Mawwiage is what bwings us togevah today.

I mentioned in my last post - just yesterday! - that I'm engaged to be married.

For a while, it seemed like it would never happen. I contemplated buying the China I wanted bit by bit, because I started to see myself as hip, single Aunt StrainedConsciousness for the rest of my life.

I'd been dating a fellow for a few months, and had informed him, on our third or fourth date, that I had some health problems, and that they weren't fun to deal with (I went whole hog and told him about the intestinal fungal infection, because that's attractive). His response was, "No problem."

At least, it wasn't a problem until it was a problem, until I didn't want to go to a concert because my infection was back, and I felt awful and exhausted and nauseous. And then, he just... stopped calling. Because five months of dating didn't warrant more than that, apparently.

When I realized that he had no interest in continuing to date me, I was pissed. Pissed that he didn't have the cojones to tell me himself, and pissed that I'd wasted my time on him, particularly since I'd straight up told him, in detail, how the infections affected me, when they happened.

I got on eHarmony that night, and responded to several messages that had been dropped into my InBox in the past two weeks.

One of those messages was from the man I will marry on May 30, 2015.

He was cute, judging by the picture, and wrote exceptionally well, and seemed to have a well-developed sense of humor. We met for coffee a few weeks later - we began corresponding over the Christmas holidays of 2013 - and I liked him immediately.

Except he needed a haircut. But hey, that's easily fixed, right?

He had a good sense of humor, a wide range of interests, and he was exactly like his picture on the eHarmony website. Except more handsome, so hooray!

Our second date was at the Museum of Natural History in Houston. I'd been wanting to see their Egyptian Hall, so we went. We also went through the butterfly exhibit, which was fun, but the best part was definitely the Egyptian Hall.

Why? Because of all of the amazingly hilarious jokes that can be made at the expense of mummies.

Yes, I know, I'm going to hell for mocking dead people. Or, at least their canopic jars.

As we wandered through the gift shop on the way out, a Triceratops mug caught my eye. Not just any triceratops mug, though: an over-sized triceraCHOPS mug, showing the different cuts of meat on a triceratops. My Future Husband bought it for me, and I still use it every day at the office.

By our fifth date - when he made me dinner at 9:30 at night because I was exhausted, on my anti-candida diet, and had just left work - I was hooked. I had to drive to my parents' house, the next day, and when I got there, I cancelled my eHarmony account. I'd found the one.

By our fifth date. Because I didn't feel like breaking my dad's record (He told my mom on their third date that he was going to marry her. She laughed at him.)

Jump ahead fifteen months, and I'm two months away from our wedding.

It's going to be pink. If you'd told me two years ago that I'd be having a pink wedding, I would have laughed in your face.

However, My Future Husband and I attend the Unitarian Universalist Church in Houston, and its interior is painted in two different tones of pink, with soft green accents and beautiful mid-tone wood paneling. It's a very Frank Lloyd Wright-ian building (as are many Unitarian Churches), and I'm thrilled to be having our ceremony there.

My niece was initially excited about it, because that means that her flower girl dress will be pink. Except she just told my sister/Matron of Honor that she wanted a gold dress.

TOO BAD, KIDDO. YOU WILL WEAR YOUR FAVORITE COLOR AND YOU WILL LIKE IT.

Anyways, we're having a morning ceremony - 11:00 a.m. - with a luncheon to follow at Ouisie's Table, a Houston institution, and also site of the one and only instance in which I've had a waiter pour a drink on me (it was a Bloody Mary, for the record, on my birthday. I think I was 22).

And then, the next day, My Future Husband and I will leave for almost a week in Santa Fe, New Mexico, one of my absolute favorite places to visit.

We've been living together since shortly after our engagement - I was very ill, unable to work, and could no longer afford the rent on my apartment - and My Future Husband has been doing an excellent job of dealing with Wedding Decisions.

For instance, he chose the wedding invitations. I stood in the living room, with six different invitation samples in hand, hemming and hawing about which ones I liked, and he took them, sorted through them, and held up the one we are about to mail out to our guests. "I like this one," he said.

It's pearlescent pink with black lettering. I would never in a million years have thought he'd pick it, but he did! And I like it.

When we went to pre-shop for our registry, I couldn't decide on the Formal Flatware I wanted, and he opened a drawer of flatware, said, "I like this one," and voila! It looked better with our China than any of the others I'd seen.

