A bit of post catch-up.

I'm sure I originally intended to post lots about Madison Trip the First (there will be a second soon, hence the numbering), but I really can't remember much anymore. Basically we went up to look at four houses managed by this one company, intending to pick one to rent( ... )

Then, of course, there was the flooded attempt to get back to Bloomington from Indy, and then finally we made it and I got my driver's license FINALLY HOORAY. And then on Monday the 16th I flew out to California to hang out with Becky and go to her wedding. Becky, for the uninitiated, is some lunatic who I've happened to know since high school. We hung out together all my junior year. That would have started in September 1997. Oooooold.

She and I and her now-husband all went to Disneyland that Wednesday, where I found that they have taken my favorite parts out of the Haunted Mansion AND Pirates of the Carribean( ... )

Becky and I did plenty of other things too, like eat red carnations and say hi to Lizzie. This makes no sense to anyone else but us. And we went to the Brea Mall to sit by the crazy sculpture of two dogs and a lobster, as of old. I slept on an air mattress on her bedroom floor the whole time I was there, the better to facilitate the doing of stuff. After the first couple days, her brother got a hotel room so that their mom's friend Teri could stay in his room while she was visiting from Texas. Teri turned out to be kind of insane and also fun. She was also obsessed with this one flower that is often used in landscaping in southern California; I didn't even know what it was called, it was so tune-it-out-normal for me, but it turns out to be an agapanthus. And yes, that picture was taken just because when Becky and I saw the truck we knew Teri would be thrilled.

And then, of course, there was the wedding, i.e. the main reason I was even out there. Becky had her cousin Sarah, her friend and former coworker Kristy, and me as bridesmaids, and perennial tiny cute friend Katy as maid (technically matron, but dammit, she still looks about sixteen and you just do not call a sixteen-year-old a matron) of honor. She was marrying a Mister Cash, who apparently can pinpoint the spot where his family diverged from the Cashes that went on to produce the Man In Black, and who had some of his friends and Becky's brother as groomsmen. On the one hand, they didn't have to wear dresses; on the other hand, they had to wear wool suits. I'm not sure who got off better, really.

The wedding was brought to us by the letter J, and by butterflies. Lots and lots of butterflies. Everything that could be butterfly-themed, was; the flowers, the aisle runner, every piece of paper involved with the whole shebang, the ornamentation in the bridesmaids' hair and (so I was told, though I did not see) the mother-of-the-bride's shoes. You know how after a wedding, traditionally rice or birdseed is thrown? At this wedding, everyone got a little box, and when they opened it, a live monarch butterfly escaped into the sky. INEXORABLY ADVANCING BUTTERFLIES.

Becky was always the type to plan out her wedding, apparently going back to when she was little, and so everything a wedding could have, this one did. And all of it butterfly-themed. THEY HAUNT ME IN MY SLEEP, I TELL YOU. And it all went off quite nicely, right down to the four-year-old flower girl doing her job adorably, though when Becky views the videos she is probably going to laugh at how much I tripped over my dress when I came in and went up to stand on the steps. Apparently when a dress is to be "floor-length", that really means it should stop about four inches from the floor? I guess if I were a real girl I would know these things. As it worked out, that poor dress got stomped on by more people by the end of the night than, uh, a really stomped-on thing. Especially since I swear it got longer since the last time I had tried it on. INEXORABLY ADVANCING HEMLINE, perhaps?

After the wedding and the release of the butterflies, the bridal party got into a limo and everyone else got into normal boring cars, and we all went over to the receptiony place. I had my first champagne in the limo. It wasn't bad at all. Then we sat in the "bridal room" while everyone else was seated, and then we were introduced and did the walkity in our assigned pairs up to the head table where we were sitting. And then there were the standard things like the first-one-as-a-married-couple dance, and the Becky-and-her-dad dance, and so on and so forth. And dinner. And then just general dancing for whoever wanted, while the new Cashes wandered around and mingled with everyone.

At some point I realized I was the only one left at the head table, because everyone else was either mingling, dancing, or, in the case of Kristy, gone home to sleep because she was pregnant and the babies did not believe in her sleeping past 2 AM which meant bedtime had to be early if she was to get any sleep at all. And at that point I was like "yeah heck with this" and so I left the head table and squeezed past the dance floor to go sit with Teri at one of the normal-people tables.

Eventually I was convinced to do one "stand in place and bop around like a doofus" dance with Becky, Katy, and Beckycousin Sarah, which allowed me to not die of a dress-related incident while still being able to participate in the fun. It also did not matter that I dance like a non-dancing thing, because of that whole "like a doofus" part. Case in point: I took the shawl thing I had, that each of us had so that my arms wouldn't have to be naked in the strapless dress and Katy's back tattoo wouldn't show, and tied it around my head like a blue-dress-wearing ninja. Or like in Puzzle Pirates.

Then I went and sat down with Teri again, until Becky's brother came by and asked if I wanted to dance. Which I of course refused, since dancing with a boy means you have to move around, and I neither knew how to do that kind of dancing, nor wanted to give my dress more chances to murder me.

But then Teri talked me into it.

So, yes, for all of thirty seconds until the song ended, I danced, in a dress, with a boy. And not even a bad-looking one. (You'd almost think I was a real girl or something.) After I sat back down again, Teri claimed that he had asked me to dance because he was Teh Likes Me, but I remain convinced that she was simply trying to drum up another Martz family wedding so that she would have an excuse to come back out from Texas and play with the agapanthus plants again.

After the reception, I helped clean up a bit, which mainly involved running around in sneakers and a dress pulling covers off chairs. This was surprisingly fun. Then I said goodbye to an obviously-exhausted Becky, and they went off in the limo while I was driven back to her now-former house with a cake layer on my lap. I changed back into normal people clothes, pulled literally over seventy-five pins out of my hair (I kept them, and counted just now), took a shower to get most of the hairspray out, and went to bed at 2:30 before waking up to be at the airport at 6.

And then I came home. The end.

It was a lot of fun, although I kind of re-acclimated to southern California while I was there, and so now I am all over again weirded out by Indiana's flatness. Being in Orange County is like being surrounded on however many sides (depending on what the day's smog lets you see) by a huge, mainly-brown security blanket that's lumped up kind of funny around you. The horizon is just way too empty without it. Also: no agapanthuses.

And now we're just sort of continuing to pack so that we can move into our temporary housing and hopefully within a month or two find an actual place to live.

I am hungry now. I should eat breakfast.