A little ditty about wedding songs

I had a wedding song before I met Joe.

It was a ditty by a girl on a guitar. Burned onto a mixed CD given to me by my old friend Sarah, whose imaginary cowboy this blog is named after.

I wasn't even sure who sang the song, or what it was titled, until my friend Ricci and I listened to it on repeat one afternoon in my Sarasota cracker shack, and Ricci went home, Googled the lyrics and discovered it was by Rosie Thomas and that the title was Wedding Day.

So much for love

Guess I've been wrong

But it's all right

Cuz I'm moving on

I've got my car all packed with cassette tapes
And sweaters and loose change and cheap cigarettes

The lyrics were neither romantic, nor bitter, somewhere in between Jewel and Alanis Morissette, which suited me just fine from 2005 to 2007.

I was single then. Somewhere in between grounded and orbiting space.

Working in a marble yard. Trying to write a novel. Living in a 1920s bungalow with exposed rafters and no air conditioning. No television. No wireless Internet. Just a black laptop computer that no longer held a charge, that was given to me by my best friend Ro in exchange for one roundtrip airplane ticket from Buffalo to Tampa.

It had been her computer when she was in college. My friend Troy called it my Carrie Bradshaw laptop. Having never seen Sex and the City, I had no idea Carrie Bradshaw had a laptop, much less the fact that it was, according to Troy, a big black one with loud keys.

But I thought it was pretty rad that when I was single I owned a Sex and the City prop, a chic accessory for a girl from the sticks.

I'm gonna drive through the hills
With my hand out the window
And sing 'til I run out of words
I'm gonna stop at every truck stop
Make small talk with waiters and truck driving men
I'm gonna fall asleep in the back seat
With no one around but me and my friends
It's gonna be so grand
It's gonna be just like my wedding day

Ricci and I hung on every word of that song. Blasted it when we'd drive from my bungalow to the public pool to swim laps. Loved that we didn't need boyfriends to have a wedding song. Loved that the lyrics evoked a sense of bliss some girls only experienced on their wedding days.

I'm gonna stop at every bar
and flirt with the cowboys in front of their girlfriends

Obviously, eventually, we got boyfriends.

Consequently, but not on purpose, we stopped listening to Wedding Day. It wasn't that we were making egg souffle for our boyfriends while whistling Dixie. It's just that in general, we spent a little less time together, a little less time driving to the pool to swim laps, a little less time pedaling our bikes, a little less time thinking this song would be our one and only wedding song.

I've had enough of love
It feels good to give up
So good to be good to myself
I'm gonna get on the highway with no destination
And plenty of vision in mind
And I'm gonna drive to the ocean
Go skinny dipping
Blow kisses to venus and mars

When Joe and I got engaged this fall, we didn't start discussing wedding details until months after the Question Had Been Popped. When we got on the subject of wedding songs it seemed neither of us had any one song in mind, so I suggested Etta James' At Last, not realizing Beyonce had recorded a version of it for her role in Cadillac Records, also not realizing the Obamas would dance to it five million times the night of the inauguration.

Recently, I interviewed Bobby Vinton, the 1960s crooner responsible for such wicked ballads as, Blue Velvet, Roses are Red (My Love), I Love How You Love Me, Mr. Lonely, and the 1970s Polish love polka, My Melody of Love.

I did my fair share of Internet research before meeting Vinton, downloading corky love songs my Nana probably loves, leaving Joe voice mail messages to the tune of Blue Velvet. The innocent schmaltz had kind of grown on me – and not in an ironic hipster way.

I started thinking: what kind of love song best describes me and Joe, the couple?

After I left my sunglasses at Bobby Vinton's beach estate, I figured we had to go with a Vinton ballad. It lends itself to a good story and I'll be damned if I pass up a good story, even if I have to dance to a Polish love polka on my wedding night. Besides, Joe digs the fact that Ray Liotta and Lorraine Bracco dance to Roses are Red in Goodfellas.

I'm gonna drive under skyline and sunshine
Drink good wine in vineyards
And get asked to dance
I'm gonna be carefree and let nothing pass me by
Never ever again

This song was my wedding song when I was single. It was appropriate. I could relate to it. I could belt it out in cars. I could be single to it.

What I need now is a song I can be married to.

--

PS. The picture was taken in the first two months of our relationship. We were staying at a hotel in Fort Lauderdale and we had just gotten out of bed. I remember thinking at the moment, I'm happy just watching this man put his contacts in.

PPS. For more on Rosie Thomas.

Residual fireworks.

