Lessons From Fencing Class

Hello blog reader people! Hope your day is going well so far. Man, this shorter week (because of Labor Day) has sure gone by a lot faster than I was prepared for. At least we are rushing toward Saturday--my dear friend is getting married then! Woo-hoo!

But, I figured before celebrating with champagne and ... uh ... champagne*, let's reflect. Weddings signal the beginning of a life united together and in Our Lord. I remember when planning my own wedding, it wasn't difficult to get carried away with things like decorations, or food, or the infamous dress. However, it is most important to remember that a wedding is about the marriage with that person you love very much.

Being married will be hard, challenging, frustrating, and, at times upsetting. But instead of fighting, abandoning each other, or taking to bad habits, you and your partner should always choose to work together to fix the problem.

Or, you could do what we do to keep the marriage going: sword fight.

That's right everybody! It's time for lessons (and a couple pics) from fencing class! Get excited!

LESSONS FROM FENCING CLASS:

-If you are thinking that you have run out of gift ideas, try something unexpected. I bought Stephen and I fencing lessons, and he totally loved it! I was the cool wife. I had everything going for me. Great anniversary idea, ladies.

-Wear clothes that you will want to keep outside afterwards. Fencing makes you an unusually powerful and deadly ratio of sweaty-to-smelly. Either do laundry immediately, or regret it.

-Fencing swords hurt. Not a lot, but just enough so that every time I said "oww" from anticipation of someone poking me, I lost a little bit of that "cool wife" thing. Don't do this. Wait to actually be poked before saying oww, and try to be in actual pain. And, definitely don't say oww when you are only trying to put the face mask on. You lose major cool points there.

-The fencing jackets have a built-in, thong-like adjustable strap. Make sure your fencing jacket fits just right or is a little big. I'll let you figure out why.

-Face masks: also surprisingly sweaty. Prepare yourself with a bandana, as you cannot wipe the sweat off your brow at any time without knocking the mask off. You especially cannot try doing this during a match.

-If you happen to have a young whipper-snapper of only 16 as your teacher, try not to take offense when he mocks that hardly anyone in the adult beginning fencing class can touch their toes. He is young. He has no idea what's coming.

-Chest protectors are VERY important. Don't forget to wear them.

-Chest protectors only protect the chest.

-Listen carefully to the type of sword you will be working with. It affects your fighting strategy. A foil is like the sword the Three Musketeers use, and is meant to poke people in the torso only. You also have what is called "priority," which means that once the person who makes the first move is blocked (or "perried"), they can't get a point until the other person tries to make a move and you defend yourself against them. Sabre is the second type of sword. It is like a pirate sword, and your arms and legs are a target. These fights tend to go faster, as it is more "free:" anyone can poke anybody else at any time. Lastly, an epee is a bigger (and heavier) foil, and is good for tall people like my husband to repeatedly win matches against smaller, weaker individuals that he might have to drive home with.

-Be aggressive. The best fighters seem to be.

-Take out all of your anger at fencing. You can barely see the other guy's face. Sticking your tongue out at him while fighting is a total possibility, and I would dare say encouraged.

-Footwork is crucial to staying balanced and moving in the most powerful way. It will also be the source of major leg cramping about 36 hours after your first class. Prepare yourself with ice and stretching.

-Enjoy your moment of shining glory when you beat your husband in a match. He will claim it is because of the type of sword and fighting, but you will know it is because you couldn't lose 'em all.

Posed picture time!


Where we took our class



Me, post match. You understand the sweat thing now.



Stephen and me at the end of class. Awwww.



These lessons are certain not advice for marriage or for working through problems, but it was definitely a lot of fun to share this experience with the man I love. We recommend it!

Plus, my husband can never take that win away from me.



*What else do you celebrate with, really?

.

There Wasn't Anything in the Brownies

The roles have been officially switched as I helped execute a bridal shower this weekend for my dear friend, Nicole.

