Alone

Sometimes I feel like even if I found someone to talk to, there's no one willing to listen.

Like a whole new ring

Yesterday was a bad day. That's all there is to it. I called out at the library in favor of lounging on the couch and being waited on by Christen and catching up on shows from last week. There were, however, highlights:

I paid for our invitations, and those should come in 7-10 days from now (hurrah!). This is what they look like.

And I stopped at Jared's to see if I could get my mom's ring fixed, as it was missing a baguette. My mom gave me this ring a couple years ago, and it was the first ring she ever bought herself. It's not generally in my style (it's gold where I prefer silver, it's a baguette setting and I stay away from those), but I love it dearly. Since I got the ring, it's been missing a stone and I've been too lazy to get it fixed. It was also filthy from 20-odd years of never being cleaned. So I took it in the get it fixed, and the lady seriously cleaned it. Like 5 minutes in the steamer cleaned it. And guess what! There weren't any missing stones -- the ring was just so dirty that you couldn't see the one stone anymore. So she cleaned it and polished it and now it's like I have a whole new ring. Mom says it probably looks like when she bought it :) That makes me super happy.

The last gift for my bridesmaids came in. I can't say what it is, because they read this too, but they look so cool! I ordered one for myself too, and it has my soon-to-be name on it, so I brought it to work and put it on my desk so I don't feel the urge to show it off to my girls ... now, I just need to get them spelled right and we'll be good. They spelled mine and Autumn's correctly, but misspelled Shea's and Shelley's names so I have to send them back and get them redone. Thankfully, there's plenty of time for that. Yay for getting stuff for people!

I also started looking for something to get the parents. I found these sappy sweet framed poems that you put a wedding picture in that is a definite possibility. Parents like that sort of thing :) I need to make a list of everything I need to finish so that I can get it done -- my goal had been to finish getting everything done this week, but that's obviously not going to be the case so maybe by next week? Hmmm ... if I don't go nuts by then, we'll see. :)

Toodles!

Rains down in Africa

It's a shame that GTA Vice City has completely killed my love for Toto. It's still on my iPod, and everytime I hit that song in the shuffle, I can't hit the forward button fast enough. I walk into the library and Christen is listening to it on the computer (yes, he puts it on repeat). I walk into the living room and he's driving the car in GTA listening to that same station .... I just want to reach out and wring Toto's collective neck!

In other news, I am adjusting to life without glasses, slowly. It takes me less time to put them in, and Saturday I forced Christen to take me to the flea market to get a very hot pair of designer knock-offs. Everybody has good things to say about my lack-of-glasses, which worries me about how I looked with glasses, because I do still prefer them. I need to get new lenses because my prescription has gone up, so I'm stuck in contacts for at least the next two weeks, but I would ultimately like to go back to glasses full time and contacts only part time.

We finally picked out our invitations this weekend. They are very nice and way sophisticated -- and a tad expensive, but not as expensive as if we had gone to Crane or such. We stuck with Party City, because among the cheesy castle and roses invites they had a number of classy cards ... and they were 30% off, which made them much more affordable. Once they come in I'll probably post a picture so you can see what great taste we have. Ha!

Also drove down to Ellenton to putz around the outlet mall for a few hours. I got a couple pairs of jeans (the whole reason for going down there -- for some reason I fit the weird sizes better than standard), a pair of jean capris and two blouses. Christen came away with two tee-shirts, two pairs of jeans and a wool peacoat. He's wanted one of those damn coats for months, and I don't like them on men. But he could not be persuaded to stick with his leather jacket, so I am now the proud owner of a man with a wool peacoat. Hmmm.

Dinner was at Red Lobster last night as we had a gift certificate from Christmas still, and it was very tasty. Somehow we were there for almost 2 hours, but still it was tasty. I had shrimp scampi and coconut shrimp. Ahh, shrimp. Tasty little buggers, they are. And leftovers for tonight -- hurrah!

One drink or two?

I got contacts yesterday. Which is not to say I won't generally still be wearing my glasses, because I will. I love my glasses. I think I look good in my glasses. Boys like my glasses ...

But I wanted contacts for the wedding, and I figured if I got them now I could wear them a little bit and get used to them beforehand. They were a kick at work -- everyone loved them. :) Tonight, happy hour.

Knot my fault

My back is killing me (literally, slowly). Last night I worked at the library organizing the stacks of newspaper (they keep 2 months of back issues of 4 major newspapers) and for three hours I was stooped over a table fixing them and now I have a knot right in the middle of my back (right where I can't get to it myself). It's quite frustrating, really. I've been hunched today to keep it from throbbing, but when I get up I have to put my shoes on and the heels aren't helping. Thank god for my purple socks:

(note: not my socks).

