for the coolest chemist i know (come to think of it, she's the only chemist i know...)

kristoise, i saw this and thought of you. if i were a better friend i would have bought you the t-shirt...if anyone more generous than me is interested, check out this site.

Moving On

it's funny how attached you can get to a house, even one you never lived in. four walls and a roof, a floor, some windows- that's all it is, really. but a house and the things in it come to stand for so much more. memories, both good and bad, that color the four walls so much more thoroughly than paint. the couch you used to take naps on when you were a child, as ugly as sin, but still so important; the rickety dining room table that you would never really use, but you'd never have the heart to give away; the old fashioned looking desk where you found your first dirty magazines, stuffed away under stacks of useless papers. these things and this place mean so much, though they are in actuality just that- things and a place.

as some of you know, for many complicated legal reasons my late father's house- which now technically belongs to me and my sister- can never be sold, so for the past few years we have been renting it out. the first couple we rented it to were wonderful tenants and took great care of the house and all of the things in it. they rented it furnished, so all my stepmothers and i had to do to get the house ready for them was clean out drawers and pack away valuables, stuffing everything else- all of my father's towels and sheets and knick-knacks and books and memories- into the attic and leaving the house not terribly unlike it had been when Dad was alive. easy, on so many levels. last summer those tenants moved on, and for the past eight months the house has been vacant, a silent shrine in the woods to my father, as if he would be returning any moment from the duck blind to light the woodstove and watch a basketball game on tv. in other words, just how i wanted it, though knew it could not remain.

a few weeks ago my uncle Robert called to tell me that he had found tenants for the house, a couple of nice older ladies who loved the place and wanted to sign a 5-year lease. they had excellent references, Robert loved them, and they wanted to move in right away. perfect. except that they had their own furniture and they didn't need Dad's, so we would have to empty the house- immediatly. this was the hard part i had been hoping would never come, my shrine was being torn down never to exist again. though the new tenants did very graciously agree to vacate the premises for the week of my wedding so that we can use the house, i had privately hoped that the house would remain unrented until after the wedding, leaving my shrine intact for that highly emotional last unmarried week. no such luck- my last single night will be spent sleeping in a stranger's bed.

to make matters worse, Robert had originally told me that the new tenants were understanding about the quick move and the problems it presented to me and my stepmother in terms of getting there to clean the house out. he said that they were willing to "work around" the old furniture or possibly store it in the basement until we could get there to move it, in march. today i got an email from Robert that, in fact, everything needs to be out of the house by the 27th- 10 days from now. my uncle is a relatively clueless man when it comes to other people's feelings, but this just goes above and beyond all levels of common sense or consideration. even if i was unemployed and in possession of a private jet to fly me to maryland at a moment's notice, it would still take more than a few hours to go through my dead father's house and pack it up for the last time ( by myself, as my stepmother has a demanding 50 hour week job and my sister is in school).

basically i just feel overwhelmed. angry and frustrated and sad and overwhelmed. my hero of a stepmother found a moving company who would pack up the house and drive everything to richmond to a storage unit, but that means that strangers will be packing up my father's house and i will never see it intact again. then all of his things- which now belong to Rachel and me, but which neither of us currently have a place for- will be sitting in some depressing tomb of a storage unit in richmond, a town i rarely visit. all of my memories, all of his things, all that i have left of him, just sitting in a climate controlled box among many other climate controlled boxes, being forgotten.

why can't i just keep my shrine? why do i have to be the one with no parents? wasn't losing my mother enough, did i have to lose my dad too? it's not fucking fair- i don't want money or furniture or pictures, I WANT MY FUCKING PARENTS BACK!!!! everyone gets to have parents, why don't i? what did i do? WHAT DID I DO????

i suppose this post was misnamed- i'm not doing a very good job of moving on at all.

Lamest Holiday Ever

i hate valentine's day, have always hated it, from my elementary school years (when i was forced to send valentines to kids who had either ignored or made fun of me all year) to my middle school years (when i never got as many stupid paper hearts as my more popular classmates) to my high school years (when those ghastly 'heart-with-arms-and-legs' floating mylar balloons entered the picture). it is a needless, useless, ridiculous holiday that reinforces the stereotypical idea that love is better expressed through scheduled meaningless material gestures than through spontaneous and regular expression of true caring. stupid, stupid, stupid.

and i AM in a very happy and romantic relationship now, so this is no mere bitterness. we just don't happen to need a calender to tell us when to be affectionate.