As a bridesmaid, I am now under a different umbrella of responsibility when it comes to weddings. No more worrying about a wedding for months and enjoying a separate party thrown by your friends. This time, it's the reverse.

And the reverse comes with a completely unanticipated lack of sleep.

I think it is because the bridesmaids are so busy (isn't that life) that we weren't able to get to a lot of the actual "doing" for this party until the night before.

Nobody tell Nicole. Not that she'd care. Unless of course she is reading this blog right now. In which case I am going to casually ease back into my original thought.

As I was saying without any break for side-thoughts, planning this shower was a whirlwind of driving throughout the greater Fresno area mixed with way-too-much late night brownie eating, all of which resulted in four delirious girls laughing way too much at things that would clearly not be as funny to people who got eight hours of shut eye.

We hunted for every yellow flower that could survive the August heat. We spent about 10 minutes contemplating whether the correct amount of limes for our centerpieces was 90 or 100. We slices and chopped and generally avoided destroying fruit and flowers as we made Martha Stewart-worthy centerpieces. And, we witnessed a 90's-era music, one-person dance party courtesy of a 60-year-old newlywed.

Not that I'll ever share such personal information with the blogosphere, of course.

All in all, planning the shower was fun, and I think everyone had a very nice time at it. Instead of worrying for months about a wedding, I worried for about 12 hours.

It was awesome.

The Wedding Dress Story

Here it is, in all it's glory:

Stephen and I had a long engagement, so I thankfully had lots of time to find The Perfect Wedding Dress--the one all gals seek.

And seek I did. I sought all over the place. After looking at, literally, thousands of dresses online over a period of several weeks, I found the one I had to have.

It was a Maggie Sottero dress with an A-line skirt, fitted lace bodice with crystal beading, empire-wait satin detail and three-quarter length sleeves.

I think this dress was made for me. It was everything I wanted. Which of course means that nothing was going to stand in my way of getting it. Nothing.

A local bridal shop carries Maggie Sottero so I called them up to see if they had the gown in stock. They said no, but that they could order it if I did decide I wanted to try it at no cost of obligation to me. Since I had a lot of time (read: like, a year and a half) before the wedding that sounded fine and dandy to me.

Life was pleasant for quite a while. I would regularly check the Maggie Sottero website, making sure my dress had a good night's rest, that it had enough to eat, and make small-talk with it.* I dreamed about trying on my dress soon, picking out the rest of my wedding ensemble, and generally looking like a princess. Because real princesses wear sleeves, you know.

My dream bubble popped one Friday morning. I followed through on my normal dress-checking routine when--gasp!--it was NOT on the Maggie Sottero site.

"It must be some mistake," I thought, trying to calm myself down. "I'll call the bridal store."

I explained (read: freaked-out) to the consultant my increasingly-stressful issue, and then waited on hold while the bridal shop called the Maggie Sottero warehouse. Those were the longest two minutes of my fashion life.

The consultant returned to my line: "That dress is being discontinued. Today is the last day to order it, by three o'clock."

I didn't know hearts could sink so quickly. Disappointment--then, irrational panic.*

"I'll call you back," I said. I had gone into crazy bride mode.

At the time, my mom and I worked together, so I called her up and asked if she could come over to my office. I explained to her the situation and how this dress was going to be gone FOR ALL TIME if I didn't order it within the next 4 hours. I would not have the option of trying the dress on. All I could do was head to the bridal shop, have them take my measurements, and hope that the dress fit and that I loved it when it arrived in a few months.

Oh, and I'd have to put half of the $850 the dress would cost down that day. Talk about impulse buying. It didn't matter; I wanted that dress.*

I see now that for my mom it must have been like trying to catch 10 pounds of mud with fishnet stockings. I was spewing so much babble, I was getting to the point of hysterics. I didn't think I was one of those people who would cry about a wedding dress, but having the possibility of this dress taken away FOR ALL TIME was putting me over the edge. She tried reassuring me that life would go on, that I'd find another dress, and that it was too much money for a dress I couldn't actually try on.