And then we bought chocolate at the fancy candy counter in the store where we registered (if you're ever in Houston, check out Bering's Hardware: you can buy chocolate, Herend porcelain, William Yeoward crystal, and lawn mowers).

It's nice to have someone who can defuse some of my OCDesign. And he hasn't built a bonfire out of my design magazines, either.

Yet...

Public Self-Mockery

I'm getting ready to indulge in a bit of self-humiliation, potentially, so bear with me.

Hopefully, it will prove entertaining to you, Dear Reader.

Until this past Saturday, I hadn't been on a proper date in 18 months. It didn't particularly bother me - I didn't lie awake in bed at night wondering why boys don't like me, or anything - but it's kind of nice to have a man other than your father take you to lunch/dinner occasionally, and if I want to get married before I turn 50, I decided I'd have to make a change in my current MO, dating-wise.

Mind you, until recently, my current MO, dating-wise, was to ogle good looking men out of the corner of my eye while buying almond crackers in the "Special Diets" area of Whole Foods.

A friend had mooted the idea of joining eHarmony, a while back, and I decided I'd do it.

So, I'm now swimming in the murky waters of internet dating.

I didn't realize it would be quite so complicated.

First of all, I've thought myself to be fairly open-minded about appearances, lately. I'd see some decent-looking fellow - but by no means "a looker" - on the street and think, "Hm. Yeah, I could date that."

That attitude doesn't really work in internet dating, though, because then you will end up doing nothing but responding to the not-too-impressive-looking and rather shrimpy fellows and wasting time communicating with them when, in reality, you'd rather chuck them for the ridiculously good-looking professor who just emailed you. As it is, I spend 1-2 hours per day culling the herd, so to speak, so I can devote more time to the 4-5 "most promising" gentlemen with whom I'm corresponding.

So, my superficial tendencies - which I was so proud of myself for supposedly overcoming! - are back in full swing.

Then, too, there's the eHarmony concept of "guided communication," in which there is a carefully choreographed set of moves and steps you take before you send someone an email. You can, if desired, override this method and just send someone an email, too.

I've found, by and large, that most of the gentlemen on eHarm get to about step two (out of 4 steps, the 4th being email) and say, "Oh, to hell with this. Here's my email address. I can't stand any more of the guided insanity. I think you're gorgeous and intelligent. Respond if you'd like to."

Sometimes I respond. Other times, however, I go along with the guided communication , even though it can be tedious, particularly if you're already prepared to marry one of your matches, as I currently am, although I have yet to meet him, or even speak to him on the telephone, or even exchange an email.

I kid. (sort of - he is, quite literally, a long-standing and highly unlikely fantasy of mine come true).

I've already had one date, and it went well (I think?) and have another one, this Thursday. The amount of time I spend preoccupied with my wardrobe, trying to decide what to wear, has increased in tandem with the volume of emails in my eHarm inbox.

Hopefully, I won't end up with a case of "first date fatigue."

Out of Touch

I'm out of touch

With my own time

And I'm out of my head because Ryan Reynolds is People's Sexiest Maannnn.

Second day in a row that I've butchered song lyrics. Yesterday, The Beatles. Today, Hall and Oates.

The music definitely says something, because as the lyrics above say, I'm out of touch with my time.

I've known this for a while. One of my friends thinks it's hilarious. She loves telling people that I have no idea what Justin Bieber sounds like (at which point I thought to myself, "They play his songs on the radio? I thought he was just a Disney thing..."), but that I can pluck the title and artist to some obscure song playing in a bar (The Doves aren't that obscure. And just because I know who Bonnie Tyler is, jeez...)

So today, I posted on Facebook about how disappointed I was that People selected Ryan Reynolds as their Sexiest Man.

Adorably goofy. Okay. Fine. Whatever.

Apparently, there are plenty of women out there - some of whom are my Facebook friends - who disagree and think he's a total studmuffin.

Heheh. " Studmuffin."

BUT HE WAS IN VAN WILDER. NO ACTOR WHOSE MAIN ACCOMPLISHMENT TO DATE IS VAN WILDER CAN BE SEXY.

Or maybe that's just because I'm not up on pop culture, so I don't know what else he might have been in since then. Hmmm...

Then I started thinking about who I would have selected for Sexiest Man Alive.

Er. Honestly? First guy that came to mind (granted in his form of 20 years ago)?

Yup. And for the record, yes, I think he is still very handsome today, but I think he needs to go back to the mustache instead of the goatee thing. Just sayin'. Nevermind that he's older than my dad...

