New Years Eve. We decided not to go out to a party or bar, and instead have a nice dinner and drinks with our friends (the also newly-married) Megan and Alex.
It was a great time, and unfortunately, the only picture I took all evening was this one during the two minutes that they spent checking their dog, the Captain, for fleas.
Remembering Sarah's homemade picture ornament, I took a look around my parent's tree, but didn't find any ornaments with me on them. I did find one of Allie and one of Julie, and here's one of Sherry (I wish it read, "Sherry Christmas!").
Mom: You never made one in school. That's why there isn't one of you. Do you feel left out?
Me: No. Not really.
Mom: You could make one. Make one for next year and I'll put it up.
Me: I might do that. Only because I think it would be funny to have ornaments of the girls as kids, but me as an adult.
The traditional day after Christmas Pizza Hut lunch with Grandma.
Driving out there, Allie and I tried to remember how long ago it was exactly that Grandpa Ralph had passed away. I guessed twenty years, but in reality it was closer to ten.
Grandma: That's a beautiful ring.
Sarah: Oh, thank you.
Grandma: I still wear mine. See?
Allie: Grandma, why are you wearing it on your middle finger?
Grandma: It doesn't fit on my ring finger anymore. So I put it here. But now I can't get it off.
Me: It's stuck?
Grandma: It's stuck.
Dad: Just use cold water.
Me: Or butter, right? You could get it off with butter.
Grandma: I think I'll keep it on.
Christmas Eve in the suburbs with Sarah's family.
I found this homemade ornament on the tree of Sarah as a child.
One of Sarah's Uncles: Enjoy these Christmases as just a married couple. Once you have kids it changes. It's nice, but... after this party I have a whole night of putting things together ahead of me.
Went to see Shad's last show at Second City last night. I got to sit right behind his wife.
I'd never noticed before that his picture is on the cover of the Food and Drink Menu. He's pretending to be an audience member. It's almost as if he's laughing hysterically at his own show. "Ha ha! That Shad guy is great!"
I took this picture one year ago.
Sarah's Facebook Status Today: "On this morning last year I was still single. But not in the afternoon."
We've accumulated a lot of anniversaries, it seems. Anniversary of when we started dating. Engagement anniversary. Wedding Anniversary. We've Been Married This Many Months Anniversary.
When does it filter down to just the wedding anniversary? Next year? The year after. I'm not saying I'm not enjoying it, I'm just wondering.
Yearly Christmas dinner with the dudes. We usually go out to a fancy restaurant, have some drinks, catch up.
This year we went to Red Lobster. It started off as a joke, and somehow turned into, "fuck it, let's just really go to Red Lobster." A little bit "it would be funny," a little bit "it's been an expensive year" and a little bit, "why not? who cares where we go honestly, we'll have fun."
Nick: When I came in the door the hostess immediately said, "Are you with the seven?" The Seven. It's so ominous.
Me: Like we're a secret society.
Nick: And she knew right away I was with you guys. No hesitation.
Me: Maybe you walked in with the exact same level of ironic enjoyment.
Hansen: Anyone else ordering a Lobsterita?
This is how I really ended my vows. The morning of the wedding I noticed something in the pages I'd been keeping in my back pocket for a week. So, I ad-libbed this:
"There's actually a typo in this last part, but... I'm just going to read it as it is. 'I love you Sarah. I excited to be your husband.'"
My (probably too long) wedding vows:
"It was never a question for me that I’d want to write my own vows. It’s important to me to let you know, in my own words how important you and this day are to me. But that said, the traditional wedding vows are pretty classic."
And then I ad libbed the bit, "Like Toto's 'Africa,' they're awesome."
"'I take THEE, Sarah to be my lawfully wedded wife, to love honor and cherish, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better and for worse, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health, til death do us part.' Those words are burned deep into nearly everyone’s thoughts about what a wedding is. So, I thought I’d quickly talk about what those words mean to me.
"First, 'to love.' Easy, done. I love you like crazy. And I feel that love deepening every day, and becoming more a part of who I am."
