Real Housewife of Atlanta

Hi, I'm Anie. I've decided to start a blog about my life. I'm not sure if anyone will want to read it, though. I mean, my life is pretty normal and straight forward. I got married at 23 to my highschool sweetheart. We bought a house in the city three months later. He has a salaried job and I work super part time (about 15 hours a week) just to give us a little extra grocery money. He pays the bills, I wash the underwear.

On Friday night we light Shabbat candles and have a nice dinner. About every other weekend we're joined by our boyfriend and girlfriend and their boys. We spend dinner trying to keep the kids from blowing out the candles and then we head out to our local vampire LARP (Live Action Role Playing game). Usually mom and the boys will hang out for half an hour to an hour. Then they go home and go to bed while the rest of us play until two in the morning. After game, a handful of friends (somewhere between two and five) come back to our place to spend the weekend.

Saturdays are spent with the kids going to the park, friends hanging out on the porch, and lots of computer games. Until nightfall, when it's time for another LARP. Sundays are for walking around the neighborhood and sad goodbyes. Then it's back to the grind of another work week in which my darling husband will leave me with a To Do list that I will never quite finish.

Weekends with out games are usually more low key. Most of the time there's some party or club event scheduled, which will give my boyfriend a reason to come to town. I'll put on my party clothes and he'll put on his nice collar and we'll go out to have some fun. Often the husband comes along as well. Living in the city, we can usually come up with a few different options for entertainment, though Sunday nights still usually find us at home watching television shows on Netflix.

Passover is spent with my mother's extended family here in Atlanta. Easter is the big holiday for my husbands family, but it's pretty open invite so this year we brought our boyfriend and girlfriend along, too. Thanksgiving we usually travel to South Carolina to stay with my parents and go see my Dad's family. We don't tend to stay long, however, because a friend here in Atlanta hosts a big Friends and Family feast the Saturday following that we like to be back for (if only to recreate the holiday with the [gender]friends and their kids). Christmas is complicated, but seems to have settled into a compromise with my family coming to Atlanta and us doing Christmas Eve for my dad. Then we all head out for the in-law's big todo on Christmas Day. Unfortunately, it happens at the same time as the girlfriend's family's todo, but we all managed to get together afterward for some quality family time. Maybe this year we'll see if people can shuffle their schedules around a little, but probably not.

Of course there are other key events in the year. Our LARP is part of an international organization, and we host an event every March. Then there's always Dragon*Con in September (which served as our honeymoon one year). Somewhere around January or February we tend to travel to Milwaukee for their event game. And this year we're talking about both New Orleans and Israel. It seems like there's always something coming up that we need to save our pennies for. Luckily, we all seem to get along well on long car trips and in cramped hotel rooms.

Really, I guess that's my life. I admit, the house isn't nearly as clean as it should be for someone with nothing else to do with her time. And the laundry always tends to get done minutes before we run out of clothes. And juggling all the various families and faiths can get complicated, not to mention budgeting in the trips and cons. But my home is full of love and happiness and parties and people and even a few whips and chains just to keep everything in line. All in all, it's just a normal, boring life. But maybe you'll enjoy reading about it anyway. I hope you do!

Our Strange New Wedding Tradition

Our friend, Rickles, got married last year and he charged those of his friends who were coming to the wedding with a very important task. Namely, to shock and appall his new inlaws.

Now Rickles' wedding reception was very DIY in a traditional way. The centerpieces were very simple, large red pillar candles with some squares of Godiva chocolate scattered around them. The reception food was primarily nosharim - fruits, cheeses, and a chocolate fountain with strawberries, marshmallows, cubes of cake and graham crackers arranged around it. Skewers were provided to allow for ease of chocolating (because you don't want people sticking their fingers in the fountain).

Now I don't know if your minds have traveled to the inevitable combination of these elements, but our minds got there pretty quickly. I can't even say whose idea it was. In my memory it doesn't really seem like anyone suggested it, or initiated it. But suddenly, and organically, there we were - marshmallows on skewers roasting over our centerpiece candle before being combined with our chocolate and graham crackers. It seemed so natural, so appropriate, soright. It also had the added advantage of earning us a few dirty looks from the inlaws thus managing to be delicious AND fulfill our obligations to the groom.

Fast forward a little less than a year. Lorien and I are at our wedding shower (which is misleadingly named since we only got three gifts). We're opening a gift from one of my mom's best friends. It's this ornate candle stand complete with raised candle tray, decorative stones, and three large pillar candles. She's going on about setting the mood on our wedding night or some such, but Lorien and I aren't really listening. We've locked eyes and the same thought is travelling through our minds. "something ... something ... wedding night." "Or the reception," one of us says, quietly, to the other. I don't remember who said it now. Truthfully, it doesn't matter. Because we both knew. Oh, yes. It would happen - Temple rules against open flames be damned.

And so one of our chuppah holders, one who had been a primary participant in the Rickles Wedding Shenanigans, was given the responsibility to make sure we had what we needed. He came up to me at the reception and I handed him the keys to our trunk, allowing him to get the candles. "I've got the stuff," he said upon returning. "Where should I set up?" A quick scan around the room drew my attention to a particular table filled with a specific group of friends. "The Rennie table," I replied, gesturing their direction. "If anyone will be cool with it, it's the Rennies." And so it was decided and implemented. I didn't get to follow him over there, being whisked away to be social or dance to some sentimental song, but I did manage to overhear my photographer come up to the other photographer* and say "Did you see what they're doing at that table? They're making smores!" "I know," she replied excitedly. "I got a picture of it."

And I smiled as I continued making my rounds. It was one time, among many, where I realized that maybe I was a bit more offbeat than I'd given myself credit for ;-)