us? Could they not set up some sort of auto-reply to her email address informing people that she's no longer with the company? Somebody? Anybody? Bueller?

Anyway, I nicely refrained from pitching a fit because a) I'm not a Bridezilla, b) it wasn't this poor woman's fault, and c) I was at work. Instead, I told her who I was, she called up our file, and we spent the next half hour or so rehashing everything I'd already been through with the other woman. Including, let's see, the most important aspects--the menu and the price. Basically, the other woman had our "file," but that only meant that she had the original quote that we'd been given, which was a good $1,000 higher than the final price we'd negotiated and did not include the open bar. Luckily, I had a whole email trail of the back-and-forth, including the revised proposal with the correct price and the open bar included, so I just forwarded all that on to her and she seemed fine with it. Let's just hope that this woman is as good as she sounds and that the contract she sends reflects everything we specified at the correct price. Until that happens, my personal jury is still out. But being able to deal with this unexpected issue actually made me feel really organized, which was a first for me on this whole wedding planning thing.

Though I wasn't so organized on the menu--I had taken notes on what we'd selected during our tasting, but unfortunately I had assumed that our DOC had everything noted and thus gave the menu with our notes to Torsten's parents when they were visiting, because they asked if they could have it. Not irretrievable, but still, rather than having him try to call them and ask them to find it again, I just went to the menu options and tried to recreate the menu from memory. I'm almost positive that I got it right, and if not--well, hey, what I did pick sounded good too.

Speaking of Torsten's parents, this is the other thing that this email from the site set into motion. Since signing contracts means paying deposits, both Torsten and I sent emails to our respective sets of parents, more or less asking for money. Now, my parents have already agreed to pay for the wedding, within reason, less whatever Torsten's parents agree to spend. As you may remember, Torsten's parents already agreed to contribute, but how much was left up in the air. Torsten thought it would be half of the cost, but we weren't sure because they actually laughed when we showed them our projected budget. And his mom made comments like, "You could rent a site like that for $80 in Germany," and "I have a friend who could do the flower arrangements from her own garden for free."

Anyway, my mother, who is amazing--AMAZING--wrote back to my e-mail within 12 hours and simply said that a check in the amount of the combined deposits for the caterer, site, and photographer was in the mail. Because did I mention that she is amazing? And then Torsten's parents called and said that they will contribute an amount that is equivalent to approximately one-fifth of the total cost of the wedding.

There isn't really anything to do in that situation, besides just say thank you and accept their generosity for what it is. I mean, we asked them to contribute whatever amount they wanted, and we know that they feel somewhat alienated from the whole wedding planning process, and that the idea of the cost of a wedding in a big American city is totally outside of their realm of understanding. But we also know that they make about the same annual income as my parents and don't have any debt, even a mortgage. And Torsten truly believed that his parents would do what he would have done in that situation, which is to unreservedly pay for half.

Apparently his parents asked if that amount was okay, and it is, of course it is, because it's still a sizable chunk of money and we told them to give whatever they wanted to give. So Torsten said yes, of course, and when he told me about it later I told him to just write them an email saying thank you for the generous contribution. And it is generous, and I do appreciate it, and at least my parents won't have to pay for the entire thing themselves.

But it does rankle a little bit that Torsten's mom made a justification comment along the lines of, "We're sure that Jess's parents have so much more money than we do." Because that is patently not the case, and it's not really a fair assumption on their part, and it makes me a little upset that my parents are going to shell out the vast majority of the wedding cost even though it's not exactly easy for them to hand over that amount of money, and then their names will be listed together on the invitation as though both sets of parents had contributed equally. Even though I feel really petty thinking about the invitation thing.

Sorry, I just needed to vent briefly. Really, I am grateful that his parents are contributing at all, and I know it was a shock for them to find out how much the wedding will cost, and that it's hard for them to conceive of their son marrying someone that they've only met once, and it's tough for them to come to terms with the fact that their son is going to permanently settle in a country a whole ocean away. And we weren't planning to milk them for money and then go crazy with some lavish wedding--we've been working within a pretty strict budget this whole time anyway. And I already called my mom and told her the news, and she took it pretty well and reiterated what she's said all along, which is that we should have the wedding we want and that we shouldn't worry about cutting corners to save a couple hundred dollars here and there. Because--and I'm pretty sure this bears repeating--she is AMAZING.

But still. It seems unfair, and I feel bad for my parents. And also violently grateful to them, for being so generous, and for not asking us to pay. And I also feel bad for Torsten, who feels especially guilty about putting the majority of the cost burden onto my parents.

But now that I've moved into pay-deposits-sign-contracts-nail-down-details mode, I'm on a roll. I've looked into florists and bakeries, and I've called two DJs, with whom I will make appointments soon, and I have a list of potential officiants for a secular ceremony. Things are Happening, is the point here, and I feel so much better knowing I'm getting things done.

