Last minute wedding stuff.

I camped at the groom's house last night. He tossed the keys to my sister and the three of us, Myself and my 2 sisters stayed there. 

His mom, also my sister has a room in the house that she uses when she visits so she went there. I hit the spare bedroom upstairs and my other sister had choices but she's kind of like me in that she can camp easily. She opted for the couch and a poncho liner.

We're up now and I have fried up a pond of bacon and ate a good sized chunk of it along with three eggs and left the bacon out for my sisters who will nibble on it and maybe fry themselves an egg or two.

What is funny is that even though I'm the champion fast dresser, my sisters are no slouches either. Either of them can dive into a phone booth and give Clark Kent a run for his money, coming out looking like a queen ready for the embassy ball.

One of the things about staying somewhere else is that you do not know where things are. I broke out the coffee and sis came in and took over and made a pot but finding the fixings was a chore. I almost broke out my little plastic bag of sugar and coffee creamers but we found everything.

As far as being on time goes I actually syncronized my watch off ot WWV before I left home because I have had headaches over time before. 

Someone got in a hurry when we buried my mother and things started five minutes early and it made my kid sister look like she was late when in fact she was 3 mintues early. I bailed her out over that one.

When I was in high school I used to set my watch by WWV and they remember that. If I say it is a certain time, they accept it as gospel if I mention setting it by WWV.

In fact a few years back a cousin was griping about time and I flatly told them what time it was. The looked at me dubiously. One of my sisters asked me when I had set my watch and I told her it was two days ago. Instantly BOTH sisters ratpacked him and pointed out that MY watch was set by the American Bureau of Standards and the atomic clock in Ft. Collins, Colorado and NOT by asking some wino what time it was.

I've been trying to find an old Radio Shack time cube for my baby sister as she cuts things awfully close at times.

Today is going to be lazy until about 11:15. Everything is calm as we fought ourselves out yesterday. At about 11:15 there will be chaos as the two girls fight over the shower.

I guess the bride and groom are planning on offspring. The Most Beautiful Bride in the World is a tiny little thing and I commented to my sisters the way things seem to work. If/when she does have a baby my guess is that it will be a baby the size of an elephant.

It is generally those six-foot plus tall broad shouldered, big hipped Big  Olga types that give birth to babies the size of a peanut.

I got into trouble several years ago when a moose of a woman gave birth to a very small baby. I was astonished and let my mouth run off and said I had taken dumps bigger than that. Immediately the referee blew his whistle and threw out a penalty marker. Fifteen yards. Ouch.

Last night I took off my jersey and my sis instantly confiscated it to sleep in. Seeing the rehearsal was totally informal I opted for a pair of Dickies pants and a CMP jersey I snagged at Camp Perry last summer and had been saving for something like this. It is a subtle shade of pink whaich you know I wear often.

One of my nephew's friends asked who the old guy in the pink shirt was and he laughed and told him that I was his Old School tough guy uncle and that he would be wise to steer clear of and derogatory comments about the color pink or he would wind up looking pretty stupid. 

He also said that it was a slam dunk that I would be wearing a pink shirt and a black tie to the wedding which I am.

When you tell your friends that the scar on your uncle's arm came from fighting his way out of a Singapore whorehouse whan he was seventeen they tend to remember their manners, even if it is a bullshit story.

It was a guess on his part but a good one. I generaly do wear a pink shirt and a black tie to functions requiring a tie. It's generally a pretty subtle shade of pink.

Incidentally the rehearsal dinner was actually pretty subdued as my nephew is smart enough to hang with a more intelligent crown than his dopey old uncle did when he was his age.

It is actually a good thing because years ago everyone would get toasted and show up at the wedding looking like a bunch of two-dollar whores after a thousand-dollar night.

I didn't see anyone getting truly plastered and actually like things that way. For the record the bottle of Beam in my seabag is still pretty much full. I bought that jug this past March after a match at Quantico and only had a swig to wash down some cold medicine.

