Family and other indisposable things

Our wedding is inching closer and closer, faster and faster. I have officically busted the budget and it seems that everyone's deposit is due right now, $500 here, $1,000 there - it's adding up and freaking me out. And I really am trying my best to find the best deals while not compromising too much on quality. At this point I'm only nervous about the baker - I'm sure it'll be lovely cake, but I'm worried it'll taste like wedding cake and I've never really liked wedding cake. There is a difference between cake and wedding cake. I don't know what happens to make them different, I just know that eventhough I like to eat cake, I rarely like the cake served at weddings. There's something dry and too-sweet and yet nearly flavorless about wedding cakes. At least to me.

But this is one of the two bakers everyone suggested to use and the other one won't make the groom's cake the way I want, so that's that. There is only so much time you can spend on each part of the wedding or else you'll drive yourself crazy. And because I do want our wedding to feel like a wedding, you pretty much have to have a cake and flowers and all the other stuff that makes a wedding a wedding.

Which brings me to family. As the wedding nears, the distance between me and my family becomes increasingly painful. I am lucky in that I am not referring to emotional distance, just old fashioned miles of space. My mom, stepdad, little brother and one of my sisters and her family all live way far north and I live in the South.

The distance slashes across my heart because I know that it won't be long after we get married that we're going to try to start having a baby and I won't have my mother around for comfort and help. Yes, J's family in here, but we're not really close. We're all friendly with each otherand it's nothing against his sisters, but honestly I'd just prefer to have my own mother and sister with me. I guess it's just a comfort/familiarity/blood thing.

I've turned this over and over in my head and there's just no reasonable solution to it. They like living up there and actively dislike how land-locked we are. We like living down here and actively disike the cold, grey weather they have up there. Not to mention that everyone has their jobs and homes and what-not that makes it practically impossible to move. The prospect of having children who don't really know their Grandparents and other family members makes me so very sad, it almost makes me not want to have any - the emotion is just that strong.

Not to mention everything I've missed in my little brother's life. He's 15 now and I get to see him twice a year at best. Same goes for my sister and her kids. My niece Sam hardly even knows I exist. That kills me. When I moved down here after college I never really thought about how drastic the distance would prove to be. We had always moved around so much, I think there was a part of me that believed we'd all end up living near to each other somehow.

How fitting: Marc Broussad's song "Home" just came on.

I think one thing that makes this so tragic for me is that I always liked/loved/appreciated how close our family was considering and despite the divorce, step-parents, half-siblings and many, many moves that happened, for better or worse. I think this led me to believe that my family would do the same - not let outside things affect our sense of family and always come back together in the end.

Maybe that was just my perception, a romanticised memory. In reality my older half-siblings were parted with our common father at ages 3 and 4 by marrying my mother and moving away and then my immediate sister and I were parted with him after he left and our mom's marriage moved us away from him when we were 10 and 11 years old. All of us, our dad's children, spent the rest of our lives as occasional guests at his house, but all of the kids, though legally only half-siblings, all refer to each other fondly and willingly as just sisters and brother - even my younger half-brother, who has absolutely no blood relation to my older half-sister and half-brother, is regarded as family.

That said, this kind of openness in titles and affiliation has also led to some strain - my stepdad calls me his daughter, something that I like - but he would like and has asked that I call him "dad" - something I just can't do. It's not anything against him - he's known me since I was 10, he went through my teen years much more acutely than my own dad who saw me only 5 times, two weeks at a time, while I aged from 12 to 17. But I just can't bring myself to call him "dad." I've tried to explain this to him - that if my own father had really cut out and left completely or died, then I could and would be happy to transfer the title. But my dad didn't and he's not, so I can't.

Anyway, the point is I am sad, upset, pissed, torn...etc. about not having my family closer to home - so that it can really feel like home.

Now this is what they call...

Truth in advertising:
This photo was taken by my dad when we were on a hike up Pilot Mountain in N.C. and came across a pack of cig's on the trail. Dad thought it would be funny but no one helped us pose at all - we were influenced, I believe, by all of the billboard ads that showed pictures like this Misty ad. Creepy, huh?

Hilfe!

Ich suche fuer meine Freundinen aus Stuttgart, Isolde u. Dorothee Wuensch (vielleicht Dorothee Paulus). Ihre spitznamen sind Iso und Dodo. Kennst Du Sie? Bitte melde Dich!! Ich vermisse Euch so sehr!!!

{This post says "I am searching for my friends from Stuttgart, Isolde and Dorothee. Their nicknames are Iso and Dodo. Do you know them? Please get in touch with me! I miss them so much!" I wrote this because I lost touch with them and thought, hey, people google their own names all the time, maybe this post will come up in the search - and it worked! Dodo emailed me about a month later and then Iso came to visit. This internet thing is pretty darn swell, doncha think?}

NOLA needs YOU!

