You are coming down with me, hand in unlovable hand

I started this blog entry a week ago, when I got home from Santa Fe and the wedding shoot. I never finished it, so I'll just restart it.

The whole entire trip was a cyclone. It started the second we dropped our shit off at the hotel, and didn't end until we got back to Colorado Springs. Let me see if I can sum up.

Day one:

Derek and I left Friday morning. I had dinner with his parents Thursday night, and it went so well. Way better than I anticipated. His parents are exactly what I thought they'd be like, but they were warmer. And they welcomed me, and I loved it. We arrived at the hotel Friday afternoon, dropped our stuff of, and then headed straight over to the rehearsal/rehearsal dinner. Derek and I tested light, scoped out spots to take before and after shots (which is how we found the murder house, but more on that later), and generally checked out where we'd be spending twelve plus hours two days from then. And that's when we noticed all of the cars in the river. There were twenty five of them...all manner of old car, just hanging out along the river bank. Derek and I couldn't figure out how to get to them, so we wandered along the outskirts of the location, looking for a break in the fence, or just a place that wasn't topped with barbed wire. And then, we found the place where all of the fence ended. Victory! We got in and Derek immediately says to me, "Uhhh, I'm pretty sure you're walking through poison ivy, love." I looked down, and sure as fuck, I'm stomping through the thickest patch of poison ivy I've ever seen. But I am far too stubborn to admit that I'm doing something stupid, even when I'm caught red-handed doing said stupid thing. So I responded with, "Welp. What the fuck ever!" and I just made my merry way through the poison ivy (which was all fucking OVER the place). The best parts of the story are not that I'm a moron, but that I'm a moron that isn't allergic to urushiol, and I'm a moron that's not allergic to urushiol that also got the shot she was after.

That shot is EXACTLY what I hoped it would be. Frubs got a pretty fucking cool shot, as well, but he did it without prancing about in poison ivy, so his shot isn't as victorious or interesting.

There's Derek's shot. It lends better to the scope of all of the cars along the bank. We talked with the owner on the day of the wedding, and he said they started doing that fifty years ago, to control erosion. And since the water has little to no salt content, the cars don't really rust out. I thought it was super cool. Anyway, that was pretty much day one. We had dinner with Derek's family after the rehearsal, and they're all incredibly nice. They chatted with me, they welcomed me, they acted like I had been around for years. It wasn't awkward, it was wonderful.

Derek and I bought a bottle of Kraken, went back to the hotel, and Derek threw a bit of a hissy fit over the size of the cups provided by the hotel. His solution was fucking ridiculous and genius. He used the coffee maker pot as a glass.

In reality, the pot isn't much bigger, but I have to give him credit for being productive during his tantrum. My mother thought it was fucking hysterical.

Day two:

Day two was the wedding brunch. I had been hoping that after the wedding brunch, Derek and I would have time to make our way along on our own for a few hours, finding abandoned things and enjoying each other. We did get to do that a bit, but It was really only a two hour affair when we snuck away from the pre-wedding brunch (which was huge and delicious) and examined a mostly abandoned church and the two buildings behind it that just happened to be right next door to Derek's aunt's property. There were some decently old graves in the tiny graveyard, but most of them were recent-ish and gaudily decorated. Is it bad to say that about someone's resting place? I don't know the etiquette for these things. Anyway, here's what I found while we had that adventure:

 This is in the second building behind the church. I can't even guess how old these were. There was one room that had about seven layers of wallpaper, going from bad to worse throughout the years. There was an abandoned Monopoly board that looked like it hadn't been played since the box had been opened (and honestly I can't blame the people that abandoned it. That game ruins lives. It's like the civil war. It pits brother against brother, and nobody wins), and even a creepy room that had been decorated on and off for children. I have a lot more pictures to go through from this excursion, but I've promised myself I'll process the wedding shots entirely before I dig into my bonus shots.

