The last 24 hours March 28, 2008

Tomorrow it will be done. Which means today is Armaggeddon.

I slept four hours last night. I came in from work at 1 in the morning. I rested an hour, slice of pizza and water in hand. Then the shredding and cleaning began.

 I was supposed to have done it earlier in the day. But an emergency sent me out of the house. Again. My phone’s been ringing off the hook. Yesterday as I desperately tried to do five things at once, one of those things being leave the house to go to work, it rang yet again. I literally screamed at it. “I HAVE NO TIME! LEAVE ME ALONE!”

Screaming in the company only of myself. Plastering on a grin for everyone else.

Awoke at 8 this morning, with plans to clean my bathroom, weed the yard, drop off words to a ceremony I thought had been settled but apparently had not been.  I had to work at noon. I had company coming that night. It was very possible I wouldn’t have time even to dress myself for the ceremony, with my efforts to get the house in shape and feeding everyone taking priority.

My phone rang at 10. Our minister had thought we had a meeting. I needed to be down there. My plans for weeding the yard went out the window yet again. I cursed the 24-hour day and my six-day work week. I sped to her store. The umpteenth red light nearly pushed me over the edge as I let out a curdling scream while I sat alone, windows down, in my car.

I cut off a city bus. My mind raced. Could I weed at night? Can I just wear a stocking cap to the ceremony? I have to wash my car… clean house… find warm food because we no longer have a caterer… moretimemoretime I need more time…

I get there. I apologize for the misunderstanding, even though I am certain I didn’t misunderstand. She pulls me aside.

Jade, this is about you guys. Remember why you wanted to do this in the first place. Think negative thoughts, and negative things will happen. Think positively, and positive things will happen. Let it go…

(Paraphrase of a 30 minute conversation.)

 Let it go. And here I thought I was the cool bride. Until push came to shove.

I’m trying to let it go. I’ve now ceased being pissed about not having enough time. Now the nerves are kicking in full gear.

Let.

I hope all goes well. But more importantly, I hope a decent time is had by all.

It go.

I’m not yet convinced, but I’m trying. It feels better to try than to be pissed.

Want to wake up March 26, 2008

Jade says she wants to wake up on Sunday, when this is all over.

The craziness. The cleaning. The coordinating. Even the party, which until yesterday, seemed like the easiest part because someone was taking care of bringing food.

We bought enough booze that if we truly just wanted to wake up on Sunday, that could be arranged. Nevermind that I’m a lightweight drinker.

I had a mild freakout when I saw a story about the airline my brother will be flying on tomorrow, and how they were cancelling flights today to do some checking on some of the planes. I freaked out my brother too, as I told him this, but then discovered that my brother wasn’t flying on that type of plane.

I just knew, for a brief five minutes of panic, that this would be the topping on our wedding cheesecakes: now my brother wouldn’t get here either.

But it’ll be fine. I hope.

What else can go wrong? March 25, 2008

Jade calls …

“We have a problem with the food. … A big problem, actually.”

Until now, I hadn’t stressed that much about how things were going. Most of my stress revolved recently around cleaning. Which I’ve been doing all morning. Washing linens. Getting bottles ready for recycling or putting in the garage at least. Picking up junk. Putting away.

“What’s the problem?”

“You know Nick?” The guy catering our reception.

“Yeah?” I’d sent him a check a couple of weeks ago and the envelope was returned because I forgot to put a stamp on it. But we remailed it with stamp. There can’t be a problem with the money, right?

“Well, Nick doesn’t think he can make it.”

I’m thinking, oh, somehow he scheduled something else.

“Nick’s doctor wants him to have open heart surgery on Saturday.”

Well, you can’t argue with open heart surgery, I guess. Even if he did put it off, I can’t imagine asking a guy to cater food for us when he needs emergency surgery. Could keel over.

Jade is busy. My head is starting to explode. I really can’t deal with this right now. But it has to get done. So I try calling one of the alternatives on our list. Phone maze. I’ve been instructed to call a more downscale grocery store to see what they have. There are too many choices, or unclear choices. We had this all planned out a couple months ago. I’m surprised we still have the other options in the wedding folder.

