Buenos Aires - Friday - Getting to the Wedding!

D and I took a nap.

And did some other things.

And didn't start getting ready when we were supposed to.

I'd planned on giving myself at least an hour and a half to get ready for the wedding, but realistically I wanted two hours to look bridesmaid-like and to deal with the new, unpredictable, unchartered haircut.

My shower took the predicted amount of time, but man. THE HAIR. I had no idea what to do with it. New haircuts are great, but it takes a while to figure them out. I was frantically trying to dry it, trying to figure out what I needed to bring to the wedding, trying to match my jewelry to my dress, glasses to my dress and jewelry, then every possible glasses/jewelry/hair combination.

I think D wanted to kill me.

When M called me frantically and said "I need help with my hair! A doesn't know. Can you help?" "YES! I need help too." "Should I come up?" "YES!!!"

M came up, frantic, crazy, saying "Look at this! LOOK AT THIS! What am I supposed to do with this!?" She too was having new-hair anxiety. "I wanted to leave it curly, but then I blew it dry, and now it looks like this, and its terrible!"

It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't bridesmaid enough. Neither of us had been prepared to be in the wedding, so we were both suffering from the same anxiety.

"What should I do?" she asked.

"I don't know!" I didn't know. I was overwhelmed by our bad hair. "Look," I suggested, "Why don't you try to blow it dry?"

M didn't want to because what if it looked worse? I said "Worst case scenario its bad and then you wet it again and let it dry naturally and then it will be curly and gorgeous."

"OK," she said. She went back down to her room and I told her I'd meet her down there, with my flat iron, as soon as I was finished ironing my own hair.

Of course my hair took forever. Forever. Because I have far too much of it. And because D was helping me iron it and I kept saying "D, is that on? Are you sure? It doesn't feel very hot..." It was not on.

I turned it on, and within 1 minute of having turned it on it blew the adaptor. We weren't surprised, as the directions said that one should not use the adatpor for battery charging or hair helping purposes, which were the two purposes I needed it for. I'd used the flat iron and the battery charger on numerous occasions prior to this wedding crisis, but of course the thing chose to blew when I needed it most.

I was going nuts. "I look awful! I am hideous! I cannot go to the wedding looking like this! Which glasses!?!? I DON'T KNOW!!!"

D and I threw some stuff in a bag and headed down to M and A's room with all of my jewely and hair accessories for M to try.

M had miraculously fixed her hair, and we were ready to go.

On our way down, I said "Wait! I forgot the address in my room!"

M and A said "That's ok! We have the address!"

OK!

We ran downstairs. Our estimated time of departure had been 8:00. The wedding was scheduled to start at 8:00, but N told us that as long as we were there by 8:30 everything would be fine. It was about 8:15 when we got into the cab.

We said "We need to go to the Buenos Aires Yacht Club which is at dock 4."

"Where on dock 4?"

"Just dock 4."

"Do you know where it is?"

"No. Don't you?"

"No." By this time the cab driver had already started driving and we were a few blocks from the hotel.

These was much discussion of "Should we get the address?" "Will we just find it?" "How hard could it be to find? We'll just go to the dock!" "Won't you know, Leah Lar, where we are when we get there because you wrote down the address?" "How could you forget the address?!"

Right. Because there was any chance in hell I was just going to remember the address. Right. All I could remember was that one of the cross street's had a woman's name in it, and I thought it had an "O" in it.

If only that stupid brat hadn't flustered me so! I could have looked at the map!

I really really really wanted to just get the address from the hotel.

But we opted to just go to the dock, because we were already en route.

And we got lost. Real lost. We had no idea where it was. Nor did the cab driver. He kept stopping and asking people for directions. I kept saying things like "Wait! I think I saw this street on the crappy map!" and "Wait! Olga!!??!? I know that it was a woman's name with an 'O' in it! This must be it!" and "Or maybe not, because Olga doesn't seem right - but wait! Maybe I saw that street on the map?"

M and I were getting really nervous, since we were, after all, the bridesmaids.

I kept saying "I am getting an ulcer."

M kept saying "I wish we just knew that they won't care. Like they probably won't care? N said that things are really chill here and nothing happens on time. They probably won't care. But I just wish we knew that."

We knew we were near it. We knew we were behind it. We'd seen it from across the river earlier in the week. We knew it was nearby.

And suddenly the cab driver turned onto a street called "Victoria O'Campo," and I felt like the biggest idiot ever, because it had an "O" in it and also it happens to be my sister's name.

Right.

I really did turn out to be the idiot of the night.

We sauntered in at about 8:50 and, of course, nobody cared that we were late.