Jon Best's Groom's Guide to Planning a Wedding In Less Than One Week and On a Budget

I might not be Mary Fiore¹, but I can do in a pinch

1. Choose wedding date.  I've heard that the groom's birthday is an especially suspicious, I mean auspicious, date.
2. Have ring bought and marriage certificate arranged beforehand
4. Tell family, friends, and co-workers about wedding.  Financial tip: waiting until it's too late for people to RSVP makes buying and sending invitations unnecessary.
3. Tell family, friends, and co-workers² that you met a lady that you're considering marrying.  Wait... did I do that backwards?
5. Sometime during all of this, ask brother to be the best man and have him accept.
6. Have co-workers who refuse to go to the wedding if no (free) alcohol will be served.  Considering the wedding and reception will take place in a public park that prohibits such beverages, it's not really a choice.  Besides, such a move eliminates people who aren't there for the nuptials from attending and that's probably not all that great of a loss.
7. Although not absolutely necessary, having a father who has been a minister and knows someone who can perform the wedding (in Spanish and English, no less) certainly helps³.
8. Have step-mother willing to buy wedding cake and batteries for boom box to play music at reception.  Remember that it's only the latter that goes into the boom box.
9. On the day of the wedding, get up and get dressed, wife... I mean, bride (because she wasn't my wife yet) does the same and then prepares ceviche⁴ for the reception.  Besides the ceviche, I believe we also had tostadas and soft drinks.
   
   ⁵
10. Have co-worker who introduced you to each other do bride's hair and helps with her makeup.
11. Go to park (I'm 90% sure it was the McKinnon Neighborhood Park, but have a slight bit of doubt).  Did I see her before the wedding?  I believe so, but it's not like I believe in superstitions so it turned out ok after all.
12. Give a little time for anyone who wants to show up to do so.
13. Have wedding and don't mess up any lines.  Since I think all I had to say was "I do", that made it fairly easy.  Kiss the bride when minister gives the order.
14. Par-tay!  (Sorry, no bouquet or garter belt to toss)
15. Not know that one is supposed to pay the minister and have father volunteer to do so.  Have witnesses and minister sign form.
16. Cut the cake.
17. Have co-worker do the traditional (at least I guess it is in Mexico) smearing of a bit of frosting on my and my lovely wife's lovely nose (hers, not mine).
18. Get toasted with apple cider.
19. Get birthday card from father and step-mother.
20. That's pretty much it.  We took the remaining wedding cake home after that and lived more-or-less-happily ever (or at least until she died) after.

¹ Especially since I did not fall in love with the groom.
² If one of these co-workers happens to be the person who introduced you to each other, that's one less person you have to tell since she probably already knows.
³  And, yes, that does mean we did not have someone to perform the ceremony until a few days before the event.
⁴ Mexican sushi
⁵ Sorry, I couldn't find a ceviche⁴ recipe on YouTube in English.

My wife, she wrote me a letter

Or a lesson on hard it is to translate something when
the person who wrote what you are trying
to translate did not spell it correctly

This is just going to be a semi-Recent Widower Review explaining the similarities and differences rather than go through the entire song so that I can get back to discussing the letter/note under discussion:

1. She was never my baby.  She was always a woman to me (although I have plenty of disagreements with those lyrics as well), both before and after she became my wife.
2. An airplane/train ticket wouldn't have helped anyway since she lived within walking distance.
3. I didn't need to spend any money for that same reason.
4. She did write me a letter (well, actually three), although many might call a missive of that length a "note" instead.
5. Lonely days were gone, but only for awhile.  They've since returned.
6. I was probably at the restaurant when I read the letter, so I did have to go home.
7. The closest thing the letter said about not being able to live without me was that she wants to know if I would like to meet her.

So, it's pretty much 2½  points of agreement among the 7, although it does include the major point (that she wrote me a letter) included in the title.  But let's get to the note itself (Spanish first, translation in green second).  Note: Lorena tended to confuse "b" and "v" (since they sound alike in Spanish), drop the "h" (since it is silent in Spanish) in words, and not add necessary accents, so I have had to make minor spelling changes and make a few guesses.  Some parts of the translation might not be perfect (please let me know of any better ways to translate this in the comments), but I've done the best I could.

