WorldWideWaterCooler

Look at that, another wedding anniversary! We’ve been so busy lately, it really crept up on us. Plans include a quiet dinner at home with a bottle of the good wine.

One of the bigger challenges in the past months has been dealing with the wacky health (physical and mental) issues our damn dog’s been having. So it seems appropriate that I post a little reminder (also printed on the back of our wedding programs in 2008) that love, and dogs, are worth it.

Falling in love is like owning a dog
an epithalamion by Taylor Mali
www.taylormali.com

First of all, it’s a big responsibility,
especially in a city like New York.
So think long and hard before deciding on love.
On the other hand, love gives you a sense of security:
when you’re walking down the street late at night
and you have a leash on love
ain’t no one going to mess with you.
Because crooks and muggers think love is unpredictable.
Who knows what love could do in its own defense?

On cold winter nights, love is warm.
It lies between you and lives and breathes
and makes funny noises.
Love wakes you up all hours of the night with its needs.
It needs to be fed so it will grow and stay healthy.

Love doesn’t like being left alone for long.
But come home and love is always happy to see you.
It may break a few things accidentally in its passion for life,
but you can never be mad at love for long.

Is love good all the time? No! No!
Love can be bad. Bad, love, bad! Very bad love.

Love makes messes.
Love leaves you little surprises here and there.
Love needs lots of cleaning up after.
Sometimes you just want to get love fixed.
Sometimes you want to roll up a piece of newspaper
and swat love on the nose,
not so much to cause pain,
just to let love know Don’t you ever do that again!

Sometimes love just wants to go for a nice long walk.
Because love loves exercise.
It runs you around the block and leaves you panting.
It pulls you in several different directions at once,
or winds around and around you
until you’re all wound up and can’t move.

But love makes you meet people wherever you go.
People who have nothing in common but love
stop and talk to each other on the street.

Throw things away and love will bring them back,
again, and again, and again.
But most of all, love needs love, lots of it.
And in return, love loves you and never stops.

Welcome, to all of you who have gathered today to share in this ceremony with Neil and Jennifer. The words which will be spoken here today are sacred, although these words are not what joins these two. Indeed, it is not I who is joining these two today at all, nor is it this ceremony.

We are not here to mark the start of a relationship; we are here to recognize a bond that already exists. Neil and Jennifer have joined themselves together, and we have gathered so that they might bear witness before us of the oneness that has grown up between them. Here, they will affirm this oneness and this dedication formally and publicly, as they have already affirmed it to each other. As they now exist as one in their own eyes; so may they exist in yours.

This union has already occurred in the giving and receiving of their love and in the myriad ways in which they have entwined their lives together.

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My first kiss was with Ben Newcombe. We were 11. I'm pretty sure it was his first kiss too.

We used to hang out on a bunch of sand dunes (or so we called them) near our respective houses. A bunch of sand had been dumped on a piece of swampy-ish land to compress the soil before building an ice rink on it.

We just thought the dunes were great for leaping off of.

Then, one day, we were sitting on top of one dune, chatting about whatever it is that 11-year-olds chat about, and Ben leaned over and kissed me. Full on the lips.

So I pushed him.

He wasn't hurt badly, but he did cry. I didn't mean to hurt him. I'm still not sure why I did it – it just seemed like the right thing to do at the time.

I found out years later that Ben is gay. I'm sure the first girl he kissed pushing him off a sand-dune didn't have anything to do with that though.

Right?

Hooray! Neil’s finally home!

At least we don’t IM eachother from here.

Now that I finally have time to write, most of the memories about our wedding are getting quite hazy. Thankfully the pictures were just finished, so I at least have a reference for what actually went on.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous or edgy at all on our wedding day. I’d planned myself into a corner – the months of both self- and vendor-inspired angst had finally rolled themselves up into a neat little ball of an event that was just going to happen – and there was really nothing left for me to do.