After much personal debate and more tears, I put a call into Stephen (who, by the way, is off training in Georgia at this time) to let him know that the dress that I loved (a dress, mind you, that he had no idea about, or interest in) was going to be lost FOR ALL TIME. He tried to console me just like my mom had. He foolishly said things like, "You'll find another one," or "You'll look beautiful in anything."

Poor guy. He was trying to talk sense to a woman flirting with insanity.

I decided lunch was in order. As I ate, I had a revelation (read: "crazy-person" revelation). I couldn't let the dress slip away. I couldn't give up; I just had to get creative.

My creative solution was to do what any whimpering, crazy bride would do in this situation.

Check eBay.

"Maybe, just maybe, the dress will be out there," I told myself. It was just madness at that point. "People sell things like that on eBay, right? Right? RIGHT?!"

Actually, they do. With my total long shot, I typed in the maker and name of the dress and a sample that another bridal shop was getting rid of came up. In great condition. In my size. In the right shade of white.* In my madness, I convinced myself that it was fashion destiny.

"BUT WHAT DOES IT COST?!," Crazy Jen thought to herself. "WHAT IS IT?!"

Ok, for those of you at home who like to play the guessing game, I'll give you a minute...

...

...

...

...

...

Got your guess? Good. Ok, here's the starting bid I saw:

$25.

This initiated full freak-out mode for me.* With a shipping cost of only $25, I thought "I can totally buy a dress for $50 bucks on eBay! If I don't love it, I won't feel like I lost hundreds of dollars, and if I DO love it, I will save a ton of money!"

I suddenly got serious, and shifted from Crazy Jen into Crazy Bidding Jen. I was very closely watching this auction. I had both a desktop and laptop open to the bid (you know, in case one froze or was slow). I basically refreshed the auction every seven minutes. I was on a mission. I was only 19 hours from The Perfect Wedding Dress. One person did try to outbid me once, but because I had pre-set my max bid to, like, $200, and because I was shopping with a vengeance, I was getting this dress. There was no way they were going to take it away from me. My precious.*

The next morning came, and I opened the auction page. There was about an hour left, and I was still the top bidder. I don't think I peed or brushed my teeth until the dress was mine, at which point a did a happy dance and ran to the restroom. The dress was going to be shipped to me within the next three days. Guess what? It was shipping from a shop in Atwater. Yeah.

In three days, it did arrive. And it. Was. Perfect. I seriously loved everything about it. It fit just as I imagined it would and I knew that this dress was going to be the one I got married in.

The kicker? The final cost of the dress, shipping included, was $77.56.

That's the story, now immortalized on the blog.





*Weddings make you crazy.

A Bridal Odyssey

I love dresses. No news here. In fact, I think I may have started another blog with this exact same sentence. Well, not quite.

Wow.

Anyway….This weekend I got to be around one of my favorite type of dresses—wedding gowns!!

I was asked by the wonderful ladies at Elegant Bride in Fresno to be a model for their show this weekend. The show was part of a huge bridal convention titled A Bridal Odyssey in Visalia.

And odyssey it was.

I drove down there in a half-stouper, hoping that someone would magically drop coffee through my moon roof. I had forgotten just how heavy my nuclear-bomb-resistant makeup case is, and trekking through muggy rain (in July!) didn’t start my day off great. I spent a lot of the day hanging around, not reading Jane Eyre, and convincing myself that it wasn’t doing me any favors to eat the complimentary doughnuts for the models.

We models then rehearsed by walking around in various patterns on the stable but shady-looking stage; I think seeing more seams in it than any of the wedding dresses we were going to wear makes anybody a little uneasy. After rehearsing, I spent a good portion of my morning creating the perfect hairdo that said, “I might look loose, but I’m rock solid. You should see how much hairspray is holding me together. You want to try a veil? Just try to get that headpiece out once you stick it in.”

Hair has a lot to say, apparently.