I made a fresh pesto sauce last night and mixed it with penne pasta and shrimp -- it was tasty. I brought the leftover pasta for lunch today. There weren't many shrimp left (they were the extras from Sunday's dinner) so we gobbled them up last night. I could seriously eat shrimp everyday and be blissfully happy.

Orgasmic

This is the best bottle of wine I have ever had in my life. Slightly sweet with berry and heat, dry finish, with hints of mocha and coffee -- seriously, I gushed over this bottle the whole night. Served with bacon-wrapped shrimp, asparagus and green beans, and white rice. Because I drink red wine with anything I possibly can. So amazing. Go buy a bottle. Now.

Ahhh, shopping

Took the man-child and the evil sister shopping today, him to the used bookstore and her to get a dress for her 8th grade dance. That's all I've got. Tonight's for relaxing.

(note: not my dog. Cute though, even if it is a spaniel.)

I wish I could make the same sound the dog makes ...

... when she lays down to sleep. It's sort of a sigh through the nose. She keeps alternating between passed out and chewing on her leg. That I don't care to do. Christen is asleep in the chair, though I don't think he knows he's asleep yet.

I was in a terrible mood today. I had a dream that the wedding was a mess, and then I got a text from my MOH that she wasn't able to come to the dress fitting this weekend, and I just got into this funk that was hard to break. Luckily, there was plenty of wine here and Charlie and Katie met us for wings at Winghouse, so I was nice and loose and fun by the time they got here. My legs are still a little tingly, but I might just sleep that off.

Wrap me in designer sheets ...

I boned up on my sleep, and not in the dirty way. I've been going to sleep between 9:30 and 10:30 every night, and it has rocked! Except that yesterday I had a reeling headache and moped about the house eating frozen pizza and mac & cheese (Annie's organics, so at least I was trying to be a good girl) and doing laundry and cleaning. When my head wasn't throbbing, at least. Thankfully, the house is cleaned and my head has finally stopped doing the polka behind my eyes. La de dah ....

On the menu.

What I should have done this weekend was relax. Of course, I don't often relax, and as such I've come back to work just as tired as I left. At least I had a good time, right?

On the way home Friday I decided that Christen and I needed a nice night at home. I stopped at Total Wine to get a couple bottles; I stopped at the grocery to get a nice steak and asparagus and fresh bread. We had steak, asparagus w/ hollandaise sauce, and bread with Italian dipping seasonings. It was fantastic, if I do say so myself. We had a nice zinfandel with it, and a Bordeaux for afterward, and sat out by the fire pit and reminiscenced about our camping trips and talked about what we wanted from the honeymoon. Such a nice night.

Saturday we didn't do much of anything during the day -- hung around the house and did a little shopping. Really I felt icky and kept taking it out on him -- I know, I know. I tried to stop but sometimes the word vomit just gets the best of me. So we went home and took showers and tried again. We met Acie and Tom for dinner and met a couple of their friends, and then went minigolfing with them. A much better end to the day, for sure. Christen won (he was only 1 above par) and I came in second. Love it! It was a grand time.

Sunday we went to Stacy's for a BBQ, and took Lola. She wasn't very polite and kept starting fights with Stacy's beau's dog, but they mostly had fun. We had a blast, and the food was excellent. Afterward I greatly wanted to go home and go to sleep, but for some reason I was up until midnight. Lola had the right idea; she plopped down on the living room floor as soon as we got home and was still there sleeping when we went to bed.

All in all, a great weekend, but one of these days I swear I'm going to get to sleep. I evidently am incapable of sleeping in, so maybe I'll try to go to bed early? Shocker :)

Running for nothing

Someone needs to tell Molly's owner that it is not in good etiquette to leave the double gates open at the dog park when yours is not the last dog leaving. Dumb bitch (the owner, not the dog). Last night I took Lola and Jazzy (mom's dog) and my brother to the dog park for a little while. Because of traffic we got there with only about 20 minutes until closing, but at least they could run around a little bit until we had to drag them back home. There were about 4 dogs still there, but they left very shortly after we got there. The last dog to leave was Molly, an older water spaniel (I think). We hung around for about 10 more minutes and then walked up to the gate where the dogs pushed right through and took off! Jazz was pretty easy to catch - he's fat and slow and obedient. Lola likes to run. It took me about 20 minutes of running to catch her, and then it wasn't even me that caught her. The maintenance dude caught up with her in his cart.

The silver lining? She took a monster dump in the people's side of the park, and since I was trying to catch her at the time I didn't have to clean it up :)

random meanderings

One of these days I'm going to wake up and actually want to get up to go to work. Not that it's going to happen any time soon, but maybe someday. It's not work, it's just the getting out of bed that's the problem. I don't have any problem getting up on the weekend (although this past weekend I slept in more than usual) but during the week it seems impossible. I was having a dream that I was giving birth with a bunch of other women who were also pregnant (read, though: I am not pregnant) and it was very surreal -- it didn't hurt at all, but I was trying to go to the bathroom first so I wouldn't have an "accident" while giving birth and then the arms just popped out and the nurse yanked the kid out of me by the arms and I just felt empty.