Great. What else is going to go wrong? Weather forecast says it’s going to be party cloudy. I bet it fucking rains.

Not enough time March 24, 2008

We’re running out of time and the house is half clean. And the house is where we’re having the reception.

Neither one of us really have a lot of time to spend cleaning, but I have more than Jade.

I’m not in a good mood right now, frustrated with work and a class I’m taking. All I wanted to do after class was collapse on the floor. Which I did.

There’s a great sense of accomplishment when you finally catch up with your laundry AND put it away. And then a sense of defeat when you contemplate the rest of the tasks ahead of you — days before a wedding, and days before guests come to stay.

It’s getting to the point where we may have to categorize things into optional

What’s not optional
Do programs
Changing, washing all bed linens
Dusting
Sweeping
Vacuuming upstairs
Cleaning two bathrooms. The third, a little closet, is already clean
Get pop for reception. Ask brother whether he still drinks Pepsi
Get additional food in the house, so we don’t look like we never eat
Clean my computer desk. Have a bad habit of eating at the desk
Mop laundry room floor. It shares space with a litter box and is therefore icky
Get present for friend helping us at last minute
Get gift bags or something for presents for everyone who is helping us… Hmm, when are we supposed to give the gifts, anyway?

Optional, high priority
Mopping wood floors downstairs
Recycling bottles
Rewashing the sloppy job I did on the kitchen window
Organizing linen closet

Optional, probably won’t get done
Clean kitchen rug
Get rid of boxes of books to give away. Have been sitting there since we moved
Get rid of two rugs we recently replaced. I think for now, they will go to the garage, along with some dead plants

Regular tasks we need to keep on top of
Dishes
Laundry
Recycling/trash

There’s more. Jade wrote it down and I’m just writing this off the top of my head. I enjoy checking things off the list, but when I look at it, I get intimidated by what’s left. Most of it. I want to wave a wand and make the house magically clean, so I can just enjoy the thought of getting married in a few days, without the stress.

Repurposing invitations March 22, 2008

We like to save money. And blow it on other things. We had a general idea of how expensive ordering invitations would be. And we really don’t have a lot of people coming.

We wanted to design our invitations anyway. Anything we could do is probably more creative than 75% of the invitations out there. Or that’s what we told ourselves.

But we don’t know the first thing about getting things printed in a print shop. If we had our stuff professionally printed, we needed to figure out where. We needed to figure out what dimensions we were talking about, what kind of paper. We needed the right size envelopes.

The task became more unpleasant the later it became.

Until we discovered invitation kits at Target. You can buy invitations, response cards and their corresponding envelopes all in the same package. We didn’t have to worry about designing an invitation we had printed ourselves to fit a standard-sized envelope. It was all color-coordinated and done.

The hardest part was making sure we could get everything to print within a simple, raised decorative border. It required a lot of trial and error. And the kit contained 50 invites, so we had plenty of extras to burn in our printer.

Or so we thought.

We didn’t know if we wanted to do programs, but eventually agreed that it would be nice to offer some sort of general outline of what was going on, as well as acknowledge all the people helping us.

• Problem 1: We had a copy of what the minister is going to say, but we don’t have one right now. And I only vaguely remember what order everything is supposed to be in. Are we going to bluff our way through the programs? Probably. Which reminds me: I really need to locate and print out my vows, because I didn’t memorize them, and won’t have time. Without Jade seeing them.

• Problem 2: We tried to find program kits but they are sold in quantities we do not need. And then I found a program kit that looked exactly like the stuff we used for our invitations. And we still have quite a few left over. The problem? Do we have enough left over for programs? Well, we’re going to try it.

• Problem 3: The leftovers are one-sided, because they are going to be repurposed invites. So we have to fit whatever we want to fit on one side. It honestly hadn’t occurred to me that we would even need more space until I saw the program kits, and how many of them are designed to be folded, two-sided deals.

