If I'm Not at the reception by Five, Call the Bail Bondsman

For the past three years it seems at least once a month I have a friend inform me that they have just recently gotten engaged and are now in the process of planning their nuptials. While I'm always happy to hear that a friend has found their one and only, I have always dreaded the inevitable turn in conversation to how 'incredibly hard' planning a wedding can be. Whenever the conversation veers in this direction I tend to scoff in disbelief, thinking that either A) My friend is just looking for excuse to prolong wedding talk or B) Friend is being a crazy bitch about her wedding and making it much more difficult than it needs to be.

When I worked in the Junior's department of Dillard's I had a friend named Jo who worked in Women's Shoes. Jo was a couple years older than me, and one of the coolest people I have ever met in my entire life. She had a pretty rough upbringing, and because of this as an adult she was a no nonsense, no BS type of woman. Imagine my surprise then, when one boring day at Dillard's I took a quick jaunt away from my section to Women's Shoes and found Jo with her head in her hands crying hysterically. Being the observant person I am I exclaimed, "Jo! You're crying!" Like I said, I'm quite observant.

Jo looked up for a quick second to acknowledge my presence before going back to crying. Thinking that perhaps it would be best if I let Jo cry in solitude (I know that's how I prefer to cry), I started slowly backing away from the counter she was standing behind. Then Jo said something that I would have never expected from someone like her, "I guess planning this wedding is really just getting the best out of me." I was shocked and horrified. How could one of my kick ass female role models possibly be falling into this utterly girly/pathetic trap of wedding obsession? My nineteen year old self was absolutely appalled by what I considered to be the utter failure of a fellow feminist. Though my sensibilities were thoroughly offended I did my best to comfort Jo for the next few minutes until Area Sales Manager from Hell approached and banished me back to the Junior's Department. While I remained friends with Jo after this horrifying incident, I am sorry to say I never saw her as quite the same kick ass feminist I had beforehand.

Until now. Now that I'm engaged my views on wedding planning and what it takes have completely changed. That is, I'm fairly certain I am experiencing payback for my previous lack of sympathy in the form of negative wedding karma. Absolutely everything that could go wrong with wedding planning has gone wrong. Here's a small list of just a few of my biggest annoyances:

1.)We planned the wedding making sure E would have time off of school and work. We of course, never planned on him getting a job that would require he be present for training in Lexington the morning after our wedding in Iowa. It happened. Guess I'm going to end up being one of those lame people who don't have sex on their wedding night.

2.)We wanted a small wedding of about thirty people and found a small venue/reception site accordingly. Somehow between parental invites and word of mouth our guest list has exploded. Now instead of a small quiet wedding we're just praying our wedding doesn't get busted up by police for fire code violations.

3.)Two of our more "persistent" exes have discovered we're getting married. We're now dodging phone calls and considering placing a "do not let these people into building under any circumstance" sign with our exes pictures on them at the entrance of the wedding venue. However, on the upside this may provide me with a follow up to my "Bitch Please" post, this time entitled "It's Time to Move On Asshole".

These of course, are just a few of the many annoyances I feel have been bestowed upon as karmic retribution. So what's the point of this post? Mainly, I just wanted to bitch. But also, if you happen to be attending my wedding and notice that I'm not at my own reception by five, I ask you to do me a favor and call the local bail bondsman. I've never been in a fight before, but I swear, I'm teetering on the brink of loosing it.

Photo Credit: {karenmphotos} & {zzilch}

Bitch Please

I've been gone for quite a while. You know the usual... There's a lot to blog about, but today I'm here for one reason and one reason only, and that's to say:

BITCH PLEASE!

You were "happily" pregnant with your new boyfriend but thought it was still important to let him know how much better you were than me. Bitch please!

I didn't even know who you were until you came into MY job and told me I better not mess with you. Bitch please!

He moved out of state and didn't tell you, now you're calling trying to find out his address. Bitch please!

He's ignored your Facebook friend request ten times and you're still not getting it. Bitch please!

You legally renamed the kid you had with someone else, two years after your breakup with him with his obscure first name. Bitch please!

