The other is a collaboration with Jeremy, called What Really Happened, where we’ll both write from different perspectives about events that happen in our lives. I’m excited about the new projects, and I’ll leave this site up for a bit until I can archive everything on my computer, but if those of you who were kind enough to link to this site could update your bookmarks it would be greatly appreciated.

So please check out the new blogs, and as always, thanks for reading!

The first wedding we’ll be attending is next weekend down in Rehoboth Beach, which is one of my favorite vacation spots ever. We’re lucky to be staying with friends of ours at their family’s beach house, which means we won’t have to fork over money for a hotel room for the weekend. The ceremony is at a church near the beach and the reception is at a vineyard outside town. It should be great, and I’m really excited for it. One of the interesting things will be the opportunity to see what choices the bride and groom made. See, before I started wedding planning I had no idea how many DETAILS there are in the ceremony and the reception. Everything from the music, the vows, the color, the food, the order of the dances, the seating, the silverware, the decision whether or not to throw the bouquet, the dress, the invites: they’re all flexible. Things I wouldn’t have paid too much attention to before – like the kind of flowers in the centerpiece or the filling in the cake, or whether or not they do a bridal party dance – are probably going to captivate me.

We’ll be home on Sunday, and then I have another 5 days to obsess about my own wedding until I hit up my cousin’s bridal shower, followed by her wedding the next weekend. Yes, the shower and the wedding are very close together, but with good reason. Her two older sisters both just gave birth for the first time in the beginning of August and one of them lives out in Vegas and won’t be coming to town until next Friday. Being brand new Moms and planning a shower on top of it can’t be easy.My cousin’s wedding will be very different from the first one we’re attending. For one thing, it’s on a Friday night, and it will be much smaller and more intimate. The church isn’t far from where she grew up, and the reception is at a well known restaurant/banquet facility just over the border in PA. The Old Boy and I are both taking the day off of work so that we don’t miss the 6pm ceremony and will probably spend the morning in our first pre-marital counseling with the new priest who will be officiating our wedding, so it’ll be an extra wedding-y day.

Last, but not least, is Jeremy’s older sister’s wedding in Philadelphia. This one is another weekender, since The Old Boy is in the wedding and we need to be up there for rehearsal on Friday night. Again, this wedding should be different than the other two because it’s taking place right in the heart of Philadelphia at an old Catholic cathedral, and the reception is at a swanky downtown hotel where we also happen to be staying for the weekend.In the midst of all this, I still have 71293164893217483 things to check off the to-do list for my own wedding, but instead I keep adding to it everyday. First and foremost must be the purchase of a dress, because with just six and a half months to go, I am going to be walking down the aisle in a bunch of white bedsheets that I fashion together with rubber bangs and safety pins.

Fourteen mediocre years have passed, and although I always kept the hope alive the whole time it was obvious during many of those seasons that the Phillies didn’t have a chance to repeat their 1993 season. For the past couple years it’s been different. Chase Utley, Ryan Howard, Jimmy Rollins – these guys are good, and for the first time I thought to myself that maybe we could do it. Everyone laughed when Jimmy Rollins predicted that Philadelphia was the team to beat this season, and now I can say it. For the first time since I was in the seventh grade, I can finally say it. THERE IS GOING TO BE A POSTSEASON!

I don’t think I can describe the amount of cheering that went on in my living room today between The Old Boy and I. I am practically hoarse, and I wasn’t even at the stadium. Although I never lost hope, I sure didn’t think that I’d be writing this post back in May when we saw them fall to the Blue Jays with an abysmal 13-2 score. Say what you want. Say the Mets choked. They did, that’s completely true. But it was more than that. This year’s team was the perfect combination of luck, guts, and heart. Check out this great Sports Illustrated article written before Philadelphia’s 10,000th loss. It exemplifies being a Philadelphia fan perfectly. Now if we can only do something about those Eagles…

Am I crazy to be complaining about nice weather? Well, I guess that all depends on your definition of nice. I am a cold weather type of girl. I love climbing into bed at night into a cold bed and snuggling under tons of blankets to get warm. I love drinking hot chocolate by the fire. I love knitting scarves to wear. I love snowstorms – as long as I don’t have to drive in one. 90 + degree weather is a nightmare for me. My forehead gets all sweaty, my hair gets all frizzy, and I find it impossible to cool down. At least if it gets to cold outside all I have to do is put on a hat and a thicker coat. Hot weather is for the birds.

