Terami.com Blog

I was very excited to be able to bring to you a photo blog entry this morning, one in which I could showcase goofy pictures of myself and Kevin as we attended a wedding this past weekend. Unfortunately, as we were leaving the hotel room, we played hot potato with the camera. My purse was too small. His pockets would bulge too much. And neither of us wanted to sully our formal wear with the sling of a green camera case. So the camera stayed in the suitcase and we went to the wedding, camera-less.

Going out of town is always an adventure for us. We like to plop ourselves down in a hotel and just walk. There's no car rental. There's no pre-planning. All there is, is a vague sense of meandering. We lose time. We chat with strangers. We barely get drunk on watery $2 drinks at the local bar. We find fascination at hardware stores and antique shops. We stand in grass and watch how out-of-town wind blows differently from the California variety. Things we usually ignore (like bus stops and city trees lining the sidewalk) become points of conversation. It's good to be a tourist without a destination.

By the time we arrived at the wedding, we were already relaxed and easy. However, back in California, I had taken too much care about my dress selection. Through clenched dissection of my closet of ill-fitting formalwear, I selected a too-large strapless dress. I knew at the time that in order to wear it, I would either have to keep my hand on the top wire at all times, or else stuff my bra with tissue to keep it from falling. In California, this seemed rational. So, I found myself wearing the dress, but with my relaxed vacation attitude, I shrugged my shoulders that as a grown woman, I was contemplating the scratchy hotel kleenex as a solution to my problem. Sometimes? I'm just a genius.

At the reception, I kept a healthy distance from the dance floor. Even though I did a security check in the hotel room by jumping up and down to make sure the dress wouldn't fall, I couldn't risk catastrophe in front of 100 people. So, I enjoyed the party from my seat - immersed in conversation with the groom's family. The woman I sat next to is the curator for a collection of miniature furnishings. (The Kruger Collection) As she was describing the artistry of the women who designed and constructed these pieces, my mind just raced to one of my happy childhood memories: playing in Katie's meticulous dollhouse.

(Katie's actual dollhouse, photographed by Sarah Renard)

To me, it's beautiful that I can attend a wedding in a town 2000 miles from home, sit next to a woman I've never met, and be reminded of something that I've been carrying with me all along. Strangers and strange towns aren't so strange after all.