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Lady_Luthien120
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Name: Renee
Gender: Female
Interests: Writing, reading books, studying the Middle East, painting Russian Orthodox Icons, singing in the Oratorio Choir on campus
Expertise: *Literature, particularly twentieth century
*Gender studies
Occupation: Student
Industry: Art
Message: message me
Member Since:
10/22/2004
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| Back over Memorial Day when we went to see my parents, the issue of what to do with my wedding dress came up. I've been thinking a lot, and I'm probably going to have it cleaned, and then send it to "Brides Against Breast Cancer", which is a very cool organization that helps grant the final wishes of women battling metastatic breast cancer (kind of like the "Make-A-Wish" foundation for adult women with this cancer). The fact is, I considered having the dress cleaned and preserved and stored away, but I realized after a while that it will probably never come out of the box again. There's no reason I'd wear it, and even if I have a daughter someday, I doubt she'll want to wear it. Most brides these days want to choose their own gown, not to mention that there's always the body-type issue. My mother and I are the same height, but wholly different "types" (I have a longer torso and much shorter legs). There is, of course, the sentimental value, but I have many very beautiful pictures of the dress that take up much less space.
However, since I knew that this was more than likely "it", I tried on the dress one last time. It actually fits better now than it did on my wedding day. Josh and my parents grabbed the camera, and I decided that I'd do one final thing - some outdoor pictures. At the wedding, our fantastic photographer would have been happy to take outdoor shots, but that day it was hot, and let me tell you, that dress is heavy! Not to mention there were no places right beside the church to take the photos, so I would have had to get in a vehicle and stand in the heat, not to mention the dangers of mud and my own penchant for getting stains on clothing (I've managed to terminally stain dark colored clothing - not to mention white). Josh and I decided it just wasn't going to work out and we opted not to do that. But, three years later, it didn't matter as much so I went for it!
There are several others I like, but here is my favorite. I'm going to try playing around with all the shots in the photo editing software to get all the light perfect.
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| Well, we've made it to three years of marriage as of Wednesday! I'm pretty excited about that. In the grand scheme of things, it's not all that long (especially when you take into consideration that both of our sets of parents are at 25+ years and all of our grandparents made it to 50+), but have to start somewhere on all those years!
It helps that I'm blessed with one of the most wonderful husbands in the entire world and I'm so happy to be married to him.
For our anniversary, we pretty much hung out at the house. My wonderful in-laws stopped by to take us out for ice-cream (yum) and that was a lot of fun hanging out and talking with them.
Josh made me something very special as a gift. Since we've been married, my recipes have been on scraps of paper haphazardly shoved into our mail organizer by the kitchen, some handwritten with shorthand directions, others printed off the computer. Josh made me a recipe box, which we'll paint to match my dishes, and typed the entire disaster of recipes onto cards to put in the box! I'm very excited about that! Now I'll be able to find things and read them! I know it took him a lot of work to cut, glue, and put wood screws in place to make the box, and I'll treasure it!
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| Okay, so this morning I was reading news and such and chanced across an article about "bridesmaid prenups". What?! I read the article, which stated that now some brides are making their prospective bridesmaids sign contracts that the bridesmaid will not gain weight, will take good care of their hair and skin, will not intentionally get pregnant, will not change their hairstyle/cut their hair without the bride's approval, will not make "improper advances" towards male guests at the reception, and will basically do everything the bride tells them to without complaining. Wow. And here, silly me, I thought weddings were about celebrating a huge commitment with God, family and close friends - not about "perfection". I understand that brides do want certain dresses and such, and there are some definite responsibilities to being a bridesmaid, but real friends talk those differences over nicely. To ask someone sign a legally binding contract to lose weight or not get pregnant is just ridiculous and sad. I didn't even know a contract like that would be possible or legally enforceable!
All I can say is that I am so incredibly blessed with amazing friends who honored me greatly by asking me to stand up with them at their weddings and never would even for a moment have considered such a thing as a "bridesmaid prenup".
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| This weekend we went on our annual camping trip with our friends from college, Joel and Julie. It was our first time not camping in Michigan, but since they had moved, we decided to camp out on the banks of the Mississippi River and do some hiking and biking in the Iowa state parks.
Well, it started out with us getting off to a late start. We finally got the bikes loaded and got on the road. It took us an hour longer to actually get to the park than we'd thought originally. At long last, we finally got there and found that Joel was out trying to get us some firewood. We went ahead and unloaded, set up the tent, and took the bikes off the back of the car. This was when we discovered that our bike carrier was poorly engineered and had put a nice, small pair of dents in our trunk! Frustrating, but not fatal.
