Tomorrow Is Another Day...

You Ask, I Answer!

A couple of weeks ago, I signed up for The Great Interview Experiment.  There are few things in life I enjoy more than talking about myself, and asking other people personal questions, so the combination of those two activities was an experience I could not pass up.  I was interviewed by the oh so fabulous Darcey, a.k.a. The Muse of Strip Search City, and I very much hope she doesn't mind me posting the interview here.  It's been kind of a busy couple of days at work, so, you know, free blog fodder!  Can't pass it up!

I think she came up with a lot of really fun questions, so without further preamble, on with the show!

1) First off, congratulations on your wedding - the pictures were beautiful! What was the inspiration for your wedding colors?

Thank you so much!  My colors were red and ivory, with hints of gold, and like most of my wedding planning decisions, were kind of a no-brainer for me.  Red has been my absolute favorite color for as long as I can remember.  I love its richness and warmth, and honestly, what girl doesn't look fabulous is a stunning red dress!  I chose ivory rather than white because all of the white dresses I tried on made me look like the Corpse Bride.  On top of that, our wedding was in late November, and I thought it was a nice nod to the holidays without hitting people over the head with snowflakes, reindeer, and stockings.

2) What would you do if you and your husband supported vastly opposing football teams? (Case in point: my bf and I are polar opposites - I'm a UGA grad, and he's a GaTech/Tennessee fan.) Do you think it would have any great impact on your relationship?

That's a tough one to answer since I've never had to face the tragedy of seriously dating a fan of an opposing team!  I would like to say that the power of our love is strong enough to overcome his misguided affection for a team like Auburn or Tennessee, but I don't know.  We would probably just have to have separate residences from September through January!

3) Yay, another fan of the great and powerful Eddie Izzard! Of his stand-up shows, which is your favorite and why? And also, have you been watching "The Riches" - what do you think of it?

Oh, I adore Eddie!  Is it just me, or is he the only man who can pull off lipstick, eyeliner, blush, and high heels and still be supremely sexy? A friend introduced me to his stand-up when I was in college and I've never found another comedian who can make me laugh as hard.  I have a very soft spot in my heart for Dress to Kill, as it was the first show of his I ever saw, and I still find myself offering people the choice between cake or death and always giggle when anyone asks me if I want a cup of coffee.  I love that you get what is essentially a history lesson over the course of his shows and his humor is so intelligent and referential, but he can also drop an f-bomb like nobody's business! I've actually never seen The Riches.  I know, I know!  I was so excited when I heard about it, and then I just never knew when it was on or what channel--still don't come to think of it.  Anyway, it's definitely on my list of things to watch before I die.

4) If you could live in any city in the world, where would you go and why?

I would absolutely love to live overseas some day, for just a couple of years.  I am in love with Howth, Ireland, a quaint, picturesque town on a peninsula, just a short DART ride away from Dublin--but I don't know how long I could stand living that far away from all of my family and friends with those tiny, tiny bathrooms.  Within the states, my current obsession is San Francisco. I've been dreaming of living in the Bay Area for well over a year now. I love the weather there as well as the thought of being within driving distance of mountains, beaches, woods, and  great shopping.  I love that I already have good friends that live there, and I just find the city charming.  It just fits all of my criteria for the perfect place to live.  Except for the real estate prices.  Those suck.

5) Are you a believer of destiny/fate or is everything just chance and luck?

I believe that we choose our fates.  One of my favorite pastimes is thinking back over all of the decisions I have made in my life that have led me to where I am now.  I've managed to get as far back as 9th grade, when I opted to take Junior ROTC for two years rather than one and a half years of gym.  That turned into four years of Army JROTC, which led to an AFROTC scholarship, which is how I met my husband, and how I ended up in Washington when the Air Force stationed him here.  I had a miserable time for the two and a half years that I spent in the Air Force, and many days spent wonder why on earth I had ever signed up for that life, but in the end I truly believe that it was my destiny to be there because it brought me to the life that I have today.  I could have made a very different choice at thirteen and taken gym, and I'm sure that my life would be very different right now, but when I made that decision to enroll in a different class I chose a different fate. I'm pretty sure I just made zero sense.

6) How/why did you start blogging?

I actually started blogging in college, about six years ago, I just didn't know that's what it was called.  I had a bunch of super-geek, computer whiz friends and one of them randomly offered to build me a website.  I remember thinking, what the heck am I going to do with a website?  But it was free, and I was probably bored, so I said sure, and while you're at it make it very flowery.  And so he did.  And I wrote about my life for about six months until I got distracted and went to a movie or something.  No one ever read it outside of my circle of friends, and I completely forgot about it for almost three years. Then I entered the real world and started my job and got bored again. A couple of my friends that lived far away had these websites that they would write about their lives on, and I started clicking on some of the links on their sites (what I would now call their "blogroll"), and I was hooked.  I read silently for about four or five months before I realized that I too could get a blog, and then when I was at work I could write on it and comment on other people's and it would look like I was working!  Brilliant!  And so my blog was born in August of 2005 and I never looked back.

7) What kind of pizza do you like - do you always go with a specific chain, or does it vary? And do you and your husband agree on toppings?

Lucky, lucky girl that I am, Colby and I are in agreement not only about our love for the LSU Tigers, but also for Papa John's pizzas with light sauce, extra cheese, and black olives and/or mushrooms.  Are we not a match made in heaven??  Unfortunately, Papa John's does not recognize our neighborhood as a legitimate residential area, and so we are forced to turn to Papa Murphy's and Pizza Hut.  It's not the same, but when you need a pizza, you need a pizza!

8) You mentioned sending Colby into the lingerie department to find a replacement sticky bra for the Air Force Ball - is there anything that you wouldn't send him to the store for - whether it's because it would be too complicated for your hubby (makeup, perhaps?) or just isn't worth trying to explain the details?

Oh no, after that, he totally sealed his fate.  I will now send him to the store for anything.  Any man who can successfully select a stick-on bra can do anything in my book.  Although I will admit I'm hesitant to allow him to go grocery shopping without me.  He always comes home with the most bizarre generic items, and I am very choosy about which brands I prefer.  But he's learning.  I'd say within the next year or so, he will be fully licensed to go to the grocery store without my supervision.

9) You seem to stay fairly active - what is your favorite form of exercise?

Hm, yes, I think once upon a time I did indeed do something other than sit on the couch and stare at the moving pictures on the other side of the room.  Running is absolutely the greatest exercise in the world, both in terms of how many calories your burn and how quickly the results start to show in your legs and core.  Unfortunately, running also destroys your knees, hips, and ankles, and in the past year I really started to feel it.  So, the next best thing for me is the elliptical machine.  It simulates the motion of running, but without the nasty joint pain side effects.  It doesn't burn quite as many calories, and it doesn't start to show for a bit longer, but I'm sure my eighty-year-old self will thank me some day!

10) And everyone has one of these... what is your best drinking story?

Oh, nice.  Okay, well, there are a bunch of really great ones, but since this is a family blog (i.e. My mother and father know of its existence and read on a regular basis), I think I'll stick with a story they've heard before and isn't too shocking.  Admittedly, it involves only an average amount of drinking, but at least it was underage, and it did take place in a house of spirits! 

So, when I was eighteen, I called home to let my mom know that I was going to Ireland for six weeks over the summer, and did she want to by my airplane ticket?  Seriously, when they're pitching those study abroad programs, they do NOT warn you about the horrifying cost of international airfare.  And so it came to pass that I spent half of the summer between my freshman and sophomore years of college in Ireland. After our four weeks of class in Dublin, we had two weeks of free travel.  I had decided to travel around the perimeter of Ireland on my own for a week, and then meet a friend in Dingle for the last week.  It was amazing, fabulous, and the greatest experience of my life, until our last weekend before meeting back up with our group.  We'd had a very fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants approach to traveling, and typically made our reservations in a hostel on the day we arrived in the city. This all worked very well until we tried to make reservations for our last night on our own in Dublin, only to find out that it was a bank holiday weekend and EVERYTHING was booked.

We meandered sadly over to our local pub, plunked ourselves at the bar and began pounding back the ciders (me) and Guiness (her).  At some point over the course of the evening, we decided that our best option would be to stay at the pub until they kicked us out, and then wander down to St. Stephen's Green where we would take turns sleeping on a bench.  We'd had a fair amount to drink at this point, which I'm sure is why this seemed like a remotely reasonable proposition.  As the night wore on and the locals trickled out, we were left nearly alone at the bar, surrounded by our various backpacks and shattered dreams.  The bartender struck up a conversation with us, and when he discovered that we were seriously planning to spend the night in a public park, he was understandably horrified.  Due to the combination of his fear that we would be attacked in the night by a crew of homeless Irish folk and his attraction to my friend's very large breasts, he offered up his tiny apartment over the pub.  We weighed our options and eventually determined it would be easier to fend off one suspect Irishman than twenty, and agreed to his proposition.  We all drank a bit more together, invoking that unbreakable bond of drunkenness, and eventually stumbled upstairs to his loft.  The next thing I remember is waking up the next morning in the bartender's bed (I was alone--he was quite the gentleman, and also I was not the one with large breasts), my friend shaking my shoulder viciously and insisting that we needed to leave NOW.

It turns out that in some point in the night she had looked over at his head and noticed that it was crawling with lice.  It was never determined whether this was indeed the case or if it was the pot they had been smoking talking.  Regardless, we scurried to the nearest drugstore and as soon as we were able to get into the dorm room that we'd managed to secure at Trinity College, spent the rest of the afternoon scrubbing ourselves raw with every bottle of Rit we'd been able to lay hands on.  And so ends the longest drinking story known to man.

***
Such great questions, thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to ramble on about myself extensively!  I'll be posting the interview that I conducted as soon as I get the answers back--no pressure Erin!

A Newly Engaged Girl's Guide to The Knot.Com Crazies

So, Jen, from Operation Pink Herring, recently abandoned the internet for an extended length of time while she and her boyfriend went gallivanting around Barcelona.  When finally, her first post in over a week popped up in Google Reader, I immediately surfed the internet wave over to her place.  The first part of the post detailed the standard post-vacation slump, but then, the final picture in the entry was a picture of a gigantic diamond smack dab on her finger.  That sneaky girl went and got ENGAGED!

A few days ago, I got an email invite to attend her Surprise Virtual Engagement Party, the idea being that all of Jen's bloggy friends would post a wedding-themed entry on February 15th in honor of her big news.  It seemed simple enough, but immediately the pressure hit me.  I mean, what can you say to a recently engaged girl that she hasn't already heard a million times!  Clearly there is "Congratulations!", but I needed a little more than that to fill out an entire blog post.  So, I thought and I thought, and I realized that the first thing that most newly engaged girls do is log on to The Knot and often times get sucked into their message boards.

I loved using my local board to find vendor suggestions, but before much time had passed, I realized that there were certain types of people that I kept coming across.  And so, to help Jen out, I have decided that I will detail the nomenclature of The Knot should she decide to journey to that bizarro universe of all things wedding--The Knot Message Boards.

The Regular
The Regular is the easiest species to spot as they will almost always be the first people to respond to your queries, and have three or more of the small blue circles beneath their names in their posts.  The Regular  is the most predominant species in The Knot universe, and often can be sub categorized by some of the following descriptions as well.  If a poster has been married for more than a month and is still residing on The Knot, it is safe to assume that they are a Regular.

The Troll
The Troll can generally be found on typically peaceable boards, and their sole purpose in life is to wreak havoc and cause dissension amongst the masses.  It is usually easiest to spot the Troll by their use of all caps or poorly spelled missives, usually choosing a random "Regular" and criticizing their carefully constructed "Knottie Bio".  The Troll is most efficiently dealt with by ignoring their attempts at upheaval and feeds on heated responses such as, "Oh yeah, well I bet ur fat and ur fiance hates you!"  Proceed with caution.

The Co-Dependent
The Co-Dependent can be easily detected by their chosen identifying moniker.  It will typically involve composition such as "Mrs.XXXtobe"  "XXX'sWifetobe", and in extreme cases "XXX'sGirl4Eva".   It is important to note that although this species' identity seems to have melded with that of their mate, it is almost always harmless to others unless provoked by its main predator, The Troll.

