I was sitting in my office today when a friend of mine sent me a text message on my phone that had little hearts and said “I love you”.  At the bottom it instructed me to send it on to all of my friends.  So, I did.  I sent that bad boy to everybody, including my teenaged boy, who hates that kind of crap.

About 20 minutes later, my phone rang.

“Hola!”  I answered. I have caller ID so I knew it was my boy, Matt.

“Hey!  Guess what!!!!” He said, all giddy and excited like.

“Uh… what?”  I played along.

“My phone’s workin!!!” He exclaimed.

You see my boy has a really bad habit of tossing, flipping, pitching his phone..(along with other various forms of abuse).  About two weeks ago, the phone, in an act of ultimate retribution, just up and quit working.   He could still send and receive text messages, but not talky talky.

“No shit?!?!”  I get giddy with him.  “You mean the phone you called me from works?!?!?”

“Ha. Ha. Ha.”  he retorts. “But I wanted to let you know.”

“Well, very cool, baby. I’m glad its workin.”  I tell him.

And I am genuinely glad it’s working because he’s been on an “I want a new phone” kick for about 2 months now.  So right at this second, he’s thrilled to have one he can speak into and hear from.

Then it hits me that he’s calling from school, because I can hear all the chatter of teenaged boys in the background.  So I ask him,  “Why the hell are you in school?”

“Cuz we’re rednecks and apparently we don’t vote up here.”  He says as serious as can be.

“Did you get my text message?”  I ask him all lovey dovey.

“Yah. Yah.” He says trying to put me off like teenage boys do when they are confronted with the “L” word.

“Well?  Do you love me, dammit?”  I push out of sheer enjoyment knowing he was squirming in front of his buddies.

“Come on, Matthew.  You can say it.”  I prod.

“Oh, God.” He said.  “I gotta go.”

“Fine.  Love you.”  I tell him.  He knows I really do love him.

“Ya. Ya.  Bye.”  He said and hung up.  I’m pretty sure his eyes were rolling in back of his head too. 

I really do love the brat and I’m really super proud of him.  That’s ok. He has to come home sometime.

“Baby!”  I hear Tony calling out as he comes down the stairs to the bathroom where I was in the shower.

“Baby?!?!” He calls out again before bursting into the bathroom.

“What’s wrong?” I ask him reaching for the towel.

“Well, that damn cat.  That damn cat keeps on bothering me.”  He says shaking his head.

“What’d she do this time, baby?”  I asked, as this is quite a normal conversation in our combined domicile.

“Well, I went up there to see if the cheesecake was thawed out, and she was trying to get it.  I had to push her fat ass off the table just to get to it.  She went down swingin. It was like she was trying not to let me get it.”  He says, serious as can be.  “I think she’s got something against me.”

“No baby, she’s a psycho.  It’s not just you.  She attacks anybody and everybody.  She’s an equal opportunity hater.”  I try to mend his feelings.

“That’s not all she did, baby.”  He laments.

“Ok.  Tell me.”  I roll my eyes as I towel dry my hair.

“Then I decided I had to pee, and she followed me in there.” He goes on, “She jumped up on the toilet as soon as she saw me go in there.  And I shewed her down, so she jumped up on the sink and she started swatting my butt while I tried to pee.”

“She’s always hung out in the bathroom, Tony.  She’s not out to get you.”

“But the cat violated me.  She was grabbin my ass while I was in a vunerable position.  I was tryin to pee!”  He protests.

“Well, baby.  All I can tell you is to keep your back to her or she’s liable to swat somethin else.”

As if hunting for a smoking area wasn’t fun enough to occupy our 4-hour layover at O’Hare International Airport, mom decided that she needed airport food. Now, it wasn’t that she was hungry. No, this wasn’t the case.

“It’s almost like tradition,” she says beaming that smile of hers.

“Yogurt is somehow a tradition? Do tell,” I ask.

“Not really yogurt, but eating in the airport,” she quips back.

“Oh hell, now I’ve heard it all. That’s like me running right to Manchu Wok for Lo-mein everytime I hit the ground. It ain’t tradition, Mama. It’s a matter of eating from being bored. Pure and simple,” I lecture.