On the 6th of July I remembered four things:

I remembered the first time I tried to swim without arm floats. How the water felt like pudding and my arms felt like whisks. I was five years old and treading chlorinated water in a concrete pool in Myrtle Beach. How I prayed, even though I didn't believe in Jesus, that my father would pluck me from the water and set me back on dry land. How I regretted instantly thinking I could make it on my own to the water slide, which was the color of a robin's egg. How when my father grabbed me from the deep end it was with one hairy arm. How water ran out my nose and burned my throat when I coughed. How I was scared of the water for three days after that.

I remembered a railroad tie, a broken pier jutting into cold Lake Erie on the shores of Crystal Beach, Canada, where I stayed with my best friend Sarah's family. How Sarah's family always rented a ramshackle beach house in a ramshackle beach community that profited from an amusement park that closed in 1989 that everyone including my parents and grandparents used to go to. How my mother told me she rode The Comet coaster when she was pregnant with me. How every time I looked at that ghostly roller coaster from the end of that jagged pier I used to squint at it, frozen in time, frozen seven years after my birth, frozen before I had a chance to ride it, and imagine my mother with her red feathered hair, riding it pregnant with me. How when Sarah and I jumped from that jagged pier we'd hold hands and curl our toes just in case we landed on rocks when we hit the water.

I remembered the smell of model airplane fuel. The sweet sticky smell of model airplane fuel. How my father kept it in little bottles on his work bench in the basement. How the bottles were tiny because model airplanes don't require much fuel. How the fuel was the color of pink lemonade and the bottles were shaped like old lady face potions. How next to the fuel there was model airplane resin, that in its powder form was softer than baby talcum and whiter than sugar. How I loved to sift my hands through it. How I loved that my dad had stuff like this in our basement. Jars with skull and crossbones symbols on them. How in school they told us to stay away from stuff like that, those pale pink potions that powered fiberglass Nazi warplanes.

I remembered eating vanilla pudding pops in the summer. How we used to buy them from Crances Superette from a woman named Mary who worked behind the counter. How Mary hung a yellow fly strip by the milk freezer. How she had short brown hair that looked like a winter cap. How she lived in the apartment upstairs and had big round glasses and a sad wistful smile.
...


PS. The picture above was taken July 4 in Sarasota's Bayfront Park.

Dreamy for broken-down ferris wheels.

Hi.

I'm getting ready for bed, which is ironic given I'm starting this thing to devote my clear-headed awakened-ness to writing again in the wee morning hours before Joe wakes up. (9 a.m. - 11 a.m.) And though this is a weekend blog and not a Thursday night blog, tonight is a test. Tonight I introduce myself.

I'm not a fan of the word blog by the way. I think it's one of the more annoying words we say. Right up there with caucus and David Petraeus. So lets call this something else. Something a little more lyrical or sarcastic or poetic or plucky. Joe has a composition book he keeps track of all his finances in. A true composition notebook - the white and black kind teachers made us buy in elementary school. Joe has one of these that he's outlined all his finances in. He drew a calendar inside with the months of the year broken into boxes big enough to log his daily expenditures and incomes. And in each day he's alloted himself money for various things according to his budget. In the space where a student might write his name. ("This book belongs to ...") Joe wrote "2008 Financial Ledger."

After Heath Ledger died I crossed out the word financial and scribbled in Heath's name. So now we call the composition notebook The Heath. As in: "Do you want to do Chinese take-out tonight?" "I don't know. Will The Heath allow it?" Or: "We can go to Radiohead next month! I'm $200 over in The Heath."

I think it's a loving tribute to Ledger.

I tried to make a Heath. It didn't work. I lost interest in the organization. But I really want one. So in honor of Heath, Joe and my unborn novel I'm going to call this my Lance. Here's why:

I have a good friend named Sarah who still lives in my hometown in Western New York. When we were in high school Sarah used to fantasize about running away with a cowboy named Lance as many country girls are inclined to do. (Except me. Cowboys are fine, I just like nerdy writer types better.) I, unlike Sarah, fantasized about running away with a book. Camping out in the woods Thoreau-style and writing from sunup to sundown, oblivious to mosquito bites and societal norms.

So this my Lance.

And I've got to go. I'm reading the best book. It's called "The God of Animals" by Aryn Kyle. And it's amazing.

PS. The picture above is of a ferris wheel I waited too long to ride. Let this be a warning to those of you who wait to ride ferris wheels. ("Oh lets go get cotton candy first." Or: "The Whack-A-Mole line is shorter.") Ferris wheels break down. Sad but true. So ride them before they do. And if you happen to be on one when it does go kaput, count yourself the limelight-loving storyteller of the evening when you tell your friends and family how your life (and several carnies) flashed before your eyes as you waited to come down. I can only imagine the kind of creative brainstorming that comes on like a nausea when you're stuck on a broken-down ferris wheel.