The Beebee
The Beebee is a species of poster who has chosen their life mate at an age that is lower than that of the average bride.  However, the youth of the species alone does not qualify it as a Beebee.  This is a trickier species to spot, as it is usually necessary to investigate their chosen nuptial arrangements.  In addition to their youth, the Beebee will typically include a great deal of pink in their decorating scheme--often including several different shades of the color with contrasts of lavender or possibly ivory.  You will also often find that they have selected a cake topper in the shape of a castle,  reference the term "fairy tale princess" in their descriptions, almost universally choose to wear a tiara, and generally have a date set two or more years in the future.  Like the Co-Dependent, the Beebee is fairly harmless though often considered a pest.

The Shrew
The Shrew is the most dangerous species of the lot, although if observed from a safe distance, often a source of great entertainment.  The Shrew is the hunter of the universe, and they move in large packs, feeding on Regulars, Co-Dependents, and Beebees.  Their natural habitat is the Not Engaged (Yet) board, but they often forage for their kill in other boards selected at random.  The Shrew is often an older, married woman and is most easily identified by their razor sharp tongues, sarcastic comments, and regular use of foul language.  They are a fascinating species to study, however, approach at your own risk.

This is of course, not a comprehensive list of the species you are likely to find when traveling through the wilds of The Knot message boards.  Jen, I wish you the best of luck on the battle field that is wedding planning.  Congratulations once again on finding such a wonderful man, and I look forward to hearing all about your beautiful wedding day when the time comes. 

(Important side note:  Be assured that as beautiful as everyone else's weddings are sure to be, you will always know in your heart that YOUR wedding was the most beautiful.  And you'll always be completely right!)

Love in 2008

The first thing I noticed about him was how tall he was.  In a room full of uniformed men, he stood a head above them all, and he had the kindest face.

I was seventeen, high school was only three months behind me and I'd never been so scared in all of my life.  I think he smiled at me.  Or maybe he smiled at someone sitting near me.  Either way, I was instantly in love.

I mooned over him from afar.  I became friends with his friends, and discovered that he had a girlfriend.  I was crushed, but had the arrogance of youth.  I knew my time would come.

The music was pounding, the light was dim and the room was packed with people.  I wore my favorite shirt and my highest heels.  I was giggling with my girlfriends.  I was eighteen, with my whole life in front of me.  Someone whispered in my ear, "He broke up with her today."

The next day I went on a first date with another man.  He was in love, or so he said.  It was the definition of a whirlwind romance.  It was the definition of dysfunction.  Fourteen months later, it was over.  I was nineteen and my world had shattered.

Another four months passed, and I was healing.  That day the sun was shining and I felt a sense of peace as I walked amongst my fellow students, beneath the tall, shady oaks.  I kept my head down, sadness still in my heart.  I heard him say my name.  The first thing I noticed was how tall he was, and he had the kindest face.  He greeted me with arms outstretched.  I hugged him back and waved as he walked away.

This time he had smiled at me.  Instantly I was in love.

The music was pounding, the light was dim and the room was packed with people.  He was standing there on the other side of the room.  "I'm going to do it tonight, or never," I whispered to a friend as I went to him.  The hours passed, but they felt like minutes.  He kissed me.  Or I kissed him.  It didn't matter in the end.

Twenty years old, and my heart was breaking.  The distance is too hard.  We're too young.  Live your life and I'll live mine.  Maybe someday...  I kept believing.  I had learned that the end of love isn't the end of the world.

He came to visit after Christmas.  Standing side by side, as we watched the otters play in their pool, I knew that it wasn't over.   He held my hand.  Or I held his hand.  It didn't matter in the end.

Twenty-one.  Twenty-two.  Years go by.  The laughter outweighed the tears, but still we knew that the distance was too hard.  A long distance relationship can only work when there's hope that the distance can end someday.  We didn't talk about the cracks forming below the surface.  It felt like the beginning of the end again, but I did nothing to stop it.

How many times can a person survive a heartbreak?  How can something that hurts so much not kill you?  How do people expect you to keep living?  Twenty-three years old, starting over again.

Somewhere along the way life regained its glow.  I could smile without hiding tears and for the first time in a long time I felt whole again.

He wanted to be friends.  Three months.  Five months.  Six months go by.  I knew that we were more than friends, but it took him much longer to realize it.  He came for a visit.  Standing there, watching the dogs playing in the water I knew that it wasn't over.  Before he boarded the plane he leaned down to kiss me.  "I love you," he whispered.

The first thing I noticed was how tall he was.  In a room full of uniformed men, he stood a head above them all, and he had the happiest face.  Twenty-four years old and my whole life stretched before me.  "Are you ready?" she whispered as she arranged my veil.

I'm seventeen years old again as I take my first steps down the aisle.  He smiles at me, and only me.  I am instantly and always in love.

(Entered into the February Write-Away Contest)

A Wedding Story: Angela & Colby

The morning of November 24, 2007 at nine o'clock in the morning, my alarm clock went off, heralding the last day I would wake up as an unmarried girl.  The first thing I heard was the steady tapping of raindrops hitting the windowpane, and although our blinds were closed, I could tell that it was far too dark in the bedroom for it to be a sunny fall morning.  However, we had 3 girls that had to get through the shower before the bridesmaid's brunch began at eleven, so I rolled out of bed to begin my morning ablutions.

Brunch was absolutely delicious--it was catered by a family friend and I can't imagine the food would have been any more delicious if we'd had it done professionally.  In fact, it was probably even better since it was all made and presented with love.  I wish I had pictures to share with you of the gorgeous table setting, the amazing selection of finger sandwiches, soups, desserts, and drinks, unfortunately I have zero pictures of the wedding day on my camera so unless any show up in my mailbox sometime soon, we'll all have to imagine the fabulosity.

Brunch went until around twelve thirty, when our nail girl showed up and the getting ready process began in full force.  Everyone had told me that the wedding day would fly by in the blink of an eye, but honestly, up until seven o'clock in the evening, the day felt like it was going to last for an eternity.  Shortly after we started lining up to have our nails done, our hair and makeup artist arrived and the house turned into an explosion of nail polish, eye shadow, hairspray, and giggling.

One of the most vivid memories I have of getting ready was the 20 minutes or so we all spent transfixed on the story of Abigail and Brittany Hensel, a set of conjoined twins that one of my bridesmaids brought up randomly while my hair was being curled.  Every one of us, down to the makeup artist was fascinated by the story and my younger sister spent her time looking up articles and YouTube videos to try to answer all of our questions.  I just love and adore my bizarre friends and family!

The rain had continued throughout the day, and I'd done my best not to let it get to me.  At that point, it was the only thing that was going wrong, and it was so far out of my control that I didn't want it to bring us down.  My florist called to assure me that the decor would still be gorgeous, even if we did move the ceremony inside, and the woman in charge of our string quartet called to verify where the ceremony would take place and confirmed that the acoustics would be even better if it took place inside.  I received periodic calls from Colby throughout the day--and just to highlight how different the wedding preparation process was for him, they spent the day at LSU visiting Mike the Tiger while us girls were all running around at my house like chickens with our heads cut off.

Finally, at 4:45 we made the decision to go ahead and get ready at my house since the rain had stopped and I wouldn't have to worry about trying to dash through the rain in my wedding dress to get inside the venue.  It was a bit of a trial to find somewhere to get ready since there were 5 bridesmaids, a flower girl, a ring bearer, a reader, a mother of the bride, father of the bride, and a fabulous girl friend, as well as the bride all getting dressed in my parent's house.  We eventually did manage to make it happen, and after 45 minutes of attempting to corral everyone in the dining room, we got our pre-wedding photos done and at six o'clock loaded up in the swanky black limo to make the ride over to the plantation.

We were running a few minutes behind schedule, so once we were at White Oak, we all dashed inside and spent most of the rest of the pre-wedding time attempting to get my veil centered and jammed onto my hairspray shellacked head.  Not long after my head was properly attired, the bridesmaids were ushered out to line up, and suddenly the sounds of the string quartet switched from prelude music to the strains of Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring.  I waited, clutching my father's arm, as the music wafted back to us, and then as the music changed to The Sleeping Beauty Waltz for the bridal party procession, I realized that I'd forgotten one last lucky token in my purse.  My dad retrieved it for me, and I carefully slipped the old six-pence given to me by our officiant into my shoe.

Just as I straightened up, our coordinator poked her head in the door and in that moment everything hit me.  Up until I'd just been focused on getting dressed, making sure my hair was right, worrying about whether there would be enough room for our guests in the parlor where the ceremony was taking place.  Now that I was hearing the final strains of the waltz, everything else melted out of my mind and when I finally saw Colby standing at the head of the aisle I realized that all that really mattered about that day was that by seven thirty, I would be the wife of my best friend.

The tears had threatened to start for the first time when my dad told me how beautiful I looked, and as the Trumpet Voluntary started, they threatened again as I began my walk down the aisle.  So much of the ceremony is a blur, but there are certain things I remember.  The lighting of the vigil candles from the back of the room up to the front, our parents using their candles to light the unity candle, repeating our vows while trying not to laugh at the ring bearer who was hooking his index finger into his collar and pretending to choke in his tiny tuxedo, the gorgeous sounds of my uncle playing the guitar while my aunt sang There is Love, and the warmth and love I felt when all of the guests joined in the group prayer for our wedding.  Everything, right down to the kiss at the end was absolutely perfect, and as we walked through the saber arch during the recessional,  I felt such a sense of joy and certainty that this night was one of the greatest of my life.

And that's when everyone's warnings came true and the rest of the evening flew by in the blink of an eye.  There were pictures in the parlor once the guests had been ushered into the ballroom, then as the James Bond theme song played over the loud speakers, Colby and I made our grand entrance into the reception as husband and wife.  The first dance, to Idina Menzel's Come Rain or Come Shine, was a blur, as was my dance with my father to  Unforgettable, by Nat and Natalie.

Then I came crashing back down to earth with the sudden realization that I REALLY had to go to the bathroom.  So with the help of my sister and two friends, we maneuvered our way into a tiny bathroom stall, and we all shared in the gloriousness of relieving my bladder.  When we got back to the ballroom, the bridal party was all standing around waiting for me to get back for the toasts, then it was on to the cake cutting and the wedding cake pulls.  Once all of the formal business was out of the way, my friends produced two heaping plates of food, as well as the Wedding Cake martini from our martini bar, and I proceeded to stuff my face as much as possible, before making it out on to the dance floor where I spent the rest of the night.

The next two hours were spent dancing, greeting guests, sampling all of our martinis, putting out the fire caused by the combination of my sister's tote bag and a precariously placed votive, and finally it was time for the bouquet and garter tosses.  I knew the evening was drawing to a close, but before the night was over we managed to squeeze in a Second Line, The Shout, and a last dance to Harry Connick Jr's It Had to Be You, before ending the night with Frank's New York, New York.  Our photographer ran Colby and I outside to get a quick outside nighttime shot in front of White Oak, and then we snuck back inside while our guests lined the front walk and the limo pulled around to the driveway to pick us up.

We made the final walk of our wedding night through the crowd of our family and friends and before we knew it we were in the limo flying down the interstate to the Hilton Capitol Center where Colby had decorated in true honeymoon style earlier in the day.  There were red rose petals strewn across the floor, champagne chilling in an ice bucket and two dozen gorgeous long stemmed roses on the bed along with a beautiful coffee table book on Italy. 

And of course, given the classically romantic setting with the roses, champagne and stunning river view, we did what every couple dreams of doing on their honeymoon night--kicked off our shoes and stuffed our faces with the delicious crawfish etouffee, mini Natchitoches meat pies, cheeses, fruits, vegetables, jambalaya, stuffed chicken, and cake packed by White Oak.  And then... well, you know!

All in all, it was truly the night I've dreamed of my entire life.  With the exception of the weather, everything went off without a hitch, and if there were any hitches, I never heard about them, which is the way it should be.  My two goals for the evening were to create an enjoyable experience for my guests while also managing to have an amazing time myself, and I really feel like I achieved both goals.  I had such an incredible time, and I just wish that I could have those friends and family surrounding me more often.  When I think back on that night, the overwhelming emotion is sheer elation, and I feel so lucky to have had the opportunity to have that beautiful night mark the beginning of a marriage with the most charming, handsome, intelligent, funny, and most importantly kind and loving man I've ever met.