Nothing, that is, except socialize with the flock of family and friends that had descended on the venue. I was sort of deluding myself into thinking that I would get some alone time and wouldn’t mind being the total centre of attention. I tried turning conversations to other people’s lives – no dice. So after the eleventy-frillionth time I was asked “how do you feel? are you nervous?” and with no last-minute details to distract myself with, I was a complete basket case.

Thankfully that didn’t manifest into more than an uncontrollable lip-quiver during the beginning of the ceremony. Neil was having just as hard a time holding it together as I was – but we both made it through like the rockstars we are!

We had a few people ask about the ceremony and vows we put together – when I get around to turning on the other computer, I’ll post a link to a .pdf with the ceremony text in it.

Of course the ceremony seemed to flash by in an instant, then it was off for photos. I heard the canapes and cocktails were good, but we were too busy being swarmed and shutterbugged and exclaiming “holy crap, we’re married!” to enjoy them.

And on to the party!

And when I posted the day after the wedding that it was the best party we’d ever thrown, it wasn’t an exaggeration. Everyone seemed to have a great time, multiple guests made a point of gushing about how our wedding was the best they’ve ever attended. The most rewarding bit from a bridezilla perspective was that every detail we’d thought of – from food to drinks, to decor, to the fact that we had babysitters, to the favours, the surprise outfit changes and just the mood of the evening – someone made a point of thanking us for, or just commented on how clever, unique and awesome we are.

Even the band emailed the next day to thank us for throwing such a great party where they really enjoyed the chance to jam and rock out (apparently not usually the case at weddings). And while everyone loved the fireworks finale, I think the pyrotechnician was most excited of all about the show he managed to put on (the guy was literally bouncing up and down shouting “did you see that? It was AWESOME!”

We left shortly after the fireworks, but apparently everyone else continued to party well into the night. Neil’s brother managed to find himself in a hottub fully clothed, and one of my brothers passed out under a bush.

I think that means we can officially call it a success.

If you’d like to view the photos, visit www.blueolivephotography.com/jen&neil. Slideshows are a nice sampling of the event. The full 800+ photo online gallery is password protected. The password is the name of the small town we were married in (lower-case). If you don’t know, comment and ask!

We made it to our beautiful villa in Spain, and not a moment too soon.

Morocco is a hard country to visit as a tourist. Totally worth it, but definitely more difficult than any trip I’ve taken before. I’ll get more into that in a post once we’re home.

Anyhow, just as we finally thought we’d at least figured out Marrakech and the Djeema El Fna, Morocco gave us one final fuck you.

Food poisoning.

That set in on the train at about 4:30am of the 12th of April and didn’t cease for the rest of the train ride to Tangier, or the trans-Mediterranean ferry to Algeciras, or the car ride into the Ronda Mountains to Gaucin, or indeed the rest of the day. And night.

Today, the 14th of April at lunch was our first real meal since the nefarious foodstuffs (not willing to try anything riskier than plain bread and weak tea). Needless to say, our simple homemade pasta primavera and salad (with all fresh, local produce, thankyouverymuch) was the best meal we’ve ever tasted.

In that fateful 36 hours, we’ve thrown up and pooped more times than I can count, in three kinds of transportation, across two continents. We have shared the kind of embarrassing bodily-function moments that guarantee we can never split up now for fear of the secrets getting out.

If we can make it through that, we can make it through anything!

Right?

Well, we did it!

I’m currently hanging out in bed at the Fairmont YVR, drinking coffee and slowly waking up before breakfast. Our flight leaves at 15:10.

For the wedding, the weather turned around completely and we had beautiful sunshine as the perfect backdrop to a really lovely ceremony.

And the reception was definitely the most fun party we’ve ever thrown.

For pictures, stalk the Blue Olive site. I’m sure many of my flickr contacts will also be posting photos (we totally felt like celebrities with paparazzi all night).

And now I’m going to go get ready to fly away with my husband (and try to get more used to the words husband and wife).

In the meantime, check out my flickr page for honeymoon updates, and see ya when we’re home!

