The Chronicles Of Jessica

In approximately 32 hours I'll no longer be single.

In terms of the world at large I think it's a fairly median age to be getting married but in terms of my family I'm considered kind of a late bloomer. In fact I'm fairly certain my grandmother secretly thought I was a lesbian until we put down a non-refundable deposit on the catering.

I'm really happy to be getting married. Paul = Awesome. But I guess there are some things I'll miss about being on my own. During certain weeks of the month I used to do a fair amount of sitting around in a pair of double XL boxer shorts nursing a bucket of fried chicken and watching Hugh Grant movies; I don't see that happening much anymore. I also liked to occasionally eschew shaving and pretend I was living in France and make General Food's International coffee. And Paul doesn't allow certain things in the house that used to be standard fare, such as Britney. Or Janet. Or vegetables.

But he is always willing to kill the bug. He does a mean Al Gore impression. He loves my cooking. He never minds my breath in the morning (which frankly, could take paint off). He is lovely and tender and kind and I can't believe my good luck that he asked me to marry him.

At some point I'll have time to write about the full wedding planning experience, which is formidable. My mother will never be the same. Also I forgot to lose ten pounds. But I think the whole production will come off beautifully, and we will have an amazing time. And at the end of it all, we'll be married, and Paul will be under legal obligation to kill any bugs in our domicile. (I stuck it in the vows, just in case.)

Jess: We are so married.

Paul: Word up.

Jess: The Philadelphia airport is now the bane of our marriage's existence. If it were possible to get away with arson, I'd be sending you out for gasoline and matches.

Paul: Don't say that out loud, we're in the airport right now.

Jess: K. Well, how about if I start out by talking about the first part of the honeymoon and we can kind of tag team it and you see if you can work on coming up with something funny to say.

Paul: Oh great, yeah. (snickers) I didn't mean for you to write that! I'm keeping my mouth shut. I'm going to kill that guy making slurping sounds with a ring pop.

Jess: All right. Well, everything started out fine except that we had to get up at 4:30 in the morning. We are not morning people. But we made a pact not to complain about it being so early and Mom and Charlie came to get us and take us to the airport. We went through the Dunkin' Donuts drive through and got coffees and bagels. They gave me the wrong kind of cream cheese and didn't put enough sweetener in my coffee. We should have seen something coming.

Anyway, the flight from Maine to Philadelphia was uneventful, but right when we got to the gate at Philly, we found out that there was mechanical trouble with the plane and it wasn't going to be able to take off for Fort Lauderdale till 10:30, a half hour late. It quickly became apparent that that was a generous estimate and that whatever was wrong with the plane was going to take a lot longer to fix. At this point we had to face the fact that we might not get to the boat on time to make our cruise.

Paul: I would like to backtrack a bit. I think it's important to note that the flight from Portland to Philly was flawless...eerily so. All the airport hassles went smoothly, the flight was pleasant, and even the plane's landing was seamless. This, I thought, is going too well. Something was bound to go wrong.

And it did! After a few delays of the flight, they announced that the plane was BROKEN and they needed a NEW PLANE. Now, you'd think a major (and essential) enterprise such as an airline would be prepared for a contingency not related to acts of God with, I dunno, MORE PLANES. But no. So there we were, waiting to see if another plane might appear out of thin air to get us to the boat on time.

We weren't the only cruisers on this flight, of course. We were on Princess cruises and there were only a handful of like passengers, but the Carnival cruisers were numerous, they were privileged, and they weren't going to take this lying down. They formed a Carnival Posse. One lady in pink, especially spry for her age, began to make announcements gatherings other Carnivallers, collecting names and cabin numbers, and one can only assume, administering oaths of fealty. Her husband, a likewise skinny fellow, clad in a blue Hawaiian shirt, with a beard only a math teacher could love, was the muscle of the outfit, the bouncer raising the Army of the Inconvenienced WASPs. As we would learn later, we should have been so lucky as to have Mr. and Mrs. Pink on our side, but it was not to be.

