Insta-photo

- Hey babe!

- Hey! I got my hair run-through done today!

- Cool! Are you going to have it up for the rehearsal tonight?

- Yeah! You wanna see it?

- Of course!...Can I see it now?

- Um...sure! I'll blog it!

It's a beautiful age we live in, folks.

Fun like vacuuming

I know that there are some people who spend years planning their weddings, and I know I have no right to complain, but MAN! I can't wait til it's all over (the planning, not the wedding). Just now, I'm more excited to be done with minutae than I am to be getting married. Babe, I swear that'll change by Saturday.

Planning a wedding was fun for about five minutes. I'm pretty sure I was trying on a dress in those minutes. Much of wedding planning is dull for the participant (me), and cannot be made interesting for the voyeur (you). The reason there hasn't been many wedding posts is because they would sound an awful lot like 'Today I tried to finish up that damned seating plan, and to make it jive with the list of people I have who are attending, so that I could (a) give the reception hall FINAL final numbers (these are different from the 'final' numbers we gave a week ago), and (b) so that I could be sure everyone has a seat. Counting a hundred-odd-plus of ANYthing is tedious, but names on a computer screen is pure eyesore death. Add to that the fact that each time I count, I get a different number, and you have me up waaaaaaaaaay past my bedtime, swearing my heart out.' No one wants that.

Instead, I will give you a sample of the stock blogs I will be auto-posting while on my honeymoom: 'Spent day on beach. Read several books. Had steak and bellinis. Wish you were here.' I haven't found the 'auto-post' button yet, but I'm sure it's here somewheres.

Only skin deep

On your wedding day, not much of your actual skin is showing. The majority of your flaws can be safely hidden under a tuxedo or voluminous dress, and all you really need to worry about is your face and (for the gal) your arms.

Joel has a flesh wound on his face he's hoping will heal by this Saturday.

For myself, I'm hoping this happy little character makes a discreet exit.

There may be a lot of photoshopping done.

eau de nervous bride

today i was getting my dress fitted, which is one of those intimate procedures where you're totally regretting not having shaved, and the girl touches your bum like, eight times, and then, right when she was all up in my space trying to fit the bodice so that it didn't slide down and cut into my side-shelves, I FARTED.

there's no way out of that one.

engagement photos

aPPARently, flickr will only let you upload 200 photos per account, unless you upgrade to the pro (ie. paid-for) account. which i won't.

solution? set up multiple accounts for multiple photo sets. so here are joel and my engagement photos, taken my my sister (who's other photography can be found here). the first seven are the ones she liked best, and spent time photoshopping zits (joel's) and wrinkles (mine) out of. the rest are ones i thought were cute. particularly the one of us jumping as high as we can (i didn't include the one where joel jumped so high that his shoe flew off, because i have chins [plural] in that one). i also like the ones with the shopping cart, because i think my hair looks kind of fabulous in them, not all dampness-frizz-chic like most of the other ones.

enjoy.

stapletation

so, yesterday (being sick, and inexplicably going to work anyways), i had a zillion errands to run in the evening. in a wave of self-pity and desire to get my shrinking skin into some flannel, i cut that zillion down to three manageable errands that all occurred in the same area of town (vital for those of us sans auto) and that would (supposedly) demand little of my time or energies.

i stopped by the gym to discuss whether or not i still maintained a membership there, despite my refusal to attend (or pay) for the past four months. the answer was, bizarrely, yes.

i dropped of a (three-weeks overdue) video. thanks, no-late-fees.

i stopped by staples to get the photos for our invitations printed. one hundred four-by-four prints, four to a page, equals twenty-five eight-and-a-half-by-eleven prints, with some room in the margins. staples does these for cheap. howEVER, they charge you a dollar per cut to cut them out for you, and since these photos were tricky business, they recommended that i cut them one sheet at a time, since their paper-cutter had a tendency to slide. that's nine cuts per sheet, times twenty-five sheets, equals two hundred and twenty-five cuts, equals two hundred and twenty-five dollars.

