Lovely day for a lovely wedding.
Got up mightily early this morning to make it to a 10 am wedding in Berkeley. The groom was one of Lewis’ friends from junior high. It was quite a nice affair – both the (fairly non-traditional Jewish) ceremony and the reception were both at The Brazilian Room in Tilden Park in the beautiful Berkeley Hills. There was a great Bay Area mist about this morning, with lots of light rain and fog.
The wedding was a much smaller affair that I anticipated, since Lewis and I got invited and I’ve never really met either the bride or groom in the years we’ve been together. But they were at our wedding, and Lewis and the groom seem to have solid affection for one another… so it was quite an honor to be on the list! Our friends Ben and Maya were there, as well as some other old classmates of Lewis’ from Davis, so we were in good company. We also carpooled with another couple from Davis who we hadn’t met who were quite lovely and I’m sure we’ll see around town in due time.
I’d never been to a Jewish wedding before (actually, this is the first non-family wedding I’ve been to!), and it was very cute. They aren’t particularly orthodox, so it was a very casual ceremony, but it did have the various blessings and canopy and glass-crushing I came to expect. And a klezmer band. And lots of circle dancing! All in all, it was a really warm and relaxed reception with lots of participation from the crowd and lots of silly happenings.
Only downside for me was for some reason my heart wouldn’t stop palpitating in the latter half of the reception. I kept walking outside to get some air, getting myself calmed down, and then going back inside and having it start up again. It did eventually stop, but I think I went through four prolonged rounds of it or so, and it’s usually just one or two off beats before it rights itself. It was at least well timed to prod myself into getting an appointment at the health center, since I had spoken to my nurse about the general palpitation issue last week and she told me to come back in with my records from my old place in LA where they had done an echo cardiogram.
I do think it’s just stress (as in, this always happens waaay more frequently around finals week and such than any other time), but anyone who has had regular palpitations must know how off-putting and a little troubling they are. At any rate, when I had that echo cardiogram done last time all my doctor said was that I had a slightly irregular heart beat, and I’m sure that’s all that’s going on now. It’s funny how nervous I get about my body when I’m stressed out. I keep finding muscle knots (I think) in my neck that my brain just can’t let go of. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to talk myself out of thinking that they’re cancerous lumps or some sort or another. Any tiny thing goes wrong and I presume the worst. This doesn’t happen when I’m feeling less stressed – I wonder what it is about stress that makes me feel so… perishable? At least my hair isn’t falling out, like one of my grad school compadres.
March 15th, 2009 | Tags: friends, heart, stress, wedding | Category: life | Comments Off
