Do It Your Way
There are “about 153,000,000″ results in Google when you search for “wedding-planning.” Take what you want from them. You want an immaculately decorated church wedding with a fairy-lit forest reception? Have a ball. You want to get married on a mountain with only your officiant present? Go for it. All kinds of people, from friends to our cake baker told me, “It’s your day, do what you want,” but I still worried.

We wanted a taco truck / Photo by Michelle Jones

Stop Worrying
Ha! I didn’t stop worrying until 19 days after the wedding. I worried about the capacity of a reception hall before we booked it (we didn’t even book that space, and when I was worrying about it, we hadn’t done anything to commit to it). I worried the hall would look bare with the minimal decoration skills I planned to apply. I worried we didn’t buy enough cups, that my hair would fall, that there wouldn’t be enough beer… everything. Even while worrying about these things, I knew that if any of them happened, we’d get through it. Still, I woke up in the early morning and lay awake, stressing about these hypothetical situations.

Something Will Go Differently Than Planned
The women at the beauty school where I had my hair done shared this encouraging advice during my “wedding hair” trial: Something will go wrong.

So I tried to think of all the possible situations and solutions (probably contributing to my sleepless mornings).

What if the taco truck doesn’t show? We’ll order pizza.
What if the flowers don’t arrive or aren’t enough? We can buy flowers at a florist. Or Kroger.
What if my hair falls? 39 pins couldn’t hold it for two hours! Who cares?!

The flowers arrived and were beautiful / Photo by Michelle Jones

Of course, the situations I planned for did not come up. Instead, the day before the wedding, we were under a severe weather watch (“THE APOCALYPSE IS COMING!”, but isn’t it always?), and my cell phone stopped working. So I drove to the phone store for a new SIM card under blackening skies, scanning the clouds for the one that was going to turn into a funnel. Thankfully, the tornadoes did not come for us. The phone only worked intermittently for the rest of the weekend, but everyone has a phone, and I was somewhat able to communicate through Twitter (although really, if you’ve been meaning to replace your nearly three-year-old phone for eight months, consider doing so before a bunch of people who will need to call you travel to your city for your wedding).

Seek Advice from Like-Minded Friends
When worrying about all those wedding disasters, voicing my concerns to a friend helped. Whenever I got spazzy, I had several empathetic, but sensible friends and family members who helped keep me sane. Acquaintances and strangers were encouraging, but they also planted nonsense in my head. Those hair salon ladies listened to my worries and shared some reassuring words. But they also contributed to a crisis in confidence about the reception decor (again), resulting in the cancellation of table linens I’d ordered less than 24 hours before (black table cloths would have been fine). Luckily, a friend helped ground me by showing me photo albums of the detailed decor from her wedding, then revealing that no one remarked on these details. This was the same friend who told me as long as I had food, music and drinks, everything would be fine. So know which friends are able to listen and advise without creating more stress for you.

Have a Rehearsal
No matter how small the ceremony — and ours was very small — rehearsing your ceremony is a good idea. Ours went smoothly, but my parents and I clearly needed practice walking together.

We had some issues getting through the door / Photo by Michelle Jones

Buy More Bourbon
Especially if your wedding is in Kentucky.

Have Fun
This seems so obvious, but at least one blog I read proved that pressure can ruin the day. Despite all my worrying though, the goal was to get married, then celebrate. That all happened, and this is what I really learned: Gabe and I have loving friends and family who braved tornadoes, airline asininity, stage fright, and a small-scale bridezilla (I got a little grouchy around 3 pm on wedding day) to celebrate with us.

Photo by Michelle Jones

Now excuse me for the next two months. I have some serious “thank you” card writing to do.

To Do lists

It’s true, we tried all but one of the restaurants on our “Places to Eat” list — and then some. We hit up the vegan Swan Dive the last weekend it was open, and its replacement, Hammerheads, is one of our favorite spots to take visitors. We first visited Hillbilly Tea around this time last year, and after a long brunch followed by a walk around downtown, went back for late-afternoon tea (there were drinks at the Galt House and beers at the Main Street BBC in between the two visits. It was a decadent day). Sadly, the closing of the Sherman-Minton bridge has added another obstacle to reaching New Albany, so it’s been a while since we’ve been back to Bank Street Brewhouse (the biggest obstacle in reaching New Albany is laziness. Crossing a river, regardless of bridge conditions, somehow makes a drive more arduous). Since our last visit, I’ve developed a taste for Bloody Marys, so I’m ready to go back to brunch and the Build-Your-Own-Bloody Mary bar. And sometime last spring, I finally made it to Bodega, the tapas bar in the Highlands. The food is pretty tasty, but the bar is what keeps drawing us back.

There are places that never got added to the list, but became goals as they opened: Garage Bar, Harvest, and most recently, Rye. We’ve tried them all, and now we’re aiming for Maa Sha-Allah, a West African restaurant Gabe learned about through work. Louisville is a great city for eating — in fact, we’re currently second to Lafayette, Louisiana in Southern Living‘s “Tastiest Southern Towns” competition (you can vote here).

