For Jenny

Just a Few More Days...

Everyone keeps asking me if I'm nervous. Heck no! Get me outta here! :) I'm not looking forward to the two day trek involving driving two dogs to their new home, but I'll be so excited to be there. All of this flying back and forth stuff is not for me.

I packed up my work cubicle Friday and said goodbye to my teammates. One of them bought my lunch and one of them gave me a Chick-Fil-A gift card. This makes me think maybe I should leave town more often!

I talked to my mom today and apparently she was just hit with the realization that she won't see me again until the wedding. For some reason, this seemed remarkable to her even though I just saw her last weekend and the wedding is next month. We go six month stretches without seeing each other all the time, but I guess it's different for her knowing that I'm just a couple of hours away. Who knew?

My alterations on my dress are done (no more cookies until after the wedding!). I fear that the dress may take a scandalous turn if it gets any tighter. I'm going to try to keep it appropriate.

I've had a couple of offers on the house, but they were ridiculous, so it's still on the market for now. I've had a couple of showings in the past couple of days, so I feel like it will sell when the right people see it. I'm not moving the majority of my stuff until it sells anyway, so if the house is still here for my use during wedding crunch time, so be it. It will be so nice to be out of it though so I don't have to rush around like a cleaning mad woman every time it needs to be shown. The other morning I was trying to get it ready for a showing before I left for work. In the meantime, one dog puked on the carpet, one dog pooped in the bathroom, and one dog climbed up onto a crate, yoinked a bag of treats, and commenced tearing it open and chowing down. All within a few minutes of each other. I think I'm being tested.

At any rate, life is good and I get to see TheGroom in 5 days for the first time in 3 weeks! And after that I don't have to be apart from him anymore. Whoo hoo!

Bridezilla has Left the Building

And not a minute too soon! Things are much calmer now that I've gotten a bunch of things checked off my list.

The house is showable (which is a feat with three dogs running through the house on a constant basis!)

Pretty much all of the details are taken care of except...
*Have to find out for sure that the venue received the form we faxed them (left message today).
*Have to figure out music (left message today).
*Need to meet with the officiant to discuss the format of the wedding.
*Must return hot pink shoes. (Bought equally fabulous ones last night. Fret not!)
*Need to upload Butter pictures. She's so hard to photograph, but hopefully some of the ones I took yesterday came out as more than just a blur.
*Invitations go out this weekend!
*TheGroom needs a tie that matches my sash. Surprise! Let's go with the darker suit, OK? I'll even let you do a white flower instead of hot pink. Bride of the year, right here!
*Dress pickup is May 6th (I guess it's technically a fitting...I'll try it on with the alterations done). *Aside* The alterations lady was so funny last night. "Zyou have beeeg gap right up top. We fix it!"

And just for my own sanity (because I know I'll lose the paper I have this written down on..)

Day before wedding:
- Before 3pm, pick up rental stuff

Day of wedding:
Early early morning- set up reception items.
Get hair did.
10am -pick up cupcakes when the bakery opens (Will send someone to do this).
Someone needs to pick up the food and set it up

Monday after wedding:
Rental items rinsed and returned. We rinse, D.R. returns.

Objectives and Accomplishments

First of all, if you've emailed, facebooked, called, texted, telegrammed, etc., and haven't heard back from me, I apologize. I am alternating between periods of "I'll never get everything done in time!" and "Ooh, look at what I've marked off my list, I can totally do this!" But all in all, I'm extremely overwhelmed with a bunch of stuff that needs to get done within a short period of time. And also, I have a previously planned one week vacation in the middle of all this which sounded like a good idea at the time, but now I'm thinking of it as a week where I'll get nothing productive done.

(Can you tell that today is a meltdown day?)

I have:
*Said yes to a dress (but I still have to work out what I'm doing about a petticoat and all that frou frou stuff that I know nothing about). The dress chick asked me what size dress I wear when I got there and I looked at her with a blank stare. I don't wear dresses! How was I supposed to know?!
*Taken my precious to get sized (I'm a little nervous because I handed it over to a guy with a gold tooth who tried to convince me to DRIVE to a small Carribean island rather than fly--needless to say, I want it back pronto!).
*Ripped down all of the wallpaper in my house (with lots of help, thank goodness!)
*Started painting (It's not as quick, fun, or easy as it looks and I want to cry).
*Spoken to a realtor.
*Gotten the downspout that Butter tried to eat replaced (without my consent...didn't know until I got the bill in the mail yesterday, but that's a different story).
*Hired lawn care professionals.
*Finished two books (one on marriage and one on weddings).
*Wondered what in the world we can do in place of premarital counseling considering that we're rarely in the same place at the same time.
*Started a registry.
*Freaked out about not knowing exactly all of the wedding/honeymoon details.
*Been constantly reminded of how blessed I am. Who else has it this good?! Nobody!

