What Are The Vows Again? In Sickness? Yeah, We've Got That Covered

Though Hilary and I have been together for almost three years, only a year or so of that has been in the same city. As a result, we are still going through lots of new experiences together. We each have relatively strong immune systems, and thus far have managed to avoid being sick.

At least until last weekend. Hilary went out to dinner with a couple of her girlfriends, and her tummy starting hurting when she got home. She went to bed early, but couldn't sleep. Things weren't going well, and...well, watch this video if you want to get a sense for what the rest of Saturday night was like for her:



Yeah, she had a rough go of it, the poor baby. I felt so bad for her, but it seemed like there was nothing to do but wait it out. We figured it was food poisoning given her symptoms, and I put in a call to our doctor friend Rich to get his medical opinion (he agreed).

We hoped it would pass after a few hours, but ended up staying up most of the night as she began to experience intense abdominal pains that literally knocked her off her feet.

By Sunday morning they had gotten worse, to the point that I half expected this to happen. We decided it was time to visit the ER, just to make sure nothing more severe was going on.

Emory University hospital is just down the road from where we live, so we headed there hoping our early arrival would mean a quick in-and-out.

When we arrived in the ER, there were only three other people there waiting as well, which we took for a good sign. Yet one hour later, there we sat. Hilary's pain was still severe, so I went to the counter to find out what the hold up was. I anticipated we might have to wait, but I couldn't understand why no one in front of us was going in as well.

The woman at the counter apologized for the wait, and explained that the delay was caused by a large number of emergencies that had just come in.

Oooooh, so that's what it was. My bad, I guess I misunderstood the purpose of my visit to the GODDAMN EMERGENCY ROOM.

I began to make plans to take Hilary outside and run her over with our car so that she might qualify for the hospital's stringent emergency care standards, but finally a nurse came out to get her. They put her on an IV and took some blood and urine, but everything checked out ok and we went home three hours later after she started to feel a little better. The doctor agreed that it was most likely food poisoning, so we assumed the episode was over.

And so it was - until Tuesday. Not wanting Hilary to feel bad for making me take care of her, my excretory system took it upon itself to get in on the act. The next two days for me went something like this:



Good times! Fortunately, Hilary was very sweet and supportive, fixing me scrambled eggs and a piece of toast and letting me watch a little TV in bed before I went to sleep (it may seem like a small gesture, but that is a huge concession from her). I don't know if my sickness was related to hers, but the two happened so close together its hard to believe it was a coincidence.

It wasn't a real fun few day period for either of us, but it did give each of us a chance to polish up on our caretaking skills.

So, future kids, I think you're gonna be in good hands. Mommy will make you some food or caress your head if you start feeling ill, and daddy will take you to the ER if it gets worse.

He just may have to run you over with the family car first.

The Wedding Trailer

One thing Hilary and I have tried to do so far in planning this wedding is try to do things the way we want, even if it flies in the face of CWW (Conventional Wedding Wisdom). For those that know my father, you know he instilled in me a healthy skepticism of tradition; just because something is done a certain way doesn't mean it must be so.

It doesn't mean we are reinventing the wheel here - we're not parachuting into the ceremony or Superman-ing a ho during our first dance - we just want (like most couples) to make our event our own.

One thing we wanted to do was an email Save the Date (Note - we realize we are not the first to do this. Our friends Joey and Jenn did one as well, which we want to make sure to mention. To the best of our knowledge, they are the first to ever think to do this and should be credited as such. And we bring this up only because we want to, not because they reminded us repeatedly that they did it first).

The best part about doing an email was it allowed us to do something new - a movie trailer. Our friend Matt did a couple of these for his wedding back in November, and we thought they were hilarious. His company, Blue Blanket Productions, specializes in doing just this kind of thing (shameless plug - he also does trailers for bar mitzvahs, birthday parties, whatever you need!), and we thought it'd be a fun thing to add into the mix.

Hilary and I are thrilled with the way the trailer turned out, which is great, because our creative insights for the project didn't exactly mesh going in. If our feelings about it were a relationship health book, it's be entitled "Men Are From Mars Where They Understand Comedy, And Women Are From Venus Where Nothing Is Funny, With The Possible Exception Of The 1980's Film Girls Just Want To Have Fun".

Eventually we compromised my artistic vision, and to Hilary's credit, the final product is a happy medium of both of our styles. We hope you agree!

-- The Wedding Trailer
-- Blue Blanket Productions