Melenie getting married and Detroit goes back

Melenie wed her live-in boyfriend Jay on Saturday at the UU Church in Ptown. It was not your usual wedding with a minister, priest or rabbi officiating at the actual wedding ceremony but rather Andre Gregory [Dinner with Andre; Uncle Vanya etc.] delivering a funny monologue including the jealousy of their cats before administering the vows. They had selected two poems of mine they wanted me to read to start off the actual proceedings – Why marry at all & Colors passing through us. One person read a poem by Mary Oliver and another a poem by Stanley Kunitz. A therapist gave some advice. Friends spoke about the couple. It was all very Outer Cape funky and funny and informal. Jay was wearing a new blue suit and Melenie had a gorgeous gown made for her by a Ptown designer. An hour before the wedding, Melenie was being dressed by some friends when one of them ran the zipper onto the fabric. For the next 40 minutes they tried to get it free, but it was jammed permanently. Finally Melenie called the designer and he came over and sewed her into the dress. She was a few minutes late to her wedding. The reception afterwards was at Sage, run by friends of the couple. They spent the night there rather than going back to Truro. Lots of food and then dancing. At 2:30 in the morning, Melenie called the designer to get her out of the dress, which he did. Then he took the dress away to repair it. After five days of activities for up to 100 people, Jay and Melenie collapsed. She came in on Wednesday to work with me one last day before they go off to Paris for two weeks. I had been going over the copyedited manuscript of MADE IN DETROIT, out from Knopf in March, since it arrived about a week ago. I answered all the queries, removed one haibun and replaced it with a better one, replaced one poem in the political section. It was a relief to get it off express mail to my editor Ann Close at Knopf. I did one last thing [besides eating them] with the tomatoes and made some Greek basil tomato sauce. One pint I’ll use tomorrow with a shoulder of lamb in a Greek dish I make relatively often with variations. I froze two containers of it [there’s so much basil in it I don’t dare try to can it] for future use. We have been eating our first fall salads, always a treat since we run out of spring salad every June. Today we are prepping the diningroom for painting, moving everything away from the walls so they can be washed. I picked out a slightly different color. With the slate floor and blue curtains. we had used a pure white. With the new vinyl floor to be put down soon, we hope, that bluish white would not work. I selected a warmer cream. We’ll need new curtains. in the late 80s, I had a sewing machine and made those. Not about to happen now. I know longer have a sewing machine and no desire to spend a week making curtains for the 10 windows in the diningroom. I’ll find something on line or in a catalog. Puck is interested, Mingus is excited, Xena is interested but a little worried, and Sugar Ray will not go hear the diningroom with all that moving of furniture and stacking of boxes. I hope we can keep the cats from keeping painted too.