My Wedding Related Thoughts

As I wrap up the major parts of planning my wedding, I wanted to reflect on the event.  The whole stage of planning seems to prey upon my weak points.  I'm simply happy having people I know celebrate this life event with me and getting married.  The difficulties I've had with this party planning:

-Figuring out details.  I asked my bridesmaids if they would like to help with decorations and emphasized I did not so much care what into them as long as at least one thing adorned the tables.  This, apparently, was a horrible idea because this was perceived as "lots of pressure to make things look nice for your wedding"; meanwhile I thought it was evident I was not so concerned, so why would anyone else?  I wanted to delegate assignments and trust my artistically inclined bridesmaids to the fullest.  I knew they'd do a good job.  I ended up picking things and still being really open ended, but this was much better received.  There are other examples, but I'll keep this short.  I still have a hard time mustering up the energy to plan essential details.  It's practically brain overload.

-Gifts.  Normally this is the highlight or light at the end of the tunnel for some engaged people.  We throw you this nice party and you give us nice presents!  It was drilled into me early on to stop expecting gifts because they are not a given.  I was not terribly put out by this.  In fact, it delighted me.  I was hoping people would donate to a charity instead of giving me things.  All the furniture and dishes  have were either bought or given to me second hand and they have suited me just fine.  I am not a fancy person and am weirdly indignant about buying new things when I have perfectly fine things.  Call it my anti-consumerist hippie dippyness or the residue of my CEE obsession, but I struggled with the "necessity" of giving people the impression I wanted these new things.  This sounds like a liberal cliche (it probably is), but I spent all of our time at Bed Bath and Beyond riddled with feelings of guilt and betrayal to my principles.  I didn't need these things and I also didn't really want them (except for cooking gadgets), but I felt completely pressured into doing a registry because people would buy things for me anyway and it might as well be things I wanted.  I've heard all the good reasons for people gifting me, but it was the one thing I felt strongly about and I was pressured enough that I caved.  When we did the registry, we stuck to things we knew we would use and kept it free of anything even remotely frivolous.  We're still hoping for charity donations instead.

-Money.  This is a can of worms because I don't think this wedding should be an extravagant affair, but a decent non-stake center one costs a fair amount of money no matter how much you try to shave.  Our circumstances dictated a real dinner and we set out to get that done for as little as possible.  I've tried to cut costs wherever imaginable because I would rather see that money pay off debts we have than for a day that won't matter that much to me 10 or 15 years down the road.  Pretty pictures and some good memories, but only one of those is necessary for me.  I am practical enough to realize that the money spent on this single event could be put to much better use.  I'm not against spending money at all, but the extent has always been a point of conflict for me personally.  I keep wishing I was Polish so I could have people potluck my reception (it's expected at a traditional wedding, from what I've been told)––not even a joke.  I would do it anyway, but it would offend a lot of people.

Matt and I were totally on the same page and he's been incredibly helpful.  He's done anything I've asked and has done some extra.  We felt the same way about gifts and money, which were both pretty hot button items for us.  We've had to give on them and I think it's been hardest for me.  I've been easy going about a lot of points because I know they don't truly matter, but that carried over to things that mattered more to me.  I just have to take a deep breath and say, "I already started it, so I might as well finish it."

Sucky Crap

While my last post was about the nice things in being engaged, this is the flip side.  Being engaged, I've discovered, is a lot of work and very little of the reward.  We have to do lots of errand-y, decision things and we haven't been spending as much time just alone and enjoying each other.  While I know the other side of the wedding day is not just alone time and googly eyes, the thing that irks me is that he's not there to just talk to me before going to bed in addition to the fact that we spend a lot of time reigning ourselves in.  Tonight we were just spending time together, talking and being a little silly, but when he said he had to go, I just started welling with tears.  I couldn't even help it.  We've been engaged a whole two weeks and I already feel emotionally frustrated.  Honestly, it's worse than the physical part.

My favorite thing in the world is just quietly talking to him and I want nothing more than to have somewhat silly talk with him as we drift off to sleep.  So I cried, uncontrollably, both times he tried to leave.  I finally managed to pull it together for him to leave because he just couldn't leave me crying.  Even now, as I think about that moment, I feel little droplets streaming.  I feel like a crazy person, but it's because we don't have that much time for those little intimate moments.  They recharge me and help me remember why I'm expending so much energy on this one event (though I still couldn't care less about 90% of it).  To me, it feels like morphine wearing off and you can't help but feel the pain when it leaves.  He makes me happy and I feel good and whole.  When he leaves, I feel torn.  It's happened previous times, but it's gotten worse.  My feelings when we separate have blown out of proportion, but I want him to be there so we can have those moments I like so much.

Is it May yet?  Seriously.  The weather has been all confused.

Perks

The secret perk of being engaged is that I have become way more productive.  This means I'm a bit busier, but I do enjoy accomplishing things that have been sitting around forever.  I have 95% percent finished scrapbooking my trip to Thailand, which I took in summer of 2006.  I had it partially done forever and couldn't bear to cull my ridiculous amount of photos (somewhere near 100 for a two week trip...), but when I realized I had to move my things again, I just hated the idea of schlepping the scrapbook AND the photos separately.  So I started going through and, in a whirlwind fashion, cutting and pasting them into some semblance of a scrapbook.  Just have to label some things and then it's finisimo!  Hopefully I will tackle some of my Europe pictures (and possibly print some from Germany and Hungary to finish it all!) before I move.  My Sundays are the day when I take on little projects like that.  I'm still going through my clothes and pulling things I never wear.  I have to possibly share closet space with him and I need to move all of it anyway, so I'd rather get rid of things I don't use that much.