J and i very deliberately do NOT celebrate valentine's day, and this article i read this morning on cnn.com does a very nice job of summing up just why we don't. why are people such sheep that just because the card and candy companies tell them that today's the day to express their love, they DO IT! and, apparently, to make matters more pathetic, they all express their assigned emotion of the day THE EXACT SAME WAY! why not tell people you love them on some random thursday in march? or- better yet- why not say it every day? and why not do it in with your own words, actions or some creative form of self-expression, instead of with cheap, mass-produced hallmark sentiment?

okay, i'm getting off my soapbox now. i have to go glare at the lemming couples who are coming to my job to 'celebrate their love', which is clearly so much stronger today than it will be next week.

The Color Quiz

Take this quiz- very interesting results. Here are mine:

Your Existing Situation
Working to improve her image in the eyes of others so as to obtain their compliance and agreement with her needs and wishes.

Your Stress Sources
Has an unsatisfied need to ally herself with others whose standards are as high as her own, and to stand out from the herd. Her control of her sensual instincts restricts her ability to give herself, but the resulting isolation leads to the urge to surrender and allow herself to merge with another. This disturbs her. as such instincts are regarded as weaknesses to be overcome; she feels that only by continued self-restraint can she hope to maintain her attitude of individual superiority. Wants to be loved or admired for herself alone; needs attention, recognition, and the esteem of others.

Your Restrained Characteristics
Circumstances are restrictive and hampering, forcing her to forgo all joys and pleasures for the time being.
Clings to her belief that her hopes and ideas are realistic, but needs encouragement and reassurance. Applies very exacting standards to her choice of a partner and wants guarantees against loss or disappointment.

Your Desired Objective
Desires a tranquil, peaceful state of harmony offering quiet contentment and a sense of belonging.

Your Actual Problem
Needs to achieve a stable and peaceful condition, enabling her to free herself of the worry that she may be prevented from achieving all the things she wants.

Your Actual Problem #2
Wants to be valued and respected, and seeks this from a close and peaceful association of mutual esteem.

anxious

i don't know where to begin. i feel like i'm losing my mind. this morning (and, come to think of it yesterday morning, and the morning before that..) i woke up with my mind racing with fears and anxiety, about everything from money to my relationship to life and the universe in general. i wake myself up with fears. and i can't get back to sleep. i try to calm myself down, i lay there diligently repeating in my head "calm, calm, everything is okay," but it never seems to work and eventually i am driven out of bed, tired or not, to the computer, to face more fears and dire headlines and overwhelming responsibilities.

i really am afraid i'm losing my mind. or control of it, anyway. and the worst part of it is that when these anxieties pile up on me i take them out on J, sure that if HE were working more often, if HE were being more responsible that I would feel better, less afraid. where does this come from?

here's a more complete background on that particular strain of anxiety: as usual, i am worried about my and J's financial situation. he is 32 years old, and a waiter. january is a traditionally slow month for waiters, so lately he has been working anywhere from four shifts a week (that's about 28 hours a week) to none (that's NONE), with an average of two shifts being the norm. that means that there are weeks when i work 36 hours a week and he works 12 to none. this bothers me. my job is not exactly a high-paying position either, but at least i'm working. i hate my job, but at least i go. true, when he works, J can often make more in two nights than i make in a week, but that hardly makes it feel more fair. initially, J was waiting tables because it was the only job that gave him the flexibility to pursue his improv and performing dreams, but lately he is not doing any improv (or performing of any kind), so i am starting to wonder why he can't work a regular (read: stable) job. i hestitate to ask him to take a second job during these slow months, but then i reconsider when i realize that even a second job would just require him to work the same amount of hours that i ALWAYS work. i hate having this resentment. i hate that i take out my anxieties on him, but i don't know how to stop myself. the best i can do is not to tell him about my resentment and worry every time it springs to mind, but even that is not something that i can always control, and there are times when i just want to yell at him at the top of my lungs that he is he is LAZY AND IRRESPONSIBLE AND IT'S NOT FAIR THAT I AM DOING ALL OF THE WORK!!! the thing is that none of these things are true- he is not irresponsible, he's not really any more lazy than i am, and he does work, just not as regularly as i do. he has still managed to pay his bills and set some money aside for the wedding, or if he does fall behind one week he always gets me back the next; he has been fabulous about sticking to his budget, and not going out if he has not been working; and since he's been working less he has started to single-handedly handle all of the housework and has been very involved and helpful with the wedding planning stuff. if i am doing more work outside of my job, driving myself nuts with my obsessive and maniacal need to always be 'doing something' it's because i choose to. well, because i need to to feel useful, and productive, and whole. lately i cannot relax, because downtime makes me feel guilty.