 This is the entrance to one of the buildings behind the church. The texture of the door was absolutely fucking GORGEOUS, and I did take a close up of it, but again, it's for another time. Hopefully soon. I'm so excited to break into the shots I took just for me.

Jesus saves! Salvation now in Behold Him Blue and Yahweh Yellow! This is the altar in the nearly abandoned church. Derek was very gracious and left a dollar in the donation box. I'm not sure they check it all that often. There was a side room with a huge bible, all in Latin, set for a funeral that took place in 1993. Which was cool in and of itself. Anyway.

We went back to the wedding location to take some peripherals, and the entire underpass on the way there was just COVERED in Cliff Swallow nests, so we got out and took pictures. I mostly just smiled look a doofus as the birds swarmed around and around me, chirping and swooping and making a general mess of the sky.

 Lookit! Look at that angry little swallow!!! This is a 100% crop, so it's really not the BEST quality, but it's still clear enough to tickle me absolutely.

A portrait of an artist as a young jerk.I was snooping on Frubs as we took pictures of the birds. We sat under that bridge for about two hours before it was time to go.

We spent the rest of the afternoon with Derek's family, in Santa Fe. We all drove down and met up in the town square, at the Saint Francis Basilica. I was heavily disappointed with that place, by the way. The name basilica promises sweeping stained glass and intricate stairs and gorgeous pews...but this was just a huge church. I felt immensely let down. I did have a solid chuckle at the park for the basilica that said "no dogs allowed'...once upon a time, in another life, St. Francis was my saint, for fairly obvious reasons. Knowing what I do about St. Francis, that sign sent me into pretty heavy giggles. While walking the rest of the grounds, I spied a sign that said, "Famous staircase chapel" with an arrow. I stopped Derek and I said, "Holy shit, this is where Loretto is." I have been aching to get to Loretto for YEARS. I can't explain why religious stories move me so, they just do. Even if I don't fall for the bullshit, I get very wrapped up in the hyped stories. Saint Joseph built the stairway, you say? OH, how fascinating! After a nine day novena to him, really? Neat! Tell me more! I gobble that shit up. But I spit it back out as acerbic commentary on what a shitty carpenter Saint Jospeh is, because the nuns at Loretto didn't even want to USE the fucking staircase. Still, that amazingly beautiful staircase has long been on my list of things to see. So, when I told Derek this was where it was, he responded with a very enthusiastic, "BUT MY FAMILY IS WAITING TO HAVE DRINKS WITH US!" To which I replied, "Fuck your family, I'm going." And it wasn't even about not wanting to spend time with them...I did. But I also knew I was pressed for time, and I wanted to see my staircase. So before I gave Derek a chance to argue with me (and he did look stunned as all fuck), I walked off toward the Loretto Chapel. Half a mile later, I discover they're closed for some ugly couple's shitty wedding, and I was crushed. CRUSHED. If I could make the letters of CRUSHED bigger to emphasize how CRUSHED I was, I would. I asked the wedding coordinator if I could get a two minute peak inside, due to being from out of state, and she gave me a blank look, said no, and then turned around and walked away, looking back at me once with a quizzical look on her face, as if I had just asked her to disassemble the entire chapel and put it back together again using nothing but her toes and her keen sense of smell. At this point, I was far too proud to go back into the bar with Derek and his family...who knows why...so I sat in the antithesis to Saint Francis park and took pictures of strangers. Derek and I went back to the hotel a few hours later, and geared up for the wedding day.

And then it was the wedding day, and those pictures are still being processed. I found a couple more that I fucking LOVE. Like this one:

but I'm not even a tenth of the way done. I haven't been culling like I should, I'm just rolling through and then processing them as I find them.

I have to go to bed. My new job is wearing me out. I do h ave Denver Zoo pictures to post, but I will do that tomorrow. This post has gone on long enough, and I really am exhausted. I'm sitting in my office, wearing nothing but a towel, with my dried, curly hair. I hate my curly hair. But this is a testament to how fucking LAZY I am right now. I can't even be bothered to take the effort to make myself attractive. Welp.