The decorating was all to be done the day before the wedding. My mom forbid me from helping. So when the parentals left in the morning, I was home alone for a while to just tinker around and worry. Not good.

They came home for lunch, and brought my Uncle Matt (dad's brother) with them, so the four of us ate together. Then they all left again, and I tried to call the MoH back because she had called me earlier in the day. Mom had wanted me to do something with fiance, but he was planning on spending the day with his BM, his cousin Dan, who did not get there until much later in the day than he had counted on.

Anyways, MoH was out with some girls from highschool apparently (none of which I had invited to the wedding), and when she said she was coming to kidnap me for the afternoon, she really meant all of them were coming too. This made for awkward times.

I just kind of tagged along on their already planned outing. It was a lot like highschool in that I didn't really fit in. But then they started asking all about the wedding, and I felt really uncomfortable. I invited them out of guilt.

When I was finally able to escape to get ready for the rehearsal things got stressful. Parentals got back home and informed me that after 7 hours the decorating was no where near being done. We all had to change into nicer clothes because we were working under the impression that fiance's side of things were all going to be jazzed up.

We get there on time, which turned out to be early by everyone else's watches. Fiance and his family are all just wearing normal clothes, so we looked way out of place. After various bloopers (including the church guy making a big thing over thinking that we were going to repeat the vows even though I had already insisted that we not do that) we went to Olive Garden for the rehearsal dinner.

After that, I was still forbidden from helping to finish the decorations, so my MoH dropped me back off at home to sit by myself some more. Fortunately fiance and Dan came over to play Bocci ball (like I had wanted to in the afternoon with them and MoH, but no one cooperated), which was pretty fun.

I was so stressed, but believe it or not I actually got some decent sleep that night.

I figure that to fill in on what all happened while I was gone, I should start at the beginning.

There wasn't one.

My MoH sent out emails to everyone, but no one could attend. She gave me a card, and Amanda (1 of the 2 people that had promised a party earlier) had given her a card for me. Both had gift cards in them, so she took me shopping and I bought some of the stuff that I had forgotten to put on the registry.

It was fun to spend time with her, but it was basically a bust. I guess that's just another experience I will have to miss out on. I guess the thing that bums me the most is that then fiance had 2.5 bachelor's parties, and I didn't even get 1 party myself.

I guess that if I had invited more of the girls from highschool to the wedding sooner, they would have been able to come to a party. But I never really meshed with them anyways, so the experience would have not been what I had hoped then either. Oh well.

I survived the whole finishing-planning-last-minute thing, as well as the wedding, as well as the honeymoon and am now safe back in the apt.

Marriage liscence was waiting at my parents house when we got back from the honeymoon. The lady at the courthouse spelled my mom's name wrong (with a G instead of a J), even though I had spelled it out for her. My mom says that we have to file for a correction because of that. Sounds like a pain. Is it necessary?

I'll have to do better JE's about the various things I've done over the past 3 weeks. For now I'm going to try to go back and catch up on everyone else here, which will take a while since I literally have not been on the dot for the entire time I've been gone.

Ok, so here is my freak out...

I am really really stressed right now. I do not want to go back to P-town next week. My mom is apparently big time freaking out over the wedding, and she's stressing me out through emails and IM's about everything.

Just so that you have an idea on how crunched time is at this point: 2 weeks from today. That is when the wedding will be.

The extra flowers we had to order have not been started on yet. They are silk. My mom said that the florist was "going to start on them early next week". So now I am worried that this will not be done. It's not a terribly large order so once she starts it shouldn't take that long. I just did not want to have to worry about this.

I no longer have a hair appointment. Because the hairdresser my mom wants me to have might not be in town that day anymore. But my mom wants to hold out and wait on her. Or I have the option of trying to find a new hairdresser when I get back into town which basically gives me a week. Not something I wanted to have to worry about.

Still have to schedule engagement photos. Which I can't do until I get into town, and mom makes it sound like she isn't going to do it, even if I said "this day and time".