And also, yesterday Torsten got his American license. This means he can now legally drive in the US again. I can be a passenger! I can relax! I can look out the window! We can rent a car without paying the extortionate fees for an under-25 driver! It's like a whole new perspective on life. I cannot even begin to describe the extent of my excitement.

Hooter

I consider my extended family to be fairly small, even though my dad was one of six children. He has three brothers and two sisters, but only one sibling has children, so I have only two cousins. My mother has one sister who does not have children. So I have three aunts and three uncles, except that one of my uncles, Michael, died of AIDS in 1994, when I was ten.

Although his death had a profound and lasting effect on me, and although I still miss him deeply to this day, and although he is the reason that I began working in public health to begin with, he himself is not exactly what I want to write about today. Instead, I want to write about his dog, who temporarily became my grandmother's dog after his death, and then eventually became my family's dog. His name was Hooter.

Michael had had Hooter for as long as I could remember--in reality I think since I was maybe four years old. He got him from an animal shelter, where his name had been Skeeter. My understanding is that Michael wanted to change the dog's name drastically, but it just didn't work, so he eventually picked the name Hooter because it sounded sort of like Skeeter and because Hooter really did hoot quite often. He was half beagle, half basset, and he had that classic basset bay that he issued most often when he wanted to go for a walk.

Michael always fed Hooter leftover food from his dinners the night before. The two of them would wake up late, like around noon, and share the leftovers between them. I don't know if Hooter ever ate dog food. He was definitely spoiled and also overweight. We used to play Stock Market with Michael, and we would always rub Hooter's ears and kiss them for luck before we rolled the dice. They were incredibly soft and silky, and so long.


After Michael died, my grandmother took Hooter in, even though my parents offered. My grandmother wasn't much of a dog person but I think she wanted Hooter because he reminded her of Michael--the same reason we all wanted him, I guess. But she couldn't deal with the baying, and the constant demands for walks, and the pickiness developed through years of spoiling. Plus, Hooter was lonely. He must have wondered what had happened to Michael, where he had gone. He must have felt abandoned. And he probably missed his people-food leftovers.

So when I was twelve, my family took Hooter at my grandmother's request. Another one of my uncles drove him down from my grandmother's house in upstate New York to DC, where my dad and I had driven up from North Carolina to meet him to pick up the dog. It was right after Hurricane Fran, and our house had been without power for several days at that point, and we were out of ice and it was impossible to buy more in the area, so we used the opportunity to buy several coolers full of ice bags from DC grocery stores. Then we drove home in our minivan, me sitting in the back with Hooter on a raggedy pink blanket that my uncle had brought with him.

We already had two dogs when we got Hooter, and so we were good about feeding him a consistent diet of dog food and trying to get his weight down a little bit. The other two dogs accepted him pretty quickly, but he never really got into playing with them--he was always just a little aloof, and he much preferred to lie on an ottoman that he quickly claimed as his own than to play tug-of-war with the others. He liked my dad and would often cuddle with him.


He also tried to run away every and any chance he got, and would return hours later, stomach bulging from all the garbage he had eaten, and puking every couple hours on the carpet. We had to put a child lock on the cabinet with the kitchen trash in it, so that he wouldn't nose it open and eat the leftovers. People food made his sensitive stomach angry, but he loved it and ate it at every opportunity. Once he ran away on a snow day that I had off from school, and I spent two hours hiking through the snow in boots and pajamas, following his delicate little footprints. I didn't find him, but he came home soon after I did.

We never played Stock Market after Michael died, so there was no more kissing Hooter's ears for luck, but we would still rub them a lot, and he loved it. When it was time for a walk, he would jump up and down and howl with excitement. He had a raggedy old collar, and we tried to replace it when we got him, but the first time he threw his head back to howl, the collar came flying off, because his neck was thicker than his head. So we had to stick with the old collar, which for some reason never came off. He was smaller than our other dogs, so we could pick him up, or hold him on our laps, which he would usually tolerate with a long-suffering look before eventually scrambling down and walking over to his ottoman with extreme dignity.


Though he was older than our other dogs, he outlived them both, so he was there when my parents got their new puppy. The day they brought the puppy home, he jumped on his back paws and rested his front paws on Hooter's back--a sign of dominance in the dog world, I think. The puppy was establishing his place as the alpha dog in the household, and I always felt that Hooter just didn't care enough to resist--he was old, and all he wanted to do was lie around and sleep. He and the puppy spent most of their time ignoring each other, and that was probably for the best.

Hooter died right after my freshman year in college, before I had come home for the summer. He was probably 15 or 16 years old. He had been tired, my parents said, and not eating much recently, and then they came home one night to find him lying peacefully on his ottoman, dead. It was the first dog we've had that did not die in pain and did not have to be put to sleep. He deserved it. It truly felt like his time to go--like he was exhausted, weary of still being alive, ready to go to sleep once and for all. I don't believe in an afterlife so I can't tell myself that he's with Michael again now. But it seems peaceful for him to be gone. He needed it, I think.