Friend Charlie from high school and his fiancée bought a house in my neighborhood - two streets over! I'm so excited to have friends so close! Not that it meant anything when I lived in Temple Terrace, since my friends in that neighborhood still never called or came over unless I made the effort. These friends are a little more extraverted though, so maybe we'll have better luck. I'm still hoping that my new neighbors are cool -- I never see them, and I'm not so good at initiating conversation when it involves knocking on the door and introducing myself. I was sort of hoping to see them outside so I could stop by. Charlie and Katie came over this weekend and celebrated their buy, and they might be coming over tonight to watch the BSC game -- Go Gators!

If I were Lola, I would be furious with me. We went to the dog park on Saturday and she played with all the other dogs. There was this other dog that looked exactly like Lola except she had very short hair all over, including her tail. It looked so good! So Christen and I decided to cut her hair, including her tail. I told Christen I felt like Delilah cutting off Samson's hair. It looks so bad! I'm getting used to it now, but I felt so bad for her when we first did it. Her tail was so cute! We were just getting so tired of the tumbleweeds of hair rolling across the wood floor all the time, so we thought if she had less hair then we would have less hair. Luckily, she doesn't seem to notice. That was not the case when she shaved her butt- she wouldn't walk with her back to us for 2 days. :) I hope it grows out soon enough.

More proof of my stupidity ... and Happy New Year!

So I've told you about my stupidity regarding the lost shoes (and no, VG, they weren't even my Steve Maddens, they were my stupid little black leather flip flops with the big flower on the front), so now let me tell you about my car.

This morning I was having a terrible and weird dream where Christen coached a softball team, and kept making us move because he hated stains and bugs and whenever he saw one he would make us pack up the team and move somewhere else. So I was had trouble getting out of bed because I was oddly intrigued by what would happen next (okay, who am I kidding; I hate getting out of bed anyhow for work). So I had only about 10 minutes to get ready and get out of the house.

10 minutes later I'm sitting in my car trying to start it, but the damn thing wouldn't start. I tried not to freak out; I'm going to be late, but more importantly, why won't my car start? Will Christen have to drive me to work? Will Shelley pick me up to hang out so I'm not stranded? Finally, I go into the house and hand Christen the keys. "You start my car. I can't get it to start." he says okay, and out we go to the garage. Once we get there, he looks down at the keys in his hand. "These are my keys. Of course you aren't going to start your car!"

Fudge it. I need to go back to bed and start over.

****

However, I'm here and, well I'm queer in the straight sense. Happy new year! My new year's resolutions are: to start taking the stairs at work, and to start working like mad to finish the wedding stuff so I'm not freaking out 2 weeks before it happens. However, the stairs have been put off until we move floors (I'll die going up 6 flights) except when I go up and down to the 4th and up to the 7th, because those will be good for me. I started working on the wedding stuff, pricing transportation from the church to the reception, bought a couple more things for the attendant's gifts, and made a list of what I still need to do so I don't forget anything. Hopefully the girls will keep me on track (by "the girls" I mean Shell and Shea, not "the girls" as in my rack ... although that would be interesting ...)

I hope your New Year's was great! Mine was pretty good; low-key and all that. The usual suspects and I went out for dinner and drinks until they kicked us out at 11pm, then went to K&S's to watch the ball drop. I fell asleep before it fell, was woken up for a New Year's kiss, and fell back asleep until they picked me up and drove me home. I'm no good at staying up that late. I had prepped myself; Friday night we went to Theresa's house for a party which was a lot of fun and I didn't get home until around 2am (so I slept in the car, I stayed awake while I was there!) and Saturday we spent the whole day out in Orlando shopping at the Outlet Mall, having a lovely peanut butter burger at Jungle Jim's (my fav-ourite), playing minigolf and perusing Downtown Disney and didn't get home until after 1am (okay okay, I slept in the car then too -- so sue me!) and Sunday I broke up a family fight and sat on the couch all day reveling in doing nothing. So I tried to get myself used to staying up late, but I ended up crashing. I don't think the bottle of wine had anything to do with it! I swear!

Last night we went to DSW for new shoes for Christen and I ended up getting 3 pair (Christen got 2). I got some black wedge peekaboo toe shoes, black strappy wedges, and my favorite: silver strappy wedges (the proper term for the color is "diamond glitter"). They rock -- so cool! The girls at work are not impressed by my description of them (I was told to "get out of my cube" by Juliette) So I'll have to wear them to show them how wrong they are. :) Plus I still have $30 of credit so I can use my $10 coupon when it's good in 2 weeks. Hurrah!

Anyhow, back to the gridstone. Yay for me! (Can you tell I'm trying to be extra pumped about the new year?)