It's not a party unless the police are called....

It's been a busy time around here. We're planning a party for Saturday, and it's a sort of big party...people are flying in from out of town, driving from far away, driving from across town...all for Hub and I. We decided back in December or January to have our marriage blessed by the church, but rather than just showing up and "having it done" we had to go through a lot of paperwork owing to my previous union and its dissolution. Getting hold of that paperwork took months, and as we waited, we thought we should maybe have a party.

A party that wasn't a wake, that is. We've had a few wakes in the last year.

In thinking that maybe we should have a party, we decided that we wouldn't just pull drunks off the street as witnesses, and maybe we should ask our friends to stand up for us. And maybe we should book a caterer. And maybe we should make several forays into the Niagara region to pick out wines. And maybe, when the priest looks at his book and says, "How about August 16?" when you're speaking to him in June, you think, "Oh, that is so much time to plan a party!"

Or it's lots of time to freak out about the party.

It wouldn't have been a big deal, but now it is. Hub's family is extensive, and they're littered throughout the city. My family, not so extensive, but littered throughout places that require flying to get here. Our friends are all over the place but many are here in town. The church is just up the street, which is handy.

Then it was what to wear, how formal to make it all, how to plan plan plan.

I am good at planning parties for other people. I can think of what they want, I can talk to them, I can organize people to do things that they don't want to do. I direct, I cajole, I maintain a calm order while all the time I'm thinking of 100 things at once. I get to do the same thing for this party, except that I'm also the centre of attention and the people I'm talking to? Are me. Or I am it.

I don't talk to myself very well. I'm not very cooperative. I don't do what I ask of myself and I would rather sit here and type or read a book about literary criticism (which I actually have been doing, and I love it) or knit or visit or just sit and stare into space than do what needs doing.

We've been busy almost every single weekend this summer, and I'm tired of it all. Next weekend we're busy again, and then it's Labour Day weekend and we'll be busy just doing stuff around here. Busy. The whole summer has been a relentless merry-go-round of busy. I want to get off. I don't want to hold this party this weekend.

Naturally we're also on a death watch; after all, no one has died in a week. Hub's cousin's wife had a stroke about a month ago, and she was doing okay in the hospital, waiting to move to rehab, when she had another stroke last week. She is now in ICU because she needs assistance with her breathing. She'll either get better or she won't. I hope she hangs on through Saturday, because otherwise nobody will want to have a happy party...it'll be another wake.

Olympic Fever

BF1 and I are now glued to the television, watching every minute of Olympic coverage. Luckily, the CBC does not disappoint, and if you want to watch, it's there for you.

I have a question though, regarding the entrance of the athletes. Now I admit that I missed the beginning of this section of the opening ceremonies, and even if I'd been present for the first entrances I probably wouldn't have heard what was going on. Ear problem due to taking children to the pool yesterday results in no hearing aids. Tell me though, why Egypt and Portugal and Moldava and Morocco and then Australia and Zambia were in those respective orders. Maybe "infidel", "monkey", "capitalist pig" and "golden pubics" would translate alphabetically in Mandarin ?

I was reminded of a former colleague today, when I swore to myself about attending another, yes, another, funeral. Except that I put the f'ing word in front of funeral (in my head) and then remembered this former colleague, who, when I would use this particular terminology, would look at me directly and say, "Hilary, funerals do not fuck."

Well, okay, they don't, and neither do runners or toilet seats or car doors or rain, but it's a useful modifier as well as a verb.

The former colleague was from The Netherlands (not from Holland. Holland is a province in The Netherlands, as we were reminded every time we said he was from Holland because we knew it would stir his ire.) and was of a very literal mind. Besides correcting verb/modifiers, he tried very hard to make a lot of inorganic compounds and was quite successful at it. He married an opera singer who divorced him, and then he lived in a bush for a few weeks before he house-sitted for a couple his former wife knew. Once they returned he moved back to the bush for a while, then moved in with the Ex. He graduated, got to move to England to work for a well-known chemist, and lasted six months. Graduate work didn't suit him. He moved back to Canada, married another woman after their baby died, and then she divorced him too. To my knowledge he fell off the face of the earth, although I did see him at a conference out west once. It was very strange. He didn't talk to me, he just put his hand on my shoulder as he walked by.

This has nothing to do with going to a funeral today. The woman who died was 38 years old, with two children ages 16 and 13, husband, large Italian family. We went to the funeral because the deceased sister is married to Hub's nephew, and yes, it seems a tenuous connection but it isn't at all.

The mass was quite long, and then I went to the mausoleum with Hub's sister and brother, while Hub took The Darlings home to feed their little faces. The mausoleum was very beautiful, and so many names on the walls with plaques and pictures and "Riposo in pace" and flowers and extra pictures of babies and children so that the dead know that new family members have arrived...there are lots of big windows and light and stained glass. It's lovely. It's terrible to see a coffin pushed into a hole in the wall, and terrible to hear the wails of the female family members as this is done. If you're outside at a gravesite the sounds are carried away by the wind, but inside the sounds echo around you and go through your head and back a few times. It was all terribly sad.

I have honestly had it with funerals though, and would prefer that I not have to go to another one for at least a year. Even then it will be too soon, too reminiscent of the one before or the one before that, too many things said that sound the same as last time, and most of all, a Catholic funeral here in town is almost always at the same funeral home, and so far, all the people we know who've died here have been in the same room for the visitations. So you go in, and it's the same room as Zia was in, or the same room Maria was in or the same room as....well, it doesn't matter. We are familiar with that room at the funeral home now, rather more familiar than we'd like to be.