Ready, Steady, Go

What a summer it's been. There is now less than a month until Nico and I get married, and I've spent a lot of this summer getting ready. We're pretty close to being done, it's mostly the small things and the things that have to wait until the last minute that we have still to do. Though make no mistake, those last-minute things are a big deal. Things like making all the cupcakes and making corsages and bouts. But we'll have family and friends here to help then, and I know we can get it all done.

We got our engagement pics back from the photographer this weekend. We had them taken two or three weeks ago at the downtown branch of the Seattle Public Library. A librarian getting her engagement photos done at the library, don't you love it? Yeah, well, this particular library has some great architecture and it's hard to turn down an excuse to go to Seattle. Here are some of my favorites:







Whew. I can't choose just one. Does that mean I'm vain?

But it hasn't been all wedding, all the time. I've been able to get some useful things done. My garden, for instance. It's done OK, not fantastic, but alright. I've gotten enough roma tomatoes to make a smallish batch of marinara, augmented with some basil I grew from seed. I'm going to freeze the marinara and save it for a pick-me-up on a bad day. I've also put some of my tomatoes and Anaheim chiles into a batch of my roasted salsa roja, which I canned in little half-pint jars. And I made three different batches of jam with berries from Spooner Farm stands. Also canned those. I like canning. In small batches, anyway. People say that if you've got your own preserves it's like having money in the bank. I disagree. I think it's like having sunshine in the bank. That along with the marinara sauce and a couple bags of chopped up rhubarb from a coworker's garden in the freezer and I feel almost ready for winter.

Which is good, because winter is coming. Oh yes. I like to say that in this part of the country fall starts on Sept. 1st. And it does. Sept. 1st this year saw us with rain and gray skies after a long stretch of sun. Now the trees are just starting to turn color. There are a couple of early maples here and there that are already almost completely yellow, but the others aren't too far behind. The first seasonal squash is also beginning to show up at the grocery.

And finally, Nico and I had a chance to get outside and play a little when Olympia had its first-ever Zombie Walk. We talked about using this as our engagement photo, but decided against it in the end.

At last the hellish experience of dress-fitting is over.

I just got back from my second/final dress fitting at, where else, David's Bridal. Whew. You know, going to try on the dresses was actually fun. My sisters were both in town, we got a great saleslady, and the dress seemed perfect.

That was last November. The dress has been hanging in my closet since January, and last month I went in for my first dress fitting. Alone. I had no idea what to expect but I probably should have based on the many people who've had bad experiences with DB. You see, I've gained weight since last Nov (Thanks, Genetics! Thanks, Sedentary Job, 2-hour Commute and Depression!) and, since I was alone, I needed help getting the corset-bra latched in the back. God forbid. My alterations lady was not happy she had to help me, and at one point she even muttered the phrase, "My God!" I admitted to her that I'd gained weight, although not so much that I couldn't make it into the dress or anything.

Now, I'm kind of an awkward girl. I'm introverted and I generally don't have very much to say to strangers. I'm bad at small-talk. But I also fear awkward silences with people in service positions. Maybe that's because I'm usually the one in a service position. So what do I do? I throw out all the fat acceptance rhetoric I've learned in the last year and a half and I make a fat joke. About myself. Because for some reason I think it's important for the alterations lady, who I've never seen before in my life, to like me. I wanted her to be comfortable even though I sure as hell wasn't. Never mind that this is her freaking job and I am a paying customer, never mind that she probably sees 50 brides a week and I mean nothing to her. Nope, I'll do anything for a laugh, even one at my own expense.

And she did laugh, a little. But the rest of the fitting was spent in uncomfortable silence and halting shop-talk. She told me she could let the dress out 2 inches since I'd gained that weight, and I chose a style of bustle. Not much else to say, I guess.

Fast forward to about an hour ago, when I went in for my second scheduled fitting. This time I was smart enough to have Nico strap me into the bra before I even left the house and it's a good thing I did because the alterations person this time around was a guy. And have you noticed that the women who work at David's Bridal wear, well, whatever, but if a man is working there he's always in a tux? Even the alterations guy? Seems a little incongruous to me.

So I dive back into the dress, stand on the little podium, get a quick tutorial in bustling then shimmy back into my street clothes all wrapped in a nice warm blanket of Awkward. At least this guy didn't comment about my weight, and neither did I. Although I did adroitly complement his well-executed bustle by telling him I didn't think I would end up stepping on it. He didn't laugh.

But now it's over. I think I deserve a glass of wine, and if I weren't so tired I'd probably have one.

Also today Nico and I had our engagement shoot at the down town branch of the Seattle library! Our photographer, Amanda, is totally awesome! She's so sweet and has so much energy. I can't wait to see how the photos turn out.

Wedding Beer

Last night we sampled the second version of pumpkin porter for the first time. It's only been in bottles for two weeks. It was, well, good. It's never good after only two weeks. The beer always needs more time to age a little and mellow out. After only two weeks it's usually still way too bitter and the complexity of the flavors don't shine through clearly enough. In short, after only two weeks the beer is usually not quite drinkable yet.

