Recently in Marriage Category

A friend of ours whose in-laws work with Energizer recently gave us his-and-hers gift bags full of trimmers, razors, and other cosmetic things. Chris is fascinated by gadgets, no matter how small or for what purpose. While I watched television he disappeared into the kitchen bathroom and I heard the small "reuuuuuuurr" of tiny machinery. He reappeared some time later, walked up to me and smiled.

"Notice anything different?" he asked, raising and lowering his eyebrows repeatedly.

"Um ...?"

I just trimmed my nostril hair. Electronically." 

The other day Chris said to me: "You know what? My grass is looking good. Lookin' REAL GOOD." He said it as though the fescue in the backyard had suddenly developed breasts overnight.

"Yes, it does look nice," I said, looking up from my copy of Domino.

"Yeah it does! It looks AMAZING."

It's spring again, the time of the year when animals come out of hibernation, when baby critters are born, when men ultimately talk about fertilizing their lawns whenever gathered together. It's apropos. At a recent gathering of friends, I noticed that the conversation from the man-half of the group delved into grass fertilization and yard work and mowing and machinery. Whereas a man's fishing stories are akin to a woman's labor story, so is yard work discussion akin to something chicks talk about, I'm too tired to think of a competent analogy. You get it. 

The other day we were at Lowe's, often thought of as man territory, but I love it there. I love the shiny objects and the smell of the wood. Basically, I love it for the same reasons as would a cat. Chris convinced himself that he needed a blower-slash-sucker. Some mechanized elephant to remove the dead leaves from under the deck and from the flowerbeds. He spent thirty minutes examining the different types of blower-sucker machines (my mind is about to explode from the juvenile opportunities here) before trotting out proudly to meet me in the garden department with the box in hand.

That afternoon as I pruned and planted like a 50s' housewife, he stood in the backyard and adorned himself with the blower's bag and strap as though gearing up for a joust. He slipped on a pair of the manliest garden gloves I could find him (blue and green stripes), a pair of yellow goggles, and for a moment, I could've sworn I heard the Vienna Boys' Choir and saw a Photoshop starburst behind him as he stood satisfied, his hands on his hips.

Chris and I attended a friend's wedding over Labor Day weekend at Tower Grove Park. Fall is my favorite season and I'm perpetually out-of-doors, so the fact that the wedding and reception were outside was icing on the proverbial cake. I had my first carriage ride; I've lived in St. Louis my whole life and never once rode any of the carriages.
I stuffed my face beside none other than the mistress of retro fashion herself, Annamarie von Firley (also Doug's sister). If you read Bust you'd recognize her; she was written up a couple months ago.

After a few glasses of wine our friend Jay, whose band The Pedestrians played the reception, somehow convinced me to do bgv's on their cover of "Stepping Stone." Chris took video on his Treo and I'm doing everything in my power to prevent him from secretly uploading it to YouTube. SHUT UP. You will not see it. Absent were the traditional, kooky reception music and in their stead we cut a rug to songs from the Cure, the Clash, etc. I'll take awesome 80s bands that start with "C," Alex.

Our friends had one of the coolest novelties I've ever seen at a wedding; they rented a photo booth and offered free photos to their guests, one strip for the guests to keep and one for the bride and groom. Needless to say, the photos grew insane, but decorous still, over the course of the evening. At one point Annamarie employed her trapeze skills and attempted to perch herself at the top of the frame.

What follows below is evidence that Chris and I would have been lovely guests at the Mad Hatter's tea party.