Okay, so if Tom said, "Nope. Not doing it. I'm too old for that business," who would I pick then?

Er... Yeah. Not old enough to be my dad, thankfully, as he's only 13 years older than I am (so that actually puts him inside the acceptable range of ages for dating, in my opinion).

So Tom Selleck is "too old for this" and Javier Bardem is off frolicking with Penelope Cruz. Option #3?

The -ahem- most surprising option?

The one that my friend looked at me and said, "Wait, who? You mean the guy who played....

Ghandi?"

Yeah... Ben Kingsley (sigh. Flutter eyelashes). But she apparently hasn't seen him in Sexy Beast.

The movie title says it all.

The Interior Mania Continues

My mother and I went to see Antony Gormley speak at the Nasher Sculpture Center on Saturday (he was fascinating. If not for the fact that I was felled by a migraine, I could have listened to him all day. As it was, I still stuck it out through the whole damned lecture. THAT AMAZING.)

Prior to the lecture (little artist crush, now), my mom came into my apartment to survey the new lampshades in situ, seeing as she gave them to me for my birthday and all.

We have decided that my current picture frames have got to go.

Sigh.

It's a vicious circle, Dear Readers. You think you're getting things just right, and yet there's something nagging at the back of your brain...

We've decided that the frames should be gold/gilded.

Oh, Ms. Strainedconsciousness! you cry. You don't have the money to buy loads of new picture frames!

No, Dear Reader, but I do already have in my possession plenty of gilding supplies, for I went on an art supply binge a few months ago (prior to surgery, pain management treatments, and daily migraine attacks) and bought gilding fixative and foil. It's not real gold, of course, because I can't afford that, but it looks quite like the real thing, and it's doing a smashing job of transforming the taxidermy mount for a set of deer antlers I have.

Ahem.

Gilding is actually, I've found, a wonderful way to relax. Brush on the fixative, do something more productive for 20 minutes while the fixative dries a bit, and then return to the object to be gilded and start applying the foil, using waxed paper and a dry paintbrush. It's very minute work, very tedious, and really quite brainless. I don't have to worry too much about it, whether I'm doing it wrong. If the fixative gets too dry, I just put on some more, wait a bit, and start again.

It doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to be solid on the first go round. It eventually begins to look even, although the surface is made up of a mottled agglomeration of foil bits.

It's a craft I can get behind.

Although really, I tend to stand over the objects when I work.

I Feel So Artsy Fartsy

My mom and I decided that we needed to do something fun, today. Yesterday, our fun consisted of getting our toenails painted, lunch with a family friend, and finding out that aforementioned friend's daughter is expecting (yippee!), which is impossible to beat.

After finishing our brunch at La Madeleine, we started kicking around the topic of "fun," and decided that "fun" should be a trip to a museum. But which museum to pursue? I whipped out the trusty iPhone and discovered that the Fort Worth Modern is between exhibits, so they were off the list. The Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University had an exhibit of Cubist portraits by Diego Rivera, which sounded intriguing. For Christmas the past two years, my mom has received a membership to the Dallas Museum of Art. Naturally, that was the next museum whose exhibits I Googled.

The main exhibit was titled Private Universes. I was originally put off by the painfully ambiguous title, as well as the rhetoric that enshrouded the description of the works in a veil of mystery. This critique from a former art major. Maybe my mind was just clouded by the omelet and croissant I'd just devoured. My mom decided, however, that she wanted to see Private Universes, so we set sail for Downtown Dallas.

I am so glad we did.

The works of art were breathtaking (kind of like the view from my hopefully future apartment, but better: breathtaking on par with an ozone alert maroon day). They ranged from the slightly disturbing to the sublime. One work was executed on canvases that enveloped you - literally - in a wall of 24K gold lusciousness - the gold foil applied to the canvases created stylized woodland scenes interspersed with pure abstract shapes (and still this by Jim Hodges is shown on the DMA's web page about the exhibit). Franz Ackerman's my "Ready Now" jolted the viewer with its heroically scaled riot of flourescent colors. I was enthralled.

The first three paintings at the entrance to the main gallery (the barrel vault) were my favorites, though. Those and a word painting with an underlay of Sponge Bob Squarepants checks - yes, from a check book...seriously - that talked about accidentally shooting his mother-in-law on a hunting trip when he mistook her for a deer wearing an orange vest and brewing coffee. It made me laugh out loud.

If you're a museum-y kind of person, and you're in Dallas, I highly suggest checking out the exhibit.