Talking A Lot

People sure talk a lot in the south. I’ve been helping Harold get set up, which is kind of a special hell because my rage starts building when I have to wait for simple things. I’ve been trying to be less high strung New Yorker about it, but it’s very hard not to oh get out of the way, I can not take this any longer, I’ll just get behind the counter and ring myself up.

I got my hair cut today at the haircutting school in Chapel Hill. I love Hair Metal in Greenpoint the best, but it’s in Brooklyn like everything else awesome.  (Wait, actually my best haircut and color ever was in Austin, Texas, in some place Allison found for me, but that’s even further away. Also, this is irrelevant information. Would you like to hear about the weather next, or shall we just get on with the blog post?)  But cosmetology schools are awesome for inexpensive trims and coloring.

So my hairdresser just got engaged, right when Harold and I did. And her fiance proposed under a waterfall with a Princess Diana-style ring, and then we talked about friends’ engagement stories and upcoming wedding plans.

I feel strange whenever I say I’m getting married. Some of it is being, ahem, an older bride.  My best girlfriend from college, Allison, got engaged nine years before I did, and that was after she’d finished school.

Some of it is that being with Harold means having good company, a peaceful, laughing and affectionate relationship, from which he encourages me to try, to take risks, to pursue interesting things, to explore. Not just lets me, actively encourages and supports, and it’s awesome. But I’m better at being snarky than being amazed.

And now there’s this post-election commentary on single women voting overwhelmingly for Obama, although married women voters skewed Republican. Even ignoring the rhetoric about us single slutty-sluts wanting our free birth control and legal abortions, it’s not hard to see some major ideological shifts between singles and wives. I don’t think I’m changing anything except liking Harold a whole lot, and having a lovely new ring, but what if I am?

Also, hey, I don’t know if you all know this, but once you get engaged, a lot of people suddenly have a lot of advice for your relationship.

I mentioned that to my hairdresser  — the well-meaning nosiness part, not the aging bride bit, the crazy about Harold bit, or the part where I think too much about exit polls — and she agreed wholeheartedly. She says it goes double for young brides, and since she’s eighteen, she gets it more than a post-college bride like me.

I admitted that, actually, more of my friends are married than single, and the bridal advice usually comes from friends in very happy marriages who want me to have the same joy they’ve found, which is a charming hazard of being an over-thirty bride.

“Oh, you look really good for your thirties. My mom’s 36 and you look way younger than she does!”

I made the sound that someone who’s still adjusting to her peer group having babies might make as she realizes that she’s practically a grandmother.  I’m still kind of adjusting to saying my fiance and actually meaning a man that I’m involved with and planning to marry, but I’m sure I’ll have a lot more chances to say it. Because people in the South really do a talk a lot.