Jess: You forgot to make your joke about the lady in pink being the Cindy Sheehan of Carnival Cruise lines.

Paul: Bugger!

Jess: Long story short, the Carnival Army raised enough of a stink that their boat decided to wait for them to get to Fort Lauderdale, which as it turned out, was about 2 hours after the boat was scheduled to leave. Our boat left without us, stranding also another honeymoon couple who will henceforth be known as, "Psycho and Mrs. P". These guys got married the same day we did, and they were on the same cruise so you would think we would have some kind of common bond with them. But no - they were crazy. On the surface they seemed normal but as the hours wore on in Philly and it was obvious that we were doomed to miss the boat, the husband got all rage-y. He was yelling things about a lawsuit, he was stalking up and down the halls and stuff. We saw him in the customer service line with a video camera, doing a Real World MTV style confessional. We were very frightened.

TO BE CONTINUED....(we have a lot of boxes to unpack right now.)

Paul: I haven't even had coffee yet and you want me to be funny?

Jess: Everyone wants to know what happened! We can't leave them hanging!

Paul: Okay, well, we need to talk about our customer service superhero, Zachary Pappas.

Jess: Zachary Pappas is the only reason to NOT blow up US Airways and all their kin. He is awesome.

Paul: Now, he didn't go and physically stop the boat from leaving the dock with his bare hands, so he's really more of a semi-hero but a hero nonetheless. Everyone there was screaming at everyone behind any sort of a counter, but he kept a cool head and a good sense of humor.

Jess: Since we were definitely going to miss the boat by this time, Zach got us on a flight to St. Maarten the next morning at no extra charge.

Paul: I love that guy.

Jess: Can I make a joke about having a threesome with Zach Pappas?

Paul: (withering look)

Jess: You know, like because we liked him so much?

Paul: No.

Jess: Sigh. Okay.

Paul: But seriously, the real reason this guy was such a trooper was his endurance of the screaming Carnivites and other customers, making irrational demands and threats as though anyone behind a counter could shout "accio plane!" and get us on our way.

Jess: We finally got to Fort Lauderdale about 2 hours after the boat had left without us. As the plane descended you could actually see the cruise ships heading out to sea. It was really sad. As for the - what are we calling them, Carnivites?

Paul: Yeah, Carnivites.

Jess: Well, they raised such a stink that their boat actually waited for them. When we got to baggage claim there was a little Carnival representative in a red jacket waiting to escort them to the dock.

Paul: Lesson: Start an unruly gang, get what you want. Anyway, Ft. Lauderdale was where we would have to crash for the night, and I think "crash" is the only way to put it. One would not be "staying" or "relaxing" where we were. From the frightening cab ride to the suspicious looking hotel, it was like a night in Afghanistan with palm trees.

Jess: There was weeping. Then there was eating in a motel tiki lounge with a down-on-her-luck waitress named Bernadette. The next morning we had to get up at four thirty in the morning for the second time in a row to get the plane to St. Maarten so we could wait for the boat.

Paul: Hey, the restaurant manager gave us cheap/well-intentioned champagne!

Jess: It gave me the hiccups.

Paul: Ingrate.

Jess: Shh. My mom had booked us into the Westin St. Maarten which is a brand new hotel that's only been open since December. This was about when things started to really look up. The hotel was absolutely amazing, one of the nicest I've ever stayed in. Definitely the nicest one Paul has ever stayed in. He kept saying, "Why is everyone being so nice to us? It's freaking me out."

Paul: Well, it was. I suspected ULTERIOR MOTIVES.

Jess: The picture in Part I is the view from our room. Shyeah! I know, right? They had an awesome huge spa and I went and had an aromatherapy massage. If anyone is wondering what to give me for my upcoming birthday, I would like more aromatherapy massages. It doesn't neccessarily have to be in a professional setting; I would submit to being rubbed down by a homeless guy with some lemon pledge if it will evoke the lovely memories of the Hibiscus Spa in St. Maarten.

Coming soon in the third and final installment: We make it on to the boat, I get robbed of a karaoke title and Paul gets in a fistfight over a deck chair.