He was a beautiful dog, and a sweet dog. He was the dog that kids always liked, because he was gentle and approachable. He was long-enduring. He was Michael's mostly companion. They belong together. I wish they could be. I wish I could believe they were.

Clarification on the Update

Ahem. Excuse me for sucking at clarifying. You guys are all so sweet to be concerned about our apartment. Allow me to elaborate.

I have not actually been home since the fire thing happened this morning. But my understanding from Yohan is that there was a fire in the parking garage of our building, and that it was contained within the garage. Yohan IMed me from our apartment after he was allowed back in the building, so my assumption is that if our apartment itself had been on fire, he would have mentioned something.

Of course, we all know that to assume makes an ass out of you and me, so maybe when I get home I'll find our belongings in a charred heap. If so, you WILL be hearing about it, believe me.

Clarification and Update

After reading some of your comments on my last post, I feel the need to clarify slightly: Torsten didn't go out into the hall naked thinking that somehow Yohan just wouldn't notice him there in all his naked glory. Rather, he completely forgot that Yohan was there at all. Even though he's been there for two weeks. Which is worse? You decide. And then tell me, because I want to know what you think.

Also, an update: Yohan IMed me at work this morning to say that the fire alarm in the building was going off. At first I thought he meant that the smoke alarm was beeping again (because no, we didn't change the batteries, and that's because after all of Torsten's naked attempts as well as my clothed attempts, we were unable to remove the plastic cover from the smoke alarm). But no. It was the building fire alarm. I told Yohan how to find the nearest exit to the building. He came back an hour later and informed me that there were tons of firefighters all over the building, and that the building basement was now flooded with water and it appeared that the firefighters had broken down some walls.

Coincidentally, Yohan himself is a firefighter, or at least he will be starting in January; he finished his training in June and he starts with the Marseille Fire Department after the New Year. But I guess he didn't get to help out on this one. Apparently, whatever walls they broke down were not structurally necessary ones, because they let everyone back into the building.

Our smoke alarm has psychic powers, is the point here. It obviously knew what was coming. It tried to warn us, but we wouldn't listen. We were too busy flashing our houseguest and being vanquished by a tiny plastic cover.

International House of Cool

We had a very nice weekend over at the International House of Cool (IHC), as I'm pretty sure our apartment should now be called. On Saturday, Torsten and I brought Yohan to have lunch with my sister at a Salvadoran place she likes. Yohan had never even had Mexican food before, so it was eye-opening for him--he had a chimichanga and devoured the whole thing. His plate was wiped clean before I was even halfway done with my food. It was kind of amazing. More amazing, however, was our table--Yohan and I were speaking in French, my sister and I were speaking in English, my sister was talking to the waitress in Spanish, and Torsten's mother called in the middle so they were speaking in German. We were a quadrilingual group. Technically, this didn't take place at our apartment, but I still think the apartment qualifies as the IHC.

Though I have to say that the weekend did not start out in a very relaxing fashion--at 4:30 on Saturday morning, our smoke alarm emitted three very loud, sharp beeps in a row, then fell silent, then did it again. The beeps woke all of us up, and actually, our responses to the situation were extremely indicative of why we're such a good match. Torsten asked me if I'd heard the beeping and I, half-asleep, responded that yes, but I was sure it was nothing. (Apparently, that sort of dismissive reaction is commonplace for me. This is why it's good that I have Torsten--he'll keep me from trying to go back to sleep in the middle of a fire, tornado, or similar.)

Torsten disagreed about it being nothing, yelping that we must have left the stove on (similarly unreasonable, let me point out, given that it was the smoke alarm and gas from the stove would not create smoke, and also given that the smoke alarm was not beeping incessantly the way it would if there were actual smoke). So, he leapt out of bed naked and ran to make sure our apartment wasn't on fire. As he was about to open our bedroom door and head into the hallway (a mere five or ten feet from where our no-doubt-wide-awake guest was in bed), I woke up enough to suggest to him that he put on some clothes before he left the bedroom.

The response I got, however, was an incredibly shocked look and a cry of, "CLOTHES? Why would I put on CLOTHES?" This was delivered in such a disdainful voice that he totally deserved what happened next, which was that, after staring at me like I had proposed that he apply full makeup before checking out the smoke alarm, he charged out of our bedroom butt naked. The best part, although I didn't realize this until later, is that he was so out of it and yet worried about the smoke alarm that he stood underneath it, everything on full display to Yohan, reaching up and trying to fix it for the course of several minutes. I was still in bed, half asleep, when Torsten came rushing back in the room, being all, "I think he saw me naked."

No DUH. That is all.

