General Genitals reporting for duty

The day of my sister's stagette drew nearer and nearer and no matter how I looked at it, I couldn't view it as anything except a big pain in the arse. Final details, keeping it all hush hush from my sister, trying to guess what on earth she'd like but not being able to ask her out right without giving it all away. Trying to appease everyone but keep everyone on the same page and in line.

It was a f*cking nightmare.

When the other bridesmaids e-mailed me to tell me how excited they were and how they coudln't wait for the stagette, I almost puked on my keyboard.

Finally, it was the night before the stagette and I spent four hours slogging over my stupid sewing machine adding final details to my sister's Lara Croft costume.

I was busy hacking away with my seam ripper at the tangled mess of black thread that was supposed to be one of Lara Croft's gun holster straps when my sister traipsied up the stairs to tell me one of the other bridesmaids had just called to make sure I knew where to bring her tomorrow morning for the start of the stagette activities.

"YES! YES I KNOW WHERE TO BRING YOU! SHE ASKED ME EARLIER AND I ALREADY TOLD HER A MILLION TIMES. NOW SHOO! You're ruining your surprise and damned if I care but your other bridesmaids would kill me."

I suppose Karen was far tooo excited to notice what I'd just said so she just stood there babbling to me about how stressed she was about the florist and the table cloths, the rings, her manicure, her dress and other things I cared absolutely nothing about.

Eventually, noticing she was performing to an unwilling audience, she left the room to go call my mother and whine some more- but not before adding, "Oh and have you gotten your dress altered yet? I told you to get it altered a week ago! And have you gotten shoes for it yet? What?! You haven't yet?! I want everyone in silver sandals! And your speech? You and Joanne know you have to give a speech right?"

I rolled my eyes, shooed her from my room and slogged away at the stupid costume for another three hours till I broke the needle on my machine, got pissed off, went to bed and told myself I'd finish all the other preparations in teh morning. I set my alarm for 7am and went to bed.

I woke up grudgingly and completed the final touches on her costume. I chugged about a litre of coffee, then I packed the rest of her outfit and grabbed the rest of the stuff I was responsible for bringing and went and made sure Karen had gotten her ass out of bed.

I forced a litre of coffee down Karen's throat too despite the fact that she gets itchy from it. She gets itchy from everything and as part of organizing the stagette, I had to put togther a list of everything that my sister is allergic to. It took me about half an hour. She's allergic to everything from mushrooms to lobsters to cats to coffee.
"Trust me woman. Its gonna be a looooong day," I told her and shoved the coffee down her throat.

The neurotic bridesmaid had called for the upteenth time at 9am to make sure I knew where to take my sister and I answered exasperatedly for the umpteenth time in the affirmative.

I got Karen in the car and we set out on our way. Irony of ironies, I got lost trying to get Karen where she needed to be taken. By the time we got there, the neurotic bridesmaid was beside herself.

I managed to calm her down and from that moment on, I was determined to have a good time. We started out at the fancy shmancy spa at the Hyatt hotel in downtown where I got a nice pedicure. Well, it was nice till I got out into the daylight and realised that instead of the gorgeous copper colour I thought was on my toes, I'd chosen out a flourescent ala road construction signs shade of orange.

After the spa, we headed over to one of the bridesmaids houses for a bridal shower.

Our major activity for the bridal shower was putting together a scrap book for Karen. We would each design a page and leave a place for a photo of us and hte bride together on her wedding day.
Gag and a half.

If you know anthing about me, you'll know that I spend a good deal of my time in Saskatoon avoiding scrapbooking and avoiding hanging around anyone who talks about scrapbooking (a near impossible feat considering anyone who's anyone scrapbooks these days). To be fair, I'd never tried scrapbooking before and all my negativity stemmed from the fact that I have no idea what anyone is talking about when they rant on about heat guns, punch out decorations and gold leaf to me. And by some ill twist of fate, people rant to me about scrapbooking A LOT.

So as you can imagine, I was staring at the table of colourful paper and ribbons with something akin to horror. "Come on Vivian! We're expecting great things from your page! you're hte maid of honor!"

"F*ck almighty." I murmured under my breath.
"What was that?"
"Uh, I said, um, 'Alrighty!' uh, which page am I decorating?"

An hour later, I was getting really into it. "Pass me the glue dots please! And does anyone know where the pink lacey ribbon went?"
We were each supposed to write a heart-felt and meaningful message on our page underneath where our photo with KAren was supposed to go. The other bridesmaids wrote something like "Oh you guys are such a beautiful couple! I love you both! All the best for your future and happiness!" or something like that.

I drew the line at writing a sappy message to my sister and instead, added a little punch-out lobster decoration to my page and drew a bubble from its mouth saying "Hey Karen! Dont eat me or you will get itchy!"

The other bridesmaids thought I was crazy but Karen got it. I think it really meant more to her than if I had written something sappy and totaly unlike me. Hey, I have an ice princess rep to upkeep here!

The rest of the evening went smoothly and we got Karen into her Lara Croft outfit (and it didn't fall apart and it actually looked really good!) and then we all changed into boot camp outfits. Don't ask how we chose the theme. It was supposed to be "Superheroines" but somehow got morphed to Tomb Raider but then we all decided we couldn't have ten Lara Crofts running around so then we decided to dress up in camouflage and the theme ended up being Lara Croft/Boot camp. Go figure.

One of the other bridesmaids ahd brought over foam letters and we were supposed to each have a boot camp name. We had a "Commando", "Private Parts", "Captain Butt" (my poor little cousin Chantelle had the honour seeing as her real last name is Butt), "Seargent Sexy", and "Captain Head".

They got to me. They racked their brains for something original. Karen brightened up and shouted out, "How about 'General Warts' guys?"
I gave her a death look.
"General Genitals!" someone else shouted.

Well, it was better than being General Warts. I shrugged. What the hell.

The rest of the evening, I ran around with "GENERAL GENITALS" emblazoned on the back of my shirt. We headed down 17th ave for a scavenger hunt. If you'd asked me seven years ago at my high school down the road if I'd ever be sipping a beer at the Ship&Anchor with 'General Genitals' in big foam letters on my back, I'd have avoided eye contact, backed away slowly and ran for the hills.

But that's exactly what I did. Later that evening found us all shaking our booty camp butts at one of the clubs downtown and begging the DJ to play something decent. We'd managed to sneak my little 14 year old cousin into the club using my 34 year old cousin's ID. The bouncer merely stared hard at the ID and then at my little cuz and went "you're really cute" and let her in. That's security for you.

The evening ended with all of us dragging Karen and my cousin out of the club and into the back of my car. It was pouring rain and a bar fight had broken out and the cops were raiding the club. I had six drunk people in my car and I managed to get them all and myself home in one piece.

I changed into my PJs at home and slunk into bed. I stared at my shirt on the floor. Some of the foam letters had given out in the course of hte night and it now proudly proclaimed "GENE AL GE ITALS"

It was 2am and I was exhausted. I sighed. Despite my trepidations, it had been a good day. General genitals and all.