like i said, i'm going crazy.

actually, yesterday during one of my now regular mini-anxiety attacks, my friend R threw out a word that may apply more aptly than "crazy". i think i may have a codependant personality. i looked up 'codependent' today on the web, and a lot of the symptoms(who am i kidding, MOST of the symptoms..) sound eerily familiar. for example:
-Inability to know what "normal" is
-Difficulty in following a project through.
-Difficulty relaxing or having fun.
-Judging self, others without mercy.
-Low self esteem, often projected onto others. (eg: Why don't they get their act together!)
-Belief that others cause or are responsible for the codependent's emotions. (Codependents often use language like "you make me feel ______", or "I was made to feel like____")
-Overreacting to change. (or intense fear of / inability to deal with change.)
-Inability to see alternatives to situations, thus responding very impulsively.
-Constantly seeking approval and affirmation, yet having compromised sense of self.
-Feelings of being different.
-Confusion and sense of inadequacy.
-Being either super responsible or super irresponsible. (Or alternating between these.)
-Lack of self confidence in making decisions, no sense of power in making choices.
-Feeling of fear, insecurity, inadequacy, guilt, hurt, and shame which are denied.
-Isolation and fear of people, resentment of authority figures.
-Fear of anger or bottling anger up till it explodes.
-Hypersensitivity to criticism.
-Being addicted to excitement / drama. (Chaos making.)
-Dependency upon others and fear of abandonment.
-Avoidance of relationships to guard against abandonment fears.
-Tendency to look for "victims" to help.
-Rigidity and need to control.
-Feelings of responsibility for other people--their feelings, thoughts, actions, choices, wants, needs, well-being and destiny.
-Feeling compelled to help people solve their problems or by trying to take care of their feelings.
-The feeling that it is easier to feel and express anger about injustices done to others than about injustices done to you.
-You feel safest and most comfortable when you are giving to others.
-You feel insecure and guilty when someone gives to you.
-You feel empty, bored and worthless if you don't have someone else to take care of, a problem to solve, or a crisis to deal with.
-You are often unable to stop talking, thinking and worrying about other people and their problems.

this would explain why i think that controlling J and "fixing" his "inadequecies" (instead of just "fixing" myself) would solve my esteem problems . this would explain my extreme need for control in every aspect of my life and my feelings of failure when i fail to achieve this totally unreasonable control of the uncontrollable. this would sync perfectly with my sometimes debilitating fear of abandonment and loss.

so i've possibly identified the problem, now for the solution. what do i do? how do i learn to trust myself and relax? how do i learn to trust J and have faith in his ability to be a grown up and take care of himself as well as pull his weight in our relationship? how do i learn to trust that everything will indeed "be okay" without my worrying about it and fixating on it every waking moment?

for now i will try yoga, and therapy, and b-vitamins, and a little more self-love and patience. this last one will be the hardest; it appears i have a lot of bad habits to break, and a lot of fear to let go of.

quickly

exercise really is the best cure for the blues. true, booze or chocolate may be quicker and easier to reach for, but with exercise you actually feel BETTER about yourself afterwards, which is a nice side-effect. this winter i am determined to exercise away both my blues and my ass- what could make me feel better than losing both of those?
that's all i have to say.

a smack in the face

it's funny how death just sneaks up on you. i am sitting here at work, the beginning of a regular saturday night shift, and suddenly we get word from one of the producers that a popular actor here at the theatre has died of a heartattack on his way to a gig. he was young, less than forty years old. he emceeded a show that my band played in less than three months ago. he was just a regular guy- funny, talented, full of life. he wasn't a thin man, but he was no chris farley, and in fact he had been trying to lead a healthier life as of late, exercising, eating better, drinking less. i did not know this man in more than a passing manner- i'd seen him at parties of friends, around the building, and around the neighborhood- but i knew who he was, i had met him, and said hello to him, and made small talk and snide remarks with him, and i knew him as a living breathing person.

and now he is dead. in just an instant. no warning, no hint, no preparation at all.

death is like that, it can come out of nowhere, like a phone call in the middle of the night, or in the middle of a sunny afternoon, or the middle of a regular saturday night shift. it can come to anyone, at any time, and there's nothing we can do to predict it or to stop it. yesterday you're alive, today you're not.

and it's just not fair, it's just not FUCKING fair.

i think i need to go cry now.

scary thought

it just occurred to me that we are more than half way through the 2000's. we are four years away from '2010:a space odyssey', four years away from VH1's 'i love the 2000's'.

wow.