*Aside* Honestly, this has all been an exercise in realizing how little control I have over ANYTHING. It's unnerving, but everything is turning out way better than anything I could have come up with on my own, so it's also a lesson in trust. */Aside*

I need to:
*Find a home for Butter. We're not going to have a yard that's suitable for her.
*Find a sitter for Butter while I'm on vacation.
*Finish painting.
*Clean the house from top to bottom to get it ready to sell. Realistically I will be hiring someone to do this, probably. Normally I wouldn't outsource on something like cleaning, but I hate cleaning and I've got plenty of other stuff to do.
*Purge stuff I don't need anymore and stuff that we're going to have two of.
*Figure out how we're going to get my stuff from point A to point B. Cost/Benefit Analysis is in order. (sweetheart?)
*Get the house listed within the next 2 weeks.
*Maybe have a garage sale to get rid of all that purged stuff. I'm thankful to have already had volunteers step up and say they'll help, but time is short.
*Spend as much time as I can with family and friends.
*Sell the house.
*Move.
*Get married 1-2 times. :)
*Leave the continental US and hopefully regain my sanity.

Oh my goodness, y'all. Pray for me! This is all very worthwhile, but today is definitely a meltdown day. I want to crawl up in bed and go to sleep for awhile, but I have to work the rest of the week b/c the team leader isn't and I have to be him while he's gone.

And So He Did

How crazy is my life? I would not have predicted this in a million years, but I couldn't be more excited. :)

More Videos!

Roz is staying with me this week, so we've been messing with the video features on my phone. In these videos, she reads portions of a funny dating site profile.

Part 1:


Part 2:


And in this one she does a dramatic reading of a different profile.



We are easily amused!

The Noose Tightens

It appears that everyone on the floor got a talk, but they all got different talks. There's even talk about the dress code being more strictly enforced.

Basically, my only joy at work comes from eating snack mix and listening to my audio books. My waistline will expand, surely. But maybe my "books read in 2008" list will too.

Today's Kevin's birthday. Just seconds ago, I spotted a spider climbing on the wall just behind his head. Did he appreciate my concern when I grabbed him by the hair and yanked his head away from the wall while gritting my teeth and saying, "I'm serious!*"? I don't think so. But I very well might have just saved his life. If that's not a good birthday present, I don't know what is!

*When I see spiders, I don't often speak intelligible sentences. It was the best I could do.

What are you Trying to Prove?

I think that most everyone has something they're trying to prove. Maybe it's a subconscious thing for a lot of people, but I think it is probably something that deeply affects our lifestyles in ways that we don't always realize.

If I'm really honest with myself, I have a few things I feel the need to prove. Most of them are a result of trying to prove someone wrong.

"You told me X about myself, so I'm going to make a complete fool of you by proving you wrong."

It can be a real motivator. Sometimes it can help us accomplish good things, but I'm not sure that it's the healthiest motivator. I'm thinking that anytime you hope someone else ends up looking foolish, it's probably not the kindest thought in the world.

The funny thing is that the person that we most want to prove something to usually couldn't care less. So we jump through hoops, stress ourselves out, let our other- more important- relationships suffer, and for what?

So that's my deep question of the day:

What are you trying to prove?

It's not something I expect everyone to know off the top of his/her head, but I'll bet we can all come up with something.

Feel free to leave your answer anonymously in the comments. You can also share why you feel the way you do if you can do so without dishonoring someone. This is about owning our own junk--not putting it off on someone else.

Sometimes it's just good to know that other people have issues they need to work through too.

Addendum to Song of Songs?

The Boy: You're very lithe.
Me: Huh?
The Boy: You're very giraffe-like.

I mean, if Solomon can say this and get away with it:

2:9 My lover is like a gazelle or a young stag.
Look! There he stands behind our wall,
gazing through the windows,
peering through the lattice.

I guess it's OK for The Boy to tell me I resemble a giraffe.

At least he didn't tell me my hair was like a "flock of goats" and my teeth are a "flock of sheep". BAAAAAA!

BTW, I don't think lithe means "giraffe-like".

*muah*

Remember Those Pictures?

Remember a few weeks ago when I mentioned that we went out with our friends Jerry and Kenny Tainer and had fun, but that I couldn't really discuss it without the pictures?








Aren't those the creepiest mannequins you've ever seen? The human hands on the hog are really something. And contrary to popular belief, I DID NOT have anything to do with Jerry lifting the scary lady's skirt. She heard that her bloomers had been stolen and had to check it out for herself.

