Snack Hell, The Sea of Humanity...and other wedding weekend stories: Part III

Spa Hell! That's what Friday was, if you can imagine it. I think if I had actually been to a spa, it would have been different. As it was, Friday was hectic. The day started off dropping off gift bags at the various hotels where our guests were staying. This went pretty smoothly, except that the guy at the Hampton Inn JFK looked at me like I had two heads when I brought in the gift bags. It made me worry that maybe not everyone would be getting one, but oh well. There were vending machines in the lobby. After this task, my dad and I drove to JFK Airport to the Avis rental place so that I could be added to the rental car contract. Navigating JFK is just horrible. It is a horrible, horrible way to start off your day, and I wouldn't recommend it.
Then, we drove into Hewlett for my nail appointment. Because I was going to the mikvah later that afternoon, I couldn't have nail polish put on yet, so I just had a regular manicure and pedicure. After that, I drove back to Garden City, dropped my dad off, picked my mom up, and headed to Woodmere for the Mikvah. My mom had no idea what this ritual was all about, so I tried to explain as best I could without overdoing it. See, she had already had quite a bit of culture shock up to this point with the orthodox jewish wedding and all, so I didn't want to push it. The mikvah visit was completed fairly quickly, and we were on to the next appointment, but not before driving back to Garden City to drop my mom off. I then drove back to Hewlett for the polish application at the nail salon, and finally back to Garden City where I collapsed into a coma at 8:30 pm. I had been in the car the entire day on Friday, and it was not a good thing.

Snack Hell, The Sea of Humanity...and other wedding weekend stories: Part II

Now we come to my favorite phrase of the whole weekend: "Oh, the sea of Humanity!" I think my dad uttered this phrase at least four times while we were sightseeing in Manhattan. This makes me think we need to avoid Times Square next time and just hit up SoHo and Greenwich Village.

We got to the train station just in time to catch the LIRR into Penn Station. This was kind of fun because my parents got to see a bit of Long Island. Of course, it wasn't as fun as we got closer to Jamaica and saw all of the garbage and nastiness that is also part of Long Island. The magic sort of faded for my parents at that point. When we got to Penn Station, we had to have a family meeting about not getting separated. I can just imagine my mom loose in Manhattan without the rest of us. I think her head would explode. So after telling my mom that she was not to lose us, that her handbag was safe, nobody was going to mug us, and that any public restrooms should be avoided, we set off into the urban jungle of Manhattan.

As we emerged from Penn Station out onto 7th Avenue, the first sea of humanity comment emerged from my dad's lips. He takes a look up 7th ave. at the throngs of business people and holiday shoppers and says, "Oh, the sea of humanity!" My mom and I ignored this comment- honestly, how do you respond to that?- and continued up 7th avenue towards Times Square. As we approached Times Square, there it was- comment number two. Oh, the sea of humanity! Ok, dad, we get it. Lots of people here in Manhattan. Yes, it's a sea of humanity.

I was amazed that we spent almost 8 hours walking around New York, but we didn't actually go into any of the normal sightseeing places like the Empire State Building. We saw the window displays on Fifth Avenue, I took them into Michael C. Fina so they could see this mysterious store in which we were registered, and my mom tried on an $11K necklace in a jewelery store on Fifth. We strolled around in Central Park for a while, ate a burger at an Irish pub nearby, and met up with two of my bridesmaids for drinks. We did manage to see the tree at Rockefeller Center, and of course, stopped into a Starbucks for a cup of coffee. True to form, this Starbucks was only two blocks away from another, cleaner, Starbucks. I believe the next sea of humanity comment came as we walked up 6th or 7th ave. towards Central Park. Oh, the sea of humanity!

In the middle of all of this, we did manage to catch a Broadway show. We decided on Wicked, which proved to be a great choice. It was completely different from the book, but enjoyable nonetheless. After this, exhausted by the sea of humanity that we endured throughout the day, we called it a night and headed back to the LIRR for the journey back to that waspy town known as Garden City. The next day, Friday, proved to be hell on earth for me. Really, I simply had too many spa appointments scheduled, and I had done so very inefficiently. More on that later.

Snack Hell, The Sea of Humanity...and other wedding weekend stories: Part I

So it's finally done. We're married, and I'm having major issues adjusting to the new last name...but that's for another post. Since things got a bit hectic the week before the wedding and I didn't have time to post, I'm going to have to post what I can remember (surprisingly quite a bit) from the past two weeks.