Pulling a pen out of my pocket, "So, let’s check that one off the list.
"Okay, next, 'to honor.' I actually had to think about that one. What does that mean, exactly? It’s one of those words you just kind of brush past without thinking about. Is it like the old creepy 'to obey' that people don't use anymore?
"I looked it up and it has a lot of meanings, like 'to worship' or even 'to pay.' But the one I like is 'to hold in high regard. To respect.' Respect isn’t a very romantic sounding word, I respect you, but I do respect you, I hold you in very high regard, and I think that’s important."
Crossing another line off with the pen, "So far so good.
"'To cherish.' Yep. Check.
"Okay… 'to have and to hold from this day forward.' This one is kind of funny to me. 'From this day forward' is like, 'Okay, starting NOW I’ll be good, I’ll be good to you. Let's wipe the slate clean.' And I guess that’s what a wedding is, that’s the whole point. This is the moment. But, and not to take away from all of this, I’ve felt bound to you, deeply connected to you for a very long time now. Plus, who are we kidding, I’ve had and held you before today, so to speak. I think we still get this one."
(No one seemed to catch the slightly dirty joke at the end of that last bit, which is maybe for the best, although later, when a family friend of Sarah's sent us a video he'd recorded of the ceremony, you could hear him chuckling a little to himself. So, it did not go entirely missed.)
"'For better and for worse.' We’ve had some of both, but you always make the worse better and the better… also better. Basically you make things better.
"'For richer and for poorer.' I’m in for it. I’m excited to eventually get to the richer part...
"'In sickness and in health.' I find this phrase taking on more meaning as I get older, as you start to get hints at the curveballs life can throw at you. And we've only experienced very minor things, but it's good to know you're there. For instance when I hurt my back, and I could barely walk or stand..."
(I think this is the moment when this picture was taken by the way, the moment Sarah realized what story I was about to tell.)
"...you helped me get to the bathroom and helped me stand in front of the toilet, and you stood behind me holding me up while I... urinated."
Big long laugh at this point from the chapel. "Now that’s not exactly the most romantic story, admittedly, but it meant a lot. And shortly after that I proposed to you.
"But let’s not forget the health part of that. In sickness and in health. Let’s be healthy. Let’s help each other be healthy. Let’s get healthier together. Soon. I mean, not tonight. We’ve got a lot of booze and cake but... after the honeymoon.
“And finally, 'Til death do us part.' Kind of a downer of an ending. There’s also always, 'For as long as we both shall live,' which is the glass half full version of that. Of course, you once said to me, 'You won’t stop being married to me just because you’re dead.' Which is... fair enough. So, I’m willing to extend our marriage contract, I promise to love honor and cherish you, through the good and the bad... forever.
"I love you Sarah. I'm excited to be your husband."
I had to be out of the house for a few hours while Sarah hosted a ladies-only holiday party, so I tagged along with Shad while he did some Christmas shopping.
Shad: These days when I go out on errands, it turns into an excuse to sneak off and eat at the places my wife and I used to go to before the baby.
We shopped a little. We ate a lot.
Sarah took this picture a couple days before the wedding.
She was saying that she hadn't written her vows yet, that she didn't even know where to start, and she asked me if I'd written mine.
I said, yes, I had, and in fact, for the last several days I'd had a copy of my vows sitting my back pocket, so I could look at them whenever I had time, so I pulled them out and held the pages up in the air and said, "Here they are. They're right here."
Sarah yelped and put her hand up, blocking the pages out of her view. "I don't want to see them!"
For the next couple hours I would occasionally pull the pages out of my back pocket and hold them up, just to get a reaction out of her.
The holiday parties keep coming. Today, the Whirled News holiday brunch.
Many of the Secret Santa gifts revolved around everyone's new favorite game of having one person pick a slogan, and another pick an image idea (both without hearing what the other has suggested) and then turning them into an awesome t-shirt.