scary.

bye bye 2005; 2006, pull up a chair

as i sit here in my stupid, meaningless job on new years eve, handing out tickets to people naieve enough to pay twice as much as they would have paid last night for the exact same show just because of the date on the calender (not to mention the ass-raping {i.e. $50 cover charge for $2 paper party favors} they will receive should they try to enter their friendly neighborhood bar this evening), i feel the desire to reflect on the year gone by, and anticipate the year to come.

for the world at large, 2005 was not the greatest of years. that it started with the SECOND innauguration of George "i'm an idiot" W Bush, certainly did not bode well. tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, riots, bombings, and war; the continuing erosion of political systems and freedoms around the globe, the death of a pope, two more conservative supreme court judges, and britney spears was actually allowed to breed.

well, at least Chicago won the world series.

for me personally, it was not such a bad year. i got engaged just before it started, and consequently had 90% of my wedding planned by the end of it's first month. february brought the first child born to one of the "old gang", (and november welcomed the second!). J and i discovered in May that our building had been sold for condos, and found our much beloved (and much more fabulous) current home by the end of June. summer held an engagement party on the east coast, moving, my grandfather's 90th birthday (hope i inherited his longevity!), and more wedding planning. the fall was all about weddings: first one of my closest friend's- the tall and lovely R- in which i was the maid of honor, then J's best friend's, in which he also stood. then came the usual holiday madness, my big 3-0, and the startling realization that my own wedding is now less than 6 months away. this year i returned (briefly, but i'll start again next year, i swear!) to therapy, procured health insurance for both J and myself (it only took me nine years), finally finished paying the government back for those tax years that had 'slipped my mind', went to my first writing conference, conquered my fear of writing fiction, received my first paycheck for singing with my band, discovered that i do indeed remember how to make friends, and began to think seriously about babies and graduate school (though not in that order).

all in all this year was about growing up, which- now that i'm actually doing it- really isnt' as bad as i thought it would be (though in have no plans to ever complete the job). for the world, i hope for better times in 2006; for myself, i know they will come. this next year holds my wedding to a wonderful man who is my best friend, a return (hopefully) to the world of academia, and continued growth and adventure all around. this 'life' thing is pretty fun- bumpy at times, sure, but overall well worth the price of admission.

happy new year to all of you and yours, and may life in 2006 continue to be a wild and wonderful ride.

is this what thirty has in store?

about a week ago, as i was innocently walking to work, along a street i walk down almost every day, passing by windows i see almost every day, in one particular clothing store window i spied the cutest little pajama set you've ever seen- all pinks and purples and fuzzy baby goodness- and i think my uterus actually did a backflip.

BABY URGES STARTING SO SOON!

now this may be as much a 'getting married' thing as a turning thirty thing, but it took me completely by surprise. i know that several of my blog readers have babies and are crazy about them, and i have always been happy for my childbearing friends and their respective offspring, but i never really saw that as the path i wanted to take just yet. i am too selfish, too irresponsible, too often drunk to be a parent. but lately i have been wanting a squeaming, spitting, peeing, pooping bundle of joy of my own. especially around christmas. i love christmas, i always have, but lately i can't help but think how much more amazing it will be when i have kids: J all dressed up as santa, sneaking outside to shake jingle bells and stomp around on the roof; actually buying toys for presents; leaving out cookies and milk; 'babies first christmas' ornaments...

whoa! slow down little ovary! let's get past the wedding first!

i'm such a softie...

this story made me cry- in a good way. i'm such a sucker for pet stories. happy new year everyone, hope we are all so 'lucky' in 2006.
(more on turning 30 in later posts, i swear!)

approaching the new frontier

in three days time i will turn thirty. i will have been on this earth for a full three decades, and i must say that i could not be more excited.

i wondered how i would react to this latest milestone, but really i am thrilled. i feel good about thirty, i sense good things ahead, and most of all i am overjoyed that this decade will be welcomed in with a wedding instead of a funeral.

i enjoyed my twenties. they were full of firsts and adventures and world travel. i graduated college, traveled all over the united states, moved to europe, acted in london, sang jazz in oxford, moved to chicago, 'fell in love'(or so i thought) several times over, and explored and abandoned countless careers. those are all things that i will remember fondly from this era of my life. my twenties were also full of loss and heartbreak and a whole boatload of drama. these are the things i am fully ready to leave behind. i'm ready for some roots, some grounded-ness, some semblance of self-awareness and confidence. i am fine with restricting my traveling to vacations and actually settling in one place for a while. i am more than fine with restricting my romantic drama to sunday night television, and marrying a man who makes me feel loved and happy and safe.