"Jon" (I don't think that needs translation)
¡Hola! (Hello!)
Me platicó Lorena lo que les pasó anoche pero es que yo le dijé a Lorena que me ablará [= hablará] antes de benirse [= venirse] para saber si Jesus y su esposa se habían ido al baile y no mas me quede esperando la llamada.  (Lorena¹ talked to me about what happened to them last night but I told Lorena that she will speak to me before she went [to work?] for me to know if Jesus and his wife were going to go to the dance and I would no longer have to wait for the [phone] call.
Tambíen le dijé que iba a estar a las siete afuera del restaurant aber [= a ver] si podían salir pero como no salieron. (Also² I told her that I was present at seven outside the restaurant³ to see if they could leave but they had not left).
Me biene [= viene] para la casa y a las nueve me iba debolver [= devolver] para benirme [= venirme] con Lorena y conoceste porque de tanto que me habla ella de ti y a te conosco [= conozco]. (I went home and at nine, I went went to return to come with Lorena and meet you because of how much she has told me about you and to know you.)
Aunqué yo [no?] sé que te bas [= vas] a desepcionar [= decepcionar] de mi porque no sé si quieres tener una amiga chaparrita y gordita. (Although I do [not?] know if you will be disappointed in me because I do not know if you want a slightly short and slightly plumpish female friend.)
Tambíen aller [= ayer] en la tarde estube [= estuve] con una amiga comiendo en el restaurante y cada [vez?] que alguien asomaba de adentro de donde ustedes estan decía cera [= sera] él o no sera.  (Also², yesterday afternoon, I was eating with a female friend in the restaurant y each [time?] that someone looked out from where you are she said "Will it or will it not be him?".
... y me decía mi amiga pues que tanto mirar para alla pues nada le contestaba... (and my friend said to me because so many would look from there and yet nothing would answer)
... y tambíen estaba un muchacho sirviendose fruta y dijé a mi amiga que fuera  a ber [=  ver] como se llamaba y que decepcíon se llamaba Ezequiel. (and also a guy was serving fruit and I told my friend that I would go see what his name was and what a disappointment that he was called "Ezequiel").
bueño.  es todo lo que te puedo desir [= decir].  hasta pronto.  Lorena F.  (Well, that is all I can say to you.  Until soon.  Lorena F.)
Me contestas porque lo que me mandaste el otro día lo perdio y no me dio nada.  Me dijiste que allí abias [= habías] puesto tu numero de telefono (Answer me because that which you sent me, I lost and you did not give me anything.  You told me that you put (wrote) your telephone number there.)


¹ My co-worker at HomeTown Buffet who gave me the note.
² Since she used a lower-case "t" on tambíen, it may have been the last word of the previous sentence, but it makes more sense as the beginning of this one.
³ Probably HomeTown Buffet in Salinas.

I just learned how to change the cover photo on my Google+ profile

Words cannot describe how beautiful she is to me.  And the emotions every time I see it: love, pain, joy, sorrow, blessedness, betrayal (how dare she leave me alone?), and too many more to sort them all out.  Then there are the questions to which I do not know the answer.  I have to restrain myself from punching the monitor so that I no longer can see it while at the same time wanting to linger on it, caressing the image of her face (why can't it be the real thing?).
I hope that no one reading this is bothered by my remembering this Memorial Day someone who fell in the battle against cancer.  I didn't plan it this way, it just happened.

A cautionary tale

I cannot recall the month, much less the date, it happened.  I thought I had narrowed down the time frame by finding a purchase made at the Salinas Amtrak followed by another at an Inglewood Costco, but their date of April 25, 2011 marks them as about a year too late.  While the exact "when" remains a mystery, the "what" I remember all too well despite dismissing it as trifling at the time.  My wife had returned to our Salinas, California apartment after visiting her sister in Los Angeles.  While there, she said, she went to the hospital with abdominal pain and the doctors discovered a lump/mass (masa) in that area of her body.  Maybe it was fear of the effect of hospital bills on our financial situation (we weren't too far from almost losing our apartment due to back rent we eventually paid off and both of us being temporarily unemployed) or perhaps I didn't want to believe that it was what it almost definitely was, but I should have rushed her to Natividad Hospital or pretty much anywhere to have it checked out.  I didn't.
And so I am left here to wonder: would they have caught it in time if I had?  Would it have made a difference?  Would she still be alive, perhaps even well?  What kind of husband was/am I, to allow that to have happened to her?
 I cannot prevent questions like these from haunting my thoughts or wounding my heart.  But that is as far as I will let them go in crippling my life and destroying my future.  Yes, I made those choices.  Yes, I own up to my failures.  However, I am human.  I recognize my imperfections.  The past remains unchangeable, but I can repent of what I have done and use the knowledge I have gained from my errors to make better choices now and in the future.  The story has not finished and I feel joy over that.