I had always said that I would consider inviting him so long as my sister did not have a new boyfriend at the time of the wedding. Why? Baby Daddy will start a fight, and I don’t need that on my wedding day.

And now here I am 64 days from my wedding with a very single sister. I have no problems with this guy. I mean he hasn’t worked in 6 years, contributes $0 to my sister or my niece, and is incredibly immature regarding when he’ll “babysit” his child, but I have accepted these shortcomings and they don’t bother me anymore. It’s just the way things are.

Actually over the years, I’ve realized I share common interests with him. Things are amicable. And he’s in my niece’s life forever, therefore also in my life forever. I feel like I should invite him to my wedding considering this information. No problem right?

Nope, my sister and my mother object to his presence. I can understand why my sister – who is also my maid of honor – doesn’t want him there. He does add unnecessary challenges to her every day life. My mom brings up other points. I have to admit I believe her opinion is biased. I mean, he did knock up her teenaged daughter and doesn’t contribute money to raise her, leaving my mom is responsible for helping my sister financially when he should be. I understand the resentment. The other reasons she lists are also somewhat valid:

*Dude doesn’t have a car or a drivers license. How will he get to the wedding? My first reaction is to say “That’s not my problem.” I have plenty of friends and family coming from all over and aside from providing suggestions for hotels, I am leaving their arrangements completely up to them. Baby Daddy is a 30-something year old grown man. He should be able to figure out how to get there on his own. In actuality, he will probably beg and pester my sister and/or our dad. My dad will end up having to pick him up, and I will require my dad to be at my beck and call on my wedding day. Sorry for being selfish, it’s my wedding.

*Dude has nowhere to stay. While the wedding isn’t that far away, it’s also not down the street. My family is staying at a hotel that night and certainly will not either take him home or let him crash with us. Even if he wants to get a room, he has no money. My sister has no money to give him, nor should she, and then he might pester my parents to put him up somewhere.

*There still is a (small) chance he will make a scene. I’m pretty confident he won’t, but give anyone a few drinks and an ex-girlfriend and I’m sure words will be exchanged. My sister has maid of honor jobs to do (like calm me down if I freak out) so I can’t have her being all uppity over something. I also want her to have fun.

So that’s the situation. I’m mailing invitations in a week. Does Baby Daddy get one???

*Vendors: I think we’ve booked all of our vendors. Everything from venue to DJ to pictures, flowers and decorations is set. Of course I have a binder that is seriously full of contracts (Hi, I’m Monica from Friends lol). We really hit the ground running on this category, which is nice cuz now we can kind of just ease through the rest.

*The rest: We’ve been busy doing things like picking songs, looking into dance lessons, deciding on menu options, etc. This is really the FUN part! My dad also offered up his services. He’s retired so he’s been searching the internet for various things we “need” – starfish decorations, candles, a ketubah, etc. He’s been a big help!

*Bridal party attire: Half of my girls are outfitted. The other half will be soon. J is a groomsman in his Best Man’s upcoming wedding, so while we picked up his outfit for that affair, we started perusing attire for our own. Yeah…we selected basically everything. I’m just waiting on a swatch of the bridesmaid material to arrive so we can finalize vest colors. Yes, I realize we’re like 2-3 months early on this task, but it’s better to be early than late! I’ve also been chomping at the bit to pick out a dress for my flower girl, but given that she’s still growing (related: she’s turning FIVE in a couple of weeks!?!) I can’t commit to anything yet. Who knows if she’ll still be a 5T or up to a child’s small? I already know what I generally want though, I’ll just have to wait a couple of months to find it

*Registries: We have 3. They are all works in progress, but OMG they have been so much fun to put together! One of the registries is basically a website with wishes for our honeymoon. J has been doing a GREAT job of picking out fun activities for us and making entertaining captions for our guests. The other two are at stores, and each one has had some sort of registry event for us to attend. I have to say, if you’re gonna register somewhere, do it at one of these events. While setting up these registries, we were served a range of treats from mimosas to waffles, samples of coffee from various coffee and espresso machines, dinner foods, and on and on. Plus they have TONS of people on hand to answer any questions. It’s the best way to go!

*Honeymoon: Aka the best part! My one complaint though: WHY are plane tickets so expensive?? We’ve settled on a tropical island location and J has enough hotel points for us to stay affordably. We just have to get there. Now we are in the midst of playing plane ticket roulette. We have 2 options here: Buy tickets now at a whopping $1400ish each, or keep waiting for a “deal” to come around (we’ve been waiting 3 months already and the only thing that’s happened is that the every day fare has gone up about $50. The longer we wait, the more the fare will creep up). It’s kind of fun/exciting, but dude, I’m not down to get ripped off on a plane ticket right now. I think we should set a threshold price (aka find something for $1250 and pounce) and a threshold date (aka if we don’t have a “deal” by May 1, just buy whatever). What would you do?

*The wedding website: While I’m a true slacker on this blog, I actually do update the wedding site religiously. Like anytime there is a change lol. New block of hotel rooms? On it! We booked a shuttle to take guests around? Information is there! Maid of Honor changed jobs? Bio updated (at her request lol). If you’re privy to the URL, you should check it out

That’s really all I’ve got right now.

For some reason, my sister has always had a strange obsession with unicorns. From a young age, she played exclusively with My Little Pony, and had quite a collection of their special unicorn series. And watch out – if she was playing with a unicorn it was best not to mess with her. She’s feisty!

This obsession grew to the point that one night at dinner she seriously scared my mother. We were sitting at the table, and my then 4 year old sister exclaimed “I feel very weird. Something strange is happening!” My mother thought she was having some allergic reaction to something she was eating and was very concerned. When prompted for more information, my sister responded with, “I feel strange. I feel…like…I’m turning into a unicorn!!!”

Seriously? Yes, this absolutely happened. I can’t make this shit up.

So on to the sandwich. When we were little, my grandma would take care of us during the day on summer break. She always made us lunch, and I remember always hating what she made. I mean, I was like 7 or 8 and was picky about foods. And seriously, what kid wants to eat an apple for lunch? And a PBJ? Hell no. My dad introduced me to a concoction I still eat regularly: the peanut butter banana sandwich (also good as nutella and banana). Every day I would help my grandma in the kitchen while she made lunch. I mean, I couldn’t have this old lady messing up my food after all.

My sister got jealous. Why did I get to make special food and she didn’t? She wanted in, so we let her make her own sandwich one day. I’m not even kidding you, this is how it was made:

1. Pull out 2 slices of bread.

2. Slather peanut butter on one slice, jelly on the other.

3. On the peanut butter side, add 5 Oreo cookies, shaped together the way the number 5 appears on dice.

4.On top of the Oreos,  layer on some marshmallow spread.

5. On the jelly side, add a generous portion of goldfish crackers. Don’t be shy. Seriously. Add more.

6. On top of the goldfish, add a few potato chips, but not too many. Maybe some regular Lays, maybe some Nacho Cheese Doritos. It doesn’t matter.

7. Ever so carefully put the 2 sides together. This is going to be a challenge. Goldfish will spill, jelly might drip. Don’t worry about it. You’re 4 and it’s OK to make a mess.

I believe the first time my sister made this our grandmother and I halted our own lunch making and just stared at her. Was this really happening? Yep. When she was done, we asked her, “What in God’s name is that?”

Of course, this masterpiece could only be called one thing. A Unicorn Sandwich.

And without a doubt, my sister consumed the entire thing.

What have I been doing all this time? That’s a good question, cuz time has certainly flown by. Here’s the synopsis:

*I went to Italy. I’ll blog more about that later tonight, but I will tell you it was PHENOMENAL. We spent 6 days in Rome and did just about everything, including catching pink eye. Yep, medical issues follow me everywhere I go! We headed north for 4 days to Florence. Gorgeous city, and a lot cooler and less humid. It’s nice sightseeing in weather under 105 degrees. We also did a side trip to Pisa/Lucca and another to Cinque Terre on my birthday. BEST. BIRTHDAY. EVER. Finally, we headed down to Naples for 2 days. Naples is a dump, that’s for sure, but Pompeii was so worth it. Sorrento was glorious. More details on all of this to come!

*I quit 2 of my jobs. Hallelujah!! I increased my hours at the other one so I can still afford to pay my bills, and I took a different unpaid internship job. I’m now working in a school and am finally realizing my calling in life. Good thing it only took me 20-some-odd years to find it! It was a crazy month of transitioning, and at one point I was working 4 jobs for a week, but I made it through, sanity in tact. Whew!

*I’ve been planning my wedding. Duh!! For those of you who don’t know me well, I’m organized and plan ahead to the point that it’s pathological. Taking the idea from my friend (and bridesmaid!) Jess, I have started a wedding binder. My colors are eggplant, turquoise and silver, so the binder and its pages are those colors. I’ve been clipping things I like from magazines and putting them in their appropriate category. It’s fun – like scrapbooking! The binder is almost full though, fortunately with contracts! Yes, I am ahead of the game and have tons of vendors already selected, deposits paid.

*Last but not least I’ve been helping my extended family clean out my great aunt and uncle’s house and prepare it for sale. It’s kind of sad, but there’s so many of us doing it and we’re bonding over it. We found so many old pictures of relatives that lived and died before our time – it’s really neat! We also found a lot of … um… educational materials. Materials including, but not limited to, 30 years worth of Playboy magazine. The house is almost ready to go on the market.

After he died my parents started going through the house. They secured several firearms. One story that still makes me laugh:

Mom: “We found this revolver with no serial number, not registered. I didn’t know what to do with it. I mean it’s a gun. I certainly don’t want it.
Me: “So what did you do with it?”
Mom: “Well David (family friend) was there. I looked at him and said ‘David, do you want a gun?”
Me: “You gave him a gun?!?!”
Mom: “Yeah. What’s wrong with that?”
Me: “Um. A lot of things. Does he have a gun permit? The gun isn’t registered. I’m pretty sure that’s not legal.”
Mom: “Well he has other guns. I figured I don’t want this near me. Should I have done something else?”

Gotta love my mother. (For the record she made him bring it back and is going to get it registered.)

So then several weeks later they’ve completed round 1 of the house cleaning. Secured all 8 of the firearms. This had my mom really nervous: “Caro, what do I do with these? I mean, I need to dispose of them somehow, but I’m not driving them somewhere. Taking them in my car. Where would I even take them? The police station? Just throw them on a table and say ‘Here officers. I don’t want these.’”

But then they found my uncle’s homeowner’s policy. The one that had the itemized list of firearms. 10 firearms. As previously mentioned, various family members had only located 8. So there’s 2 weapons unaccounted for somewhere in the house. Um…..that could be a problem. Know what else could be a problem? 7 of the secured guns were loaded. 2 of them fully loaded.

So basically there’s 2 guns MIA in the house. Possibly loaded. How does one lose 2 guns? Especially when one of them is a .22 caliber rifle with a scope.

Happy hunting to us. Literally!

In keeping with this theme, she has recently had a minor surgery to remove an ovarian cyst that just wasn’t going away. Just a couple of weeks later this girl texts because she’s broken out in hives on her chest. OK? What do you want me to do about it? Texts keep pouring in. “Hives are moving up my chest and down my stomach.” “It’s on my neck now.” “I can’t breath and I’m freaking out.” Finally, “I’m going to the ER.”

So she goes. With a 4 year old.

After shots of adrenaline, benadryl, and steroids, I get a text complaining about the needles. Then another one, “My blood pressure is 72/40. Is that bad?” LOL yes, yes it is. Good thing you’re at the hospital.

So they release her, now armed with Prednisone, Benadryl, and an EpiPen. Next day she heads to the doctor for labs so she can find out what in the hell she is apparently very allergic to. Today the labs came back and I got this text:

My doctors called. My lab work came back negative & they’re like ‘so that’s good’. How is that good? We are no closer to finding out what I’m allergic to. And they’re like ‘u have to make an appt in August so until then keep a lot of Benadryl on you’. Ummmmm …? FAIL doctors office! LOL

And this is why I love my sister. Because her body hates her and even though none of the doctors can figure out why, she is able to laugh about it and entertain other people with her misfortunes.

Seems pretty appropriate actually; today marks one month since my uncle died. I’ve been thinking about him a lot lately. I wish I could have spent just one more Sunday with him, playing dominoes and eating delicious sandwiches. I always thought I’d see him again soon. Not so much.

Thanks James Taylor.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwugjyeSKx4[/youtube]

Just yesterday morning they let me know you were gone
Suzanne the plans they made put an end to you
I walked out this morning and I wrote down this song
I just can’t remember who to send it to

I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain
I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I’d see you again

Won’t you look down upon me, Jesus
You’ve got to help me make a stand
You’ve just got to see me through another day
My body’s aching and my time is at hand
And I won’t make it any other way

Oh, I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain
I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I’d see you again

Been walking my mind to an easy time my back turned towards the sun
Lord knows when the cold wind blows it’ll turn your head around
There’s hours of time on the telephone line to talk about things to come
Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground

Oh, I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain
I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I’d see you, baby, one more time again, now

Thought I’d see you one more time again
There’s just a few things coming my way this time around, now
Thought I’d see you, thought I’d see you fire and rain, now

I just found the (insanely expensive) parking receipt from the hospital from the day my great uncle died. Now I’m sad.

As much as it blows my mind that I paid $24 to park for like 6 hours, $24 to be with him when he died seems like a bargain.

I think I’ll keep this in my wallet. Hopefully next time I see it I’ll smile rather than tear up. I <3 him

By far my favorite Angelo-related adventure!

We’re Caro and Mel, and we’re Angelo’s great-nieces.

As you all know, Angelo and Norma didn’t get out of the house much in the last few years. One day Mel and I went over to their house for lunch and a visit. Toward the end of the visit Angelo asked if we could pick some things up from Safeway. Our parents frequently grocery shopped for them, and I had been with my mom on a couple of shopping trips. It really didn’t seem like rocket science so Mel and I happily took the list and headed to the store.

On our way to the store we looked over the list. It was 7 pages. Angelo had attempted to make things easier for us by grouping things together: the meats, the veggies, the frozen foods, and so on. Again, how hard could this be?

We got to the store and started with the easier things. Milk, cottage cheese, some yogurts. But then we got into some trouble. What kind of yogurt do they like? What brand of creamer? I called our mom and asked. She laughed but was happy to help. Then we moved on. But we kept running into problems. What does that say? I’ve never heard of that brand, is that a mistake? So of course we kept calling our mom.

I think about an hour and 12 phone calls later she was pretty tired of us. So when we made it to the vegetable section we started calling our dad. Angelo wants red onions – are those the purple ones? What does zucchini look like? Which ones are the sweet potatoes? We must have called our dad 8 times in 10 minutes. Angelo had made everything very specific: 2 pounds of this, half a pound of that. I remember we were measuring the green beans and I thought to myself “a pound of green beans sure is a lot!”. But we just kept piling them into the bag. We would later come to realize that we measured out one kilogram of green beans. Oops!

I think it was about this point that my sister and I realized that not only did we have a 7 page list on our hands, but this thing was double sided. We had milk and other perishable items that we worried were going bad, so we actually swapped some things for fresh ones, then headed over to the frozen section on our way out.

Mel and I grabbed some waffles and some other frozen stuff. Then I noticed we were supposed to get 2 boxes of drumsticks. For some reason, I had it in my head that we were supposed to get drumstick chicken and couldn’t for the life of me figure out why on earth Angelo would think that would come in a box. We had called our parents so many times that they were sick of us so I just made an executive decision: we were getting 2 bags. 2 5-pound bags of drumsticks.

We were happy with what we picked out and pushed our overloaded shopping cart to the register. A few hundred dollars and some creative car loading later, we headed back to Angelo and Norma’s. The look on Angelo’s face when we arrived was priceless. He looked at us and exclaimed “What the hell happened to you? Did you fall into a well or something? You’ve been gone for 3 hours!!” We briefly explained what happened and started unloading the groceries.

Despite 50 calls to our parents we managed to get half the items wrong. We got over double the amount of each vegetable because we measured in kilograms, the wrong size cleaning products, and so forth. And then there were the drumsticks. I told him I had never heard of drumsticks that came in a box, so I showed him the 2 bags that we got and asked if they were an ok substitute. Angelo just about had a heart attack. He was laughing so hard we thought he was going to collapse. He didn’t say anything as he went to the den to tell Norma.

It turns out they had wanted two boxes of drumsticks – the ice cream cones. Instead, we brought them 10 pounds of marinated chicken legs.

Angelo, in the way that only he could, assured us that even though we had done a horrendous job with his list, he bets we were the two prettiest confused girls in the store.

After that day Angelo only asked me to shop for him on a couple more occasions. Each of those times were “emergency” situations and only had a half a page worth of groceries. And every time we went up there for the next year, he offered to cook us some of those chicken legs! It’s adventures such as this that we’ll miss the most.