This weekend we also got my ring back (so pretty and sparkly), looked at one venue (the Stowell's), got Matt's wedding band at an antique store (he also bought me a button from Gorbi coming to Merchandise Mart back in '92), had a double date with my parents for Mission Impossible 4 (the main plot was a Swedish nuclear extremist trying to frame the USA for an attack and warm up the Cold War––SO RIDICULOUS), mostly decided on a venue, and we ruled out Glacier National Park as our honeymoon spot.  We both wanted to go to Glacier, but it was expensive, difficult logistically, and I became anxious about it.  So we're going to Fond du Lac WI instead, with a short pit stop in Milwaukee on the way back.  Way more low-key, which is what we really wanted, waaaaay less expensive, and we can simply drive up there in 3 hours.  Awesome.


I look forward to the next super productive weekend with a Saturday filled with flower consultation, venue seeing, and possible some other little detail.  This won't be so bad!  I can do this!  [Next week i will probably freak out again since that feeling comes in waves.]

Reflections on a Snowy Day

It's been almost a month and a half since I have even viewed this blog, let alone write in it.  Things just got crazy.  I never finished my journal entry from November either.  This Matt character has really brought my life into a whirlwind.  I'm hoping things calm down after May because things are definitely starting to pick up now that I have to plan a huge party.  Parts of it are fun, but it's got big chunks of stress thrown in because it's a lot of logistics.  I just want to show up, but I can't afford to have someone plan it for me.  Trying to keep things simple and still classy without spending tons o' money: at first it sounded like not such a big deal, but now I'm starting to feel a little more overwhelmed.  It's a whole production for such a short celebration.  Ah, culture.  You make us do some nonsensical things.

I signed up for a German class in all of this and I'm considering taking my C1 certificate test as well.  I may end up postponing the latter for the sake of my sanity, but I have a little while until that decision needs to be made.  Matt encouraged me to do the class so I would still do something I enjoyed and perhaps unwind?  We'll see.  He did offer to take up some more of the planning if that would help; what a keeper!  I keep pushing him to find time to practice drums too, so perhaps we will both push each other to keep doing our favorite hobbies so we don't go crazy being über-frugal and planning like fiends.  I just don't feel like I have time and it's about to get more crunched; my work hours of 9:30a-6p make things wonky as well. 

But this new addition of snow is lovely.  Definitely a fan of this development.  It helps things feel calm and quiet, which I very much need.  Maybe this won't be so bad after all.

Die Holiday Weekend ohne Boyfriend

I was at my parents helping them clean and decorate for Christmas.  It was nice to help out the ol' folks.  Friday I came home to an empty apartment, but I just puttered around and ended up pulling out the radom nails in my walls and spackling every hole and crack.  The fact that I did this on a weekend night and stayed up late doing it (though Emily kept me up later with her happenings) make me feel a little lame, but I'm glad I finally got that household chore checked off after nearly 3 months of putting it off.  I have to get paint to repaint my room.

Saturday I woke up like a shot and got straight to making soup.  I started thawing my frozen vegetable broth while I ate breakfast and whipped up a minestrone from stuff I had around.  I am actually quite proud of that minestrone because I made everything from scratch.  I made the vegetable broth weeks ago, and everything else was an ingredient.  The minestrone is really good and it has split pigeon beans (usually used for dal), peas (cooked with some pieces of soppressata), red potatoes, red kidney beans, and tomatoes.  I was glad I took the mason jars because I was able to divide it and freeze it and look super homey and cute.  YES!  This soup was a significant victory over the cream of broccoli soup I made, which was more like mushy overcooked broccoli with lots of rice and a little of cream.  I didn't have a blender, so I overcooked to broccoli to mushy and used a fork.  No bueno.  I don't know if I can choke down the last jar I have left.  I should find a way to repurpose it.

Sunday Matt came back.  I was way happier to see him than I thought I would be.

Life marches on

The past two months have been interesting.  My priorities shifted from reading and blogging to things like puttering, cooking, spending time with my boy, and deciding what I want to do on a given night.  I haven't touched a book in at least a month (my 60 book goal is all but dead at this point--I got to 46...), I haven't so much as glanced at my other blog (if I have time, I'd rather do something more productive/less productive). 

Things have certainly changed.  For one, any moment I'm not at work, I'm either with Matt and/or at church things.  If I'm not doing those things, I'm trying to cook for myself, shower, grocery shop, or do other basic chores of life.  If I'm not doing chores, I'm dedicating my time to puttering and daydreaming.  I keep up to date with CEE stuff, but it's not like it was before.  More reasons for grad school.  I just feel like the only way to slow down and enjoy myself is to not have lots of extra thigns to do.  Life will take me down the road of really busy soon enough.

I've been dealing with some really heavy situations lately, but only one of them has really weighed me down, and it's not that bad either.  I just keep humpin' from trench to trench.  Life goes on.  These problems give me something to think about, which doesn't happen too much during my day to day routine--it's almost a base level of functioning where it's hard to get above the sameness of it all.  You just feel a little robotic, going through the motions without a higher functioning intellect.  I'm not a dum-dum or anything, but it's almost like motor memory when you don't know what you're doing on the conscious level.  You're doing something, but you can't explain why you're not consciouslessly doing it.  Work.  It's just work.

No way to warn someone

I've been thinking about the nature of time recently.  For the first time in my life, I fully understand what people mean by the "relentless, ever faster pace of modern life", the phrase "the daily grind", and the numerous descriptions of onward marching time.  My time is somewhere other than with me.  I have time outrunning me, outpacing me entirely.  I will have more thoughts on this when I have more time to consider them.  The irony.

But the song "We Carry On" by Portishead was a revelation in concert because it was then that I realized that this song perfectly describes the nature of time in my new life.