And yes, that is a picture of us getting in trouble for molesting the mannequins. For the record, I'm not the one who pulled scary lady's hand off either.

13 Quick Ways to Annoy Your Single Friends (TT#17)

13 Quick Ways to Annoy Your Single Friends What's up with married people bugging single people about when they're going to get married? Do we go around asking you when you're going to get divorced? This list is dedicated to people everywhere who have ever made a single person want to slap them--and trust me, we really do want to slap you when you say stuff like this. These are all actual things that have been said to me. I couldn't make this stuff up. You know, the funny thing is that this stuff usually comes from out of the blue...like people are just waiting to pounce. And everyone thinks they're an original. I guess the most astounding thing is that the majority of people who ask this stuff couldn't care less about the stuff that IS going on in my life. I could win the freakin' Nobel Peace Prize and the response would be, "Oh, but don't you wish you had a special someone to share it with?" So here you go... 1. When are you getting married? 2. Did you get engaged over the weekend? (I'd let you know if I had.) 3. Do you think you'll ever get married? 4. When do you think you'll get engaged? 5. I really figured you would have been married by now. (well, I would have gotten married already, but I SO ENJOY having this conversation multiple times each day.) 6. Be sure to give me like a year's notice before you get married because I need to lose some weight first. I don't want to be a fat bridesmaid. (you don't have to worry about that.) 7. You know, you're actually pretty, I don't understand why you've never gotten married. (I guess there must be something else that's freakishly wrong with me.) 8. You're an old maid. 9. So there's no ring on your finger? (as the person is standing right in front of me and can clearly see there's no ring on my finger)(Yes, but it's invisible to nosey people.) 10.You'll understand what it's like when you're married. (ooh, I can't wait to grow up and be just like you.) 11.Why haven't you gotten married yet? (have you seen the stats on the divorce rate? If you're already married and I get married, one of us will end up divorced. I'd rather save you the heartbreak.) 12.I can't wait until you get married and have kids. (how does that impact your life?) 13.Do I need to start planning a wedding shower? (probably not since you just asked me all of the questions listed above in rapid-fire mode and I told you I have no wedding plans.) I know that my single readers probably have a few of their own that they could add. Someone out there is probably thinking this is a really bitchy list, but if you've never been single (and if you got married straight out of college--or earlier, you've Never Been Single), you don't know the amount of crap we get that subtly insinuates that our lives won't really start until we get married. I refute that. Don't feel sorry for someone just because his or her life isn't identical to yours. It's an arrogant viewpoint. Our lives all have different paths and I don't believe that's an accident. I don't regret not being married at this point in my life. Things happen in their own time. Links to other Thursday Thirteens!

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Note to My 18 Year Old Self...

You should have never complained about your legs. My kingdom for your legs! I mean, seriously...you have no idea what's in store for you.

Elaine, I thought you might enjoy this since it has a picture of Amber in it. May she rest in peace. :(

Cluck, Cluck, Cluck

I've joined the Blogging Chicks group, so check out all of the cool chicky blogs listed in the blogroll below.

Click here to join

Weekend in Review

These are events from this weekend as I remember them.

1. Took Friday off work. Read books. Set out to cook Mexican chicken casserole only to find out I've lost my recipe. Cooked it anyway. Was OK, but not the best.

2. Saturday Read books. Took Butter to the vet to get her shots and found out she has pink eye. Wrestling a hyperactive beagle 3 times a day and convincing her that eyedrops aren't deadly isn't fun. So far Mercy and I haven't come down with it, so maybe we won't get it.

3. Saturday night, on a Coke Icee high, convinced the boy to play Monopoly with me. Played a variation of the game that was called "short game". Four hours later, the boy had driven me into bankruptcy and I was offering to sell him my get out of jail free card for $750. He had over $18,000 in the bank (we had to write it down because we ran out of monopoly money). It was a Cinderella story really, earlier in the game he said he didn't think there was any way he could win because I had a lot more money than him (I hit Free Parking a few times). Does anyone else put money in the middle for Free Parking? I think it makes the game more interesting. Especially when I land on it. Am requesting a rematch.

4. Sunday I went to Something Brewing to restock the book basket. The owner paid for my lunch because he said I'm doing such a good job and he wanted to thank me for picking their business to be the OBCZ. Nice guy. Someone had donated 5 books to the donation box. One of them was called Jacintha. It was about a land long ago when gods cavorted with humans and one such god was known as a sought after lover. I laughed while reading the back cover.

