Temerity Jane

I am basically the king of getting good plane seats and getting married.

Internet, let me tell you about where I’ve been, in picture form, because the jet lag has me by the neck and is shaking me quite viciously, so I am not really in any mood or condition to be using my words.

Haha, fooled you! Even though there are going to be pictures, and even though I’m only 50 words in, I can tell you that you’re probably in for another 2000 words of unnecessary-ness, just like always. If you have to go potty, go now!

As usual, my trip started out AWESOME!

Remember the picture I posted of all of my belongings laid out on the coffee table? Phil packed them for me, including the laptop, into my checked bag. Which weighed 50.0 lbs. I think I had better use a lot of shampoo while I’m here, just to be safe.

Anyway, normally I carry the laptop in a backpack, along with my purse and oh, also a rolling carry on, because while some people are bingers and purgers and some people are cutters and some people jump from destructive relationship to destructive relationship, I like to express self-hatred by making myself as miserable and stressed out in airports as possible.

This time, though, I brought only a purse and a canvas bag full of library books. Now, I know that checking the laptop is not THE most brilliant thing I’ve ever done, but you guys, it was the most brilliant thing I’ve ever done. I was through security in under 2 minutes, my 6 trips to the bathroom were nearly unfettered, and I didn’t spend my entire pre-plane time clutching the straps of various bags to ward off roving bands of airport thieves.

While I was sitting and waiting to get on my  flight, a guy walked by dragging a suitcase and carrying three bags of Wendy’s food. Interesting. He was followed by a man in a black polo who chose to accessorize his belt that day with a pair of handcuffs and a holstered handgun. Following them were two men, each holding a Wendy’s soda with two hands, and also, each was carrying a small white towel, laid over their hands. They were followed by yet another stern looking man, and they all went right to the counter at the gate and stood there, very close together.

You guys, you would be so impressed by how quickly I put together these totally random and minuscule and complicated details into one cohesive picture. I watch Monk, you know? I was basically Monk. I was all, “Hm, one very skinny man carrying TOO MUCH FOOD and two able-bodied gentlemen using two hands to carry a single soda each and also, a towel?” It was like, lightning fast in real life, you guys.

Anyway, when I got to the airport and printed out my boarding pass, the seat assignment was different than the toilet-seat I thought I had at home. When they loaded these gentlemen into the plane first, to take that back row of seats, it made sense. I got a free upgrade to an exit row so that the real, honest to goodness, handcuffs-covered-with-a-towel prisoners wouldn’t have to be separated from their gun-toting pals. Maybe it was their first time flying or something.

Thanks for the legroom, prison friends!

To top off my free exit row seat? There was no one in the middle seat. Just me, empty seat, and an off duty flight attendant against the window – an off duty flight attendant who DIDN’T SAY ANY WORDS TO ME THE WHOLE FLIGHT.

You guys, everything was coming up TJ.

Except, except, and of course there is an “except,” the guy in the middle seat in the row in front of me kept getting out to let his wife or their other seat mate in or out. And a couple of times, he would look into my row and comment about how much extra space I had, in a kind of expectant way. Like I was some kind of space-having jerk, and his gentle prodding would make me realize that and I’d let him have my seat. At one point, the lady sitting with me got up for a while, and the dude kept asking if there was anyone sitting there, between us, so that he could leave his cramped middle seat and come ruin our extra legroom, empty middle seat paradise. Oh, hell no. I had to give up a seat next to the toilet for this!

After a while, he just stayed standing for a long time, but not in the aisle. Since I had so much room, he just half-stood IN MY SEAT area for a good ten minutes or so. And then? And then? He look at me at one point and goes, “I’m practically in your lap!,” and RUBS MY BACK WITH ONE OF HIS HANDS.

I think my flinching away offended him, because then he told me that exit row seats have a huge drawback and it was that I had to lean forward to play mahjong  on the touch screen monitor in front of me. No, sir, the drawback is that PLANE STRANGERS think that the concept of personal space extends to blocking half of my mahjong  game with their butt and touching me with their PLANE STRANGER HANDS.

