post-nuptials

So there have been no posts to this website since july. I'm going to go ahead and cop out and say this is because I was planning and carrying out a wedding for the last six months, but I'm sure my own inertia had quite a bit do do with that. So before I digress, a few words on marriage:

1. The phrase "emotional roller-coaster" is redundant. Honestly, what you are buying when you get a ticket for a roller-coaster is emotion. Boredom, anticipation, fear, excitment and nostalgic depression, in about that order. So really, what I experienced over the last few months leading up to the Big Day was simply a non-kinetic roller coaster-- an expensive one, but one that lasted for a very long time (and had a pretty awesome giant hill and loop-de-loop at the end.) And the first thing you want to do after it's done? Do it again, of course.

2. I didn't really feel Sunday Post, family-sitcom married for a little while after the actual wedding. The moment when it finally settled in was, in retrospect, typical. Like lots of people that are fairly picky and nerdy about pop music, I'm a sucker for a sappy love song. I'm convinced that people can't really get obsessed with an art from unless it has a somewhat primal, uncontrollable lock on their emotional state. Movies can't really make me cry. Otis Redding can. The song in question here was quite possibly the most red-faced, snot-on-your sleeve blubbering piece of guitar-and-vocals that exists on this planet. I'm not going to invoke the name, but suffice it to say that it was written by Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie. I'm pretty sure this guy cries putting his socks on in the morning. We (my wife and I) were picking appropriately emotional music for our wedding video. We settled on half Ray Charles, half Death Cab, figuring that if people didn't get it out of one of those barrels, the other one would have them covered. The trifecta was finished by a Willie Nelson coda. The combined emotion of all of these songs, picked out whilst sharing a desk chair with my new wife, my dog at my side, lights low, was about as close as I will get to Norman Rockwell subject matter. It was unabashedly wholesome, and while I am putting a somewhat snide tone on it now, at the time I am proud to say I felt no irony whatsoever. Right then I knew I was married, and that it was a good thing.