Happy Valentine’s day to all of you, from all of us at Chez Watercooler! And from us to you, some chocolate, getting dirty, courtesy of our friends at AdHack (if I’m not eating much chocolate these days – because there is NO room for me to get any bigger and still fit into my wedding dress – I can at least enjoy some dirty thoughts about it):

I’ve been nutty busy with nothing very bloggable these days (work, gym and strata stuff mostly) and crossing things off the wedding to-do list whenever I have some spare time (the last list has been updated, for those who are curious about progress).

So in the spirit of relaxing and reconnecting, Neil and I are going to take some time tonight to just chill out together and take a first crack at both creating a bit of an inspiration board for the new design of our living/dining room and writing our wedding vows. Our shower last weekend was wine themed, so we’ll probably enjoy our fair share of libations during the process.

Are any of you planning on doing something special with your loved ones (or just yourself) today?

For whatever reason I’m feeling kinda frisky today. And what better way to get it all out (and go back to my regular cold and miserable self) than to purge it from my system with a Meg-inspired Love List:

Remember that bonus I mentioned receiving (along with the aerodynamic socks) after coming back from Trade Show Hell? I have finally decided what to do with it. The KitchenAid Artisan Stand Mixer. The Cadillac of small appliances. I’m venturing out to the burbs to pick it up tonight! I can already smell the Christmas Baking.

I have finally started exercising again. It’s still too damn cold for running, but I have managed to get up off my arse and actually work out a few times this week. It hurts. Mostly in a good way. But definitely for the best, considering the aforementioned point.

Doing good, with your help! Send me an email naming a charity you’d like me to donate to this holiday season. I’ve already gotten a few emails, but am certainly excited to get more. Even if you’re pretty sure I already have your address – drop me a line anyway with a shoutout for the cause near and dear to you.

Neil’s coming home tomorrow! The worst parts about his absence have been:
a) the fact that I’m currently not getting coffee in the mornings (at least not until I make it to Starbucks, which requires being dressed and presentable), and
b) it’s far too stuffy to sleep in our apartment at night with the windows closed, which means that when I wake up in the mornings, it’s up to me to leap out of bed and attempt to dash to the other end of the apartment to close the windows, turn on the fireplace, turn on the heat in the livingroom, turn on the heat in the bedroom and dive back under the covers for 20 minutes to warm up. All hopefully without tripping over the dog or myself (not an easy feat at 6:00am pre-caffeine!).

Along with my mind (which thankfully has returned) I seemed to have lost my social life after disappearing for a month for work travel. Now that holiday parties are in full-swing and I don’t have to keep turning down invites for being out of town, I can feel that slowly starting to change.

We’re only 3 sleeps away from getting the first glimpse of the inside of our new place! Hopefully will be able to move forward with a closing date shortly after that. We’ve already given notice to our landlord. It’s finally really happening!

Aah. Better. Now I can get back to my curmudgeonly self.

Got any love you need to purge? Drop it in the comments, post on your own blog, and go tell Meg!

One year and one week ago I had sworn off dating all together, and was looking forward to my upcoming trip to the Carribean, where I planned to get into all sorts of trouble in the name of being single and awesome.

One year and six days ago one of my best friends told me that my Ridiculously High Standards had inspired a single male acquaintance of hers to inquire about a date with me.

One year and two days ago I got an email in my inbox containing the following:

I’ve been reading your blog for a while — Chris might have mentioned
it at work once, and it has a memorable URL that makes me giggle, so
I kept typing it in. I always enjoy reading your posts, but the ones
that make me laugh the longest and hardest are the ones about your
disastrous dates. I love them! I love the detail, and the
storytelling is spot on.

So anyway, the whole RHS topic made me think: I wouldn’t stand a
*chance* with you! I’m awful to date. Then I started laughing,
because at least I’d be able to read about it and laugh at how awful
it was from *your* point of view….

Well. There we are. I phoned her tonight to ask how to contact you,
and she gave me this email address. Perhaps you’d like to phone me,
and we can arrange a blog post of our own?