Oh, and the other thing is that I took Yohan shopping on Saturday, because he brought over 1,000 Euros with him to spend, and his money has been burning a hole in his pocket ever since he arrived. So he bought the iPod Touch, and there's been no talking to him since--he's just so excited about the WiFi and the mini Web browser that he's perma-glued to the iPod. Last night after the Red Sox beat the Indians (thank GOD), Yohan went to the bathroom, where he remained for at least ten minutes. Five minutes in, an email from him popped up in my inbox--"Victoire pour les Red Sox!" That's right, he emailed me from the toilet. Apparently this was "Get to Know Each Other Far Too Intimately" Weekend over at the IHC.

Everybody's telling secrets

Okay, well, a bunch of my favourite bloggers, including Molly and KLC, have been doing the whole secret-sharing thing, and I loved reading their posts, so obviously I had to jump on the bandwagon. Here we go.

• I am petrified that I will be infertile. Even though I want to adopt a child and I know it wouldn't be the end of the world if we ended up adopting both our kids. I really, really want to be pregnant and give birth.
• Sometimes I think that instead of having a local wedding with friends and family, we should go somewhere cool just the two of us and get married on a cliff or something, still in our fancy wedding clothes. But I'm pretty sure I only really want to do that because the pictures would look so cool.
  
• I like my job a lot, but it isn't a passion I could follow forever. People say that you should do what you love and what doesn't feel like work, and the only thing that falls into that category for me is blogging. I am incredibly jealous of dooce for being able to support her entire family through her blog.
• It actually causes me physical pain to have gone this long without having a dog. But I still don't want to move just for that reason, because I love our apartment and how cheap it is.
• Most of my favourite books are children's books, like The Giving Tree and Eloise and most of Roald Dahl's work. I have a first edition of Eloise in French, signed by Hilary Knight (the illustrator). I met him when I was interning in the Hamptons in 2004. It was awesome.
• I check my Site Meter a lot, and am incredibly gratified by how much traffic I am consistently getting these days.
  
• I read and love TMZ even though I feel really bad for people who always have flashbulbs going off in their faces. No wonder celebrities wear sunglasses all the time.
• Speaking of celebrities, I feel really bad for Britney Spears. I think she's been suffering from post-partum depression, and I just want to somehow make it all better for her.
• I learned French very quickly, and am totally fluent, and now everybody thinks I have a natural affinity for languages. I really hope they're right, because I'm afraid I'll never learn German well enough to really communicate with Torsten's family, and that my kids will have conversations right in front of me that I won't be able to understand.
• It makes me a little bit sad that since we are going to focus on teaching our kids English and German, I probably won't be able to teach them French from infancy.
• I love cute shoes but I really suck at wearing high heels and usually stick to flats. Also, I wear flip flops as much as I possibly can.
• My sister thinks I'm vain because I really like my curly hair and play with it a lot.
• I really like to drive but I am so excited that Torsten is about to get his American license and then I'll get to be a passenger and not have to focus on the road all the time.
• I am afraid that the Weight Watchers will suddenly stop working and I will never get below my current weight.
• I am thrilled about the fact that getting married gives me an excuse to buy a truly extravagant dress.
  

Blast from the past

Last night, we won our volleyball match 2-1. I am no longer feeling like the worst player on the team, in part because I served 10 straight points last night and in part because the game we lost was the one I sat out on. And also, when you sit on the sidelines for an entire game (the first time we had tried that approach where people alternate sitting out a full game), you really see the weaknesses of the team, and I saw a couple people who were pretty bad, much worse than me.

What can I say? My goal in life is never to be at the very bottom of the barrel.

In other fascinating news, there must have been a mosquito in my cube earlier, because my left leg now has five brand-new mosquito bites on it. FIVE. AND one on my right leg. Isn't it the middle of October? Shouldn't there have been some kind of cold snap by now that killed off all the mosquitoes or sent them to hibernate or whatever it is they do in winter? Why my legs? Why? I guess this is a reason why I should start wearing pants to work. I mean, instead of skirts. No, I do not go to work in my underwear.

Lastly, I was talking online to my high school ex-boyfriend earlier and I remembered this heinous Geocities Web page that I built when I was in high school. And actually, I had a "My Life" feature where I just created blank pages and typed stuff about my life on them. So I guess technically you could say I've been blogging since May 22, 2000. Sounds much cooler than being a bandwagon blogger who didn't even start blogging until 2007, huh?

Anyway, the site is still up, and I am going to be very brave here and give you the link so that you can check it out for yourselves (NEW UPDATE: The site exceeded its hourly data transfer rate, so I sucked it up and paid $3 for more data transfer space, because I love you. Everything should be working now. Also, a happy side effect of the $3 is that the site should now be ad-free). Just please don't judge me by my photography or my poetry. Especially the poetry. But maybe you should judge me by the page that is entirely devoted to my high school boyfriend. Because it is pretty awesome. Just like me.

Excess sympathy

I've been noticing about myself recently that little things that people do that make themselves seem vulnerable make me feel sad. I don't know what it is about vulnerability, but I see the littlest things and sometimes I project a whole, tragic existence onto a person and feel terribly bad for them. Even something as little as seeing someone cough.