We're getting married in less than a month, you broke up with him almost three years ago and still can't move on. Bitch please!

I usually try to be more mature than this, but it's just turning out to be one of those days.

Going Back

I'm in Iowa right now. Why? Well, since I'm enrolled in a few distance courses right now I occasionally need to get tests proctored. While E and I were living in Cincinnati I was able take them at the local library, however, after we moved I went to the Lexington public library and was told that they did not offer the service. What to do? Being the impractical person that I am, I decided to turn it into a month long trip to Iowa. Rest assured, there is some method to my madness. The school I attend is here, so I'm able to get my tests proctored at the university instead of arranging them at a random library. I'm also hoping to get the final wedding plans worked out during the next month, as well as spend time with my family and friends.

E and I drove out here last Tuesday, and got into my home town around 6. E then proceeded to take off right away to meet his friends in his hometown for slice night at their favorite pizza place while I spent some time with my family. He drove back the next day to see me before he headed back to Lexington and we spent some "quality" time together. At some point he asked how I felt about staying here for an entire month without him. To be honest, it hasn't been too bad yet. We've been able to talk quite a bit since we both have decent wireless plans. The worst part has been not being able to have sex.

The fact that I miss sex more than I'm missing the intellectual company of my fiance may seem rather callous, or vulgar to some. What you have to understand is, before I met E I hadn't found anyone I could even entertain the idea of having sex with, resulting in me remaining a virgin until the age of twenty. While I wouldn't say it's weird to be a virgin at twenty, it certainly seems uncommon to be an unintentional virgin (especially if you're a woman) at that age. *FYI an unintentional virgin is someone who has made no formal commitment to remaining a virgin, yet their virginity remains intact* Now that I do have sex, it's almost like I'm making up for lost time, and I certainly don't want to go a month without it! For the record though, if forced to choose between personality and sex I would choose personality (but it'd be a hard choice).

Other than lusting after a fiance I can't have, I've been keeping busy. Friday night I made (more like watched the making of) homemade macaroni with Heidi and Britt. I also got to see Britt's daughter, who's almost two now! Then on Saturday night Heidi and I hung out with Mike, his (pregnant!) wife Amber, and some other friends for awhile. Also, I'm planning a trip with my mom and E's mom to see our wedding venue. We're going to get a feel for the space so we'll be able to buy whatever decorations we still need while I'm here in town. This is going to be a busy month...

My Dreams Have Come to Fruition

Square Pegs is on Hulu!



The week has consisted of a disappointing and endless job search. In an effort to take my mind off my inability to find gainful employment E and I are headed up to my grandma's to swim in her pool and visit with my mom and brother who are visiting from Iowa. I'll be back with a real update eventually.

Shoplifting and Alergies in Lexington

This is the first official week in Lexington. E and I moved our furniture down here last Thursday, but had to wait until a few days ago to actually move down here ourselves. Things have been going alright so far. Our new apartment is great; I never realized just how much it would mean to have quiet neighbors and our own washer and dryer. Incidentally, said washer came in quite handy after Adin, for some reason, was unable to hold her bladder during the measly 1.5 hour drive between the old and new apartment...

E had his first day of work yesterday. He's working as a camera operator at a retail store. You know who I'm talking about, the guys who are usually in their mid twenties to early thirties who wish they could get a job in law enforcement but are too much of an ass (which is saying a lot) to get along with other officers. So instead, they sit in a small room by themselves for ten hours a day praying that a twelve year old will steal a pair of panties so they can show them who's the boss. Yep, that's my fiance. To be fair, as far as I know he's not like that on the job. He's also not quite in his mid twenties yet, and he just needed a job that would work with his school schedule. Anyway, the job seems to be going alright. My only concern is his probationary period. Apparently if he doesn't get enough stops during his first few months on the job they may let him go. This has led to me pondering which scenario would be worse: E loosing his job, or me being arrested for shoplifting. It's not like I'm having any luck finding a job anyway...

