Love Tours 2010 (part 1 of 3)

A few weeks ago, Mack and I went to LA to visit his family and to celebrate the love of our friends Gio and Whitney. Gio shares my birthday and was my work spouse when I worked in LA. I spent more time with him every day than I did with Mack, and most nights when I'd come home, the conversations between Mack and I would start with, "Oh, guess what Gio told me/did today..."

So what if I kinda worship Gio a little bit. He's badass. And I find his OCD reassuring.

Gio's now-wife, Whitney, is about a perfect a mate as any guy could ask for. She's gorgeous, intelligent, loving, patient, classy and quite likely the most thoughtful person I've ever met.

And the two of them together, with him stealing rubs on her butt and her melting into his eyes, it's just the way it should be... the definition of a love that doesn't make you sick.

Gio and Whitney went to college together, I think at Carlton or some similar liberal arts school that cultivates ridiculously talented people, and all their pals from that era of their life made the trek to the wedding to celebrate the love they watched blossom over four years. And they brought poems and songs and speeches to offer the couple that made the rehearsal dinner feel more like a grown up talent show.

Oooohhh, that rehearsal dinner, mmmmm. Mojitos and homemade gelato and seeing all those people I fell in love with in LA again. I hope Gio and Whitney had as much fun as I did... although I'm pretty sure their night didn't end with them swimming in their underwear and driving home with a towel on their head and wearing Mack's shirt.
The wedding day started with breakfast with Jordan, Jolia, David and Kathy, other work buddies and their fascinating wives, at this awesome place called The Farmer and the Cook. Everyone at our table was vegetarian/vegan except for David and Kathy, and the table next to us, three young people whose prettiness shouldn't be natural, were on a raw diet. The girl had brought her own magic concoction of nuts and health, so she let us have a sample. And then I had one more thing to add to the list of What Makes California So Awesome.

After breakfast, we decided to go for a short hike and ended up looking over the Ojai valley behind an orange grove. The valley runs east-west so it gets sun all day and in the evening, when the sun sets, everything gets bathed in a pink light.
I planned to see that pink light emerge during the wedding.

A shuttle took us up into the mountain to this mansion that had rose gardens that would make the queen in Alice in Wonderland jealous. We watched Gio and Whitney exchange vows that made me cry about 14 times, and the minister, their friend Tessa who was ordained on the internet, told a story of a note Gio had written to Whitney when they were college about the two of them being whales off Baja California making a life journey together.

See, Gio can predict the future.
After the wedding ended, Mack and I wandered around the grounds drinking Negra Modelos and ended up perched on a rock that overlooked a junkyard. The 200 other people carried on with wedding chit chat behind us, but we soaked up the sunshine and took word adventures into our dream life.
Eventually it was time to eat delicious food, play around with the photo booth they had, and take a look at the popsicle cart, which had such flavors as avocado. Then it was cake and dancing and swirling and drinking so many Negro Modelos that every time I walked up to the bartender, he'd automatically hand me two of them.

I wonder if his birthday is also May 16.
We had to get back to LA pretty early in the morning on Sunday so we could see Mack's mom, who had been working all week, so we packed up and headed out. Mack decided he wanted a cup of coffee for the road and zipped our Ford Focus into a corner coffee shop. And by zipped I mean rammed the curb and popped the tire on our rental.

We had a brief pit stop that allowed Mack to show off some of his man skills and let me relish our good fortune at being held up in such a magical place.
Then we were on our way back to real life, knowing that we're not as good at marriage as Gio and Whitney will be but we're getting pretty good at making it through the rough spots without killing each other. And that's probably the most important part of happily ever after.

Things that made me love Valentine's Day

Sleeping in until noon and having lots of vivid and lively dreams the entire time I was sleeping.

Waking up and realizing we have all the makings of a pancake breakfast.

Making pancakes without ruining the first three and getting really annoyed.

Drizzling warm maple syrup all over the unburnt pankcakes and the soysages.