Our amazing photographer was Corine Tran, out of New Orleans, and all of the pictures from the wedding can be viewed here if the slide show just wasn't enough for you! (Event ID is colby_angela_112407)

A Wedding Story: The Day Before

The week leading up to the wedding was incredibly intense.  The days seemed to last forever as we tried to cram in all of the last minute "stuff" and deal with the various mini crises that just seemed to keep coming up.  My dress and the programs were huge sources of stress and incredibly frustrating since all of the problems were caused by incompetent vendors and were completely out of my control.  The programs were eventually sorted out, but the dress drama nearly drove me to homicide.

On Friday I had to pick up my dress, borrow a guitar from a friend, and the ever so lovely Carolyn at the airport.  I figured it would just take a bit to run in, grab the dress and then scoot over to the airport by the time Carolyn was arriving at 11:30.  The first sign that things were not all right in the world was when the tailor brought my dress out from the back room and the bra cups that I'd asked her to sew in were still in their little ziploc bag on the outside of the dress bag.  I stayed calm at that point and politely inquired as to why the cups hadn't been sewn into the dress.  Her response?  I hadn't told her that I needed them sewn in.

I sort of just stared at her in disbelief, recalling how at my fitting on Monday she had watched me take the cups out of their bag, insert them into the bodice and then had her help in adjusting them.  I even remembered how we had all laughed because I'd accidentally put the cups on the wrong sides.  However, she told me that it could be fixed quickly and she'd sew them in while we waited.

So, back into the fitting room we went, and when my sister took the dress out of the bag it was immediately apparent that it hadn't been pressed like we had been told it would.  We tied the laces, inserted the cups and had them pinned in place, and then asked about the pressing.  I'm not entirely sure what the tailor was trying to say (her English isn't the greatest), but just just kept saying over and over again that "her machine couldn't do it"--that is press the dress without steam as the French taffeta material required.  However, they assured us that they had called a nearby dry cleaner and they would be able to press the dress in one day so we could pick it up the next morning.

I was not at all thrilled with the situation, but didn't see any way that I could force her to press the dress, so we paid her the $179 (!!!!) for the alterations on my dress and my sister's dress and went on our merry way to the recommended dry cleaner.  Which was closed.  Because it was the Friday after Thanksgiving.  So essentially our tailor charged us nearly $200 to take in the bodice of my dress about an inch, sew a hem, insert some bra cups, and then lied to us about checking to make sure that someone could take care of the pressing for us in time.

I wasn't quite livid at this point, but the anger was certainly mounting since it was now 11:15 and Carolyn was expecting us to pick her up in about 30 more minutes.  We drove on to another dry cleaner who told us that it could be done, just not at their location.  So, giant dress in hand once more, we moved on to the next location where the girls, and I shit you not, LAUGHED IN MY FACE when I told them I needed my dress pressed without steam by the next day.

This is about when my insides combusted and my eyes started seeing red.  I didn't speak for fear of what I would say in my current state, and we were forced to accept that we were going to have to iron my dress at home on our own that afternoon and that was just going to have to be good enough.

We did eventually get to the airport to pick up Carolyn, who had been waiting sweetly and patiently for nearly 2 hours, but now we were behind schedule and had to race around town to pick up the guitar and grab some last minute supplies at Target before leaving for the rehearsal at 4:15.

The rehearsal went... well enough.  I had a little mini-breakdown before the rehearsal started, a breakdown that was fueled into blinding fury by the end of the rehearsal.  I mentioned before that someone in the wedding party trying to change certain aspects of the ceremony behind my back, but luckily (or unluckily for the certain someone, I suppose) I found out from all of my lovely and attentive spies and was able to switch everything back to the way it was supposed to be when the rehearsal was over.

Because of the course of events earlier in the day, no one at my house had time to get ready for the rehearsal dinner before we left, so after the rehearsal we headed back to my house to change.  And when you have four grown women, two children ages seven and three, and three extremely unhelpful men in one house trying to get ready during the most intense and emotionally charged football game of the season, there is just no way to get everyone out the door in 15 minutes or less.  Which is how I showed up 45 minutes late for my Rehearsal Dinner, and was horrified to discover that they had held the serving of dinner until we arrived.

Mortified does not even begin to express how I felt as I went through the buffet line and then sat at the head table, far away from my friends and family, trying to find my appetite buried beneath all of the stress and frustration.  Fortunately, once the awkwardness of dinner was over, I made it out to the dance floor and had a fabulous time for the rest of the evening with my friends and family.

So, Friday was a bit of a bust, but the wedding weekend came in like a lion and went out like a lamb.  Aside from the fact that the weather gods were not on our side, Saturday went absolutely beautifully and if we hit any snags along the way, I never heard about them.  However, at this moment in time, a Quizno's Turkey, Bacon, Guacamole sandwich (hold the bacon) is calling my name, and when I hit "save" my NaBloPoMo obligations will be completed successfully.  Therefore I'll get to the actual wedding recap on Sunday or Monday and until then you can feast your eyes on this gorgeous slideshow put together by our wedding photographer.  (Just promise not to look too closely at the ones featuring my profile, because seriously, hate.  My sister got the boobs AND the bone structure!)

Home Again

It was a long day, but we're home safe and sound.  No more written words for now, but here are some pictures that should say a few thousand.  Thanks Carolyn!

Under the Wire

I almost caved and just said a big screw you to NaBloPoMo.  I figured it had been a long enough day with enough stress and I really didn't need to stay up for another 15 minutes to type this.  But then I realized that as much as it sucked that my dress wasn't totally finished when we went to pick it up at the tailor's and then they wouldn't press it so we spent over an hour driving from dry cleaner to dry cleaner trying unsuccessfully to find someone who could press it by tomorrow, and then discovery that someone was trying to rearrange certain parts of the ceremony at our rehearsal, and then taking far longer to get ready for the dinner than we expected and showing up 45 minutes late only to discover that they'd been HOLDING THE SERVING OF DINNER UNTIL WE ARRIVED (deep breath) it all worked out in the end.

My mom was able to press the dress, the alterations were completed in the end (although they will be hearing from us), my fabulous friend Carolyn successfully made the flight in, the ceremony will be reverting back to the originally scheduled course of events tomorrow when it counts, and although we were late for dinner the dancing and spending time with family and friends was fantastic.  Plus my dress and shoes were awesome.

So, on that note, I'm going to wash my face, go to bed, and when I wake up in 9 hours it will be my wedding day.

Unbelievable!

Happy Turkey Day!

Well, the bachelorette party was a raging success and my throat is still in pain from the amount of shrieking and singing that took place.  I don't remember much of what happened after 12:15ish, so I'm taking that to mean that we had a really good time.

Today I was up and ready for the first shift of Thanksgiving at my parents' house and around 2:30, after ingesting waaaaay too much food we headed to Hammond for Thanksgiving shift two.  Colby is at his bachelor party now, most assuredly having a good time (they had shirts made--I think they were possibly even more dedicated than the bachelorettes.)  I played card games with my cousins all evening and now am settling in for final program detailing and thank you note writing.

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving--or just a really great Thursday if you're a non-American.

Wedding Weekly Activity Report

Well, it's the final countdown--no more weekly activity reports after this one.  I don't know how all of you feel about that, but I for one am absolutely thrilled.  We got almost all of the programs assembled last night without any more issues, Colby and I went to pick up the marriage license today, and I have my bachelorette party tonight and Colby's bachelor party tomorrow night.  It's all starting to get pretty darn official and exciting, and all I can think about is how much I want a nap.

It has been such an insanely busy week, but it's funny how it hasn't seemed to fly by at all.  The days have stretched out to accomodate everything that we need to get done, and I feel like we're doing exceptionally well with sticking to our schedule.  Everyone keeps telling me that my wedding day will be over in the blink of an eye, but if this week is any indication I think it may just seem like The Day That Lasted A Million Years.

Rain is still in the forecast for Saturday, which I'm not thrilled about, but I'm trying to take a page out of Colby's book and just not worry about things that I can't control.  I also have been trying to confirm with our hair and makeup girl for the past two weeks and haven't heard back from her.  That's another thing I'm trying not to worry about, but it does seem a bit strange for a respected and highly recommended business owner to drop off the face of the earth for two weeks.

However, there's not a whole lot left on the list, and for the sake of brevity I'll just skip to the list of things we still have to finish before the weekend.

Angela & Colby's Wedding WAR 21 Nov 2007

Tasks Still on the To-Do List

• Confirm with Makeup Artist/Hairstylist:  You know, if she ever decides to call me back
  
• Wrap Bridal Party Gifts:  I got started on this last night and it should only take another 30-45 minutes or so to finish this up tomorrow or Friday.
• Finish Assembling Programs: I just have about 25 or so of these left to do, and it's just a matter of sticking the brads in the holes that have already been punched.
• Start a Wedding Gift Tracker: I just need a spreadsheet to keep track of the gifts we're receiving and will receive.  It was easy at first as they trickled in, but we're already starting to have trouble remembering all of the generous and wonderful gifts we've gotten so far.
• Finish Framing the Wedding Photos:  We have a two frames with spots for 3 5x7s each, and we're putting in the wedding pictures of each of our parents and all of our grandparents.  The pictures will be set out on the guestbook table and later hung on the "wedding wall" in our house.
• Pack Wedding "Emergency Kit"
• Pick Up Wedding Gown, Tuxes, & Guitar: All done Friday morning, working around picking up Carolyn at the airport at 11:30 and getting home in time to get ready for the rehearsal which starts at 4:30.
• Drop Off All of the "Stuff" (Guestbook, Pen, Cardbox, Etc.) At White Oak: We found out that we can drop off everything Friday evening, so we just need to inventory our box and provide them a list of where everything goes on Saturday.
• Make Final Payment to Makeup Artist/Hairstylist: Provided she actually shows up on Saturday that is.

So, really, it's not too bad--most of the things left to do will just take a brief amount of time to finish, it's just a matter of squeezing them in between spending time with all of my family and friends.  Speaking of which, my family is all gathered out in the gazebo, drinking wine and laughing, so I think I'm going to go spend a little while with them before donning my sparkly dress and heading out on the town!

Happy Thanksgiving Eve!!

The Hook

Today I went shopping for honeymoon attire with my mother and best friend.  That was sort of unspeakably bizarre.

More later...

Monday Mishaps

It's been a stressful couple of days to say the least.  I'd like to also apologize for being a terrible blogland participant this week.  I've had a couple of minutes here and there to check email and scan through my reader, but I don't foresee having a lot of opportunity to spend a lot of time reading or commenting.  I promise that as soon as all of this madness is over I will be back to my regularly scheduled blog stalking.

Anyway, there have been a long chain of wedding related events that have gone wrong, and things are now back on the upswing, but last night it felt like the end of the world.  Of course, in the midst of my inaugural wedding meltdown I completely realized that it was totally ridiculous to be so upset about the fact that Office Depot completely screwed up the printing and cutting of our programs, and even though I did indeed forget my birth certificate at home, it is being overnight and should be here by tomorrow afternoon.  So everything should work out, but it's been a long road to get here.

Today we made multiple trips to Office Depot to fix and then re-fix the programs, went for my final dress fitting (it's gorgeous, oh my God, I forgot how much I love it!!), and made a couple of shopping trips to get some bridal party gifts and buy supplies for my emergency wedding kit.  Tonight I just have to cut the martini menu, the scavenger hunt cards for the table cameras, and the cards that  guests will sign instead of a guest book.  After that I'll organize the bridal party gifts and then it will at long last be bedtime.

I've been waiting for bedtime since I dragged my weary body out of bed this morning.  It's been such a very, very long time coming...

A Brief Recap

The past couple of days have blown by in a heartbeat, while simultaneously dragging on for years.  I did manage to leave a little bit early from work on Friday after a trip to the aquarium where I had the chance to meet some of my favorite Hollywood stars.

Dory and Nemo would like to remind you that fish are friends, not food.
 
Almost as soon as I sat down on the train, I received a phone call from Colby and he led with that aforementioned famous line of his:  "Do you want the good news or the bad news?"

The bad news:  My computer couldn't be fixed--something about they could solder the broken piece back in place, but the wires would probably never line up properly again so the computer wouldn't actually be able to receive a charge.  Of course I promptly lost my shit since all of my wedding files were on the hard drive and hadn't been backed up in a few weeks--weeks in which lots of updating had been done to my files.  That night, rather than arriving home early, getting some laundry done and then taking a leisurely trip to Target, we drove up to the closest Apple store where I finally bought my long awaited MacBook with a combination of excitement and frustration.  I love my new computer, but I honestly would much rather have waited until after our trip to Italy in April.

