My Norwegian Cousins

We’ve got too many people. That’s what Larry said. Too many people are coming to the wedding. What, so "too many people" want to see us get married? When did it get to be too many? 89 was OK, but now 101 isn’t?

I wouldn’t know how to get married with less than a hundred people. I’ve got 21 first cousins. They all got married (so that's 42) and most of them had multiple kids. Some of their kids have kids. I have nephews and nieces who've procreated and I'm only NOW getting married. More on that later.

Fourteen of those 21 cousins are the Thompsons, my Mom's Norwegian side. I showed Larry a photo of one of our yearly family reunions. In Solvang of course. This photo wass from 1983, I was 21 years old.

Cousin Sherri’s son Jay is in the picture, back row far right. He was only 8. Now Jay is 31, married with 3 kids (and a fourth on the way). Thompson Cousins, with their spouses and children, make up over 60 people. If Larry wants to complain about inviting them all to the wedding, he should have married me when I was 22 and there were only 30 of us. But we didn’t know each other then.

He's not complaining. He's just new to the big family idea. His extended family amounts to four people: a mother, sister, brother-in-law, and nephew. And only two of them can come to the wedding. Larry’s marrying a social girl with a social family. What can I say?

This past weekend, Larry went with me to my cousin Deedee’s house. DeeDee’s youngest daughter Haileigh just graduated from 8th grade. Haileigh gave us a piano recital. Then she played the Irish drum while her father played the guitar, and they sang Irish worship music. It was lovely.

And two more of my cousins (deedee's sisters) were there: Roxanne and Janice! Roxanne, her hubby Jeff, and their three kids were visiting from Uzbekistan, where they do outreach. Cousin Cousin Janice and her two daughters, who are in YWAM. Sherri wasn't able to come, but her two children, Jay and Tia, were there. And Jay and Tia's own kids. Plus, friends from Deedee and Scott's church came to hear Haileigh play. It was a lot of fun.

I remember as a teenager feeling like I was in a privileged position compared to my cousins, because I was going off to college. Most of them got married out of high school. But I went to college, grad school, I studied abroad. I had the world in front of me.

Now at 44. I’ll have a family of two people. And I’m witnessing my cousins and the family that fills up their living room with noise and love and music and laughter and praise and prayer. And I think, so who’s got the privilege?

Here’s my Norwegian family tree. All of my first cousins are married, 99% of them have kids. And some of those kids have kids.

And then there are the Isaacs. Only Nancy is married so far. One could attribute it to social and ecucational conditioning. All of us Isaacs kids went to college and grad school. Collegiates get married later. But my brothers are in their fifties. I'm 44. I think it's less due to college education and more due to family experience. My father was such a broken sick guy, he did so much damage, it’s a miracle any of us had relationships, let alone got married.

Thank GOD we grew up with faith. At the same time, my mom often used her faith tBut my mom used her faith to hide from a lot of life’s problems. Like uh, my dad. And much of my siblings and my experience with faith has been having to undo bad habits and beliefs. That's the thing about sin and its effects. Doesn't just 'go away.' I think the Bible says something about that. Figures.

Well, enough of that. It took a lot of church and prayer and bailing on church, and counseling, and letting go, to get to this place. I’m just glad I did. Now I can take the Yellow Ø off of the family tree.

But don't expect Larry and I to add any names to the right column. We're 44 and 51. Larry's not going to host a high school graduation party when he's 70.

Registering for Wedding Gifts

Poor Larry. The questions I've asked him lately. Which china pattern do you like? Could you eat off of square plates? Which shower curtain do you prefer?

I’m choosing items for our gift registry. Asking a guy’s guy what kind of china he likes is akin to asking a girlie girl her favorite bear hunting tactic: going camouflage or smearing oneself with deer urine.

Well, it was Larry who first brought up the subject of gifts. A recent email exchange went like this.

