a peek

Here's a little peek at an incredibly cool thing my man and I did a few days ago.  I'm hoping to share more details at the beginning of next week.

Happy weekend!

tiny surprise

A well-used knife block full of old kitchen knives came through the shop today.  Nothing very exciting, at a glance.  At the end of the day, though, one of my co-workers pointed out a funny little detail on two of the knives.

It's a little strange, but I thought it was sweet.

names

There's a big, complicated conversation going on today over at A Practical Wedding, "On Name Changing and Weddings."  If you are someone who has no opinion whatsoever on whether or not a woman should take her husband's last name when she marries, then I sincerely doubt that you are a living, breathing person.

This is a contentious subject for all of us, and my generation seems to have inherited a lion's share of doubts, confusion, anger, and worry about the issue.  Skimming through the hundreds of replies to the APW post is incredibly engrossing.  It's a reminder of how deeply personal the decision has become for us as women, for our partners, and yes, for our hypothetical children.*

I'm changing my name.  This may come as a surprise to some who know me, but others--who recall that my last name rhymes with "underwear" and is synonymous with a forest animal--will understand that I've never been all that enamored with my "maiden" name.  Especially as a third-grader.

Maybe I'd feel differently if I were an only child, but I have brothers to carry on the "family" name.  (I did briefly consider taking my mother's maiden name as a second middle name, because I am one of the last branches of that particular tree, but I've never followed through on the idea.)

My man has told me all along that the decision of whether or not to take his last name was mine--which I already knew, of course--but now that I've decided to go ahead and do it, it seems like he's glad that's where I landed.

We talked vaguely about hyphenating and we joked about just swapping last names--he likes mine better; I prefer his.  In the end, changing my name to his is the most convenient option, and my inner child has a real penchant for laziness.

