Just 'Cause We've Made it This Far Doesn't Mean We've Made It

Well, Hello Again

2006-09-13T08:27:00.000-07:00

It's been a while. I realize I've been completely neglecting my blog and while I'd like to say it's because I've been insanely busy, the truth of the matter is, I've just kind of lost interest. I decided to stop on by Christy's blog today and read her most recent post of closure and can't help feeling the same way. Blogging was like second nature while Matt was deployed - it was a fantastic outlet for my feelings and even gave me an extra little bonus by getting me published (see Military Bride). It was even easy to continue to blog after Matt returned home because we had the roaring emotions of post-deployment to deal with, not to mention our upcoming wedding (and let's not forget about the Jetta). Now that the wedding has passed (and I'm driving a fully functional car), I find I have very little to post about. It's a return to normalcy, and it's nice. You can still find me on my myspace page where every now and then I post silly nonsense on my blog, so anyone reading this who's a fellow myspace nerd should add me as their friend. I leave you all with pictures from our honeymoon to Cabo San Lucas. Thanks to everyone who's supported Matt and I - some of you have been around since the beginning of Military Bride and some of you may even remember the blog I had before Military Bride that the army made me delete :) Everyone keep in touch!

Happily Ever After...

2006-08-21T13:52:00.000-07:00

Okay, I AM going to actually post about the wedding eventually, but for now I thought you'd all be happy to know I finally got to sorting through and resizing photos, so you can view the album here. Most of the photos are from our photographer, but some are not... Anyhoo, ENJOY!! I promise I'll post soon. Really!! LOL.

I'm BAAAAACK

2006-08-18T13:55:00.000-07:00

Yes, yes, I'm totally utterly and completely slacking with updates, but I have lots of pictures to post and lots to tell...unfortunately I also have LOTS to catch up on at work. The photographer gave us a few discs with ALL the photos on them so I have to sort through about a billion photos and resize the ones I like for the website, so I PROMISE I'll have them posted no later than the end of next week. Until then, here's two already resized photos to hold you over for the time being!! :)~

Going to the Chapel....

2006-08-01T14:03:00.000-07:00

Well, here we are. After a 20-month engagement - a 14 month deployment right smack in the middle - seemingly endless planning, sleepless nights, dreams of missing photographers and dreams of stolen wedding gowns, our much anticipated date of August 5 is nearly upon us. 3 days away, to be exact (well, that's if you don't count today, natch). I remember going to a wedding last October and basically scoffing at the bride who told me, "It'll come up quickly." What did she know? In October, I still had more than 5 months of a deployment left. But it DID come up quickly - alarmingly quickly, actually. I remember (and many of you have also recalled in my comments) when my wedding counter was in the 500s, and yet here it is, down to the teeny tiny digit of 3.

It's been a lot of fun. Oh, I know I've complained a good deal, sworn off wedding planning for the rest of my life, come close to tearing off my ears from listening to Matt complain about the hoops the Catholic church makes you jump through to be married in their religion, but all in all, I've thoroughly enjoyed it (even moreso now toward the end since Matt's gotten incredibly excited - it's very contagious). At home I have a box full of framed table names (each table is named after a part of Lake Tahoe, i.e. Emerald Bay, Crystal Bay, Sand Harbor, etc), a box full of gifts for our wedding attendants (wrapped beautifully by yours truly, I might add despite Matt thinking they look "gay"), a guest book, framed photos of our parents from their wedding, fake wedding rings for the ring pillow, the real wedding rings for the vows, a basket full of programs, a topper and ribbons for the cake - all the fruits of our labor, all waiting to be taken up to Tahoe tomorrow.

I thought last week would drag by and was quite surprised when all of a sudden it was Friday and Matt and I were sharing drinks and talking excitedly of how "a week from today..." And now here we are. Not "a week from," but rather, "this week," this Saturday, 3 DAYS. This is my last day of work for 2 glorious weeks, which means this is also my last post until I return to the office on the 17th (at which time - or shortly thereafter - I'll have a plethora of pictures to post). Then I'll officially be Mrs. Matt and all the time spent doodling my new name all over my desk calendar will have paid off when I no longer have to sign my tremondously long and difficult-to-pronounce maiden name.

Matt's best man, Brian, is driving into town tonight. They've known each other since Matt was 12 and Brian was 10 and tonight will be the first time I meet him. They're waking up bright and early tomorrow (4:30 a.m. - yikes!!!) to go fishing and in the meantime, I'm getting my pedicure, my new set of nails, and going to Tahoe to go over ceremony music, to drop off cake decorations to the baker, to meet with the photographer one last time before the Big Day. I can't really believe after all this time it's really here, and it really did "come up quickly!" I'll be back soon with plenty of pictures from pre-wedding events, the rehearsal dinner, the wedding and reception, and of course, the honeymoon. Bye for now!!

