February 17, 2007

James and I have been together now for four years, and I have tried in recent months, since our engagement, to pin it down to a moment. One moment, when I looked up, and thought to myself, yes—this is the man for me. The closest I can get, the one moment I can wrap my fingers around was in his hotel room a day after he tried to cook an Octopus in his efficiency hotel room.

I am weird. Unrepentantly, unabashedly weird. As such, I tend to fall for people who have the same tendencies of oddness, random spontaneity, and freakish quirks of character.

Our first date was in a hotel room. It wasn’t that kind of date. We met in New Orleans, for work, and were of course, staying in a hotel. As I walked down the hall to his room I couldn’t figure out why that whole wing of the hotel smelled fishy, and not in a briny fresh from the sea kind of way, but in a two week old festering tuna can kind of way.
Inside his room, the smell was worse, and as I a fidgeted on the edge of the bed wondering what I had gotten myself into, I couldn’t take it anymore. “Why does your hotel room smell like dead fish?” I finally blurted.
He looked stricken and then embarrassed. “I tried to make Octopus last night. It was awful.”
I looked around the little efficiency kitchen knowing it was identical to mine and came equipped with such utilitarian cooking implements as 1 frying pan, 1 sauce pan, a can opener, assorted slotted spoons and dinnerware for two. This was not a chef’s kitchen. It did not even have an oven. The average frat house was probably better outfitted for a culinary adventure involving an octopus.
“Why would you do that?”
“Why not? How often do you see octopus at the grocery store. It seemed interesting”
I couldn’t recollect ever seeing an Octopus at the local Schnucks, but as I tended to stick to the snack aisles, I probably wouldn’t have noticed, and I certainly wouldn’t have dragged one home by its little tentacles and thrown it in a pot. I started laughing at him, but my insides started to toss about—flip, flip. This was my kind of guy. Irreverent, adventurous, and a little bit weird. Most girls probably would have run for the hills, but oh no, not me. I had to see how this thing was going to play out.

I am a gal on a budget and I am determined to have a wedding for under $10, 000 (this includes the honeymoon– and the honeymoon is the bulk of the budget since I want to go to St. Lucia). What this means is a DIY wedding long on spirit and ingenuity and short on cash. The ceremony site is a park called Bee Tree, so…that sort of became the theme– bees and trees. Think picnic baskets, vintage table cloths, an alt country band, and lots of cold beer.