jaysaint Getting it all down on paper…

What a wonderful weekend. What a wonderful, exhuasting weekend.

Damon and I made it happily to the alter (or river, really) and now we’re married folk. Some highlights of the weekend include:
— Our cab driver getting into a road rage fight with another driver and screaming “I spit on you! I spit on you!”
— Shopping for the right shoes all over New York, only to have Sarah find the perfect pair in a thirty-minute trip to TJMaxx while waiting to come get us at the airport. (Mind you, she had only seen a photo of the dress — on the hangar — in bad light)
— Flat-out falling down the stairs during the ceremony rehearsal. Matt Myers said he heard it all the way from the front porch of the cabin. Fortunately some hunky gentlemen were available during the ceremony to make sure I didn’t stage a repeat performance.

These may all sound like bad things, but they were actually great sources of laughter. Because it’s hard to be anything but cheerful when your closest friends and family have come from hither and yon to be with you when you get married.

Other highlights that are more obviously highlights (in no particular order):
— My dear friend Andrew calling from Germany to be with me, at least for a moment.
— The food and the cake that were utterly delicious.
— Jennifer reading from ‘The Velveteen Rabbit’ during the ceremony.
— My Mom and Dad talking like old friends. (They haven’t been in the same room in over 12 years.)
— Damon’s adorable little brother hugging me at the end of the night and saying, “I really love you, Jillian”
— Damon’s mother pulling him aside to tell him she felt like he and I have what she and his father had. (His father died when he was just 12 — the oldest of four.)
— Toasts from a wedding party that were beautiful and so true to each of the speakers.

And my favorite moments:
— “husband and wife”
— “kiss the bride!”

WARNING: NAVEL-GAZING AHEAD

This is my last full weekend as a single woman. It’s been ten years since my divorce.

Planning this wedding has been a great lesson in patience and creativity, and it has been humbling too. I thought I could coast through this, spending not too much money or sanity. And I would say that, with one week to go, I’ve done pretty well — but not as well as my pride led me to believe I would. I’ve had a meltdown. I documented my bout with insomnia (over now). I’ve gossiped and complained about friends who were being high maintenance about the plans. I’ve spent far more money than I anticipated.

None of this means that I’m not excited and happy — that’s definitely the way the prevailing winds blow. I picked up Damon’s wedding band yesterday and he was wearing it around the apartment last night. It gave me a little thrill every time it flashed by, and I was even more tickled by how happy he seemed to be to wear it. It’s safely back in its box now, waiting for the big day.

This is just an attempt to open my eyes wide and learn what I can. It’s also a good time to enjoy saying “I want…” so many times in a row. Damon and I hope to be parents and if that all works out I suppose that phrase will go down in usage frequency.

I’ve also spent some time thinking about my last 10 years as a single woman, seven of them before I started dating Damon. I was rarely a sad single — I liked dating different guys, I liked living alone. It was, with the rare exception of when I was pining for someone, a way of life that really suited me. It speaks volumes about Damon that he’s someone who can make me want to walk away from it forever. I think of my friends who both enjoyed and suffered single life with me. All of the laughing and commiserating and planning we did. A lot of it was predicated on being single. Now some of us are and some of us are not. I’m lucky to be able to say that almost all of those friends are still with me. But our friendships have changed. Most of them have gotten deeper and stronger, but a few bonds have slipped. I wouldn’t change who we are to each other now, but I have so much affection for those younger (mostly) women with whom I burned so much energy. And I have a little shrine in my heart for all of those guys I dated, but who weren’t the one I would make it to the finish line with. I’ve been so extraordinarily lucky with the men in my life. Exempting all the random three-date-or-less guys — I probably can’t remember most of them unless either he or I did something really embarrassing on one of our few dates — I can’t look back on any romance of my adult life and shudder. Well… maybe one. But those six or seven guys who really had an impact on me, who knew me and spent a lot of time with me, each one left such rich gifts behind. If it wouldn’t be weird and inappropriate, I’d love to write them each a letter telling them how much I still love them and am grateful to them for helping to make me into the woman I am now. At least I can still count almost all of them among my friends, and so get to keep lots of those old benefits.

And there’s another tip of the hat to Damon. He loves my friends and loves how much I love them, even those guys I dated. I’ve never gotten a moment’s static from him about it. I find this remarkable, especially because he doesn’t have any ex-girlfriend friends. He must have liked being single even more than I did, because he doesn’t even have many exes. We had a night out with some friends one night that sticks in my memory. It was a woman and a man, who weren’t a couple. I had slept with the guy, he had slept with the woman. We all knew that we all new, neither previous relationship had been a secret. And there we all were, eating and drinking, laughing and enjoying our night. And not one of us seemed (can’t speak for them for sure) even slightly weird about it. I love that. I love that I can have a relationship like that.

Obviously, I’m feeling introspective. I’m trying to indulge that. I can be pretty blithe, but it’s a serious thing we’re about to do. And I don’t want my current work chaos, or wedding planning nuttiness, to keep me on the surface the whole time.

Famous faces featured in my Ambien-fueled dreams last night:
Moby
Jake Gyllenhall
Prince Charles and Princess Diana
Al Gore

Two weeks to go to the wedding. Two weeks to go until our portal launch at work.

That is at least one major even too many in the next two weeks. It looks like I’m on track with both, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t sill tons to do on both fronts.

Now I pride myself on displaying grace under pressure and I’m exceptional, if I do say so myself, in an emergency. But there’s just too much time for me to sail through this. As a result I was caught in the thinking thinking thinking = no sleep equation. I would collapse happily into bed around 11 and drift right off only to pop wide awake at 2 or 3 in the morning thinking ‘I wanted to put the ‘Dinner Tonight’ module on the Kathy Peel pages!’ or ‘I still need to confirm with the florist!’ And that would be it for the night. I’d get up and get comfortable in front of my computer and next thing I knew it would be time to go to work.

So after about a week of this I would estimate my intelligence had dropped about 25% and my disposition was suffering as well.

And then a friend who happens to be a doctor stepped in and changed everything with a wave of his prescription pad.

Now I have a nice little stash of Ambien, and sleep will come either naturally or in pill form. But there will be no more wide-awake nights before launch and wedding.

This stuff is magic. I’m alseep within ten minutes of taking it. There’s no hazy, druggy feeling, there’s no hangover in the morning. And the extra-cool bonus is vivid and varied dreams. I think now I know how it feels to be a sleeping cat.

I can totally see how these can be habit-forming, as literature warns. I think I’ll be able to avoid becoming a sleep-aid junkie. But then again I’ve just written a whole journal entry about it.

I may have miscalculated how easily we can live without an air conditioner. Summer came to NY this weekend, and suddenly the apartment feels stuffy and warm. On the other hand, it’s 84 degrees out right now and this isn’t anything like Atlanta hot. What we could really use are some ceiling fans. But considering how hard i was to get the new light hung in the bedroom, I shudder to contemplate that job.