I don’t like setting my alarm clock on vacation, but I’m glad I did this morning. We went joy-riding with the blue-hairs up the Rogue River! We saw ospreys and eagles and deer as we traversed grandiose scenery, had lunch, and got wet “braving” the rapids. The splashing was mostly gratuitous showmanship, but nonetheless I tittered with all the grandmas as we banked turns on the water and sped through narrow channels.
We have now crossed the California border. Tomorrow: redwoods!
Day three of our honeymoon finds us at The Inn at Spanish Head. This is the first building in my experience where the street-level lobby is on the ninth floor. Balcony views of the coast and an outdoor swimming pool lured us to pause our drive south for an extra night. The hotel restaurant and lounge offer lackluster food and service (though the chef’s smokehouse salmon is good). But no problem: after a late night swim, we snacked on Croatian fig jam and Camembert cheese baguette sandwiches, ingredients courtesy of our local Whole Foods back in Seattle. The plan for today: beach walks, more swimming, reading, and maybe geeking out.
We’ll put up posts on the wedding as soon as we can write coherently about it and we sort through all the pictures.
In the meantime, read critics’ reviews: Nerd’s Eye View, Wolftone, and Vain.
Let’s just say it was a gorgeous, moving event.
(On a lighter note, For Better or for Worse captures some of the angst of actually planning the event. So glad that’s behind us now!)
Wedding season is upon us. Knox’s parents drove up a few weeks ago. Our first guests arrived on Sunday for their pre-wedding Northwest vacation. Knox’s sister and her family are in town.
The logistics are sufficiently under control. We had a spa day on Sunday and I have a much-needed haircut tomorrow before more out-of-towners arrive. Then it’ll be hiking, fireworks, and vows.
Oh, right, vows. I thought we were forgetting something….
Our marriage is less than a month away. Life feels full, as we try to juggle wedding tasks (the meeting of the parents went well), errands we want to get done beforehand (the picket fence is still an abstraction), and relaxation (hah!)
Obviously, I have marriage on the brain, but it seems like I’m not the only one. The New York Times has a retrospective on four years of gay marriage in Massachusetts, complete with a multimedia feature. Then, same-sex marriages are held up as examples of more equitable and non-gender-based power dynamics. And finally, in a shocking development, it seems that heterosexuals themselves are discovering equitable marriage roles.
These last two leave me shaking my head. Obviously in a same-sex marriage gender is not part of the power dynamics, but why should the power dynamics be affected by gender in the first place? And is it really that novel that some straight couples eschew gender roles? I certainly grew up with the expectation that both partners in a marriage share responsibilities equally, and that’s the norm among my friends, too.