Have to talk to church man next friday. Have to make my list of the changes that need to be made. Expecting this meeting to go very badly. I wasn't happy with the way he did some of the things at the last meeting, and I told fiance that. I did not tell fiance my solutions though, because I knew that would be a fight. Better to just tell everyone all at once. Because I am not backing down.

Bridal Shower Attempt 2 is making a little more progress, but I still don't see it coming to fruition. 2 weeks left, and no invitations sent out. No day or time picked out. I may email her back again and tell her not to bother, because right now I feel like this is a pointless additional stress.

This could just be that I am still pissed off at my mom right now. She asked me if I wanted to come back with my dad on Sunday, so as to have a few extra days to work on stuff. I wanted to scream "NO!!!" because that is a few extra days of stress under her constant fretting and picking.

Wedding registry is a sodding mess. I made several attempts at correcting it (while talking to mom -- bad idea) but for some reason the damn website logged me out every time I clicked a link, so I was only able to remove 1 thing, but I couldn't put the additional things, including the replacement dishes, on there. Fuck.

While I talked to mom, she reminded me of all the things I will be busy doing when I get home, which I didn't want to think about at this point. I wish she would have let me bring some of the stuff here to work on, because I've got all the fucking time in the world, but I have to wait until I am under her supervision and this huge anvil of a time constraint to work on it.

I am just so frustrated right now, because I feel like it's not going to come together and it's going to be totally miserable. I don't understand why mom went through all that harping to make me stressed out with her "all these things are not done yet and I am totally freaking out on my friend from stress" and then try to make it better with "oh, I'm sure it will be fine" when I told her she was making me feel not confident.

This is going to be a disaster. I can't wait until it is over with.

Finally we have airconditioning in our apartment. Considering it cleared the 85 degree mark inside here the past couple of days, it's about time.

When the landlord called after the repairman left, I asked him for a discount on rent because we were without heat for 3 months and air for an additional month. We get $50 off now.

He tried to make me feel guilty by saying how he paid "a considerable amount" to heat the apartment below ours (which is empty) so that we would not freeze. Which he immediately relented saying that if it had been rented out, the heat would have been on anyways. To be honest, I think half of the units are empty right now due to disrepair.

After he conceded on the money off, he asked if we would be renewing our lease. To which I tried not to laugh.

The one thing I am afraid of is that he will now try to cheat us out of our deposit money to "recoup his losses" which will make me very upset. I am used to cleaning for dorm inspections, so I know how to clean. The place was such a mess when we got here, it will be in better shape when we leave, no matter what.

I don't feel bad.

Previous

Went home Friday night, because my dress was supposed to be done then. While fiance and I were still trying to get through the traffic to leave town, mom called and said they had to reschedule my appointment for Saturday because the shop was too busy to see me that night.

When mom and I got there Saturday morning, the seamstress told us that apparently she had misbilled us, and they had not done all the alterations. They had the dress a whole month, but did not notice the billing problem, or the fact that it was still all pinned until I got there that morning. They promised the dress would be ready in 2 hours. We came back and I tried it on, and the woman had to make additional changes, which she said would just take a few minutes while we waited, but ended up taking a while. It is at home now. Hopefully it will be ok.

Mom and I picked out a bunch of random stuff to use for table decorations. The central theme is blue/white/silver, but no two tables will be alike. I'm not really sure how to have a unifying element to make them all seem like they sort of go together.

My maid of honor is an absolute love. I wish I had asked her sooner, because she is such a help to me.

I exchanged fiance's suit pants for ones that will (hopefully) fit him better. It was at this point that mom realized that I had bought the suit, and began researching the wedding payment etiquette. Obviously the bride's parents aren't supposed to be paying for everything, and yet right now they are. Fiance's mom hasn't offered to pay for anything (at least as far as I know, I guess she could have asked him, and since he doesn't know/care about weddings, he just told her not to pay for anything). So my mom said she'd pick up the suit, because she feels bad for me paying for it, and now we're both afraid that fiance's going to pay for the rehersal dinner, even though his mom is supposed to. Mom's kind of bent out of shape about it, and so am I. But how do you really say "um, you're supposed to be paying for stuff too"?

