the world is your acorn

Well, The Little Red Haired Girl finally did it. She finished her master’s thesis, which means that we spent the last week up in Boston attending Commencement activities (and spending some time with wedding planning while we were up there).

Highlights of commencement:

• We watched the broadcast of morning exercises from a lecture hall, which was fantastic. We were out of the rain, we could see the stage, and Diana Eck and James Anderson did a great job commentating (wish I could find a picture of them)
• Sandwiches from Lee’s Sandwich Shop between Graduation and the commencement address
• J.K. Rowling’s commencement address was phenomenal. She was witty and intelligent and interesting, expounding on the benefits of failure, imagination as empathy, and the importance of acting as a result.
• Dinner at Carlo’s Cucina

Yesterday afternoon The Little Red Haired Girl and I embarked on a three hour journey to Birmingham with our New Little Buddies. We had plans to have dinner at one of the only restaurants in the city open on Sundays, then head over to UAB to see the Indigo Girls and Brandi Carlile. I had never heard them play together live before, so I was pretty excited for the show. And I’ve been a huge Indigo Girls fan for so long that I’m just always excited to see them play.

Anyway, we go to the restaurant, and meet our New Little Buddy’s sister and brother-in-law, who are totally fun. The restaurant was also pretty delicious, although it was literally empty except for us and the service was a little slow and surprisingly unknowledgeable about the menu despite the fanciness of the place.

So, we rushed through dessert to get to the theater with enough time not to miss a minute of Brandi, and were delighted to find a parking space pretty much right in front of the building. Come to find out there was tons of parking available because the concert had been postponed “due to illness.” So freaking disappointed. We drove the 3 hours home, tail between our legs, too sheepish to admit that we were actually glad to get home by 10pm on a Sunday night. But definitely sad about the show.

It has been rescheduled for a Monday in a few weeks. I think we can go, but we’ll be totally exhausted for Tuesday, and we’ll have to drive the 6 hours there and back again. Plus, we are worried that they won’t be playing with Brandi then. They are touring with Michelle Malone the next few weeks, which is super cool, but I’d just really been looking forward to seeing them play with Brandi. I’ve seen them play with Michelle Malone a few times before, although it was years ago. Maybe they’ll feel bad for postponing and all 4 of them will play for the postponed show! Wishful thinking, I know.

The Little Red Haired Girl now has a ring. I keep protesting that we’re not “getting married,” we’re just having a wedding. If you think of marriage as some sort of governmentally or religiously sanctioned institution, that’s not what we’re doing. If you think of it as a commitment, we’ve been doing that for a while now. And plus, there’s still something heteronormative about calling it a marriage that makes me uncomfortable. Apparently though, buying a diamond ring and presenting it the night before Thanksgiving is not too heteronormative for me. Because I did it.

The weekend before Thanksgiving I was back in New England for some old college shenanigans, and while there Lady E. and I went ring shopping. I had always meant to go with Fierce n’ Fiery, but that’s just the way things shook out. I sort of decided a few days before going, Lady E. did some research on where to go, and we went. The weekend was so crazy that we pretty much squeezed ring shopping into the 3 hours we had between my landing at BOS and our driving to New Haven that night. Luckily we found exactly the right thing pretty much right away, and after shopping around some more to be sure, we went back and sealed the deal. The diamond was going to be set in a plain white gold band over the weekend, then mailed overnight to The Little Red Haired Girl’s dad’s office on Tuesday (the next day they were open).

On Wednesday The Little Red Haired Girl and I drove to her parents house, and I sat on my hands in a sweat until her dad came home with the package. I don’t know why I was nervous about it, it’s not like she was going to say “no;” we’ve already set a date and reserved a venue. At any rate, I was nervous, and didn’t wait very long after her dad arrived to drag her upstairs on some false pretense and present it to her. I don’t really remember what we said, except that she was really surprised and felt guilty that I’d bought it. (I think she’s over that now). There were tears and hugging, then she had to pee. Seriously. So finally her mom yells up, “What’s going on up there?!?!” and I had to answer that The Little Red Haired Girl was peeing. Very romantic. Then we went down, everyone oohed and aahed, we popped some bubbly, made some weepy toasts (ok, that might have just been me), and that was that.

It actually went way better than I’d hoped, and it was really sweet how helpful and supportive her parents were in the whole process. It felt weird to play it like it was some sort of engagement, when really it was just that I’d given her a gift. But it was nice to have everyone so happy for us, even though I already knew that they were because her mom was throwing us an engagement party on Saturday for all her hometown people. But that’s a whole other story.

When I’m really tired, it feels like my eyeballs are rolling up or down so hard that the backs of my eyeballs hurt. Well, last night I figured out that it’s not that my eyeballs are going anywhere. My eyeball muscles are just tired and strained. I’m a freakin’ genius.

• how hard my friends make me laugh
• how good a new toothbrush head makes my mouth feel
• finding that I have something to contribute
• happiness
• when my cooking comes out the way I intended

The pepper that comes with the Morton’s salt and McCormick’s pepper shaker pack should be called “little black flakes of flavorless confetti” instead.

the little red haired girl: hi, oliver
the dog: *burp*