A Comedy of Errors, or How Murphy's Law Rules My Life - Part 1

So, as I said in my first post that I'm not a lucky person. I'm really not, this isn't a "woe is me" post, it's just the truth in my life as I've learned to live with it. I've learned to (mostly) just cope with it. Sometimes I have my meltdown and get it over with and go on with it.

So when I say that I want to be "crazy lucky" for once in my life, I mean that I want things to go right with me for once. Just please, please, please let me get what I want this time (que up The Smiths, props if you love 'em). So my husband, Eli, and I were against the odds even meeting up in the first place for many reasons. And we beat a lot of odds in staying together for nine years, we even broke up once but within six months were back in each other's arms and married nine months after.

Now that wedding photo of ours deserves some explaining, I think. Those grins on our faces? I swear to you that it was mostly sheer relief that we finally pulled it off! We already had plans to go to Mardi Gras in 2011 with two of our best friends, Heather and Jared. Jared's parents live in Houma, LA and we were gonna go down with them and air mattress surf to have a cheap and fun dream Mardi Gras vacation. And Eli decided to finally ask me to marry him and we decided we'd to it quick and dirty down in NOLA during Mardi Gras... Cause that's how ya do it, right? I was finally gonna get to go to Mardi Gras and get married during it to boot! Seemed easy enough, I found a reverend who did weddings like I wanted which was going to be in the French Quarter, and on the day we wanted which was Lundi Gras (Fat Monday, the day before Fat Tuesday) and it turned out that Jared's mom is an amazing seamstress/costumer and she agreed to make most of mine and Eli's clothing as we wanted a quasi-pirate theme. She got our measurements and started work while I spent the time at home setting everything up and buying a particular bodice I wanted from a seamstress online and she had no problem with my time frame.

Well, the bodice didn't arrive in time so it had to be sent to Houma to await us. At least it showed up on time for that. Our flight, OTOH... we flew out at 6 a.m. and were supposed to land in LA at about noon. Instead on one of our legs, we were routed from Houston to College Station for fog. We sat at College Station for a couple of hours before we finally got to go on to Houston, where of course the airline had no idea what to do with us all! We got stuck sitting in Houston for about six hours on standby, bored out of our skulls. Eventually they put us on a plane bound for Louisiana and we arrived at about 9:30p.m. Meanwhile Jared and Heather and dad had been waiting around for us since, oh NOON, since J & H were scheduled to come in about the same time as us, but from a different state. But we rejoiced that we were finally there, though we'd lost half a day of fun.

Bored in Houston selfie

The next morning, we got up to hang out until it was time for our first parades in Houma and we had a blast despite some rain. Ate great food, got alcohol from the drive up daquiri places, enjoyed the nice weather, etc.

The hubby-to-be

Houma night parades with my bestie!

After a couple of days of that, on Friday we went downtown to pick up the marriage license and find that Eli hadn't brought his birth certificate, but some other form that wouldn't work. Now a judge could have by-passed that issue, but the only one on duty refused to be seen due to it being a long holiday weekend. Mardi Gras for us up north is just a blip on the radar for most folks, but down there, it's serious bizness. Apparently all Eli ever had was this unusable certificate and his mother didn't have it, either, so all we could do was work with his Aunt in his birth city to go to the hospital and get a certified copy to fax to us. Eli busted his butt with his Aunt's help and they got the darn certificate, but it wasn't gonna get faxed to us until Lundi Gras, yes, the day we are getting married! Also, the small town courthouse was going to be closed on Lundi Gras, so no getting our license there. We also needed to leave fairly early that day to get a rental car to drive to New Orleans which was about an hour and a half away. At this point, I'm ready to take the hints the Universe is shoving down my throat and give up on getting married anytime soon, but I reserved the rental car and hoped for the best.

To be con't...