Fiance's older half sister apparently asked how the wedding plans were going, and he volunteered that we each had one attendant now. She (as I knew she would) said "oh great! now you can include my kids in the wedding party". *sigh* He apparently got us out of that some how, but I'm sure it's only a matter of time before it comes up again (like everything else that people didn't immediately agree to).

(like the rings, which I bought both of as well in order to end the recurring arguments)

According to the wedding website, there are 31 days left. I don't know how I should feel about that.

Um, so in the ongoing saga of "the damn heat/air don't work" today the landlord and repairman are supposed to come by to put in the new heating unit. Which will be fabulously wonderful until the end of the week when it will be too hot for heat.

So, I asked him why he can't make the air work today too. Because, honestly, it is hot enough in here right now to run the flipping air conditioner. But he said that in order to charge it properly it would have to be "at least 75 outside" and "at least 85 inside". Which I think is bullshit because over the weekend, I heard it only had to be 55 outside to charge an air conditioner (it is supposed to be 65 today).

Any more information?

I don't know why I ever feel like writing about the wedding (I don't really feel like it right now though) because I hate talking about it. I don't even like to think about it that much because it stresses me out.

Last night I bought fiance a black suit to wear. It's pretty nice. Going to see if I can exchange the jacket for one with fewer buttons later on because they only had the 3-buttons at the store. I also bought the wedding bands.

Still need to find ties, bells, I guess a veil. Try to restylize the new invitations to match the old ones (since fiance had one more invitee than we had invitations, last minute). Select music.

I have to finish the stupid registry too. We don't have enough room for the stuff we have now. I'm tired of the registry. I feel like most of the guests won't buy presents anyways. Probably not getting a party...

I talked to Amanda finally. It was a little more than a week after the party was supposed to have been. Apparently her and fiance had gotten into a big fight about it, and he had prompted her to apologize. I still had to initiate the conversation with her. She made me feel like a burden. I certainly don't feel like making things any easier on her this time around.

No word from Priscilla. Probably won't get an apology from her even if I ask for it.

I guess I have a maid of honor now. I don't really know why I ended up asking her. She already had a dress she wore in someone else's wedding that would work fine. My mom finally stopped harrassing me about not having any attendants. Fiance better hold up his end of the bargain and ask his cousin to be his best man. Because if he asks one of the two friends he had planned on asking (whenever I decided to outlaw attendants) I will probably recancel them and have to figure out a nice way to unask the poor girl. Oh good, he just finally asked him, so now I guess I can stop worrying about that.

Oh, and I also have to tell the church man that everything we agreed on last time I have changed my mind about. Because I didn't really like what we agreed on before anyways, I was just not in the mood to talk about it then. I guess I should tell fiance about it too. Not looking forward to that argument.

Looks like the migration away from slashdot (to multiply) seems to have worked this time. I know that I personally do not post much but I always liked reading stuff from everyone else. I have no intentions of moving at this time for various reasons (no threaded comments!, if I wanted you to see my pic I'd find a way anyways, already have too many journals that I don't write in).

I should probably just close down this account, since the amount of time I spend here is no longer justified by the amount there is to actually do/read. I probably won't be able to make that step though.

Only I didn't really cry much. And there wasn't a party.

Months ago I may have mentioned that my "friends" Priscilla and Amanda had offered to throw me a bridal shower. Indeed that was all they would talk to me about for the first couple months. And as soon as they picked the date and the place I stopped hearing from them at all.

So as the date draws near and I don't know what time I'm supposed to be at the place. So at that point I figure that they canceled the party and didn't bother to tell me. Which sucks, but since they are sucky friends it's not like it's out of the question for them to do that. My mom and fiance kept trying to tell me to be positive because surely they wouldn't have been that inconsiderate.

So the day of the party I still haven't heard from them. So I call Amanda first because I have her home number and ask her what time and where I needed to be that night. She says she doesn't know and that I should call Priscilla.

