Tomorrow marks my 40th birthday, as well as our return home from our honeymoon. :) We'll be spending most of our day in one airport or another -- Mexico to Houston to Newark -- so I thought I'd give myself a shoutout now, while R is still sleeping.

I'm not sure I've quite settled in to the notion of turning 40 yet, but I'm doing it in the best way possible...newly-married, just coming back from our honeymoon to our apartment. Part of me doesn't want to come home and resume real life anytime soon -- we both hate our jobs, and now that the wedding's over, need to get back to finding new ones. But part of me is ready to get back -- I'm done with the sun, I want to see tall buildings and get Thai food, I miss our friends.

I'm turning 40 less gracefully than I turned 30, I think. Turning 30 was great -- I had the best time, I really loved my 30s. :) Turning 40...I'm expected to be a little older, a little wiser, and there's a little more experience than I'd necessarily prefer. I'm on my second (and hopefully LAST) marriage, I've had many in my family pass away, and there's just been so many family issues. Hopefully, things will smooth out and settle down, now. And yes, we're trying for kids. :) Let's see if that happens, too.

I need to go check on R, and the lobby's actually a little noisy -- which is good,as typically it's deserted and very like "The Shining." Still playing surreal music, tho'. 'later!

Random observations:

• Going out into town, in the middle of the day, on top of a bad sunburn is just...bad. Remind us not to do it again. R wound up taking refuge in a Starbucks. :(


• Our hotel lobby is like the Mexican version of "The Shining." It's ALWAYS deserted, and the music gets more surreal every time we come in.


• Tried to do my MexiGnome impression. R thinks I'm even more nuts than usual.


• We're doing a "canopy tour" tomorrow, where you explore the jungle on a series of ziplines. You're 90 ft up. We're both TERRIFIED of heights. Why are we doing this again? Ah, yes, stupidity.

Music we heard at lunch today...while sipping very large drinks involving coconuts...

• Mexi-Celt (I seriously want to drink with those guys)
• Mexi-Ska
• Mexi-Doors
• Mexi-Enya...
• And our personal fave: Mexi-POLKA!

Caliente! XD

I know that I'll be missing my Dad for the rest of my life, and I've gotten pretty good at it. He's been gone for seven years, after all. But for some reason, whenever I think about him not being at my wedding, I break down and it's like he died yesterday. It's that level of grief.

And, uh, wedding's coming up soon. I need to deal with this, and I don't know how.

I'd like to have some mention of those who aren't here in our ceremony. The challenge, of course, is that 1. I don't want to make this a memorial service -- it's a wedding, after all, and 2. I really, really don't want to cry at this level during the wedding. "''Scuse me, the bride needs a bawl break, she'll be right back. Tissues are in the gazebo, honey!"

I've read some other things, such as leaving an empty chair at the ceremony with roses on it and displaying pictures with flowers in front of them...again, a little too "memorial service" for me. One nice suggestion was to carry Dad's picture in my bouquet somehow, that might work. We were also planning to do a digital frame or two with pictures of me and R, both together and separate, with our families. Shots of my dad and grandparents could certainly go in there. :) And I plan to mention my dad and grandparents somewhere in our program.

None of this helps with the fact that he's not going to be there. And I know that some would gently tell me, "He'll be there in spirit," but I'm not so sure that's the case. I think, after he died, Dad's spirit hung around for a while, but I also think he's since moved on. I haven't felt him around in quite some time. I'd love to be proven wrong, but I can't hold out much hope.

Honoring him is the best I can do.

It's been a rough week in CakeLand. Every time I write it's "we're running around like lunatics," except we ARE, and the lunacy's getting worse.

Last weekend was one of the fun parts; we went out to Long Island on Saturday and picked out wines (we're getting married in a vineyard). I'd brought our menu with us, so we could pair up correctly, and the vineyard folks looked surprised and told me I was organized. I'm surprised. Doesn't everyone do this?

Wednesday was also fun, if a little draining. We'd decided to get our marriage license, which involved leaving work early, since the Marriage Bureau closes at 3:45 and is all the way downtown. Everything was fine, until I woke up Wednesday morning and realized that I needed to decide what my name would be...a question I'd been avoiding for months.

there are some who call me...Tim!

When I married for the first time, M felt pretty strongly about my taking his name, in whole or in part. Since I liked my name, and wanted to keep it, I compromised and did a hyphenate. It was a looooong hyphenate, but it worked for me.

Since my divorce, I've been wondering if I did the wrong thing. I felt very, very strongly about keeping my name -- did that mean that I wasn't as committed to the marriage as I thought, even before I walked down the aisle? In keeping my identity, did I somehow keep a part of M out? Was I setting boundaries without realizing it?

I've been going back and forth for months about my last name. R's last name is too long to hyphenate nicely with mine. so that was one option out. Another option New York State offers is to combine portions of both your last names into one new one. R wasn't much up for that (plus, hello, "Hemculli?!"), nor was he up for taking my last name as his second middle name. (Which, as it happens, you can't do in New York State anyway -- the license only covers surnames.) So it was really down to my last name or his, with R saying that he was totally fine with either choice.

I sat in my office Wednesday morning, writing his last name with my first in various combinations. It didn't look right -- plus, since we both share the same first initial, it really looked more like his name than mine. I went into his office and said, "Are you completely and utterly sure you're okay with my keeping my name? Are you sure you're not going to regret not having a 'Mrs. H.' down the line?" I also told him about my conflicts, about how I was worried about what it would mean for me not to take his name...did it mean we weren't a family?

I went back and forth about it for most of the morning, until something that I read finally helped me make my decision:

"I do have a good name, if I have to say so myself. I think it has syllabic rhythm. And ethnic identity. And I share it with a very cool Southern, Catholic writer. So, that’s part of why I kept it. I think it’s like a little hint, “I am THIS kind of person.” The kind of person who will get your joke about catechism class and drink too much Guinness. If I had taken my husband’s name, it would have been like pretending to be somebody else with a whole other personal history and a whole other set of in-jokes and favorite foods."

That helped. That helped a LOT. See, I'm mostly a mutt, but my last name is Italian. My last name, as my buddies well know, means "white ass" in Italian. How on earth could I give that up?! XD

So, I kept my white ass. :)

do I need the eye test with that marriage license?

The Manhattan Marriage Bureau issued 70,000 marriage licenses last year. For something so romantic, you'd think it would be prettier...but it's not. It's more like going to the DMV. The Bureau is supposed to be getting a makeover -- it's not coming too soon!

We also ordered our wedding bands on Wednesday -- putting the WED in Wednesday -- so we were able to cross some more items off the list. Both of our rings look awesome. :)

We've been getting so much done, but truth? I'm to the point where I'm so psyched for this to be over..and for our butts to be parked on a beach! The only thing I'll need to plan is what cocktail to try next. Soon...soon... :)