the squibix family blog

Thursday:
11am: Dan and Leah leave their Bedford home an hour later than planned, because of increased necessity of hugging the Rascal puppy an additional million billion times. I canít leave my BABY!!!! The fear of still being home when the dog walkers arrived spurred us onward, however.
5:30pm: We arrive in Ithaca, after about a thousand are-we-there-yets from Leah, who thinks when youíve seen a hundred rolling hills youíve seen enough rolling hills, especially when thereís a delicious dinner waiting at the end. We finally arrive to Danís aunt and uncleís house where we will be staying, a beautiful new home bordering the Cornell golf course, and featuring our guest room of two twin beds with mattresses about eleven feet off the ground. You know, Donna Reed sexy. We wash up and head over to Moosewoods, the vegetarian restaurant that Dan has been telling me about since he graduated from college. I am so excited about eating that I am jumping in my seat.
6:00: We eat the BEST DINNER EVAR!!!1 and I am so gushing to the waitress that Dan is embarrassed. The waitress, for her part, instantly pegs me as a dieter when I ask if the lemonade has sugar added. She automatically puts my salad dressing in a container on the side, and offers me cold-fruit-soup as a dessert instead of ice cream. I am sheepishly grateful and wonderfully satiated.

Thursday night:
The twin beds we are sleeping in are stacked three mattresses high, princess-and-the-pea style, and they slope downwards from the middle so that I wake up in the middle of the night subconsciously gripping the sides with my arms and legs. I have to make a bit of a princess-and-the-pea myself, but thereís no light in the hallway, so I illuminate my phone to navigate the stairs down to the bathroom. Their downstairs guest bathroom was formerly a hallway, so there are two doors on either side and the floor is carpeted in a color identical to the living room. The carpeting gives me the very odd sensation of using the toilet somewhere that Iím not supposed to be. I have these recurring nightmares where Iím looking for a bathroom but the toilet is somewhere bizarre, like exposed in the middle of a living room. Am I supposed to go here? Is this really okay? My sleeping brain invents these tricks to keep me from peeing in my bed, but now in real life I keep pinching myself to see if where I am is infact Danís auntís guest bathroom and if I can infact empty my bladder there.

Friday:
7am: We awake and shower early to head over with Danís parents to what Dan has billed as the MOST AMAZING SUPERMARKET IN THE UNITED STATES!!!!! Wegmans, a chain found only in upstate New York, has its flagship store not five minutes from Cornell, and Dan holds many fond memories of walking the many fully-stacked aisles and the amazing prepared foods department hand-in-hand with cute girlfriends who are NOT ME! Not that Iím jealous or anything. We go to the supermarket together LOTS OF TIMES now, and itís WAY MORE SEXY than it ever was with any of you, Cornell sluts.

Anyway, the supermarket is quite amazing in its selection, and we buy food for breakfast and assorted things for the wedding. Itís early in the morning, but Judy is already freaking out aloud about what she must accomplish today. A bridesmaid dress must be transported and a Target must be found and a tux must be picked up and 20 people must be phoned to make sure that they know that the rehearsal dinner will begin PROMPLTY at 5:00 otherwise we wonít make it to the church on time.

After breakfast we go on a walking tour of Cornell, accompanied by Judy and David who start the tour with us but leave an hour into it because there were only six more hours left before the rehearsal dinner and much more freaking out needs to occur. For our part, Dan and I see the libraries and many academic buildings of note before getting caught in a flash rain storm which leaves me very wet and slightly less enthusiastic for touring. This is makes Ithaca so beautiful, Dan says: all the water. Fine, I say, but let the grass soak up the water, not the only pair of jeans I brought on the trip!

Friday evening we dressed in our finest semi-formal attire to attend the rehearsal dinner at the Ithaca yacht club. Judyís greatest fears were realized when every member of the wedding party (minus myself and Dan of course) were at least half an hour late, with some showing up more than halfway through the dinner. A call to the bride and groom found them delayed in the act of plaiting the flower-girls hair. Itís just like Africa over there in Ithaca! Sooooooo indigenous! Too bad the Cornell chapel is less indigenous with its tight schedule of wedding rehearsals. Damn the man!

Back at the yacht club, the guests of honor finally arrived and we sat down to a lovely if hurried dinner. Then we made our way to the chapel, where we found out that us wedding partiers would need to be standing at attention the whole service. Wuzupwidat? I know that in OUR wedding the maids and men got to SIT DOWN through the readings. I guess we just accepted the laziness of our bridal party. Here we had to WORK for our formal attire.

Saturday:
We woke up bright and early at 7am to get showered and prepped before the groomsmen crowd descended on the house for final preparations. The youngins other than us, you see, were all staying at a campground over the weekend and needed to avail themselves of Danís auntís showers. After breakfast and showering, Dan and I went for a walk down to the Cornell wildflower gardens which we had missed in the previous days rain. Walking back up the hill, sweating bullets, we wondered why we had showered BEFORE our morning walk. Alas, it was only foreshadowing the hot day to come.

Stay tuned. Next time: THE ACTUAL WEDDING!!!!!