So I call Priscilla and ask her the same questions. She says she doesn't know and that I should call Amanda. So I tell her that Amanda had told me to call her. So she says she has to call Amanda and that she'll call me right back.

The gist being that yes, the party was canceled. Not even that it was canceled but that it had never been planned or even thought about. The bad part is that Priscilla tried to put all the blame on me and had about 5 non-concentric excuses for why there wasn't going to be a party.

Worse yet is that my mom feels bad for me. And yet she still wants me to ask them to help in the wedding.

Worst is that Rachel's party is on Saturday. I wasn't even invited (not that I would have gone) and that there was apparently plenty of time and people to come and they spent all their time planning her party instead of mine, even though she wasn't even engaged when they had promised me my party.

Priscilla asked if there was a time they could reschedule but she did not sound apologetic or even interested. Mom says I should let them try again, but I think that would be pretty pointless.

I'm not really disappointed, because I expected this would happen. I still feel pretty shitty though. I guess what's really the worst is that I know they don't even feel the least bit bad.

I've been sick again recently, which is why I've been MIA this time. I'm not fully better yet, so I'll probably still be catching up for a while.

Anyways, I have a CitiBank credit card. I had it for years, but only just now started using it because for some retarded reason I thought it would be a good thing to do. You know, try to start building good credit and shit.

Well, since I no longer live at home, I used their web interface to change my address to the apt here, so that I would be able to get my statements promptly. I got my first statement, paid the bill early, using the online interface once again.

I never received anything from them in the mail. So today I figured I would check online to see if it had my address wrong. My current bill is twice as much as I was expecting it to be. Never got any statements in the mail here (and my mom did not include any in the mail that she sent me last week, so I don't think they went there either). My address is listed as being here, and since I got one here I have no freaking clue what happened to the other ones.

Apparently one was supposed to have come like a month ago. So I have outrageous fees listed on my online statement because I have a "late payment" or something. Or maybe the email they sent me about my last payment still being early wasn't really processed until several days after they sent the email, so that one was late. Either way it's not really fair. I certainly would have paid my bill on time if they could have been bothered to send it to me.

I'm going to have fiance look over it when he gets back home from work to make sure I am reading this correctly. If I am then I am going to call them and complain and see if I can get them to take the late-fees off. If not I will pay the balance and cancel my card. Because this is fucked up. Actually I might cancel it even if they do take the late-fees off, because I don't like to give morons more than one chance with my money.

Back in December (like the first weekend of December) I did something bad to my ankle. I call it a sprain, but I'm not sure that's the proper term for it, since I never saw a doctor about it. I kind of twisted it and landed on it taking a bad step down off a curb.

It never really stopped hurting, although I regained most mobility and could walk without much pain. It would more flare up every now and then based on what shoes I wore and how cold it was.

Anyways, last night as fiance and I were leaving campus I managed to take a bad step on some uneven pavement and wrench it pretty good again. It didn't hurt as much as it did the first time, but now the pain is quite noticable again.

I suppose I need to start looking for a doctor here. Right now I don't think it is strong enough to drive on (it's my right ankle) and I don't want to burden fiance. At least I brought my ankle brace with me. That should help with my random stumblings around the apt.

Ribeye steaks with baked potatoes. We drank Pinot Noir with this. The ribeye actually ended up being nice and red on the inside still. Usually I guess we end up with thinner steaks so they cook all the way through. The wine actually seemed to cancel with the ribeye which was kind of weird. I guess I didn't really expect that to happen.

Shrimp Scampi. We decided to just stick with the one wine, so no Chardonnay to go with this dish. Fiance said that the Pinot Noir went ok with it, but I just stuck to the water at that point. The most unfortunate thing is that around here it is nearly impossible to get fresh seafood. Our home-town is on the river, so you can even go to like a Wal-mart to get fresh seafood. We tried all the grocers here, and none of them had any, so we had to get the frozen shrimp. I thought it was still good though, because the frozen shrimp tasted less seafoody than the fresh do (I don't much like seafood).

