In honor of National Talk Like a Scurvy Scallywag Day – I mean National Talk Like a Pirate Day, here are the long awaited photos of MY PIRATEY WEDDING!

ARRRR.

This isn’t all of them, by far – but these are the ones that one of my lovely best friends, Sarie, took (I did a few, but she took most) for us. The other ones number in the hundreds and still need going through and tweaking.

Enjoy! OR WALK THE PLANK!! Here is the link to the LOLPyrate Wedding Set at Flickr.

Let’s see… so far you know I had a pirate wedding on April 19th, and that the wedding happened almost a year ago to the day that I met my new husband.

…what? I failed to mention that specific fact?

Oops!

It’s true – we met on the twenty-first of April last year, on the second day of Penguicon 5.0. Since that day, Troy has not failed to commemorate every single 21st of every month since then (with either jewelry or hugs and kisses or a combination thereof), which only makes him more kissable, of course. Hot guys with muscles, brains, AND a sensitive streak? Completely kissable.

This year, Penguicon fell on almost the same date (the 18th to the 20th, for those of you detail-oriented enough to care), and a few months ago we suddenly decided to get married on our (nearly) one year anniversary of being together. Because, in fact, we have been together ever since that day last year.

More backstory!

Back to last year, then! Soon after my new blond Sith and I discovered that smooching was our new favorite pastime, I had to leave the con and go home. When Lithie and I planned our weekend, we figured we would just have to stay up all night on Friday, and go home sometime on Saturday/Sunday when we were too exhausted to have any more geeky fun. Once we got there, we volunteered some in the ConSuite, thereby securing at least a few hours of sleep in the hotel room set aside for broke volunteers like us who needed to crash for a bit. (There is a whole hilarious story involving a hermaphrodite who had a conversation with… itself… in the bathroom on Saturday morning, too, but that’s for another time.) We would have maybe stayed another night in the Penguin Pit (the crash space’s hilarious name), but it became bleedingly important that we go home RIGHT NOW and not later.

Alas, I had to bid farewell to my newfound kissing partner; and honestly, at that point I really did think that was all it would turn out to be. I assumed that it was a freak happening, a once-in-a-lifetime event, and that I would either end up with an awkward situation or none at all. I was sad to leave him, but I was so overly caffeinated and overly tired and overly full of kissing adrenaline that I really hadn’t had time to process much of it yet. We hugged and kissed goodbye outside in the parking lot, and Lithie kindly drove home, since I was suddenly and completely exhausted.

I was very restless during the night. This was partly due to the fact that all three of my kids were still over at my grandparents’ house for the weekend, and I don’t sleep very well when they’re gone – and partly due to the caffeine still running in my veins like hyperactive plasma. Sometime in the early morning hours, I remembered that we had not exchanged phone numbers or even email addresses, which would make any more contact relatively impossible. Almost immediately after that thought, I decided I was going to have total and complete episode of because-I-want-to, and get up at the crack of ass, take a shower, and drive all the way back down to the con. To see my boy, of course.

What happens at con…

I arrived at the hotel with a few hours to find my Sith, smooch on him for a while, actually exchange phone numbers, and then drive back up toward my house to pick up my kids.

Then the fun part started.

If you’ve ever been to a con, you know that the deadest part of all is in the morning between about 8am and 11am. Those who stayed up all night have fallen asleep somewhere leaned up against a wall or cuddled awkwardly into a puddle of their own drool by then; and those who are lucky enough to have money for their own room (or a friend to share theirs) aren’t up or showered or fed yet. The only poor souls still wandering about have stayed up too long to remember how to go to sleep, or they actually had something to do at this time, although they may have forgotten what it was.

I walked up and down the halls, rode the elevator up and down several times, and had the increasingly sinking feeling that my Sith had gone home or, at the very least, disappeared somewhere out of my reach. I beat myself up for not getting his number the night before. I hesitated on the second floor balcony near the elevator, looking out one last time onto the floor below, and then I saw him.

A flash of black cloth, a flick of blond straight hair, and he was… walking down the hallway… toward the elevator! Hooray!

I composed myself in front of the doors, trying to gauge which one he was getting on. I flipped my hair back a little, straightened my shirt, suddenly nervous. My grin felt ridiculous but I couldn’t stop myself.

I heard the doors close below, heard the engine hum and the lifting click and whirr. The door opened, and there he stood, just as handsome as the night before, and for a moment I worried that going home to shower and change had made me unrecognizable; but then he was smiling, happiness stretching across his face like an unexpected gift, and then I was saying “I forgot to get your phone number,” and then our arms were wrapping around each other, and then he was kissing me again, his arms as strong as I remembered, and his hair as gold as sunshine.

