Daily Archives: August 21, 2002

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Okay, last post for a while, I promise. I’m moving to the laptop where I will write.

For a while now I have been sneaking tastes of Going Bridal, a truly well-written blog that details a bride-to-be’s insanity of planning her wedding. Having gone through this personal hell not once but twice, I enjoy her site immensely. (Just to be clear, I only actually got married once.) Anyone who has been through Wedding Hell should check it out.

I don’t know if I could have been that erudite whilst in Wedding Hell. I recently found a whole file of e-mails to people during the six months, however, and I appear to have had some sort of sense of humour. (Except when it came to the co-ordinator at the McMichael Gallery, where we had our reception, who tracked me down at 8:30 am the day of my wedding at the hairdresser’s to tell me that everything was under control and not to panic. Not to panic? Well, thanks; now you’ve got me worried, passing your worry-germs on to nice, calm me, who was actually having fun with my maid of honour and the hair stylist until you called.)

Example: On September 10, 1999 (that’s fifteen days before the wedding) I found this in an e-mail I had written to our musician, a lovely flautist:

“Well, the wedding hell that everyone warned me about with such glee is beginning. The odd thing is, it seems to be everyone else who’s obsessing about it, not Ron and I, nor our parents!”

And warn us with glee they did. We planned everything down to the last minute and the co-ordinator at the McMichael still managed to mess things up, forgetting we had asked for a full bar service (fixed seven days before the wedding, thank goodness), forgetting we had asked that the gallery be open to our guests (fixed two days before the day), and conveniently forgetting our entire schedule so that the reception room wasn’t ready for the guests when they arrived. (With grim and great joy my husband sent Taras and MLG after her. Muah-hah-hah-hah-hah.)

Also found this gem from the same day:

“Ah, yes, that game called “Real Life” where if you miss your perception check you either end up owing a lot of money or with a healthy chunk of foot in your mouth. In the words of the Immortal ROb, “Real Life? I hate that game”.

You forget, Marc, this is the guy who said he had until Aug 25 to tell us if he was coming or not. […] Or maybe he’s just trying to be funny. Please note that the very stressed bride-to-be isn’t laughing.

Rain “rescue me from wedding hell” Murphy”

That “guy who said he had until Aug 25 to tell us if he was coming or not” was in fact the best man. He eventually sent us his reply card so he could actually be counted among the final number in order to be fed.

A day later, September 11, 1999, the subsequent message sent out to the same people:

“Apology graciously accepted. Things aren’t funny these days, just very irritating. If one more person asks if I’m nervous I’ll eat their liver. No, I’m not nervous; it’s everyone else’s stupid questions I have to put up with. And that includes the wedding co-ordinator at the McMichael and the attitude-problem minister in charge of the Doctor’s House. I’m fine; Ron’s fine; the parents are fine (even though Ron’s great-aunt is positive his mother collapsed of stressing out over the wedding (ha!)). We’re not stressing out over details like people seem to keep gleefully hoping. We’re stressing out because we’re trying to keep up with normal lives while making final lists for travel, outfits, scheduling, putting up with stupidity and people not thinking things through on their own. […] You know how much I hate organizing things and making sure everyone is set. Well, some people are conveniently forgetting that. All this to say that tempers are short and please be careful.

“Gods this was depressing. My deepest apologies back at both of you. I – we – are going to need a lot of support and understanding in the next thirteen days. Yes, thirteen days. And I *still* have to buy stockings. Sigh.”

I think I ended up buying stockings less than a week before the day. Yes, I bought two pairs – just in case. One is still in the package. The other pair which I wore doesn’t even have a run.

That’s as bad as I got, though. Didn’t lose my temper with my husband-to-be, or with any parental unit. I remember being surprised that we were as relaxed as we were. (I sincerely hope we disappointed the McMichael co-ordinator, and all of the elderly relatives who were being doomsayers.)