or

i could cut them out myself.

do you know how long takes to make two hundred and twenty-five cuts? an hour. an hour! that's EIGHTY-SIX YEARS IN SICK-TIME!!! the fellow at staples was kind enough to let me use their fine paper-cutting device, so at least i wasn't stuck at home hacking away with my safety scissors, but i shiverred and coughed and sneezed out little bits of photo paper and got dirty looks from the staples-girl for phlegming on their equipment, all for the sake of a fine invitation.

the point of this post, i guess, is this. if you get an invite, count yourself lucky. not because you get to partake of the splendor that will be my wedding, but because what you hold in your hands represents the sweat of my brow, and the expectoration of my lungs. if your picture has a scrap of white border on the edge that i failed to cut off, or if the slice isn't exactly even, don't mention it. i will open-handed slap you, on my wedding day.

in which i make a large purchase

and so i bought a dress.

let me elaborate.

the first time we went to bryan's, we were helped by a woman named jordana (name remains unchanged to enunciate how COOL she was, and if you ever go to the bryan's in brentwood mall to buy a something, ask for jordana, because she was rad) who ran around fetching me dresses she thought i would like, and generally being helpful and servicable and enthusiastic, as though she were my best girlfriend or something, even though i had technically come in too late to be trying anything on. yesterday, we were helped by...honestly, i never got her name, and i probably wouldn't use it here anyways, since i have nothing nice to say about her. but she had acres of trouble finding the dresses i had marked down last time, and asked if i could help her because i might recognize them if i saw them, to which i replied that no, i wouldn't know them from a hole in the ground, which was (in my opinion) why we had written the style numbers down in the first place! she eventually found them, and led us to a room, but she was also taking care of another bride. this left me standing in a dress we weren't too interested in for probably ten minutes, while i tried to express with my body language (unzipping half the back, taking off the straps, lounging by the changing room door) that i was ready for a new dress. it's bad weddingdressshoppingettiquette, you see, to take the dresses out of the bags yourself. that's why you have a 'person.' ANYway, once the other bride left, and we had her to ourselves, she was vague and un-helpful, and any assistance or information had to be pried out of her, and she didn't seem like she knew her stuff. and then we went up to the counter to pay, and the girl at the counter was abrupt (code for rude) and also un-helpful. we were asking questions about alteration prices, and she said that she had no idea, and that we'd have to talk to the seamstress about that. she gave us the total, final, complete price, and my mom asked if that included the finishing (cleaning, pressing, fixing any teeny flaws) fee, being as how this was the total, final, complete price she was giving us, and she said no, that was an extra such and such. again, like pulling teeth to get any info here.

but let's talk about my dress. joel reads this thing, and while he couldn't care less if he knows what my dress looks like, I care, and it's MY blog, and so i won't describe it. i'll just say that i tried it on the last time i was in bryan's, and it was the fan favorite. in lieu of a vague sort of description, i WILL say that if new york were a mermaid in the 40's, it would be this dress.

do we really need a toilet bowl brush?

joel and i went registering on the weekend, and i was all like, yay! free shopping! this will be fun!!!

fun = arduous

you know how hard it is to make decisions about big ticket items? and how you want to comparison-shop and then go home and think about it and then ask your dad his opinion and then go back and get a different one? registering is making all those decisions at once, and kind of in a rush. what color do we want our plates to be? do we need a toaster if we're already registering for a toaster oven? and what of pans? are bagless vacuum cleaners really all they're cracked up to be? why are knives so expensive?

i'm still not convinced that we'll need kitchen shears, but i bartered them for a digital timer. and then there's the measuring cups both liquid and dry, the vegetable peeler, the toothbrush holder, the hundreds of dollars worth of things that you need but dont have because you've always had roommates who brought ice cube trays into the equation and all you've got is a coffee bean grinder and an air-pop popcorn popper and a wine-bottle holder shaped like a hand.

