A tribute to Daryl Strawberry and Superman

A few weeks before the wedding, I made an appointment with the event coordinator of our wedding location to go over set up and layout, etc.  I texted my mom, who had planned to meet up with me later that day in town to go do a trial run of my hair, to see if she wanted to meet me.  I never heard from her, so I assumed she didn't want to come.

When I arrived, I met the lady and we made introductions.  Then she made a reference to needing to wait for someone with the same name as my father to arrive.

My dad?  Whaa?

I asked her what she was talking about, and she said he told her he was planning to meet us here too.

Apparently everyone in my family has stopped communicating with me.

Sure enough, as I was dialing his number to see what the heck was going on, I see his truck pulling up the drive.  Right after noticing that my mom wasn't with him, and thinking that was weird to leave her at home when we planned to meet up anyway, I saw her car.

Right behind his.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Greenpeace, the EPA, and Toyota for making the world a cleaner, less polluted place.  Because on this day, we sure weren't.

Nice Event Coordinator Lady showed us around where we'd be having our reception and the lawn where we'd be having the ceremony.  I'd provided her with a diagram of our wedding reception layout compliments of a brilliant little applet on The Knot She was very helpful in pointing out the things I didn't realize we'd need.  Like when she asked where we'd put the cake?  And I smartly replied that the cake would be on the cake table!  Then she asked me where the cake table was on my diagram.

Oh.

Nice Event Coordinator Lady scribbled in a few more things I'd forgotten on my diagram and we were on our way.

Mom and I had a few hours to kill before we drive up to Oregon City for the hair appointment so we poked around a few thrift shops in search of more table decorations.  I needed more frames for the table numbers and bottles for vases.  Do I have you scratching your head yet?

Remember the theme: Vintage G h e t t o.

We stopped at Baja Fresh for lunch.  They have this mango chipotle heaven in your mouth salad business there.  So, so good.   On our way over to the restaurant my car started making one of those noises that is akin to a human having chest pains.

Like, call 911 your car is about to blow up kind of noises.

Being the responsible car owner and mechanic that I am, I turned up the radio and kept on driving.  To my credit, when I parked the car, I did sort of kneel to the ground and look underneath the car to see if anything was hemorrhaging from up inside the guts part of the car.  I saw nothing.

I only know how to check 4 things in a car.

1) Windshield wiper fluid
2) Oil
3) Brake fluid
4) Gas

I quickly deduced that it was none of those things as it was sunny and 90 degrees outside, my first car was a Subaru with an oil leak so I know what that sounds like, my brakes were working fine (for once), and I had a full tank of gas.

So I did what any self-respecting girlfriend would do in this situation.  Texted MacGyver 15 minutes after he started his shift at work to tell him my car was "making a bad noise".

My mom and I spent lunch debating whether I should try to drive my car another 45 minutes away, or try to find a mechanic and diagnose/fix the problem.  The biggest issue was that I still had to get home to Cowtown at some point that weekend, and that was a good 2 hours away - much of it out of cell range.  I started having visions of my car going all Decepticon at 60 miles per hour, except instead of turning into a badass robot, it just flew into a million pieces scattered all over I-5.

We stopped in a Midas shop and this very nice guy offered to ride around the block with me and listen to my "bad noise".  After a few times of hearing it he told me what it was.

I don't remember now what he said it was, because all I heard was, "something something something your car isn't going to suddenly break into pieces while you're driving."

That was all I needed to hear.  I text MacGyver a quick, "just kidding!" and we were off to a hair appointment.  

I thought it would be a good idea to consult Shirley, my GPS goddess, for directions to this place as I'd never driven there from that direction.  But alas, Shirley failed me in the most epic of ways.

She took us hither and yonder, over brook and dale, over the river and through the woods to get to Oregon City.  What should have been a 30 minute drive with no traffic turned into a 90 minute ordeal of driving 20 miles an hour through every sleepy town between Salem and Oregon City.  I'm fairly certain we crossed the International Date Line at some point in that voyage.

By the time we arrived I was so frustrated I was shaking.  MacGyver's sister had asked me to bring some photos of the hairstyles I had in mind and after I finished telling her why we were late to our appointment, she asked me if I'd remembered the photos.  I realized that in my haste to JUST FREAKING GET THERE ALREADY, I had left them in the car, along with the hair pieces I made for the bridesmaids and for myself.

As I walked back out of the salon to my car, I was taking deep, calming breaths and telling myself that this day was already bad enough.  It would only get better form here.

And because I had to open my mouth and say THAT out loud, karma came and leveled me right on my ass.

I mean that in the most literal of ways.  Actually it was my face.

I'm still not exactly sure what happened either.  Just that one moment I was vertical, walking back inside with my box and my Marshmallow Man folder, and the next moment I was horizontal, face planted on the floor of the foyer in the salon.  I looked up at the two girls standing behind the counter frozen with their mouths gaping open.

What the hell...?!?!

Apparently my foot caught on the edge of a floor tile, or a leaf, or the air, or something, and I face planted in a most spectacular way.  My papers went fluttering, and my box flew across the room.  I don't know how those girls didn't lose it right there in front of me.  I don't think I would have had the same level of composure to not laugh hysterically had I been in their position.  Commendable, ladies.  Truly.

I started laughing, because I mean really, what else do you do in that situation?

When I went back to where MacGyver's sister and my mom were waiting, I told them the story and we all had a good laugh about that, though really neither of them were surprised.

I'm happy to say nothing is broken, though my leg and knees took the brunt of the fall and I'm pretty bruised up.

But my hair?  My hair is going to look soooo fabulous!!!