*Almost* ready to get hitched

I don't mean that in an emotional, logistical, or even financial way. I mean that legally. The Texan and I went downtown on Wednesday to get our marriage license. I must say, I have never seen city employees so downright happy. Might have something to do with this being Fiesta Week*, but no matter what, they were all downright pleasant. Something new, I guess.

Anyways, we paid our $36, showed them our IDs, promised that we weren't already married to someone else or related to each other, and got a handy-dandy folder with a HUGE wedding cake on the front and the inscription, "When you want to get married..." It comes complete with a notebook of questions designed to provide low-cost couples' counselling. If we hadn't thought until now about conflict, communication, and children, I don't think that this notebook would be enough. Still, the state of Texas can say it tried.

The marriage license for Bexar County (gold star for the first non-San Antonian who can pronounce that correctly**) is quite pretty. It's a vintagey-looking yellow with little pictures all around it of various images that presumably represent SA. The Alamo is, of course, front and center. But there's also the German flag (this place had, at one time, a sizable German population), an armadillo (never seen one this far east), a steer, a guy wearing a military uniform and giving a salute, and a completely incorrect view of St. Mary's University with the Tower of the Americas behind it (no way, no how in this space-time continuum can you see the Tower of the Americas from that part of SA), among others.

The back, however, is the crucial part. It says when the license was issued and for how long it's good for. There is a 72-hour mandatory waiting period so that you have time to cool your heels and rethink things. I just checked, and there is no waiting period to buy a gun in Texas. How appropros. Then the license is only good for 30 days, something which has provided me with some consternation. In my control-freak way, I've been trying to get done everything that can possibly be done ahead of time. That includes finding a JP to marry us. Unfortunately, the JP office won't talk to you until you get a marriage license. So now we can find someone to marry us. We'd joked about getting one of our friends to fill out the online application and become a minister, but it looks, knock wood, like that won't be necessary.

* You do not joke about Fiesta Week in San Antonio. This is when the whole city shuts down the last week of April in order to celebrate the Alamo and Battle of San Jacinto (which led to Texan independence) with a series of parties that culminate with the Battle of the Flowers. Today is that great battle and I know people who are pulling their kids out of school for the parade. I can appreciate having pride in your local culture but my god it's frustrating if you're trying to get stuff done. No one's working any more than they have to.

** Phonetically, it's Bear County. Not even close, were you?

Ready to boot-scoot

I took another step in my Texasification recently: I got a pair of cowboy boots. I had long wanted a pair, figuring that it was the law if you lived in Texas, you should own a pair of boots. So when we went boot-shopping for The Texan to wear to our wedding - oh yes, they do have gorgeous dress boots that you can wear with a tuxedo - I broke down and got some too.

Of course, my special skill asserted itself. I have the capability to walk through an entire store of items on sale and pick the one thing that isn't. This time was no different. The store (and this is an honest-to-god cowboy store, complete with t-shirts of a cowboy praying next to his horse) had row after row of pairs of boots on display. The kind I ended up getting were shown with only the left boot available - you had to ask to try on the entire pair, and then, once you decided to get it, the salesperson had to walk the boots to the front of the store and leave the box with the cashier.

Like all good things, these boots were handmade in Italy and they are, I modestly note, quite purty. It's getting warm now, so unless I want to go all Daisy Duke on San Antonio (and if you've seen my thighs, I think we can all agree that that would not be good for anyone), I'll have to wait until the fall to wear them. Can't wait!

There's one Texas thing I still cannot bring myself to do, though: get a Texas driver's license. Hey, I actually like the picture on my DC driver's license - how rare is that? Someday, though, I'll have to do it. Texas has a law that you have within 30 days of moving here to get a Texas driver's license, and after that, there are consequences. A friend told me she just got a ticket from a cop for having lived here for - gasp - TWO YEARS and not transferring over her license. So now every time I drive, I practice a story for the cops as to why I'm here and yet don't have a Texas driver's license. The pressure's building, and I'm sure I'll just snap and do it at some point, but for now, I'm clinging to my DC license with everything I've got.

Spa-bound

Tomorrow, I'm off to another spa. Really, you can't go to too many. This time, it's for a big bridal blowout extravaganza, and not even for me. A friend is getting married three weeks before we are so I get to take notes and steal liberally every good idea she cooks up. As part of her bridal shower, a bunch of us are spending the afternoon at the spa. I am finally tipping my hat to my ever-growing credit card debt and taking the lesser route of a full-body scrub, as opposed to a massage. Almost as good and half the price. Works for me!

I had thought about getting a facial, but I have gotten into a spat with every single facialist I've ever been to about whether or not I should have extractions. For those who are lucky enough not to know, extractions require a hook that pushes down into your pores and brings out whatever shit's been living down in there. Now, my personal opinion is if I'm paying you lots of money, I do not want to come out of the experience clawing at my reddened, sore face. Facialists, on the other hand, always sniff at my "no extractions, please" request and act like, well, it's your funeral if you want to keep that type of sorry, aging skin tone. And I have never had a facialist agree with my skin care regimen (WHICH MY DERMATOLOGIST PUT ME ON. suck it, bitches).

Anyways.

A body scrub should be fun. I haven't gotten one since having visited a Korean bathhouse. Those are, um, different - everyone walks around naked, there is water everywhere, and you get scrubbed down by women wearing bikinis and faces full of makeup. No happy endings to my knowledge.

Good times

Can you tell a bunch of girls were out drinking, given this credit card receipt?

1 Pointsettia (it had cranberry juice and possibly some sort of champagne in it)
1 Choco-nut martini (booze and chocolate = drink nirvana)
1 Mojito (a classic)
1 Juice (there's one in every bunch)
1 Bourbon well (why pay more for name brands when you can get just as eff'ed up for the price of a well drink?)
1 Jagermeister (no comment)

My blue heaven

Thanks to an extremely rainy winter, Texas' Hill Country is having an astonishing bluebonnet season. Last year I think I saw maybe two of them. This year they are popping up everywhere, even behind our house.

So when The Texan was thinking up places for us to do our "couple" shot for our wedding, a hill covered with bluebonnets was one of the first things he came up with. I was a bit leery because it involved just pulling over on the highway, getting out, and taking pictures by the side of the road. I thought that Texas' Highway Patrol might have issues with all these cars stopped for non-emergencies, but The Texan assured me that everyone does it.

Sure enough, when we went to get our picture taken Sunday, there already were quite a few cars pulled over. Of course, everyone else was taking pictures of their little darlings - we were the only non-kids...

...until a big white burly pickup truck showed up. A couple got out. The man was carrying a toy sports car - the kind toddlers use to scoot around in and pretend they can drive - while the woman had two chihuahuas in tow. One had on a dress, while the other was wearing a snazzy new suit. As we pulled away, I saw that they had put the car in the flowers, the dogs in the toy car, and started snapping pictures.

Earlier in the day, when it wasn't so god-awful bright, we were at the botanical gardens taking pictures, as well as San Antonio's newly-renovated Japanese Tea Gardens. The latter has been around for decades but over the past few years fell into disrepair as the original owners died out. The city recently took it over and has been working to turn it into a city park. As part of the high quality control standards that you see so often here, they even put up a wooden gate with the following etched into it to greet all guests: "Welcome to the Chinese Tea Gardens."