There is only one place on our restaurant list that we still haven’t hit: “the Filipino place,” or Sari-Sari. It’s still open. It’s right next to El Mundo on Frankfort Avenue. According to their website, it’s even been mentioned in Southern Living (this blog post is turning into a mini-advertisement for a magazine I don’t even read). And they have a buffet on Fridays.

As for the “Louisville to Do” list, it’s a little less complete, but most of the unchecked boxes are for sights outside of Louisville: Cumberland Falls, Mammoth Cave… ok, those are the only two, but add the Red River Gorge and Cave City to the list. Locally, I still haven’t been to the drag show at Connections or visited the Muhammad Ali Center. And this year, I’ve really got to get to the Derby, even if it rains.

I’m thinking with some good planning, I could knock out the local To Dos in a weekend. Dinner at Sari-Sari, followed by a drag show, and then a museum visit the next day. Who’s in?

I started again on January 1st this year, and so far, have successfully taken a photo each day. Since I work from home now and don’t actually have to go out each day (and when I do, it’s either mid-day and really bright, or after sunset and dark), I’m already finding myself reaching the end of the day, going, “Oh… I need to take a picture.” At this rate, I have a feeling there will again be many photographs of Gabe doing stuff around the apartment.

One of my favorites so far.

If you’re interested, you can follow along on Flickr. I’ll also go ahead a plug another photo-a-day project. Clare lives in California, and is taking a daily photo of the Pacific Ocean. I’m jealous.

Back in August, my friend Melissa introduced me to a Louisville landmark — or at least something I look forward to seeing when I take Frankfort Avenue to River Road. It’s the facade of a house. I biked out to it in September to get a closer look.

According to Wikipedia and Unusual Kentucky, the facade of the Heigold House is one of the few remains of the Point neighborhood, an area populated by wealthy ex-New Orleanians in the 19th century. The rerouting of Beargrass Creek and the 1937 Ohio River flood contributed to the eventual disappearance of the neighborhood. The facade was moved to its current location to make room for condos, although I can’t find out exactly when.

So now I know what that is. Next up? Finding the carved rabbit statue.

I originally printed these photos for an International Women’s Day event, where I also spoke on reproductive health justice in Togo. The images feature Togolese women and girls, who were my closest friends during my time in Togo. They welcomed me when I arrived, showed me how to carry water from the pump (a short-lived endeavor on my part), made sure I was appropriately dressed for the mosque on the important holy days, guided me through the village (it was a small village, but I still needed help finding the middle school), and saw me off each time I said “goodbye.” They let me advise them on how to care for their children’s health, even though I have no children of my own. At least one told me she wanted me with her when she delivered her fourth child.

I haven’t kept up with these women, but they are the ones I wanted to work for most when I was in Peace Corps. I was a health volunteer, but I wanted to be a Girls Education and Empowerment volunteer, and I did as much women-focused work as possible. In November 2007, I biked the length of Togo to raise funds for the Karren Waid girls’ scholarship program. Karren Waid was Peace Corps volunteer in Togo who died in a car accident in 1993. Her family set up this scholarship fund in her name, and since then, it had been managed by current and returned Peace Corps volunteers and Togolese nationals. Volunteers distributed funds to the scholarship girls, helped select recipients, and monitored their progress.

In 2008, the Karren Waid fund became Pathways Togo, a non-profit focused on providing scholarships and mentoring to Togolese girls. This year, they funded 44 scholarships. It costs about $20 a year to send a girl to middle school, and $50 for a year of high school. The photos on display at Heine Brothers are $50 each. I will be donating any proceeds from the show to Pathways Togo (minus Heine’s fee). If you are located in the world outside of Louisville and are interested in purchasing a print, send me an email or leave a comment. The photos showing can be viewed here.

If you’d rather just make a donation to Pathways, this link will take you where you need to go.

Perhaps one day Waco’s “Known For” will change from “Cult and FBI standoff in the 90s” to “Home of Dr. Pepper” (there’s a museum). Maybe it will become better known for the Texas Sports Hall of Fame, or the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum. By then, I doubt I’ll have a reason to visit, as I expect my brother will have moved.

For now, Waco does have one attraction that I wanted to see.

A zoo. With three month-old tiger cubs.

Happy Thanksgiving birthday to me.

“No. That’s her real accent.”

This was my second time in Minnesota, but I was told that now, away from the Twin Cities, I was seeing the “real” Minnesota. I’m not sure what that means, apart from the accents and lots of farmland. But I liked it.

I went to Rochester for four days to visit a Peace Corps friend who was home from her current teaching job in China. I spent the first two days working from her uncle’s house, which is about 16 miles west of Rochester (which, for the record, is 60 miles from Minneapolis, and not a suburb like I thought). There’s not a lot out there, but there is wifi, which is all I need to work. On Friday, we left the country home to do the grand tour of Rochester.

