Marriageness: The Beginning

We are now on the third morning of married life. I look at the clock - 5:59am. I jump out of bed, flipping on the lamp, exclaiming "OH MY GOD! I'm going to be late for work!" The Jim exercises his new rights as a husband by completely ignoring my freak-out and pulling my pillow over his head and going back to sleep. Smart boy. (My clock is set 10 minutes fast and it really only takes me about 15 minutes to get ready for work and about 45 to get to work. Therefore I had about 10 minutes of free time to properly freak out, frantically make breakfast, and search for my keys, earrings, and shoes all over the apartment.) I made it to work on time. (Jim is probably smiling in his sleep right now. He knows me very well indeed.)

On the way home from the Redmont on Sunday, Jim and I picked up She and Him (the new Zooey Deschanel & M.Ward record) and Broken Social Scene presents: Kevin Drew. I wish I'd had time to really listen to them. Instead, the Jim and I have spent the last two days either stretched out on the davenport watching old movies (The Thin Man, Auntie Mame, Vivian Leigh in Anna Karenina) or playing the Bed, Bath, & Beyond version of Supermarket Sweep courtesy of our multitude of gift cards! Hurrah!

Pictures! I know! Pictures to be posted of the ceremony and receptions! And of crazy, drunken Bocce Ball Bachelorette Party!!! Hurrah!

Looking Back - HFAGS Dec 2006

Hope For Agoldensummer will be playing at Workplay on Friday, May 16th with The White Oaks. Their latest album, Ariadne Thread, was released in late 2007.



Here's a short chachipiece from Dec 2006, brought along by Hope For Agoldensummer's previous album i bought a heart made of art in the deep, deep south.

Laying down the gun....

This morning as I mindlessly packed my little bag for work, I pulled the Hope For Agoldensummer album from the towering stack of cds sitting dangerously close to my bed and slipped it into the inside pocket. I had to bring it with me, because every time I've taken a moment to daydream in these last two days, every minute wonderfully wasted, I hear "Laying Down the Gun" and it has been building and building and building into a frenzied triumphant chorus.

I see my friend Sunni just as she sat on her couch Saturday night, leaning back with Ralph's steel guitar, pushing her golden hair out of her eyes and picking out the all of the tiptoeing, intricate loveliness of every line as we sang the harmonies high and whispered:

"It turns out, instead of blood you've got love songs traveling through your veins. What I found were all the words you ever sang tapped into the bones of your rib cage...."

I think of the first time I saw it performed live, upstairs at the Moonlight, the tense and burning energy turning around the stage. Deb Davis and her xylo. Will Taylor wavering from side to side, cello churning. Claire's eyes are closed. She's sitting straight and tall, her face turned up into the light as she's crying out:

"Instead of stopping our hearts, we play music because we're rock stars.
We come together and we work and we fall apart...."

I listen to the song again and again and it burns brighter every time.

"I play music because I'm in love with silence and sound. Just like a machine I picked my pen...."

And all of the sudden, it stops.

The Marry Mix/ Chronicles from the ER (on a Tuesday)

I've asked my cousin Brandon to play the music for the wedding. I've been going through my stacks of records trying to pick out songs...how can I narrow it down? Worse, how can I find some appropriate happy music, beautiful music that I love for the wedding? I've realized more and more as I've organized the last years worth of music lying at the foot of my bed just how dark my palate really is. Even the upbeat music tends to be about awful things, like a twist of Magnetic Fields or a ride on the roller coaster of an M. Ward record. M. Ward, with his dancey saloon songs so full of death and disappointment, afterthoughts and whimsically damaged dreams, always makes me happy.

I wish I could write Tiny Mix Tapes for some suggestions:

"Mark Kozelek couldn't play my wedding, the spring flowers made him cheerful."

*********************************************************************

Some guy just walked up to my desk with a baby and said "Hey! We just left the hospital and realized we took the wrong baby...so we thought we'd bring him back." He held out the baby and all of these thoughts started swirling through my head, my face froze and I stopped. "Nahhh Girl. Just kidding! Got you! Got you! Where's the food court?" His family walked up behind him as I slowly pointed the way and they all started laughing.

mothers day and other halves

My mother got some Neutrogena products, a loofah, some chocolate, and a song.



I sang with her church choir. Actually, I should say that it's my father's choir, since he is the music minister. I'm not much of a church person, even though I come from a long line of missionaries and fire-and-brimstone Southern Baptist preachers, so it meant a great deal that I came (on time) and sang, standing next to my father and near to my mother on that small stage.

Mother. We went shopping, which is usually a quite life-threatening experience, and somehow through the eyelet sleeves and teal blue linen carnage we both survived.

I have to say that I suspect she might have become a Feist fan through the weekend. SHe had to listen to the record three or four times as we drove from store to store and around and around looking for parking spaces. I think I saw her nod her head a few times to the beat, though I'm not sure. She may have just been popping her jaw (she has a history of TMJ). She is definately not a fan of Broken Social Scene although I know that she does enjoy the better part of Jason Collett's "Idol's of Exile".

She tends to scoff a bit at the music I love, at least when we're in public. To her, pretty much all of it is noise. She spends her driving days listening to the sweet sounds of the Brothers Cazimero or to the soundtrack of the 1987 original Broadway production of Les Miserables. Because of her, I know every single word of that musical. Every single word, every note, every stage direction...

Because of her, I also know every word to Lewis Carroll's the Jabberwocky. This talent has come in handy many times over the course of my life, as you can imagine. Very popular with Jim. Also performed at random during parties where much alcohol has been consumed (it is to be understood that this has not happened for some time).

Thursday, Jim and I will run away to the Great Metropolis of Columbiana to get the marriage license. That's so crazy. That's so awesome. And also, Jim tells me that I must change my name...to Sikahip Eel Semaj, which is such a strange name that I don't quite understand. I guess I'll just have to get used to it. Oh. I just got it. It's his name spelled backwards. Nice. It's Monday. I'm a little slow.

Look what I made on Craft Night!

Shut up! I know. The wedding is two weeks away! Merrilee said it would be a great idea to make a little Jim puppet and have them exchange vows later on at the reception. Yes, the reception at the bottletree that I've not even sent invites out for...I'm so behind. Shut up. You won't mind a finger puppet making booth next to the half eaten wedding cake will you? Super.



I can't stop listening to this: