Ellen & Lee Get Married

On October 24th Ellen and Lee got married in the Jardin du Luxembourg in front of the Medici Fountain. (I had to Google it too.) They were giddy and giggly and felt a little silly, and then they were stuffed into a car and driven all over town for photos. I tried to pare them down, really I did! But there are just so many great ones.
When it was all over, they went back to their Air Bn'B where Ellen put on her comfy clothes and Lee went out and got them a Dominoes Pizza from down the street. They were awfully hungry. That night they celebrated with a big, french meal and just a few days later, Lee would overdose on espresso shots and spend a day in a Spanish hospital.
Truly a timeless love story.

Oyster Roasts And Assistant Mom

A couple of engineering and architecture firms decided to host oyster roasts in the same week and the lovable employees of Brett's work place were invited to each of them so on the coldest week we've  had yet, we had to go stand outside and mingle. Brett has fun co-workers, most of which have a minimum of four children so there were lots of small people running amuck and other tiny people strapped to larger people's torsos. Also there was cheesy chili and some meaty, lush oysters. The most notable part I assure you was that Brett and I won the company corn-hole tournament for the second year in a row. So.
Here we are with our canvas bag winnings. The winners used to get cash so these are forced smiles.

Here we are with the top losers. That's Alex and Jessie flanking Brett and me, and on the left there is the Bossman and his wife. They're awfully nice. I worry about appearing overly happy and simple when I gather with a collection of bright minds like these but they do a great job of remembering the details of my colorful, fanciful existence and you just don't expect that from people that make sure buildings and roads don't collapse. Please take note of Brett's clothes. We dubbed him Khaki-Man.

Brett has a collection of bosses due to that ranking hierarchy that offices have but his direct boss, Chris, has become one of his great pals and they go off together on their lunch break to shoot guns at the firing range and admire the products for sale at Home Depot. Sometimes I meet them for lunch and I can hardly contain my laughter. I hear Chris stories when Brett comes home from work and then when I come around, Chris tries to pretend to be professional and watching him withhold his laughter makes me struggle with mine and we wind up alway beaming at each other and never saying anything. 

At the next night's oyster roast, a very cold occasion, there must have been 200 engineers and architects from around town and only 2 folks from Brett's office showed up. We didn't know anyone there and were uninterested in mingling. So we signed in, slurped down a few oysters, and then went out for tacos. 

Pippa made up for lost cuddle time. Grace punished us with her indifference.

Here is a photo of Ellen at the office.

And here's a photo of Mom hard at work for Lux N' U.

On this day we couldn't set the tables because the rental guys hadn't finished unloading them yet. So there she is chatting away with them, keeping everyone from getting anything done.

That's what's going on around here.

Roof Top Fugitives Of Some Kind

Back in June, on a balmy, bright evening, Brett went over to Erik's house for Guys Night. I stayed home, excited to curl up with Pippa and a good movie. Whilst I ate my supper, an alert came through on my phone that a Wanted Fugitive was loose on Folly Beach, last seen scampering through the marsh grass towards James Island. I read the article with intrigue and learned that they had closed the roads to Folly, were searching cars, and had started a marsh-wide manhunt. At the time, the articles didn't list the crimes of the fugitive. They just stated that he was possibly armed and was considered dangerous. "Perfect!" I said to no one, because I was home alone on the one night there's a fugitive.
The night carried on. Brett whooped it up at Erik's house while I kept one eye on my rom-com and the other on the news update. Folly Beach Search Complete, Fugitive believed to be on James Island, etc.

I went to bed about 11:00, surprised that Brett wasn't home yet. He get's sleepy by 9:00. I left a few lights on for the Big Guy and drifted off to slumberland. At midnight I woke up and Brett wasn't home. "The fugitive!" I thought immediately, but I wasn't awake enough to think reasonably so I audibly moaned in agony before falling asleep again. In my unconscious mind, Brett had been caught in the crosshairs of the whole thing. Erik's house isn't far from a dark, seedy street. Definitely the street I would go to if I was on the run. Brett had been taken or stabbed. I was certain.
At 12:30 Brett came home without any flesh wounds and quietly slipped into bed and turned off the lights.
"Brett, there's a fugitive." I mumbled.
"What?"
"He's here on James Island. They can't find him."
"That's ok." Brett responded calmly. He could read through my sleepy remarks to see that I was actually quite concerned.
"I thought he stabbed you."
"Why?"
"He's dangerous and headed right towards us."
I only remember part of this exchange as I was mostly asleep. Brett and I drifted off and at 1:00am we heard the strangest, loud sound that immediately frightened all four of us. Grace and Pippa let out short, huffy grunts, their heads high, ears standing tall. The sound was right outside our bedroom window. It fired off again. The girls cocked their heads. Brett and I held our breath and listened.
"What is that?" one of us whispered.
The sound could best be described at hooting monkeys. Which is quite out of place on James Island so I became certain that the fugitive was sitting on our roof, calling to his friends in their secret monkey language to come pick him up.
I suggested this to Brett and he wasn't so convinced.
"It's probably just a monkey."
"We don't have monkeys. Why would there be a monkey?" I whispered back to him.
"An owl, then." Neither of us had ever heard this sound before.
"So I've lived in this house more than a year and happen to hear a "monkey" call for the first time on the same night that there is a fugitive on the loose?"
I saw Brett consider the odds of such things.
The howling roof top fugitive let out his call again and down the street we heard his friends respond with the same collection of gurgles.
"They're closing in on us. Do you have a gun?"
"Lu, I think it's all ok." Brett got up and peered through the front door window. "I don't see anything."
"Well of course not. He's on the roof!"
I appreciate Brett for being level-headed when my imagination gets the best of me, so I felt both relief and real fear when he began to prepare a method of home defense.
"I really don't think it's the fugitive." he said.

I fell back asleep telling Brett how scared I was and the blasting cackle woke us up again an hour later. We drifted from slumber to fear all night long and finally, when morning came we both got up and said, "Woah. That was awful." We were sleepy all day.

In the coming weeks we would tell many people about the strange sound we heard that night. Everyone had a suggestion. Birds, fighting cats, bad teenagers. We couldn't quite mimic the sound. We gave up our curiosity and two months later we would wake up one night to the same ordeal. This go-round I felt confident that it wasn't the fugitive, though they never did find him. It was much easier to decide that it was a critter of some kind but was no less easy to sleep through. The next morning we mimicked the sound to each other as best we could and then spread word through town about our rooftop squatter.
Some friends of ours suggested coyotes and Brett readily accepted this theory after listening to their sounds on Youtube and reading an article about the excessive coyote population in North America. Henceforth, we have suggested coyotes anytime we delight crowds with the tale of that strange night. Since all of this, the coyote monkeys have sat upon our rooftop many times to torment us while we sleep. If the howling doesn't wake us up, Grace and Pip defending their home will.

Last weekend, we were hanging out with our friends, Alex and Jessie, who have these great neighbors that we sometimes see and the neighbors we're quite happy to see us that day.
Turns out they had visited a Bird of Prey museum, met a Barred Owl, and thought of us. The husband, Casey, mimicked the call he learned at the museum while the wife, Emily, stood with a happy, expectant expression on her face and her hands open, ready to receive our rejoices. We laughed at Casey and Emily, mostly because we imagined them thinking of us on their adventure day and saying, "You know, Alex and Jessie's friends. The tall guy with the dark, hairy wife? That heard the monkey on their roof?"
We looked up Barred Owls on Youtube and were delighted, relived, and embarrassed to find out that that's exactly what we've been hearing and it sounds so owl-like when you're watching an owl do it. I'm convinced that our Barred Owl has a speech impediment because he's much more loud and shrill and scary than the videos would have you believe.

Happy Idiots

A Stream of Consciousness

Several times each week I think of things I want to tell you about on my blog space. When I sit to do the blogging I can't remember anything that has happened to me in the last month or so. What's that about? Do you think it's a weird thing to be conscious for most of the hours of each day but looking back you have no recollection of what kind of person you were for the whole year that you were nineteen? Was I good at talking to people back then? Was I awkward or graceful? Did people think I'd grow up to be alright or was I disconcerting?
I recently found a correspondence I had with another girl in high school - riotous letters we exchanged, and had you asked me about that girl, I'd have said we never really talked. I don't remember befriend and exchanging letters with her. What was I thinking about back then?

So to combat the memory loss, I take a look through the pictures on my phone, as they act as a digital journal of my days... except that most days I don't leave the house so the majority of my journal entries are pictures of Pippa. And that's because she follows me everywhere and then does cute, funny things and I think I must take a photo of it or I won't remember that it happened, like the rest of my life so far. Remember that time Pippa sat like this?

Or when I got ahold of her back legs and she just slumped over and a accepted it. 

Maybe I need one more picture of Brett telling Pippa a story. They look so sweet together.

But then I gather all of these pictures and realize that no one has any real interest in looking at Pippa in different positions. I, of course, can't understand why. But you do. 

The truth has already been stated. I don't leave the house much, so any news I've gathered has come to me through phone calls that were possibly initiated just to make sure that I'm still alive. 

Mom calls and keeps me updated about Bob things and Aunt Georgia's recently acquired collection of bruises and broken bits. Dad calls to offer his delivery services and ask questions about office things and if we'd like to come over for dinner. 

Ellen calls daily, less to check on me and more to be entertained because she does all of the office work too fast and then has hours to kill. I've been fully updated on her and Lee's big adventure through Europe and will share the wedding photos when we get them back and Ellen accepts that pregnant people are a little puffier than non-pregnant people and that the pictures are beautiful and special and in a few more weeks when she's a real whopper, she'll probably think she looks great in  those photos. 

I will share this photo though. 

This is Lee in a hospital in Barcelona. He got some awful food poisoning and spent the last four days of their trip laying around just like this. That breaks my little heart. 

From Brett I get in-person updates about life outside of our home and he tells me all about work things and what he's been reading while he's supposed to do work things and then we have meaty discussions about all of those intellectual things he's been reading and before we know it, we've got to do the dishes and get to bed and start the whole thing over again. 

In ten years I'll look back and wonder what I did the whole year that I was twenty-nine. Do you think that in that time I'll gain a new quality that will seem so natural that I can't imagine having lived life without it and then I'll wonder what I was like at twenty-nine? Did I do this thing yet? How did I function without it? How was I perceived?

In actual news, Brett has to wait until late December to find out if he passed his big test. He said the morning portion of the test was frighteningly easy but the afternoon portion was much less suspicious and gave him reason to smother out the confidence from the first part of the day. For a few days after the test he was still mulling over the questions that stumped him and texting them to his boss so they could "nerd-out" about it together. I'd like the record to show that I read one of the questions and selected the right answer without doing any math and instead, just using common sense and I've been impressed with myself since. Brett reveled in my intelligence, chuckled at himself and then went quiet. I'm still not sure what to make of it.