A brand new Sharpie broke in my hand this morning, creating a mess that only BP can relate to.

Kaylyn and I have been married for almost three months. We’ll call these past three months our extended honeymoon. Our new married life will begin on September 1st when we officially move to Savannah. We’re both very excited. Kaylyn is now the AT&T External Affairs Manager for Southeast Georgia. I have informed my law firm that August 31st will be my last day and then the Mrs. and I will begin our march to the sea and the next stage of our lives.

It’ll be an adventure. We plan to document our life changes on our new blog located at http://wesandkaylyn.com .

See ya on cyberspace and in Savannah!

Luckily for me, I was always the bride.

But, no one ever tells you about what really is in store for the bride-to-be when planning a wedding. The good news is you don’t have to argue with your significant other as to who wears the dress — that’s a given (well, for most). However, you do have a task list a mile long and a fairly busy couple months leading up to the big day.

Yesterday, as I set out to complete my domestic tasks of cleaning, cooking, laundry, paying bills, etc, I started to think, “When is the next time I’ll have a weekend in Atlanta?” And then it dawned on me — April. But, only for one weekend. Let me give you a quick rundown of my upcoming weekends:

• March 5-7: Driving to Charlotte for my first bridal shower (hosted by my wonderful cousins — Cara and Mary, and my sweet Aunt Janny), trial run of hair and make-up and third bridal dress fitting. I’m really excited for this weekend — my FAVORITE is coming in town, I am able to spend time with family and close friends AND I get to see my 85 lbs, four legged, floppy-eared Boone — the prized family Labrador. GREAT weekend.
• March 12 – 14: Flying to Charlotte for my bridal portraits — Saturday will be a busy day!
• March 19 – 21: Parents are coming down from Charlotte to Atlanta, so I guess this counts as an Atlanta weekend? It’ll be busy though, we’re moving items in and out of the condo, as well as introducing both sets of parents to each other. This all follows a very full-day work trip to Washington DC for me. Whew!
• March 26-28: Driving back to Charlotte for my second bridal shower (hosted by my terrific aunts — Laura, Cathy and Georgia, and my wonderful grandmother). Less to do on this trip, but am sure as we inch closer to the wedding date, there will be more added to this weekend for items to accomplish and lose ends to tie up.
• April 2 – 4: EASTER .. and a break.
• April 9 -11: Bachlorette party in Savannah … watch out you southeastern Georgians.
• April 16-18: Engagement party in Jesup hosted by great friends — Jenny Thomas, Erica Baker and others!
• April 23-25: Wedding for friends Emily & Chip in Knoxville, TN

WHEW! Whirlwind tour and exhausting couple of weeks. Exciting? Absolutely. But, I hope I don’t look like a zombie bride in my pictures from all this travel. As a colleague said last week, your wedding pictures stay with you forever — and truer words have never been spoken.

It’s official, I’m ancient. My youthful days have been cashed in for a quiet Friday at home with a movie, a few slices of pizza and a bedtime of 9 PM. Nothing wrong with that, just another indicator that I’m old. I would try to do something to reverse the unfortunate trend that is aging, but I’m certain it would land me at Johnny Hideaway’s at age 50, single with cats.

Side Note: For those of you who are unfamiliar with Johnny Hideaway’s, give me and/or Rachel a call. We’ll take you there when you’re in Atlanta — I find it wildly amusing. A great spot for people watching. You’ll also quickly catch on to my last remark.

At any rate, I’m old. But, not as old as my fiance, or so I thought until I found… these!!!!

In case you cannot tell, it is elf boxers… with bells. It’s also my first time seeing them… ever. In our almost two years of dating, I’ve done laundry and put away clothes (you may sing my praises), but I have yet to stumble across this beloved, prized possession. So, you can imagine my great surprise last weekend as I’m with my dear friend Rachel who helped us to move and we find Wes’ elf boxers.

It’s evident that Wes, albeit six years older than me, is still young at heart (maybe?) and I have already set myself out to pasture. Still, the discovery of the boxers begs the question…

Wes, what do you do in your spare time when I’m not around!? And, more importantly, who are you!?!?!

• I’m helping coach a youth basketball team of 9 and 10 year boys. One month into the season, we’ve had more moral victories than actual victories. Starting this week, I’m beginning a series of pre-game motivation speeches to put us back on the winning track. This week’s speech will be titled “Winning is More Important than Having Fun.” Next week, I’ll follow it up with “Sportsmanship is Overrated. Winning is Not.”

• Kaylyn took a second job at Williams-Sonoma for the holidays. Because I still have doubts suspicions about what Kaylyn does for a living during the day, I did a lot of reconnaissance work on her moonlighting gig at Williams-Sonoma. I learned that she one of the best part-time spoon salesperson in Buckhead. During one of my visits to Williams-Sonoma, I noticed a gigantic copper pot. It was HUGE… like a witches’ cauldron or Oscar the Grouch’s trash can. I wanted it. I thought of all the possibilities: you could bathe a St. Bernard; hide a kindergartener; bob for apples; beat it like a tribal drum; keep a baby dolphin as a pet; or I could cook enough of my award winning chili to single-handedly end world hunger. Alas, my dreams were dashed when I saw the price tag: $999.00! Still, it’s a worthy vessel.