{{More Photos from the trip HERE}}
J and I went to New Orleans last week - I hadn't been there since 2000, so it was the first time for me since Katrina. It's a weird mix between renovated houses that are completely redone, empty houses that look like the flood happened only a week ago and other areas where, truly, they were probably falling apart before anyway and now the situation has exacerbated the problem.

As we drove into the area, you first pass Slidell and then the outer part of New Orleans, which, according to what you can see from the highway, is full of empty, boarded up and fenced off aparment complexes and neighborhoods. There was a Wal-Mart that had yet to reopen. J recalled having seen that same Wal-Mart parking lot full of tents when he came here about 3 months after Katrina. I was pissy when I thought about how Wal-mart was so quick to run commercials touting their support for the people affected by the hurricanes, but now can't seem to be bothered to reinvest in this community and offer much-needed jobs. But then, I didn't see really any work being done on the abandoned neighborhoods (except demolition) - so maybe there simply is no need for a Wal-Mart?

We arrived to our hotel, the Rennaisance Arts, got cleaned up and then headed out for dinner. We asked around for a true down-home style NO restaurant, but we wound up at Brennans and that wound up being one of those typical places that is mostly known because it's been around for-EV-er despite the food now being mediocre and waaaay overpriced ($100+ for 2 people and only 1 drink each!). BUT we shared a wonderful Bananas Foster, which was especially yummy because apparently this was where the dessert was created (due to an overflow of banana shipments). I like eating history!

Next day J had to work and I took a long walk down Magazine Street. I walked for almost 3 miles and saw the aforementioned mishmash of up, down and everything inbetween houses & businesses. Once I got to the retail section, that's when the human element, namely desperation, kicked in. Every salesperson I met had an underlying panic/fear/stress about the lack of tourists and money being spent. There they are, trying their darndest to get back to normal, opening their stores everyday, but with few people coming by to shop. They were very chatty - much more so, I believe, than before Katrina - and were full of questions. Where I am from, why I was there (J's business), what kind of business...? This was one time I felt no guilt spending money freely because I knew they needed to business so much.

I didn't leave a single store without the shop keeper strongly encouraging me to come back and bring friends. Or at the very least tell everyone I know that it's time to come back to New Orleans. My fave shops: Winky's (I spent the most here for some great funky clothes and a postcard that says "Gnome on the range"; Brass Menagerie (a reproduction house hardware store run by an old couple and their cat with the heart-shaped shot on it's nose, Domino); and Derby Pottery.

That theme carried over into the evening when we were given two rounds of drinks by 2 different people at the d.b.a. bar on Frenchman Street.

Merry F-ing Christmas

What a screwed up couple of days! Not all bad, but some of it was pretty damn unfortunate and is messing with my head. Good thing I can latch onto the made-up concept of starting over fresh in the new year or else ... I don't know what.

I did it!

I managed to throw quite a little shindig yesterday! We celebrated J's birthday with family, friend, food and fun presents! I made the following tasty treats (with some help from Jaime & Laura!):
Artichoke & Spinach Dip + Red Lobster-style Cheddar Biscuits + Phyllo Triangles + Mexican 8 Layer Dip + Fruit + Cheeses (including Ruth's Pimento Cheese Spread!!) + a Jelly Roll cake + Spice Bundt Cake

Toccoa put on her party dress and I actually finished making our stockings (a little thrown together, but still...)! Unfortunately my mom couldn't be there, but I'm pretty sure I would have made her proud!

Crafty (crazy?) Lady!

I'm getting really exicted and nervous about his party on Sunday (3pm at our house. Be There!) I am going to try to cook everything myself. It's very likely that we'll end up having to order pizza like at our last party when I didn't cook but I also didn't buy enough food and people were hungry and starving and falling over from being malnourished and it was bad. (ok, so no one really fell over, but it was still pathetic)

I am also going to try to make stockings from J, me and Toccoa (the dog). Ha! Let's just see if I can drive myself totally crazy in the next 4 days (er, at first I wrote "gays"!) (and just then i almost wrote "at fist"!)(what the hell? have i already gone nuts?) [note to self: put nuts on grocery list]

Unfortunately I will not have painted to dining room and guest bedroom like I really wanted to, but whatever. I also will not have finished sanding the armoire for the guest bedroom, nor will the yard have gotten de-leaved and landscaped. And I'm sure the kitchen and our bedroom, no matter what I do, will still look like a wreck. At least I can keep the bedroom door shut.

I will be happy when the holidays wind down because then I plan to apply to SCAD (or someplace similar) to take classes and eventually get a master's degree in graphic design.

Well, I'm off to try to make stockings!! Wish me luck and I hope to see you Sunday!