Larry: We don’t need wedding gifts, we can ask friends to bring food for the reception instead.
Susan: The heck we don’t. You can go on eating off of paper plates. You just won’t be married to me.
Larry: I don’t remember eating off paper plates as a biblical grounds for divorce.
Susan: Proverbs 21:9 Better to live on a corner of the roof than a wide house with a quarrelsome wife.

I never coveted nice things. A trip through Housewares makes me exhausted and depressed. It’s the incessant pleading, “need me, buy me!” So when it comes to picking out STUFF for a wedding registry, I get equally exhausted. I don’t want to start wanting things I don’t already want. I’ve gotten by this long without a perfect set of silverware. Or a pasta bowl. I don’t eat pasta. And I’ve never made pizza, let alone needed a pizza wheel.

But when it comes to your wedding, you find yourself rationalizing ... Well maybe I never ALLOWED myself to want a set of matching salad forks. Hmm, I could use nice place mats. And a matching runner. What’s a runner? I don’t know but I should have a matching one. After all, God created beauty. A beautiful table is a godly thing. Especially if we’re going to have people over and create a sense of community with other artists, and artists have a natural sense of beauty … and you’re off to the debtor’s races.

One thing I don’t need is a set of “fine bone china.” A couple years ago, I was at the Goodwill buying some gadget (maybe a newly divorced couple’s pizza wheel). They were putting out a set of dishes that looked nice. I mean, really nice. I figured, this was my one shot at gracious living. So I bought the whole shebang. Dinner plates, salad plates, butter and bread plates, olive plates? Coffee cups, demitasses, espresso cups. A four course serving for 8 people. I got it home and found out it was Richard Ginori, worth $2,000. I got it at the Goodwill for $70. Way to Shop!

Okay, so if we're registering for gifts, what could we use? I was startled at the items on the Bed Bath & Beyond “Reigstry Check List.” Maybe this covered every couple from Alaskan Park Ranger life partners, to Mississippi Mamas who deep fry their spinach: Basting Brush, Citrus Zester, A CAKE DOME? Egg Slicer, Mandoline (??), Deep Fryer, Electric Can Opener, Electric Knife, Electric Teakettle, Electric Fondue Pot (as opposed to the manual Fondue Pot?), Grilling Machine, Sandwich Maker. A sandwich maker? Don’t they mean, "your hands?”

Okay, well I could use some everyday china, to give the Ginori a rest. My favorite place setting "ZaZen" in aqua enamel. It costs $80 for 16 pieces. Four people, one course meal. That's more than I paid to serve a three-course meal to eight people on fine china.


The stuff I thought was reasonably priced, that I would have considered buying, was in the “Off To College” collection. That was depressing.




I picked out a few patterns I liked and sent them to Larry. He liked the last two the best.

Larry: The blue/brown ones. Then the ones that look like Target Practice.
Susan: Yes, the easier to drop meat on your plate.

But the Target practice plates ran $80 for a four-piece place setting.
I liked the blue-brown ones, but we had too much of a theme going: blue/aqua with brown. It’s already our wedding colors, bedding and towels.

Would we wake up in 2011 and shudder, "everything is so Ott-Six!" and spray paint everything Neon Orange just to break up the monotony?


So I chose this groovy Paisley pattern from BB&B. But they're expensive! And the plates are square. My friend Hannah loved them.
She and her husband have square dishes.

"Square dishes are great. We got ours at the Pottery Barn!"

Oh gosh. I hadn't even thought of Pottery Barn when it came to gifts. Now what? Maybe they've got the perfect dishes. Well, lfor all I know they’ve got blue-brown plates in the shape of a trapezoid.

I may end up telling Larry he’s going to have to get used to eating off of $2,000 china until we can afford square paisley.

I Created A Monster!

One of the things I love about Larry is he’s a computer nerd. The fact he was a Mac guy was enough of a turn-on, but that he was an internet junkie and blogger, impressed me so much I knew I had to marry him. Of course I impressed him when I told him how got my computer out of a kernel panic by launching in single-user mode, checking the volume with fsck and resetting the disk permissions. I know, I know it’s getting hot in here.

