Much Ado About Nothing

Last week was my monthly Ikebana International meeting, this one named “Western Wedding Gowns to Japanese Kimono.” Regrettably, even though I looked forward to this particular meeting for many months, when the day came, I barely had the urge to get myself there from Tokyo where I had been staying with KH. I finally found the motivation and managed to get myself there, but I didn’t end up sitting through much of the meeting for two reasons. I have pretty much zilch to share with you.

First reason was that I had done some serious harm to my lower back while in Tokyo and couldn’t even sit in a chair to watch if I wanted to. The second reason was that my friend Russia was one of the day’s models. Her son was also involved as the ring bearer so I spent most of my time backstage with them during the second part… the part I was really hoping to see… wedding kimonos and Japanese wedding traditions. Skipping most of the first part, the Western wedding gowns and traditions since, you know, like I’m a Westerner and all. This part was purely meant for the Japanese percentage of the room.

The big fun for the day was that through most of this first portion, I did have the opportunity to pretend I was a fancy, professional photographer, hauling around Russia’s big, impressive-looking camera and madly snapping pictures of anything in my path. It became clearly obvious about that exact time why I am not, and never will be, a professional photographer… I killed her big, impressive-looking camera. Halfway through the models, it stopped on me and henceforth only winked its evil, green-eyed, error message every time I attempted to fix it with my frantic button pushing. Which I am sure totally improved the situation. Smart as I am, I also had my tiny digital on me. I originally balked at pulling it out as I couldn’t stand losing that admiring glint from the eyes around the room that Mr. big, impressive-looking camera had been affording me. Pride lost in the end for the pure fact that I wanted at least one damn picture. Well, smart as I am… I never charged my camera so it was dead on the second shot. Pretty much one is all I got.

So this is therefore what you get… I learned nothing about Japanese wedding traditions or garb to share with you. I managed to take this picture of the woman wearing wedding kimono moments before camera number two died. My back hurt like h-e-double-hockey-sticks and I had blisters on my feet because I had forgotten to pack nylons. I called it a day as soon as I ate my lunch, had a piece of wedding cake and slushed down some painkillers with a glass a champagne for the train ride home.

The end.