March 22, 2005 - Confetti Jones

Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

March 22, 2005 - Confetti Jones

My sister's fiancé wearing his birthday present

Somehow, when I was writing about Saturday, I left out something very important. In the afternoon, before going to the St. Joseph's Day celebration, my sister and I drove to the bridal shop in Boalsburg where she'd ordered our dresses.

We picked up mine and the dress for my brother's wife, which my sister will deliver in person when she visits them.

They allowed me to try the dress on. My sister came in with me and helped me get an idea of how it will look by pulling the top tight. It's gorgeous, a very flattering bright red dress I could actually see myself wearing elsewhere.

I'm still trying to get closer to my goal by the wedding, but the dress would look great now, too.

On Sunday morning, I got up fairly early and took a shower. I grabbed a book and was going to read until people got up, but my sister's fiancé was up already. He had made coffee, so we chatted while we drank a couple cups.

When everybody was up, I brought out the presents for my sister and her fiancé. My sister liked the colorful glass wind chime we got her, and her fiancé loved the T-shirt I gave him, with one of my designs. They both also got cash gifts, which I know will come in handy.

It was a gray, rainy day, fairly typical for State College. We decided to make the best of it. After my sister and her fiancé cooked us omelets, using some of the delicious chenna cheese that The Gryphon had made, we hopped in the car and dropped off my sister's fiancé at the library where he works.

Then she drove us to Bellefonte to see the place where they're hoping to move in soon. It's half of a brick double house in a nice, residential area with a huge back yard. I'm hoping they get it.

The rest of our afternoon, we stopped at various party supply stores and craft stores to look for ideas for decorating for the reception. Mainly, we were pricing things and getting ideas. She's doing the decorating herself, so we had to check on supplies.

The Gryphon came with us and occasionally provided feedback on our ideas, usually giving us a reality check if something would end up being too costly or labor intensive. I never realized before how poorly equipped some of these party stores are. They just didn't have a lot of the things we sought. We had to stop at various places before we had an idea of where she could get what she wanted.

By the end of the afternoon, we finally understood why wedding planners get paid so much. Not only do they have great ideas, but they can probably find large bags of confetti, something we couldn't find anywhere. We decided to check out Dad's crosscut shredder and suss out the possibility of making it ourselves.

We had to be back at my sister's place by 3 p.m., because somebody was going to look at the massage table she was selling. My sister is a certified massage therapist and once had a business out of my dad's office. But once she pursued a career in social services instead, she decided she doesn't need the table. Still, when the woman bought it, I could tell she was sad to see it go.

After relaxing a little longer, we talked about dinner. My sister said it was too bad that The Gryphon and I had sushi for lunch on Saturday, because she'd like to try the sushi place. I told her I didn't mind going back. So that's what we decided to do. We stopped at the library first to leave a note for her fiancé that he was welcome to join us.

This time of day, Say Sushi wasn't as crowded. We were seated at the same table where the table before I'd watched a family of three. When I first saw them, I thought it was three alumni. But the more I looked the more I realized it was two parents with a son. This gradually got through to me when I looked at the woman and realized that, despite the fact that, to me, she looked young, she was straight out of about 1985. From her pouffy hair to the turtleneck paired with a sweater and jeans. Her husband looked like a mid-'80s frat guy, with the frat guy mullet. I supposed that if they graduated about 1985, they could easily have had a son old enough to be attending college at Penn State.

But today there was not much people watching to be had. My sister's fiancé joined us for dinner. We all got sushi platters except for The Gryphon, who had noodles again. We had a nice relaxing time talking about different types of sushi. My sister had to check first that our sushi platters wouldn't contain octopus or squid, because she'd read an article about how intelligent they are and can no longer stomach eating them.

After dinner, we returned to my sister's place and packed up the car. We figured we ought to get on the road while it was still a reasonable hour, because of the long trip home. I'm glad we left when we did, because I was just starting to get tired by the time we got home.