That being said, I do enjoy some aspects of summer. I like going to the beach. I like sitting on my back porch and drinking iced tea or a cold beer as the sun goes down and a nice breeze starts to blow. I do not like scorching heat. As a fairly pasty woman whose Cherokee heritage is far over-weighed by her Irish blood, I do not like the sun because it makes me really pink and itchy.

I love autumn. I can’t think of a single thing I don’t like about the season. I love when the leaves turn. I love when the weather gets cool. I love wearing a sweater for the first time. I love apple orchards with their apple cider, hayrides, and cider donuts. I love caramel apples, pumpkins, and little kids dressed up like goblins. I want to watch marathons of ghost stories and the Halloween anthology on TBS. I want autumn. I want autumn now. I do not want 90 degrees, I want 55. Tops. It’s almost October, people. Am I being unreasonable?

Someone please tell autumn that I have a sweater, a cuddle, and a ton a ghost decorations waiting for it. If I don’t start smelling fireplaces in the air soon I may go crazy.

It was February 12th. I came home from work and The Old Boy was already home. I knew in advance that he would be home early, which is a nice surprise because he usually works until 10 at night. He had ordered sushi from our favorite place and had set the table with tea light candles and vases filled with two dozen red roses. When I asked him what the occasion was, he told me that he wanted to take the opportunity to celebrate Valentine’s Day with me since he would be working late on the actual day. I have to admit that this was a little fishy, because for the entirety of our relationship all that I’d ever heard was how much he hates Valentine’s Day. I’m not too big on it myself, because although I am a sucker for holidays, that particular one is kind of hokey. When I mentioned that fact to him, he replied that he did indeed detest Valentine’s Day, but since it wasn’t officially the 14th, he wasn’t breaking his cardinal rule of being a love humbug. That seemed to make sense.

Next, I was instructed not to read the card that came with the roses until after dinner, which piqued my interest to the point where I scarfed my meal down with anticipation. I am pretty sure I swallowed at least one or two California rolls without even chewing, and a piece of eel became lodged in my throat, incapacitating me for a second or two. When we finished eating and I was sure I didn’t need the Heimlich, I finally opened the card. It said, cryptically: “Look in the dryer.” So I did.

In the dryer was a valentine – you know, the old school kiddie kind with mermaids and princes on the front – instructing me to look under a specific towel in the bathroom. I took off down the hall, ran into the bathroom, and looked under the towel where I found yet another valentine telling me to look in another location in our house. This continued until I had found 60 (!!!!) hidden valentines, scavenger hunt style. These valentines were hidden on top of the kitchen ceiling fan, between specific pages of books on the bookshelf, behind Smores flavored Pop Tarts, inside boxes in closets, in between seat cushions of the sofa. There were some cards instructing me to find things that I didn’t even know we had.

The last valentine (although I didn’t know it was the last at the time) was hidden behind a picture of us taken a couple of years ago at my cousin’s wedding. This valentine didn’t lead me to another place – it said simply “Will you marry me? Circle yes, no, or maybe.” I started crying the second I saw the word “marry,” and when I turned around, The Old Boy was holding my engagement ring. I was so overcome and busy hugging and kissing Jeremy that I am pretty sure it was a couple of minutes before I even said yes, although my answer was obvious.

After basking in my joy for a few minutes I got on one phone to call everyone I knew and give them the good news, while The Old Boy was on his cell doing the exact same thing. We then drove over my Mom and Dad’s house to share the good news and show them the ring. My parents knew that the engagement was coming up, because Jeremy had talked about it with them on Christmas. They didn’t know how or when he was going to propose, and as I related the story for the first time I started crying all over again. Even now, though I’ve told the story countless times in the past seven months, I still start to tear up when I think about how much time and planning went into that evening and how adorable his face was when I turned around to see him holding the ring.

Yeah, he’s totally a keeper.

See, it seems that as soon as we women get a change to pee somewhere where the level of cleanliness doesn’t directly reflect on us like it does in our own homes we lose all sense of etiquette, descend into filth, and adopt a group mentality where lack of class is acceptable as long as someone else is dealing with the aftermath.

