Wedding Belles, Part Two

What a gay, romantic week it's been here at the old chez peenee.  Two of our oldest friends, Cow Queen and K, popped into town to get married and stayed here with me.  It was their thirty-something anniversary, and after a very tastefully small ceremony at City Hall, we had a lovely lunch at one of my favorite Italian restaurants downtown.

And then, a slightly less romantic trip to the emergency room for Cow Queen.  After we got home from all the wedding festivities (no bouquet toss since the majority of the party was composed of widow ladies) Cow admitted as to how his leg was aching and reminded me that he had been in the hospital a few years ago with MRSA, the drug resistant staph infection, and that his doctor he'd been at pains to warn him how easy it was for it to come back.  He also revealed a big hole in his shin that he had won falling down a ladder at work last week.

He was reluctant to go to the emergency room, but a lifetime with R Man had taught me how to overcome such moronic protests.  Why is it when the words "infection" or "blood loss" or "chest pains" hang heavy in the air, I am the one who thinks how attractive the local hospitals are?  The idea that I am the responsible one in the room should make everyone a little less comfortable.

So I stuffed his protesting ass in the car and wheeled off to my favorite E.R.  A lifetime with R Man has also equipped me with a connoisseur's knowledge of them.

It wasn't bad, less than three hours, mostly spent discussing the wedding and the lunch and then we were back home.  So it wasn't the ideal honeymoon.  At least he scored a bunch of oxycontin and that has to count for something.

In Which Cash is Dropped

Crepe myrtles, one of my favorite Southern flowers, in bloom

Attention, People of Earth:

So anyway, I got a charming postcard from an old friend (isn't that quaint?)  which reminded me I needed to attend to my own quaint writing medium and now here we all are.  Welcome back.

New Orleans?  Fabulous, darlings.  I swept through thrift stores,  junk malls, and Good Antique Shoppes with equal abandon, flinging the bucks like a drunk sailor in a cathouse.  mrpeenee's credit card has a new, possibly permanent dent in it, but it was worth it.

I found a beautiful big dining table with a huge dark green marble top, a pair of charming antique armchairs, reupholstered in a lovely grey and white stripe,  a couple of chest of drawers, a very pretty chandelier that will be much improved by having some of its fussier crystals removed, lamps and a vase.  I also met with the cabinet maker who's doing the kitchen and picked out the marble and tiles for the baths and the kitchen and the bricks for the patio.

Also, I got to see for the first time the couch I bought online.    Sweet.

Ooh, also, a lovely little drop leaf desk.  We must have seen fifty of them, or more.  Where on earth could they all have come from suddenly?

Chandelier in a box.  I rather like the minimalist implications, but I think I might hang it without the cardboard, what the hell.

My talent for arbitrary decisions stood me in good stead; I chose the bricks in under five minutes.  It probably took us longer to park.  I just don't see the point of dithering, especially over something like patio flooring.  I've discovered it seems so overwhelming when you're standing in the middle of eleventy million options, but then once they're installed you never critically look at them again.  After all, they're just bricks, or light fixtures, or faucets.  You see something you like, take it.  Perfection is not achievable, says the buddha.  Or mrpeenee.  One of us, anyway.

Quiet, please.  Can't you see tattoo buddha is taking a nap?

But that's only in person. I came home to nail down the bathtubs and sinks and stoves and whatnot online and once again the internet with its vast universe of choices reduced me to a blob of indecision.  Until, that is, I recalled how effective cutting myself off from porn until I at least picked out a goddam tub had been.

And it's a good thing naked muscly men are such an effective driver for me since renovation on the house has suddenly shifted into some kind of warp speed.  When I left there, all the interior walls had been ripped out and the floors in the bathrooms were nonexistent.  Now word reaches us framing has finished and walls are going up.  Hoo hoo!  Walls!  Floors! All kinds of cool house stuff.

Reporting Live, and Bleeding, from New Orleans.

Why on earth am I back in New Orleans in July?  Mostly to show solidarity with Sister Mary Legs in the Air who is drilling down through the house renovation, but mostly because I need to pick out some windows and other detritus at the architectural salvage place.  I also want to take another run at antiques and, as always, I want some shrimp.

I got in late last night and somehow found myself up awake and at 'em early this morning, which is so very not my style.  Since I needed supplies, I wound up hanging around outside the Walgreen's for them to open along with a most colorful gang of lowlifes.  It was like being on set at Warner's between takes of some not-very-successful Bogart film.

Speaking of Not Our Sort At All, I flew Delta here and if you were wondering on which airlines people board without wearing their shoes (perhaps they didn't understand they could put them back on after security, perhaps they just didn't want to, perhaps they don't have any.  Who knows) I have the answer for you.

And now my thumb has started bleeding mysteriously, like some stigmata.  I went over to the front desk for a bandaid and it's telling that I stay here so much, I knew where they were when the clerk didn't.

The temps and humidity combine to produce an ambience similar to a pot of water right before it boils.  Dear god, it's good to be home.