wife

I hope you'll forgive me if the next few posts are a little fractured.  We're still getting things unpacked around here.  One of the things we've brought home with us is this crazy notion that we're--um--married.  We've been saying the words "husband" and "wife" like it's a funny little joke between the two of us.  Because it kind of is, I guess.

I know married couples that prefer not to use those words to refer to one another.  They choose to call each other "partner," an idea that I'm not opposed to, by any means.  Unlike some people, though, I think there are ways to use the word "wife," for instance, without embracing the history of subordination or sexism that "wife" might have once implied.

In a way, my position on this isn't unlike my reasoning for taking my man's last name.  It's easy for the world to understand what I mean when I call my partner-in-crime my "husband."  And he can call me "wife" all he wants.  First of all, I think it's hilarious right now. And it reminds me of the giant commitment we just made to one another.

And it makes me feel a little rebellious, because, in the end, I have all intentions of making "wife" mean whatever I want it to...

While I decide just exactly what that is, I reserve the right to play with all of the old stereotypes.  One of my favorites to riff on--the 1950's housewife--will be a little easier to evoke with the help of a gift I received the morning after our wedding.

My dear Aunt Kathy made this beautiful little apron for me. It has rick-rack--I love rick-rack!--and sweet little pockets for recipe cards and handkerchiefs.

I don't know who made the fabric, but I love that, too.  All in all, it's such a pretty thing that I'm a little apprehensive about wearing it in the kitchen, for fear of getting it dirty.  I'll work up the nerve, though, because I can't let such a great apron go to waste.

And with that, I'm off to the kitchen to make dinner for my man so it's piping hot when he gets home from work tonight.  The best part?  Sooner or later, it will be his turn to make dinner.  And that is what being a wife in my house is all about...

 

after

Two days after the wedding, and my bouquet is doing just fine.  The marriage seems to be going pretty well, too, although that could just be because my man and I have been too tired to do anything but smirk at each other, fiddle with our wedding rings, and giggle every time someone says "husband" or "wife."

We're on a plane back to Seattle tomorrow and maybe back to something like "normal" life.  Hopefully, I'll have some juicy photos to share with you all soon.  I definitely have some thinking to do about the future of the Sparrow in the next few weeks.  (Do let me know, dear readers, if you have any thoughts on that complicated subject.  I really would appreciate some advice on the subject.  Also, I just like to hear from you all...)

For now, though, I am going to just sit for a few hours and do nothing. Weddings make you tired, friends.  They are beautiful and brave and exciting, but man oh man, are they exhausting, too.

I'll be posting again on Wednesday.  After I've had a very, very long nap.

wedding eve

The ceremony is written.  The coleslaw, potato salad, and corn muffins are made.  The rehearsal dinner is over.  My little sister and her nice young man are constructing our wedding cake in my parents' kitchen.   In less than twenty-four hours, my partner-in-crime and I will be partners-for-life.

From this moment on, I refuse to stress, worry, or flip out.  We're doing this thing, and we're doing it right.  I'll be back after the weekend with a photo or two.  Wish us luck!

the groom

I've addressed this subject before, but I'm really feeling it this week.  You all know how fond I am of Mouse at Souris Mariage, and I'm almost always in total agreement with her.  Her post yesterday touched on "how to get the guy you're marrying to do one of the things on his checklist."

And, well, look:  I understand that this must be a common thing that girls are dealing with all the time in wedding world.  It's just that, of all the troublesome things I'm wrestling with in these last precious days, my man not doing things is not among the concerns.  If anything, it's kind of been the other way around.  My partner-in-crime is in Getting Things Done mode, and sometimes, it's all I can do to keep up.

He has single-handedly constructed our pig-shaped pinata, a process that's taken almost a week, seven layers of paper-mache, and one very big balloon.

He also ended up being the person to sew together the fifty or sixty feet of pennants that I was very excited about six months ago but never managed to actually assemble.  My dear stepmother offered some initial instruction on the sewing machine, but my man took it from there, sewing away long after I'd called it a night.

He's also managed to transfer our giant wedding music playlist onto a compatible computer, led the charge on both our coleslaw and our potato salad, mowed a giant chunk of my parents' even gianter lawn, reminded me to call the tent rental guy, washed his fair share of canning jars and cute vintage tableware, met with Mike the Pig Roaster to discuss Saturday's game plan, and done pretty much every thing else that seems to suddenly need doing here in the final hours before the Big Day.

Oh, and he's also been spray painting these awesome toy animals for our "table number" scheme.  Yes, we stole the idea from Martha, but since when was that a bad idea?

Here's hoping that those of you that are planning weddings have been fortunate enough to find a partner who wants to share in the fun.  I'm constantly being reminded of what a lucky girl I am.

Three days to go.  This thing is really happening.  There's no going back now...

to market

If you've been reading awhile, you might recall one teeny tiny detail about our wedding that I haven't made much mention of here: My partner-in-crime and I are making most of the food for our seventy-some guests.

Before you start wringing your hands on our behalf, I'll stress the word most.  We are hiring someone else to roast the pig.  The original plan there was for my man and my foodie brother to roast the pig in a giant hole in my parents' backyard.  Somehow, my folks managed to talk us out of that one.

And dessert is definitely going to be a group effort.  My brother--off the hook with the whole pig thing now--is bringing a few pies.  My Aunt Kathy has pledged two sheet cakes.  "Our" cake--the one that will feature the little cake toppers I've been yammering on and on about--will be made my littlest sister.

Which mostly just leaves the easy stuff to us.  Potato salad, coleslaw, and corn muffins.  And a yet-to-be-determined vegetarian option.  (Yes, we know, the clock is definitely ticking on that one...)