A fancy coffee maker that makes coffee delicious every single time.

Waking up a really handsome husband and getting him to eat pancakes with me.

Learning that we have a fancy dinner at one of my favorite restaurants planned for the evening.

Going to said fancy dinner and eating some of the best goat cheese mashed potatoes of my life.

Trying to remember all the ways we've celebrated Valentine's Day.

Laughing about that time he made coconut shrimp, macaroni and cheese and margaritas.

Finishing off a bottle of delicious red wine with a decadent chocolate pot pie.

Coming home and basking in gratitude for having someone like Mack to share today with.

Dulywed: Year 3

Dear Mack,

I was watching Top Chef on Tivo today and the challenge was to create a dish using the hotels of Las Vegas as inspiration. The Bellagio and Mandalay Bay were among the featured hotels, and the whole subject took me back three years ago when we spent the weekend at the now-demolished Frontier hotel, to that fateful night when you and I went to the courthouse and promised to be best friends for the rest of our lives in front of three complete strangers.

I remember wearing cowboy boots and picking the most ridiculous bouquet in the little chapel. I remember the minister pushing the play button on his tape player and cuing me to walk down the 6-foot-long aisle. I remember thinking how silly this whole show was and how tragic that some of the other couples there were actually taking this seriously. Our wedding, the one that legally bound us, was a joke.

But then, standing up at that ridiculous alter wrapped up with silk roses, something happened. Since no one else in the entire room mattered, I became fixed on you. I robotically uttered familiar phrases about sickness or health, richer or poorer, and looked into your eyes without being distracted. When I was told to say that I would be your best friend forever, I was jolted. That was a serious commitment, one I naively hadn't considered before that moment, and I had to make a decision right then and there. Staring at you in your grandpa sweater with your big smile and dangerous eyes, I agreed. I promised to be your best friend.

I know that there have been days, weeks, maybe even months in the last three years that I haven't been your best friend. In fact, it's possible and likely that at times I've been your worst enemy. But even in that darkness, in that indifference and carelessness, I'm still glad that I made the promise of friendship. It's created a bridge that keeps our marriage from going under, that gets us over the bad times and back to the good ones, that binds you to me and me to you.

This past year has been full of ups and downs, just like the roller coaster ride we went on at the New York hotel moments after we got married. You graduated from college and I got laid off from my job. You started med school, I started nursing school, and we both stopped doing dishes. We moved away from your family and came closer to mine. We traded endless sun, weekends at the beach and a constant state of poverty for rainy days, mosquitoes and feeling like millionaires. You lost judo the way you liked it and I lost fire dance as I was just falling in love with it, but you gained a judo friend who loves it as much as you do and I reconnected with the arts activism that gives me a sense of purpose. We got my older sister back, we left your baby sister behind. You had your issue with ProstaStrong and I had mine with Metamucil. We drove across the country in a state of delirium, shared the discovery of shadow people, almost died trying to move in and then sat on the porch swing swilling cold beer and getting bored of unemployment. I built a dollhouse, you dissected a human body.

I guess you could safely say this year has been unlike any we've ever had.

A few weeks ago when you were about to burst from resentment for a state narrowed by its dominant whiteness, we escaped to the cemetery to sit by the pond and preserve your sanity. In that small afternoon, while you held my hand so I could hang over the pond and get garbage out of the water, while we watched the fish have a feeding frenzy on bread, while that super fat ugly bird waddled over to our bench to get some attention, I felt like we were best friends, like we are appropriately balanced between helpful and hurtful, between together and apart, between supportive and disruptive. I felt like I did that day at Shakertown, when the whole world fell away and it was just me and you and cartwheel practice.

Of course I love you. Of course I care about you. Of course I think you are deliciously handsome and sexy and smart and funny. But as we spend more and more time together, the thing I value most about you is your friendship.

Thank you for the last three years and for the one we're starting today. Happy anniversary, Mr. T.