5. Virginia just called and let me know about Laura's dad's arrangements. The memorial is at 10:30 on Wed. if anyone else wants to go. I'll send out an e-mail.

I Heart My Friend Mandy

Thanks for bringing me The Beatrice Letters. I read a few of them last night before I went to bed and then I was so thoroughly confused that I had to Google it to see if anyone has figured out what the heck is going on. It helped a little, but I'm still mostly clueless.

I will write up a detailed hypothesis of what I think is going on when I'm done reading them. It will be useless drivel.
_____________________________

I am rich with books. Aside from The Beatrice Letters, one of my Bookcrossing friends in NLR sent me 6 books in the mail yesterday. Five of the Georgia Nicolson Chronicles which are going to be great, and a book called Bless Your Heart, Tramp by Celia Rivenbark. She's also the author of Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank and We're Just Like You, Only Prettier. I like her already. (and I love my Bookcrossing community)

I've also received Anderson Cooper's Dispatches from the Edge, Sena Jeter Naslund's Four Spirits, and Donald Miller's Through Painted Deserts in the past few days. Life is good! I'm excited to read all of these. I suspect I'm going to be a busy little reader for the next couple of weeks.

Come back tomorrow. Tomorrow's Thursday Thirteen might make you wet your pants.

Ho, Ho, Ho!

I've had a good weekend. I went shopping with Little Mandy yesterday (who knew that LR had a Pottery Barn?!)...when I say shopping, I mean that I tagged along while she shopped. I'm sticking to my no-last-minute-purchases rule. The mall was insanity. The funny thing about always shopping early is that other people don't. It never fails that one of those other people want me to accompany them as they do some hustle and bustle shopping. Still, it's not nearly as stressful when all I have to do is keep someone else company!

Anyway, interestingly enough we ran into Amber and Janna while we were at the mall (which stands to reason since I think everyone in the state must have been there!). It was good to see them. It had been years. We stood for several minutes in the entrance of Victoria's Secret talking and catching up and just asking to be kicked out of the store for being in the way. Then we walked back out of eachothers' lives until the next time we have a chance encounter.

It's weird to go from seeing people every single day for years to never seeing them. At least it is to me. I should probably be over that by now, but it's just surreal to think of oneself as just part of a phase of someone else's life. Granted there are people who have been "temporary friends" in my life too--guilty as charged! Sometimes people just grow apart with time, but most of the time it's *not* because it's inevitable. Usually one or both of the parties does her part to help the process along. Indifference can = 'doing her part'.

We met Virginia for dinner. I hadn't seen her since her wedding (because as we all know, being in a friend's wedding is the kiss of death to a friendship for some reason. I'm serious, I'm starting to get superstitious about it!). I think she has even better hellion-dog stories than I do. Her dog can scoot her crate around the house and eat textiles. Butter could really do some damage if she were intelligent.

Well, I'm off to wrap the few Christmas presents I haven't gotten to yet. Merry Sunday.

Tick, Tock

I'm reading this book called Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin (total chick-lit). I'm only a few chapters in, but it's already started affecting me negatively. The main character started talking about all of the things she had planned out for herself when she was a child. She was going to get married when she was 25 and have kids a couple of years later, yada yada. So on her 30th birthday when she's still single and hasn't accomplished the things she dreamed about, she kind of freaks out.

On page 4 she says:

I did not plan on being alone in my thirties, even my early thirties. I wanted a husband by now; I wanted to be a bride in my twenties.

And at about that point, I started freaking out. I thought..."OK...I'm 27. Oh Crap!!! I'm not 27, I'm 28. I'll be 29 in April! I'm almost 30. I'm almost 35! I will surely die a childless old maid!"

So later I had conversation similar to this with Kevin:

Me: I started a new book?
Him: Oh yeah, what's it about?
Me: It's about a chick who's turning 30 and is freaking out because she's not married.
Him: Oh. That's not good. Should you be reading stuff like that?
Me: Why shouldn't I read it? I'm going to be 30 in two years! Just two!

(the sound of my ovaries shriveling up can be heard in the background)

Him: You shouldn't read it because it makes you all 'meh'.
Me: I'm not all 'meh'.
Him: You're getting freaked out and it's making you 'meh'.

It made me 'meh', folks. It did. And the crazy thing is that I love being single. There's never been a day in my life that I've woken up and thought, "I wish I was married today." or "I wish I had kids today." Those are things I want at some point, but I so love peace and quiet and freedom and independence that I can do without the heavy stuff right this minute. But then I catch myself wondering if I'll get to a point where I've put the heavy stuff off for so long that I don't have a choice anymore. That's what makes me 'meh'.

But in the end I'm not in control anyway...which for people like me is equally disturbing.