and then also it was joel's birthday, and i wanted to do something fun, but instead i had to give him a coupon for the fun thing i had thought of to do, and we'll have to do it later, and i had a spicy chicken burrito from taco bell that sat wrong all afternoon until i dumped some yogen fruz on top of it, and the low-fat yogurt + fruit helped detoxify the testosterchicken and miscellaneous spices and then i felt ok. and joel has this horrible cough which is really just a continuation of the cough he had over christmas, because he never actually got over that one, and we were trying to watch a movie but he kept having to blow his nose, and you can't get mad at someone for being sick, and when they're that sick mostly what you feel is pity and a shameful relief that it's not you, but i think snot is pretty much the grossest thing, and i'd rather die than have someone else's snot on me, even joel's. and we're starting pre-marital counselling soon, so we had to do this 165-question preparation exam, and we weren't allowed to cheat and be like, i got (c) for number 79, what did you get, so that we could look like the perfect couple and sail through counselling, because that's the point, right?

and so it was a long day, but not like last week was long. it was more productive than frustrating and mundane, and it was more fun than hellish, because i was with joel, and that makes everything more tolerable. even registering. and snot (almost).

in the family way?

so, that time that i posted that i was engaged, i got, like, a zillion comments, and then nate posted that he and erin were preggos, and HE got a zillion comments. so, in a power-hungry bid for recognition, i would like to announce that i am with child.

except that this is the post where i tell you all that i'm not pregnant.

so, joel and i got engaged just before christmas (you may recall), and we're getting married in the middle of april. this has prompted rumors of a shotgun wedding, and the time has come to inform you that, no, there will be no little rachel-lings running around within the next year. the true story is as follows:

there's a very narrow window between joel finishing school and joel going back to school. roughly two weeks worth. i'm in a wedding near the end of that window, and so, in order to eliminate (decrease? mildly alleviate?) stress, we have set the date for the beginning of the window.

i know. much less juicy.

the simple math

wedding planning + pms = unreasonable outbreaks of tears

the $ is for $ervice

we experienced both ends of the wedding dress spectrum today.

we had gone to bryan's bridal on thursday night, and they squeezed in a few try-ons for me even though we blew in at 8:05 and they don't normally allow try-ons after 8:00. i'm going to call bryan's 'middle of the road,' and i mean that with all kinds of flattering intentions. the girl assigned my case took a look at my pictures (note to future brides: look through a thousand wedding magazines, and rip out anything you like. if you like the straps, rip out the page and circle the straps. write: 'straps.' otherwise, two months later you'll be like, 'what? i hate that necklace. two-months-ago-me has no taste.') and grabbed some lovely things off the rack. they've got a comfortable and spacious try-on area, and they give you a bottle of water with a bride on it, in case you get parched, or forget why you're there.

this morning, we drove down to action liquidators, in vancouver. the interior was suspciously reminiscent of the mcc store in abbotsford. the dresses here were all about half the price of the dresses at bryan's (and bryan's was quite reasonably priced), and rightly so. they certainly weren't spending any money on decor or professional staffing. there was a man-staff lingering about, which made nakedly handing a dress out to my mom a leetle sketchy, and i really think the awkward girl helping us out thought every one of those dresses was the paragon of beauty. the ones that made me look frumpy. and short-torsoed. each to her own, i suppose.

if action liquidators was those waxy chocolates that you get in advent calenders, then sposa was lindor. SPOSA!! oh, i wish you could have been there, robyn. ALL of you, friends, i wish you could have been there. we chose it at random off of new west's bridal row, but i don't think we could have chosen better even if we knew what the hell we were doing. they only fit one person at a time so that they can give you their full attention, and so that you have command of the 360 mirrors. and not to toot my own horn, but i looked good in every. single. dress. better than good; i looked AMAZING! well-made wedding dresses are built to flatter, to tuck in all your tummy bits and to hoist your girls without giving you that fat-fold in your pittoob (pittoob: that squishy bit between your armpit and your boob. on men, it's a pittec). they're snug, but self-supporting, so they can sit flush up against your skin without cutting into your back fat. mind you, they all cost more than double what the dresses at bryan's were costing, but THEY ELIMINATE FIGURE FLAWS!!!