• Problem 4: We probably would like to design our programs so that they echo the design of our invites, but now we don’t have extras to burn. And part of the problem was getting everything lined up properly. Much trial and error. The good news is that we can use the template we built. The bad news is that it just may not be worth it. Plus, if we add lots of fanciness, we leave even less room for the actual information on the program. Designers: Love images more than words.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should also point out that when we found invite kits at Target, we were ecstatic. Our search was over.

But Jade is a shopper. It takes her months, sometimes years, to decide on a momentous purchase. It requires lots of research, window-shopping and hair pulling. And I’m the impatient one. If I like something, and want it, I buy it. This probably explains the difference in our savings account balances.

Jade wanted to shop around. And being new to the invite kit game, I told her look, this is a great price, we really need to get working on these invites, and where else is going to have these anyway?

You may say I’m a dreamer March 21, 2008

We have cool-ass friends.

Most of the merry 20 or so at expected to attend our wedding also are in our wedding.

We have a photojournalist friend shooting it. A friend’s mother (an EXCELLENT baker) hooking us up with wedding cheesecakes. Not to mention our two attendants and a friend handing out programs.

And a friend of ours — my private lessons teacher — and her husband are playing for us.

My musician friend is hella crazy busy. All the time. I finally caught up with her via phone this week. And even though I’ve had months to think about the music, and even though — even worse! — I’m a musician myself, I had really no clue what kind of music we wanted.

I knew, however, what we didn’t want. Pachelbel. Wedding March. Ave Maria. On my part, I wanted to rule out just about anything I’ve played over and over again in the various wedding gigs I’ve done over the last 15 years. Lizzie just didn’t want to be too conventional, since a lot of the rest of it isn’t very conventional.

So my musician friend helps me out, fishes out ideas. We’ll have two attendants — Lizzie’s brother and a mutual friend — who mainly have the job of carrying stuff. They’ll come down the aisle together… to… Pachelbel. (dammit. But it is pretty and it’ll be such a short snippet it’ll be OK.)

When it came to us, I drew a blank. My musician friend says they have some popular music. Elton John, Josh Groban (Elton’s OK. Josh Groban–absolutely not. I barely know who he is.) But at that moment my mind hitched onto a familiar melody both Lizzie and I love. I asked her, “Do you know any John Lennon?”

We’re walking down the aisle to “Imagine.” I hope they can find a good arrangement.

That one detail actually has me smiling about this thing. I’ve told two friends about the addition of “Imagine,” and they say they might actually cry. Lizzie said she might cry. Hell, I might even cry.

The addition of the music makes all of this seem much more real. Concrete. We’re gonna do this thing. Yes, it is a big deal. In front of all those people, for the first time we’ll be holding hands. And sharing a kiss.

When we first moved here, we were almost a secret to ourselves.

What a crazy, crazy turnaround.

Thank God for our awesome friends, those who support us and love us and who’ll be there for our one special day.

You may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

I said the W word March 20, 2008

I said the W word to my dad, accidentally.

We’d both been so good at avoiding the subject, and I didn’t even realize I’d said it until a minute or two after I’d said it.

We were talking about coaxing my brother into doing things he doesn’t want to.  Like wait at the airport until I can come and get him, because I won’t be able to leave work right away.

Like behaving himself. I didn’t want to come right out and say, don’t embarrass me, but my dad says, well, you just need to tell him. I know my dad would tell him if we were in the same situation. My dad already told him to stay out of trouble, something you don’t need to tell the average 28-year-old man. His wife shouted the same thing over the phone as my bro and I were talking. “Keep him out of trouble.”

Anyway, then there was telling Dad that I just wanted to make sure he would do whatever I wanted, because it was my wedding.

“Just tell him that it’s important to you,” Dad says, not skipping a beat.

Then I moved on to getting the other factor in the equation, our friend, to make sure she didn’t repeat any of the things I’ve said about my brother, to my brother.

“All of it true,” I tell my father. “Everything I’ve said about him is the absolute truth. I just don’t want my friend to repeat it to him.”

And then I realized I’d said wedding and that neither one of us died, and the world didn’t even stop for a minute.

Progress.

T-minus 9 days. Here we go.