“Well, whatever you want to call it, Missy. I want a frozen yogurt and we’re gonna walk until we find one,” she commands. “Did you see anyplace to get one?”

“I saw a fat guy up by the security check thing, but I think it was ice cream, not yogurt,” I tell her.

“I want fat-free-frozen vanilla yogurt…” she says dreamily thinking about diggin’ in.

Not ice cream. Not chocolate. Not full of fat…. No.

With that I pick up my 50 pound carry-on bag at Gate K-5 and we start walking. We see a sign for frozen yogurt and head that way.

I have to say this should have been an extremely simple and painless task as right there in the “K” terminal are TWO, not just one, but TWO TCBY’s!!! Easy right?

Well, not so much. Off we go…

The lil dude at the first TCBY didn’t have any vanilla, SO, he pointed us to the other food court way the hell down the way at gate K-15.

We get there, and sure enough, TCBY. We walk up smiling, only to see that the lady has the frozen yogurt machine torn down for cleaning. The sparkle immediately left my eyes.

So, we decided to take another walk and ended up in the “L” terminal. Only one TCBY and no vanilla. So we follow back out of “L” and wander over to “G”, only to find out after walking 2.5 miles to get there, that it’s a commuter terminal and they have no TCBY at all. Figures.

Defeated and depressed, we turn around with our heads hung low. The pep in our step was lost long ago as we shuffled along. All of a sudden, my mom happened to see a hidden food court area that we had somehow walked right past at least 3 times.

And in the very bad end of that little hidden jewel sat a TCBY. We walk up, skeptical that anything will come of the visit.

“Vanilla?” Mom asks the girl with that desperate tone in her voice.

“Sure. What size?” The girl says with an angelic smile on her face.

“Large!” Mom says completely satisfied.

It was as if the clouds parted, the heaven’s opened and a choir of angels started to sing Halleluja in unison.

“Want one?” Mom asked me.

“Nope. I wanna bagel.”

It was Saturday, October 6th in the year of our Lord 2007. A beautiful and mild day for flying I thought to myself as I peered out the glass door at Tony and the boy loading my two pieces of luggage into the bed of the pick-em-up truck, for people wanting to fly as well to countries as Costa Rica, they can visit aerobell.com to find the best flights for this.

I tried and tried to whittle down the amount of crap I had packed up. Deleting various pairs of shoes and casual clothes by the handful. My Mother swore that she was going to get all of her stuff packed into one reasonably size suitcase the night before when she was packing.  I thought to myself, I’ll be damned if she gets all her shit shoved into one “reasonably sized” bag and I can’t. But I couldn’t and I was at the point of accepting my defeat when we left the house to go pick her up.

As we pulled down the drive way to pick her up, my uncle was helping her roll her reasonably sized bag out of the garage, followed by yet another bag nearly the same size as her reasonably sized bag. Hmmmm. Get ’em hoisted and let’s go. The sunny skies are waiting on us.

We took off to McGee Tyson airport here in beautiful Knoxville (Alcoa), Tennessee. Tony helped up get the bags out of the bed of the truck and almost dropped a nut trying to get her suitcase out.

“A little heavy there, huh?” I asked him, whilst cackling toward her.

“Just a little,” he said, shaking his head that I can be so snide and yet so loving at the same time.

We gave each other some seriously tight hugs and sweet kisses.  He went on and I went in to check in our stuff.

“Name and identification, please,” the robotic sounding lady at the American Airlines counter blurted out.

“Well, ok. Gotta dig it out,” I said as I start shuffling through my carry-on bag looking for my passport.

“Ah. There it is!” I say proudly, as my digging expedition proved I hadn’t forgotten my passport. I lay it on the counter in front of her.

“Very good. Will you be checking any thing through today?” as she peers over the counter at the over stuffed luggage at my feet.

“Mmmm, yah. These two.” I rolled my eyes as I lifted them onto the scale.

“Ok, they are checked all the way through to Frankfurt. Have a nice trip.”

