So busy-busy.

I got married almost two weeks ago.  I panicked in the last couple weeks about whether I was going to get that dress as decorated as I wanted it and I recruited some belly dance friends to help me bead and sequin it. So I had two ladies give up several evening for me. We were all, at this time, also getting ready for our big summer dance performances to start 11 days after the wedding, and one of them is getting married at the end of this summer as well. She had to fly out to the east coast to do a bunch of things with her fiancé’s family, but she came over the night before they flew out saying she could stay up as late as I needed her and she’d just sleep on the plane the next day. And she got back into town the Tuesday before the wedding, so she came over and spent all Wednesday beading and putting together wedding favours for me.

I had decided a long time ago that I was going to dance at Diefenbaker Park for Canada day like I have for the last two years, wedding day be damned. But, of course, the morning of, I was like, “why did I think I could do this? I could be at home sewing. Or relaxing.”

I always do this ‘oh babies are no big deal, I will write a book during my maternity leave,’ ‘oh weddings are no big deal, I will do a dance performance on the afternoon of my wedding day.’ I think, honestly, that I have a very low stress threshold and that this has shaped my behaviour by causing me to choose activities based not on what I think I can handle, but based on how I would feel about it afterward. I mean, if I asked, “do I think I can handle a dance performance on my wedding day?” The answer would be no. But if I asked, “do I think I can handle performing dance?” The answer would be no. If I asked, “do I think I could handle a wedding day?” The answer would be no. And yet I manage to get through these things. And while the intensity of doing is sometimes intolerable, the enjoyment comes in the stories I have amassed. Therefore, I will commit to just about anything if I think it will make a good story and I tend to discount stress as a reason to not do something.

Anyhow, the day really went well. The kids were amazingly behaved the whole time.

I think one of my favourite parts of the day was Ethan. When I was panicking at the house trying to make sure we’d got together everything we needed to bring to the boat, I said, “what else do we need?” And Ethan said, “our fancy clothes.” Which amazed me, because he’d been so resistant to my buying him slacks and a white shirt which he didn’t want to wear. But he brought it up and he gamely went and got ready when I told him to. He and Rachel spent much of the day telling me how pretty I looked.

After photos and supper we went to hang out at the Mendel Art Gallery. I got out of the car and looked at the lawn and said, “I can’t walk across that without my heels sinking into the ground, so I’m going to take the paved, long way around.” Ethan said, “I’ll walk with you.” And we started out.

“You might regret that,” I joked as my hemline got snagged on my shoe’s rhinestones and I stopped to disentangle myself for the 815th time. “I’m moving pretty slowly.”

“That’s okay,” he smiled at me, “It just means I get to spend more time with you.”

After the Mendel, Ian and I went down to run decorations onto the boat. The river was so high that the dock was pitched at a steep angle from where it was moored to the concrete launch up to the boat at water-level. Coming back down from the boat, Ethan was beside me and I said, “hey lend me a hand so I don’t put my heel into these gaps between the boards,” so he held out a hand and walked me carefully down the dock. When we got close to the railing, he said, “you better take this railing, it’s steadier than my hand,” and then he ran ahead to open the gate for me.

Too sweet.

The next morning, when Ian got Hannah up, she said, “are we going to go to the boat and get married again?”