Too late to stop the train March 15, 2008

It’s too late to stop the train.

We had to fight and struggle and claw to get the time off we needed, but we finally got it, sorta.

Even though Jade threatened to call the whole thing off because she was frustrated with our time-off situation, I knew she didn’t mean it. We’ve already spent so much time and money that there’s no stopping now.

Talked with the minister again yesterday and went over where we can expect to stand and so on. We can’t have an actual rehearsal with the minister, so Jade wanted to get it outlined for us. It’s possible we’ll try to walk through things the day before the wedding, on our own.

I’m not worried. I’m more worried about getting to spend time with everyone, and knowing that I won’t do a good job with that.  There’s also a slight problem with when I need to pick my brother up from the airport, during the middle of a bad time at work.

We’ve already had a couple more people drop out of the wedding; a friend and her boyfriend. Scheduling problems strike again. Local friends had their weekends changed, so they can’t stay all day as planned. The heavily pregnant woman is on hospital bedrest for the next two weeks.

Will anyone show up to our wedding? Is all this stress and money going to be worth it? I hope so. We only get one shot at this. I don’t think I could live through this again, anyway.

So many things to do. We should really start cleaning the house now. Do some more shopping, and not just clothes shopping.

At some point, this will all be over. I just can’t see the end of the tunnel right now.

Learning from your mistakes March 13, 2008

We’ve made some mistakes in the planning of the ceremony, but there a couple of glaring ones that we can’t fix.

Normally, we could say, oh, we’ll do it better next time.

But there is no next time. This is it. A wedding. This is something you do forever. You can’t change it.

So here’s a couple lessons we learned, but can’t put into practice:

• Do not make your ceremony a secret from your supervisor. No matter the reasons, if you’re in a scheduling crunch, you’re going to get burned, and then you can’t explain why.
• Do not plan your ceremony for a date that other people have time off. Because in an understaffed department, the supervisor cannot help.
• If you’re desperate for the time off, and you have time off the following week, but you’d really wanted a honeymoon that next week. Do the wedding the next week, when you have vacation time, and skip the honeymoon. No time is guaranteed off, not even if you’ve been begging for the last four months.

I’m really stressed right now, and so is Jade. We thought we could deal with one scheduling contingency, but now we think it’s about to get worse. I can’t be … sick for two days right around when I was begging for time off. Not believably, anyway. And certainly Jade can’t be sick those same two days, either.

Are you sure? March 6, 2008

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

My aunt abruptly asked me how our ceremony plans were going. I was a little shocked; I didn’t want to bring it up because I figured it was just another opportunity for her to tell me she didn’t approve, but that she loved me anyway. And it did come to that.

“I wasn’t going to bring it up. Do you really want to hear how it’s going?” I asked in disbelief. “If so, I have a couple things going wrong…”

“I shocked myself,” she said. “I wasn’t sure I was going to ask.”

Just as abruptly, she says, “Are you sure you want to do this? Is this what you want?”

In the wheels of her mind that I can hear from 2,000 miles away, she thinks that I don’t know what I’m doing, that I’ve somehow been strongarmed into this. That this is her chance to stop me. That she perhaps thinks she’s trying to dissuade someone from doing something stupid, like marrying that asshole boyfriend that nobody in your family likes.

“Yes, I want to do this. This is what I want. I’m happy. Don’t you want me to be happy?”

She then says, “I guess I should know by now that nobody can make you do anything. You’re pretty strong-willed.”

She wants me to go on as before, straight and lonely and sad. I’m much easier to deal with as the memory of the happy, younger niece who tripped at her heels like a puppy.
I’m being hard on her. My aunt wants me to be happy, and while she doesn’t approve, she’s making an effort. Which is more than I can say for my father.

After some more lecturing during which my eyes started welling up, she then changed back to how the wedding plans were going.

“I figured it’d be pretty rude not to ask, considering that this is a big thing in your life.”

I gave her extra points for trying, and deducted a few for feeling like crying. Though that passed soon enough.

Instead, I gave her abbreviated versions of what’s been going on, and she even wanted to know what we were wearing.