Sweet! Phase one of the objective was complete. Mom’s turn.

“Name and identification, please,” robot lady says to her.

Mom handed her passport over and started lugging her bag up onto the portable truck scales.

“Oh my,” says robot lady. “It appears we have a problem. This first bag is nearly 17 pounds over the limit. You can try to redistribute it, or you can pay the $50.00 over weight limit fee.” (Have photographic proof of over packing, blurry, but still evidence.)

In typical J-Lamb fashion, my mother had over packed for real. And Tony said my bag was way heavier than hers.  Pffftttt.  I wasn’t the one sitting in front of the check in counter redistributing 67 pounds of crap to meet the American Airlines approved weight limit for checked baggage. Hahahaha.

“Gonna fit it all into one bag are we?” I say to her as I cackle a little more at her packing misadventure.

She shoots me the most evil of all evil looks and says, “I can fix it.”

She unzips the offending suitcase and proceeds to pull out a fat bag of hair products, a Bible, several books.

“Sweet Jesus, Mom!” I gasp in amazement. “How the hell did you get all that in there to begin with?”

“Can you please put some of these in your carry-on and I’ll put the rest of it in my other bag?” she asks, obviously ignoring my sarcasm.

“Yah, yah, yah,” I babble as I shove her books and other random small items into my bag. I decided rather than start her off pissed, I’d shut up and pick another battle later.

There’s nothing better than messing with my Mom. I don’t do it to be mean to her. I just find it to be the most entertaining activity around  sometimes.

“Let’s see if that does it,” she says as she pushes the suitcase back up on the scale.

“Just made it,” robot lady said, actually cracking a smile. “Have a nice trip, Mrs. Lamb,” she said as she handed mom’s boarding pass over the counter.

Mom couldn’t say anything, she just smiled back as we walked toward the secure area.

“Damn, mom,” I said with sincere realization. “I really think I should go chain smoke for a few minutes since it’s gonna really suck once I cross that security line.  I’m not gonna get to smoke for like 298 hours.”

She showed her compassion and said, “Ok. Let’s go outside.”

She sat there in the waiting area while I chain smoked a couple of cigarrettes and got enough of a ciggie buzz to border on a headache.

“Let’s go, Mama,” I said as I walked back up to her.

With that, we were off toward security check point.

“Oh shit!” I whined.

“What now?” She asked me.

“They’re gonna take my lighter. I just bought that lighter!”

“You can buy a new one when we get there,” She said.

“Fine.” I took the lighter out and pitched it in the lighter collector jail they had set up.

So, we made it through security and we were on our way. Quite an eventful afternoon and we hadn’t even left Knoxville yet.

Finally.  A year after the proposal.  Finally, after three changes in date, time and venue.  Finally, after finding a wedding cake that didn’t resemble spiderman.  Finally, after managing to locate and fit into a sexy yet firm suitable set of wedding underwear.  Finally, we did it.  We got hitched!

Of course, in our typical style, anything less than complete and utter chaos, followed by family drama and tradgedy.

I must say, my bridesmaids were stunning and wear sexy gowns.  Nice tits, ladies!  I couldn’t say it in the church, because well, it was church.  But dang, everybody’s boobs looked superb in those dresses! 

The boys didn’t look shabby either.  Ain’t it funny how a man in a classic black tux can make a girl weak in the knees?

It was actually beautiful, other than the bridesmaids walking to “Pray for the Dead and the Dead will Pray for you”.  Long story.  I stress here and now, that it was an ooopsie on our part, as we didn’t listen to the concerto in full.  We thought, “Oh that’s beautiful” when we listened to it the first time and turned it off with listening to it all the way through.  So, two of the bridesmaids are walking to lovely strums of a classic string quartet, when it goes into the death march.  Sweet Jesus!  I’m back there yelling to Val, “Oh shit! Oh Shit!!!!!  Cut it off, cut it off!!” 

Which he did, and we went on.  It was at this point I had decided I either need an ample amount of Jack Daniels right then and there or a mega dose of Xanax.