Anyway, the purchase was made and we had time for a quick Wal-Mart run before Colby dropped me off in Tacoma for my hair appointment.  Once my hair was finished I spent the rest of the night packing and salvaging as much as I could from my wedding files on our external hard drive.  I finally dropped into bed around 1:30 in the morning and was up again at 6:00 to finish packing and bring the dogs to the vet where they're boarding until we get home.

It just never gets any easier dropping those little guys off for their long trips at "camp".  I was doing fine and they were completely a mess during the car ride, but once their leashes were removed and they were walking away, they're little tails wagging unsuspectingly, I would be lying if I said I didn't mist up more than a little.

The flights were long and tiring, as they all are from the top left corner of the country, and we landed a little after ten o'clock last night.  Today I've been spending the day working on wedding checklists and I took a break to have lunch and spend the afternoon with one of my closest friends and bridesmaids.  It had been far too long since we'd seen each other, so it was a wonderful visit and then it was back to the wedding grind.

Tonight, the plan is to sit down and assemble the wedding programs and get the bridal party gifts organized.  Tomorrow, I have my dress fitting first thing in the morning, before having some files printed at Office Depot, shopping for last minute emergency wedding supplies, and then going to our final meeting at the ceremony and reception venue.  So naturally I'm now going to go eat a large slice of triple chocolate cheesecake.  I don't want people worrying about whether I'm eating enough during my walk down the aisle!

Things That I Love--Wedding Edition

Well, I was hoping to have more time for this, unfortunately, the day is slipping through my fingers "Like sand through the hourglass"!  We're leaving for a work luncheon in about 40 minutes, then taking a trip to the aquarium.  I'm hoping to catch the 3:30 train home, run by Target for some last minute shopping and then throw in a load of laundry, then it's off to my hair appointment at 7, home by 10 and packing until oh dark thirty in the morning.

Tomorrow we're dropping the dogs off at the vet in the morning and then heading to the airport and taking off some time around noon.  I'm hoping against hope that I'll have my laptop back and in working order today so I should be able to blog from the airport and keep up with my NaBloPoMo obligations!  So, today won't be much, but it's just a few of the vendors and tools that I've used in the wedding planning process and would highly recommend to anyone else out there who may be planning a wedding.  I may do a part 2 next Friday, it just depends on how much I can get to today and whether or not I can think of anything else I'd like to share.

To Have And To Hold Inc.

I had a lot of trouble finding a ring bearer pillow that wasn't hideous, covered in mounds of tool, or stark white (we wanted ivory).  I found Carol through the message boards on The Knot, and was incredibly impressed with how easy she was to work with.  I sent her an email letting her know my color scheme and she sent about 15 different swatches of fabric in the mail for me to choose from, as well as beading options.  I chose the basic design from a picture on her website, emailed her with my color choices, and just a few weeks later the gorgeous pillow arrived on my doorstep.  For all of the customization and time she spends working with you, the price is extremely reasonable also.  I think my pillow came to $48, which is certainly comparable to prices of the mass produced monstrosities you can find off the shelf.

The Brides Essential Wedding Planner
Amy Nebens

I love, love, love my wedding planner.  I love it.  I will admit that it's rather large, so it's not the easiest thing to haul around, however, it is ring bound, so you can remove pages, add pages, move sections around--really customize it to your own needs.  It also makes it easy to take checklists and the lists of questions for vendors with your for your meetings without lugging around the whole binder.  There are plenty of pockets for contracts, flyers, saved emails, etc, and there's a whole page of business card slots.  The checklists are extremely thorough, and the questions for vendors really cover the spectrum of topics that you need to cover.

Flowers Into Paintings

Okay, well, technically this is not a vendor that I have used yet--however, I've seen some of the finished products and they are STUNNING.  Essentially, you send or drop off your wedding bouquet up to 3 days after the wedding, she dries and presses you flowers, and then turns your bouquet into a gorgeous painting.  You can request a specific color scheme or just leave the entire piece completely up to her.  I love that this is a way to keep a memento of your wedding day without keeping a dusty, dried out bouquet shoved in the back of your closet.  It's something that you can display in your home, use as a conversation piece, and some day pass on as a family heirloom.  Oh my God, I kind of want to cry right now just thinking about it.  What can I say, I'm a little emotional lately.
 

I've Become "That Girl"

You know, the one that is completely incapable of opening her mouth without wedding related babble spewing forth uncontrollably.  I've been trying to keep quiet at work as much as possible for fear that I will unleash a tirade of nonsense sentences involving flowers, tipping rules, dress fittings, and gift etiquette.  It's like I've come down with an incurable case of Wedding Tourettes.

And the thing is, there really is so much more to talk about.  Like I've been thinking a lot about religion and my beliefs lately, largely inspired by Maggie's serial about her relationship with Catholicism.  And I've had this entry floating around in my head for over a week now about all of the doubts and questions that I have and wondering how one goes about finding a church, and if it's bad to want to go to church just to make friends.  But every time I sit down to write it I get distracted by my photo list or suddenly remember something that needs to be added to my wedding time line.

I want to write about the dogs and how insanely frustrating it is that for the past few months they've made it their sole mission in life to eat the entire contents of our house, yet I still really, really want another puppy.  And then I think oh my God, could that possibly be my biological clock suddenly starting to tick and think marriage, hmm, must be baby time!  But no, right?  Because Colby and I are in harmonious accord about the fact that we want to wait another 4 or 5 years before we even think about kids.  So maybe I really do just want a puppy?  And how can we keep the dogs from eating everything in our house?

I've also got a lot to say about the Seattle transit system, which really isn't all that fascinating, so maybe that's why I haven't written about it.  But seriously, the parking situation at the train stations is absolute crap which led to a parking ticket which I have now lost and need to pay, but don't know how, and then they just randomly decided to cancel my train home without saying anything on Monday because freaking Monday Night Football was in town.  My God Seattle, get your shit together!

So, anyway, the long and short of it is that I just can't bring myself to bore you with another post about the wedding, because you've all been so nice about it and I want you to keep being nice and excited for me, and not like, for the love of all that is good and holy, please shut UP about the WEDDING!

Instead, I'll show you the boots that I bought after all of the wonderful winter shoe advice I received from y'all on Tuesday.  Some people would have thought to themselves, huh, good idea, I should buy a pair of boots!  I thought to myself, huh, good idea, I should buy three pairs of boots!  So I did.

Anne Klein Culhane (Brown)

Nine West Campion (Brown)

Franco Sarto Women's Pension Platform Ankle Boot (Black)

Wedding Weekly Activity Report

Oh my Lord, y'all, I have to most serious case of wedding brain KNOWN TO MAN.  Yesterday I managed to leave the house with the back door unlocked, the alarm not set, and I forgot to grab my jacket.  I then proceeded to freeze my butt off all day and stare at my computer screen at work, half-heartedly filing and filling in spreadsheets.  The evening was capped off with a bizarre dream in which a Mr. Beldenesque teacher led a chorus of singers and dancers in a rousing rendition of "Mein Herr".  I'm not sure how that's wedding related, but it sure was hilarious when I woke up this morning with that stuck in my brain.

All joking and Cabaret references aside, the wedding stress is truly beginning to weigh heavily on my shoulders.  Last night, I was reminding Colby to finish his part of the photo list and when my voice crept up to what could be referred to as a slightly shrill pitch, he pulled me down on his lap, put my head on his chest and remarked gently, "You've done a really great job of not being a 'Zilla so far..."  But the thing is, after a year of calmly and meticulously planning, I can finally feel her there, lurking just below the surface, just waiting for something to go wrong or not go according to schedule.  Bridezilla is there, bubbling up from the deepest, darkest pits of my soul and I fear for all of those caught in her wake.

I've been stalking accuweather.com for the past few days, ever since we entered the 15 day range that it forecasts.  Things started off well enough--highs in the low 70s, lows in the 50s, but sunny and clear.  Then yesterday the temperature was still the same, but scattered showers had made their way into the forecast.  And now this...

Oh my God!  No!  What did I do to deserve this!  In the span of 12 hours, how did we go from sunny and the upper 70s to THIS??  So, of course, logically I know that there's no way they can really accurately predict the weather in Louisiana from 10 days out, but the Bridezilla in me is seriously freaking out now.  Why?  Why?  Whyyyyyy???

Sob.

Anyway, I guess now let's move on to the current status of wedding planning in Angela's world.

Angela & Colby's Wedding WAR 14 Nov 2007

Recently Completed Tasks

• Finish the Guestbook Scrapbook:  I snipped my last photo and stuck on my last sticker last night.  I'm planning to bring my supplies with me when I go home so I can scrapbook the bachelorette party and rehearsal dinner if there's time, but if there isn't, I'm perfectly happy with the product as is, and I can't wait to show it off!
• Finalize Menu and Service Details with the Caterer:  I finally got in touch with White Oak and we finalized our menu for food and the bar, reviewed all of our linen rentals, made our final payment, and scheduled a final meeting with our wedding coordinator for next Monday.
• Call All Guests Who Haven't Yet RSVP'd:  We took care of this over the weekend, and it turns out that a few of our guests had actually sent in their RSVP cards, but they were lost in the mail.  I'm thrilled with our final number of 131 and although it's still going to be a tight squeeze if the ceremony is forced inside by rain, it will certainly be much better than the 150-175 number that I was fearful would be attending.
• Give Final Headcount to White Oak and Bakery: Done!  And we were even able to go down by one cake size for the wedding cake which saved my ridiculously generous parents about a hundred bucks.  A drop in the bucket in the grand scheme of things, but still, we'll take it!
• Confirm all Vendors: I'm counting this one is done even though I'm still waiting to hear back from the hair stylist/makeup artist we have scheduled to come to the house and get us ready.  I'm hoping that she'll get in touch with me today, and if not I just have that one phone call to make tomorrow.
• Send Limo Company a Schedule and Directions:  Turns out all I had to do was tell them all of the pick up and drop off locations over the phone and they don't need us to give them directions.  Nice!
• Make Final Payments to Vendors:  This is another one that goes in the mostly done, but just waiting on one vendor file, so I'm counting it as finished.  We just have to pay the makeup artist on the morning of the wedding and we'll be squared away.

Tasks Still on the To-Do List

• Finish "Must Take" Photo List: I have this almost totally finished, Colby and his mom just need to fill in the names of people who will be in their extended family photos.
• Pack to Go Home:  This is starting tonight.  I'm just going to scour the house for all of the wedding related items that need  to come home with us and throwing them in a pile in the loft next to my suitcase.  I'm going to attempt to start thinking about clothes too, but if I'm honest with myself, I know I won't get that done until Friday around midnight.
• Final Haircut & Color: I have an appointment for Friday night.
• Email the List of Nail Appointments for the Girls:  A family friend is setting up the appointments for us, so I just need to let her know what everyone wants--I'm planning to get this done on Friday.
• Print Table Camera Cards, Martini Menu, and Guestbook Cards: I'm doing this Sunday after brunch at a friend's house.  It should be fairly quick and painless.
• Assemble Programs:  On the schedule for Monday evening--I'm hoping I'll have some volunteers to help me out, but I don't think it should be too difficult.
• Final Wedding Gown Fitting:  First thing Monday morning.
• Pick up Sabers:  I'm hoping Colby will do this while I'm at my fitting
• Marriage License: Also on the schedule for Monday.  I was hoping that we would get the chance to squeeze in lunch with Wordnerd too, but sadly she'll be heading out of town that day and will be gone all week.  I'm so bummed, but we're definitely going to make it happen next time I'm in town!
• Drop off Unity Candle and "Something Blue" Brooch with the Florist:  Tuesday morning
• Hit the Mall to Buy Final Gifts, Shop For Honeymoon "Trousseau", and Eyebrow Wax
• Wrap Bridal Party Gifts
• Shop For and Pack Wedding "Emergency Kit"
• Pick Up Wedding Gown, Tuxes, & Guitar: All done Friday morning, working around picking up Carolyn at the airport at 11:30 and getting home in time to get ready for the rehearsal which starts at 4:30.
• Drop Off All of the "Stuff" (Guestbook, Pen, Cardbox, Etc.) At White Oak:  Still hoping that I can do this on Friday, but I forgot to ask when I talked to her this weekend.  I'll check during our Monday meeting.
• Make Final Payment to Makeup Artist/Hairstylist

And that's about all I have on my schedule, so hopefully it's really all we have left to do.  Okay, well, now I'm going to go cry a little bit about the weather forecast and check my skin for any hint of Bridezilla green.