One down side to Lexington that I have noticed, what's with the air here? I swear, I've never had allergy problems in my entire life, but now that we've moved it seems I'm sneezing, wheezing, and coughing all the time! During an interview today I had to put more effort into holding in a sneeze than I did answering my interviewer's questions. At the end of the interview when she asked me if I had any questions for her I had to fight off the urge to ask whether or not the air here is physically doused with pollen by some supernatural being or if it just seems like it.

All complaints aside, Lexington is turning out to be a vast improvement over Cincinnati. Of course, it would really take effort to rival the atrocity that is Cincinnati's west side.

It's All How You Document It

It's been quite a while.

What have I been up to since December that has kept me too busy to write? Well... I've been finishing up my final 28 credit hours in order to complete my BA, working an internship, attempting to maintain a healthy relationship with my fiance, planning a wedding, looking for a full time job, working on a new web project, and preparing to move Lexington.

I can honestly say that the past six or so months have been the most hectic and stressful of my entire life. However, because I have already not been blogging about them, I've decided that I'm going to pretend that the overwhelming stress never happened.

It'll be like that time my dad and I went to the Pirate's Dinner Adventure Theater in Orlando, Florida. The performance was horrible, especially since it was meant for children and not adults. However, we decided we'd still like to look back on it fondly. So, after the performance we decided to take a ton of pictures like the fun loving fools we are. Now every time we pull out our vacation pictures from that fateful trip to Orlando we look a this Pirate Dinner Adventure photos and think, "Damn, that was a good time!"

That's what I'd like to do for this time period in my life. Because, overall, this is turning out to be a great year. Getting engaged/married to E, finishing my BA, starting my life, these are all major milestones. I'd hate to look back on this time period ten years from now and only remember how incredibly stressful things were.

So yes, I'm in deciding right now that I am not going to go back and update everyone (all two of you) on the past six months. Instead, I'm going to focus on the here and now. The move, the job, the marriage, everything that's happening that I'm so incredibly excited and happy about. And ultimately, ten years from now, those are the things that I'm going to want to remember anyway.

Early Christmas

E had the day off yesterday so we decided to celebrate our early Christmas. We're both somewhat shy and absolutely hate the whole Christmas tradition. You know, the one where everyone gathers around at Christmas and each family member takes turns opening their gifts while everyone else watches them... I especially hate coming up with something to say afterward, because without failure I either don't know who the present was from, or I'm not exactly sure what the gift is or why it was given to me. It's just too much pressure!

Anyway, in order to cut down on the amount of gifts we would have to open in front of our families, E and I decided to go ahead and exchange our gifts to each other. After much thought and advice from family members and friends, I decided to get E the Ipod Nano in black. Thankfully, he seems to love the gift. Right after opening it he started talking about going to Target to get the Nike running kit to go along with it. Hehe. I originally wanted to get that to go along with it, but we made each other promise that we would stick to a strict spending limit this year, and alas the purchase of the Nano didn't leave enough in my spending limit.

As for my gift, E got me a couple of things! First, he got me this cool battery charger/tire pump for my car. I've been having a lot of problems with my cars air valve lately. Every couple of monts it seems to be suddenly cracking and causing me to get a flat tire. E's been with me every time it's happened and has been able to take care of it, but I know he's been worried about me being by myself when it happens and not knowing what to do. So yeah, this thing will defintely come in handy, as long as he teaches me how to use it! He also got me a new digitial camera! It's one of those cute Nikon cameras (the one's in the Ashton Kutcher comercial), and it was much needed. My Sony met it's fate a while back after I managed to scrath the lense while carrying it in my purse. I'm not sure how this happened, but if anyone was able to pull off such a feat, it would be me.

In other news, tonight is The Office Christmas special! Some may not find this blog worthy, but I LOVE The Office, and the Christmas special is almost always my favorite episode every season. They didn't have one last year, so I'm hoping this years encompasses the the hilarity of two specials wrapped in one. I don't think E realizes it's on tonight, so I'm going to try to make it into a little Christmas event for him. I'm thinking hot cocoa, those white chocolate covered pretzels, and some type of appetizer. I just want to do something nice for him. He's feeling kind of down about the possibility of not being able to go home to Iowa this Christmas.