A Stiff Belt of Daddydom

A week before my daughter's wedding, 20 things I should be doing besides this. But I just read the best blog post ever, by a guy I don't even know, who does what he calls "one of those Daddy blogs." Well, it is and it isn't. It's called "The Wind In Your Vagina," taken from something his four-year-old said, and I won't spoil the anecdote for you. It's on his home page, the link to which is now in my sidebar, right below The Bloggess (an insane Mommy blog).

The post I mentioned is entitled "Rubber," and I won't spoil that for you either. Superb. It made me wish I'd given this mishmash blodge-podge of meandering riff-raff some kind of focus. This guy has a definite niche, a distinctive voice and point of view, and a respectable, admiring audience. I found him on Twitter, where he posts under his blogonym, Black Hockey Jesus.

Wunderkind #3 is playing with a friend, darling spousette running errands. I'm trying to figure out what's left on my non-existent checklist. Got luggage rack, installed it (exacting to the fraction of an inch), all set to move son #1 out to Boulder en route to wedding. Wrote piece to read at wedding--is it everything it should be? No. Words fail. It's a whole new level of bittersweetness for me. Still waiting for return calls from florist and caterer. Script rewrite going OK, if you don't count having to send pages via fax. Blogging unnecessarily about all this? Check.

Word Problem
Today I calculated beer & wine for the wedding party, guest list now closer to 100 than 150. My formula is arbitrary, but sensible: Figure half beer drinkers, half wine drinkers (no liquor--too complicated). It's hot in the high desert on the longest day of the year, so figure a 3-to-1 ratio of white to red on the wine. Half lite, half something good on the beer. So, how much to order? The overriding imperative is, You Can't Run Out. Figure two drinks per person per hour. We have the hall for four hours. That's 800 drinks. So 400 beers, 100 bottles of wine @4 glasses per. WTF? 400 beers and 100 bottles of wine for 100 people sounds like backstage with the Stones. Can I get some blow with that? So cut it by 25%. 300 beers and 75 bottles of wine, 50 white, 25 red. Wait, that's a 2-to-1. Plus, case lots, so multiples of 12...72 bottles? 54 white, 18 red. A better ratio, but...

Is this insane? Yes. But if you cut by half, it doesn't sound like enough. So, 300 beers = 12 and 1/2 cases. Say 13. Say five cases of lite, five cases of good ale, and maybe three cases of generic lager. 54 bottles of white wine = 18 chard, 12 sauv blanc, 12 pinot g, 6 blended, and 6 viogner. For the 18 reds, I think I'll ditch the cabernet. Who drinks cab on a hot day in the desert? But you kind of have to offer merlot, don't you? Maybe 6 merlot, 6 shiraz, 6 pinot? Maybe drop one and double the pinot--it's lighter & still in fashion. Maybe there's too much variety here.

Shit! What about champagne? Aw, jeez. Maybe scrap the blends, reduce the chardonnay, add a case of bubbly? How many little toast pours can you get out of a case? I knew I forgot something....

And I still gotta buy a belt to match my shoes.

I never wear belts. They seem like quaint holdovers from a more decorous era of loose-fitting trousers and corporal punishment. But you don't go beltless to your daughter's wedding.

I've been to most of the decent clothiers in Kansas City, and only came close to buying a belt at one store. They all look ugly and clunky to me. Can you even dye a belt to match this brown? No? Jolly old town.