Your Worries And Fears Become Your Friends

So, JD and I went to see Gnarls Barkley at the OC Fair last night. Dang, that was a super good show. Especially since Mike Patton's new band (Peeping Tom) was the opening act. Mike Patton, I swear. Gnarls, whatta charmer. If ever there were two voices I would more like to have sex with, I can't think of them. Fucking good show.

Anyway. There's photos of the start of our happy ever after honeymoon on the F-blog.

P.S. It's our one-month anniversary. Isn't the first month supposed to be the hardest? Oh, we are so golden.

I Just Knew Too Much


Hey, guys! "Crumpy" the dwarf requests the honor of your presence at the F-blog to view every photo of Jenny and Mike that I took!

A Wrecking Ball, Before The Building Fell

So you know how I said I had cuter photos of sheep? They're up on my F-Blog now for your perusal. As are many many many new photos. I'll keep them coming.

File Under: Could Only Happen To Jessica

So the other day my cell phone rings, and it's JD sister. She sounds a bit panicked:

ME: Jess, where are you?
JESS: In the car wash. I'm stuck.
ME: WHAA?!?
JESS: My car won't start. My car has been washed, like, eight times.
ME: Your car won't start?
JESS: Yeah my car won't start I turned it off in the car wash and now it won't start and I can't get out because the car wash keeps going.
ME: Hmmmm. *Maniacal laughter* We'll be right there.

Spectacular Spectacular

In the last 48 hours, I have had two Spectacular Coffee "Disasters." This photo is to help illustrate what I mean by "coffee," as well as "disaster." Ha.

So, yesterday morning I wake up from a creepy dream in which I am to be hanged for something but I escape, but some of you were also supposed to be hanged and did not escape with me when I was all, "come on guys, let's run away instead of being hanged," because you were like, "no, we'll get in trouble." Don't ask, I have no clear memory of who precisely was hanged/not hanged. But it was a weird dream, right? So I wake up groggy and am enjoying some coffee on the couch (much like the photo illustrates) and I have a habit of setting my mug down on the arm of the couch whilst I do other things, like shout vituperative invective (is that redundant? Jenny? Raedy?) at the today show. I turn my back on my coffee mug (never, never do that, people) and forget immediately it is there, because my brain is so full with information I don't need that I have morphed into a goldfish-like person, all of you who obsessively listened to Little Plastic Castle in high school with me will know what I mean and everyone else probably always knew that goldfish had no memory; I however had to learn it from Ani DiFranco. As I learned most important things. You know, someone should write one of those "All I Ever Needed To Know About Life, I Learned " books or posters but have it be "From Ani DiFranco Song Lyrics." Ok, dibbs.

Anyway so my brain is full, making me incredibly stupid, and I am acting out some ridiculous movement to JD that has no place in the morning's first cup of coffee since it is so flaily (dibbs) in nature, and I send the coffee mug hurtling off the arm of the couch.

Now.

You may think, "oh no, your white carpet!" well, that is very sweet. But I have knocked a mug off this same arm of the couch and onto the same spot of carpet before, so the carpet is no longer white in that general vicinity. What I had never before achieved, however, is the incredible radius of coffee splatter that I created yesterday. Coffee. Everywhere. On everything. Stretching six feet under the couch, into the dining room, coating the vertical blinds, coffee had splashed through the screen door and onto the patio, stained the baseboards on the wall, etc. Some of you may have seen Dracula: Dead And Loving It? Well, that scene where they go to nail a stake through Lucy's dead heart and with each tap of the hammer, literal gallons of blood spurt out in a very comic sequence? That is exactly what the coffee did. There could not have been more than an inch of coffee in that mug, yet it sprayed the entire apartment in a thick mist of chicory. For about ten solid minutes. Yeegads.

In that particular case, I was just thankful that my mug with little highland cows (wee hillan coos, you guys) all over it had not been harmed.

Then, today, JD and I get in the car so he can take me to school, and we are running slightly late, and I have my backpack and a sack of lunch-related food and a travel mug of coffee and I load all this into the passenger side and then as JD starts the car I find his sunglasses in the console, so I pick them up and open them and jam them onto his face like a good little wifey and he shifts into drive and hits the accelerator rather brusquely if you ask me, and the coffee travel mug that I have set atop the dashboard and instantly forgotten about once my attention was directed elsewhere (see? a goldfish) flies comically into the air and turns upside down and comically empties its entire contents onto every square inch of my person. And it was hot. Just spec-tac-u-lar. I was all pleased with myself too, before it happened, because I had eked another day out of one slightly filthy pair of jeans to avoid doing laundry last night. Of course, I had to change into completely filthy pants, which have been falling down K-Fed style and grossing out my faculty all day.

Also, I put gas in my car the other day and failed to put the gas cap back on. Which I noticed ten minutes later on the freeway. I am doing it real big, you guys. How awesome is it that I'm actually getting smarter as I age?

And for those of you who had money riding on it, I can attest that at least once a day since we got married I have shrieked, "I'm not a witch, I'm your wife!" over and over. So, there's that. Yeah peace out back to the grindstone.


P.S. Once I have collected all the photos and amassed them into a reasonable collection, I'll send out a link to the snapfish account.

Do Your Thang, Honey



In case you didn't notice, there are more photos on the F-blog. My mom's arrived. But if you want to see quality photography, please head over to Jenny's Blog.