The weird thing is that I do all of the things that make me sad when I see other people do them. I cough, I sneeze, I rub my eyes, I often seem tired, sometimes I snag my clothes on things. And none of those things makes me feel bad for myself at all. I feel totally fine while I'm doing them and not in need of sympathy or anything else. And yet when other people do those things, I feel sorry for them. Even though in my head I know they don't need anyone feeling sorry for them, or if they do it's not because they're coughing or whatever.

When I was in high school, my mom had this idea that she was going to slip greeting cards with $20 bills in them to random people without them seeing. Except that she wasn't the type of person to actually do that, so I was supposed to be the one who actually snuck up to the person and somehow slipped them the card. The first time was around the holidays, so the card read "Happy New Year." We were at the grocery store and my mom picked out a guy whose cart she wanted me to put the card in when he wasn't looking.

But I got shy all of a sudden, and worried that he would see me and think I was crazy. It was an older man, tall but slightly stooped. He was wearing an acrylic sweater and polyester pants and he was slowly examining canned vegetables. I told my mom I didn't think he looked poor, and I meant it. He just seemed like a guy in pants and a sweater to me, deciding what groceries to purchase. But now, in retrospect, I realize that my mom was probably right--his clothes were clearly quite inexpensive and also not very warm considering that it was winter, and he was probably not scrutinizing the canned green beans out of mere curiosity but rather making a decision about the price he would have to pay for them.

The memory of that man and his can of green beans and his acrylic sweater, which I can still picture perfectly in this kind of buttery yellow colour, makes me really sad. It makes me wish I had just gotten myself together and stuck that card in his shopping cart. It was just $20. But I bet he could have used it, and I wish I had done it.

Wedding dress necklines

While we're on the topic of weddings, I've been thinking about dresses recently. Specifically, necklines. One of the things I've noticed is that an off-the-shoulder style tends to suit me in general. And I also love sweetheart necklines. And the amazing thing about wedding dresses is that a lot of the off-the-shoulder ones have sweetheart necklines. So I could have BOTH. Like this:


Or I could even have one that is just plain off-the-shoulder, without the sweetheart, like this:


Or is the whole off-the-shoulder thing just way too eighties and something I'll look back on and shudder? Because I could also go for a strapless sweetheart neckline, like this:


I know I've talked about wedding dresses before, and you guys have already given me so many helpful suggestions and opinions. But I can never get sick of dress shopping, and since I can't actually really go try on the dresses for at least another few months, the online admiring and agonizing over style choices is all I have to sate my desire at the moment. So please, bear with me. And tell me your thoughts.

Apparently, I'm a Bridezilla.

I thought I was all cool about getting married and stuff, and flexible and laid-back and everything else that most brides are not. And then I read this article on CNN, about a bride who is suing her florist for $400,000 because they put pastel pink flowers in the centerpieces instead of rust-coloured ones, and also because the hydrangeas were wilted and brown, and presented in dusty vases without enough water. And I totally felt for her.

Seriously, I understand how upsetting that can be, since pink and rust are nothing alike. And also, it's not like this was a budget wedding--apparently, they shelled out over $27,000 for the flowers. Which is waaaay more than we're spending on our entire wedding. I would definitely be upset if the flowers were the wrong colour and all wilted, too. I probably wouldn't sue for $400,000, but I'd be really angry. And anyone who spends that much on flowers is obviously someone who wants and expects her wedding to be perfect, and cares about things like the fact that everything in the whole wedding was done in rust and green, and that pale pink clashes horribly with that colour scheme.

Also, just to do a bit of math--we are planning to spend about 7% of our wedding budget on flowers. Assume the same for this woman, and you're looking at a wedding that costs almost exactly $400,000. Coincidentally, the amount she's suing for. My feeling is that anyone who spends that much on their wedding is the type of person who will then feel like the whole thing was ruined by the hideous centerpieces clashing with everything else at the reception. She was probably really upset as soon as she saw them and that probably interfered with her enjoyment of the very expensive day. I would personally never think of suing a florist over pink vs. rust coloured flowers, but I would also never dream of dropping anywhere near that much money on flowers to begin with. And if I did, I would damn well expect them to be fresh, un-dusty, and the exact right shade of rust.

So I can sympathize with her. Am I right? Or are my days of sanity over?

The Incredible Shrinking Wardrobe

Do you know what sucks about losing weight? Especially if this is the first time you've ever really lost weight and so you have lots of clothes that you love all in one size? What sucks is that your carefully-constructed-over-many-years wardrobe starts to become useless. At first you'll just notice one or two sweaters that are looking kind of baggy, and a skirt that's sitting lower on your hips, and then all of a sudden it's like a big rush of hahaha all your favourite clothes from last fall? They don't fit you anymore. They make you look like you're wearing a gunnysack, and that is NOT a good, or professional, look.

