Lucy's Spleen

Flamly Reunion

Now my brother Jak is here! It's a flamly reunion!

Stan and mom and I spent the day walking around Cambridge in the new crisp cold. We toured campus like we do with guests (I learn a little bit more each time about the olde and hallowede Harvard grounds), visited the Cambridge Common, where you can learn about George Washington taking charge of the revolutionary troops, and Christ Church, where George & Martha used to attend services. Then we had a couple of beers at celebrated Charlie's Kitchen and did a little shopping on Harvard Square. My brother arrived in the early evening and since then the four of us have just been laughing non-stop. It's one wildly inappropriate joke after the next around here now, punctuated intermittently by song and dance. In other words: the usual. I've been notably more weepy since having family around, and more appreciative of Stan than ever, too. I'm basically just a big, sappy pile of joy basking in the presence of three of my most comforting and most hilarious loved ones. It's cathartic and delicious.

I am a participant in NaBloPoMo.

Wedding Fever

It's the time of the season for loving, everybody. Marriage marriage marriage! The last weekend in July marked the ceremony for my good friend J. and her partner P. (thanks for the drinks, P and J!), tomorrow is the wedding of D to the lovely W, and last weekend my stepsister married her man at the top of Hidden Peak at Snowbird. And you know what? Even though I thought I would have a hard time relating to their pagan-hippie-goth-pirate fire-spinning friends, everyone there was delightful, and we all had a wonderful time.

Since breaking up with Asberger (haven't mentioned him in a while, have we?) I have been pretty jaded about marriage (and, I suppose, love in general). In fact, marriage schmarriage! I don't think I've ever in my life thought less about my connubial future than I, um, haven't thought about it over the past ten months. So I was somewhat surprised to discover that my eyes welled up as I helped my step sister into her wedding dress, and again when she arrived on her father's arm at the top of the mountain, and, during the vows when she looked into her lover's eyes and asked him, "Will you be my husband?" it was the husband word that got me, and I experienced a peculiar, constricted sensation in my chest and my throat and the corners of my eyelids...

And that's all I'm saying about it because this is not a mental path I want to wander.

My sister was BEAUTIFUL, and so was the little song my dad wrote and played on his new ukelele for her (how often do you have a legit excuse to employ (and rhyme!) the term "geodesic dome" as a song lyric?), the in-laws were charming and we got to spend the rest of the day achieving Ultimate Relaxation in the lodge hot tub and sauna and just hanging out with each other and I thought, "I really should try to be closer to and spend more time with this side of my family," and I was right; I really, really should.