on sunday night my wonderful and amazing husband-to-be threw me a 'surprise' birthday party which was made ten times better by the surprise appearance (the night before) of my dearest little sister, synge. seeing synge (and the surprise birthday video message from sarachkah and vixanne- thanks gals!) reminded me how lucky i am to have such a wonderfully strong foundation of old friends in my life; these friendships give me perspective and history and make me aware of who i am and where i have come from. it was also wonderful to look around the room and see that i have created a new life and home for myself here as well, full of interesting and amazing people who love me enough to come out in the frigid chicago cold to celebrate my birthday.

all in all, i'm feeling good, ready for the serendipity of a new age. and i'm hoping that life in my thirties will continue to please and surprise me.

is this normal?

to all the married ladies (and the singles too, of course, it's just a matter of situational semantics):

did you get ex-boyfriend urges before your wedding?

just last week i changed email servers- as you probably all know since you all got the email about it- and one of the first people to write me back was a certain irish ex of mine who i haven't talked to in about a year. i loved this man, it's true, but that was long ago (six+ years, to be exact), and last time i checked i was totally over him and totally in love with my current betrothed. but after C wrote to me i had a dream about him, and lately he keeps popping into my mind. a few days ago i wrote to him and told him i'm getting married, and he wrote back and told me he's living with some girl named suzanne, and for some reason that made me incredibly jealous. i know it is horrible and selfish to think that he should be languishing somewhere, sick with the thought of me marrying another man (since he is obviously still madly in love with me, the woman of his dreams- duh), but truly, there is a part of me that wants that to be the case. and i'm disappointed that it's not.

maybe this is all because i recently developped a crush on Harry Potter, and this particular ex kind of looks like a grown up Harry Potter (yummmmmmmm). or maybe (more likely really ) i am just experiencing pre-hugest-commitment-of-my-life jitters.

but i do miss C, i really do. and i do wish that he was somewhere pining over me, i really do. there is a part of me that is still pining over him; besides J, he was the next biggest love of my life, and sometimes i wonder where we could have gone together if circumstances (and geography) had been more aligned.

any comments or suggestions? did this happen to any of you?

maybe i'll call this my monthly blog...

i just noticed (and so might you- if anyone actually still holds out hope and reads this blog) that my last entry was exactly one month ago. wow, sorry about that, but it's been an action packed month with no real signs of slowing down. so for right now i will call this my 'november entry' and make no promises of more frequent entries (except for the implied 'december entry') until after the crazy holidays wind down in january. ( just in time for the 'january entry', but you get the gist by now). since most of my readers are probably just as frazzled as me right now, i doubt that anyone will mind the infrequency.

on to the blogging.

first and foremost i must send out a hearty and heart-felt congratulations to vixanne and her hubby, who welcomed their beautiful son (lets call him angel) into the world on the day before thanksgiving. truly something to be thankful for (i'm sure he won't be hearing THAT for the rest of his life, just like i don't get told that i must be 'my parents favorite christmas present' every time someone sees my birthdate. nowadays i counter with, 'i don't know, they're dead, so they don't talk about it much'- or at least i desperately want to. but i digress...). welcome to the world little angel!

in other news, with the holiday season now upon us, i am starting to show symptoms of a wicked holiday blues coming on. i am fighting it tooth and nail, hoping that it's nothing that some christmas music, mulled wine and a return trip to my therapist can't cure. i haven't seen my therapist in over a month, and i definitely need to return. a few weeks ago my band played at a funeral (the deceased was in his forties and left behind a wife and eight year old son) and i think that's what started the emotional ball rolling. today i went to see Harry Potter and experienced a strong desire to jump into the world of the movie and never come back (i also experienced an inappropriate attraction to Daniel Radcliffe, especially considering he is a 16 year old boy, but that's another story). with the wedding a mere seven months away, i am starting to panic again, and dream of a world without adult responsibilities or worries (and WITH unicorns and magical candy). my old escapism tendencies are slipping out. i hosted thanksgiving at my house this year and got disproportionately upset that things did not turn out picture-postcard perfect; this need for perfection is becoming a troublesome pattern in my life. i am starting to wish my life was more like fiction or the movies- exciting and pretty and full of happy endings.

i am excited about christmas though, mostly. it is my absolute favorite time of the year, probably because it is the one time that a huge portion of society buys into my unrealistic fantasy-land image of the world for a month or so. even if it's saccharine and materialistically driven, at least around the holidays people pretend to love their fellow man and believe in magic and miracles. i'll take what i can get. it was also my mom's favorite time of year and i have a lot of happy memories of christmas. the holidays are the one time where my memories of my mom make me more happy than sad.