I barely got out of there in time to get my kids – not that my grandparents would have cared, since they would love to just keep them forever – and THIS time, I had his phone number.

So, of course, we were on the phone until his battery died.

And so far I have only updated you an entire day more – at this rate it will take me a month! But I’m having a good time, so I guess you’ll have to suffer. ;)

I took this picture right before I left the second time, and trust me, I had the exact same goofy grin on my face.

Well, by now you know that I went and got myself hitched again. YARR, avast! I tell you what, at the very least it gives me a reason to speak piratey for the rest of my life if I want. And I DO WANT.

But before I tell you the story of the weekend and the wedding and all the not-sleeping because it was Penguicon, I have to tell you about LAST year. Last year at Penguicon 5.0, which was when I – quite by accident – met Troy.

And, before I go any further – I have to blame ALL of this on my good buddy Matt. Because he was the one who told me about Penguicon to begin with.

So last year, about this time, things were all drama and whatnot around my home. I was living in a different place, a little two-bedroom house with a nasty garage and a damp-ish basement, and I had kicked Tim out only a month and a half previously. I was not only NOT looking for love, I was not even looking for more friends. I was geeked about Penguicon because I wanted to be around other geeks, to talk about books and Linux and maybe learn some new things. Lithie and I planned to go together – I had babysitting for the kids planned out, I had money for registrations, and we had the weekend free – and we were practically exploding with the pent-up need to GET OUT OF THE HOUSE ALREADY, AUUGH.

We showed up on Friday and got our registrations, our program books, and proceeded to walk around together, going to various panels and meeting various people, and managing to (apparently) make it look like we were geek lesbian lovers. Ha! I guess if you are two hot women at a nerd convention, you MUST be lesbian. But I digress.

Most of that weekend is a blur, except for one or two parts that I remember pretty vividly. One of the things I remember so clearly was the elevator opening and a tall young man with long blond hair, dressed all in black, was standing there, STARING AT ME. In fact, weirdly, we were staring at each other. I gigglesnorted, he grinned, and I believe I said something lame like “Oh hai”, and I got on the elevator and went up to the second floor to partake of the food in the marvelous ConSuite.

This blond Jedi (Lithie saw him before I did, and ran over to me screaming and laughing hysterically, “LUKE SKYWALKER WAS IN THE ELEVATOR, I SHIT YOU NOT!!”) kept showing up around all the corners I found myself walking past, much to my amusement. I could feel his eyes on me from across rooms, through crowds of people. I thought to myself, ha ha ha, he has a crush on me!

It wasn’t until Saturday afternoon that I actually met the Jedi, and one of the first things I said was something about my three kids. Because you know the first thing that scares away guys who are just looking for something quick and dirty is mention of children or other relationships. And lo and behold, he was not only completely at ease about it, he was excessively respectful. His manners were almost old-fashioned, and by the time he had explained to me that he was, in fact, dressed as a Sith, had manufactured his own light saber, and hand-stitched his leather boots as well as his entire costume, I was fascinated.

Things were complicated for me. Far too complicated to be with someone already, so soon after such a huge thing had happened to me and my family. I had taken my mommy responsibilities so seriously that I had relegated myself to becoming a twice-divorced woman with three kids from two baby daddies (hahaha, I hate that phrase). I knew that what I’d decided to do for my kids was the best thing I had ever done, but also the hardest. I knew that there was a lot of pain, heartache, and confusion in our futures – right along with the joy, freedom, and strength that comes with fulfilling one of your life’s purposes.

(This picture courtesy of Davroz, who takes many random shots of people wandering about during local cons. Incidentally, he took some of our wedding photos as well – so you’ll see more from him later.

Yes, I look incredibly tired – all the caffeine was starting to be totally ineffective. Also I look a little pissy, because I was paranoid. Chalk that one up to over-caffeination too.)

Complicated or not, strange timing or not, sometime around midnight I found myself walking arm in arm with the Sith, and sometime later than that, I found that I had an irresistible desire to kiss him. And so I did. I think maybe he wanted to kiss me too.

(Stay tuned for the next part… )

We went to Penguicon.

We had a pirate wedding.

We volunteered and got no sleep (almost).

I drank lots and lots of coffee and Water Joe.

The kids got to swim in the hotel pool and spend the night with a friend.

I’m not tired anymore (haha), but I have LOTS to tell, so here is part one.

More later!