One year ago tomorrow I went on my last date. I had no idea it would be the last one at the time. I only agreed to go on the pre-vacation date at all, because I figured it would NEVER work out, and would at least give me a bit more blog content before I left on a jet plane (which I never actually did write about – ironic, non?). How firmly convinced was I that nothing would come of the date? I didn’t even wax my eyebrows. There’s a picture hanging in our bedroom taken the day after that date reminding me of such, with my horrible eyebrow stubble.

And now, one year from today, we’ll be husband and wife. How cool is that?

Happy Anniversary Baby – I love you like mad, and can’t imagine life any other way.

I can’t really call it a “New Year’s Resolution” since it started in late November, but Neil and I are on a bit of a health kick these days.

Summer was great: we had salads nearly daily since fresh, organic produce, meats and cheeses abound in our neighbourhood, and took epic walks with the dog (2-3 hour wanders around town) a few times a week. I rowed, he ran, we rollerbladed and hiked and generally our bodies were tighter than… well… fill in your own simile regarding very tight things.

And then the rains came.

The salads were no more, as all of the fresh things went out of season. Sure, we can still get lettuce, but it’s leathery and flavourless. The tomatoes have lost their tangy zip. Broccoli is wilty and brownish and sad.

The once epic walks have become instead games of “how fast can we run around the block, scoop the poop, and dodge as many raindrops as possible” and “how much stuff can we toss around the apartment for the dog to chase before she breaks something.”

We turned to stews and tubers and TiVo. And lo, our waistlines grew.

So we decided to nip the fat in the proverbial bud.

We’ve embraced frozen vegetables, smaller portions, cut down on “white” food (rice, flour, pasta) and started exercising most mornings.

Frankly, it was all my idea (brought on by some pants that suddenly “shrunk”) and wouldn’t you know it, Neil’s taken to all this like a damn duck to water.

I am not all that impressed.

I am the penultimate procrastinatrix, and instead of getting out of bed at 6:30am to work out, I’d rather make all sorts of excuses about how I can do it later (or tomorrow) and just ONE brownie won’t kill me (ok, maybe two).

But Neil practically springs out of bed in the wee hours to hit the road for a 35 minute jog with the dog. Then he comes home all chipper and and concocts fat-free fruit & yogurt smoothies in our spanky new blender (thanks again Chris & Jill!). He takes an active interest in sticking to a low GI diet and comes home gloating and proud to share his good food choices.

And what do I do? As he leaves for his run, I begrudgingly stumble out of bed and let Carmen Electra and Michael Carson kick my ass. Neil and the dog usually arrive home when I’m somewhere in the middle of a set of excruciating donkey kicks, and more often than not I nail the dog in the head while she’s running around being crazy.

I suck back my tasty smoothie, think about how good for me it is, and dream of the 24g of fat in a Tim Horton’s bacon & egg breakfast sandwich.

I get to work, I plug through, sometimes I have soup and salad for lunch, sometimes I have pie. Neil goes to Salad Loop nearly every damn day (which I don’t have near my work). I fantasize about cheeseburgers.

Neil will even get up and go for his regular run on Wednesdays AND Thursdays, when we ski Wednesday nights. He claims he feels Grrrrreat! I did a light upper-body workout Wednesday morning, snowboarded Wednesday night, and suffered through most of my workout Thursday afternoon. I had to go to work with my hair in a wet ponytail today, because my arms are so sore, I can’t bear enough weight to wield the hairdryer.

But I am noticing that overall I’m feeling better. The pants are mysteriously un-shrinking themselves. I’m standing a little taller now that I’m not feeling bloated and puffy all the time. I’m even sleeping better.

Is that enough to keep me going? Hell no.

I do it because I’m stubborn. I will not be shown-up by my fiancé. Whatever he can do, I can do backwards in High Heels.

I’m just hoping he starts to feel the same way about doing the laundry…

Read Part the First here.

So Neil and I became engaged in Korea. And decided to keep it a secret until we could do it “right,” meaning until we could buy the ring we wanted, and start saving for the wedding.

We waited. And saved. And waited. And saved. And waited. And saved some more.

Of course, complicating matters was the fact that we’ve also bought a condo under construction, and have to have a significant sum saved for the rest of the down payment and closing costs.

