A bout of randomness

1. BM dress #4 was finished last night. Hooray!

2. It is Oldest Friend’s birthday today. She is 29, which makes me go EEP because that means I turn 29 one week from today. And I haven’t even thought about what I might like to do for my birthday, because all I ever think about anymore is wedding crap.

3. Except last night, when we went over to our friend Julie’s new place (she moved in with her boyfriend!) and had Game Night, meaning everyone except me played with a wii and some other game system and I visited with people and finally got to see the necklace Julie made me for the wedding with green pearls I bought in China back in November of 2005. It was nice to have an evening where I hardly thought about wedding at all.

4. I am really annoyed at my skin. Like, really really annoyed. I hope this doxycycline stuff works soon, because my skin looks the worst it’s been in about 3 years right now. Good thing I have makeup I can cake on if I need to!

5. I wrote out 18 thankyou notes today for the work shower gifts. When it comes time to write our wedding thankyou notes, I am NOT writing them all myself.

6. Fridays are the best days. I hope it’s nice this weekend.

7. Petra has taken to sitting in a small cardboard boxtop that has some weird poky cutout bits (one of the shower gifts was a glass creamer/sugar bowl that were stuck in this thing). I don’t know why she likes it so much. You’d think the cardboard poky bits would be uncomfortable, but she can’t be dissuaded.

Wednesday Wedding Day: Almost finished!

This weekend and the last few days:

Finished bridesmaid dress #3 and started #4
Finished a bunch of Huge Craft Project (I can’t wait to get my new camera so I can take pictures)
Cut down one of our readings to manageable size, then sent it and the other two to our readers for their perusal pre-wedding
Worked on the ceremony, still not finished
Got RSVP from the last people we were waiting on (my flaky uncle and his SO, who are coming, yay!)
Found a possible source of lemons (for lemonade) and flowers
Started to get really excited
Had work shower, received thoroughly unexpected large check from one coworker (and some other stuff, too. Also, I got to eat carrot cake which is one of my favorites and something I almost never get to eat because Dan doesn’t like desserts featuring cream cheese, so if I made a carrot cake I would have to eat it all myself.)
Called wholesale flower place to find out what flowers will be available, in case my mom’s yard and our other hookup don’t pan out
Mailed off 3 finished bridesmaid dresses and worked on #4, which is giving me fits. I’m all finished except the stupid zipper.

So what’s left to do before we leave for CA?
Complete Huge Craft Project (one more piece!)
Printing thankyou notes (Dan is doing this at school)
Design and print program (Dan again)
Finish playlist for eating and dancing
Rent music equipment
Rent kilts/etc.
Send off checks to everyone who needs checks
Give final numbers to caterer
Figure out final seating arrangement (we’re doing escort cards and assigned tables but not assigned seats to minimize family awkwardness)
Table name cards and stickers for escort cards (Dan again)
Print escort cards
Finish ceremony
Send email to photographer re: shots we want (formals)
Finish zipper on the last dress and mail it off to QIR
Make a list of everything we need to bring to CA (our car is going to be stuffed to the gills!)

Also, I had a dermatologist appointment today that I’d made weeks ago for what I thought was a skin infection on my face that I had for months. It cleared up when I took the antibiotics for my sinus/ear infections (so I think I’m right about what it was) but then as I mentioned, a couple of weeks ago I ended up breaking out in hives on my face that spread all over, and they’ve gotten a little better but not much. I’ve switched shampoo, body wash, face wash, moisturizer, lotion, changed the sheets on the bed, analyzed my diet to determine whether I’ve started eating anything new or too much of any one thing, and taken Benadryl at night (can’t take it during the day because it makes me sleepy). Still hivey. My insurance is through Kaiser, which notoriously makes you wait weeks and weeks for appointments, so my dermatologist appointment was made in January. I opted to keep the appointment and pay the stupid $50 fee, and left with a prescription for doxycycline (the derm thinks it’s stress-induced weird acne and not hives, even though they itch and benadryl seems to help). Oh well, at least it will keep any other stress-induced zits away.