Don't get me wrong--I need to lose the weight, and I'm so glad it's working, and I understand that this side effect was to be expected. The fact that some of my favourite clothes no longer fit is not a reason for me to give up on Weight Watchers and start eating fried rice and a tub of ice cream at every meal. And I'm also not comparing this loss of good-fitting clothes to anything like the magnitude of Clink's tragic denim disaster. After all, I still have my clothes. Some of them still fit. And the ones that don't, well, I can admire them hanging in my closet. And I suppose I could get my absolute favourite pieces taken in.

But still. I can't afford to replace my entire wardrobe, and also I am nowhere near done with the weight loss, so everything I buy to fit me now will hopefully not be fitting me in a few months. Which means it should all be cheap, but I don't want to LOOK cheap, and also I don't have space for all these clothes. And yeah, the logical thing to do would be to get rid of the clothes that are now too big, but people, I'm scared to do that. Because what if I gain the weight back at some point? Then my clothes won't fit and I'll have to pay for all new ones but there won't be the silver lining of weight loss--it'll just be miserable. And I'll feel sad about all the pretty clothes I used to have that I stupidly threw away in a fit of optimism.

So. For now, they're staying, at the back of the closet and in the bottom dresser drawer, all my former favourite clothes. Oh, and also, on the tailoring thing? I can't get the clothes tailored now because, like I said, I'm not done with WW yet. I have to wait until I'm at my target weight, or until I've plateaued and given up on the target weight and accepted some other weight that isn't quite the target weight, but hopefully in the vicinity of the target weight. And even then, I'm just CONVINCED that as soon as I get all my clothes taken in, I will gain ten pounds and they'll all be too tight and then I'll cry and cry.

But? On the plus side? This weekend's trip to New York could not have come at a better time. We definitely spent multiple hours at the giant Macy's. Yohan was overwhelmed by all the options, but me? I was IN MY ELEMENT. I bought three sweaters, two skirts, a coat, and a fancy dress. I spent more money than I have ever spent on clothing at one time before in my entire life. (Torsten swears it wasn't that much; I am just used to being poor and wanting to cry whenever I made a purchase with a total cost in the triple digits.) But the amazing part was that I actually needed ALL of it. Well, except the dress.

Psychic space

I don't remember how old I was when I met Jesse--I think eleven or twelve. Her name was Jessica then; so was mine. We were pen pals first, and the reason we met was that we had the same name, both first and last. She was on the pen pal list in New Moon magazine, and I wrote to her because I thought it was so cool that our names were the same, even if the last names were spelled differently.

Jesse is the reason that I go by Jess now instead of Jessica as I did when I was younger. I remember having a serious discussion about it on the phone, probably before we had ever even met in person, and deciding that we each needed a nickname. She became Jessie and I was Jess. And we've both stayed that way, although she has long since dropped the I from her name.

We lived on the east coast but far apart, me in North Carolina and her much further north. The first time we met was at age 13, in 1997. My parents drove me to visit her and then she came down to visit me. The next summer, I went with her for a couple weeks on her annual family trip to Maine.

I went there with her more than once, and those trips blend together in my mind now. Jesse's extended family had a cottage right on the water, with only a field between the house and the ocean. The next door cottage also belonged to Jesse's family, I think, and the house on the other side was owned by people with dogs, one of which was a black lab/Newfoundland mix named Casey that I absolutely loved.

The annual trip wasn't just a vacation, or a family reunion--it was a time for the family to work on restoring the cottage, which was about 100 years old. Although I didn't understand that at the time, or at least it wasn't really clear in my head. The extended family was vast--assorted third cousins and whatnot, and the kids often brought friends. The fact that a lot of these people were barely even related was astounding to me--I know no members of my family more distant than first cousins or great-aunts.

My memory of that first summer involves me cutting Jesse's hair really short at her request, my own hair being dyed an eggplant colour, and lots and lots of card games. We spent a lot of time sitting at the dining room table by the screen door, playing Pounce or Michigan and listening to music from my Discman on the $10 purple speakers I had bought at Wal-Mart. Casey would push through the screen door and we would pet her. Almost everything happened in that dining room, or on the porch.

It was confusingly beautiful to me that I had even wound up in this amazing cottage with this jumbled family in such a gorgeous, remote-feeling place. I was happy there, and relaxed; I was loud and I laughed a lot, and I teased Jesse's uncles and sang off-key and crowed when I won Hearts at night when the whole family played. Sometimes when I woke up in the morning I would go out on the balcony by myself and feel like I was in a movie because everything was so perfect. Jesse and I were together pretty much all the time. We spent time out in the field, down by the dock, canoeing with her cousin, looking in the seaweed for crabs.