When I was a little girl, my Grandma Lore and I used to hang out while my Mom was at work. Okay, actually she was babysitting me, but it never really felt that way. She was a lot of fun and loved to go out so we’d often spend our days walking around the mall. We’d buy little trinkets, throw pennies into the fountain, gobble up free samples of cheese and summer sausage at the old Hickory Farms store, and eat ice cream cones while sitting on benches and watching people go by. Then we’d usually meet my Pa for lunch and sometimes catch an afternoon movie. Since I was a wee little thing with a wee little bladder, I often had to… well, wee.  Lore hated public bathrooms. She knew it was inevitable that in the course of a six hour day spent at the mall I’d have to go at least three times, but she hated it none the less.  If she knew my Pa was coming soon she’d wrinkle her nose and squint her eyes and plead “Can you hold it just a little bit longer?” Most of the time the answer was no, and we’d march over to use the Food Court john.

My Grandmother had her bathroom procedure down pat and she never deviated from it, not for any reason. She would grab a bunch of napkins from the Arbys near the bathroom entrance and use said napkins to open the door as well as to push open and lock the door to the stall. She would throw that napkin in the toilet, grab a fresh napkin, wipe the entire seat with it, and then dispose of it. Then, even though she had wiped the seat, there was still no sitting to be had. I learned the Art of the Squat when I was very young.

1.No part of he body may touch the bowl. This includes not only heinie cheeks, but also the back of the thighs that are in danger of coming too close to the bowl.

2. Pants must not touch the floor.  This means that while squatting one hand must always be holding up your drawers, but not holding them so close that you risk getting pee on them. This can pose a challenge.

3. During the squat you cannot touch the walls of the stall. Envision the walls as being made out of fire so that you’re not tempted to use any part of it for balance.

I normally really hate posting close-ups of myself, especially of my face. In addition to my oddly shaped nose, I also have a Jennifer Aniston chin going on, and some really fat cheeks. Seriously, those things probably weigh five pounds a piece. Sweet Jesus, I clearly need The Flex Effect . Those things were cute when I was 5 , but 21 years later not so much, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, back to my hair. I originally wanted a trim, but got inspired at the last minute and had Christi cut off about four inches. I absolutely love it tonight, but tomorrow when I am getting ready for work and trying to style it on my own it may be a completely different story.

Our Save the Date magnets have arrived, and I am terribly excited. They look like the image posted above, but obviously they have our names and wedding date on them instead of Amy and Mark’s. Whoever they are. Since we are about a month and a half away from mailing these bad babies out, we’re now trying to finalize our list with the hopes that we can start the envelope calligraphy relatively soon. The problem is that our invite list has taken on a life of its own and grown to disproportionate sizes waaaaayyyy above what we originally were shooting for. Even allowing for the possibility that some of our out of town guests won’t be able to attend, we’re still a good 20 people over our target.

How did this happen? I’d like to say that I have absolutely no idea, but that wouldn’t be entirely true. See, I have a fairly gargantuan Irish family, especially on my Dad’s side. My list really doesn’t even scratch the surface of my family in the sense that I’m inviting all my aunts, uncles, first cousins and their spouses, but just a couple of great aunts and uncles and second cousins that I’m particularly close to. If I had gone the whole kit and caboodle with all twelve of my Dad’s aunts and uncles and all of their kids I could easily have used up the entirety of my guest allotment just with family members. It’s hard to pick and choose, even under budget constraints.

Dress

I am almost 100% positive I’ve picked out the style of my dress! Actually, I’ve picked out two dressed that I wish I could morph into one, perfect creation. I am hiding these pictures under links so that The Old Boy has the option not to look at it, if he so wishes. Personally, I don’t think it’s a big issue for him to see the dress I’ll be wearing. I plan on staying at my parents’ house the night before the wedding, so it’s not as if he’ll see me in the dress, but I don’t want to ruin and surprises if he wants to be surprised.