More saving, more waiting.

Finally, in early November, the bank accounts were showing promise, and we realized we can make this happen for the Christmas holidays! We’re both Christmas fiends, and looked forward to being able to share our happy news at seasonal celebrations, when family and friends usually flung far and wide would be all together to break the news to in person!

So we trundled ourselves down to a local diamond vendor where I picked out a setting, and told Neil his job was to pick the sparkly stone to go in it.

And here’s where I tell you all that Neil is a TERRIBLE secret keeper!

He was so excited every step of the way, that he’d practically be bouncing up and down with glee on the days he’d gone over to the jewelry store to view another diamond that they’d brought in.

He thinks he was being subtle, but randomly showing up near my work (which he NEVER does) to go for lunch, when I know the jewellery store is halfway between his workplace and mine is a BIG hint.

Or the day he phoned saying he just got off the phone from a teleconference and was going to leave work now, and I can hear traffic in the background (instead of office noises, which is what I usually get).

Nevermind the day he came home, stared at me, and burst into a HUGE grin saying “I’m SO excited about finally getting officially engaged to you.” I knew that day the ring was ready, and most likely in the house.

Because my parents are quite traditional and he’s a gentleman, Neil went over to their house to speak with them before popping the question to me. That was Thursday December 7th. My parents phoned before he’d even left, and were ecstatic to hear the news and share their congratulations with us!

All that was left for Neil was the actual act of giving me the ring, and making it official to the rest of the world that we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together.

The night of the 7th, I don’t think either of us slept well – after over 6 months of waiting, there was nothing left to wait for, other than the perfect opportunity to present the perfect proposal.

So the morning of the 8th, we woke up and started our general morning routine. From the first night Neil stayed over at my place, we’ve had this “thing” we do…

For reasons still unknown to me, that first morning he woke up, bright-eyed and bushy tailed, and instead of being annoying (as I find most anything that doesn’t involve me still sleeping at that hour), he offered to make coffee. Let me tell you, there is no quicker way to get through the cracks in the cold, dark exterior of my black little heart, than with a cup of hot, fresh coffee. And it stuck. He gets up and makes coffee, I let the dog out of her crate and turn on the morning news, and our little family hangs out in bed for half an hour or so to start the day.

We’ve even shared our routine with other couples, and it’s SO cute and rewarding when someone says “hey – I told my boyfriend/fiancé/husband/whatever about how Neil brings you coffee in bed in the mornings, and he brought me a cappucino in bed today!” It’s always nice to have a reminder that we really do have a good thing going on.

So, the morning of December 8th. Neil can’t keep a secret, I’m giddy as all get-up, and there is a giant elephant (read: diamond ring) hanging out in the room.

We’ve both got our coffee, are half-watching the news, and Neil asks me “how elaborate a proposal story do you want to have to tell your friends?”

Of course I answered “I just want it done with love.”

So Neil reached behind his pillow, pulled out a blue velvet box, and said “You already know I love you so, so much, and I can’t wait until the rest of the world finally knows, will you marry me?”

I opened the box, saw the ring that took my breath away, looked at the man that stole my heart, and finally said “Yes.”

I know nobody’s asked, but I did want to post how Neil proposed – both because it’s adorable and I’d like to have it recorded for blog posterity, and because when I start posting the inevitable adventures in wedding planning, some of the plans will have more context for anyone who’s following along at home.

I’m posting this in two parts, because both are pretty long. Read Part the Second here.

It will probably come as a bit of a surprise to most that we’ve actually been engaged since May 20th (or 21st – depending on which timezone you were in…).

You see, we knew amost from the moment we met that there was something awfully special going on. We were both dancing around the issue, talking about ideal weddings and hypothetical children, leaving the elephant firmly entrenched in the room by not quite saying we wanted those things with eachother. Neil had also flat-out asked how formal a proposal I wanted. We knew. It was only a matter of time.

Fast forward a few weeks, and we found ourselves in Korea, very near the end of our travelling rope.

