The Cat and the Canary

It's eleven at night here on the Valdez farm.  Ashley is cooing and calling, rounding up the family menagerie.  She's managed to grab the attention, and the collar, of our partially-deaf elderly dog.  The spoiled, rotten, perpetually famished Fabio, princely cat of his domain, is sitting by the baby gate which separates the kitchen from the dining room.  Why, one might ask, is he not attempting to jump the thing, which he can easily accomplish with all the feline grace one would attribute to his species?  Because out of all the people in this house, Ashley is the ONE person who will lift his royal hiney-ness over the gate!  And he knows it.  So, he sits and waits.  Expecting.  Knowing.  Only with her.  Animals are uncanny in their knack for knowing their owners.

There seems to be a hair uprising of sorts going on around here.  Me with the bleached blond.  Both my girls now dyed black from their natural dark brown.  It was quite a sight, what with Sarah perched atop the counter top, spraying Ashley's tresses while she bent herself backward toward the sink.  That's a new approach I've not witnessed before tonight.  I wonder what the men have under THEIR caps?  Reverse mohawks?  Dreadlocks?  Perhaps scalp tattoos?  Speaking of which, mine is entered the itching phase.  This phase has made me particularly grateful that I did not decided to lay ink on, say, an entire arm or thigh or buttock.  What madness would follow such a decision?!

With all the goings-on and goings-away, my promise to stand with the bride in a renewal-of-vows wedding ceremony for a nice woman at our church just about escaped my radar screen.  I can't imagine what part of baking under the bright late-July sun in Middle-Tennessee in a lined satin gown with full makeup would cause me to forget such a thing.  Though the ladies of the South tend to glow in the summer months, I flat out sweat.  Every bridesmaid dress I own has rings around the armpits.  What I want to know is why can't someone have a nice cool WINTER wedding?!  A ceremony which requires, say, a light sweater to be worn about the shoulders.  While trying on gowns tonight, pleasantly surprised though I was to be informed that a size 6 fit far superior to the size 8, I tried to imagine how much deeper the espresso shade would turn when I marched down the aisle, prepping the audience for the bride.  I certainly don't want to detract from her moment with murmurs about the trickling brook running in my wake, splashing about her train!

You think I'm joking but I leave you with this memory from one of my wedding party escapades.  I'm in a deep purple dress, wearing Spanx and a special bra with cutlets to help my meager form fill out the upper reaches of this satin wonder.  (For you men not in the know, these are in a woman's arsenal for fending off all manner of physical imperfections.)  For this occasion, I am also required to sing.  The bride is my very close girlfriend, my oldest friend, the LG to my GL, the reason I tattooed my hip.  For her, I'll wax as melodic as a canary despite my nerves.  I'm not a performer.  But this won't be a performance.  It will be an act of love.  However, I'm perspiring to beat the band.  Under my arms, at my hairline, behind my knees, and about my girded loins.  In a gallant effort to reduce my anxiety, my husband grabs a wad of paper towels from a small room off to the side from the altar and drags me in.  Imagine the surprised faces of all involved when the gowned priest, emcee of the ceremonies, enters his chamber to find my husband kneeling on the floor in front of me, my gown gathered about my hips as he tends to the job of sopping up my sweat.  Sorry, father!  How many Hail, Mary's will THIS take?

The canary did, indeed, sweetly sing.  To his credit, the padre kept a straight face the entire time.