But this pumpkin porter was drinkable. Bitter without being overwhelming. Relatively clean after-taste. Not exactly sweet, and much smoother than I expected. There was a little bit of depth to the flavor but the spice and pumpkin notes were really subdued. So much so that you wouldn't know it was a pumpkin just from tasting it. And it should only get better as it ages.

I wish I had time to play around with it a little more, but I don't. I'm going to spend May brewing the beer for the wedding so that it has a few months to even out and reach its peak. Maybe I'll add more spices to the next batches, but I'll keep the amount of pumpkin the same. I'll taste the first version of pumpkin porter again to be sure, but I'm pretty sure this second version is the keeper. I based it off of Papazian's recipe for Goat Scrotum Porter, but I'm going to call mine Black Bird Pumpkin Porter instead. Seems a little more autumnal and wedding-appropriate (although I'm sure some may argue that scrotums of any variety are wedding-appropriate).

Oh, also, I got a new chair:

Hiring a Photographer (aka Maybe the Wedding Won't Suck After All)

On Monday I'm going to drive to Tacoma and meet my potential wedding photographer at Hello Cupcake to interview her. I'm going to bring my little wedding notebook, my list of questions printed out from Real Simple and my checkbook, and I'm going to pretend to be Charlotte from Sex and the City. I'm pretty sure this is the photographer I'm going to hire. I don't have any overall vision for the photography, other than it "looking awesome." I'm just happy to be getting it done.

Until this week it was looking to me like we wouldn't be able to afford a photographer. I might lose my job at the end of the year and to be honest we don't have a huge budget to begin with. The idea of paying for everything was quite literally overwhelming me. And I'm not a huge photography arts person, but the idea of not having any nice, professional pics of my wedding was depressing me to the point where I was wondering why we were even having a wedding. Why not just elope? In short I've been pretty depressed over the economy and wedding planning in general. Don't get me wrong - I want to be married. I was just having trouble keeping up the excitement about getting married.

Deciding to go ahead and hire a photographer has made a huge difference in my wedding planning mood. I can't quite pin down why that is, but I think that somehow the thought of NOT having a photographer became, in my mind, emblematic of all the things my wedding couldn't be. As for the money side of it, well, I'm just making the decision to have faith that we can swing this.

I also printed out a good wedding planning checklist from OffbeatBride, and that's helped me to wrap my head around the whole planning process. When I was still in what I like to call the theoretical stages of planning I was having a great time thinking of what we would and wouldn't have or do at the wedding. But now that we're in the actual stages of planning, every decision made has felt like the death of a fantasy. The checklist helps me to feel like I'm getting things done in a positive way rather than winnowing away all my ideas. Plus I was able to show the checklist to Nico to help him understand what's happening with the planning. That checklist actually has the potential to be a great communication tool. As a result Nico understands the process a little better and will be helping more, and I don't feel like I'm doing this all on my own. Win-win.

Banana Slug Sighting!

It's been rainy and cool for the last few days, so yesterday I decided I would go hiking in the rain and mist at McLane Creek to look for banana slugs. That park is just as beautiful in the rain as it is in the sun, and I actually didn't get that wet hiking in the trees.




I wandered off the trail at one point and almost stepped on this little guy.



And to show you how 'city' I am, when I first saw it I thought that someone had dropped their headphones. Heh. Nope. No headphones, just a naturally occurring amphibian. Then a few feet away from the salamander I saw my first banana slug!



Not the most strapping specimen, but still pretty cool. If it had been stretched out I would estimate it to be 3 - 4 inches long. The poor little thing is in some kind of defensive mode with its eyes pulled in. Here's another picture where it looks even more like a frightened, greenish penis:



After this I went back to the trail and obeyed all posted signs. I saw another salamander and, at the very end of the trail, another banana slug. Boy am I lucky! This one has those characteristic spotty-banana markings, too.



Jackpot, my friends. It's good to have that checked off the list. There were also a ton of cool-looking mushrooms, if you like that kind of thing...





And so my attempt to reprogram myself to the Pac NW made some significant progress this weekend. I have to admit that Nico and I are still recovering from living in Aberdeen. We were so used to being home-bodies there and keeping ourselves aloof that it is still an effort for either of us to get out of the house and do something, try something new. But we're working on it. Last night we stopped by Orca Books for the first time. I can't believe we waited so long to go in there. It was great! It made Oly feel just a tiny bit more like home. And then afterwards we went to Quality Burrito and I actually remembered to order my burrito without rice this time. (Rice in the burritos. That's something that deserves its own blog post; I don't want to get into it right now.)

And then there's the wedding planning, which must begin in actuality now. It will be around this time next year. I was worried that having it in early October wouldn't be the best idea because the leaves might not be pretty enough yet, but they are. So that will be good. And now we're beginning to look for an actual place in Oly to throw this shin-dig. There are a couple of possibilities in the works that we're planning to take a look at, but it seems like every place I find is possibly too small (we don't know how many people we'll have, how many will be able to travel from AZ/MN) or a little far away or maybe a little too expensive. We'll figure it out.