There's No Wrong Way to Eat a Reese's?

All these years we've heard the commercials for Reese's. They've told us there's no wrong way to eat one. Imagine my surprise yesterday when my Sugar Daddy friend, Arthur, bought me a package of Reese's from the vending machine and I saw this note printed inside the package:

Candy is a treat. Please consume in moderation.

How dare they tell me how to eat a Reese's! To make matters worse, I was licking off the remnants of chocolate/peanut buttery goodness from each of the little tissue paper cups as I read it. I thought about my appearance and realized that it looked like I was so enjoying the candy that I was prepared to eat the wrapper (hey, they're almost that good!).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The boy was hooking up this police scanner last night...I'm not sure exactly why. It wasn't for police spying purposes (just in case that's illegal). The dispatcher was talking about a domestic disturbance, and said the victim was hit in the belly with a mirror but had no scratches or bruises. Right about then, the boy was messing with my hair and said, "Lean your head back or I'll hit you in the gut with a mirror." I'm easily amused. Since then, we've been threatening to beat each other with mirrors.

I'm about to get my computer upgrade now (whoo hoo!)so I must cut this short.

When I come back, I will be blogging at the speed of light!

On Denise Austin

I was reading through Mandy's blog and saw some comments on Denise Austin. I tried to comment on her blog, but xanga didn't like me very much.

Anyway, I thought I'd just share my thoughts here and I might even throw in an extra college fun story as a bonus.

Denise Austin is on crack. There's no other way to explain her. When I was in college, one of the girls had a Denise Austin video--I think it was Little Mandy...someone correct me if I'm wrong. Anyway, occasionally we would break out the video (we didn't have DVDs back then, kids) and attempt to keep up with her. Just about the point when we all wanted to die, she would say something really smart alecky like, "Now I want you to try this for an extra challenge!" Then she morphed into some kind of alien and started doing things that a human bone structure won't allow. Then lots of yelling at the TV would ensue.

You know what else used to be fun? Taping Days of Our Lives, muting the TV, turning the closed captioning on, and assigning everyone a 'part' to read. Of course, the funniest ones were when one of us got a guy's part. Imagine me reading for Bo in my best manly voice, "Hey there, Fancy Face! How's Shawn Douglas? How did Stefano get out of jail? I thought he died 7 years ago!"

Ah, those were the days. It's hard to get your friends to get on board with activities like that once you "grow up". Ah, the nostalgia!

RETRACTION!

I've been informed that it wasn't Little Mandy's video, it was Tara's. That makes sense because I remember cursing the video in Tara and Amber's room in Frances Crawford.

Nonoxonyl-9: It's not just a spermacide anymore!

Let's see...

Am I absolutely boring or what? I haven't had anything fun to report in quite awhile.

I'm considering jogging a little bit tonight. It's been awhile. Alias is cancelled tonight (Oh my gosh, is Vaughn's dad alive or dead? Who was that creepy nurse in his uncle's hospital room? I bet Irina isn't dead either. It'd be just like her to come back from the dead (again!)) And Kevin's busy tonight, so it's a good opportunity to go punish myself for being lazy and out of shape. And that's exactly what exercise is to me. Punishment for not getting in an exercise routine 20 pounds ago. I wish my dogs would run with me, but they're not the best at stuff like that. I'd really like to wear Butter out. I wore her little butt out last night when she wouldn't stop acting like a maniac in the middle of the night. She's mentally disturbed or something. Something's not right with that little psycho.

(Still a little mad at her)

Free beagle. Inquire within.

I went all day yesterday without a Coke. That hasn't happened since like 1992 or something. OK, it hasn't been that long, but it's been awhile. I'm trying to cut back. There's no sense jogging if I'm only going to drink Cokes and more than replace the calories I just burned with empty calories.

I think that having a boyfriend makes weight gain easier too. When I don't have one, I eat cereal for dinner and don't think anything about it. Boys cannot live on cereal alone, so when there's a boy involved, there's also a real meal involved.

Excuses, excuses.

Anyway, I found out what "Laughing Cow Cheese" is last night. Arthur had given me a low fat alfredo sauce recipe that required this dairy mystery, and I couldn't find any at Wal-Mart. I spotted some at Kroger last night, though, and picked it up. Maybe I can try that recipe out sometime this week. I will report on it at a later date.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Whoa. I just took a potty break (it must be all this water I'm drinking in lieu of Coke. Anyway, someone brought some body spray stuff up here and put it in the bathroom. The ingredients label was turned toward me and one of the first ingredients was Nonoxonyl-9. The name of the body spray? Secrets of Paradise.