How my wedding was like The Rocky Horror Picture Show

No, not the outfits!

Well, maybe.

Happy wedding couple with smiling officiant

We got all the colors?! Yay!

Initially, I was thinking about the Time Warp factor.

For many months, I’d known I was going to take two solid weeks off in mid-October to host family and friends from out of town, do the nuptial deed itself, and spend a handful of days chilling out in Canada on our honeymoon. All of which I did and enjoyed! However, I did not expect that also:

  • My fiance would get his right pinky finger shattered by a blindly-opened car door while riding his bike a week before the wedding; that we’d spend half that day in the emergency room and another whole day at a surgery center on the other side of NYC; or that we’d have to employ two friends with sewing skills to modify his dress shirt and suit jacket so he could fit into them on our wedding day.
  • My Gay of Honor—who was slated to do my hair and help us with about 1,000 other things—would burn the crap out of his left hand (and of course he’s a lefty) while making dinner the night before flying into NYC to stay with us.
  • The kind soul who offered to ferry our wedding clothes to the venue would unknowingly drop Arthur’s suit pants off their hanger, and no one would notice until approximately an hour before photos were to start being taken, and Arthur would wind up getting married in a pair of Uniqlo jeans.

So I guess all of that accounts for some of the time-suck. But how did I not write a blog post for a whole month? How have my first few days back to work flown much faster than usual, even though I’m still ramping back up to full work capacity? How is it that one day, I’m eating delicious maple cookie ice cream in sunny Montreal, and the next, I’m warming up leftover green beans in my kitchen in rainy Brooklyn??

Clearly, we’ve been busy. But I do think there’s also a psychic time-warp element to this experience… Perhaps not unlike the one portrayed in The Rocky Horror Picture Show??

Rocky Horror Picture Show time warp

With a bit of a mind flip / You’re into a time slip / And nothing can ever be the same!

Indeed, as the song goes, I have felt “spaced out on sensation” for much of the past four weeks—which I suppose is kind of the point. While it’s been a little disorienting coming back to normal life and work, it was a very worthwhile and gratifying experience to plan, execute, and now come down from such a ginormous, once-in-a-lifetime affair. I know I’ll be drawing on it in a myriad of ways for many moons to come. Especially after reality sets in and I’m fully able to believe it wasn’t all a dream.

***

p.s. I owe a hat tip to the aforementioned Gay of Honor, who brought Rocky Horror to my attention back in high school, and who recently attended a live screening in our native Colorado looking like about a trillion dollars in this homemade Madonna getup:

noah-as-madonna

Go, babe!!

 

That fresh “new client” smell

I’ve long been a fan of homesharing upstarts Airbnb. Since 2010, I’ve been renting my place out to fabulous people—packs of Mormon girls from Florida, film students from Korea, and gap year couples from Australia—whenever I go out of town for a spell. And for almost as long, I’ve booked my own one-of-a-kind getaways from Iceland to Budapest to upstate New York using the site. Win-win!

AirBnB host Oliver Aguilar at his home in the Uptown neighborhood of Chicago, IL. May 9, 2016. Photographer: Christopher Dilts / AirBnB

This is Oliver. More about him in a moment. (Photo credit: Christopher Dilts for Airbnb)

As a lifelong hippie, I immediately appreciated the business’s founding premises of extending hospitality to those we don’t yet know, and a waste not/want not approach to space and resources. And as a lifelong Frugal Fannie, I also immediately appreciated the extra income I got from renting.

So you have to imagine I was pretty stoked to start writing for Airbnb recently. They’re growing like crazy, and wanted an extra hand to help publicize the many events they throw and shout their hosts’ stories from the rooftops.

Writing my first few pieces for the site was super fun and brought me back to a basic truth about what I do: attending events, talking with people, and then summarizing the experience in words is one of my very favorite kinds of writing. It’s one of my very favorite things to do, period!

In the past couple of years, my freelance work has taken many directions: narrative writing like this, copywriting for websites, editing papers and reports… I’ve liked it all, but my work with Airbnb has helped illuminate for me that I want to prioritize this kind of people-and-place-based work most of all. It’s entertaining, it’s educational, it’s tactile. And it’s often the easiest type of work I do; the writing and editing usually flows the smoothest. That probably says something in itself.

So thanks, Airbnb, for this breath of fresh editorial air. And thanks to all my fellow hosts—like Oliver, Hans, and Seamus—for being so darn friendly, and so very photogenic!

I laughed, I cried: The Holidays 2015

Lots of laughs and a few tears—of happiness!—this holiday season.

We started off in the Pocono Mountains, on a tour of its famed, fading Honeymoon Hotels.

Initially, we’d picked this particular excursion for its renowned tackiness and kitsch—and there was plenty of that!—but we did also find ourselves drinking a bit of the kool-aid. These are “couples-only” resorts, so there are no kids around; it’s also not a desperation-dusted singles scene. We’d never participated in this exact type of scenario before, but by day two, we were feeling its effects, mostly characterized by an intoxicating influx of relaxation.

Evidently, the air was so thick with romance that we lost our senses and (ready?) got engaged! Mr. Sock Monkey is holding the place of honor until further notice.

Sock Monkey

Dramatic reenactment

Before departing, we were able to see some of Pennsylvania’s many other points of interest:

Then it was off to Charleston, where we met Arthur’s family and our friends Danielle and Ryan for a festive few days of swamp-traipsing, firework-exploding, and remembering to mash the garage door button.

Oh, to make this writing-related (and because it’s so cool), I’ll add here that the aforementioned Danielle is a fabulous writer and writing teacher; we met as fellow students in Emerson College’s creative writing program. Last year, Danielle was anthologized in The Best American Poetry 2015, edited by huge-wigs David Lehman and Sherman Alexie. Holla!! She was also just today published in the wonderful On Being blog. Love you, Dani!

I’m quite sure I’ll be writing about more of Danielle’s superhuman accomplishments in the year ahead, as well as about regional travel, cool families, notable signage, and mycelium. Looking forward to all.

Here’s looking at you, 2015! You will live long on my Flickr page and in my spiral-bound journal. And a big hello to 2016 and all the opportunities for obsessive documentation you are sure to bring.

Brokelyn makin’ me feel like a genius

I never thought my cheap homemade lunches were much to write home about (though I would occasionally write home about them when I thought my mom would be particularly proud).

In fact, though some of my office coworkers over the years commented on my consistency and… uniqueness, would I periodically take heat from colleagues who turned their noses up at such frugality, and wondered why I would spend time assembling lunch at home when a world of delis waited right downstairs.

Well, guys, Mama’s finally getting her due!

Mmm! Cheap!

Mmm! Cheap!

I pitched the idea of my $2.50/day lunches (and how they’ve saved me $14K in the past decade) to Brokelyn, and when they bit, I felt real validated. See, it was a great idea after all!

Learn how to manifest this life-affirming meal choice for yourself here, and check out some of my other stories about good cheap things here.

Got any cheap tricks I should know about?

The opposite of “Movin’ Out”

Though I can’t claim to be a dyed-in-the-wool Billy Joel fan like Celeste Hamilton Dennis (and I actualIy just moved in with my boyfriend), I couldn’t help but be reminded of that famous tune about cohabitation as I schlepped box after box around my old apartment, then out of it, then into a new one last weekend.

Boy am I tired of looking at boxes (though not at my man, so that’s good).

But at this point there are just a few more coats to hang on hooks and a few more books to line up on shelves and then we’ll have a wonderful, livable new nest.

And then I can get back to typing…

Getting there

Almost there