Dear Prince William

We have been giggling like school girls ever since the royal engagement of Prince William and Kate Middleton was announced.  We are sincerely happy for the couple and wish them all the happiness in the world!  But we cannot help but wonder that things might have turned out differently if the Prince had ever received that letter we wrote to him when we were in middle school.

Wonder whatever happened to that letter.

This seems feasible.

Best Wishes To The Frickin Newlyweds

Sandy H. writes: "Just perusing the women's sports section.  Ms. Bloom married Mr. Frickin in Chapel Hill at Fearrington Village, with bridesmaids' luncheon in the South Parlor of the Carolina Inn and the rehearsal dinner at Top of the Hill.  Sounds nice, except I wouldn't want to be Mrs. Frickin.  Too many Frickin jokes can be made with this name."

Mom is right, and not just about the Frickin name.  The small-but-noisy parakeet-like feminist inside us shakes her head at the notion that the Celebrations page of the Sunday paper is viewed as the women's sports section, but the keeping-it-real garbage-eating pigeon in us knows it's true, especially in the South.  There, you can date a man for several years and be pitied for being perfectly happy with your unmarried life and not placing some sort of proposal ultimatum on his stopwatch - not that we would know what that's like. 

Once you've made it to the Celebrations page, where in some circles you will already be deemed a winner, how will the rest of us ultimately determine who the real winners and losers of this page are?  Of course, the true winner is any bride who marries the right groom for herself, and blah blah blah, cupcakes and rainbows, but since we can't tell that from an announcement, we'll go straight to the more superficial bullet points for spotting the losers.

There is a 100% chance that these brides are wearing tiaras, and their bridal portraits sometimes feature stuffed animals from their childhoods.  Before you scoff at this like it's something we made up, believe us, we've seen it before, and not just with a stuffed animal - with a Cabbage Patch doll.  There is probably mention of a "miniature bride and groom" as part of the bridal party.  The cake topper was totally hilarious and involved a plastic bride dragging her plastic groom across the top tier.  It's funny because men don't want to get married!  Ha ha!

There are so many excellent avenues to take to play voyeur to these loser weddings.  If you are looking for a laugh sometime this week, and want to reaffirm the fact that your wedding had/is going to have a "W" next to it on the Celebrations page, the CiB team recommends checking out Tacky Weddings, Wedinator, or the tangentially-related and always amazing Cake Wrecks.  

Men HATE commitment!  He's really in for it now, I tell ya!  
How hysterical and not even remotely cliche!

The Human Trapezoid

When I was being measured for my bridesmaid dress for Anna's wedding, my bust measurements equaled a size 2, but my hips?  A 10!  I am basically trapezoid-shaped.  I have never been and will never be a size 2 pending any major chronic gastrointestinal diseases and operative surgery for pelvic bone-shaving.

Another great way to lose weight and squeeze into those smaller sizes is to contract some sort of horrible infection.  I lost 5 pounds last week when I had pink eye.  Who knew a week of a weakened immune system was basically like taking 10 zumba classes?

Since I'm all better, I decided I had better get back to the gym this week; otherwise I will need to ingest a tapeworm to keep this up.  On Monday, within 30 seconds of being on the elliptical, I was pretty sure my heart was going to explode.  I decided 20 minutes of exercise was enough for this week. 

I'm going to be so good next week.  Two-a-days!  5 am wake-up calls!  This is basically what I'm going to look like after a couple of weeks of working out again and it's going to be so awesome:

There are really people at my gym who look like this.

It's Ginger Season

Between the groom, his Scottish-descended family, the Scotch-Irish folks from the highlands of the North Carolina mountains, and Derrick, the Herrmann-McInerney wedding had a ginger representation to rival that of a Weasley family reunion.  I've never seen anything like it.  

Derrick decided to celebrate this rare and special occasion of being part of the out of control ginger population by busting out his most sacred white boy moves on the dance floor.  There's the shoulder shimmy, the hunky hip hustle skip, and the oft-imitated but never duplicated head-shake/finger-wag.  The head-shake/finger-wag really tells the ladies what's up.  It's pretty much the reason I married him.  I went all malfunctioning fembot the first time I saw it.  Smoke coming out of my ears, head spinning around.  It was documented in this TLC special:

Before and After

Bill and Sandy H. got married in August of 1968, and unfortunately for them, the frozen top of their wedding cake was destroyed during Hurricane Camille in August of 1969, so they were unable to enjoy it on their first anniversary.  This fueled Sandy H.'s desire to ensure that Derrick and I did not suffer through the same heartache on our first anniversary.  She had nurtured and cared for our cake top since July of 2009. 

What a beautiful cake in its infancy.  I remember dragging Derrick to a cake-tasting and his face just lit up like a school boy when he tasted it, like the first time I got him tanked and informed him that we would be dating.

Who came up with this tradition? Sandy H. thought that, post-thaw, it smelled like old feet.  And it didn't look much better either.  Sort of like a lopsided donut that had been frosted by blind parakeets using their walking sticks.  Seeing-eye sticks?  And then left to rot all summer on the side of the New Jersey Turnpike.

Luckily for Sandy H., my perpetually cheerful father thought it was the best cake he's ever eaten!  And he intends to eat the whole thing.

The Promised Land

I love the contestants on Top Chef during Quick Fire Challenges when they have to use surprise ingredients. They're all like, "Oh. My. God. WHAT am I going to do with this freshly caught fish, all this home-churned butter, and these fresh chives? I am really going to have to dig deep to come up with something creative. This is going to take all I have."

That's quite a challenge. All week I've been trying to figure out how to subsist on a can of black olives, a bottle of Target-brand syrup, a 5-liter box of chablis, and a pack of expired birth control pills. I have refused to purchase any groceries this week in anticipation of leaving town for four and a half glorious days in North Carolina! I am stoked to visit with our families and attend the Herrmann-McInerney (Herrmannerney?  McInHerrmann?) wedding in Asheville on Sunday. The bachelorette party involved a Shake Weight, so my expectations for this wedding are pretty high.

So I probably won't be able to update Cats in Baths until next week, but I will leave you with an amazing picture of a bathed cat. Oh, and if you're thinking of ransacking my apartment while we're gone, too bad, because it will be occupied, and we have nothing worth stealing - unless you're interested in a table and chairs purchased many levels beyond secondhand from the Habitat for Humanity General Store in Cornelius, NC. I was going to get rid of those anyway.

I have no idea where this image originated, because it's all over the internet, but I got it here.

This week I have done a fabulous job of retaining the two pounds I gained last week, which was the first week of the alcohol bender cleverly disguised as business school pre-term.  That can mean only one thing: last week, I consumed 7,000 unnecessary calories.  That is equivalent to eating all the food you would normally eat, plus a Krispy Kreme bacon cheeseburger a day:

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Saturday

Sunday

I suppose I went a little overboard on several occasions out of sheer excitement for these "networking" opportunities.  I love meeting new people and let's be realistic about my arithmetical tendencies:

Math in 1st grade looks like this:

1 drink = 1 glass of milk.

Math in my house looks like this:

1 drink = 3 glasses of wine.

I probably won't pull myself together in time to try on bridesmaids' dresses this weekend for Anna's wedding, but maybe I'll manage to lose these two pounds prior to her wedding circa May 2011.