We're using an old family stand-by for the slaw recipe, making the cornbread recipe from the 1976 edition of Joy of Cooking, and looking to Martha for some All-American Potato Salad.

So today, we hit the road with a battle plan, lots of spare shopping bags, and maybe a little bit of trepidation.  Our list looked something like this:

32 lbs potatoes

9 medium heads of cabbage

24 stalks celery

17 bell peppers

And so on.  I'm sure you get the idea.  In all honesty, the food shopping went better than I'd imagined.  We put the priority on local and organic and only had to make a few tough calls.  

Things on the drinks front, though, was a little more challenging.  Everyone on the Internet has advice for you on figuring out how much alcohol to buy to entertain a crowd of seventy people.  Nobody can help you calculate, though, how many people will prefer wine to beer, whether the Pinot Grigio will go down better than the Chardonnay, or who will turn their nose up at a perfectly good IPA.  There was a lot of guessing going on today.  A little bit of arguing and desperation, but mostly guessing.  And we're really, really hoping we guessed right.

We did get a little excited about the beer shopping, though, once we found the "Local Beer" section.  We bought a few "sampler" packs from Great Lakes Brewing Company, some Buckeye Beer, and a Cincinnati classic called Burger to help wrap things up at the end of the night.  We're happy to have lots of Ohio beer to serve at the party.

We were thrilled to see, though, when we finally returned from our shopping market extravaganza, that a nice little treat from Washington was waiting for us.

Our much-anticipated case of cider from Wildfire Cider has arrived! Ohio beer is great, but we're excited to be able to share a real taste of Washington with our wedding guests.  In fact, I very nearly cracked open the first bottle when I opened the box, but I managed to restrain myself.  I'll have to be very, very good about not sampling the wares before Saturday evening rolls around...

Tomorrow, we make the coleslaw.  Wednesday, the potato salad.  The corn muffins don't come until Friday.  Oh, and a vegetarian entree will have to get crammed in there somewhere, too.  Also, there's the pinata. And the pennants.  And I have an awesome new idea for the table numbers.

Nobody panic.  We've got a plan.  Really.

cans

Eight days and counting.  We've been pecking away at the to-do list, but it seems like something in a Greek myth that grows two new heads for every one that you bravely hack away.  A Hydra.  The to-do list is a Hydra.

Today was a trip to my grandparents' house.  This trip, like every other I've made in recent years, culminated in loading piles of things in the car, things that my grandmother has been "saving" for me.  Some days it's just fresh dill and green beans.  Once, it was a pair of mittens that belonged to my mother.  Today, along with some long-lost stuffed animals and an heirloom piece of embroidery, there were jars.

My grandmother calls them "cans," not jars, and while I understand why, it still sounds funny when I say it.  She says these jars are "green," too, to distinguish them from the clear ones.  

I'll call them blue, instead, but on every other point and detail of home canning, I defer to my grandmother, who has been canning everything from peaches to beets for the past seven decades.  Even today, a trip to her cellar will reveal shelves and shelves full of canned goods from last season--more than she and my grandfather could ever eat.  My grandmother grew up during the Great Depression and to this day, she cannot abide waste.  Of anything.  Including a perfectly good cucumber.

My grandmother obviously hails from an earlier time, and I've made plenty of choices in my life that she disagrees with.  If she thought there was anything strange, though, about our wanting to borrow a boxful of "cans" to stick flowers and candles in at our wedding next weekend, she never showed it.  She just asked how many we'd need, and whether we'd rather have pints or quarts.

We didn't really have solid answers for either question--we are still making some of this up as we go along.  We just took the box that was closest to the door, and we'll be scrubbing them tonight, along with the rest of the thrift store dishes.

I've said this before, but we won't be the first couple in the world to have thrift store china and vintage mason jars at our wedding.  And I've said this before, too:  I don't care.  We're surrounding ourselves with the people we love and the things we like to look at, and I don't think there's a darn thing wrong with any of that.

I told my partner-in-crime that even if we don't end up with flowers to put in them, I still think the jars will look nice on our reception tables. My man laughed a little bit at that, but I'm hoping you'll agree with me...

the venue

In the midst of the hustle and bustle, the dish inventories, the pinata-making, and, yes, the lingering illness, I have to remind myself to take the time to enjoy the view.

We're holed up for the next ten days (!) at my parents' place, which also happens to be the venue for our wedding.  Unlike plenty of other soon-to-be-weds who barely have a chance to see their rented venues before the big day comes around, we've had plenty of opportunity to walk the property, noting the changes in elevation and enjoying the way the light moves as the day passes.

The house is old, a much-renovated farmhouse that's drifted in and out of my family for the past hundred years or so.  It's the house my grandfather was born in, and when I pointed out for him the osage orange tree we were planning to have our ceremony under, he was quick to note the site's proximity to that of the (long-ago demolished) outhouse.

Outhouse aside, it's still a great old tree, the osage orange.  If you squint a little bit, you can see the iron wagon wheel that's grown into the crook of the tree.  It's about twelve feet off the ground now, and I like to imagine that day however long ago that someone first thought it would be a good idea to lean the wheel there against the base of the tree.

There are plenty of other trees, too, and clearings bordered by green cornfields and wheat that is just starting to turn gold.  When the wind isn't rustling in the leaves, you can hear the neighbor's cows bellowing from down the road.

We probably couldn't have gotten farther from the street noise and pigeons of our little apartment in Seattle if we'd tried.  Still, this is the place where I spent the first eighteen years of my life, and it still feels a little bit like home.  Hopefully, for my man and his visiting family--who weren't lucky enough to be born in the wilds of the Midwest--it will all just feel like a pleasant pastoral vacation...