That's how Steve ended up with a shirt with a wizard and the slogan, "WHO YA GONNA Call.." and Glynn ended up with a shirt of a shirt with "two seventies guys shaking hands" and the slogan "You Can't Tame the Beast."
(It's worth mentioning that I took this picture during the exact moment Glynn realized he'd sat in quiche.)
Last night was the office holiday party.
Me: Allard, Poland, get over by the cardboard cut-out and I'll take your pictures.
Poland: Oh here we go. This willl end up on his blog, with some kind of strained explanation about how this has something to do with his wedding.
Me: No. I don't think this'll make the blog. It's too long a journey to explain the Steve-o cut-out.
Poland: Oh, you've traveled further.
True.
So... someone posted an embarrassing photo of our coworker, Steve-o, on Facebook. A picture from high school of him in a production of South Pacific. Allard and Poland immediately grabbed a copy of the picture and began photoshopping it into every picture that floated around the office (sometimes subtly, sometimes not). So, for the holiday party we decided to blow the photo up and make a standee out of it, so everyone could take their picture with it. Sort of a real-world photoshopping.
Also... Poland wore that vest to my wedding.
Volunteer Day at work. About half the office spent the afternoon at the Greater Chicago Food Depository, helping to package the food that is distributed to the needy throughout the Chicago area.
Since I'm tall I was put on pasta shoveling duty. I shoveled a ton of pasta. Literally a ton. Over two thousands pounds of pasta.
My arms hurt.
The whole time Sarah said her vows, a big fly kept buzzing around my head and landing on my face. I swatted it away once but it came back. I didn't want to draw too much attention to it, so I just let it stay there, sitting on my face. You can see it in the wedding video.
When we were done Sarah swatted it away for me.
Me: That fly won't leave me alone. [big laugh from crowd] Boy, this country wedding was a great idea. [bigger laugh]
Growing up we used to always get small gifts in our Christmas stockings on December 6th. St. Nickolaus Day. Something like that.
Sarah put the stockings up over the weekend, so I snuck out and put some candy in hers.
Sarah: It's such a fun surprise. Although I feel bad that I didn't get you anything for your stocking.
Me: Don't worry about it. I've got you.
Sarah: I'm your present? [laughs and looks down] Well, I am wearing your socks.
I've been asked to tell a Christmas story as part of a holiday storytelling series at the iO Theater.
So, for the few of you out there who wish my blog posts were much longer and didn't include any pictures, you should come see me tell the story of The Santa Problem this Thursday at 10:30 at the iO Theater, as part of Holiday Punch in the Face.
Rehearsal for a Sketchfest show. The festival started ten years ago, and the group the Backrow did their first sketch revue that first year. And they've done one every year since.
Ten years of Sketchfest. Ten years of the Backrow.
I actually bowed out of doing the last few Backrow shows because I was too busy, but I've decided to come back for the tenth (and likely final) show.
Each year there are more children and babies at the rehearsals.
Here we are doing an initial read-through on one of the sketches, making a point of carefully skimming over any dirty words that we'd prefer the children didn't hear.
Meador stopped by to give us a wedding gift.
We'd told him not to get us anything, that officiating our wedding was present enough.
Meador: I took that as freedom to get you whatever I want, and not something on the registry. So I got you... Settlers of Catan!
Sarah: You didn't have to do that.
Meador: And now I can come over and play it with you guys. Can you play with three people?
Me: I have no idea.
While running these workshops in Massachusetts, I've been working with Meridith, an improviser and actor who I used to perform with years ago in Chicago before she moved to Denver.
Meridith: It's good to see you!
Me: It's good to see you! It's been, what? At least five years. More?
Meridith: I heard you got married, congratulations.
Me: You as well.
Meridith: Now... did you marry... the same... was it the girl you were...
Me: [laugh] No. Not the same girl. Different girl.
Meridith: Ah. [laughs] I thought so. Because that was a long time ago. But hey, I'm not married to the same person I was married to then, either! So...
Me: We've both had some bumps in the road since we last saw each other.
Meridith: Some.
Me: But we're doing great now!
Meridith: We're doing great now!