I Really Shouldn't Be Here

I'm so not in the mood to be at work today, and I really don't think the world is in the mood for me to be at work today.  Reasons:

1)  I got splashed by a taxi while I was walking to work because I was trying to avoid a puddle.  Hey, Alanis?  Would you consider that ironic?

2)  When I sat down at my desk I snagged my tights and they had to be trashed.  Luckily I randomly decided that leg shaving was in order yesterday, however, now I am quite cold and not looking forward to the walk back to the station.

3)  I haven't been able to focus on anything, and just when I got into the groove on one of my spreadsheets, my 1 and 4 key stopped working on the number pad of my keyboard.  The 1 and 4 above the letters work fine, but do you know how annoying it is to be clickity clacking along, entering your data, and then are taken totally out of your element when you have to reach all the way across to the other end of the keyboard?  It is excrutiatingly, painfully annoying!  And there are lots of 1's and 4's in my spreadsheet.

4)  Just because.  Is it Friday yet?

I know this is just an example of another week that will seem to be dragging by while I'm living it, but I'll look back on it in a few months and think about how life has just flown by recently.  I'm trying not to wish these final days leading up to the wedding away, but it's growing increasingly difficult to pay attention at work or think about anything other than when the florist will call me back, whether or not my dress will still fit, and if my Nordstrom order will arrive in time for the rehearsal dinner and bachelorette party next week.

Still, I am truly relishing each day that passes between now and November 24th.  I just keep thinking about how quickly the past year has slipped through my fingers, and how that one wedding day will be over in the blink of an eye.  I know that a marriage isn't just about the wedding, and that it's how you live together in the days after that count, but even so, after spending 25 years of my life dreaming about My Big Day, and laboring for the past year over all of the plans and details and checklists, it is inconceivable that in just 12 days my wedding will be a thing of the past.  (INCONCEIVABLE!)

I'm so ready to be married, I'm so ready to be Colby's wife and partner for life, but I must admit, I'm also ready to wear a beautiful dress, to spend a day bing pampered and treated like a queen, and to spend hours that will fly by all to quickly with the family and friends who have taken the time out of their own lives to celebrate with us.
 

My Last Sunday Before Vacation!

I understand that vacation is something of a subjective term, since when we fly out of here on Saturday pretty much every hour from there on will be devoted to either wedding preparations of some kind or entertaining family and friends.  However, as busy as that will keep me, and as exhausted as I may become, I absolutely cannot wait to wake up next Sunday morning and get started.

I've always marked time when counting down until upcoming milestones by thinking of where I am in relation to what is going to happen.  So, for the past few months I've thought things like, "This is the last March I'll spend as an unmarried woman", or yesterday, "This is the last time I'll do laundry in our house before I'm married."  (Which will probably turn out to be untrue since I always find at least one thing that needs to be washed at midnight the night before we leave to go anywhere.)

Anyway, when I saw this meme over at Michelle's I knew I had to do it, since another one of my favorite things to do is think about where I was at this time X amount of years or months or days ago.  It helps me judge how far I've come and how far I still have to go.

30 years ago: I don't even think my parents had met yet.  My dad may have still been married to his now ex-wife and my mom was a single career woman in the big city!  Well, bigger than the city she grew up in anyway...

20 years ago: I was a precious four year old, probably asking my parents every day how long it would be until my birthday and trying to figure out how I could get my sister in trouble for my indiscretions.

10 years ago: I was a painfully shy freshman in high school and had made the decision to enroll in Army JROTC  for a couple of semesters rather than take a gym class, and it was a decision that ultimately changed my life.  I went on to get an Air Force ROTC scholarship and then spend 2 1/2 years on active duty Air Force, but my 14 year old self would have laughed at you if you'd suggested that would be the course my life would take.  I was also still harboring my long-lived middle school crush on Ryan and trying to figure out why all of a sudden he only wanted to talk to cheerleaders.

5 years ago: I was sneaking drinks in clubs, wondering why I'd ever decided that reading books and analyzing them was the best choice for my college degree, and agonizing over every little Colby blip on my radar.  We had spent an entire semester flirting and after a tipsy tryst at an after-formal party, we were dancing around the idea of "officially" dating.

2 years ago: Colby and I were dating and I had come to Seattle with him to help with his big cross-country move.  But things were definitely rocky as I was ready to take our relationship "to the next level" and he was trying to figure out if he even wanted to date me anymore.  We were hovering on the brink of what would be a very painful few months, but months that we certainly needed to solidify the things we wanted in our relationship and what we wanted our future to include.  I was also miserable in the Air Force and counting down the days until I could finally get out.

1 year ago: I was in a state of absolute shock and bliss after Colby and I had decided to get back together after a six month split and began planning our wedding.  I was probably spending my Sunday night surfing the web for wedding dresses and table decoration idea.  I had also already made the decision to take an early separation from the Air Force and was just waiting for February 9th to roll around so I would finally be a free woman!

1 month ago: I was celebrating my one month anniversary at my new job in Seattle, and taking advice from the internet about what I should wear to our Rehearsal Dinner.

Yesterday: I spent the morning finalizing our guest count for the wedding (131--yay!!!), confirming with vendors, and making final payments.  Then my computer battery mysteriously died and when I unplugged the power cord from the computer to check the connection, the pin inside the computer that the cord connects to came out with it.  Oh crap.  So, now my computer has died for the fourth time in two years and now I've taken over possession of Colby's computer.

Today: We went for sushi with some friends, then went to Best Buy to see if my computer was fixable, Target to buy accessories for the rehearsal dinner, and then investigated window treatments at Lowe's and Home Depot.  Now we're watching Dr. Who while I fulfill my NaBloPoMo obligations.

Tomorrow: I start my last week of work before the wedding and start packing for our trip home.

Brief Update from Wedding Central

Sorry folks, don't have a lot of time for an super wonderful post today--I'm working on final payments to vendors, confirmations and trying to get a final headcount for the wedding.  We still have six invitations out with no response.  Seriously, what is WRONG with people?  Please, if you just take one thing away from this website, let it just be that you always respond to wedding invitations in a timely manner.

I also have those 40,000 pounds of laundry still hanging over my head, and a trip to Target and Lowe's in the works, so with that I shall bid you a fond adieu and will be back tomorrow with my Sunday update on Day 11 of the NaBloPoMo challenge!

Thursday, Thursday, Wherefore Aren't Thou Friday?

Just yesterday I was smugly congratulating myself on just how easy posting daily has been.  An absolute breeze really!  Just open up Typepad, bang out some words, and voila!  A post appears!  And then today happened, and I just realized I haven't posted yet, I have 40,000 pounds of laundry that I absolutely must stop procrastinating about tonight, and a scrapbook that really needs to be finished in the next seven days, which means I have to do at least a couple of pages tonight.

Plus, it's definitely not Friday, even though I've been thinking it is all darn day long.  Of course maybe it's a good thing it's not Friday, because remember this?  I still haven't ordered my dress.  Or any shoes.  Or figured out what accessories I'll wear with it.  Because apparently I thought all I had to do was make a decision about what I wanted to wear to the rehearsal dinner--I didn't seem to think it was terribly important to actual acquire said garment.  And of course all the shoes I see online are hideous.  Since when can I not find a shoe that I like?  This is positively unheard of.

Update: Crisis averted!  Shoes have been purchased and will arrive on Monday.

But still I shall persevere, tonight I'm going home to measure myself, I'm ordering my dress (probably going to have to shell out extra cash for a rush order) and I'm deciding on some shoes in the next few days.  This weekend I'll make a Target run for some fine jewels and I'm making a packing list.  Because we are leaving in T-8 days and I really haven't even begun to collect myself.  I haven't even unpacked from New York, and I got home over two months ago.  I am completely worthless.

Wedding Weekly Activity Report

When I was in the Air Force, one of my jobs as the Officer in Charge, and then the Executive Officer, was compiling the Weekly Activity Report--or WAR.  I loved compiling the WAR because it was a list of everything that had been done that week and the status of ongoing projects in an easy to read bulleted list format.  I enjoyed keeping track of our own stats when I was the OIC and then I liked updated all of the information submitted by the squadrons weekly when I was an exec.  What can I say, I am a huge dork and this is why I enjoy admin jobs when most people would rather gouge their eyes out with a dull knife than sit behind a desk and file all day.

ANYWAY.

I have decided that as an homage to my military self (Since technically I am still in the Air Force--I received notification that I've been selected for the rank of Captain effective June 2008.  Feel free to congratulate me on my ability to breathe.) I will be reporting back to you weekly (and let's face it, probably bi-, tri-, and quad- weekly) on the status of wedding plans.  I know!  As if it weren't thrilling enough to hear me drone on about my wedding, now you have to associate it with camouflage and weapons!  How glorious!

ANYWAY.  Let us proceed.

Angela & Colby's Wedding WAR 7 Nov 2007 (That's how we do dates in the military for all you civilians out there.)

Recently Completed Tasks

• Book Saber Arch:  Both LSU and Keesler were unable to commit to our wedding date, so Colby contacted the Army ROTC department at LSU and got permission to pick up the sabers from them  the week of the wedding and our groomsmen and ushers will perform the actual arch.  I think it worked out for the best since now we don't have to stress about Keesler randomly not showing up (it's been known to happen) and we won't have to kick out any 18 and 19 year old cadets who think they can stick around for the free food and drinks.
• Confirm Wedding Night and Honeymoon Hotels:  Done and done.  We also made reservations for NOLA and Restaurant August for two of our nights in New Orleans.  I'm particularly excited about the latter since I've become obsessed with The Next Iron Chef show on the Food Network, and John Besh, the founder of Restaurant August, is in the final showdown and my favorite for the win.  Also, both menus make my mouth water.
• Programs Printed and Ready For Assembly:  Okay, we actually hit a snag here and the paper hadn't been cut properly when my dad went to Office Depot yesterday, but after I slowly and carefully talked the print shop manager through the process for the third time I think she understood and it's supposed to be done today or tomorrow.  Therefore it is no longer on my list of things to worry about.  We'll assemble the programs when I get home.
• Add Wedding Rings to Homeowners Insurance Policy:  Colby took care of this--that wonderful guy.  Now when the raging housefire rips through our neighborhood, we may lose all of our nearest and dearest possessions and sentimental mementos that can never be replaced, but at least our jewelry is covered.
• Finalize Wedding Ceremony With Officiant:  The Reverend who will be performing our ceremony is actually a very dear family friend, which meant that I felt very little compunction while typing up the entire wedding ceremony myself, emailing it to him and in essence dictating the entire thing.  Of course, he then went through it and made his own edits that made the whole ceremony much more lovely and "churchy", but I still tell people I wrote my own ceremony.  (Except that I mostly just patched together various ceremony bits I found online.)  (And I'm not being "given away" by my dad, I'm being "presented".  It's different!
• Order/Purchase Groomsmen/Usher Gifts:  All of the components have been ordered, dropped off at the place they need to be dropped off, and will be ready for pickup on November 15.  This is another one of those things that although it's not technically finished, I am no longer worrying my pretty little head about.
• Finalize Music Selections and Send to DJ:  Done!  And we did the ceremony music and sent that to our string quartet ages ago.  We are all over this!

Tasks Still on The To-Do List (I hate this list, and yet, it lingers as most of it cannot be done until I get home.)

