Saturday

I had a very interesting Saturday.

One of my good friends got married this weekend. (Congrats Josh & Angela!) It was a lovely time. I got to see one of my good friends that I hadn't seen in a few months. (Missed him.) Got to see my brother in a tux! It was a hilarious day, full stupidness.

Starting off, my Mom swore the wedding was at 10:30. We're walking up to the church at 10, and my Mom goes "You know, I think the wedding is at 10." I'm one of those people who counts myself as "late" if I'm less than 10 minutes early for something. Awesome. Panic attack begins.

We get seated and I look around and I realize there are a lot more people that I hadn't wanted to see than I expected... "Ok, Katie. Breathe. You're here for J & A... and to see M and W in suits." Mom reads the program and realizes J&A are going to dismiss people row by row to the reception. Ok, again a little panic...a lot panic... but I can deal.

Marriage ceremony. Lovely, sweet, simple, short. Perfect wedding. Primo. Let's get this show on the road. I'm getting antsy.

They come back in and start dismissing people and my Mom starts looking around... then it happened. Her eyes got real big. She mutters something panicked under her breath. It sounded something like this through her gritted teeth:

"Mmrph smurgle mrph mmrrph!!"

"Um.... can you run that past me again?"

*Panicked eyes and a slight nervous laugh* "Mmrph smurgle murph MMMRPH!"

"Ya lost me."

"Nothing. Nevermind."

"Mom, you can't do that to me! I need to know!" (Judging by her face, I was guessing she'd seen a ghost... or my ex-husband.)

"MMRPH SMURGLE MRPH MMRRPH!!!"

"Nada."

"______ _______ (ex boyfriend) IS SITTING RIGHT BEHIND YOU!!!"

That's it, get me outta here. I'm done. Full blown panic attack. Needed one of my heart pills but they were all at home. Seriously thought I was gonna die.

It's not that things necessarily ended badly with this guy, it's just that they ended badly. (Yes, you read that correctly.) I was a big project to him and there was no middle ground. I broke up with him three times and he finally understood it when he talked to my brother and said "Katie seemed distant tonight." to which my brother responded "Probably because she broke up with you three days ago." (And I didn't pull the whole "It's not you, it's me" thing. I used plain english. Very plain.) He let me have it through a series of very angry Facebook messages to which I just told him that he was pissing me off and he needed to give me a few days to cool down. I took three days, and then told him that we could talk, but I was not re-hashing things. Apparently that was all he was interested in. I didn't hear from him again...

...and now he was sitting behind me.

Curses!

"If it's any consolation, he looks waaay more nervous than you do.", my Mom said trying to calm me down.

When it was our row's turn to be dismissed, I hugged them both, did the turn and avoid while waiting on Mom, and made a beeline for the reception. It was all good until he did the whole "I'm a photographer" cut in front of us and then did the whole "Oh hey! I didn't know it was you!" fake shock when my Mom said hi to him.

GET ME INTO THE RECEPTION SO I CAN FIND MY BROTHER AND SIT DOWN!!!

Ok, whew. There's M and there's W. Relaxation at last. The panic settled...a bit... for awhile. There was polite conversation, food, etc. M told me I have a disarming smile and that made me absolutely crack up. I was easing in to some comfortableness (not a word at all) and avoiding looking in certain directions while my Mom and I just couldn't stop laughing. She decided to go talk to him, and I couldn't stop her. I didn't care if she talked to him, I just wasn't going to.

She comes back to the table looking even more concerned than before. We make a beeline to the bathroom.

"He's moving back. He got a job. Uh oh. Are you ok? What are you thinking?"

"The words I'm thinking, I can't say because I'm in a CHURCH!"

Fast forward, a group of us are standing outside talking. It's cold, M gives me his suit coat (which was really really sweet of him) and out comes the ex. I could feel the hard-core stare down. You see, he always gave me a hard time about M and I always told him we were just friends. And now I was standing outside, next to M, in his coat.

I wanted to die laughing. Literally. But I didn't.

Ex left, the conversation ended, I gave M his coat back, Mom and I went back to the car. We talked about the ridiculousness of it all and laughed. Mom asked me if I wanted to go anywhere while we were in town, and I told her I deserved a trip to Hastings. W wanted in on it too, so we just made a family trip.

The moral of the story is this, children:

Any harship, no matter how bad, is ok if a Metallica CD is bought at the end.

Additional moral:

If you're scheduled to work on a Saturday, sometimes it's best to just leave it be.