The first dress is Alvina Valenta, and it’s pretty indicative of the style I want – although I would be wearing white like all fake-virgin brides do. I love the re-embroidered lace top, and I kind of like how this dress has a more gathered waist that will help hide what the girdle misses. I’m definitely feeling the V-neck, and A-lines seem to be most flattering to me. This Jim Hjelm dress is my absolute favorite. I love the neckline because I’m not afraid to show a little boob on my wedding day. The only thing I worry about with this dress is that it seems like it’s in the “mermaid” style where it’s tighter around the leg area. Although it looks fantastic on their size 2 model, I don’t know how flattering it would be once I squeeze my junk into it. Hopefully I can find something similar to both that I love.

The Music

Now that we’ve booked our photographer, the DJ is the next step. We have an appointment with a potential DJ this Thursday, and I’m excited for it. We’re both really picky when it comes to music, so I’m going to have a list of songs I absolutely want played during the reception. It’s going to be music that people can dance to, because that’s the whole point of the dance floor, but it’s going to be music that The Old Boy and I actually listen to. We’ve also started to think about music that we want played during the ceremony and for our special dances like mother/son, father/daughter, he and I for the first time. Here is a partial list:

Ceremony (Strings and flute!)

Pre-Ceremony : 1st Movement- Dvorak
Pre-Ceremony: Arioso- Bach
  Divertomento in F Major – Mozart
Processional: Intermezzo from Carmen – Bizet
Recessional: All You Need Is Love – The Beatles

Cocktail Hour
Lots of Nina Simone, Louis Prima, Keely Smith, Edith Piaf

Reception
Walking In/ Announcing Wedding Party: Happy Together- The Turtles
Our First Dance: God Only Knows- The Beach Boys
My Dad and I: You Are So Beautiful – Joe Cocker

The rest of the song list will be riiiiidiculously long, and my fingers are cramping, so I’ll save that for another day. I’m terribly excited though, so you’ll have to forgive the impending deluge of wedding type posts that are sure to be coming in the next few months!

 What happened is this: it was very very close to quitting time, and I was trying to make the last ten minutes not stretch into an eternity by partaking in my favorite time killer: using the bathroom.  At this particular branch, the bathrooms were on one side of the lobby and our desks were on the other.  I was meandering my way across when all of the sudden a man darted past me, busted through the doors (which did not shatter, but flew apart and unlocked, knocking a co-worker to the ground as she was servicing the ATM), and off he went.  The whole thing lasted about 45 seconds. The funny thing is that this robber would have needed to stand on his head and/or swallow flaming swords to draw any more attention to himself.  Not only was he abnormally tall, thin, and fidgety, but he wearing a bright traffic-cone-orange hoodie and camouflage pants. On top of that he picked the busiest time of day to rob a bank and ended up standing in line for almost ten minutes, fidgeting the entire time. The teller he chose to rob was just finishing up with another customer and not ready to help him yet. As he tried to pass her the note, she (not realizing she was getting robbed) kept asking him to patiently hold on a moment until she could help him. When he threw the note in front of her she didn’t immediately compute what was happening, and he finally got spooked and ran away without getting a dime.  It was more a comedy of errors than a terrifying event.

Everyone was fine, although my co-worker who got knocked down was obviously a little shaken up. I was more pissed that I had to stay late to give a statement to the police about what I witnessed when I had been moments from walking out the door. After I gave my statement to the police I never heard another word about it. I didn’t even know that he had been caught and I didn’t know his name until I got a letter telling me I was to show up in court to testify as a witness. Testify? As a witness? I started picturing the trial in my head:

DA: “Can you please tell us what happened during on the day of the attempted robbery?”

Me: “Yes. I was trying to kill time by peeing, and as I was walking across the lobby a flash of orange and camo flew past me and into the doors.”

DA: “Is that flash of orange and camo present in court today?”

Me: “I assume it’s that guy (pointing to defendant) but I really can’t be positive. That was a year and a half ago and he was running really fast.”

My testimony would more than likely be worthless, and the whole process would probably take up the better half of my morning. Since I just started New Job a month ago, I would feel awkward asking for a half day or more off already. Plus, I couldn’t help but be paranoid about the whole deal, worrying that if I was involved in a trial that sent this guy to prison he would get his posse to come rough me up or firebomb my mailbox to keep me from testifying. Or what if he showed up in court with a homemade shank hidden in the soles of his shoes and tried to cut everyone that snitched. Aren’t I hopelessly dramatic?

