The Santa Rosa pictures are up!
I worked for eleven hours yesterday and feel like very little was accomplished.
George showed up two days early this week, and then proceded to dawdle all week. Now I have to cancel the business seminar I was planning to go to. In detail: george showed up as I was getting ready to go bowling on Sunday. I had stabbing right side ovarian pain the entire day, with moderate spotting. To also get TMI on you, it was dirty blood, which confirms visually for me that I’ve treated my body badly in the past month. I’d also not been taking the Chinese herbal medication, which is supposed to get all the dirty blood and clots outta there. This moderate dirty spotting has lasted SINCE Sunday. That’s a total of four days now. I’ve not had uterine cramps until today.
I told my man last night that if george doesn’t ramp up BEFORE noon today, I’m calling to cancel the business seminar.
Guess who ramped up at 12:04pm?
I now have light uterine cramps and the blood has gotten brighter. The death cramps are on the way now, that’s how it works. So I called the woman organising the event and cancelled and explained why. She’s going to refund me the money, thankfully.
I told her, I told myself, and I told my man that I hate to live by my illness, I hate to let it dictate my schedule, but honestly, this illness has kept a pretty accurate schedule for the last 21 years. I don’t think it’s going to make an exception for me this weekend, SORRY.
I always feel like I’m letting people down out of fear and paranoia when I cancel or call in sick ahead of time due to george. In some cases, I really am letting people down and in some cases they really are upset with me. Take for instance the job that fired me for this!
But you know what, people? A business seminar that costs money I don’t really have right now is NOTHING in the grand scope of things when it comes down to my health and well-being.
It’s NOTHING.
There’s another business meeting happening next week for much cheaper. I’ll go to that, okay?
And then there’s this:
I had my first near-freakout over wedding planning yesterday. Yes the cat is publically out of the bag, I’m getting married! I will now devote a category to that and begin daily rants, because I can’t keep this stuff in any longer.
We began shopping for rings last summer and got frustrated within a month or so, mainly because of the way we were going about it. My man wanted to have me pick out my own ring, then order it, then when it arrived, get down on his knee and propose.
I thought that was the dumbest thing ever, because if we’re shopping for rings, I already KNOW we’re getting married, so getting down on the knee is redundant. He got all offended and hurt, and I couldn’t apologise enough to make it better, so I called the whole wedding off until we could understand how our brains were parsing everthing.
THAT was the problem - I had NO IDEA I thought a proposal and a ring were supposed to BE a certain way, else I get upset. I just thought ‘that’s how you do it, why would it be done any other way?’ and had no idea that I’d get upset if another way was approached.
And we’re still going through this on various levels. Badger had no idea he’d be the one pushing for the big girly wedding, while I shrank back and said HOLY SHIT, THIS IS TRAUMATISING, LET’S GO TO VEGAS.
We started looking at wedding venues again in November or December, and looked at rings from time to time. This month, I started looking for a wedding dress. Cue up the horror flick music!
I tried on a dress that was perfect for me on my first outing at the wedding dress super store in Fremont. Only problem is, it had no tags, they wouldn’t let me photo it or have my friends photo me in it, they wouldn’t tell me where geographically the dress was made or who the designer is, and they wanted $1,600 for it!!!! So I told them I’d think about it and fled the place. I’ve been looking at other dresses.
Yesterday, the super store called and asked if I still wanted the dress. I told them no, it’s out of my budget by $600, sorry. The woman quickly said they’d offer me a one time discount of $999 on the dress, but I had to put money down on it TODAY, IN THE NEXT HOUR.
So I said ok, let me call you back…
Commence panic mode and frantically dialing all my attendants and my father for advice.
All told, I spent three and a half hours on the line with my father and his wife, and with two friends, discussing my priorities and budget. I’m the one who finally decided that a $1,000 budget for a dress is TOO MUCH, and I’d like to lower that to $600 tops, please k thx bye.
The good thing that came out of all of this is now I have an idea of real money that my father is offering towards the wedding. Since last night, I’ve been sending him all sorts of info on venues we’ve been looking at, as well as laying out budget expectations. So this is good. I got dad dialed in on this now, finally. Before this, he didn’t want to deal, didn’t want to discuss other than “you have my support”. Now he’s attentive.
I am not supposed to drink alcohol for three months because of high liver enzymes. Yesterday’s little panic pushed me over the edge. I had a glass of wine. I’m sorry. I really think I’m going to need xanax to get through the wedding planning. But first, let me call some yoga places, that’s the healthier route. Oh and exercise - I need to get my ass into a gym, stat. My man has a membership but never uses it because he works late all the time. I can’t go unless he’s with me, then I can get in for $5.
So I’ll need gym buddies and yoga buddies. Yes, that is a plan. Sending the email out now.
Tonight my man and I will look at another wedding venue and talk and discuss.
Oh, it was this month that I officially decided on all of my bridal attendants, too. I waffled for so long, mainly out of fear. It’s a big step. A big decision. There’s three, and MAYBE there might be a fourth, but only if my man’s attendants reach three or four as well.
And the last headache - the guest list. OHMYGOD the guest list. We JUST got it down to 80 people this month, down from over 100. And of course I’m wracked with guilt at having to omit people. If money was no option, I’d be at nearly 200 people, I kid you not. Sadly, money is a huge issue, and I’ll be the happiest person ever if I can just realign my expensive tastes a bit on the dress issue. My goal is to come in several hundreds of dollars under budget on the dress. I’m not looking at wedding dresses only. I’m looking at gothic dresses, Victorian dresses and bridesmaids dresses. I look great in an A-line dress with some gathered taffeta poof.
Lastly, I have NO idea if this journal is the best outlet for my wedding rants. Maybe start yet another journal? Hmmm. Maybe. Maybe not. I never pay attention to who reads this.
I also have no idea about traditional wedding etiquette or who I might be pissing off or who might think they’re invited just because I tell them I’m getting married. I do worry about that, so in every day public, I need to STFU about it.
I’m empathic and always worry what the other person is thinking and feeling. But the thing is, I HAVE to turn that off. I HAVE to ground myself now.
People will know if they’re invited or not if they get a friggin invite. If someone doesn’t get an invite, it doesn’t mean I hate them, it means we simply didn’t have enough money to make it happen for more than n amount of people. I just want people to know that going over the guest list has broken my heart every time so far for the last six months. As long as people know that, I hope they’ll not get upset with us.
One wedding book I was reading said that per tradition and etiquette, I should have my parents and my man’s parents give us a list of friends and family THEY want to invite!!!!
SCREW THAT!!!!
If they want to pony up a few thousand extra dollars, then perhaps they can invite their friends too. Otherwise, HELL NO, WTF.
I have great friends. They all agree I should burn that book. 
Ok, the pain is ramping up, time to take more pain meds.