It seemed like such a weird thing, that I had noticed this girl's name in a magazine, that we had been pen pals, that we had met up, that we had hit it off so well, that we had become best friends, that we had wound up in this gorgeous place together. And lucky. Jesse was--and is--amazing, intelligent, determined, creative, lovely. We were very different but we were very good best friends. We grew apart later in high school, but we still vaguely keep in touch through Facebook. She is someone I would hate to lose entirely. She is someone I'm lucky to ever have found.

By the time the trip ended, we were already making plans for the next year. It wasn't until I was in North Carolina that Jesse called, furious, because her aunt had sent an email to her father. About me, saying that much as I was a lovely, gregarious person, it was difficult to have me with the family in Maine because I took up too much "psychic space." And that Jesse was totally different when I was there, and that I took up valuable time that the family got to spend with their Jesse. And that she, the aunt, would prefer that I not be invited back the following year.

I cried. Jesse cried. We hung up the phone. Jesse pitched a fit to her father, said that if I couldn't come back to Maine, she wouldn't be going back either. I went sobbing to my mother about all the things that Jesse's aunt had said about me. That term she used, "psychic space," still sticks in my mind. Now that I'm older, I see her point. I was loud, I was boisterous. Jesse was most certainly different around me as most teenagers are different around their various friends. I had no respect for the fact that the family was trying to restore their house--though, to be fair, I didn't realize or understand that at the time. But yes, I changed the dynamic of their family vacation, their one time per year when they got to be together in a way that was familiar and enjoyable.

I try to imagine what it was like for my parents in that situation--what I would do if my 14-year-old daughter came to me crying because someone had told her that she wasn't quiet enough, that she was too loud and that she ruined other people's vacations with her intense personality. Especially, I try to imagine what it would be like if the person who said those things to my daughter was an adult, the family member of a close friend, a person of respect and authority. I would want my daughter to be like that, lively and self-assured and unafraid of asserting herself. I would be worried that criticisms like that, from an adult, at a tentative time and age, would have a lasting effect. But I would also want her to learn about appropriate timing for expressing herself, and being aware of her impact on those around her.

Jesse's father, extremely diplomatic, ended up brokering a deal with the aunt wherein I came back the next year, but Jesse and I stayed in the other cottage next door. It was still fun. But it wasn't the same. I only went back one more year after that. I have no idea if Jesse ever goes there now. Or her aunt.

Anyway, I scanned in some pictures. I wrote to Jesse and asked if she minded if I posted pictures of her at age 14, but I haven't heard back, so I blurred out her face. If she writes back and says it's okay, I'll exchange the blurry pics for the real ones. UPDATE: Permission has been received in the form of a very sweet e-mail. Blurry pics have been replaced.

The weather in New York was perfect.

First of all, thank you guys so much for all your encouraging comments on my last post. I was a little nervous about publishing it since it felt very un-PC, but you guys made me feel much better about the fact that I'm struggling with those issues. Also, on Friday DC Blogs featured my wedding registry post (actually, if you go to DC Blogs and scroll down, you can still see it) so my traffic more than doubled, which was great but also made the timing of such a personal and potentially controversial post a bit more awkward.

Anyway, enough with the housekeeping. Obviously what everyone is really interested in is the trip to NYC, since you all helped with the planning. And first of all, let me just say that you people made brilliant suggestions, and we took you up on a lot of them, and the trip was great. We did not have time to do everything (including, tragically, the Met, which will have to wait until next time), but Yohan absolutely loved it. He is so sweetly in love with the US, probably in part because he doesn't know very much about it or its politics. And he adored New York. And given that we were only there for a total of 30 hours, about 8 of which were spent sleeping, we covered a lot of ground.

We went to the Carnegie Deli (photo by Torsten):


We saw the Statue of Liberty (photo by Yohan):


We went up the Empire State Building at midnight (the best time to go because there's no line, and a great view of the city lights) (photo by Torsten):


We went to Chinatown, where Yohan had his first ever dim sum experience. Also, I got told off by the waitress because I asked for more water at the end of the meal, then didn't drink it all. She was very upset (photo by Torsten):


We took an open-top bus tour which, conveniently, stopped right in front of the Waldorf Astoria long enough for me to photograph its sign:


We bought postcards (photo by Torsten):


And of course, the boys bonded:


It was a great trip. You can see the full set of photos here. So now I want to know: What did you do this weekend?

Adoption and racial subcultures

As I've mentioned before, Torsten and I plan to adopt one child at some point a few years down the road. The thing about the adopting is that even though any child we adopted would of course be as precious and loved and part of the family as any child we conceived, I wouldn't want to cut it away from the culture of wherever it was born. We would absolutely treat it as our own, and raise it speaking English and German and learning about our cultures and our backgrounds and all of that, just as we would a child that we conceived.

But I would also want the child to have full information about its history. Adopted kids have questions, not just about who their biological parents are but also about where they come from and why they aren't there anymore. I want to answer those questions, satisfy that curiosity, let the child know that yes, it came from somewhere else, its parents couldn't keep it/aren't alive anymore/whatever those circumstances may be, and that's why we were lucky enough to have the child for ourselves, but that yes, it has ancestors and roots in a place other than here.

