GONE FISHING -- RETURNING 07-JULY-2003

Rather than try to squeeze in some cobbled-up solution at the last minute, I’m opting to shutter this blog for the next two weeks.

Those of you in Build-A-Meme Project Team at Freedom 2004 site: please keep the faith, keep the fires burning!  We'll hit the ground running after the holiday.

I’ll try to scratch some notes for future blog posts while basking in the sun and fending off the black flies and mosquitoes.

Hope your next two weeks are relaxed and that you’ll be taking a little time away for the Fourth of July holiday.  Stay safe!

9:52:53 AM    comment []

Wedding Bell Blues

We got back rather late last evening, leaving no time to log on to check the e-mail or blog.  I don’t know if I could have blogged if I wanted to; my head’s still tripping about this weekend’s weirdness.

Friday night we met with the ex-wife, who remains a close friend of ours.  Her new fiancé was there as well.  We had a nice dinner together, roasting the ex-husband/groom over after-dinner drinks.  Lots and lots of unresolved anger expressed, some unexpressed and hanging over the table; the ex-wife was not the only one feeling anger, either.  The fiancé was quiet, polite, just an all-around nice guy; I wonder what he thought of this bash fest?

Saturday’s wedding was rather surreal.  The wedding itself was far too dignified, far too sedate.  It just didn’t seem to correlate in any way to the man we’ve known for 20 years, standing there saying his vows.  Perhaps part of the surreality was the age of the crowd.  It’s rare that I’m one of the youngest people at an event that I’ve chosen to attend, let alone an event of this nature!  Too bizarre, looking around the room, wondering who’s had plastic surgery or who will live through the year.

The reception at their new home was equally odd; the house was almost too sanitary, too pristine for the guy I know to be the groom.  Nothing seemed to fit at all in this picture.  Did he really change that much with falling in love?  Did he change that much just separating from his ex-wife and I didn’t see it? 

No – I remember cleaning his house the year after the separation.  The mounds of dog hair under the couch made me gag; I couldn’t let my kids run around that place without cleaning it first.

Something is just too bizarre here, and I don’t want to give rein to my suspicions. 

But there it is:  Did he marry a caretaker?

The bride works, has a very nice job; I can’t believe it’s that she’s efficient at picking up after his sloppiness.  I’m sure there’s more to it than just the hygiene, even if I can’t relate.  And she really does seem to be a nice person, just not the firebrand I know his ex-wife to be.  But that in itself seems odd; his other girlfriend with whom he’d been serious was also a firebrand.

The last bit of oddness came out in a chat I had with the groom before leaving the festivities.  He made a crack about one of the young adult stepsons being uncomfortable with living there in the new home.  When I said that I could certainly understand why someone in his position might feel that way, the groom was very puzzled.  He can’t understand why a young man might want to move out of that situation, when he had free room, board and laundry to boot.

Yeah, I thought, I’ll bet I’m not the only one who sees something odd about this coupling.

I could be entirely wrong about all this.  Maybe the groom has changed a lot with the passing of the years and that’s the reason for his divorce in the first place.  Maybe I couldn’t see and accept it then, any more than the ex-wife accepted it.  It drove her to divorce him, but a sea change in personality didn’t seem to be the driving factor for the separation.

Regardless of the underlying reasons for any and all of this breaking and joining, I know I won’t attend the groom’s next wedding.

8:16:45 AM    comment []