• Thanksgiving was sort of unremarkable this year. Kaylyn and I spent the holiday apart. She was busy selling spoons. I was busy having a temper tantrum during our Thanksgiving night card game. I’ve been told by those in attendance that it was the worst fit they’ve seen anyone that wasn’t teething at the time. I stand by my assessment that the game was rigged.

• Godson, Briggs Thomas, was born on the Monday after Thanksgiving. The previous evening, I had dinner with his parents, Adam and Jenny. We ate at a Mexinese restaurant in Jesup where you can order authentic Mexican OR Japanese dishes. Who says the deep south frowns on diversity? Not me. And, not soon to be born Briggs.

• Briggs was birthed without a problem, in part, thanks the Mexinese. However, since then, Briggs have been wreckin’ havoc! The poor guy developed RSV shortly after coming home from the hospital. Adam, Jenny, and Briggs spent a large part of December in the ICU in Savannah. Briggs is doing great now. But, based on his first month of life, I predict that Briggs will be a trouble-maker. There’s no telling what kind of shenanigans he has up the sleeve of his onesie.

• Briggs was not the only special blessing brought into my life during the week after Thanksgiving. That Thursday was the premier of Jersey Shore on MTV. Oh my. It is the sorriest, most despicably amazing work of cinematic art that man has ever produced. Each hour long episode is an encapsulation of everything that wrong with the world… yet, I have the biggest smile on my face for all 60 minutes. It’s terrible. Scandalous. Awful. Horrendous. Offensive. Crass. And, my favoritest thing ever. It’s like a concentrated version of Jerry Springer only with hair gel and fake tans.

• The Christmas Week 2009 Hurricane World Tour: Atlanta > Warner Robins > Macon > Warner Robins > Savannah > Jesup > Charlotte > Atlanta. All in 6 days. The days in Charlotte were like a tornado within the eye of the hurricane. Kaylyn has a family tree with so many roots and branches its more like a family rain forest. We bounced around like a pinball. It was great to get see everyone on my side and her side of our family, if not as long was we would have liked. So, the whirlwind tour was worthwhile.

• While in Jesup, we attended our annual Festivus celebration. It was a bit of a somber mood this year because our philosophical matriarch and event organizer, Jenny, was still in the hospital with Briggs. We also had our annual Chili Cook-off at Festivus. In the 6 years of the event, I’ve brought home the famed and prestigious Silver Ladle trophy 3 times. This year was a different story. It marked a low point for my chili makin’ career and may lead to some domestic disharmony with Kaylyn. See, I lost…. badly. Not only did I lose, I only received 1 vote: my own. Not even my beloved fiancee voted for my chili. This has lead me to draft a prenuptial agreement with only one clause. Kaylyn must vote for my chili every year regardless of taste, texture, color, or digestive after-effect.

To paraphrase Tim Tebow’s famous speech after last year’s loss to Ole Miss, “To the fans and everybody in Chili Nation, I’m sorry. I’m extremely sorry. I was hoping for a 4th Silver Ladle trophy. I promise you one thing. A lot of good will come out of this. You will never see any chili maker in the entire country prepare chili as hard as I will prepare chili next year. You will never see someone push my recipe to the limits as hard as I will push. You will never see a chili maker work harder than I will the rest of the year. God bless.”

Now that we’ve covered numerology* and have established that 200 is in fact fewer than 300, I would like to talk about linguistics. “300″ is set in ancient Greece, yet everyone speaks with a British accent. Weird, right? Well, guess who else has started speaking with an odd accent: my future bride.

Over the past couple of months, I’ve noticed that she will enunciate certain words with a Canadian accent. It’s pretty wild. I have no idea where her sudden inner-Canuck has come from. Most of the time it’s when she pronouncing a soft A like in the work “back.” The next time you speak to her, ask Kaylyn to use the word “back” in a sentence. She’ll pronounce it like “bee yak” and then undoubtedly tell you to “take off, eh. I’m trying to watch hockey and eat maple syrup, eh.”

This past Saturday night, Kaylyn’s co-worker, Jenice, and her husband, Kevin, were kind enough to host our first engagement party. We had a very nice time hanging with old friends and meeting new ones. Yet, as the evening progressed, something very interesting happened: Kaylyn’s voice box crossed the Atlantic Ocean as she developed a British accent! She suddenly sounded like Hermione from the Harry Potter films. It was bloody funny. When I asked her about it, she initially denied it by saying “bollocks!” She finally admitted that she was really tired and felt like she was about to lose her voice. If that’s the explanation, how long would it have taken for her to start speaking in Arabic?

I kinda like it though. It’s cute when she does it – not annoying like Madonna’s fake British accent. So, unless Kaylyn converts to Kabbalah, develops creepy muscular/veiny arms, or begins stealing adopting little boys from sub-Saharan Africa, I’m cool with her speaking with the Queen’s English.

*(Un)interestly enough, today is the 300th day of 2009.