so it comes down to this. do i love the ones (there were two 'keepers') at sposa more than i loved the one at bryan's? and if i do, do i love it more than twice as much?

the $ is for $tymied.

the gory details

so, it all started because we have family coming over for christmas on friday, and family coming over brings out nazi-mom (just kidding, mom, i love you), and nazi-mom makes you do stuff like clean your room and move things into the garage. and so sunday afternoon, while joel was out with steve (the roommate with the cats) doing reasonably vague guy-nothings at the mall, it seemed perfectly reasonable that mom would make me help her take some things down into the garage. it was cold, and i thought it was going to be one of those you-own-too-many-things-and-need-to-amalgamate-your-storage-goods-on-to-one-shelf moments, so my relief on regaining the upper floor was tangible. THEN the phone rang, and i was cryptically ordered to go into my room, and promptly hung up on. i had gone INTO my room to answer the phone, but it took some doing to find it, so i didn't immediately notice the LARGE BOUQUET OF FLOWERS that had materialized on my bed. with a note. and a blindfold? the note read (i paraphrase) 'bundle up, come outside, blindfold yourself, give me a call.' notes accompanied by flowers must be obeyed, and once outside, i was ordered back in so that joel could use the facilities. i hung out blindfolded and alone by the front door, calling out 'it's dark! my eyes...oh long johnson' until he came back. i had to hang out blindfolded and alone again once we got to our unspecified destination, because he had walked me a ways along slippy trails and over branches (i think i stepped in poop) before realizing that he'd left something in the car. [the part of me that embellishes stories to make them a leetle better would like to say that it was the ring...'hey babe, will you...uh...damn! it was in my pocket a second ago!' but it was a rose, or something.] SO, we got to a picnic bench and he made me stand on it and took my hands and said a bunch of stuff about our relationship and all we've been through that i won't repeat here, and then he let go my hands and said i could take off my blindfold. now, i had told joel when we started dating that he wasn't allowed to tell me that he loved me, because those words are scary words, and sometimes they're lies, and i didn't want to hear them if they were lies. but when i took off my blindfold, there he was, kneeling in the wet grass, telling me that he loved me and asking me to marry him. and then i said yes and then i almost cried a little bit and then i screamed for my ring and then we picnicked on the wine and cheese and spiced meats and breadsticks that were spread on the be-clothed, be-candled, be-rosed picnic bench. oh yes, and we were at this park that he and i had gone to one time when we were first dating and fed the squirrels and he took a picture of me feeding a squirrel but my little bum crack was peeking out and that was the picture that he took with him to hawaii to remember me by, and to show people, 'that's my girlfriend, she can't buy pants for herself.' anyway, THAT's the bit (candles, cheese, park, accomplice dressed like ninja to light candles) that probably took the most effort and forethought on his part but that i always keep forgetting to tack onto the story, because the important thing is that here we are, two-and-three-quarter-years, one break-up, two summer-long separations, a handful of fights, a bucketful of miscommunications, a truckload of moments that were just right, and three little words later. and babe? i love you.

oh don piano

joel wants to get cats. i don't really want to get cats, because i don't altogether like them. they're eerily like furry teenagers, and who wants that? plus, i'm allergic. but joel's old roommate, steve, got cats, and joel looooooooooves them.


see the love? go on, reach out. touch the love through your computer screen. so i guess we can get cats. but only, ONLY, if i can teach them to say things like 'oh long johnson' and 'why i eyes, ya'...



and also, i'm a little bit engaged.