So aside from our shared spiritual, artistic and intellectual values, our idea of a perfect Saturday morning is finding a coffee joint with free wi fi and hanging out for hours. We are the geekerati.

I’m sprucing up my website. I’ve got a ways to go, but it looks better than my original garish green and pink scheme that resembled the Teen scrapbooking aisle at Target.

I installed a free web counter service from Stat Counter to see how many people are reading my blog. Well this one goes a lot further! It tells you things like where the viewer came from, the name of the viewer’s ISP (internet service provider) and the location. For example, my stats show views from someone at: dhcp.psdn.ca.charter. Larry lives in Pasadena (psdn), he’s on charter.net. That’s him looking at my web page. Gotcha, Lar!

I told Larry and he installed a counter on his web page as well. And he checks it several times a day. The other Saturday night he was over and brought his computer. When he had been silent for over five minutes I went to look, and he was on his stat counter alright.
I could waste hours looking at this stuff, he laughed.

I didn't. He already had. But I still love him. He's that right blend of geek and groovy.
However, I'm banning Stat Counter from the honeymoon.

Knowing who checks your blog can also be creepy. For example, there's "someone" on AOL in or near Reston Virginia keeps going to our websites. They check our sites several times a day, and stay less than a second. every time There’s someone in Blantaeng, South Africa doing the same thing.

I think it’s an unmanned data mining robot, finding out what commercial products we mention. Or else it's one of those spybots from NORAD. Or it's an earthink spybot. You know they've got deep pockets in Scientology. Good, now I can unload all that dirt I know about Tom Cruise and
would ruin his
signed an agree
paid the guy off.

So, now Larry checks his stats every day, several times a day, to see who’s reading him, and how often. But not getting readers could send him into a funk. Imagine how much worse that he can’t even post onto his blog today.

He emailed me today in despair over his inability to blog; quoted Genesis:
"I am lost, formless and void!"

Which only proves that other verse in Genesis: It is not good for man to be alone.

Fun Facts and Fotos of the Felicitous Couple

In 1973, Susan and Larry looked like this:

In 1974, Larry and Susan looked like this:

They both took geeky family pictures. (He in '74, She in '76)
Only Larry's parents look decidedly more happpy.

If you mushed Susan's brothers together, you'd get Larry.

But that's just because beauty recognizes itself.
Oh, just go with it.

Planning a Wedding in Two Months

Do you know when you want your wedding to be?
Yes, August 26
But what time?
Late afternoon?
But what time is that? When does the sun set on August 26?
Uh, hold on let me check my occipital lobe to see if I have that information stored. No. Sorry.

SO the questions began.

Last night, Larry and I had a planning meeting with our amazing friends who have stepped up to help us get this wedding on the calendar: Doug who’s hosting the reception; Martin who’s going to marry us, his wife Debbie who’s coordinating; and Catheryn, my friend, bridesmaid, and Capo in the Susan Mafia.

But before the meeting, Larry and I had to figure out where we were going to have the ceremony. So we trolled Doug’s neighborhood in the hot Sunday sun. We checked out the parks in the area. A dog park. With no shade. You do the math. We did find another park that had one spot of shade right next to the gymboree playground. I could just see it now …

“I Larry, take thee Sus—hey crybaby on the SLIDE, Shut the #$*# UP! – to love, honor and cherish..”

Frankly I always wanted to get married in a church. I wanted to feel the presence of God, and I feel the presence of God in church. Well the old kind. The kind with stained glass, an organ echoing against the stone walls, the pews worn with prayers and worship.

There’s a bunch of churches near Doug’s house. But the area was developed after 1960. So the churches were built in that same era. Actually, I think one guy built all of them. It’s the A-Frame style Swiss Chalet rooftop. No box underneath, just a tall roof. Maybe some architect donated his blueprint to every denomination left of Catholic.

Still, there was one of those RIGHT around the corner from Doug.
“We should at least check it out,” I told Larry
“Yeah, it would be so convenient,” he said, so hopeful as we drove into the deserted parking lot.

