I was looking through "Together for Life" this morning, my new favorite book with which J and I will plan the religious portion of our wedding. I was telling him that there are some passages from the Bible that are out as far as I'm concerned when we are choosing what we want read during the ceremony. First of all, the passage that talks about how women need to "be obedient to their husbands," and how you shouldn't "wear gold bracelets" and dress yourself up because that should "be inside," - that's out. The first part for obvious reasons and the second part because I do like to wear, if not gold bracelets, then gold earrings and also cute, sometimes expensive shoes and the like. And you can't put fashion "inside."

I also don't want the passage that talks about how fornication is bad, because first of all, that's untrue, and secondly, I don't think the people at the wedding are mature enough to handle that kind of language without laughing a little. I'm certainly not.

I was listening to the local radio show "The State of Things" on NPR several days ago. The show featured a religious roundtable, during which various leaders of various religious sects talked about issues important to them. One guy, Imam Abdul Waheed, of the Islamic Center of Durham, was talking about how in his religion people didn't stop working or doing anything else on Sunday, because in his religion, the day of the Lord is Friday. He was all into how Friday people should come together and get excited and all, and he read this passage from his religious book of praise that said something like..."And the Lord, and his people, should come together on Friday, and we shall celebrate Friday with our mirth." And I want that read at the wedding.

I was telling J about our escapades last night, documented on this webpage in fact (there will be no more of that...), this morning, and mentioned we'd played Twister, which I hadn't played in forever, and that it was so much fun. J said he didn't think he'd ever played Twister. I found this astounding. But maybe it was because he was too busy playing Policeman da da da. Once, while we were hanging out with his good friends from college, J was telling some tales from his childhood and spouted off something about "Well, when we were little and we'd play Policeman da da da..." and then kept talking as though this was totally normal. "Wait a second," we countered. "Policeman da da da?" And J just gave us blank stares like we should have known what this meant. We didn't, and all agreed it was something we needed to hear - after all, this was the kid whose mom used to wake him up in the middle of the night, tell him to get up because the family was driving to Disney World, wait until he got sufficiently excited, and then gleefully inform him she was just kidding. Surely other childhood wonders existed in young J's life.

Here's how it works: Policeman da da da is a game J played with his two younger sisters in the swimming pool. He would be the bad guy - a typical character was a stranger trying to give them candy - and the girls would scream, helpless, no one to save them. Just in time, however, J would go underwater, do a quick transformation of mindset and emerge, shouting, "Policeman da da DAH!" He turned himself into a policeman and so could save his sisters! Once he became Policeman da da da J would catch the bad guy (himself) and put the bad guy (himself) in jail, appropriately located behind the pool ladder. That's right. He'd put himself in jail. I'm hoping this innovative game will catch on here in North Carolina. I have a feeling it's gong to be a summertime favorite.