Time of My Life

I've purposefully been off the grid since I left town a few weeks ago to get married. My husband (it's going to be weird to write that for awhile) brought his laptop but I have a strong aversion to anything that isn't a Mac, so I never used it myself. I just used my phone to keep up with the essentials … bank account, "The Walking Dead" blogs, basketball scores. But for the most part I was offline and it was pretty damn cool and refreshing.

I'm sitting here in front of my computer now that I'm back in town and this monitor actually feels pretty weird since I've become accustomed to the tiny screen of my phone, reading funny articles to get me through airport layovers. I discovered that while I was away, Brad Pitt was in town, Russel Brand got arrested, and the hipsteriest hipster that ever hipstered tried to sell a bike on Craigslist and the post gained popularity all over the blogosphere. When I read it, I looked at the bottom to see where exactly this bike was being sold, and it said Bywater, of course – my neighborhood. Ah, Bywater … great restuarants, bars, creole cottages – and fixed-gear hipsters.

The wedding itself was amazing and at this point still pretty much indescribable for me without tearing up, so I'll stick to "the lighter side" of all the wedding/honeymoon stuff, which I'm sure my editor will appreciate because the poor guy has been dealing with my sappy wedding posts (and other blogs' posts about weddings) for a while now. But that's what you get when five or so ladies in your office are engaged.

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We were married in Ohio among family and friends. We brought some of New Orleans with us by giving pralines as favors and teaching people what a second line was. At first I think people were alarmed that we had opened umbrellas inside because they were like, "Hello? … Wedding? Bad luck?"

But I was like, "I promise, it's a thing in New Orleans … don't believe me? It was totally in a Zatarain's commercial one time."

The whole shebang held a certain irreverence that reflected my husband's and my personalities. A few examples:

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Our rehearsal dinner was at a pizza place. For the ceremony we played a lot of M83. The groomsmen wore Pumas with their tuxes. My bridesmaids all wore different turquoise dresses. My brother (the dude in the kilt) married us instead of employing a random officiant or a preacher that I have no spiritual connection to. I actually wanted him to become ordained in the Jedi Order, but he ended up going the traditional route. We wrote our own vows and instead of a "unity candle" we incorporated a "handfasting" into the ceremony, paying homage to our shared Scottish/Irish ancestry. Our first dance was to a Raconteurs song. In lieu of rounding up my single friends to stand behind me like a pack of hyenas to catch a fake bouquet (I'm sorry, but I hate that shit), we just gave our bouquet/garter to a couple who will be getting married soon, like a torch passing. And instead of a limo we drove away in my dad's '67 Monte Carlo.

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Best day of my life.

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We decided to go to Taos, New Mexico for our honeymoon to ski and hang out in the mountains. We went to awesome restaurants where they have some of the best Mexican food in the world and my husband ordered pork chops. Everywhere.

We also decided to go horseback riding, and when we told the guide that we were both beginners we figured we'd be going on a beginner's trail. I hadn't ridden a horse in probably 10 years and Brian had actually never been on a horse ever, but our guide had us riding up a damn mountain, with "trails" that looked at times to be a couple inches wide with a steep edge to fall off right down the mountain if your horse made the tiniest mistake or was spooked by a bug or a bird, or anything.

It was an amazing experience and absolutely gorgeous, but I honestly spent a lot of the time praying instead of breathing it all in.

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It was an amazing week out there. I ate a lot of stuff smothered in red and green chile. We drank margaritas in cantinas. At night you could see every star in the sky and it was so quiet that you could actually hear what "nothing" sounds like. It was a great for a few days, but honestly, it got to be a teensy bit disturbing after awhile. I'm used to the constant buzz and energy of a city and as soon as we got back to New Orleans and got off the plane, I felt that muggy humid air and knew I was home.

On the last day before I went back to work, my new husband took me to a concert at the House of Blues. As we walked through the quarter and down Decatur Street, I thought to myself, I still feel as though I'm on vacation. I heard a steamboat and thought about how, when I'd come down for long weekends with my friends as a tourist, I had wished I could live here and hear those steamboats all the time.

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And now I can hear them from my house. Sometimes I'll hear one at night while I'm laying in bed and I'll think, wow, I'm living a dream. I'm on a permanent vacation.

It's good to be home.

 

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