Peanut Butter Bird Nests & A Nap Before Bedtime

Utterly wiped out by work today, I got home at 8 pm to find Mike waiting on the front porch for Chinese food to be delivered for our supper. We ate and caught up on our day and then found ourselves waking up from opposite sides of our tiny studio apartment: Mike had fallen asleep on the bed watching sports news after supper and I had fallen asleep in my chair while trying to read. "A nap before bedtime," he murmured a second ago in explanation and then fell back to sleep. I should be asleep too but stubbornly refuse to let my entire day be just work and sleep, so I will stay up a little longer to read. I'm glad I made the traditional peanut butter bird nests yesterday, as I certainly don't have it in me tonight. 

Peanut Butter Bird Nests:

~ 7 oz. marshmallow fluff 
~ 1/2 cup peanut butter 
~ 3 TBSP. butter 
~ pretzel sticks (or chow mein noodles or potato sticks)
~ peanut M&Ms (The Robin egg-blue Easter M&Ms are my favorite color, so I always go with them.) :)

~ Combine the first three ingredients in a saucepan over low heat.
~ Add the pretzel sticks, coating them well.
~ On wax paper, form the mixture into nests and arrange the M&M "eggs."
 

Wedding Cake, Cookies, & Flowers :)

After we went out to supper last Friday night, we stopped at a Wal-Mart near our hotel to pick up cake and ice cream. Since we'll be having some kind of celebration with our families sometime in the future, this cake was just was for us, and while I wasn't picky about it, I still hoped to run into the store and find something special, and as with the rest of our wedding weekend, our luck held: The store had a simple white square cake with a spring green border that exactly matched the green of my dress. :) The cake originally had hot pink and purple flowers iced onto the corners, but I knew I could fix it up easily enough, so into my basket it went. As I paid for the cake and ice cream, the cashier commented on my hair--it was still in its braid--and the cake, and I had to explain that I'd gotten married that day and would be using this as my wedding cake. She congratulated me and laughed--"Wal-Mart is the LAST place I'd be on MY wedding day!"--and then looked puzzled when she rang up the colored pencils, silk Daffodil bunch, and small black picture frame. I let her wonder about those items, and while waiting for Mike, an elderly man spotted me standing there with my cake and kindly said, "Someone having a birthday?" I explained that it was actually for a wedding, and he nodded and said, "Ahh! Those are good too!" Mike and I thought that was one of the more memorable comments from Friday, and it was just a sweet moment. 

It was exactly the cake I'd wanted. I used to be really into cake decorating, but even had I spent a lot of time and effort on our wedding cake, I wouldn't have done it any other way. Like the rest of the weekend, it was simple and and sweet and lovely and just "us." And the little framed drawing is now up on a shelf here in our apartment, and I'm sure we'll use it on all our anniversary cakes too.

The day before the wedding, I spent some timing sewing my pocket of pictures of loved ones into my dress and attaching Sommer's ring and something else in honor of someone else to the jacket, and when those projects were done, I began baking and decorating heart-shaped cookies to share with the court house staff and hotel staff. And I saved a few for me and Mike, of course.  :)

I made the bouquet of silk flowers so I could keep it. It is all-yellow Daffodils (my favorite flower), Pussy Willows, and a few Cattails, with the handle/holder wrapped in green gingham ribbon. 

Just looking at it makes me happy. I finished making it in late March but didn't want Mike to see it until the wedding--not that he himself would have remotely cared :)--so although I wanted to keep it out where I could see it every day, I didn't have the chance until after the wedding. And today I have been married a week already and the leftover cake, the tiny framed drawing, and the bouquet will soon be on our Easter dinner table.  ♥

A Girly Wedding Hair, Shoes, and Outfit Write-Up :)