And what will we be doing in CA for the week before the wedding?

Getting the marriage license
Getting our cake(s) (and possibly pies)
Picking, buying, and arranging flowers
Making a huge costco run for afterparty supplies
Find a pin or brooch for the front of my dress – I’ve exhausted Denver’s possibilities and so I hope to find one at a sparkly store in SF
Final dress fitting
Possibly purchasing longline strapless bra to minimize appearance of belly button (you can see it through my dress!)
Finding sari fabric to make myself a shrug (possibly)
Enjoying a night of debauchery in the city (seperately)

And, I’m sure, a million other things that I am forgetting. But it’ll all get done. I’m feeling very zen at the moment; the stress of a few weeks ago is slowly ebbing. All things considered, we’re in great shape (both literally and figuratively) – I mean, the people who got married last fall whose wedding we were in didn’t even find a caterer until 3 weeks before their wedding, so I’m feeling pretty good about where we stand.

All good things…

I’ve grown increasingly sad over the past few weeks, because so many of the blogs I read are shutting down. I know that real life takes prescidence over Internet Life, but the selfish part of me wants to keep reading these fantastic writers, wants to learn more about their lives, read their stories, and be able to tell Dan, oh, this person is doing this now.

Also, this weekend Dan did something that I am at once extremely proud of and at the same time a little apprehensive about. He got contacts for the first time ever. It was something he wanted to do for a long time, but started to think more about it recently and decided he wanted to go through with it before the wedding because he wants to be glasses-free for wedding photos. He has a lifelong squeamishness toward eyeball touching which kept him from getting contacts in the past, but I guess his desire for change overcame his eyeball touching phobia.

We went to the Chain Glasses Store in the racetrack mall on Sunday and he had his eye exam, picked out his new frames (he’s still going to be wearing glasses sometimes), and then got a long and frequently-interrupted lesson about how to insert contacts. His frustration was palpable after a while, because he was trying really hard and his eye just wouldn’t cooperate, but he got the first one in eventually and then got the second one in right away. I tried to coach him but I’ve never worn corrective lenses of any kind so I couldn’t give much in the way of guidance. I do wonder whether women who wear makeup have an easier time of learning the whole inserting-contacts process because we are less likely to cringe when things come at our eyeballs (you can’t really cringe if you want your eyeliner/mascara to go on right). Men don’t wear makeup, though (at least Dan doesn’t) and I wonder whether his apprehension about eye touching stems in part from never getting used to it with the mascara wand (he does the open-mouth thing that most women do when putting on mascara when he’s trying to put in a contact; I wonder why we all do that?)

On the one hand, I think it’s fabulous, because it will free him up to do things like run outside in the cold without having to worry about fogged glasses or being unable to see anything, take photos without having to navigate his glasses around the viewfinder, etc. And he can buy cheap sunglasses now. On the other hand, the only time I have ever seen him without glasses has been in the shower or in bed, times of intimacy even if all we’re doing is sleeping. Dan’s face-without-glasses is something that only I’ve gotten to see in years, something that a part of me feels is a special thing just for me, but when we left the glasses place on Sunday everybody in the mall got to see it. Also, I really like the way he looks in glasses (not that I don’t like the way he looks without) and I find glasses to be a really attractive thing, something to help distinguish a face from other faces.

As we drove home, he marveled at how free he felt, seeing the world in sharp clarity with nothing sitting on his face, driving for the first time in his life without glasses. He was grinning from ear to ear, heady with the pleasure of unencumberance. I know it’s a good thing and something he’s really happy about, something he’s been thinking about for a long time. But a small part of me will miss being the only one who gets to see him with nothing on his face, and miss the frames around his eyes on the days he’ll spend in contacts. I’m sure I’ll get over it eventually.