Incidentally, I am in PRM, aka People's Republic of Massachusetts which is a communist country. I carefully went through my truck before I left and made sure there wasn't so much as a loose .22 round in it as he rules in this place suck and I could wind up in the bucket for a year for something like that.

I'm going to shower now and beat the last minute panic as my two sisters will invariably fight over the shower come about 11 O'clock. 

I'm fishing my bar of Irish Spring out of my duffel because a lot of people today, especially the younger ones, use all of these newer products and body washes. Soap is what I am used to.

My sisters commented yeaterday that I looked pretty starched and pressed but there's a trick to that. The pants and shirts are new. Dickies work pants when they are new are pretty well creased and look damned good. 

After the wedding they will go into my closet until I wear them again and have to wash them and knock the crease down. Then they go into my seabag and become a work uniform.

I am now showered about an hour and a half ahead of time which means the hot water tank can recover for the two womanfolk.

It also means that they can't get even with me for when I turn on the hot water in the kitchen sink while they are in the shower and give them a blast of ice water. This, of course, is a part of my job and a delightful thing to do because I get to hear my sisters use language so foul I seldom hear it at sea.

First it is the wail of the Banshee followed by unspeakable profanity. Navy chiefs ought to take a lesson or two here.

Back years ago before the state mandated those safety valves the trick was to turn on the cold water and hear the shrieks of pain as they boiled like napalmed Vietnamese regulars. If you timed it right there would be a last minute wardrobe change as they womenfolk changed plans from bare shoulders to something that would cover up the first and second degree burns.

Back then you'd plan ahead and turn up the hot water tank to the Big Max and after an hour or so when you went back to check it you could hear the satisfying sound of the water in the tank boiling away. Then you knew that you had best have aloe vera on hand.

The PRM has legislated that bit of fun off the rolls and now all I can do is give them a blast of cold water. Oh, well.

I am sitting here now in shorts and nthing else but I am slathered down in Old Spice because I am a sailor and that's what sailors wear.

I am also trying to figure out how to escape the clutches of the bride's sister who last night seemed to have put my name on her dance card. That ain't going to happen as I do not dance at weddings. I do not know why people like that seem to zero in on me but they do.

You have to remember that I have not been to a wedding since I lived in Kodiak and I left there in '86. I'll be damned if I dance at one. It got to the point that I would ask my employer for extra work to avoid the damned things. My fear of attending weddings after I left Kodiak made me contemplate joining the French Foreign Legion for a while.

This one's different. I want to be here.

Hmmm. Speaking of the French Foreign Legion, I wonder why that subject has't been brought up. I escaped a wedding a couple of decades ago thanks to a friend stationed in Germany who remailed a letter for me that I was en route to Aubagne to enlist. 

My mother threw a conniption but my dad calmed her down because I sent him a letter through his workplace cluing him in that I wanted to squirm out of the wedding. He covered for me somehow. The man was a genius at that.

Quick fix as a rummaging of things in the nephew's closet has found me an ace bandage and the clips. In the same closet is a Ka-Bar which makes it easy as I whack off about a foot of bandage and the two clips. This will  wrap around my right ankle above the shoe and stay hidden by the sock so when she asks me to dance I will show it and have an easy out.

One sea story coming right up. I got my foot crushed between two supertankers out in the North Atlantic. Whatever. If push comes to shove I will simply refuse but the excuse should cover me.

Time marches on and I have to go back on task but there is only one fear I do have and that is if the idiot they hired to perform the ceremony runs late because of traffic on the bridge I will be pressed into service. 

While I most certainly do not want to do the ceremony I will if pressed as I did promise to be the insurance policy. While it is a fear of mine, most likely it is a bigger fear of the rest of the family as they are cringing at what I will pull out of my ass to marry them.

Actually my nephew and his blushing bride know I will come up with something. 

Right now one of the womenfolk is heading into the shower and I have to get ready to turn on the cold water in a few. I gotta go and stand by.

Update. I just heard the wail of the banshee and the the profanity is enough to make a Navy chief blush. Good job.


To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html