I grew up in one of those A-Frame churches. Cinder Blocks. Sliding glass door. A thin window column every ten feet, floor to ceiling textured glass. Some rows had those slatted vent windows. You know, those windows you see on 1950's apartments and think, wow, that idea did not age well. Anyway, at my church they got rid of those slatted windows. Not at this church around the corner from Doug’s. They hadn’t added on. A quick look around the backside of the church confirmed they hadn’t cleaned up for thirty years either. There was a trove of rusted objects, and upturned kiddy pool, and the slatted windows were chock-full of cobwebs and insect carcasses. I envisioned the bridesmaids using the back entrance and getting sall bug skeletons in their hems.

I pushed one of the bubble windowpanes to look in. It wasn’t horrible. But it wasn't the inspiring, beauty-filled church I had imagined.

Larry and I continued down the street, checking out the other churches. Same thing. We did find one whose exterior was 1940s Colonial Revival. But we got a peek inside. Any 1940s Colonial had been erased by 1980s Pentecostal. Down to the mauve carpet and the TV screen.

After driving around a couple hours, the question became: “Which church was the least depressing?” But if the point of having it in a church was to feel God’s presence in the beauty, this wasn’t it.

So we drove over to Doug’s, went into his back yard, and took a good look. It was entirely in shade. It had a few glitches of “dead space” but other than that, it was doable.

Susan: Well, do we do it all here in one location?
Larry: I don't want you to feel disappointed later. I'm fine with it. I'm a guy, I live in a box and use plastic utensils. But you're the girl. Girls spend their lives planning this moment.

The only thing I'd planned was to marry a man who loved God. and that I didn't want a home-mortgage priced weddings. My parents got married at a little Lutheran church and had cake, peanuts and punch in the fellowship hall. I liked the idea of simple and inexpensive. Like the Shaker hymn: Tis a gift to be simple, tis a gift to be free, Tis a gift to come down to where we ought to be.

So was this the place? Well, if we put enough twinkle lights in the trees and flowers in the flower beds, it could contain as much beauty as stained glass, and the holiness and beauty God decided to bring on the day.

So Doug’s back yard is going to be the wedding ceremony and the reception site.

We only had two months before the wedding, but we already our location, an officiant, the wedding party, and a wedding coordinator. I even had my dress. We were doing well.

Until the planning meeting.

Debbie and Martin just got married and she’s coordinated weddings, so she knows what she is doing. Thank God for her. But boy did she open my eyes.

Debbie: Paper Invitations?
Susan: No we’re doing evite.
Debbie: Programs?
Susan: Yes.
Martin: Kelly Paper has good stationery.
CJ: Or you can go to Target, they’ve got stuff on sale.
Susan: That goes on my list of things to do. Next?

Then there was the discussion about table centerpieces.
Susan: Nothing. We’re wheeling the tables in after the reception. People will just sit down.
Debbie: Nothing, you sure?
Of course what am I thinking? I was going to end up with a wedding that resembled an IRS audit.

Martin: Do you want Communion?
Susan: Yes.
Martin: Okay you need the cup and plate.
Deb: Do you want a kneeling bench?
Susan: Uh…
Deb: How about a canopy? You can get married under a canopy.
Doug: But my back yard is filled with shade trees
Deb: You can get one of those trellises.
So Doug, Debbie and Martin discussed the merits of buying or renting a trellis. And if it were more expensive at Michael's or Moskatels, etc etc until I interrupted.
Susan: Hey. I don’t know if I want a trellis.

But the fact is, we did need something to demarcate the altar area. Didn't we? This is where I get confused. It IS a gift to be SIMPLE, but FREE might start looking, well, CHEAP.

Martin: What kind of ceremony do you want?
Susan: Traditional.
M: No readings?
Susan: Well, yes, readings.
M: What do you want read?
Larry and I looked at each other. We hadn't thought of that.
Susan: I’ll put that on my list of things to do.
Martin: Do you want to write your own vows?
I imagined the Jonathan Livingston Seagull vows I’ve heard. “I Mackenzie, take you Taylor, to be my life partner and shaman, from this day forward, until we transcend into air ferns in our next lifetime." ACK.

