I am going to my happy place. I am walking on a beach in Barcelona. There are parrots in the trees. No one is punching me in the face. My head doesn't hurt. I don't require 12-14 hours of sleep. I have not made a doctor's appointment for next week, even though the doctor will only tell me to take some aspirin and not get into any more fist fights ( Read more... )

Waking up early means that we can take day trips. J and I take the high-speed train to from Madrid to Toledo, which is about an hour away. Toledo has Roman walls and Moorish gates and winding little medieval streets, so narrow that I can spread my arms and touch parallel buildings with my fingertips. We gnaw on churros and hike uphill to the top of ( Read more... )

I got married. I've been married for weeks now, since August 8th. I don't know why I can write pages about a day trip to the aquarium, or surveys of Russian cultural history, or the difficulty of finding just the right pair of stripy tights, but I can't seem to write more than a sentence about my wedding ( Read more... )

At this moment, I am wearing the very last size six Betsey Johnson raven dress available in the United States. That's not entirely correct - it is no longer available because I own it. This dress which was not available from the website, which was not in the warehouse, which was not in the inventory of any Betsey Johnson store in the country, which ( Read more... )

I was so proud of myself. I was going to be a reasonable bride. I was going to be that down-to-earth creature that smiled patiently while other people described their out-of-the-way locations, or the cost of booking a church, or complained about their fiancee's numerous relatives. J and I sensibly divided the event into three parts ( Read more... )

If you are not at all interested in the internal workings of weddings, look away now. There is nothing for you to read here. It turns out that some brides like to keep all of the wedding details secret, so that the Big Day (they all call it the Big Day, like they're planning to storm the beaches of Normandy) will fill their guests with shock and ( Read more... )

For as long as I can remember, I have generally been opposed to marriage. I may have said some things to that effect, once or twice. Some of those things may have sounded a little harsh. I may, for example, have told my friends that I would gladly come to their first wedding. I might have mentioned that marriage is the leading cause of divorce. At ( Read more... )