never believe the laxative box

I read somewhere that the term "honeymoon" originated way back when a bunch of tribal dudes made up a big ole batch of fermented honey (thus honey) in preparation for their buddy's wedding.  Starting at the reception and for the entire month (thus moon) following they all stayed just stank nasty drunk and sloshing all over camp.  Whatever article I plucked this interesting little tidbit from didn't go into much detail on what the bride did for the month, but if I had to guess I'd say it had something to do with scrubbing her mighty hunter's skivvies on a rock by the river.  Either that or cooking up a whole heck of a lot of chicken wings.

Whatever the case, honeymoon just sends out all kinds of lovey romantic vibes in every direction and how we came to use that term was clearly not romantic in the least.  For either bride or groom, I'd say.  Since she got thrown headlong into the real world and he probably did

 a lot of puking.

And I can sympathize with that.

Hubby and I entered into marital bliss on May 21, 2005 at 6 PM.  I don't really remember, but the announcement is hanging on my wall and that's what it says, so I guess it's gotta be true.  My only real memory of the whole ceremony/reception procedure is eating several dozen sausage balls.  We spent our first night together at home, but we got up the next morning and headed to the Smoky Mountains.

We stopped on the way at Cracker Barrel in Lebanon, TN and I clearly remember sitting on the porch in a rocking chair enjoying the fresh morning air and being almost giddy.  I kept thinking to myself over and over, "I'm married... he's my husband... I'm his wife..." I also distinctly

 remember thinking about how amazing the week was going to be just feeling out that newness and just being able to focus on, ya know, honeymoon stuff and remain blissfully ignorant, for that short time, of real-world married-people stuff.  I actually remember thinking that.

I woke up very early the next morning feeling not-so-normal and as I stumbled into the bathroom, my husband of not even 36 hours said, "Don't you wimp out on me."

So I puked.  Twice.

And so during the time when I was supposed to be hiking and sight-seeing and spending many a romantic evening with my sweet baboo, I suffered from a few of the more exciting gastrointestinal maladies and barraged my system with a bevy of over-the-counter drugs. Including one "Women's Laxative," which was billed as being "gentle" and "non-cramping." Which just let me say I must beg to differ because me and one of the johns at the Sevierville Wal-Mart got a little too well-acquainted and I was pretty much convinced that I was gonna die in that stall.  

The gentle laxative? Had all the gentleness of a gail-force wind.

I think that was the farthest I ever got away from the hotel room on our entire honeymoon.  Other than that it was quick trips to soak my feet in the hot tub and a whole lot of Andy Griffith re-runs.

After several days (yes, days) of this torture, I really just wanted my mom and fortunately the people running the hotel we were staying in were kind enough to refund our money for the nights we ended up not staying.  I should add, just to further the "aw, man..." factor of this story, that I am never sick... EVER.  I don't know when in the world I had had any kind of stomach bug before that week and I think I've thrown up once since then (which was due to morning sickness with the Kiddo... another interesting story that I should write out sometime).

Hubby collects anything to do with elephants, so as a pre-wedding gift I got him this cute little elephant with a fruit basket on its head from Old Navy.  We were going to take him along on our trip and take pictures of him in various places we wanted to remember (a la The Roaming Gnome).  We named him Funky.  Here's one of very few pictures we got of him...

And so began our fairytale.  With a great big ole WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD.

And also some puke.