Susan: I want traditional vows.
Martin: HOW traditional?
Susan: Well I don’t want them in Olde English. But what's in the Book of Common Prayer.
CJ: Wait! You can’t just go in, do quick vows and be done.
Susan: I didn't say that.
CJ: I know, but you guys are writers! You gotta make it your own. And Larry, you’re all about this new postmodern emergent Christianity. What do you want?
Everyone looked at Larry. He hadn't said much through the meeting. He'd just held my hand. Now Catheryn was asking.
Larry: I want it to be a community experience with our friends.
CJ: Well, what does that mean in terms of the ceremony?
Larry: I don't want people to just sit back and not participate.
Debbie: But people ARE participating by watching you.
Larry: Okay but I want more interactive.
So then it became a discussion about the ceremony and people getting a time to say something like in the reception toast and then there was the music to think of and .. and ... my list of things to figure out grew and grew. I was staying sane. Until we got to the food.

Larry wanted a barbecue. But the wedding is a Saturday afternoon in August. We don’t want our friends in front of a barbecue grill. Do we hire someone to cook on the day? Do we cook ahead of time? Doug suggested cold salmon. And Thai noodles.
CJ: And a really beautiful vegetable! Like asparagus!”
Larry: Ick, asparagus!
CJ: Then what vegetable, Larry?
Larry: … uh…
Susan: Larry loves any vegetable that’s MEAT.

Our plan had been for us to provide half the food and do the rest pot luck. Debbie's soft and kind eyes turned up as she advised us against it. Not a full blown pot luck. she instead suggested we ask a select group of friends to help.
Debbie: Like, 12 friends who can bring salad for 20 people. Or bread for 20 people.
CJ: or Asparagus for 20 people!
Debbie: So you each ask six friends to help.
Larry: that might be kind of hard for me.
So there I went with my envisioining. Like I’m going to ask one of my friends to bring enough asparagus for 20 people? In the midst of the talk about side dishes, I overheard Larry joke to Doug how he "was a guy," he just wanted to get to the wedding night.
Hey now, I interjected.
Larry:L You weren't supposed to hear that.
Susan: But I did. And believe me, I want to get to the wedding night too. But we've got a room of planners deciding our side dish for us, so ...

Deb: Cake? What are you going to do for cake?
Susan: Costco.
CJ: No, you don’t want that!
Doug: There’s a place around the corner it makes really amazing cakes.
Susan: Larry and I don’t eat cake. I got nice Costco cake for my mom’s 80th birthday.
D: But look, or just a little bit more you can get a nice one.
Susan: How much nicer for how much more?
Doug: a hundred bucks
A hundred here, a hundred there, makes hundreds and hundreds spent on STUFF.
Susan: The cake isn’t that important to us. Sure we’ll have it, but just something for the toast.
CJ: But this is your wedding cake!
Martin: I know a place in Southgate that will do a cake for 300 bucks.
Doug: I tell you this place round the corner, Chaka Khan gets her cake there.

Susan: OKAY, EVERYONE. I don’t have the money to pay for a Chaka Khan cake! If I say I don’t want an expensive cake, and I say it more than once, then stop it. OK?

I don’t remember much after that, except that Larry rubbed my back a little. I still wrote down what everyone said, and replied that I’d put in on my list.

Then I got home and thought, where the heck was Larry tonight? He didn’t say anything! Except how he wanted the wedding to be a community experience. And that he didn’t like asparagus. Or salmon. Was I doing all of this by myself??

So I wrote a long email. I vented about being pressured to get an expensive Chaka Khan cake. And do a barbecue for a hundred people. And asking 12 friends to bring salad. Which 12 friends, MINE? And I couldn’t pay for it. I pleaded for him to offer to do some of the tasks. “And if you want to joke how you’re just a guy and you just want to get to the honeymoon suite, then why are we doing a barbecue? Let’s skip this EFFING barbecue, and just have cake and fruit and peanuts like my parents did, and be done with it!