Dessert was red velvet cake that I made (fiance made the ribeye and scampi). It was very nearly a disaster. The baking times on the box were wrong, so if not for my OCD checking of the cake it probably would have burnt to all hell. Next time I will try butter to grease the pans, as vegetable oil is not working the way I want it to. Cake tastes pretty good, if nothing else.

This is going to be much worse than it would have been had I just written it last week, because I just finished talking to my mom. As in I said I was going to lay down on account of feeling sick, but I was really just tired of talking to her about weddings.

Just a few days shy of the 3 month mark. And guess how much is planned. Nothing! The only thing we've agreed upon is the date. Well, fiance and I agreed on it, everyone else thinks it's a stupid day because it is a Friday. The "oh that's a strange day" comments are old. Still have not agreed upon the time.

And guess what? Since there is no time, there have been no invitation purchases. So they are probably not going to get sent out at the proper time. And we'll probably end up having to buy the damn things at a Kinko's like my aunt because they couldn't decide on anything in due time either.

I went to David's Bridals again. The first time my parents drove down, and the whole thing was a flipping circus and horrible. I just went with fiance and it was much nicer and I found 2 dress styles that I liked. While both are on the cheap side for wedding dresses, they are more expensive than my mom wants to pay (she wanted me to go with the $99 dress, that I will call Amish). So I still don't have a dress either, and according to the wedding planner thing, it should be sent in for final alterations now.

Even picking out the cake style I wanted was hell with my mom. She wants the traditional layers stacked on poles cake. I picked out one where the different cakes are on different pedestals because I think that looks nicer. I don't think she agrees, but my dad must have talked her into shutting the hell up about it.

So, the dress is too expensive (they are listed at $599 with $50 for the sale right now), and the photography is too expensive at $800 to keep all the proofs and negatives. Well, I guess I could always just tell her what fiance tells me, that we could pay his sister "like $50 to do it" and then cry.

No one understands why I don't want attendants.

The last thing my mom asked me today is "do you want your dad to walk you down the aisle." At that point I had just had enough. No I do not want him to, because they are not "giving me away" I am leaving. If they (particularly my mom) had anything to do with it, I would not be getting married at all. So that just seems stupid to me. But how the crap do you tell them that. It will just hurt their feelings.

Basically I am not wanting to do any of this wedding shit anymore. I am going to start begging fiance to elope again because I really cannot do all this stress anymore. If that doesn't work I don't know what I'll do. It's getting sorely tempting to just call the whole thing off and be one of the perpetually engaged and never married couples. I don't think anyone (including fiance) would get that either though.

Well, here is where my (hopefully) short *squee* fest will begin. Last night I finally was able to find a pair of the boots I have coveted for so long. Knee-high, black leather, lace-up, no heel. And discounted because I endeared myself to the salesfellow. They are from the Hottopic, but unfortunately I can't find them on the website because they must be sold out from their online store.

The only somewhat annoying thing about them is that the laces keep shifting around so that they are too loose around the ankle and too tight up at the top. That and the laces are about 3 feet too long. But I'll figure something out. I feel kind of silly for spending that much on something I consider a luxury item, but I really ought to be doing better things for myself to make myself happy, even if it is spending what I consider to be too much on a pair of shoes.

Insert wedding rant that I don't feel like writing, here. According to our webpage counter, we're down to 99 days now. If I say anymore, which I'm trying to refrain, it will turn into exactly the rant I don't feel like writing.

Trying to get back to doing some art. Taking more art intentioned photography, rather than just random snapshots of daily life. Doing a little traditional art. Attempting to learn some digital. Hopefully I will get back into the groove and be able to link some of the things I am working on.

I've reached an interesting point. Some sort of equilibrium between the guilt and desire of how I should be spending my time. I should probably crack out that GRE studybook my parents gave me for Christmas (yes, they are exactly that lame) so that I can try to pass the tests so that I would at least have a score to submit on gradschool applications. But the thought of more schooling makes me want to cry at this point. So I am training myself to be patient and content with what I already have, and hoping for the best.