No, I certainly don’t miss organising a wedding. But I am enjoying being a voyeur over at Sara’s Going Bridal. Especially since she’s making a corset to wear under her dress. Ooooh. Maybe instead of a nice blue patterned satin I’ll do one in sage green.

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So I took the plunge and before I went to Pennsylvania to meet a bunch of people I’d never seen in person before, I made up business cards. You know, so I wouldn’t have to find a pen and scribble my e-mail address on a scrap of paper that people would lose the first time they sent their jeans through the wash.

I say “plunge” because on a business card one usually puts one’s career path or job description somewhere. No longer being in sales or management, I got to choose how to describe myself.

I chose the word “writer”.

I mention this because I just came across the first one I did, put aside for sentimental reasons. I quite like it. It’s stuck on my monitor now, so I can remind myself frequently.

AAAAUGH! Organ music on CBC Radio Two! Quick – to the Moulin Rouge CDs!

Contradiction

Yesterday was another odd day.

I met with Ceri to exchange our creative efforts for the two previous weeks, and I was late; I had been involved in my writing, finally looked at the clock, and proceeded to dash about trying to print things out, change, and catch a bus. I hate being rushed. I also dislike waking up and being slightly out of sorts, which I was yesterday; not in a bad mood, just slightly out of step with everything else. Ceri offered me tea and made me a grilled cheese sandwich, like any good Maritimer would if you collapsed in their kitchen and said, “I feel wrong.” It helped. So did the Advil.

I had dinner with MLG which was as enjoyable as always, and yet uncomfortable on other levels. We’d made the date previous to my implosion on Sunday, so rather than having an evening getting away from it all, we ended up troubleshooting and problem-solving, which isn’t a bad thing, just not what I had originally intended. Although I am an excellent listener, I am admittedly reluctant to ask people for help, and these days I’m incredibly blessed to have people who see that I need it and give it to me whether I’ve asked or not. I think that reluctance partially stems from the belief that my feelings and problems are private, and partially from the desire to not burden others (who have their own problems) with mine as well. To a certain extent, it’s also learned behaviour: throughout high school and CEGEP, my friends would pour their problems out to me, but when I tried to share my own, they were uninterested. The idea that people are determined to get me to talk and open up is rather new. I am, however, looking forward to a day when I can have a conversation with other adults that doesn’t revolve around my problems. I get twitchy when a conversation rests on me for too long and start looking for a place to hide, and when you’re in a corner at a pub with a single rather sharp individual, hiding is rather difficult. I suppose this is good for me – doesn’t it build character or something?

Apart from dinner being terribly delicious (nothing like colcannon when you need comfort food!) and being introduced to Boddingtons, I acquired a battery for my laptop, hurrah! I got home and spent an embarrassing amount of time looking for the slot to install it before realising that the only logical place for it to go was the CD-ROM drive slot, so I took out the disc drive and lo and behold, the battery slid right in. The unit didn’t self-destruct when I turned it on this morning, so I must have done something right – it has even produced a battery indicator on the display. I feel more freedom already. The Loyola campus library is three minutes away from me, and I have many fond memories of hours spent there before and after class during my BA years; there’s also a perfectly lovely park across the way which I will have to test out soon as a writing location as well.

I have an odd contradiction of feeling about my home these days. I want to cocoon, to stay home, read, and write; on the other hand, I’m feeling a little house-bound by the recent weather and want to be Out Doing Things. The latter is a very new experience for me, so I’m indulging it at the right times. In fact, Ceri and I are headed for more fabric stores today, questing for the perfect trim for sewing projects. Little expeditions like this are just perfect; they get me out, I can read on the metro, I share a couple of hours with another intelligent life form other than a cat, and then I’m home again. I have discovered by not working for an employer during the week, I no longer feel like I Have To Have Fun on my days off; as a result, when the sun goes down I no longer feel as if I’ve wasted a day somehow. This is a definite improvement.

They say it will rain this weekend. They said that last weekend too. I’ll believe it when I see it.