Hair dye, here I come

Ballet flats, originally uploaded by cee.rose.

"Oh! My! GOD!"
"What, what's wrong?"
"What is THAT?"
Prince Valiant briefly examines the object. "Huh."
"Is that a white hair? Have I got a white hair?"
"Actually, you have one, two, three... hey, you've got quite a few back here. Look, this one's white halfway down."
"I'm going GREY? I can't be going grey! I'm 25, for god's sake! I got married and my hair is turning white!"
"Well, when did your parents' hair go grey?"
"Actually, they both went grey in their twenties. But I thought I had at least until I was 30. Or mid-30s. I can't believe my hair is turning white. I LIKE my hair colour."

After an accusatory phone call to my mother (who explained that yes, she started going grey at about the same time, and white hair is grey hair dear, the grey is caused by the mixture of your original hair colour and the white hairs, with unspoken overtones of 'stop being a big silly') and some time spent staring at myself in the bathroom mirror at work, I have somewhat come to terms with my new mature appearance. Yes, I'm overreacting, but gah. Using the husband word was already making me feel old, and now my hair's rubbing it in.

I changed my name on both my license and my Medicare card today in my lunch hour, which considering the queues in both places has to be some sort of miracle. I was a bit worried about moving my old surname to its new place as a middle name, and a middle name I've been using since I was little but which isn't actually on my birth certificate, but all was well. My name now consists of five words, and only just fits on the license card.

There was an enormous funeral procession in the city today for a police officer who was shot last weekend. Thousands of uniformed police officers lined the street outside our office as drummers, horses, a bus full of family and the hearse went slowly past, and as I stupidly went out to tackle the Department of Transport at the crucial moment, I became trapped in large crowd of police officers and people in black crying, which was a little awkward. My red shoes looked out of place. I wondered about the women riding along on horses holding these strange wrapped up flags - how do you get picked for ceremonial horse duty? You do occasionally see mounted police officers riding around the city, but very rarely.

I have a new website idea which I'm rather excited about at the moment - something under my real name, for a change. I'm planning on working away at it on the weekend while Prince Valiant is off on a corporate fishing trip - in between gazing in the mirror and counting my white hairs, of course.

Returns

Bridal bouquet, originally uploaded by cee.rose.

It's hard trying to get back into blog writing after what feels like a long time away. I never know where to start - methodically recap my time away from the very beginning, or refer to it briefly before getting back into my usual day-to-day writing. I don't know how people who only blog sporadically manage to keep it up - I need to maintain a sense of continuity.

The wedding was, naturally, wonderful. I imagine everyone's wedding is wonderful. A beautiful day, surrounded by family and friends, all of whom seemed to be having a fabulous time with us - I don't think I stopped smiling all day. The ceremony seemed to whizz by - mere minutes later, we were married. I realised afterwards that the full moon had serendipitously risen behind us during the ceremony, which afterwards everyone congratulated me on planning, giving me much more credit for astronomical knowledge than I deserve.

All the little pieces I took so long to decide on worked out wonderfully - the string quartet were divine, the jazz band were perfect, and I was actually surprised at how good the food was (although despite having eaten very little during the day, I was too excited to feel very hungry). When people have asked me how it was afterwards, I've been telling them, "it was a great party", which it really was. I had an enormous amount of fun. I will however refrain, for the moment, from going on in long and boring detail about the speeches and the cake and the dancing and the bridal party (although I would like to write down something like that, for me to read in many years time when my memory of the event has faded).

Going away together for our honeymoon was also fantastic, and it gave me time to practice saying "my husband" without feeling like a character in a play. However, by the end of it we were both thoroughly sick of aeroplanes and hotel rooms, and it felt wonderful to get home and "relax" by using the remnants of our holiday going to a meeting with the bank and then inspecting properties with a view to buying a new house. It was a mixture of fun and frustrating, and is very much an ongoing process. How much do you have a love a place to go into massive debt for it, that is the question. (And while what I mean by massive debt, and what people like my colleagues mean by massive debt are very different things, the knowledge that other people are probably more in debt than you doesn't make any difference to your own repayments.)

And in more important news, I couldn't wait for my hold at the library, so I visited the book store and am now on page 334 of the latest/last Harry Potter. It was too frustrating reading about other people reading it - last night on the train I sat next to a girl reading it and was so glad I had my own copy, as otherwise I might have tried to read over her shoulder and spoilt it for myself. I'm finding it exciting, despite the characters thus far spending a lot of time hanging around and reading things in between the action bits. But I'll reserve further comment until I reach the end.