AdSense Nonsense

Blogging  about the year that leads up to Em and Ry's wedding has been a joy - with one exception. I have had to refrain from clicking the ads that appear on the sidebar of the blog. That’s because each click would send a few cents (and I do mean a few) my way. Blog advertising is meant to attract the readers (not the bloggers)  to products and services. The small print in the Google AdSense agreement says that if I click click here and  click click there -- on my blog --  I could get in quick quick blogosphere trouble.

No big deal I thought four months ago when the ads started to appear. I’m basically a rule follower. For every deduction on my income tax I’ve got a receipt filed  - somewhere.  I will drive up to a red light at midnight, not a soul or sedan in sight, and  still stop. (Notice I didn’t say anything about speed limits.) And I never tear the Do not remove under penalty of law tag off a pillow I've bought. My bemused visitors eventually take the  tag matter into their own hands.

At first, Thou shalt not click the wedding blog ads wasn’t a difficult commandment to keep. After I’d write an entry about the pretty country setting Em and Ry have chosen for their big day, the side bar would fill with advertisements. One for The Lord Thompson Manor in central Connecticut promised “ Romantic Wedding Receptions.” The rustic Connecticut National Country Club  in Putnam, CT professed  to be “the ultimate setting for a perfect reception”. More information on these and  the rest of the promos in the ad column was just a click away. But I wasn’t even tempted by these ads because Em and Ry had already found the penultimate setting for their wedding at The Barns at Wesleyan Hills in Middletown. Same was true for photographer and videographer ads, florists, and deejays. Em and Ry's bridal production kept one step ahead of those advertising parades. Choices already made. Contracts already signed.

But then came the supreme test of my moral ad-clicking fiber. The day I posted the Saying Yes to the Dresses entry the sidebar filled with Mother of the Bride dress sites.  I hadn’t shopped for my frock yet. I immediately felt like a sugar-craving diabetic locked in a candy shop.   What was a rule-following MOTB to do?

For the time being, I found a pillow I had just bought and ripped off the do-not-detach-by-penalty-of-law tag. Just to see how it felt.

What's in a name?

My future son-in-law calls me by my first name.

Last week I attended a friend’s retirement party. Past retirees were there. Some, who I had not seen for a while, heard about Em and Ry’s wedding for the first time. I answered the usual questions:

  When?  “First weekend in October.”

  Where? “The Barn at Wesleyan”

  Who? “A college friend. Dated after they graduated. Been engaged over two years.”

Then, sitting down to dinner, a question I didn’t expect surfaced. A colleague  I had not seen for years asked “What will he call you?”

                “Call me?” I wasn’t sure what she meant.

                “Yes, how do you want your daughter’s fiancé to address you?”

                As I considered the question, other marrieds at the table began to respond. “My mother-in-law  wants to be called ‘Mom.’  I always feel funny, but she asked me to,” said one.

                “I try not to call mine anything,” said another. We  laughed . But this tablemate wasn’t trying to be funny.

All this reminded me of how I came to call my mother-in-law “Mrs. Hayden” when Larry and I wed.

Of course, it was a different time – over thirty years ago – and place, in the sphere of social graces. Some behaviors considered rude then are considered quite civil now. This includes for women – the once scandalous act of baring one’s shoulders in church, and for men – the disrespect  wearing a hat at the dinner table use to convey.

But I didn’t call my dear mother-in-law “Mrs. Hayden” because etiquette guru Emily Post instructed me to. I did it because she always referred to her mother-in-law (no longer living) as Mrs. Hayden. How could a daughter-in-law go wrong if she did what her mother-in-law did?

Getting back to my dinner table friends, I answered the question first posed to me. “When Emily and Ryan were just friends, he always called me Mrs. Hayden. But since they’re engaged, he's made a point of calling me ‘Laura.’ “

             “So he refers to you by  your first name,” my friend said.

             “Yes,” I said with caution, not sure what she was getting at.

“That’s good,” she said. For some time, she had  been making  informal observations of how young in-laws address elder in-laws.  Her highly unscientific but nevertheless intriguing finding was “When they refer to each other by name, they get along better.”

A “which came first- the chicken or the egg” conversation followed across the table. Did the first-name address lead to respect or mutual respect lead to the first-name calling? No one could say for sure. But I did say, “After I had children it got easier. I started calling my mother-in-law Meme, like the grandkids.

                “And what will your grandchildren call you?” my friend asked.

The Countdown Begins

Mommy and the Bride-to-be

Fifty-two weeks from today Em will marry Ry. This is not new news. They have been engaged for over a year. The ceremony will be four o'clock in the afternoon at the Barn at Wesleyan (booked over a year ago), followed by hordeourrves on the patio and a country buffet in the Barn. There will be mums and sunflowers and sun (we hope), moonlight and hundreds of white bulbs (the electric kind) to enhance the venue.

Em has her dress. Monday we will travel to the Boston area to see hand-basted alterations of the dress on her. Em is a size 2 or 4. She fell in love with a size 14 dress, so we have put great faith into a young seamstress, who works for Nordstroms, who couldn't wait to get her hands on the large dress to fit petite Em. Good sign. Especially since seamstress number one wasn't good enough and seamstress number two was afraid to touch it.

The pressure's on, I'm told, now that we are just one year away, but I'm fine if Em's fine, and she seems like she couldn't be happier, Stay tuned as we set out sights - down the aisle.