Why Are You Pointing Over There You Boobie?

Way back here I promised when I got over this I would post some more photos of Abby and Jorge’s wedding, filled with smiles and happy faces. Finally, at long last, after a ridiculous and embarrassingly long time, I am fulfilling my promise because I am unequivocally over it! (Click on any photo to make it larger--or not, some seem to work, some don't)

It took a while because I’m not now, nor have I ever been, very good at getting over things.  Especially things I am unable to control; because I like need to be in control.  And if something isn’t going right, I like need to fix it.  So when I couldn’t control or fix the lack of music during the wedding ceremony, my heart felt like it was a booby being smashed in between the two cold, hard metal slabs of a mammogram machine.  If you are a guy and are having difficulty relating to my metaphor, pretend you are Jack and you have just climbed up the beanstalk.  But because you drank a lot of coffee before you began your climb you need to relieve yourself.  You sneak around and find the giant’s bathroom, lift the lid to the toilet bowl which, because you are not a giant, is approximately level with your, uh, with John Thomas.  You are just beginning to feel some relief when the giant stumbles into the bathroom bellowing and rubbing his swollen eyes where the golden goose had whacked him with her wing.  Before you can run, he closes the lid on the toilet bowl and, of course, John Thomas.  And then he sits on it.  Get the picture?

 Unlike me, some people bounce back quickly from a heart squashing.  They're like one of those foam balls after it’s released from your fist – boing!   They come to work humming, wearing cotton pajama bottoms with big colorful flowers all over them, hiking boots on their feet, a bulky wool shirt buttoned incorrectly, feeling completely and totally at peace with their appearance.  They flow and bounce through life like a flea on a dog.  Every now and then, when they get scratched off, they just jump onto the next animal walking by.  

Others take a bit more time to get over it – like a slow filling balloon.  They are cautious but plucky people.  They try different hair colors but they have it colored professionally.  They bungee jump but they research the bungee company’s safety record first.  And when their hair falls out after one too many dye jobs, or they vomit on the bungee-jumper-watchers down below, even though they are embarrassed, they limit the time they dwell on those episodes to a day or possibly two.  Hair will grow back after all and vomit responds to soap and water.

And then there’s me.  I believe I could be considered gifted at a lot of vital tasks, like worrying, obsessing, sticky note writing, and list making.  I cannot, however, include getting over things in that list of talents.  For example, one hot summer night back in Nebraska, I was chasing fireflies in a neighbor’s garden with my little sister and when the police pulled up to investigate the “trespassers” I ran like hell for home while she stood there sniveling and scared.   Even now, every time I see a firefly my heart clenches and I am ashamed.  I should have at least screamed “run!” before I abandoned her.

It’s not that I don’t ever get over things without lengthy emotional torment.  I only fret for a short time that people will blame me for not maintaining my husband properly when his head grows wings because I can’t get him to sit down for ten consecutive minutes so I can buzz off those 27 wisps of hair.  Dean is Dean after all.  But when my heart is being gripped by wrenching emotional pain from, oh, I don’t know, a wedding ceremony with an idiot DJ who doesn’t play the music, and a nutso florist who neglects to bring the bouquets until it’s too late, it takes me a while to recover.

Anyway, back to my point.  My squished-heart feeling continued for way too long because I couldn’t (some might say wouldn’t) get over thinking I should have been able to magically make the music start and make bouquets magically appear.  But as I said, I did finally, absolutely, undeniably, get over it.  And do you know what got me to that point?  Do you?  Time and technology.  Yes, my pitiful aching heart has been released from the jaws of the booby squeezer and revived through spending hours and hours and hours with the technological wonders of Powerpoint. 

What? You didn’t know Powerpoint was an integral part of the treatment for Incapabiliosoreleasitis Syndrome?  Well it is.  I am living proof that it works.  Yup.  I think I’ll even market it – “Psychological Healing Through Powerpoint.”   One dose of creating a 39-minute, musically-enhanced  Powerpoint show of our trip to the Amazon, and of course, the wedding, was all I needed.   I recommend it to every other crazy mother out there suffering from post-wedding I Should Have/Why Didn’t I/ Where’s the DJ – Let Me At Him Disease.  I’m telling you, there is no more powerful drug than culling through 11,914 (yes, Icounted) digital photos, finding, downloading and learning to use programs to convert, trim and fade music, and then obsessively skillfully tweaking the slideshow until it’s perfect.   Well…as perfect as you can get it until your husband starts giving you the “you’re not really STILL working on that show are you?” look and you’re forced to stop.

After I watched and listened to that show 25 or 30 times my memories began to physically change.  I began to believe the DJ really did play the songs he had been told to play and Abby really did walk down the aisle to music.  And there really were bouquets and corsages and boutonnieres.  Somewhere around the 15^th hour of working on the wedding portion of the show I began to wonder why I’d wasted so much time anguishing about a wedding that was beautiful even without music.  Because when I got over it I remembered that a week before the wedding there had been an attempted coup and we weren’t even sure we would be able to come.  I had forgotten, until I got over it, that during that coup, I told Abby I didn’t care if there was music or cake or dinner or flowers.  The only thing I cared about was being there to watch her get married.  The only thing that would break my heart was if I wasn’t. 

Throughout the wedding ceremony, if I would have remembered what I’d said one short week earlier, I wouldn’t have needed to get over anything because the bride was beautiful, the groom was handsome, and the love was palpable.  They got married.  And we were there.  And that’s all that mattered.  And you know what?  Even though there weren’t bouquets and corsages and boutonnieres, we were surrounded by beauty.  And even though there wasn’t music, the vows we listened to were more moving and more eloquent than any song we might have heard.  And I know that now.  Because now …  I am over it.

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Why Are You Pointing Over There You Boobie?