Deep breath.  The Wedding March is going. Walking with Daddy (who by the way was on his best behavior and didn’t cause any shit whatsoever). I got up there to my man looking dapper and all of his groomsmen. 

Ok, so here we go.  Daddy gave me away and there I stood looking into the eyes of the man I was about to marry.  I never in my life imagined that I would have been nervous.  But I was.  And I was about to cry.  We stood with everyone looking on… ohhhhh, the sweet, happy couple gazing at one another as “At Last” by Etta James played on.

Who would have ever thunk it?  My friggin shoes started to hurt like hell and I was about to cry again.  We manage to exchange vows with me only tripping once over my tongue and having to start over.  Queue the second song, “If You Ever Have Forever In Mind.”  By this time, the butterflies have turned to dragons and I’m so nervous that I can feel myself turning red as a chipotle pepper getting over-ripe in the sun.  I look at the pastor and say, “Is there anyway we can get him to turn this song off??”

“You really want the song cut?” He asked, looking at me like I’m crazy and then to Tony for reassurance that my head wasn’t going to spin 360 like something from the Exorcist.

“Yah, and the next one too.  My feet are killing me and I’m turning red.”

“You got it.”  He said.

He got Val’s attention. The music was cut. Moving right along. 

We are now husband and wife.  He grabbed my hand.  He pulled me close and laid the nicest kiss on me.  Dang.  We’re in church here, pal, and you’re really turning me on.

The only mishap was Lil T coming up to us mid-vows and yelling “Look Nana!  Motorcycle.” When he figured out everybody was lauging at him and saying, “Oh how cute.”, he took off. 

So, not a single mishap that was YouTube worthy happened, dammit!  I was just waiting for somebody to do something stupid.

We got it done!  The ceremony itself was beautiful.  Nobody burst into flames from getting too close to the unity candle, although Julie was standing pretty close and she has that sexy long hair. Nobody slid and fell off the stage, passed out or puked… 

I was tickled as pink as pink gets to see so many people showing so much love by being there to see this circus.  But as hectic as wedding days seem to get, I didn’t get a chance to sit and visit as I was being pulled in fourteen directions at once.  Not complaining, just the way it is.

We were in the midst of finding the photographer to make pictures after the ceremony, when we found out that the photographer had, in fact, left.  He had said to somebody, can’t remember who at this point, that he had plenty of pictures.

Um. What?!?!  I believe I’ll be the one to tell you when you’ve got enough damn pictures and when you can sit down and have cake, asshat!  But, I didn’t get the chance.  He was gone.  Must have needed a beer or a shot of tequila or something.  Whatever.  It’s my fault for putting my trust in my dear father’s friend to do anything remotely important.

That’s when SUPERMAN appeared!  He was like an angel sent to save my day!  I bet you’re wondering who by now, eh?

Well, it’s our own Mark Steel!  I was about to cry and there he was, yanking the camera out of the bag, snapping pictures of the wedding party, the reception, the friends, the family.  My friggin hero, I shit ya not!

Ok, so what else.  The reception was gorgeous!  Well, the cake started to melt and the topper kept falling off because Robyn is hot as hell and she walked by it.

I pitched the bouquet, and Robyn snatched it up.  As if she needs it (wink).  She’s next anyway.  And then Curtis (Robyn’s man) yoinked the garter!  So, if it wasn’t already happening, it’s bound to happen now! 

We ate cake…

drank wedding punch…

Posed, posed, posed… pitched the bouquet…

flipped the garter…

…and decided it was time to cruise on outta there. 

We proceeded to the truck to find it tastefully decorated with multiple condoms and window chalk.

It was then that the family drama ensued.  Amanda (my brat) broke asshat on Amy (his brat), and they commenced in a huge argument which culmunated in Amanda throwing her shoes and running into the woods and Amy peeling out of the church parking lot like her ass was nothing less than on fire.

For hell’s sake.  Please just friggin’ shoot me now!  I’ve waited all of my life for this here and day all these people want to piss all over it!

Anyway.  Mark, Becky, Olga and Holly got me some good pix, so regardless of the drunk monkey camera guy, I got my memories.