i am also excited because this year i turn thirty, and that is actually something that i'm looking forward to. my twenties, though full of adventure, were also full of drama and pain and lots and lots of self-doubt and confusion. i am hoping that my thirties will be more grounded. i still may not know for sure what i my doing with my life, but i have a way better idea of who i am and what i want now than i did at 20 or 25. so bring it on. after all, thanks to the baby boomers, 30 is now practically infancy!

let's see, what else...oh- the other day i wrote a long and cleansing email to my evil stepfather who i have not spoken to in over 5 years. it felt good just to get my gripes and grievances down on 'paper'. i sent it to him at his old email, but it was sent back as an inactive account. and now i am wondering if i should search out his current email address and send it to him, or just take it as a healthy exercise and move on. i have no desire to revive my relationship with him, the damage is done and i am perfectly happy without him in my life, but he does still have a few of my mom's things that i want, and i do want him to know how much he hurt me and why i stopped trusting him. there is also a part of me that wants to hear his side of the story. i don't know that he would respond even if i did send him the email, but i am curious. it is a pretty diplomatic diatribe, i think, especially given how coldly he treated me after my mom died. i guess i just remain eternally and naively hopeful that he would get the email and coming crying back admitting all his wrongdoings, begging my forgiveness and offering me all of her things on a silver platter (i said it was naive). maybe i should just do what my aunt says and consider all of that stuff 'lost in a fire'. they are just things, after all, and i have the most important of her belongings- her journals and photo albums (and her boobs).

so that's it for now. i'll be back in december with wedding dress news and holiday cheer. and since that's only next week, that's not too bad.

more wedding stuff

thanks for the input on the dresses and the place card dilemma (funny to call that a dilemma, considering the state of the world...); i responded to everyone's advice in the comment section of the last post. as i head off for a few days of family visiting and reception tent scouting, here are some more of my current wedding ideas for you all to chime in on if you feel the urge. watch out- i'm on a roll now!

here are some examples of the style of invitation i want. like i said, my friend jen is a letterpress printer/designer and she's going to do all of my print work. i love her stuff- it's really simple and classy and old-fashioned (like moi), and she gives me an extra discount if i run the presses for her, which is actually a lot of fun. our stuff would all be in shades of blue or green, possible with a daisy motif (jen found an old print plate she thinks would be perfect):





these are some bouquets i like. i want to use daisies and blue hydrangea (both of which grow on the farm) and go for sort of a wildflower look. i'm also thinking of putting mint (which also grows ALL OVER the farm) in the bouquet to make it smell nice:






and here are some cake ideas- nothing too wild. i'm more concerned with taste than look (ours is going to be a lemon cake with fresh blueberry filling and vanila buttercream icing- yummy), because cake is just not where i want to spend a lot of dough (pun intended). we're using fresh flowers (probably daisies again) to decorate, cuz it's about a million times cheaper than sugar flowers. oh, and vixanne, yes, cupcake cakes are still popular, and i originally thought i wanted one, but i couldn't find any that looked quite as neat as i thought they would:







yay! wedding planning! only eight months to go! (though i'm not going to go on about this for eight months, i promise...) oh, and synge, as far as bridesmaids dresses go, the color is probably going to be a dark shade of blue- either navy or something the dress company calls "sailor". i decided to go with the dessy line (which sarachkah recommended) and just let everyone pick their own style. it seems pretty reasonably priced and there are a lot of different designs, so everyone should find something that makes them feel pretty but doesn't break the bank.

the thing i'm most excited about is having all of my very favorite people in the world together in one of my favorite places in the world. that's what i'm really looking forward to (well that, and a kick-ass open bar with fresh margaritas and mojitos for five hours along with an i-pod full of all of my favorite dancin' tunes- woo hoo!).

lightening the mood

okay, no one reads my blog, i get it. or, if they do, they are too depressed by the content to comment, i get that too. i have no exciting dating life, adorable baby pictures or mucous plugs with which to draw in the readers, therefore i am making a switch. i am not promising that i will never again talk about death or fear or abortions- i gotta be me- but i am now adding wedding planning to the mix- a significantly more upbeat topic.

so settle back and breath easy; no death talk today. today is wedding talk day.