Friday--Wedding Day!--morning, Mike walked down to pick up the rental car for our trip while I stayed here to get ready and dressed. Hair and makeup were easy--my hair's naturally curly, so I just pulled it up and added the braid so it would look more special than usual (and because my mom used to do my hair like this with the big braid on top, when I was a little kid, so this was a small way of sharing the moment with her ♥), and I always keep my makeup simple enough--but I just prayed I wouldn't get a run in my tights while pulling them on. I only had one pair of the cream tights, so I was hoping that I wouldn't tear them while buckling my shoes and that Stuffed wouldn't pull out his claws around me. The contingency plan in the event of a run was just to stop by the drugstore and pick up a pair of regular pantyhose, but I'd have been telling the cashier my sob story if I'd had to do that, silly though that is. No getting-ready mishaps, though. Cream tights (that look white in all the photos) and black T-strap shoes, it was, just as I'd wanted. :)

Stuffed even let me scoop him up for a picture after I'd finished getting dressed, and no tights or skin were scratched in the process. :)

And the hour I spent getting ready, maintenance workers were outside our apartment mowing the lawn for the first time this season, so the scent of freshly-mowed grass will likely always remind me of the morning of my wedding day now. :)

My green wedding dress was actually a vintage "baby doll" nighty, but I knew when I saw it that it would work as a dress, since it seemed to match my jacket's color exactly and had the lace down the front, as well, making it look a bit fancier than your average nightgown. I had found the vintage green jacket on etsy in January and had to have a local seamstress make alterations--it was too small in the arms and shoulders--but when she finished it and it finally fit perfectly, I emailed my friend Marylou right away to tell her and added, "The wedding feels real now that I have something to wear!" :) I had fallen in love with this funky old jacket with its adorable huge embroidered collar as soon as I saw it, so to see myself in it finally and to see that it did, indeed, match the nighty-dress was a sweet moment.

As I told Marylou the week before the wedding, I never went to Prom or any school dances, so I never did the "dress-up thing," so piecing together this crazy green "everything-I'm-wearing-is-vintage-except-my-underthings" outfit was just great fun. I'd written in 2008 about my "dream" wedding gown and swore I'd never wear anything else when I married, and that wedding gown is actually in my parents' house right now--I found it after almost 20 years of searching for it, on eBay in 2009--but somehow, this green outfit was more "me," and now I can't imagine having gotten married wearing anything else. And I knew even before I finished getting ready and dressed Friday that I'd never felt as beautiful as I did that day. :)

Mike had left around 9:30 a.m. to pick up the car and returned an hour later to find me finishing the packing and dolled-up in my wedding outfit. When he saw me--smiling giddily, as I couldn't stop--in my wedding outfit for the first time, he laughed and called me "[his] little green gum ball of joy." :)

People have always told me that I wear my heart on my sleeve, but Friday, I felt like my heart really was just glowing around me for everyone to see--I just felt beautiful and happy and full of love and good thoughts. I spent the day alternately praying for people I love and thanking God and giggling and hugging Mike and then, later on, spreading the good news of our surprise-wedding, and truly, I just felt like I was glowing from it all. Hair, shoes, and makeup only go so far: I was just happy and thankful and full of love Friday. There was a quote in Country Living magazine recently from memoir writer Frances Mayes: "Happiness? The color of it must be spring green." When I read that, I clipped it out and added it to one of my scrapbooks, and it will soon reappear in our wedding album--right beside Mike's memorable "green gum ball" compliment, of course. :)

I spent some of last Thursday pinning something inside the front of the dress to honor one of my loved ones, sewing a ring that had belonged to my best friend, Sommer, into the front of my jacket, and creating a jacket pocket that I filled with photos of other loved ones I wanted to honor similarly and who had somehow inspired me and/or helped me reach my wedding day. i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart). . . .And that was my wedding outfit, shoes, and braided-like-Mom-used-to-do-it hair: Love and prayers and gratitude. Hope for new beginnings. And green gum balls of joy.  

♥

Our First Photo as Husband and Wife :)

Mr. Mike and I "ran away and got married" on Friday afternoon. :) It was, as I've told him at least fifty times since then, exactly the day I'd hoped we would have: Laid-back, sweet, simple, sunny, pretty, and fun. We married at the court house in our old college town, where we met in the late 1990s. Years before we ever even started dating, Mike and I jokingly made a pact with each other that if we weren't married by a certain date, we would marry each other, and what do you know, more than a decade later, there we were, back where it all began, driving around the campus in our mid-thirties as husband and wife. Don't ever let anyone tell you that life isn't strange.

