Thessaly's Tooth

I’m back in Nebraska, and am thoroughly sick of shopping, which is what I’ve been doing the last few days. We picked up the dress and it is hanging in my parents’ laundry room. Tonight, more shopping. Nothing to report beyond that really–I could put on a comprehensive list of everything I’ve bought, but that would be boring. Tonight, I need to travel to nearly every corner of little Lincoln, Nebraska on my shopping expeditions. It always amazes me when I come home how easy it is to get around–it takes 20 minutes to drive from one end of town to the other. In Chicago, it takes 20 minutes just to get out of the driveway.
I’ve been having fun hanging out with my fellow bride-to-be Jen. She has been helping out a lot with this wedding stuff. I’m very fortunate to have her and my matron of honor helping me out, as well as Mom–I’d be even loopier right now without them.

I started writing an entry about the Wedding Schedule I’ve worked out for the next two weeks in order to get everything done on time, but realize that it was making me sound crazy. So suffice to say, I’m headed to Nebraska tomorrow for the last bout with wedding planning. I’m not too worried–looks like we have plenty of volunteers to help out. Planning was ridiculously easy for the first few months, so I guess I can put up with some stress for a few days. I just hope my family and the wedding party will still be speaking to me after it’s all over.
I’m really looking forward to seeing everybody–there will be a lot of family and friends at the wedding that I don’t get to see too often. Next to getting married, that will be the best part of the wedding.
Now I’m off to call some vendors…

I finally found a reading that we really like for the wedding, other than the Scripture readings, and I’m so excited about it I decided to post it here. It is from T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, the end of Little Gidding:
With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this
Calling
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always

I warned Andy yesterday that I probably would not get back to my normal self until after the wedding. I have that feeling that one gets just before any major event, it is similar to how I felt right before high school graduation at which I had to give a speech in front of a couple thousand people (I wasn’t valedictorian, just tried out to give the speech and due to lack of interest on the part of most of my classmates I got the job). The day of graduation I walked around all day repeating my speech over and over–I specifically remember mumbling it to myself while my aunt tried to fix my hair, which had fallen victim to the heat and humidity which typifies Nebraska weather from May to October. This time around I have fewer words to memorize, but they’re a lot more important. Another key difference is that this time, I won’t be quoting Dr. Seuss’s Oh The Places You’ll Go–I know you’re all disappointed.
I’m not at all nervous about getting married, but I am nervous about the wedding. So many details to take care of, so much to delegate. Normally I’m not a control freak at all and am quite good at rolling with the punches, and for the most part I’m doing okay this time; but the thing is that usually somebody else is in charge and I just follow orders. This time everything is up to me: that everything goes smoothly, everybody is at least given ample opportunity to have fun, and no one succumbs to heat stroke, Lyme disease, West Nile Virus, or the many other dangers I’m told haunt the Great Plains biome these days. So, I’m a little crazed, but I’m sure it will pass.

21 more days until the wedding. Time seems to be flying by these days. The pace of wedding planning has picked up a lot starting a week or two ago, and we’re working on getting all the final details into place: planning the ceremony, making final decisions on food, reserving a PA system so that our vows can be heard by all, and so forth. I’m still having a lot of fun with it though, and we are having a good time planning what we hope will be an enjoyable day for all of the guests. Here’s hoping the Nebraska weather cooperates!
In other news, Andy and I watched Ringu last weekend. I watched The Ring, the American version of the Japanese book and movie, a few weeks ago, and it was interesting to compare them. All of the scary parts come in the same place, so I wasn’t in quite as much suspense during Ringu. Overall, I liked Ringu better for some fairly minor reasons: in The Ring there was at least one eye-rolling moment which broke the tension of what should have been a very scary scene. In some ways I liked the back story of Ringu, which was quite different from the American one, in that it was less thoroughly investigated and explained and was thus creepier. However, some of the explanations in the American version were quite cool. I’m hoping to read the book some time.
Guess I’ll get back to the wedding planning. Today, I’ll be marking down who I know is coming so far, and working on a schedule of where everyone will be when. I am sooooo organized.

I had a passing thought about ghosts today, and a passing thought has more than enough importance to make it into this particular forum. I don’t believe in ghosts at all, even though I might have lived in a haunted house once. The most famous ghost story in Lincoln, Neb. is that of the C.C. White building ghost. The White building was formerly a building on the Nebraska Wesleyan University campus, which housed the music department. The most dramatic encounter with the ghost occurred in 1963 (according to Alan Boye, A Guide to the Ghosts of Lincoln), when a professor walked into one of the rooms to see a woman dressed in old-fashioned clothes reaching to put something in a cubbyhole in the wall. The professor thought she sensed the presence of a man sitting at a desk next to her, but when she looked there was no one there. She then looked out the window, and instead of seeing the rest of the campus buildings, she saw an empty, roadless expanse of prairie. Later, someone found some old sheet music in the cubbyhole, which no one remembered putting there.

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Nothing much to report here. I’ve been working on moving-in issues and wedding stuff. Today I’m trying to justify my existence by making a pretense of doing school work. I also have a cold. It’s looking kind of dreary outside which I’m kind of enjoying–we should get as many dreary days as possible in before we have to deal with a whole couple of seasons of sunshine, flowers, and happiness, that’s what I say.
Okay, back to the pretense.

Okay, so that’s not one of the better candidates for a new blog name. We moved me in amidst the ice storm last week, and now I’m working on getting settled. The cats seem to love all the new space. It’s extremely quiet in this apartment, and it gets dark at night and I can see stars in the sky. Guess I’ll just have to adjust.

My last few days in Hyde Park have been without any major “experiences,” which makes me a little nervous. Right now I’m doing some last-minute cleaning and awaiting the arrival of Andy and my future in-laws with the moving van.
I wonder if I should change my blog name now that I’m moving? A couple of years ago I was getting my hair cut and the stylist, who was herself not from around here, being originally from Ethiopia, advised me not to stay in Hyde Park/Chicago too long–lest I become “one of them” (I can’t remember if that’s the way she put it, but something like that). I think I know what she meant, and it’s entirely possible that it’s too late for me and in some sense, I will never really leave Hyde Park. Rather than worrying about that, however, right now I need to concentrate on trying to find the cats among the maze of boxes in my erstwhile apartment.

I don’t care much for packing. Most of my belongings are currently in boxes where I can’t get at them, but there still seem to be an endless number of doodads parked on windowsills and other random flat surfaces, which must still be packed. I’m looking forward to getting to the new place (tomorrow!), but right now my apartment is looking alien and unhomelike. Except for the cats, who seem to be getting a big kick out of the whole procedure.
My friend and fellow bride-to-be Jen gave me a book called Diary of a Mad Bride, which is hilarious. Fortunately I haven’t had nearly as many planning problems as the Mad Bride, but it’s still a very funny book.