for those of you who i haven't told, we have set a date- Saturday June 24th, 2006. all of the wedding activities will take place on my grandparent's farm on the eastern shore of maryland, and all of you are invited. (well, most of the people who read this blog are invited...you know who you are...if i haven't met you in person or seen you in the last 10 years, you're probably not invited, sorry)

i have already gotten a lot of planning stuff started, because i hate my job and have a lot of free time to surf the internet and read wedding porn. i have a caterer booked (who will also do the cake and act as a day-of-event manager), an officiant (my stepmother, who is a judge), my bridal party chosen (including synge, naturally), we're using an i-pod for the music (a method i tested to much sucess at R's wedding), and, of course, we have the property reserved (being that i own 1/8th of it). i've booked a block of hotel rooms at the local comfort suites and researched all of the local b&b's; a good friend of mine who own's a letterpress printing company is going to do the save-the-dates, invitations, programs, etc.; we're making our own favors; and i am thinking that i may want to do the flowers by myself too, with a lot of help from my crafty and talented aunts. i am meeting with the rental company to go over rental and tent needs on tuesday and going dress shopping in november- though i think that i already know which dress i'm going with.

probably either this (with a blue sash):


or more likely this (with light blue or ivory detail):

the second one is the front runner- i know you can't really see it from the picture, but it looks great on- very curvy and trumpet shaped- and the ribbon detail on the back looks really cool when it's bustled. the greatest part is that both of these are BRIDESMAID dresses, which means they only cost around $300. i am still going to go out and try some more on, but i already love both of these and i know that if i keep looking for too much longer i wll fall in love with some $1000 number that would blow my budget out of the water.

that's my wedding news so far. J is being wonderful and wants to help and be involved as much as possible. he just started a second job to save up because he insists that he wants to pay for half of everything, even though i insisted that my dead folks left me plenty to foot the bill (oops! i guess i just can't do a post without mentioning the DP's at least once). now all i have to do is pray for sunshine and start hitting the gym. and about a million other details that i'm sure i haven't even considered yet.

oh, and kristoise and MAH (if you're reading), in reference to the post on MAH's blog, do you really think that i need placecards for everyone at the reception? we're doing a buffet dinner and not having any specifically designated time to sit down and eat- more of a mingling atmosphere. we're not expecting more than 90 and everyone should at least know several people they could sit with besides me and J- is it too terribly improper to ask people to seat themselves?

a day in a life

yesterday was a beautiful day in chicago; temperatures were in the low seventies with a slight breeze, bright fall sunshine, and a perfect blue autumn sky. in the morning two of my friends woke up with very different plans for the day. one got up early to catch a plane to miami to begin her three day honeymoon with her new husband. the other woke up around nine in order to make her eleven o'clock appointment at planned parenthood to have an abortion.

i spent the bulk of the afternoon before work wandering in the park and thinking about the distance and closeness between these two significant days. both women faced the day with the man who shared their position, men they love, though differently. each woman will most likely remember the day for the rest of her life, though one was starting down a path, while the other was choosing not to follow the map. both are truly adult actions, the kind i still have a hard time imagining myself old enough to experience. both are very concious decisions on how each of these women want to live their life; neither is a better or worse decision (though, in the eyes of many people, they represent the two opposing ends of the scale of social acceptablity).

thinking about my friends' days, i felt an odd mix of sadness and hope. sadness for the loss of innocence and the frightening ineveitability of adulthood; i cannot protect or prepare either my friends or myself for the whirl of emotions we are bound to experience over the next few months and years, or the highs and lows we are each bound to face. hope for what is still to come for each of us, for the support and love that they had going into their respective days, and which- hopefully- we will all have for the many other wildly divergent days to come.

i love these women. i champion their choices, and am glad that they each had the chance to make them. i hope that women can always make such choices, and do so always with love and support.

growing pains; or the one where i make a wedding all about death

this sunday my friend R got married. R and i have been friends since the first day of college, some 12 (!!really?!!) years ago, and while that is less than the 16 years i have known many of you, my small but important group of blog readers, that is still a long time. R is a part of my everyday life, she has been for the last six years, and we have very much wandered into adulthood together, both at college and here in chicago. i was MOH in R's wedding, a job which she will also serve in mine. her wedding was fun and beautiful, and totally 'them'; the bride and groom were ridiculously happy and in love, and a good time was had by all. i am very very happy for her newly married status- i adore her new husband K, they are a perfect fit, and though i am not a huge fan of his children (they are cute, but they are also spoiled, totally undisciplined and ridiculously hard to control), i know that she loves her stepsons very much and they love her. over all they make a lovely little family.

so why did i wake up the morning after her wedding feeling so depressed?