When Mike called his parents from our hotel room Friday evening to tell them, his mom said she had figured we were up to something--Mother's intuition. :) And my mom squealed, "What?! VALLY!!!" and then laughed and called out to my dad, "Gene! Val's MARRIED!" (The phone conversations with my mom and dad are two of my favorite memories from the whole experience. I laugh and smile every time I remember them.) Mom said she'd actually told our friend Vickie recently that she wouldn't be surprised just to get a phone call from me one of these days saying Mike and I had "gone off somewhere and gotten married," so she obviously believed me all the times growing up I said I'd prefer to elope. :) Our parents passed the news along to our siblings while Mike and I went out for supper, and reading our brothers' text messages and hearing their voice mails over the weekend made it all even more fun. :) We had had our ceremony at the court house scheduled since January 31st, so to let everyone in on the secret finally has been nice.)

And now it is going on midnight two days later and Mike and I both have to work tomorrow. Girly green-vintage-wedding-dress-and-black-T-strap-shoes-and-cream-tights-and-braided-hair-and-heart-shaped-sugar-cookies-and-Daffodil-bouquet details another day. In the meantime, Val and Mr. Mike are married.  :)

The Greatest Secret in This Universe

This postcard was one of the ones shared at PostSecret this past Sunday, and I found myself nodding my head while reading it. 'A lot of wisdom in a 4"x6" space, that.

When Helen Keller Was Asked ~Can You See a World?~

She responded, "I can see, and that is why I can be happy in what you call the dark--

--but which to me is golden.

I can see a God-made world, not a man-made world."

Club Level Center Ice, Babydolls! :)

I'd only been awake and recovering from work a few hours this afternoon when the message came from Mike: "[My boss] gave me tickets for tonight's game. Put your shoes on, Dear." :) And so I did, and I raced to write back and catch the bus downtown. I don't understand all the rules and penalties and terminology--hockey seems far less straightforward than baseball, which is the only other sport I've ever really watched much--but I enjoy it. Every time we're lucky enough to get tickets to games, we have some real characters sitting around us, making it even better, and I inevitably laugh into Mike's shoulder all night. Tonight it was Row of Experts right behind us--bellowing to the players such rare wisdom as "Hit the net! THE NET!!" all evening--and a man about our dads' age who sat in front of us and turned in his seat after the home team scored its first goal to scream "Woooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!" in Mike's face with his eyes crossed. The "Sam the Eagle" expression on Mike's face while the man screamed set off my first wave of giggles, and I was still bursting into intermittent giggling fits remembering it three hours later on the bus home. It was, as they say, a great night for hockey. And yes, our team won. :)

O Love-Star of the Unbeloved March ~ Sir Aubrey de Vere

The best thing about this time of year is seeing my beloved Daffodils in bloom all over town. Yesterday's rain and snow bent them some, but they're no less beautiful for it. 

Time spent with cats is never wasted. ~ May Sarton

Unconquerable

Today is the 16th anniversary of my best friend's death. Last year March 1st passed by almost unnoticed by me, making me think that maybe future March 1sts would be easier than they used to be, but this year the date is hurting my heart the way it used to, and I find myself reliving the play-by-play of the "original" March 1st. Likewise, the one-year mark, back in 1996, actually wasn't too bad--I wrote Sommer a letter in my journal and really felt okay--but the second anniversary found me feeling abandoned by her and again brokenhearted by the loss. Such is grief.

That second anniversary, March 1st of 1997, I was home from college for the weekend. I remember complaining off and on all day to my mom that I hadn't felt much of a connection to Sommer lately and that that was making this day even harder. I had recently transferred to a new college, after having completed my freshman year elsewhere, and I had yet to make any friends at school. It didn't seem like too much to ask, I'm sure I pointed out to Mom, for Sommer to let me know that she was still around me. I had been so lonely that fall and winter, watching seemingly every other student on campus hanging out with their own best friend. So maybe today, two years after her death, there could be a sign of some kind: A whiff of her perfume, a favorite song of ours on the radio, a sense of her hand on my shoulder--Anything.