I don't mean to sound casual about such a serious decision, and I would certainly never tell another woman what she should do about this--I can't think of a less negative word for it--dilemma.  I just ended up doing what everyone who loves me suggested--I made the choice that was the best fit for me.

~~~~~~~

*Sometimes I like to ask myself, "What would Ma Ingalls do?"  More and more, though, I find myself running into situations that sweet, capable Caroline never for the life of her could have imagined.  Then I have to ask, instead, "What would I do?"  And then I do it.

interrupted

It might be hard to see from where you're sitting, but that right there is a sock.  Or, most of a sock.  It's been sitting on the needles for a long time.  So long, in fact, that when I picked it up tonight, a poof of dust lifted off the top.  It's kind of sad, really.  Especially when you figure that it's only the first of what I originally planned to be a pair of socks.

Most of the other "making and doing" categories of my life are in similarly sorry shape.  My ability to do things like write a letter, bake muffins, or fold the laundry has been in a downward spiral for the past several months.  I didn't really notice, at first, but it's become pretty obvious that all the time spent on "wedding stuff" has been nudging nearly every other extracurricular to the bottom of a long, long to-do list.  (You might notice that I've designated "folding laundry" as an optional activity.  I should point out that some people do not share this view.  My partner-in-crime, for instance.)

I would be more upset by all the disruption, maybe, if I didn't realize how temporary the situation really is.  When the wedding is over and done with--along with the subsequent traveling, the second reception in Washington, and the general cleaning up afterwards--I'm going to suddenly find myself with time again. I'll go back to plain old "because I feel like it" crafting, instead of all these funny little projects with deadlines and consequences.  Hopefully, life will feel less out-of-balance.

In the meantime, though, things are going to be a little rough.  Especially for my poor, nearly-abandoned mini-farm on our back porch.  I might have to carve out at least a little bit of time to get things growing there.  Food is pretty important.  After all, a girl can't live on Once Wed alone.

Or can she?

gratitude

We received our first wedding gift the other day.  Some other time, I might try to tackle my rather-complicated feelings about wedding gifts and registries, but for now, let it be enough to say that when you get married, someone you love will probably want to give you a gift.

If you are me, the gift will arrive by mail and your partner-in-crime will carry the box up the front stairs and leave it lying in a place where you'll be sure to see it.  Then he'll suggest that you stuff the box in the closet for two months in order to open it after the wedding.  You will gently suggest that while of course, you will not use the gift until after the wedding, perhaps the gift should, in fact, be opened before the wedding, to allow you to appropriately acknowledge its receipt to the gift-giver in a tasteful thank you note.

Your man will disagree.  This conversation will continue on in a circular fashion for several minutes until you finally decide to consult an expert.  The expert, rather.

The 75th Anniversary edition of Emily Post's Etiquette is 845 pages long.  It is a very substantial book.  I  bought it a few years ago at a second-hand bookstore and have spent more time than I might like to admit thumbing through the sections on weddings and funerals and mealtime manners.

My man has never really shared my fascination with Emily and her book, especially on the few occasions I've come across something so interesting that I've tried to read it to him aloud.  I don't think he dislikes proper etiquette--although he certainly isn't as concerned with it as I am--he just doesn't seem to think that there needs to be an 845 page book about it.

And look, it's not that I'm completely caught up in the finer details of tipping department store delivery men.  I just love all the intricacies of the system, this WASPy secret code of the past two hundred years.  It's incredibly intriguing.  And I also love the idea of Mrs. Post making her life's work out of telling everyone else in America how they ought to behave.  She had books, magazines articles, and a newspaper column that was syndicated in a few hundred newspapers.  Oh, and she was on the radio.

I'm intrigued by powerful women.  I don't think a man could have accomplished what Mrs. Post did.

Now, I've gone through the "Weddings" section of my book a few times now, and I've come away with the idea that Mrs. Post would not have found our wedding planning--or our engagement--to her satisfaction. She makes no mention of pinatas, heart-shaped crayons, or melted-polyester flowers.  It's probably best for everyone that she won't be in attendance.*

(If you're wondering, though, I was right about the whole "now or later?" gift debate.  Please refer to pages 652-654, Acknowledging Wedding Gifts.)

Personally, I'm glad that there's a book like this one.  I'm not saying I wish I'd gone to finishing school or anything, but there's something about there being a right way and a wrong way to go about things--I just find that comforting.

*She's no longer with us, of course.  Mrs. Post passed away in 1960.  Never fear, though.  Her work is capably carried on by The Emily Post Institute.

dinosaur

With all my talk of "wanting" and "having," you might have gotten the idea that I'm some kind of shopaholic.   I'd like to take this opportunity to assure you that I am decidedly not.  Even so, I still can't escape the occasional impulse buy, and as is commonly the way with impulse buys, I really really want to share the thing that I broke down and bought.

My latest weakness:

Yes, it's a typewriter.  A portable Olympia typewriter, the Traveller de Luxe, to be exact.  I got it for about fifteen dollars--which, some might argue, is a significant amount of money to pay for something that you absolutely will never, ever need.  But how I could I say no?  It's in incredibly good shape--other than needing a new ribbon--and it's so dang cute.  When it's boxed up in its case, you can hardly tell that there's an adorable little typewriter inside.

I really do love it.  It makes me want to pack a vintage suitcase and fly off to Paris to write a novel.

I should tell you right now, that this isn't the only typewriter I own.  And honestly, the other two aren't any more useful than I expect this one to be.  There's an old, rusted out skeleton of an L.C. Smith & Bros. No. 8 sitting out on our back porch.  Frankly, it's too messy to have it in the house, and on more than one occasion, I've had to tell my man that no, he cannot just pull the keys off in order to "make something cool" with them.

And then there's the Underwood.

Mostly, it just sits around gathering dust, but I like to imagine that someday, we'll find something clever to do with it, even if it does end up just being a conversation piece.

A few years ago, typewriter guest books were de rigueur.  Even Martha got into the action.  I'll admit, I had the fleeting idea that maybe the Traveller de Luxe could make the June trip to Ohio with us.  I love the idea of people click-clacking their well wishes.  And it would also be fun to explain to our youngest guests what a "typewriter" is.

Unless something remarkable happens, my generation will be the last to remember the typewriter as a useful tool, rather than just a museum piece.  I have vague memories of lugging my parents' manual machine around the house, using both hands to lift the case by its black plastic handle.  I played with it for a while, and I might have even written a school paper or two on it, but then everything changed, and all of a sudden, everyone had a computer at home.  I don't know what happened to my parents' typewriter.  I'm sure they don't have it anymore.

I don't know why I'm so fascinated by all this.  I guess I like the way that a typewriter, like an old sewing machine or a printing press, can be a machine, a complicated tool, that isn't too complicated to make some kind of sense to my human mind.  There are no batteries or microchips involved.  It's a self-contained miracle of engineering.  And it's solid, undeniably real.  Not like the flimsy piece of plastic that I'm typing all of this on right now.

The Traveller de Luxe will most likely not be flying to Ohio with us.  We'll have plenty of other things to haul around, I'm sure.  I haven't totally decided against the idea, though.  I think the guest book idea is a really good one, and I know that my partner-in-crime will agree when I say that there's just something about having a typewriter around...

inheritance

I do love photographs.  I've mentioned it here before.  When we started talking about what our wedding reception would look like, we decided it would be neat to include wedding photos of our families.  We stocked up on some picture frames from the Goodwill and put out the call to our families for wedding photos, especially from previous generations of brides and grooms.

I didn't really think about how complicated it might be to actually come up with the pictures.  There aren't a lot of photos from my mother's side of the family, and the ones we do have are full of solemn-looking people that it seems nobody alive today can put a name to.

My dad's family is a slightly different story.  I think my grandmother might have some photo albums squirreled away somewhere, but I might have to wait until we get to Ohio in June to ask about them.  It's been decades since I peeked between the pages, but I vaguely remember little kids bundled up in snowsuits and awkward clumps of relatives staring darkly into the camera.  No weddings that I recall.

I definitely want to have pictures of my step-mom's parents along with the others.  I like the idea of Grandma Alice being there, in a sense.  She and her husband were a good-looking young couple, back in the day.  Funny thing is, there's no wedding photo of them.  Some nice portraits from approximately that era, but no pouffy dress or bouquets in sight.  It will have to do, to be sure, but it's not quite the same thing.

Fortunately, there's my man's family.  Not only do they have photos, but they even know who the subjects are.  And these aren't just pictures of parents and grandparents.  There are some great- and even great-great-ancestors.  My in-laws-to-be brought us copies of some of the pictures last weekend.  I am fascinated.

Obviously, I'm going to have to put some more time into making sure that my family is represented, too.  Can't have things all lop-sided with something like this...

We're planning on putting the photos out on the tables for our reception dinner.  They'll look pretty in their little thrift store frames, and maybe they'll be conversation-starters for the two big families that will be meeting and mingling for the first time.  Those are nice reasons for having the photographs there, but I think they'll play another, more subtle role, too.  I hope the images will be a reminder, at least a gentle one, both of where we've come from and of where we're going.