i feel like i have lost my friend, which i know is stupid, because things will not be any different now than they were for the last three years that she has been dating K, and, on an even more relevant note, i am in my very own happy, headed-to-the-altar relationship. so why the blue mood?

well, here's what my therapist thinks. we had something of a breakthrough in our last session. we figured out that absolutley all of my relationships are deeply affected and influenced by my fear of death. not just loss, but death. and not my own death, but the death of people around me. this is not really a breakthrough to many of my loyal readers, as i have discussed this before, but we did get more specific with the exact impact of my fears. i am freaked out about everyone around me getting married (myself included) for several reasons: 1. there is a part of me that thinks that anyone would be crazy to put all of their emotional eggs in one basket and count on one person to be there for them for the rest of their lives. i did that with my mom, and look where it got me. 2. being someone who has an extremely difficult time living in the present instead of worrying about the future, i see this rash of weddings as one in a predictable timeline of major life phases- everyone gets married, then they have kids, then some of them get divorced and remarried, then they start to die off. i know this is extremely morbid, but it is just the way my mind works. i guess in a more normal timeline i would include the mileposts of their kids graduating from college, geting married and having their own kids, but my parents didn't make it that far, so my timeline is a little shorter than most. i guess seeing R get married just reminds me that most of my friends are approaching phase two, which leads to phase three and then- my ultimate fear- to phase four. my therapist has already helped me discover that the reason i put so much pressure on myself to adhere to a strict deadline (funny choice of words) with my own life achievements is because a part of me is convinced that i won't live longer than my parents did. so in my mind, time is literally running out, i've only got 16-29 years left. and even if i do make it further than they did, growing up just puts me that much closer to losing more of my loved ones, and i don't think i'm going to react so well to that.

which way is Neverland?

man, i need to lighten up. and being obsessed with CSI, a show about random and unusual deaths, is probably not a healthy choice right now. i need to get a more cheerful hobby. maybe i will revisit pottery.

on a happier note, J and i were both approved for health insurance by (my hero) Aetna. so that makes us a little less likely to die young, right? at least now i can make J go the hospital when my hypochondriac death paranoia kicks in.

and the wedding really was beautiful. and a lot of fun. R looked like a princess, the ceremony was short but emotional, the space was fantastic, the food was good, the music was great (my band, i might add, playing instrumental jazz- my boys did good!), and the whole thing went off without even one snafu (well, one of the bridal party members' leather coat caught on fire in the dressing room- burned a hole right through it- but that didn't really affect the day). i only hope for such smooth sailing on my own day. though i must say that being a MOH is hard- lots of work and not a cheap job either. i'm glad that R is now experienced in the difficulty of wedding planning; it should make her a supremely sympathetic and supportive MOH for me!

well, that's my depressing ramble for the day. now i must go write fiction- at least in fiction i actually CAN control death.

a little test that told me what i already knew

a friend sent me this test that determines your political belief system. as i suspected, i am a social and economic liberal and best classified as a socialist. on their celebrity chart i fall between hilary clinton and ghandi- not a bad spot. i think it's funny that someone on the opposite side of the chart would be between darth vader and stalin. and there are also apparently also ideologies that would place you between ted nugent and donald trump, or between adam sandler and martin luther king. creepy.

anyway, enjoy. hope none of you fall on the dark side.

tagging is for grafitti artists

okay synge, here is my shamefully shaggable list, also in no particular order. i hope i did this picture thing right.
and the winners are:


i don't know why, but i have always found Ice Cube sexy. maybe it's the gangsta thing. maybe it's the fact that he's not a half bad actor, and he is definitely a smart business man, but he's still also a total badass. who just happens to make kiddie moves and silly comedies. he just such a renaissance man


talent, it's all about the talent. and PSH has got plenty of that. i can't wait to see capote. he's also kind of sloppy/cocky sexy, and that is oddly attractive to me (from a distance).


recently i have been obsessed with CSI, and therefore i think that Grissom is totally hot. it's all the science talk and his slyly condescending intelligence. and the fact that he's an entomologist who signs, speaks fluent spanish and just happens to be a sensitive- if somewhat emotionally detached- forensic genius. once again, he's a renaissance man. ( i think i see a pattern)


i can't explain it. and i won't try. burt reynolds is sexy, even as an old man. he's just is.


how can you mess with a classic? yes, he's eighty years old, but paul newman will always be beautiful .

i removed mick jagger from my original list because Ice Cube is sexier, and Mick is kind of small in stature which has never turned me on. if i believed in such things as tagging people, i would say i tag sarachkah and vixanne. but i don't really believe in such actions, so do as you please.