• Pack to Go Home: Yeah, this one is kind of a biggie.  And I'm terrified that I'll forget something vital.
• Final Haircut and Color: Booked for Friday, November 16.
• Finish the Guestbook Scrapbook: I'm so close to being done.  The only pages I have left are for the shower Lori threw us and about a two-thirds of the New York bachelorette weekend.  I'm also planning to bring all of my supplies home with me so that if I have time I can do pages for my Baton Rouge bachelorette party and the Rehearsal Dinner.  We'll see.
• Finalize Menu and Service Details With the Caterer:  I have tried.  Oh how I have TRIED.  Our catering is being done by the reception venue, since the venue is actually owned by one of Louisiana's most famous chefs, John Folse.  It's amazing food, and we have a delicious menu selected.  However, we switched up a few items from the preset level of catering that we chose and we're also doing a martini bar, which is something a little different from how they normally run their bar, and the venue kept telling us that they would confirm with us a month out.  I sent in the required final wedding report--about 5 pages of documents detailing every little thing about the ceremony and reception--weeks ago and included a note saying that once the report had been reviewed I'd like to be contacted so that I can set up an appointment with our Day of Coordinator when I get in town.  I haven't heard a peep from them.
• Attend Final Wedding Gown Fitting (And Later Pick Up the Dress):  Yep, can't do this until Monday, November 18.  Sure hope five days is all they need.
• Print Table Camera Scavenger Hunt Cards, Martini Menus, and Guestbook Cards: Monday, I'm sure.
• Pick up Sabers From LSU
• Assemble Ceremony Programs:  See above--will probably be done the Sunday or Monday before the wedding.
• Pick Up Marriage License: This will be another Monday task.  Monday is going to be so busy.  Shudder.  But family starts to arrive on Tuesday and I want to have as much done as possible by then.
• Call All Guests Who Haven't Yet RSVP'd:  This is going to be mostly Colby's job since the majority of non-responders are from his list.  I have two folks to contact, both of whom I highly doubt will be in attendance.  And I am so thrilled with our numbers for the wedding.  We had originally hoped for a small wedding, but over time our number invited ballooned to 216.  However, it's looking like our number attending is going to stay under 130 total guests.  It's still a little higher than I'd originally anticipated, but I'm just so glad that it won't be in the upper 100's.
• Wrap all Gifts for Wedding Party
• Give Final Headcount to White Oak and the Bakery
• Confirm All Vendors
• Send the Limo Company A Schedule and Addresses With Directions
• Buy Supplies For and Pack An "Emergency Kit" To Bring to White Oak:  The list has been made, and oh, it is extensive.  Anyone know where I can get smelling salts?
• Make Final Payments to Vendors:  This starts on Saturday and goes through the wedding.  My parents are thrilled, I'm sure!
• Drop Off All of the "Stuff" (Guestbook, Pen, Cardbox, Etc.) At White Oak:  I'm hoping that I can do this Friday when we have our rehearsal, if not I plan to beg a friend to bring it over for me on the day of the wedding.  White Oak is about 5 minutes from our house, so it wouldn't be a huge hassle.

That seems to be all I can think of right now.  I've got six spreadsheets made detailing the schedule for the week, the wedding day schedule, our payment amounts and due dates, the photo list, day of wedding tasks, and the supply kit list.  I have both The Knot checklist and my own personal wedding checklist that I've been diligently checking and complying with.  And yet I still feel like I'm forgetting something huge.

I haven't started to freak out yet.  In fact, I'm a little concerned at just how un-freaked out I am, but I'm fairly confident that when I wake up Sunday morning in Baton Rouge and look at my mountain of things to do, the nerves might just start creeping up on me.

It Had To Happen Eventually

There were a lot of things I was expecting when I moved here.  I knew that there would be long stretches of rainy, cloudy days during the fall and winter.  I knew there was a big problem with the amount of homeless people in Seattle.  I knew that the traffic on I-5 would be terrible without fail.  I was expecting plenty of tall buildings and views of the Space Needle, and I knew I'd see plenty of people at one with their fleece and Birkenstocks.

What I was definitely not expecting were all of the 45 degree angle hills one has to walk or drive up to get from one street to the next.  In the past if you'd told me to name one hilly city, I probably would have said San Francisco, but truthfully downtown Seattle would give that place a run for its money.

Ever since I started working downtown, I have had this horrible fear of walking the hills.  I don't worry about walking up the hills--that's just a good workout--but when faced with walking down one of the steep inclines, I've always managed to find an alternate route, because I just know that I'm the person who will do a face plant.

As the wedding has drawn nearer, I've become absolutely obsessed with the thought that I would fall down walking to or from work and break a leg or twist an ankle and be unable to walk down the aisle.  There has really been nothing about the wedding that has stressed me out lately aside from this bizarre fixation.

One of the things I do at work is go our and buy lunch if we have clients coming in for meetings during the lunch hour, and a few days ago I had to go out in search of a Thai restaurant for some Chicken Banh Mi sandwiches.  When I discovered that the restaurant was on 3rd Ave, my heart seized up a little when face with the realization that I would have to walk up the hills, and even more terrifying, back down them.  However, to my immense delight, I managed to make it both up and down the hill, with bags of food in hand, without incident.  Suddenly I was no longer afraid of the hills--I had conquered them and they could no longer hold me back from the delicious restaurants atop their dangerous inclines!  Ah... the hubris...

So, on Friday I decided that I would visit my favorite sub shop for lunch--Jimmy Johns--their vegetarian sub is to DIE for.  So I marched on up to 2nd Ave, and then onto 3rd, huffing and puffing a bit, but enjoying the sunshine that was giving us such a beautiful day.  I bought my sandwich, and started making my way back down to my office.  And that's when it happened--the heel of my shoes (which were flats, mind you!) suddenly slid out from under me, and just like in the cartoons when the bad guy slips on a banana peel, arms flailing and all, I was on the ground--the tops of both of my feet were scraped and my knees were throbbing.

I sat on the ground for a minute, completely in shock, and unable to figure out how I was going to get back up without pitching myself forward again.  Then a voice came from behind me--a gentlemanly voice inquiring as to whether or not I was okay.  I still hadn't found my voice, so I nodded and tried to look as much as possible like I totally meant to be sitting in the middle of the sidewalk with a bloody foot and a sandwich in hand.  When I still didn't get up, the guy reached down, took hold of my arm and said, "Okay, let's get up now."

Back on my feet I was faced with a bout of awkward conversation as I was walking in the same direction of my rescuer.  I made some lame jokes about what a clutz I am and how he'd done his good deed for the year when suddenly he piped up, "Yeah, I totally thought you were a drunk at first!"

Oh.

So, with that I thanked him again and hastily made use of the nearest crosswalk, pretending I was at my street.  I was about halfway between 2nd and 1st, the soreness in my knees increasing with each thud of my foot hitting the ground when oh my God, I shit you not, it happened again.  The same damn heel slid out from under me, and once again ass over vegetarian sandwich, I was on the ground again.  This time there was no gallant figure waiting in the wings to lift me back to my feet, so with a moderate amount of grumbling, and trying my hardest not to cry from sheer frustration and embarrassment, I struggled back to my feet and shuffled the final few steps down the hill and to my building.

Today the brush burns on my feet look a lot better, but still feel raw to the touch, and my left knee has swollen ever so slightly and has a lovely greenish blue color to it, but I'm just relieved that at long last the inevitable happened, I took a tumble down the hills of Seattle and I still seem to be able to walk unassisted.  With that being said, I can guarantee you that I will not be walking anymore hills between now and November 24, and no Jimmy John's vegetarian sub will tempt me again.

The Kick-Off

November 1st.  The first day of NaBloPoMo. (I seriously don't know how many more times I can type that word.  It's starting to be a bit like when you just say "egg" over and over again and you suddenly start to realize how strange it sounds, and then you start wondering if you're mispronouncing it and so you DO start mispronouncing it, and anyway, the point is that every time I type NaBloPoMo I think I mistyped it so I go back and fix it, but then I make it WRONG.)  The first day of my wedding month.

I come from a family who has birthday weeks and celebrates Christmas for all but 40 days out of the year, so I think I am exerting great self control when I claim only one month out of the year for my wedding and it's surrounding celebrations.  I contemplated taking a blogging hiatus similar to the one I took back in March and April. (3 posts and 4 posts each month respectively.  Yikes.)  It would be so easy to step away from the computer for a little while and focus on my 6 page spreadsheet of wedding to-do's, make packing lists, and finish painting the bedroom and hanging pictures on the wall before we take off for Baton Rouge in 2 weeks and the wedding preparations begin in full force.

But then I think back to March and April, and how much my life was changing then--officially getting engaged, a wedding shower and engagement party, packing my car to capacity and driving 2,664 miles cross country to our new house, finally ending the distance with Colby after 4 years of flying back and forth for weekend visits.  I remember that still, but I wish that I had written more then.  Written about how I was feeling.  Scared.  Excited.  Elated.  Surprised.  Sad.  Nervous.  Because now it's all faded into one big lump of my life that I can remember fondly, but not specifically.

In 20 years, my hope is that I'll be able to look back at my blog during the month of November 2007, and remember every thought and emotion that I deemed important enough to commit to paper (or computer screen at least.)  I want to remember how I felt in those last few weeks of being a "single" woman and the fun I had with my friends at my Baton Rouge bachelorette party.  I want to be able to relive the day of the wedding and reread over and over again all most of the details of our few post wedding days in the French Quarter.

Because that's why I blog.  I love meeting people across the internet.  I love the ease of staying in touch with friends and family that I don't see nearly as often as I wish I could.  And I won't lie--I love getting your thoughtful and oftentimes hilarious comments.  But the reason I really do this is for me.  For posterity.  So that someday I, or my children, or my children's children, will be able to look back and remember the life that I had from August 22, 2005 through whenever I decide to throw the towel in on this crazy thing.  I do this for me, and having you all along for the ride, to share our joys, our heartbreaks, our laughter and our tears just makes it all that much more fun.

So whether you've been reading since the beginning, or whether you're just starting today for the first time, I hope you enjoy what November holds for me over here at this old website.  So, one post down, just 29 more to go!

The Curse of NaBloPoMo

So, I think the fact that I'm hoarding all of my blog topics for November may somewhat defeat the purpose of NaBloPoMo.  I'm not actually certain what the purpose of NaBloPoMo is aside from posting daily, but I imagine that me not posting AT ALL until November 1st defeats whatever purpose it holds.  And still, I shall not discuss any of the deep, fascinating topics I have in store for you come November.

These deep and fascinating topics range from "Wedding: Oh my God it's in 23 days" to "Wedding: Oh my God it's tomorrow" with maybe a little bit of "Wedding: Well, now that that's over with, let's drink and eat beignets!"

Anyway, our weekend flew by with the rapid speed with which all weekends have been flying by of late.  I'm not used to being so productive and social, and the combination of these two behaviors really serve to make my weekends much less pajama and television oriented.  Sometimes I quite miss my pajamas and television.

Saturday we finally were able to pick up Colby's ring, so now both of our wedding bands are sitting on our dresser, uninsured and just daring a raging house fire to melt them into little pools of molten white gold and diamonds.  However, I fear that my constant "reminders" to Colby are evolving into nagging, and I feel like I should at least wait until we're married before I become a nagging wife.

We also brought our programs to Office Depot to have them printed in Louisiana, which turned out to be a much more gigantic deal than I had anticipated.  We ended up spending an hour with our good friend Brad, The Office Depot Print Shop Guy, uploading everything properly and detailing what cuts needed to be made on the paper once it was printed.  Since then I have received two phone calls along the lines of "WTF?" from the Office Depot people in Baton Rouge, so suffice it to say, I am now a bit nervous about how this whole program biznass is going to go down.

Yesterday we invited some friends and their dog over for a playdate with Jack and Ellie and that was... hilarious.  Both Jack and Ellie were instantly enamored of Rocky, and Rocky really wanted absolutely nothing to do with them.  It was a little heartbreaking watching them trail him everywhere he went, fortunately they had not a clue that he would prefer for them to run out in front of a speeding Mac truck than be anywhere near him.  By the end of the night, Rocky was begging his people to take him home and Jack and Ellie thought they had a new best friend.  Unfortunately, (or fortunately, depending on how you feel about dog pictures with a heavy dose of personification in the captions) there is no photographic evidence that such an event ever took place, so Jack and Ellie will just have to hold the memory in their hearts.

So, there, that was my weekend, minus the boring bits where we cleaned bathrooms and tried not to fall asleep while out to dinner with friends.  In all honesty I probably won't be back until November 1st.  I'm sure I'll be busy coming up with compelling and highly relevant blog topics, I'll just be saving everything for publication in November.  Get excited, NaBloPoMo is coming!

Living In Sin

Just a little over 7 months ago, Colby swept me into his arms, unlocked the door to our brand new house and then cracked my head on the doorframe as he carried me over the threshhold.  It was exciting, it was hilarious, it was emotional, it was a little bit painful.  It was the perfect metaphor for living under one roof with the one you love.  I'm not going to say that after 7 months of living together we're old pros, that we've hit every roadblock we ever will and that everything is perfect.  But you know, I think we're pretty darn good at it.

Initially, I was incredibly nervous about living together before marriage.  What would our parents say?  Would we murder each other before the end of the first month, subsequently denying me the experience of walking down the aisle in my beautiful dress?  Would he get tired of seeing me in my pajamas with zit cream smeared on my chin every single night and, wondering what happened to the well dressed girl that showed up at his house every few weeks for a visit, demand the ring back?  There were so many worries-- honestly sometimes I still wonder about the zit cream--but 7 months into this our parents haven't disowned us, we're both still alive, and my skin is looking better than it has in months.