We’d spent 10 hours in the car – not quite hopelessly lost, but lost enough to just be pointing the car in what we hoped was the right direction, as we barreled through the South Korean countryside, trying to just get to the West Coast already, preferably before sunset.

The highway signs in rural Korea are abysmal. The map we had didn’t agree with them. The laptop containing iTunes and blasting out a soundtrack to at least distract us a little, was dead. And the only person in the car who could read Korean well enough to decipher the signage as we flew past the signs has (sorry Hannah) a serious left/right deficiency, enough to compromise her navigational skills all the way down into useless range.

The inevitable happened: the three of us devolved into screaming obscenities at eachother, and Neil pitched a fit and threw the map out the car window. That did offer Hannah and I an excuse to laugh maniacally at him for a few moments – but ultimately we spent the next couple hours in the car driving in stony silence.

Having long since missed sunset, we arrived at Daechon Beach, pulled into the first hotel we saw, and sulked off to our rooms. After recharging for an hour or so, we emerged and embarked on to what Neil and I still agree was the best night of the trip.

Daechon Beach, like many oceanside towns in South Korea, is lined with seafood tents. Under a huge awning are oil drums surrounded by plastic chairs. Over the drums are giant grates, and inside is a charcoal fire. The thing to do is park yourself at one of these, and the staff bring a bucket seafood from the live shellfish tanks out front, then dump it on the grate. Armed with only a thermal glove, a pair of tongs and some chopsticks, your mission is to wait for the tasty mollusks to sizzle their way to cooked, rip them out of their tiny, shelly homes and devour them – preferably dipped in some sweet-hot chili sauce and chased with lots of soju. It was novel, it was fun, it was DAMN tasty. And we soon put the earlier part of the day out of our heads.

After dinner, the thing to do is head down to the beach, newly stocked up with fresh bottles of soju, and buy fireworks off of one of the many vendors lining the boardwalk to make your own light show. And did we ever! We drank, we shot off geysers of gunpowder, we ran barefoot through the sand and surf. It was a moment of silly, exuberant, unrestrained, energetic fun.

And, in a soju induced haze of bliss as we stumbled back toward the street, I said “If we get married, I want it to be beautiful with the beach and fireworks and fun and love, just like this…”

As if enough sparks hadn’t been lit that night – I started one more.

We got back to our hotel room, drowsy and content, crawled under the covers and snuggled up.

And with the rainbow of neon from the boardwalk shining in and the sparkles of fireworks still going off at the beach outside our window, Neil said “Baby, I don’t know if the timing is right, and I know you want a ring, but I also know I love you so, so much, and can’t hold it in any more – will you marry me?”

And in between all the fireworks going off outside the window, and inside my head and my heart, I managed to get out the words “I absolutely will.”

I suppose I forgot to tell you all that the firefighter replied to my response to his initial email. He was kind and cordial and wished me all the happiness in the world (and apologized for being such a dumbass).

His surprise contact led to a lot of thinking about the past couple years, and the adventures in dating.

It almost seems surreal.

I mean, really. Reading back through the archives, I’ve been through a lot.

What do you do when you end up with a date who talks during movies? You ditch him of course.

What do you do when you find someone who thinks you’re not so much a real person as the sum of your blog posts? Dump him via the blog of course. Sayonnara.

How many times I suffered through being stood up, or subjected to just plain bad manners?

Maybe you give up and run away for some quality time on the beach like I did.

But then what do you do when you stumble upon the person of your dreams?

What do you do when you find someone whose sentences you finish, and who finishes yours? Someone who feels like an old friend from the moment you’ve met? Someone who actually meets and exceeds your Ridiculously High Standards and adds to your life in ways you never imagined? And (don’t read this part Mom & Dad) who also rocks your effin’ socks off in the bedroom, in ways you didn’t even know they could be rocked?

What do you do when you fall in love in an instant and can honestly say each day is better than the last? When you’ve found your soul mate, your perfect partner, your true love?
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Happy Birthday Baby.

I promise I’ll remember to send you birthday cards in jail!