I also watched My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

Anyway, then I got to Newark.

I had a bit of a hard time finding my gate in Newark, because when I looked for it by following the arrows, I ended up in a weird basement that smelled like pee. I obviously assumed it was some kind of storage area, possibly the dwelling of the Phantom of the Airport, because of the way a random podium was shoved off into a hallway with an emergency exit and a broken pay phone.

Except no, that was my gate.

I didn’t care for Newark.

I went to my sister’s for a while, and by the time I got home, it was pretty late. After rolling out of bed the next day, I set out to fulfill my destiny as basically the king of getting married.

Of course, no one would expect me to proceed without fuel.

After a quick stop at Pappa’s to fulfill what was surely my cheese steak destiny, my brother – the only groomsman within reach – took me over to Sarno & Sons, where I basically kicked ass at picking out tuxes.

Actually, to be honest, which I am only going to do for this paragraph, our experience at Sarno & Sons was the best experience I have had with planning so far. The salesguy, Zach, realized that I basically had zero ideas and preferences and put together exactly what I wasn’t exactly sure I was looking for. I was making wedding decisions left and right with his help.

Ok, two decision, but they were multi-part decisions and also, two decisions is totally enough to satisfy the “left” and “right” portions of “making decisions left and right.

Non-grooms.

Grooms.

I knocked that out so fast that I decided to allow myself the night off from being the king of getting married, and went home to get ready to go out with my mom, sister and lady cousins.

After the bar, I went with my sister to her old apartment so that she could complete some moving tasks. It was so hot that she decided it was completely appropriate to pack and clean in her bra and underwear, but I don’t have a picture of that. Actually, I do, because outside the bar, she mooned me, and then tried to tell our mother that she was wearing shorts under her dress. She was most certainly not, and I needed the photo evidence for later tattling.

I do have this picture of my brother, though!

“What are you doing?”
“What does it look like?”
“It LOOKS like you don’t know how a couch works.”

Since my brother is home from college for the summer, my mom likes to keep the house stocked with his favorite snacks. That would be convenient for me, as well, if my brother was at all normal. Which he is not.

He did offer to share some of his raw rutabaga with me, though.

Yesterday, my mother and I went to visit a florist, a project I have been dreading because I have little to no interest in flowers and the last woman we visited was extremely obnoxious. However, in my new role as the king of getting married, it ended up going incredibly smoothly. Not only was the shop owner polite and the prices reasonable, they are also able to fulfil my mother’s dreams of wrapping shit in tulle, and hanging a draping canopy above the dance floor. And they’ll provide an aisle runner and a card box. Recognizing that a polite woman well within my price range is what we in the kings of getting married business like to call, “Good enough,” we dropped a deposit and took off for our next appointment.

Our next appointment, unfortunately, was to try on my dress, which I was reasonably certain was no longer going to fit. We needed to check to see if it would need to be let out, (or if I should maybe “let myself in” a little, but I’m very busy being the king of things, so that was unlikely), and what kind of undergarments I would need to wear.

Both questions were answered quickly.

It did fit and NOT THIS SLIP.
This picture depicts the scene of me less than halfway through digging out my own legs.

You guys, I have picked the groomsmens tuxes, Phil’s tux, my dad’s tux. I got my brother fitted for his tux. I picked a florist and made the deposit. I found out I am not going to have to schedule a nervous breakdown or “totally intend” to lose some weight to fit into my dress, and confirmed the fact that the bra to solve the giant boobs/wedding dress conundrum has yet to be invented.

Today, we’re going to meet with our venue coordinator to check out the guest and sweetheart table layouts for the reception, and go over all the details one last time. Saturday, I’m going to meet my mom’s hairstylist, going to pick out a cake, and then going to meet my sister’s hairstylist (to figure out which stylist is willing to override my mother’s bang-related wishes for my wedding hair), followed by hunting down some wedding shoes and wedding jewelry.

Sunday, I am going to my bridal shower, where I assume my throne will have been delivered because I am SO TOTALLY THE KING OF GETTING MARRIED.

Phil sent me this picture.
Even kings of things miss their dogs.
And their Phils.