8/4/03 Columbia County, NY (5 days until wedding)
I left Brooklyn for the last time as an unwed motherscratcher today, and plan to spend the rest of my time upstate until our nuptials. Plenty of people are already up here: Tessa's mom, my mom, my brother Steve and Tessa's best friend Jason. At this point, we can "backtime" the amount of stuff we have to do for the wedding, and it still puts us about three days after the wedding. I have this project in particular for the rehearsal party that is so intense I can't believe I'm actually doing it. It is in these eleventh hours that we start wondering why we didn't just do this thing in some rental house with a band that plays "Love Shack." I trust it will all make sense in the end.
T had a bit of a freakout today on our contractor, who had promised to have everything done by the ceremony. I'm really happy I wasn't around for that conversation. Pretty much everything looks like several grenades went off; hammers, tarps, clods of dirt and random pieces of lumber litter the grounds like an interactive performance piece.
One thing is done, though - the man shored up the second floor of the barn so that it is level, and the by-product is that we have the perfect indoor hoops court. There used to be spots on the floor that were so dead the ball would literally stop bouncing, like the Boston Garden circa 1955. Now, as long as you give the center beam a wide berth (and avoid administering yourself a sloppy lobotomy) you can actually get a good game going.
Of course, the ironing is this: they took the hoops net down for the reception. What are we, Mormons? That's what happened at church every time No Fun Was To Be Had! I vow to thwart this setback with five decks of cards, a pile of chips, and a night of $1 blackjack on my wedding eve.
Posted by at August 4, 2003 11:13 PM