But there have definitely been adjustments that we've both had to make in our daily lives, adjustments that aren't always easy and almost always come only after a lengthy battle of wills.

Battle #1: The Thermostat
There's a certain trait I inherited from my mother, and it's the complete inability to be comfortable at any temperature outside of a 2 degree span.  If the house is above 72 in the summer or below 70 in the winter, I can tell.  Colby, on the other hand is much more like my father in his belief that in the summer one should just wear less clothes and in the winter one should wear more.  So, while he is comfortable with the house at 65 degrees as he walks around in jeans a shirt and a sweatshirt with a blanket wrapped around his body, I'll slyly slip over to the thermostat, punch a few buttons and crank the heat up to 70.  When I look away for a minute he'll then sneak back over and just hit "OFF".  Of course, I can tell within seconds of the temperature slipping back down to 69 and the cycle repeats.  It's incredibly frustrating for me since I'm all "WE'RE NOT POOR YOU KNOW!" and I'm sure it's frustrating for him since he's all "THAT'S BECAUSE I'VE NEVER SPENT THIS MUCH ON HEATING BILLS BEFORE!"

Battle #2: The Bed Sheets
I think this has been discussed here before, but Colby has this annoying habit of untucking the bedsheets every night after I have carefully tucked them into the bottom of the mattress.  I love the feeling of slipping into a tightly made bed night after night, and most importantly, the pleasure of not having the make the bed every morning because the sheets haven't moved.  However, Colby's sleeping patterns are a bit more like that of the Tazmanian Devil.  He untucks the sheets, he ends up with blankets wound around him, he pushes and pulls the comforter all night so that by morning it's practically on the floor.  When I sleep in the bed alone I can wake up in the morning and with a flick of the sheets have the bed perfectly made.  When he sleeps in the bed if you wake up in the morning with the sheets still covering your feet, you count it as a good night.

Battle #3: The Kitchen
You know what's awesome?  That I can get home at 6:30 every evening and I don't have to worry about what I'm going to make for dinner, because Colby almost always has it under control.  You know what's not awesome?  The state of the kitchen after he has "cleaned up".  Sometimes leftover food actually makes it into the refrigerator, but it is rarely covered, and it is NEVER transferred into a smaller container that might actually keep it fresh.  Dirty dishes are piled into the sink, and maybe sometimes end up in the dishwasher, but I usually have to come behind, take all the dishes out to be rinsed and then put them back in.  I have no problem with just accepting the fact that I'm the one who's going to have to be the clean up crew, I'd just rather start the clean up on my own than have to go behind and re-do everything to meet my exacting standards.  I know this is not Colby's fault.  This is my problem for being the one that needs the dishes to be clean before they go in the dishwasher, and not liking the leftover soup in the refrigerator to still be in the pot we cooked it in.  But couldn't he at least try?  That's all I'm asking!

But even with all of these adjustments, there hasn't been a day yet when I haven't been excited to walk through the door and see Colby sitting on the couch.  And every night when he gets down on the floor with the dogs for "Floor Time!" my heart grows an extra size.  It hasn't always been easy, but I'm so glad that we've been able to make all of these adjustments now so that in a month we can start making the adjustment of Being Married.

There are statistics that say you should live together before marriage, and there are statistics that say you shouldn't.  Both make valid points, but I don't think that anyone should try to live their life by statistics.  For us, this is what works.  Getting married is an important step for both of us, one that will forever change our relationship in the eyes of the law, but for me, I don't think that a label imposed by society could make our bond any stronger.  It's not always pink puffy hearts and sunshine, and there are some days when we just need our alone time, but knowing that he'll be there to come back to, heater battles and sheet struggles and all, makes life so much better.

Being married will change the way I fill out forms and pay my taxes.  Living together has changed my life.

One Month

Wedding on the Brain

Well, so far neither Jack nor Ellie have succumbed to death by glass shards, today is our monthly work cocktail which means I'll get free drinks and appetizers this afternoon, and the sun is actually shining right now.  So who knows, maybe this week will actually end on a high note!  To help facilitate matters to that end, let's talk about weddings, because when are weddings NOT fun to talk about?  Just... humor me.

We're leaving for Baton Rouge in less than a month and getting married 5 weeks from tomorrow, and as the wedding draws nearer more and more people are beginning to ask if I'm getting stressed yet.  I've actually been incredibly unstressed throughout this entire process.  The way I see it, I just need to do the things on my checklist when the checklist says I need to do them, and come 6:59 pm on November 24 everything should be ready for me to begin my walk down the aisle.  There have been a couple of stressful moments, but honestly everything important has really gone off without a hitch.

I still wouldn't say that I'm stressed, however, the wedding has been on my brain pretty much 24/7 and the rehearsal dinner is causing some mild heartburn--hence the tears on Wednesday night.  The problem with planning this wedding long distance is that I can get everything set up and primed to go for November 17, when we fly in, but there's so much that I just physically cannot do until I am in Baton Rouge.  Because of this, my checklists are starting to look a little less checked than I would really like them to be.

1. Programs.  The programs have been designed for weeks now.  We've picked out the paper, we went to Office Depot and did a test run, and this weekend we're going to go in and set up an order for our programs which will then be printed out and picked up in Baton Rouge by my mom.  When I get there we'll set up an assembly line for cutting, punching holes, and putting together, but until then, no checkmark.
2. Dress fitting.  I had my first dress fitting at the beginning of March.  I didn't want to have to deal with transporting my dress to Washington and then back to Louisiana, so I'll be doing my final fitting the Monday before the wedding.  I have complete faith in my tailor, but I just can't help but worry a little bit that something won't fit right when I go to pick it up and there won't be time to fix it.
3. Marriage License.  This one is kind of a biggie and is also on the schedule for Monday in Baton Rouge since we have to have it in our possession 72 hours before the wedding.  At least one of us has to be present, in person, to pick up a license and we both have to present our birth certificates.  Does Colby know where his birth certificate is?  I'll let you guess the answer.  He wanted to know if he could use his passport instead, I asked him if he really wanted to screw around with the Clerk of Courts 120 hours before our wedding day.  Because we can be married in the eyes of God all we want, but if it ain't legal, we ain't getting no more money from the Air Force.  And that's really what this is all about.
4. Wedding Party Gifts.  I've already finished buying gifts for my girls and our female readers, Colby is in the early stages of getting his gifts for his groomsmen and the ushers finished but I'm just a smidge concerned that they won't be finished in time for us to leave.  And since all the gifts for the girls are at my mom's house, I won't be able to wrap them until I get there.  It's a small thing, but it's still getting ready to turn into a big red exclamation point on The Knot checklist.
5. Rehearsal Dinner.  I have no idea what's going on with it.  There have been tears.  Moving on.
6. RSVPs.  Seriously, what is so hard about putting a card in the mail with a little number next to your name?  We're not doing escort cards, so really we don't even *need* your name, the return address will suffice!  We're 12 days out from our RSVP date and still haven't heard from about half of our invited guests.  Again, not a huge deal, because I'm still hopeful that cards will come flooding in when the due date arrives, but I still dread making those phone calls to the people that don't respond.  Not to mention we can't give final head counts to our venue or the baker until we get all of the RSVPs.
7. Saber Arch.  Having a saber arch has been pretty important to Colby from the get go, and we thought it would be nice to use the Color Guard from LSU since we were both members of it back in our own years at LSU.  Over the summer Colby contacted the commander of the organization and was told to shoot him a reminder email in the fall when school started.  So, that's just what Colby did, except the kid had apparently enlisted in the military and was no longer in the organization.  He found the new commander who told him that the event was on their calendar and that they'd be able to support, but check with the Color Guard commander just in case.  Making this very long story short(er) the LSU Color Guard is no longer sure they'll be able to support, Keesler is the closest Air Force Base and they say they can't guarantee us that they'll be there because if a military funeral comes up, that's their first priority.  So, it's possible that we can try to borrow sabers from LSU and just have our military groomsmen and ushers do the saber arch, but it's not ideal.  And it's the not knowing that's stressful.
8. Guestbook.  So I had this great idea way back months ago that rather than buying a generic guestbook, I would make a gorgeous scrapbook of the wedding planning process and all the great parties and events we've had along the way, and set that out for people to sign.  I still love the idea.  What I don't love is that I still haven't gotten started on it.  When I wasn't working I was under some kind of misguided impression that the wedding was still ages away and I had plenty of time.  And now that I am working, I'm exhausted when I get home and the weekends lately have been filling up.  I'm making a promise to myself here and now that this weekend I'm taking over the kitchen table and I will at the very least get everything sorted into piles and organized to begin scrapbooking next week.
9. Wedding Picture Frames.  We're decorating the guestbook table with the wedding pictures of all of our grandparents and both of our parents.  I have all of the pictures from Colby's side and will get copies of the pictures from my side when I get home, but I'm also going to need frames for them.  This sounds easy enough, but when I looked online to see if I could just buy some and have them shipped to Baton Rouge I realized that it's incredibly hard to tell what the quality of a frame is over the internet.  And I don't want to spend a frajillion dollars on actual high quality expensive frames because I do not have a frajillion dollars.  I want high quality cheap frames.  So I'm at a stand still.  Do I risk it and buy frames online or just wait till I go home and hope that there are some sales going on that week and buy them there?

So really I think that's all of the big stuff.  There are other little things that need to be done--confirmations with vendors and final payments of course being the biggest ones--but those aren't really worrying me much.  I trust my vendors and I trust that my parents haven't gone secretly bankrupt (yet--maybe I'll check again on November 25).  But like I already said, last week we got our rings purchased, we booked 3 nights in a beautiful old New Orleans hotel in the French Quarter for our mini-honeymoon, and I made my list of to-do's for the wedding day, shot list for the formal pictures that we'll give to the photographer, and am putting the finishing touches on the detailed wedding day timeline.  All in all, it's coming together well, and while I'm not worried that I won't have things done in time, I just can't help but get stressed when I fall behind on my checklist.

I am so going to suffer from wedding planning withdrawal when this is all over...

Is It Friday Yet?

This week in bullet format:

• I still feel like crap, and the weather is not helping.  Oh yeah, it's definitely fall in Seattle.
• Airborne can suck my left toe because it IS NOT HELPING.
• My first thought upon waking up this morning was, "Oh God, I have to do this again tomorrow."  I then hit the snooze button.
• After downing a quarter pound of semi sweet chocolate a couple months ago, and then surviving, Jack and Ellie decided to conquer glass.  We came home yesterday to bits of Colby's glasses strewn across the living room floor and both of the lenses popped out and no longer present.
• We soaked cotton balls in milk and fed them to the dogs and then gave them each a bowl of high fiber cereal.  Ellie seems fine, Jack still hasn't gone number two, so let's just hope his intestines aren't being ripped up by glass shards as we speak.
• Why do my dogs have a death wish?
• They are now being crated during the day.  Twits.
• I took Tuesday off from work and still haven't caught up--hence the crappy bullet post.
• We picked up my wedding band from the jeweler yesterday and it is GORGEOUS!!  However, I'm not allowed to show it off to the internet yet because Colby says I have to actually be married first.  He's mean.
• The ring came with a jar of jewelry cleaner, and although I am now thrilled to have jewelry cleaner in the house, I was a little disappointed at first because I totally thought it was a jar of candy.
• How is it that it took 3 days to set stones and do detailed etching on my band and it's been 4 days since we bought Colby's ring that just needed a brushed finish put on and we still haven't heard from the jeweler?  Weird.
• I still haven't bought the dress... I'm working on it.  But I did buy a brown pair and a black pair of (hopefully comfortable) heels for work since I'm tired of either wearing flats or having sore feet.  I'll provide shoe updates soon.
• There were wedding related "heated discussions" and tears shed on Tuesday night.  Yesterday my monthly visitor arrived.  I'm not saying there's a direct correlation, but I think maybe the one had a little something to do with the other.
• But isn't the saying "There is much truth to that which is said in PMS"?

A much more interesting (to me) wedding-centric post is coming soon, but I need to eat and then get back to work.  Those spreadsheets aren't going to create themselves!

And The Winner Is...