Sommer had come through for me before since passing over, after all. One afternoon in my high school Spanish class in those first few soul-shattering weeks after she had died--and mere minutes after my teacher had thoughtfully asked how I was doing and if things were getting any easier and I had replied, trying not to cry in front of him, that no, sorry, I thought things were actually getting harder and worse--I wearily flipped open a book of Spanish literature I had been assigned in preparation for my end-of-year AP exams only to find myself looking down at a Pablo Neruda poem titled "The Dead Woman":

If suddenly you do not exist,
if suddenly you no longer live,
I shall go on living.
I do not dare,
I do not dare to write it,
if you die.
I shall go on living.
For where a man has no voice,
there, my voice.
Where blacks are beaten,
I cannot be dead.
When my brothers go to prison
I shall go with them.
When victory,
not my victory,
but the great victory comes,
even though I am mute I must speak;
I shall see it come even
though I am blind.
No, forgive me.

If you are not living,
if you, beloved, my love,
if you have died,
all the leaves will fall in my breast,
it will rain on my soul night and day,
the snow will burn my heart,
I shall walk with frost and fire and death and snow,
my feet will want to walk to where you are sleeping, but

I shall go on living,
because above all things
you wanted me unconquerable,

and, my love, because you know that I am not only a man
but all mankind.
 

Upon reading it, I got up from my desk and carried the book back to my teacher, pointing at the poem with shaky hands. "Can you believe this?" I tried to whisper, since it was silent reading time. "Look at this! Have you seen this before?!" He quickly scanned the poem and nodded at me, understanding what I was and wasn't saying. By the end of the class period, I had memorized the poem and its beautiful lines had become my mantras. "If you are not living, if you my beloved, my love, if you have died. . .But I shall go on living. . .You wanted me unconquerable."
 

But two years later, March 1st of 1997 was passing without a sign from Sommer, and long after my parents and younger brother had gone to bed that night, I finally gave up on it and decided to turn in too.  I stayed in bed for awhile but could tell I wasn't going to fall asleep any time soon, so I grabbed a blanket and tiptoed back downstairs to watch TV in the living room. I wasn't much of a TV-watcher then--I haven't been since I was a kid--and I didn't have a TV in my dorm room back at college either, so I had no idea what was on, and I didn't care. The first channel I stopped at was showing a film I hadn't seen or even heard of before, and I soon found that it wasn't by accident that it was on: The movie was Truly, Madly, Deeply.  In it, Nina is grieving the recent death of her boyfriend, Jamie, and Jamie returns to her both to show her that he's still there for her and to help her move on with her life. This is it! My sign! I wanted to scream upstairs to my mom, but the rest of the house was asleep. I settled back onto the couch cuddled up in my blanket, stunned.

And then I was yet more stunned to hear Spanish being spoken in the movie, and to hear Nina saying to Jamie, "I know this poem." As I sat and watched, with a chill moving through me, Jamie nodded back at her, and continued reciting the poem's verses in Spanish while Nina translated them back to him in English.  I knew this poem too:

"If you are not living,
If you, my beloved, my love,if you have died. . .
But I shall go on living."

My spine tingled. This is Sommer. Sommer is here. Sommer is here! This time, I didn't even want to call upstairs to Mom. This was my time with my friend. As loyal as ever, she had not forgotten me, she had not abandoned me, and she had not forgotten how to make me feel better. After the movie ended, I remained on the couch in the dark silent living room, just thinking. Had I come back downstairs to watch TV even five minutes later, I'd have missed it. Before heading back upstairs to go to bed later, I would tear that day's TV schedule page from the newspaper to save as a reminder to myself: Death does not end relationships. All those I've loved and lost are still with me. Love is eternal. And I shall go on living. ♥

(The Spanish begins around the 3:25-mark.)