More than likely, we will adopt a child from another country. For me, it makes sense to adopt a child from Africa, possibly from Senegal, since there are many parentless children there, and since it's a country where I've lived and that I know something about. I don't claim to be an expert on Senegalese culture at all, and I know I only got an outsider's perspective of a sliver of it all, but for us it would still be better than adopting a child from eastern Europe or South America or Asia or somewhere where we have no real concept of the culture at all.

The point is that most likely, the child that we adopt will be black. As anyone who has looked at the photos that I've posted has probably noticed, Torsten and I are not black. I know that many people who see our future little family unit will wonder about this, and many of them will probably ask interfering, nosy questions, and I think that we can deal with that.

But what I'm wondering about is the racial subcultures that most definitely exist within the United States. I've noticed it throughout my life. I've almost always been in places where racial diversity was highly valued and yet the vast majority of the people where white. From age 5 to age 17, I went to a Quaker school in North Carolina that was founded in 1963 with the primary goal of providing a racially integrated school environment in an area that was resisting mandated desegregation. I went to a college known as a bastion of liberalism that had student groups focused on recognizing and eliminating white privilege. I worked at a non-profit organization with a truly diverse staff from all over the world that worked together on international health issues. I currently work at another organization like that.

And yet, in all of those places, the people of colour stuck together--specifically black people. In high school, the black kids hung out together, ate lunch together, did everything together. There was always the one white kid who hung out with the black kids and vice versa--but everyone talked about those kids, and made fun of them. In my last job, all the black staff members were friends with each other, had lunch together, talked together--really, it was just like high school. In college, it was the same thing. The black people tended to seek each other out, to bond, to establish friendships.

And there isn't anything wrong with that. It might not be helping school administrators around the country achieve their goals of true and utter integration, but it's fine. I don't believe that the world should be "colour blind"--it's impossible not to acknowledge that people of different cultures, ethnicities, races have been through different experiences, have been separated out historically and thus have developed separate subcultures, that it's often easier for a black person to relate to another black person than for them to relate to someone of another race (and likewise for people of all different races). Racism exists and has existed for a long time, and that has led to the development of racial subcultures, and that's fine, it happened and we know about it and to aim for a world in which that no longer exists is unrealistic and, worse, unfair, because it ignores these histories and downplays the reasons behind the existence of current racial subcultures.

So that's the problem--I have spent only six months out of my life living in a place where my race was the minority, and while I stood out and often felt uncomfortable because of it, it wasn't an experience that made me suddenly understand "what it's like to be black in America," or anything else. I still don't have that racial history of oppression, and I'll never have that, and I know that I'm lucky for that reason. But it means that I don't have any real way of tapping into black subculture. Yes, I have black friends, and no, I don't consider myself racist except insofar as everyone is a little bit racist (and I believe that to be true).

But if I have a black child, I won't be able to raise them in any sort of black culture. And Torsten won't, either. And that's okay too, I think, but it also raises issues. Some of them are small issues--like, I don't have any experience with the kind of hair that most black people have. I would have to learn how to style my daughter's hair--it's not a skill that I could teach her as much as it would be one that we would learn together. And bigger issues, much bigger, like the fact that racism still exists in the US and that our child would encounter that racism. And that while I would do what I could to help our child deal with that, and get past that, I wouldn't have the personal experience to share the way black parents would.

And then, like I said, there's the middle issues, the stuff that isn't as big a deal as getting turned down for a job because of your race, or having a college classmate imply that the only reason you were accepted into college was because of race-based affirmative action. But stuff that still feels like a big deal, especially to the person who is living through it. Stuff like the fact that at school, the black kids will probably be hanging out together, and our child would quite possibly be hanging out with them as well, but it's fairly unlikely that any of the other kids in that group will have been raised in a white, German- and English-speaking bilingual household with a Jewish mother and parents who have never worn clothes by Fubu and South Pole and Timberland and other brands especially popular among black teenagers.

I don't mean to be drawing stereotypes about black people and how they stand out from white people, and I also don't mean to be cutting other races out of this discussion. I recognize that not all black people are a certain way or wear certain clothes or hang out only with other black people. I know that no people of any race fit into the generalizations that American society as a whole makes about them.

But I also know that these subcultures exist, that people in different races are considered to be part of wholly different demographics by advertising agencies who target their ads to very specific groups of people, and the reason is because as a group, they do have distinct cultures and styles. And I wonder what it will mean for our child to feel stuck between two different racial cultures, to look one way and yet not necessarily be able to relate to people who look the same way. Every child goes through identity crises, and I wonder if these factors will make our child's struggle to find its identity that much harder. And how much we, as its parents, will be able to help our child navigate through all the questions. And whether we ourselves will ever feel like we have answers.