By, like, a million votes.  I mean, seriously, you guys are very vocal when it comes to fashion opinions!  I was going to tally up all of the votes, but I'm not sure who left comments with votes, who just voted and who did both, so I'll just say that the purple dress won with the blue silk and the black Anthropologie close to tying in second place.  And I'm not sure what to think about the fact that all three of these have actually become my favorite--am I incredibly in tune with the fashion consciousness or am I an indecisive sheep?  The answer remains a mystery, but I'm leaning slightly toward the latter.

Regardless of whether I'm the next Anna Wintour or not, I am so thrilled that this dress won.  I kept imagining all the dresses in my head over the weekend, and when I looked at the actual pictures this one was the only one that really lived up to what I was envisioning.  And I don't think it can get much more perfect than wearing purple and gold on game day, even if we do play as miserably as we did against Kentucky.  Hey, I'm no fair weather fan, and if it gives me an excuse to decide on one of the most expensive dresses out of the bunch, then so be it!

I still really, really love that blue dress though, and I'm considering waiting until my next billing cycle and buying it as a honeymoon/future wedding guest dress.  And hey, maybe it will go on sale!  Or maybe Nordstrom will just be like, hey, you look like you need a pretty blue dress, here, have this one!  And who am I to say no to an offer like that?

Now I'll have to search through my closet to see if I have any shoes that will be appropriate with this dress.  I know I have some closed toe metallic gold shoes with a little spindly heel and an ankle strap and a pair of gold shoes that are pointy toed pumps, but I think that this dress calls for something a bit more strappy, so I'll have to see what I can dig up before I begin perusing Endless and Zappos.

In other news of the weekend, we finished painting the upstairs hallway and loft.  And yes, WE painted it.  Which means I helped.  Colby did all the detail work and I came behind him with the roller and whined about it for the entire 3 hours.  But we got it finished and will never have to do it again.  Until next weekend when we paint the bedroom and bathrooms.

I also seem to have picked up some sort of virulent and deadly disease at some point.  We went out for dinner and drinks with some friends on Friday night and I went a little overboard with the margaritas and martinis, so when I woke up Saturday feeling like death warmed over with a side of sore throat, I just chalked it up to the fact that I do not recover well from the effects of alcohol in my old age.  So I soldiered on and we ran many hours worth of errands, including wedding ring purchasing (yay!) and I felt marginally better by the end of the day.  Then on painting day, when we were halfway through our third wall, I started feeling a bit dizzy and nauseous, but since I had been so vocal about my reluctance to paint in the first place, Colby just thought I was being a wuss.  (Which admittedly, yes, I was.)

Last night a low fever hit, and this morning I woke up with my throat on fire, but I didn't feel comfortable calling in sick to work, because who stays home because of a stupid sore throat?  Not this girl!  (In my old job?  Oh, I totally would have stayed home.)  So, here I sit at work, with the chills and slight nausea interspersed with extreme hunger.  I would go home, except the first train doesn't leave until 3:35.  And I feel bad playing the sick card when I've been here just over a month.

The guilt, it kills!

So, since I haven't felt like I was going to throw up in about an hour and my stomach is beginning to feel like it's going to digest itself, I'm going in search of some soup.  Probably as soon as I've ordered and paid the stomach churning will begin again, but that's a risk I'm  just going to have to take.

Fashion Dilemma: Wedding Edition

**Edit:  Thanks to the wonderful Wordnerd (I'll bet she'll appreciate that alliteration!) this post now comes equipped with 100% more voting buttons!  You should be able to vote for multiple dresses in case you're just as indecisive as me.  I would also love to hear why you chose the dress you did, so feel free to leave a comment about your selection as well.  All of the votes so far have really helped me start to narrow down my choices!**

So, remember when I was all, "I need a pretty dress and I found about 14,000 that I want and now I need you to pick one for me!"  And then you did?  And then I ended up liking the one you all picked for me best anyway?  And so it worked out really, really well?

Well, guess what.

I need a pretty dress and I found about 14,000 that I want and now I need you to pick one for me!

I've been hunting for the perfect dress to wear to our rehearsal dinner, and I honestly just can't narrow it down beyond these six dresses.  I want a lot of things in this dress--I want it to be interesting, since let's face it, all eyes will be on me (and that guy... what's his name... you know, that one I'm marrying) so a little black dress is out of the running.  I don't want strapless because I already have plenty of strapless dresses and I just want something a little different.  And I want the dress to be sexy while also saying, "Yes, I am a demure, blushing bride--now get me a glass of Pinot!"

A few things you should know about my body type if you're newer to my blog and haven't yet seen one of the five frillion pictures I've posted:  I have a generally slim figure, but I do carry all of my weight in my hips and thighs, and I am not what one might call "well endowed" in the chestal region, so, you know, I'm not too concerned about popping out of a lower cut dress.  So really, empire waists and fuller skirts are usually the most flattering.  And my coloring is definitely fair--whites, beiges and other lighter neutral colors tend to make me look like a corpse, not that there's anything wrong with that, I'm just not going for the Corpse Bride look.

So now that we've gotten all the boring blah blah talkies out of the way, let's look at some gorgeous dresses and get our voting buttons ready, shall we!  (I actually don't have a voting button--I am not that technical, so you can just put the number of your dress of choice in the comments and I will painstakingly record the results by hand.)

Dress #1: Maggy London Silk Chiffon Halter Dress (in Absynthe)

Cutaway halter with a high neck is ruched to enhance the fluidity of a silk dress, defined at the waist with a charmeuse bow.

I adore this green--is that crazy?  I mean, yes, it's definitely WOW that's green, but I just love it.  And the bow just makes me all gooey inside with love.

Dress #2: Maggy London Sleeveless Silk Dress (in Galaxy or Absynthe--shown in Galaxy)

Tiny tucks detail a scoop-neck dress, shimmering in silk charmeuse and finished with an empire waist above a pleated party skirt.

I also love this blue, but I have the option of getting it in the green shown above as well.  However, it's a tough call, because blue is one of the best colors on me and this is a lovely one...  Also, aren't those little straps just to die for?

Dress #3: Maggy London Beaded Silk Chiffon Dress (in Regal)

Goldtone embroidery and sequins emphasize the deep V-neck, inset waist and hem of a surplice-bodice dress with gathered skirt.

Okay, how awesome would it be to wear a purple and gold dress on the day of the LSU v Arkansas game?  Plus the beading is gorgeous.  That doesn't hurt.  (And I swear, I looked through the whole of Nordstrom's dress section and came up with these three Maggy London dresses and had a number of others on my original list--I think I need to add that to my list of favorite designers.)

Dress #4: Suzi Chin Maggy Boutique Print Surplice Bodice Dress (Brown Combo)

Sumptous silk waistline centers a cotton print dress, styled with a slightly pleated skirt and a volume enhancing bubble hem.

I know some of you are violently opposed to the bubble hem detail, but I think this one is fairly subtle, and I love the brown and bright blue combo.

Dress #5: Anthropologie Chabana

A delicate floral arrangement upon deep purple silk, inset with black and topped with shimmering gold piping.

Another purple and gold dress--I am so on it!  Anyway, this one is a bit more on the demure side, but I love that it has a hint of a kimono dress to it without being a slap you over the head with a tea ceremony kimono.  Does that sentence even make sense?  I do not know.  Anyway, last one...

Dress #6: Anthropologie Spotlight

All eyes are on this polka-dotted black velvet scoop-neck, sashed with the sunniest yellow silk.

Well, I just wouldn't be me if I didn't have one black dress listed.  But I think the bright yellow sash and the polka dots steer this in a pretty wide loop around LBD territory.

So, that's it--those are your choices.  If I had it my way I really would just buy them all, because I truly do love them all in equal and yet entirely different ways, and I can envision myself wearing any of them to the rehearsal dinner.  Please, do your part, as Diddy would say, Vote or Die!

(That's not a threat, I'm not going to kill you, please don't sue me...)

So, what should I wear to the Rehearsal Dinner?
	Dress #1: Maggy London Silk Chiffon Halter Dress
	Dress #2: Maggy London Sleeveless Silk Dress
	Dress #3: Maggy London Beaded Silk Chiffon Dress
	Dress #4: Suzi Chin Maggy Boutique Print Surplice Bodice Dress
	Dress #5: Anthropologie Chabana
	Dress #6: Anthropologie Spotlight
Free polls from Pollhost.com

New York: Part Fin

So, I have been utterly exhausted this week, which is a great opener to talk about our last day in New York since it can be summed up thusly: 1) Exhausted, 2) Pumpkin Pancakes 3) Drowsy, 4) Chocolate Milkshake, 5) Really tired, 6) Rice Pudding.  Aren't you just RIVETED now?

Sunday

Go ahead and open up this picture to it's full size and look at our eyes--even given the extremely unforgiving light of the subway car, are those not some of the most exhausted eyes you've ever seen in our hollow, pale little faces?

We were up and out the door Sunday morning and on our way to stand in the TKTS line so that we could buy our cut price theater tickets and then head to Cafe Orlin for breakfast.  The part that we didn't plan for was that TKTS wouldn't be open until 11 o'clock, and that the line looked to have started forming around 9 o'clock.  It was a LONG line.  And we still had about 30 minutes until the ticket windows even opened for business.  So, we settled in for a long wait and began discussing such fascinating topics as pigeons, architecture, and why some 80 year old women still insist on tanning and wearing skin tight leopard print tops.

And then Pretend Sergeant Bitchface came along and started getting all up in my grill.  "Form a single line!" she hollered, apparently being the officer in charge of sidewalk traffic.  So, the line shuffled over toward the buildings a little bit to allow the absolute HORDES of tourists the space to walk by if they were so inclined (which they did not seem to be, as there was surprisingly little foot traffic on this particular street).  The line was still about two people wide however as we had a long wait ahead of us and were all taking the opportunity to, oh, I don't know, talk to the people with whom we were standing in line.  Well, Pretend Sergeant Bitchface didn't like that, but instead of hollering at everyone in the line in vain once again, she decided that she would target our little group, me in particular.  So, that was fun, especially when she informed me that she had told me to get in line but she "knew it was all about me".  It would have been funnier, or maybe sad since she was so clearly just trying to be important, but I was tired, and it quickly evolved from being somewhat amusing to really infuriating.  Just when I was about to start crying from annoyance, the line finally started moving, and about 30 minutes later we bought our tickets to see The Drowsy Chaperone.

With tickets in hand (well, in Brittany's wallet anyway), we headed over to the East Village for brunch at Cafe Orlin.  If you are ever in New York, looking for a great breakfast place, I implore you, go to Cafe Orlin and order the pumpkin pancakes.  They were fluffy and thick without being heavy, cinnamony and pumpkiny without being too sweet, and just overall the most amazing things I ate all weekend.  Except for maybe the cheese and herb fries--I think it's a tie.

After brunch (and a brief misadventure on the subway in which we lost Katie at the Astor Place station and no one had any cell reception since we were A ZILLION FEET UNDERGROUND) we went back to Times Square where The Drowsy Chaperone is performed at the Marriot Marquis Theater.  It was a little bizarre going to the hotel that we stayed at a few years ago to see a Broadway show, but the theater was a good size, and the show was hilarious.  I haven't become a scary fangirl like I did for Wicked, but I did love the music and spent the majority of the show laughing--except for that one time I fell asleep.  But it didn't seem like anything important was going to happen in the next five minutes, so a catnap was deemed acceptable.

We followed up the show with lunch at Ellen's Stardust Diner, which has never had awesomely great food, but is usually good for entertainment value.  We were fairly disappointed on both counts however, and eventually headed back to our apartment so that Carolyn could pack and head off back home.  Once we had her in a taxi, Brittany, Katie, and I briefly debated doing something fun, but after a quick photo op at the Permanent Mission of India to the United States (which was right around the corner, since not only were we spitting distance from the Chrysler Building, but also apparently the United Nations--how about that!), we opted to go back to the apartment and watch a marathon of Flip That House.  We discovered that we have lots of opinions on bathroom tile and glass blocks.

Eventually we dragged ourselves from our various comfortable seating arrangements and emerged from the apartment for just long enough to go to Rice to Riches, order rice pudding and then go back to the apartment and watch Friends for the rest of the evening.  And you can stick a fork in us because we are DONE with the New York recaps.  Well, except I have to tell you that Rocky Road rice pudding is pretty fan-freakin-tastic.  And also those Tide to Go pens are a gift from God.  Go buy one.  Keep in with you always.  Don't thank me, thank God.