Yosemite the Beautiful

Back in the day, before Russ and I said "I do" to marriage, we said "I do" to pre-marital counseling. I think this is fairly standard fare -- you get out all the aggression and shit-storms and dysfunctions before marriage so that you can live happily working on all that stuff as long as you both shall live. Counseling wasn't easy, but then again, I guess that's sort of the point. At least, that was our friend and counselor's opinion on the subject. He told us flat out at the beginning of our seven sessions that he was going to do his best to break us up, I think the idea being that if we could survive this marital bootcamp, we'd be more-than-okay in the days to follow. His methods eventually led to me calling him a bastard during one session, something that he still laughs about when we reminisce.

Out the all the valuable things we took away from the experience, one was that if you want to have traditions as a couple, you have to start them. Even when you're both students and often living off $30. "What sorts of traditions?" we asked. "Well, like vacations. If you don't make them a priority, let money and time stand in the way, you'll never get in the habit of being vacationing-types." I think that was around the time when I was still heavily using whatever and that's exactly what I thought: what-ever. Vacations aren't tradition. You want to go somewhere, you go. It was perhaps my psyche slowly shredding evidence that my family's vacations were indeed ritual -- every year, around the same time, we'd jump in the car and head south. Unfortunately, our choices only showed any consistency, any sort of tradition, in their complete awfulness. Someone always got arrested; mobsters threatened us; my sister got carsick; my dad passed out inside Cinderella's castle; and then there was the year that my sister had to sleep inside the cabinets because our room was so small.

So here it is, five years later C.E., and as of the beginning of August, Russ and I had yet to take any sort of vacation together. And forget traditions. We were just trying to get out of L.A. and it's unbearable 102-ness. He had this idea -- we could camp Yosemite and Calaveras Big Tress for under $100. It'd be cheap and fun and we could be outside and come and go as we pleased. No reservations. Just a truck, a tank of gas, and hopes of finding good campsites every night. Which we did. By streams, by people who caught fish and shared them with us, in places with masses of wildflowers, by lots of uber-efficient Germans, at high, chilly places, and among some of the largest trees in the world.

Check out our photos to get an idea of how not-bad this vacation was. In fact, I think I can safely say that I'm even thinking about doing it again next year. Traditional, isn't it?

You Can't Surprise a Gal with a Chihuahua

Yeah, well, that was a load of crap.

Last Friday, I woke up to Russ gently shaking my shoulder and whispering that I needed to wake up. To the many who have been privileged to see me in the morning previously, a 7:00 a.m. wakeup call is enough to reek havoc on my system for days. In other words, I don't do early mornings, at least not well. In my ideal life, which I have in many ways been living for the last few years, I wake up at 9:00 in the morning. Decadent? Yes. Negotiable? No.

That last part was also a load of crap. I have a whole bunch of potential jobs that are going to call for pre-9:00 wake-up calls and I figure that discriminating on the whole time thing is going to leave me working the lunch shift at the local Canadian Cafe or worse, at Forever 21. Getting a job is the most not-fun way to spend summer and I'm sure I'll go into snivelling detail about it at some point, but for now, just trust me. Not fun.

Anyway, I cracked an eye in order to show that I was in a state of half-communication and simply asked what the hell was going on. And that was when he dropped the bomb that our friends Christina and Emilio were eloping to Alaska. On a cruise. In about two hours. He told me that we needed to drive them to the harbor.

This news helped me progress from half-awake to sitting up in disbelief and wonder. "But she never said a thing about it," I said. Russ then said the only thing that makes a difference in my morning world: "If you hurry, we can get coffee at Peet's."

I went from bed-head to controlled-coif in about five minutes, throwing on every product that would make it seem as if I had been awake a whole lot longer -- as if I was the sort of person, nay writer, who rose with the sun, spent a few minutes contemplating the meaning of it all, and then, sat down to write totally brillant (and coherent) stories.

But, as you all know, that, too, is a load of jack-ole-crap.

As the coffee kicked in and my monkey mind slowly calmed down, I began asking questions. Why Alaska? And a cruise -- it didn't seem like either of them. They had invited me over to dinner last night, and I had gone instead to play/watch soccer with Russ, and now, I felt like kicking myself. They probably wanted to talk to me about this whole crazy plan of theirs. And what about witnesses? I was not a fiancee for six hellish months without picking up a bit of the marriage lingo, insights into the whole procedure.

I asked Russ these questions. He answered each with a very logical response that totally satisfied my questions, each one hinging on that old Southern saying, "Well, that just goes and shows you how some folks would do." We arrived at their house and I took a deep breath. I realized I was nervous. I hadn't had adequate time to rearrange my world in which Christina and Emilio were married people, married people whose first ceremony I wouldn't get to attend, and in a way, I didn't know exactly what to say. I was happy, of course, but also, totally unsure what to expect. And that uncertainty always makes me a little anxious, a little nail-bitey and a little more quiet. I desperately needed Emily Post at that moment, or at the very least, Dear Ann Landers, but unfortunately for me, I've never read either of them. The most mannerly writer in my repertoire is Alice Munro, but I suspect her courtesy is just part-and-parcel with her Canadianness.

When I walked inside, I said my, "Hi-I-can't-believe-this-is-happening," and was then handed an itinerary by Christina. It took me the better part of a minute to find that instead of Alaska, this cruise was going to San Francisco, and oh, yeah, it wasn't a cruise at all but a train, and Emilio's name was nowhere to be found, but there was mine, at the bottom. I looked up, probably with that fog of a look that seemed to be a permanent fixture on my face that morning, and everyone else burst out laughing.

It was my birthday present from Christina, a wonderful present, and it was a wonderful weekend. She's written about it at length on her blog, recounting it much better than I could, and so, if you want to know what we did, who we met, what we saw, you should definitely read her account of the weekend. You'll be amazed at all the events you can pack into two days, if you try hard enough.

I was also enormously proud of Russ -- he has made himself quite a reputation, over the years, for being a horrible liar and keeper-of-secrets. I never thought, in a million years, that he'd be able to pull of a verbal heist this elaborate. He completely surprised me with this one.

And that's the truth.