Hurry up and wait.

I've been thinking about stress a lot lately.

Trying to figure out what my stresses are, how they manifest and how to rid myself of their influence.

One of the things I've pinpointed is that I feel like I'm always in a hurry. And, when I'm not hurrying I feel pressured to get my ass in gear and hurry up. I have to make myself relax and usually end up feeling guilty the whole time. Historically this wasn't an issue for me but these last few of years I've been feeling the pressure. The clock is ticking. I realized one day, I'm not getting any younger. Okay, go ahead and laugh, I am after all only in my thirties but still, it's just now that I've finally figured out who I am, what I want to do with my life and what needs to happen to make it so. While I don't necessarily feel like I wasted my 20's I do feel that all of my aimless wanderings have made it all that much tougher to get my life in order now. I've got a lot of work to do and I feel like I need to make up for lost time.  I had something of an extended adolescence ;)

One of the toughest parts of this new found motivation is that I really really need my partner to be on step with me and help me pull this cart & plow this field. Problem is he is dealing with his GAD (general anxiety disorder) and panic attacks so he's not been able to be of much real assistance to me. He cannot handle even the smallest of stresses most days. For years now I've been attempting to juggle all of the responsibilities with more resistance than assistance. I am thankful though that he is finally seeking counseling to help get over this, I just don't know that I could take much more of it.

I see that horizon, I know that it's the direction I want to head in....I just can't seem to get there fast enough. You know those dreams where someone is chasing you but you seem to be running through peanut butter? That's what I feel like every day.

 This is the part where I get snappy and resentful towards my husband. I seem to be constantly swimming against the current, getting nowhere fast and he's no help. While I do my best to understand what he is going through I have to work double (okay, quadruple) time to not be outwardly angry towards him. Lately his panic attacks have reached epic proportions and it's been more difficult than usual. I decided to take a different tack with him though. In order to heal my resentful/angry heart I've decided that when I feel like slapping him instead I will channel that into being twice as nice to him. Instead of saying something snappy or seething I'll offer to do something nice for him or say something nice about him. Most times it feels like it helps, other times....not so much.


I have been noticing a shift in him though which is surprising. It seems that he is finally able to see how hard a lot of this has been on me. He's offering to help out a bit here & there too. It's baby steps but I have to believe that it's going to continue to get better, it just has to.


I never used to consider myself a patient person, perhaps this is the Universes' way of teaching me patience...right?

Takin' Some Time

I keep telling myself I've got far far too many other things I should be doing instead of writing on this blog but y'know what? I never write anymore. Not just here, but anywhere. No journaling. No poetry. No fiction. It sucks. And frankly I don't feel up to writing anywhere else so I'm going to do a little rambling here.

Bear with me as I muse about weddings.

I'm getting married in April. Pretty soon huh? Don't I know it.

Early on people (firstly my mom of course) told me to "be careful, weddings take on a life of their own, don't let this one become a beast!" I scoffed. (Yeah, I'm a scoffer ;)

Foolishly I thought, "not me, not my wedding. I'm going to keep it simple and under control."

Riiiiiiiggght.

The problem has not been outside pressure or an urge to please others, no disagreements between my fiance and myself. My problem is simply.....me. At first I was going super duper simple. No favors. No chair covers/sashes. I'll take the cake they offer for free and not really care what it looks like. On and on.

As time wore on I became increasingly inspired. Doesn't sound like a bad thing but trust me when I say inspired (for me) is anything but simple. I became obsessed with the centerpieces. The only decoration we are doing is the tables. We aren't doing any special lighting, no big floral arrangements, just tables. So in my mind they needed to be utterly spectacular tables. How to create spectacular tables on a very tight budget? That was my mission. Well, the one thing that didn't change in the end is that we aren't hanging any special decorative lighting and we still aren't doing any big floral arrangements.

We are however not taking their cake, I saw pictures and it's just poop. I was shocked at how bad it looked, really. Anywho, we found a great lady who is going to make us a fabulous cake. A cake I still have to desing... We scored free chair covers out of the deal since the cake was part of the package price we traded it for nice white chair covers. I saw their chairs. Lame. They are a dark maroon color when the drapes and color palette is all dark green and cream. Weird. Our wedding colors are a bright chartreuse green & crisp white. (Incidentally those are the colors of my dress as well, ;~)

I went around and around with myself on the tables looking for just the right thing to spark THE VISION. I wish I had a meter on the Internet at work & home so I could see just how many hours I scoured the web. There is a staggering amount of shit on the web that is related to weddings. It's no shit that it is a 40-70 BILLION dollar a year industry. Numbers are shaky hence the huge gap but there are so many independent people who own shops or work out of their homes that do not contribute to the statistics that it's hard to get an accurate account. It's reported that the average wedding in the U.S. costs $28,000.00.

Hard to believe. The only person I know that even comes close to that number is someone I work with who said her wedding came in at about $25,000.00. Not including the honeymoon. Most people I know don't even come remotely close to that number but I don't doubt that it's possible.

Selling fairy tales is a big business. Selling status is an even bigger one.

I worked some weddings at the country club I used to slave for that were re-dic-ulous. Waaay over the top. Whateva. It's not my thing but don't get the idea that I look down on others who do it that way, to each their own. I would rather spend my money on stuff to do while I'm there.

It looks like I'm actually going to make my predicted budget of $5-6,000.00 . It is a destination wedding, so of course it's going to be a little spendy. But that's why we waited so long so that we could be in a position to do it the way we always dreamed. Tropical. Vacation with all of our close friends and family. Oh yeah.

Okay, so I should quit crying but this really has turned into such a fiasco. Ultimately the tables are going to be a vision. I've received most of the stuff that will be going on the tables and it's all divine. I'll post pics of the reception, promise.

I had a moment of divine inspiration for the tables. It was weird, it came to me in a flash and it was completely perfect, completely me, completely unique. Somewhere along the line I decided that I didn't really want a simple no frills wedding because in the end what I am doing is throwing a party for myself, for him and for all of our friends and family and dammit, I'm going to show them how it's done! (he he he) I've always enjoyed throwing people birthday parties, being the hostess is a tough job but pretty damn fun too. And because I did log in all those hours I was able to get some pretty sweet deals on everything. I haven't paid full price for anything yet except my dress, his clothes and the flowers.

That said, I'm so tired of planning. I just want the fun part to start already. I can't imagine those brave souls that have hundreds of guests. I've got 30 and it's a bit much. Then again, the most stressful part has been handling every one's lodging for the week. Asking people for $$$$ is never fun. Having to demand it because they won't adhere to deadlines is double not fun.

Soon it will all be worth it. I just keep looking at the pictures I've got in my head.

Oh, and I'm two sizes smaller now thanks to spending half my life at the gym. It's worth it though, there's just no freakin' short cuts to getting slim and feeling better. Damn it. It's true.

On a side note:
Anyone down with Poetry Daily? There is some inspired work on this site.
http://poems.com/

How 'bout Verse Daily?
http://www.versedaily.org/index.shtml

That's my little poetry nudge.

~Peace out~


~Blessings~