Joel managed to find wood after visiting three stores in Muscatine and we all settled into our camping chairs to enjoy a nice, quiet evening. As it got a little cooler, we started trying to light a fire. No dice. The wood, as it turned out, was pretty green. Fortunately, we had nice neighbors that offered us some Tiki oil to put on the wood. Even then, we couldn't get the fire really blazing until the nice neighbors brought us some very dry 2X6 pieces that finally helped catch the other wood. We set up the other wood around the fire to dry, and settled in again to start the evening relaxation.
At this point, we received a visit from the rangers. It turns out that there is a stupid rule in Iowa that there can only be one "camping unit" per site. This meant we could only have one tent instead of the two we'd planned on. Of course, they couldn't have come during the daylight - no, only when it was pitch black. Somehow we'd not realized that this was the rule (in Michigan, it goes by number of people). The rangers were really not very nice about it at all. So we took down Josh's and my tent, which meant we had to cram 4 adults into one smallish tent, and couldn't fit the air mattresses in. This meant sleeping on hard ground.
We all got through the night, and went to start breakfast in the morning. Joel's propane tank was having issues, so the camp stove didn't want to work. After waiting over a half hour for hot water for coffee, we decided to start a fire with our now dry wood and flip the grill over and cook over the open fire. This was one of the notable successes of the weekend. We enjoyed a delicious breakfast of bacon and eggs cooked over the fire.
After that, it was time for hiking and biking! We decided that three of us would ride bikes to the state park 6 miles down the road, and one of us would drive the car so we could take the cooler with picnic supplies. Joel took the car, and Josh, Julie, and I started riding. We got about a mile out and then there was the funny noise - a kind of "ping" followed by a loud "bang"! Julie's front tire had blown out! We got off the road, and Josh rode back to camp to get a cell phone. Unfortunately, Joel had no reception. So Josh rode the 5 miles to the state park we were going to and got Joel with the car and the bike rack. We walked around, looked at an old grist mill, had lunch, and had a good time. After that, we rode a little way further and found a hiking trail. That was beautiful - some lovely sandstone formations and we went wading in a small creek.
We finished up with the hike and it was decided that Joel and I would take the bikes and ride back to camp. We were at the top of the hill. We rode down, and got about a half a mile back to the mill where there was another parking lot where Julie and Josh were waiting just to make sure before starting the 6 miles back to camp. That was when we heard the thunder...it had been perfectly sunny and beautiful when we'd started down the hill. Joel and I took shelter under a picnic shelter while Josh and Julie went to take the dead bike back to camp, since we didn't have enough room on the rack for the bikes Joel and I were riding. They'd just driven off when the sky got really ugly and the rangers came by yelling "There's a tornado warning, and it's headed straight for us here! Take shelter". Well, it's an open park, no shelter in sight! I'm about ready to start panicking, and they told us to get to some bathrooms and get down as best we can. It was definitely one of those times where I was going "Oh, dear Lord, don't let us die, please, please, please!"
We stood in the bathroom with about 12 other people and three very wet dogs until the storm passed (thankfully, no tornado). When we got back to the campsite, everything was blown around and completely and utterly soaked. Thankfully our nice camping neighbors had gotten our chairs under a tarp before the storm hit so they weren't wet, and we had some big tubs that our camping stuff goes in. The neighbors were locals from Muscatine, so they gave us some hotel recommendations, and we decided it was time to decamp.
At this point, our bike carrier was totally defunct, so we drove around Muscatine for about a half hour trying to get another one, before the kind people at Farm and Fleet managed to get us a number for a Dunham's a half hour away in Davenport that we could try for a bike carrier. Josh went to Davenport, Joel and I went to find a hotel, and Julie guarded the campsite and dried things out. We finally wound up at the Holiday Inn, picked up Julie, and Josh got back. We all took showers (Josh and Julie in particular were soaked, and all of us were muddy) ordered pizza, played games, and hung out in the hot tub in the lobby. It was nice. It was also a good thing that we decamped to the hotel, because it rained all this morning too. We were glad we weren't trying to pack in that!
So that was the eventful weekend...
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| I got to vote in the state primary yesterday, which was exciting. Normally, the primary comes way too late to be of any real value and the candidates have long been chosen. I've also gotten a kick out of watching the national news refer to Indiana as a "big" primary, or a "key" state. To the best of my knowledge, up until now, Indiana has pretty much never been a "key" state. It's a state with a small population that largely goes Republican in the presidential race. The state doesn't get visits from presidents or presidential candidates often, gets very little national advertising, and mostly get ignored. All of a sudden, we had wall-to-wall Obama or Clinton commercials, visits from candidates, and actual attention! It's kind of like some sort of alternate universe.
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