The first big adventure related to the wedding was spending several days before the wedding with my parents in New York. My parents have never been to New York before other than a very brief trip (less than 24 hours) for the engagement party last year. And even then they never made it into NYC. Let me preface this story by telling you my dad's original plan for these 4 pre-wedding days. The trip would begin with their arrival in New York on Wednesday. They would then rent a car, drive 4 hours to upstate New York, to a town with a population of 76. There, after figuring out what to do about the fact that this town didn't actually have any motels, inns, or even stables in which to sleep, he would drag my mom around a 300 year-old cemetery to do some geneology research on our family. Oh what fun! Then, on Friday, they would make the 4 hour return trip back to New York. This left almost no time to get the last minute necessities taken care of, nor did it allow extra time for emergencies. Come on people, I thought we were all OCD here! Where's the built-in panic time?? So my dad laid out this little itinerary to my mom and to Adrienne, at which point it was immediately vetoed.
The new plan consisted of my parents' arrival on Wednesday afternoon, dinner with the Grossman's that night, a day in Manhattan with me, and then wedding frenzy Friday and Saturday. And let me just give you another clue as to how that little driving trip would have gone in terms of my dad's familiarity with the area- I called him as they were renting their car at JFK airport, and my dad says, "I've got to get this GPS system hooked up so I can navigate here in Manhattan." You heard it here first: Long Island is now part of Manhattan.

The few days before the wedding were really somewhat insane. I finally made it out of the office and up to New York on Wednesday night. The next morning, I sat with my parents as we assembled the welcome bags for our out of town guests. These were possibly the most complicated welcome bags I've ever seen. They had candies, wheat thins, pretzels, two different types of cheese, plastic cutlery for the cheese, a welcome note, and explanation of what guests would be seeing at the wedding, and a map of the Long Island Rail Road. This doesn't sound like too much stuff to put together, except when you add the final ingredient: OCD Mom! I love her to death, but my mom has mastered the art of making simple things twice as difficult as they should be. Rather than buy snack packs of wheat thins, we had to put all of the wheat thins in separate plastic baggies, tie each one with a twist tie, and attach the plastic knife to the bag using the twist tie. Suddenly, I was transported back to Stamp Hell, only this time it was more like Snack Hell. Salt and twistie ties were everywhere!

So here's what the welcome bag assembly consisted of: First, we opened each of the outer bags and stuffed them with tissue paper. And yes, there was a particular way in which we had to stuff the bags: take two pieces of tissue paper, one on top of the other, make a fist in the center of the paper and pull the rest around your arm. Then pull the bag over your arm until your fist touches the bottom of the bag. THIS IS HOW IT MUST BE DONE!!! (I keep imagining a deep, demonic voice saying that phrase). Once filled with tissue paper, we dropped a container of laughing cow cheese into the bags. This helped weigh down the tissue paper and make room for the other snacks, of course. Then in went the Bailey's Irish Cream candies. Loose? Oh, heaven forbid no! They were also tied in little baggies with 5 or 6 candies to each baggie. Thankfully my mom did the candy bagging back in Dallas. Then we added the other cheese (smoked cheddar, I believe). Then the pretzels- two bags each. Thankfully we weren't required to put the pretzels in separate baggies, but I have to ask myself why? Why should pretzels get special treatment? Who cares, I should just be happy that was one less thing to bag. Then came the worst part: bagging the wheat thins. My dad and I had an assembly line created on the table in the hotel room. I opened the little bag, he dumped wheat thins, I tied with twist tie and attached the knife. Then into the welcome bag they went. Then we had to drop in the other paper stuff, like the welcome note, the wedding reference materials and the train schedules. The final step was tying with curly ribbon that my mom spent five days curling and assembling into cute little bows. Other than a short lived laughing cow cheese emergency, everything went fairly smoothly. We were finished by noon, at which time we went to catch the LIRR into the City. Sanity still with me? Check!

The Pavlovian response to the UPS truck...and damn the packing peanuts!!