Downtown Rochester

The day started with breakfast at Dunn Brothers Coffee. Apparently, this is a chain, but it was new to me. They offer full breakfast, and after our egg sandwiches, we had breakfast dessert (pumpkin bread and a cinnamon roll).

To work off the breakfast dessert, we did a significant amount of walking, first at Silver Lake, which is more of a very large pond. A power plant nearby keeps the water warm enough so that geese stick around Rochester year-round, which means an abundance of goose poop — so much that a local artist made goose poop art that was displayed at the Mayo clinic. After visiting the geese, we headed downtown (which is about five minutes from the lake) for more walking.

A sad specimen of the Minnesota state bird.

I’ve heard that St. Paul and Minneapolis have sky-walks connecting buildings so that Minnesotans can minimize their exposure to the bitter winters. Rochester has a similar system of sky-walks and tunnels connecting parking garages, a shopping mall, and the hospitals (on Thursday night, we got from the parking garage to right around the corner from our dinner destination without having to go outside). Since it was a fabulous fall day, we didn’t take full advantage of the tunnels and sky-walks. But it’s good to know they’re there, right?

A sky-walk connecting a parking garage to the courthouse.

Our downtown exploration started at the mall (the Shops at University Square), where we visited Amanda’s favorite Barnes and Noble. It’s in an old theater, and it’s even better than the old Houston Bookstop (for one, this one is still open). The building is on the National Register of Historic Places, the old ticket window showcases books, there’s a castle on the second floor, and the ceiling is royal blue with little pin-prick stars. I want to be a cat and live in that place.

From the best Barnes and Noble ever, we walked across the Peace Plaza to the Mayo Clinic, where I tweeted my location. I now realize “At the Mayo Clinic” is a concerning tweet to get without any context. It was just part of the tour, since the hospital plays such a major role in the town. A new building, the Gonda Building was added about 10 years ago, and it’s full of granite and marble and art. The main foyer has a Chihuly, and several Warhols hang in the hall next to the cafeteria between Gonda and the old building. Rather than going to an art museum, school field trips go to certain floors at the Mayo Clinic to see specific art work. Unfortunately, we didn’t see the goose poop paintings. But we did take in some interesting sculptures around the clinic:

Weeeeeeee!

Before lunch, we continued our walking at Quarry Hill, a nature center with trails, paved paths and caves. We found the quarry. It looks like a desert at this time of year.

In the afternoon, we picked up another Peace Corps friend who’s in his first year of med school at Mayo. He needed some apples, so we went to Sekkap’s, an orchard and pumpkin patch. We bought apples (I got honey), then went through the tiniest corn maze ever. It really wasn’t a maze at all, but it also wasn’t meant for adults.

From there, back home to the middle of nowhere (between Mantorville and Kasson!) for a fabulous dinner of cheesy potatoes. I’m a little disappointed I didn’t get to have the famed Minnesotan “hot dish”… in fact, I still don’t know what it is, besides some kind of casserole. I also didn’t eat cheese curds. But, the morning I left, we visited Amanda’s dad in his renovated barn-home, where I sampled elderberry jelly, corn cob jelly, and and honey butter. All very tasty, you betcha (for the record, I didn’t hear anyone say that, ever).

When my family lived outside of Dallas, my brother and I frequently tramped around a creek behind our house. We’d put on boots, walk through the electric-tower-lined field behind the houses to a trail that lead down to this creek. We waded through the water and scrambled up and down the banks when the creek got too deep. We saw tadpoles, crawfish, a snake (that was once, with some friends, and we ran all the way home), a mysterious footbridge, and once, terrifyingly, what I can only describe as a biker gang.

In August, I was walking in Cherokee Park, when I decided to take a dirt path instead of one of the paved trails. I saw this tree over Beargrass Creek and edged my way down the steep bank to get a better photo. Being by the water got me all nostalgic for my creek-exploration days, but it also reminded me that there are all kinds of lovely things to be found just moments from my doorstep… and everywhere, really.

About a month later, I listened to Terry Gross’s “Fresh Air” interview with Maurice Sendak. It made me cry like crazy, but this quote stuck with me:

“It is a blessing to find the time to do the things, to read the books, to listen to the music.”

Sendak was speaking about aging (just before, he says, “It is a blessing to get old.”), and that theme was what got me all teary-eyed. I’m sure it’s true, but why wait until we get old? I can’t do it all, but I think it’s important to find time to read the books, listen to the music, meet up with friends (or just call them), see your surroundings, and explore.

Now.

Omer

Paulette

Omer and Paulette are strangers 32 and 33, both photographed at the Art Car Parade a few weeks ago.

Omer plays flute with the March Madness Marching Band. Paulette drove her art car (which is also her regular car) in the parade and was sketching the band’s performance, because her camera’s memory card was full of video. You can visit her at mermaidsdontcook.com. This is her car:

Here are some of my favorite photos, but you can see the full set on Flickr.

The Heaven and Hell Car

Heaven and Hell Car detail

March Madness Marching Band’s hoop dancers

I love a good marching band.