I was smart. I didn’t send it. I went to sleep. But the next morning I wasn't so smart. I woke up and, without I coffee or a quiet time, I pressed the SEND key. Before proofing for stinging barbs like "Let's skip this effing barbecues" or my own contradictions: I don’t care about cake!” /Let’s just have cake and be done with it!” Or grousing about which of MY 12 friends we'd be asking for help ... without taking into account I made up for most of the guest list. Heck, Larry's family is four people. I have 21 first cousins.

THEN I went and had coffee and a quiet time. It was an Old Testament verse about God leading his people besides streams of water, on level paths, "because I am Israel's father." And about how Israel would again rejoice over God's bounty. "They will be like a well-watered garden, and they will sorrow no more."

You'd thihk those verses would be comforting. But I'm going through a shift in my thinking about the Bible. I used to open it up, read a scripture and immediately apply it to my own life. But I realize I can't necessarily do that. I mean, if I claim those verses as mine, am I not making God into my personal genie? Yet, if I look at his character in the above verses, he’s speaking like a tender father. So wouldn’t it be true that he would have at least the capacity to think of me in that same way? So how involved is God, anyway?

Larry replied to my email. The "effing barbecue" line wasn't exactly a feel-good moment for him. And he wasn't being quiet all night to avoid responsibility. Again, I was the girl. He wanted it to be MY special day. He wanted me to pick what I wanted.
Larry: Susan, if you need something, just ask me."

Interesting how, in trying to communicate, the first thing to go was Just asking?
I apologized, but I still felt crappy. The guy who’s on my side, wanting to make this special for me, is the guy I vented at. He’s planning the honeymoon. It’s his friends who are hosting us, marrying us, coordinating us. I'm the one bringing the crowds of relatives.

I watched people stress out over weddings. I told myself I wouldn’t do it. But I realize that a certain amount of stress is going to happen. I’m so grateful for our planning posse, and for Larry.

And after all, the posse had some good tips. I'm going to downtown LA to check out wholesale grosgrain ribbon and votive candles. Hey, when you hear a good idea, you gotta go with it.

Presbyterian Obsfuscation

The Presbyterian Church (PC-USA) had their annual conference. Delegates to the church's policy-making body get together and hash out important things ... This year they announced a few possible alternate ways to describe the Trinity other than "Father, Son and Holy Spirit."

Let's have a look:
"Compassionate Mother, Beloved Child and Life-giving Womb,"
"Overflowing Font, Living Water, Flowing River."
"Rock, Cornerstone and Temple" and
"Rainbow of Promise, Ark of Salvation and Dove of Peace."


"You might as well put in Huey, Dewey and Louie," said Rev. Mark Brewer of Bel Air Pres.
byterian "Any time you get together representatives of 2 1/2 million people, you get some really solid people and some really wacky people."

Clearly the wacksters had the pens. What's remarkable is that they didn't make up these names while sitting in a hotel bar getting drunk. THey actually put some thought into them, then spent time reading them from the convention dais. Precious time that no one can get back.

"Rainbow of promise?"

I realize this is because a lot of people have problems with the masculine-heavy "father son and holy spirit." I understand, historically men have dominated and often oppressed women. SO I understand that.

Male and female aren't wrong, having a distinction isn't wrong. It's what humans have done to gender that is wrong. Humans were the ones who allowed masculine to dominate feminine: Not God.

But I think we ought to reexamine what masculine and feminine really are. It's everywhere, it's in philosophy (yin/yang), it's in nature. It's even embedded into languages like French

You don't hear French Academie degenderizing words in order to establish etymological parity. "la maison" shoudln't be feminine because it implies women should stay at home!

God's qualities are both masculine and feminine. But if this relationship with God is a relationship, and he initiates, then he's the one inviting us into a dance. and he leads. Is that so freakin wrong? or would you rather be the one trying to woo God, or telling Him which steps to take? My gosh I spent enough of my dating life chasing after men. And it was gross.

Je dis: vive la difference. But if you really need to rename the Trinity, Hughey Dewey and Louie get my vote.