Fifteen days remain until I get to marry my best friend. If
somebody had told me how expensive it would be to have a wedding, I would have
settled for a handshake, but nevertheless I persist. You people. You people
better have a good time.
Very few people know this, but, we’ve been getting dance
lessons for about two months, tailored specifically to our wedding dance song.
By all appearances, I’ve paid little attention, and I have the rhythm of a
thing that doesn’t have very good rhythm. I’ll still be lost the second the
song is over for regular dancing, so I’ll probably go chat with people. Dancing
really isn’t my thing. But I’m trying.
Food, tables, chairs, cakes, costumes, haircuts, dance
lessons, drinks for both drinkers and non-drinkers, flowers, port-o-potties (I
splurged for the kind that flush.), paper plates, plastic cups and silverware,
photography. Those are all nouns and I can’t wait to verb them from my mind when
this is done. People keep asking if we are registered anywhere. Yes, we are
registered at Wells Fargo. Please get us a gift card for there.
But all of these expenses are a one-time trade for a
lifetime with my soulmate and two precious bonus kids. The girls are also a lifetime
expense—for which their biological father has still contributed exactly $0 in the last two years—but they
are a lot of fun. I just discovered today that we actually have to pay for the
four-year-old to go to preschool. WTF? More and more, every day, everybody wants more
money. But, fuck em’, we have it, so let’s spend it on education. With what we paid to have a babysitter today,
I made less that I did per hour than I did when I left prison. But I wouldn’t
trade any of these complaints for any part of my old life.
As I was pushing the merry-go-round at the park today, Emme
was laughing hysterically and screaming, “Daddy, Daddy faster!!” and when she
fell off she got up, brushed herself off, looked at me and said, “I’m ok, you a good daddy.” Then she ran
off to fall off of something else. I can’t imagine not wanting to be a part of
their lives. I would and have sacrificed anything and everything to get to see
them as much as possible.
Ella, who is eight, is becoming quite a character. She wants
desperately to be a YouTube star, and I think she could do it because the bar
is so incredibly low. She watches hours of kids unwrapping toys. She wants to do
that. She also watches people play video games. So I make her go outside. When
I was a kid, I actually had to play video
games and unwrap my own toys, and look at me now. We have a special bond; she
looks to me for guidance, supervision, and humor. We went to her first Twins
game a little under two weeks ago, and it was a great time. She made it onto
the jumbo Tron, about 31 years faster than me.
I thought a lot about my recently deceased friend at the
game. He knew when I told him we were going that it would be special and it
was. We saw the only triple-play ever at Target Field. We watched five homeruns
leave the field, and the Twins beat the Yankees. Ella didn’t understand much of
what was going on, but we had fun getting her face painted, eating cotton
candy, and eating sushi on a rooftop in downtown Minneapolis before the game.
What a beautiful day.
This will likely be my last post before the wedding and
honeymoon. I just want to thank everybody who reached out after my friend’s
passing to share their strength with me. It’s been a tough road for a lot of
people, and I am so grateful that I had an opportunity to share some of his
story at his final ceremony, and I hope my words will make a lasting impact.
Fifteen days remain until I get to marry my best friend. My
new journey awaits, and I can’t wait to share our story with you.
Thank you for reading.
