As promised to all four of my readers (I checked the stats for my blog; I know who YOU are!) This post is full of fun stuff, or more accurately, self- incriminating pictures and fun stuff.
This Halloween Geoffrey and I dressed up as dinosaurs. I made our costumes out of hoodies and felt, and did they EVER look hokey! Geoff was a T-rex and I was a Pterodactyl, but I prefer to refer to costumed Lizzie and Geoffrey as Geoffriasaurus and Lizadactyl. Here they are:
Oh, and you might notice our friends Meredith and Stuart. They dressed up as Dr.’s Grant and Sattler from Jurassic Park. See the resemblance? Even though we didn’t win the costume contest that night, (I have it on good authority that we lost because the four of us were some of the shortest people there. Apparently they couldn’t see us through the crowd when our turn came) we got tons of compliments about how “original” and “creative” our costumes were. I’ve learned through years of receiving these compliments that people usually want to say, “boy, do you look ridiculous!” when they call my costume choices “creative,” but I’ll take what I can get. We didn’t care anyway, because we were drunkasauruses.
Wedding Stuff:
A few weeks ago I was searching for literary, philosophical, academic quotations about love and marriage, you know, because I’m a huge nerd and like that stuff. Initially, I planned to use them on invitations, but as I have already established, I’m slacking on this wedding preparation stuff. There is a good chance this grand idea will never come to anything. There’s also a fairly good chance that invitations in general won’t come of anything either. If you get an email from me in the next six months that has a subject line reading “COME TO MY WEDDING!!!,” you will know I procrastinated too long on real invitations to get them out. I wish I could say I was joking here, but I really can’t emphasize enough the likelihood of my not getting around to even the most basic of wedding tasks.
Below are several quotations I found that are delightfully inappropriate for any event celebrating a marriage. If I get around to sending invitations out, they won’t make an appearance, but I feel the need to share them anyway.
- “By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.”
― Socrates
If you knew Geoffrey before I did, when his hair was shaggy and he wore wholly button up, short sleeved shirts, cargo pants, and a fedora on a regular basis, you also know that he is a philosopher at heart. According to Socrates, if he reverts back to his old discipline in a few years, you will all know that I am a bad wife.
“An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets, the more interested he is in her.”
― Agatha Christie
I suppose if Geoff becomes an archeologist in the future, you all can assume things are going well! Also, Agatha Christie must not feel the need for a wife to become more interested in her husband has he grows older. I think this is unfair. With giant ears and noses and hair growing out of weird places, I think old men are much more interesting and much more like dinosaurs than old women. I imagine an archeologist wife would be even better than an archaeologist husband.
- “There is one thing more exasperating than a wife who can cook and won’t, and that’s a wife who can’t cook and will.”
― Robert Frost
I love to cook, and I constantly feel like Geoffrey feels this way about me as he tries all the crazy things I concoct in the kitchen. I always knew he liked Robert Frost, but I never knew they had so much in common.
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Paradise Lost. Book iv. Line 533. |
This one seems a bit foreboding. It’s particularly worrisome considering that this line is said by Satan as he spies on Adam and Eve and sarcastically wishes them well until he comes back to screw everything up. I think this can be translated to modern day prose as “wait until the honeymoon is over!”
Here are some that I liked:
- “A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.”
― Graham Greene, The End of the Affair
This is a line from one of my favorite novels, and I think it’s a good analogy for relationships. Geoffrey and I are getting married in Mayish, and while that officially starts our life together, we both consider it an arbitrary date. We’ve been together for over three years and have known we would spend the rest of our lives together for most of that time; it always just felt right. If that’s the case, it’s unclear when our story began. Was it when we met, became friends, started dating, decided to commit ourselves to one another, when we officially got engaged, or will our story start in Mayish of 2014?
- “With thee conversing I forget all time,
All seasons, and their change,—all please alike.” Paradise Lost. Book iv. Line 639.
This one is nice and sappy, and appropriate for Geoffrey and me for a number of reasons. 1. Geoffrey is an early modernist and primarily a Miltonist, so we talk about Paradise Lost A LOT! 2. If Geoffrey and I need to be ready to go somewhere at the same time, it is a certainty that we will lose track of time and show up late; neither of us knows when to shut up already and finish getting ready. We will wander around the house talking about our plans for the day, what we are going to fix for dinner, how to get our dog, Maebe, to stop doing that really obnoxious thing she has been doing lately, etc… and we run late. On days when we both work from home, we don’t get anything done, because every time one of us starts to do work, the other one comes up with some “super important” thing that we have to talk about right then.
- “And then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then asked me would I yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will yes.” James Joyce Ulyssess
I’ll have to refer to Kent for a correct, although likely convoluted critical analysis of the final lines of Ulysses above. This isn’t a jab at Kent’s abilities as a critic, but rather a comment on my understanding of this book as one of those “nobody really knows what it’s about” books. As one of many people who know almost nothing about Joyce or Ulysses, this seems, to me, like a nice way of expressing the feeling of rapture, joy, and excitement that comes with a new beginning like the start of a life together, a brand new family, a new adventure, and on that note…
- “The Greatest Adventure is what lies ahead…” J. R. R. Tolkien
I like this one for a number of reasons: 1. Geoffrey and I both love The Hobbit, and that includes the book, the original cartoon movie, and the new movies. 2. I have a lot of hobbit-like characteristics (minus the hairy feet) and 3. I really like the idea of thinking about our lives as a married couple as an adventure.
And finally:
- “There are some things you can’t share without ending up liking each other, and knocking out a twelve-foot mountain troll is one of them.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
Geoffrey and I have never taken down a 12-foot mountain troll together, but we have built our share of Ikea furniture, housetrained a puppy, and taught ACT prep in Memphis City Schools together; I believe those are equally harrowing experiences.
Go Team Smemerson! 