My fears were short lived, because about two weeks after the first letter I received another one, this time telling me that the suspect had pleaded guilty and I was no longer required to schlep it up to Superior Court and sit in barely air-conditioned courtroom all morning until I may or may not have been required to testify. I was jubilant. Jubilant, I tell you!

My jubilance or jubilancy, or whatever the actual word for that state of being is was short lived, because when I came home from work yesterday there was a big blue subpoena taped to my freshly cleaned glass storm door. Not only did this subpoena server get his or her greasy mitts all over the glass, creating giant smear marks (which is my PET PEEVE!) but they also apparently got lazy and instead of actually serving me with the document they stuck a piece of masking tape to it an attached it to my door. I am no expert on subpoena serving, but from the way I understand it doesn’t it have to be handed to the person being served?  What if I didn’t even LIVE at that address anymore?  Then I would never have gotten the subpoena and the court system would think I was a deadbeat, and next thing I know I get a parking ticket and they’re handcuffing me for failure to appear.  Actually, I don’t know if it’s that serious. But what if?

Also, I really don’t need my neighbors knowing my business. Some of my neighbors are the type that will make a point to ask about certain packages we have delivered or plumbers and electricians that come to the house. I’m not saying they’re spying on us by any means, just that they have really keen eyesight and not much else to do. This particular subpoena had CRIMINAL CHARGES stamped on the front of it in big bold letters. What if my mailman saw that and thought I was the one being criminally charged? My mailman is cool peoples, I don’t want him to think I am a degenerate.

I’m not going to make a big deal out of the whole subpoena-on-the-door thing, because I am once again jubilant after confirming with the Prosecutor that the subpoena was issued prior to the guilty plea and I can just ignore it. It is currently hanging on my fridge so that Jeremy can look at it and say “YOU GOT SERVED!” twelve times a day. Ah, ain’t love grand?

So, as your may have been able to gather from the picture posted above, I accidentally dyed my hair orange this morning. The light in the bathroom (where I took the shot) was actually flattering – in natural light I looked even more like a piece of citrus. I should have know better than to color my hair. I usually leave that up to the professionals, and even then I only have it done once a year or so for shits and giggles. My natural hair color is actually quite pretty and has a lot of natural auburn highlights. Still, every so often I get bored and while I’m perusing the aisles of Happy Harry’s for something or other I end up walking past the boxes of hair color and one strikes my fancy and I take it home and shock Jeremy when he comes home from work. That was sort of the plan this morning, as he’ll be out until four-ish and then we’re heading over to his Dad’s place for a cookout.

The process for this particular hair color was quite complicated, because it was a base color and then highlights. Basically what it involved was:
- applying dye for base color

-waiting 25 minutes for it to set

-hopping into the shower to rinse everything out

-blow-drying my hair to get it ready for the highlights

-mixing highlight gunk and applying

-waiting 15 more minutes

-hopping back into the shower to rinse and condition

-blow-drying again to try and figure out what color my hair ended up

I am cringing just thinking about the amount of damage that I did to my hair. I try and keep my my hair really healthy. I skip blow-drying whenever possible, I spend ridiculous amounts of money at the salon for protein rinses and heat protectant styling products, I get regular trims to prevent split ends. And here I was, expecting a nice butterscotch with sandy highlights, and yet my hair clearly isn’t interested in reacting properly to the gallons of chemicals I have applied to it today.

If we weren’t expected at a cookout this evening and I didn’t have to go back to work tomorrow after the long weekend I would probably not be in such a state of panic. But, since those two things are a factor, I threw on a hat and a big pair of sunglasses and booked it over to the drugstore where I purchased the darkest hair-dye I could find. It is currently working its magic on my head and I am praying my scalp doesn’t melt and/or big tufts of hair don’t fall out. My previously pristine bathroom is a mess from all the dyes, I have not managed to get a single other thing done today, and this color will probably make me look goth. But that’s okay! I’ll just be sure to wear really bright colors for the next couple of weeks until it fades. At least I won’t be tangerine!

Okay, I think it’s time to rinse. I’ll keep you updated on the progress.

EDIT: My hair is now back to normal. Crisis averted.