For any of you out there who are married or about to be married, you're probably familiar with the automatic physical repsonse that is generated by the low, gutteral sound made by a UPS truck cruising up to your house. Kenny and I are visited by the UPS truck about once every two days now, and we've actually gotten to the point where we can hear the truck coming from down the street. Every night, around 7pm, I see the dog perk his ears up, raise his hackles (he doesn't care what Brown can do for him, he hates Brown) and generally go ape-shit at the front door.
Let me digress here, and tell you a bit about Nathan (the dog) and his relationship with all things brown. Nathan, being raised by one of the paler people on the planet (me), is not used to people whose skin is anything darker than slightly tanned. So at his first sight of someone not caucasian, he absolutly flipped out. He's always had this reaction, and as embarrasing as it is for me, I can't seem to break him of it. So imagine when the UPS truck pulls up, and Nathan sees a huge brown truck, out of which comes a guy wearing ALL BROWN carrying a brown package. Into Nathan's territory, no less. Mayhem ensues, as you can imagine.
So we return to the story, with the UPS truck detected in the vicinity. Seconds later, we hear it: the low rumble of an engine, the squeak of stressed shocks. I come running out of the kitchen and announce to Kenny that the UPS truck is on its way. We run to the door, grab the package, and take it to the kitchen table. We've gotten to the point now where we recognize where the gift was purchased based on the address on the shipping box (the stores usually don't put the name of the actual store on the label). If it's Picastaway, New Jersey, it's Tiffany. If it's anywhere else, its Williams-Sonoma. I can't believe we actually know these things. We were teased last week, because a box arrived from Picastaway, New Jersey. Kenny sees the address and exclaims, "It's from Picastaway! It's Tiffany!" We opened it up only to find that it was a gift I had ordered for a member of the wedding party. Oh, the disappointment.
I think that the UPS guy has become so familiar with our house that he's actually having his UPS buddies meet him there to hang out. The other night, I came out from the back of the house to find Nathan going absolutely nuts at the front window. I looked outside to see two UPS trucks backed up against one another, with the drivers switching, literally tossing, packages between the trucks. It was like some sort of bizarre UPS mating dance. I had to go out and ask them to move because they were blocking the driveway. But hey, why shouldn't he block the driveway? He probably feels like the 20-foot area in front of my house is as much his turf as it is mine. We'll certainly have to leave a gift for this guy at the end of all of this. Afterall, he probably fears for his life with each delivery because of my ferocious welsh corgie mutt dog who, let me reiterate, really hates brown.
We've had a blast receiving gifts from the registry. I probably shouldn't make this comparison, but it's like everyday is Christmas for the past month! Or maybe more appropriately, it's like 28 days of Chanukah.
The only down side to all of this is that Kenny is a tree hugger, and I am a converted tree hugger, so neither of us can bring ourselves to throw the packing peanuts away in the garbage. As of today, we have three garbage bags full of packing peanuts sitting in our dining room. Eventually we'll figure out where to take them. Someone made the suggestion of taking them into the Williams Sonoma at the mall, shoving them across the counter, and saying, "Here. Take your freaking peanuts back!" That would be really funny, I think. I'll let you know how that one goes over. If that doesn't work, there's always the burning option. When I described the packing peanut dilemma to Carol, who works with me at Cantey Hanger, she offered to burn the packing peanuts. Carol lives out in what is best described as "the country" and apparently is a pyromaniac. Maybe not a true pyromaniac, but from what I hear, there's lots of burning that goes on out at her property. In fact, that topic has come up at least three times in the past week. Carol did mention one caveat to her peanut burning offer, which was that she couldn't do it on a windy day lest packing peanuts get blown all over the pasture, at which point the cows would eat them. I don't know, that seems like an acceptable packing peanut disposal solution to me. I don't know how Carol's cows would feel about it. Of course, I could also ask Jacque, our receptionist, to let her goats go at the peanuts as well. Writing that last sentence has caused me to ask myself why so many people at my law firm own farm animals? Anyway...burning the packing peanuts or feeding them to farm animals seems to defeat the purpose of an environmentally friendly disposal. Maybe I'll just let that offer sit, and thank Carol for her thoughtfulness and pyromaniac tendencies.
Given the current packing peanut situation, the day I dread is the day Michael C. Fina delivers all of our registry items that are currently on hold, all at once, complete with packing peanuts. Fina has this wonderful registry option that allows you to keep everything on hold at their store so that you can receive it all at once, rather than in pieces. Considering that most of our registry is located at Fina, that's going to be one very big delivery. We'll be breaking down boxes and dealing with packing peanuts for weeks! That might not have been such a good idea, in retrospect. Maybe one day I'll send all of Fina's packing peanuts back to them.