Overall, the show went really well, and you could tell the audience had a good time checking out all the gowns.

I think that when I was the engaged gal, full of excitement and endurance, I was able to make it through those bridal shows with a little bit more energy at the end of the day.*

Instead, I feel like I was run over by a Hummer limo driven by all of the angry grooms forced to the convention during the World Cup finale.

Perhaps it’s because my own wedding is already over and I’m burnt out on bridal stuff. Maybe it was the fact that, at 23 years old, I was the OLDEST model at that show**. Or, maybe I miss anticipating my own special day (with my wonderful now-husband), wearing my own wedding dress (which comes with a story so stupendous it merits its own post).

No matter the reason, I was glad to help out Elegant Bride, and to wear some gorgeous gowns. I don’t know what it was this weekend that made me so exhausted, but I hope I can get whatever it is out of my system so that they will ask me back.

To share in more complementary doughnuts, of course.


*This was my fourth or fifth show with Elegant Bride.

**I had forgotten what giggly high school girls were like. In case you have forgotten, too, it’s loud.

Adjusting My Gratitude

"Thank you."

It's a phrase that's becoming increasingly rare, both given and received.

I had planned for this post to talk about writing up thank you notes for the wedding gifts and cards that our family and friends had given us. I planned to complain about having to make plans to write up the notes, since making time for something like this seemed so stressful with the million other things I had to do. I planned to express my worry about not getting them out earlier. I planned to go a whole different direction with this post.

But then, I read something that changed my attitude.

I read one of Meredith's notes. Meredith, who is the writer we all aspire to be, wrote about her feelings on thank you notes in a recent Facebook Note (but because I didn't seek writer permission, I am not linking to it). But if you take my word for it, she brings up a pretty interesting point in a very amusing way.

In all, it made me think about gratitude in general, and how as a person I need to express a more grateful attitude. It certainly won't always need to be expressed by my sending a little note to others, but I think I need to make a better effort to express how truly thankful, and truly blessed, I am.

So, I'd like to say this: I apologize for the super lameness in not getting thank you notes out sooner. If you have given us anything, including a gift or card for our wedding, thank you. Please know that we appreciate everything that you have given to us. Really.

I hope to express it better from now on.

Dancing With Myself

Stephen and I were invited to a beautiful wedding this past Saturday to watch friends of ours begin their wonderful journey together. Lots of fun dancing and hanging out with family and friends. It was really neat to take part in a wedding so soon after we had just had our own special day.

Except that I had to go without my husband.

Stephen is away at his required two-week summer training for the National Guard in some camp/fort/base in/near Paso Robles.* He was really bummed that he had to miss the wedding. Worse, he’s really bummed that he had to leave at all, and so am I.

In the past, we have had periods of time—periods much longer than two weeks—apart, but this time just feels different. When he was in Iraq, every day that passed where we didn’t get a chance to talk (he was very busy) was another stress-filled, “Is everything OK?”–type of day. I definitely don’t want those days back, and I certainly don’t wish that stress on any other military girlfriends/wives. Now, when I don’t hear from Stephen one day, I know that it just means that he has (wisely) chosen to get some sleep (before he has to wake up at 4 a.m., again).

This two-week leave of absence is, of course, much less stressful, but it is still kinda difficult for us both. I don’t mean to be whiney. Being newlyweds, we are still getting used to enjoying the brand new experiences marriage brings (“What do you mean our PG&E payment was a week late?”). We are truly loving the opportunity to begin learning about each other as spouses, and beginning to work as a team. It just isn’t easy to do all of that if only one of you comes home every night.

We love each other, so any long term time apart is not preferential. We know we’re not the first to deal with the other being far away for any period of time. I am keeping myself busy, but what else should I do to keep from going crazy in my quiet apartment while I wait for Saturday?


*This is not a National Security decoy; I really just don’t know where he is.

P.S. Hi Hon! (Stephen occasionally has 3 minutes of personal time to skim through the latest blog)