The Once-Upon-A-Time Place for Happy-Ever-After People

I’m back, lovies. We got hitched.

You heard me.

This trip was awesome. Really, it was just incredible. Unfortunately, I have tried to write this post for the last few hours (photos and whatnot) and blogger has eaten it not once but three times, infuriating me to the point that I can feel my blood pressure building to dangerous levels and therefore, I am going to write all this in word and then stick photos in there so that IT CANNOT FUCK ME OVER ANYMORE. I am seriously sick of blogger being SUCH A TWAT.

Ok, so. I took a ridiculous number of photos (~1700) so uploading them is taking forever. So I thought a nice pseudo-fotoblog would be more entertaining than me narrating every second of the trip. Also, I will do this in stages since there ARE so damn many photos and I am waiting on other people with better photographic eyes to send me theirs as well.

Anyway, we landed in Edinburgh and went immediately to change money. Twas then I realized that calling the bank to tell them not to block your debit card in Europe only results in their blocking your debit card because you’re in Europe. Urge to kill rising.

Then we went to pick up our reserved rental car and were instead presented with the “only” available option: a considerable upgrade (free), but a Nissan X-terra something or other with manual transmission. Manual. In a country that drives on the left side of the road, with the driver sitting on the right, so the stick is left-handed. Hmmm. We expressed mild concern since JD has not driven a stick since he was in high school, but they were wholly unsympathetic. Urge to kill rising. Riiiising. Fine. Urge to kill falling. I had a super bad headache and my whimpering about the driving (let’s just say it took JD awhile to get the hang of the clutch, and roads in Europe are insanely narrow and they don’t have stoplights, they have roundabouts, and we had an evil GPS lady telling us wrong directions and insisting that “the destination” was where it was not) did not help things. Oh and jet lag and stuff. So that first day we went to the Falkirk Wheel and Stirling Castle, then drove to Oban to meet my mother.

We would never have found the hotel, thanks to Evil GPS lady, except my mother happened to be standing outside it smoking as we made our three thousandth pass through the area we believed it to be located within. She saw us drive slowly by and shrieked and jumped up and down, startling the other pedestrians on the street. I was, however, completely relieved to see her in one piece.

Then, the next day we all got on this boat…
Which we took to this isle…
I stopped being so pissy about the car, and once we were driving on Mull with its charming one-lane roads I was actually quite glad that we had the 4X4, and it was nice and scenic and looked like I had hoped it would and things started falling magically into place.
We drove up to the castle through town, then this little village called Dervaig, where I made JD stop so I could photographu the wind these sheep. Delightfully, these lovelies are all over the place as you get closer to the castle, and they munch on grass along the roads, the hillsides, wherever they please. Also delightfully, this is not the cutest photo of sheep that I took while we were there. If you can even stand it.
So then we got there. It was fantastic. Much larger inside and out than we expected, the rooms were like a maze. Photos of the interior later, but here is the front (with Jenny and Mike for scale)….
And here’s the view of the bay from the front steps…

I know you guys are all dying to see actual wedding photos now, right? Right? Ok, fine.

Here is my mother-in-law doing as she’s told. Haha, just kidding. I am really glad that she knows things like, “how to iron,” because literally, I do not. I would have singed a huge hole in the front of my dress had I been left to my own devices. She is not all that impressed with my homemaking skill set, but who cares.
Here is Jenny “adjusting my modesty panel,” which I refer to as “having a good chuckle at my expense.” I am not gripping that bedpost for funsies, by the way, it is completely necessary.
It stormed all day on our wedding day. It did not storm on any other days that we were there, and the locals all remarked that such weather was unusual for June, and more likely to happen in February. Nice. Luckily, I like storms and was not bothered by the fact that it had to be inside. Because, remember, we were in a goddamn castle.

I don’t yet have any photos of the ceremony, but I’ll have them soon, hold yer horses. Here’s some from after the ceremony. Check out the amazing flowers that everyone has in these photos. Since I did not bother planning those types of minor details, they were made by Janet and Jess from flowers that Jenny and Jess went and picked in the garden (they said we could, chillax) the morning of the wedding. I was blown away by how good they looked.

First, me with my new family…
And my sister…
Jenny and Mike (aka the attendants)…
And now, a series of photos of JD and Mike looking so cute and dapper my heart might burst…
Here…
And here…
And here…

Then we all went to eat at Calgary Hotel, the only place with a restaurant within traveling distance (what with only having one car, mind you), which I also did not bother planning. Instead, the moms walked over there a couple days before the wedding and they agreed to accommodate the ten of us, and, magically, to prepare a vegan dinner for me and JD seeing as how it was Our Day. It was phenomenal, it was seriously one of the best meals I have ever had in my entire life and everyone was quite delighted with how good it was. And how lucky we were to get a booking, since JD and I tried to go back later in the week and they were full through the end of the month.

This was the vegan main course…grilled vegetable gateaux.
Yeah, no one at the far end of the table was able to take a clear photo with my camera.
JD’s (and now my) relations.
Drink it up, drunkies.
Mom Davis and the only person who can actually pull off wearing a crochety shawl.

Then, of course, we all ate dessert.
See? Dessert.
Mmmmmmm.


Then, because there are only, like, three hours of darkness on the Summer Solstice in Scotland, we took even more photos. Afterward we all put sweat pants on and played cards with JD’s family. Fucking. Perfect. Day.