Attack of the Momzilla

2006-07-24T14:35:00.000-07:00

My mom is an interesting character; I always think that if I were to ever write a book, my mother would be the ideal stuck up socialite antagonist. Her actions are innocent enough - I genuinely believe that this is just the way she is and that she can't help it - and I certainly wouldn't call her "stupid" (though I flung the word at her like crazy when I was a teenager), but perhaps "careless" would better describe her, and despite how this post might sound, I do just adore my mom (most of the time).

When I refer to my mom as "careless," I don't mean it the sense that she's flakey and unable to sort out levels of importance in her priorities, but rather that she literally could not care less - she doesn't care what others think of her, she's somewhat thoughtless, she says things that obviously she didn't thoroughly think through before saying them. Case in point: when Matt and I first got engaged, we went up to Tahoe to go to church with my mom (she's part of the parish of the church we're getting married in) and ran into an old girlfriend of mine from high school and her newly engaged fiance. My mom, never one to be outdone, kept nudging at the couple throughout the mass insisting that they "meet my fiance" and "look at my ring." When they finally complied and looked at my ring, my mom remarked loudly to me, "That can't make her fiance feel too good, seeing how big your ring is compared to hers." She didn't mean it maliciously - it's just part of her careless attitude - and while I desperately wanted to crawl under the pew away from my mother's somehow scathing, yet somehow innocent comments, she didn't even seem to notice she'd said anything wrong.

My mom is also highly social; I can't even count on my fingers and toes how many close friends she has, and I would list "throwing soirees" as one of her all time favorite hobbies. With her deep primal urge to throw one hell of a party, she has, unsurprisingly, thrown herself full-heartedly into planning the wedding. If soirees are a pleasure, surely throwing a party for 150-some people must be heaven. However, somewhere in the middle of all this, the "throwing a party for 150-some people" somehow surpassed "giving her daughter a beautiful wedding." Sometimes I think she's completely forgotten just exactly what the primary reason of this "party" is and could care less about any factors underlying the fact that she gets to hostess a really big party. She ran by me the other day the speech she's going to give at our reception, and while I foolishly expected to be moved to tears by some beautiful rendition of how my mother and I had managed to move beyond the tumultuous relationship we had during my teenage years to become such good friends and how happy she was that I was now bringing into the family a most wonderful man, I instead got a run down of how many and what states our guests have travelled from. My mom has pushed aside any notion of this wedding being mine and Matt's and has developed an awful tendency to be extremely over-sensitive to being said no to in regards to anything involving the wedding. With that said, I give you a pretty humorous list of the incredibly mundane things my mom and I have fought about with the wedding only a matter of days away:

1. The Rehearsal Dinner Seating. Before I fully get into this, it should be noted that, per tradition, Matt's family is paying for the rehearsal dinner, so naturally you would assume that this would mean they'd get first say in everything. The dinner is going to be kind of a big event since a lot of our guests are coming from far away - it would be a shame for them to travel all that way for one day - so there will be appoximately 70 people at the rehearsal dinner, which means we need to figure out an appropriate seating arrangement and everyone needs to be assigned a seat so the waiters know what meal goes to what seat for the sit-down dinner. This has turned into one gigantic headache. When Matt and I went to Sacramento for the wedding last weekend, Matt's mom and I took some time to draw up a nice diagram and tentatively work out seating assignments. A month or so ago we decided on 8 people per table - it would keep things nicely spaced and comfortable and the coordinator told us that that was probably about the max you'd want at a table anyway. We pushed the limit a little by putting 9 at a few tables (mostly because Matt and I want all our wedding party together and there's an odd number of them with their dates), but we figured that would be okay. When Matt's mom faxed the diagram and our contingent seating assignments to my mom, my mom found it fitting to change the entire thing, to add 10 people at a table where she damn well pleased. She completely eliminated a whole table and decided to put our entire family at the front tables closest to the head table, pushing Matt's family all the way to the back (nevermind that this is the marriage of two families and Matt's parents are the one paying for the dinner - I'm sure they'd have been thrilled that my mom thought it appropriate to demote everyone of importance in their life to not as important as our family). Thankfully, she sent her changes to me first, so Matt's mom never had to see the horror of my mom patronizing her family's importance. When I told her ever-so-nicely that she couldn't have 10 people at a table, she, like a whiny 10-year old throwing a tantrum, pointed out that was SO unfair because I had a table of 9 and she absolutely could not separate so-and-so from so-and-so. She would not. She wouldn't even try. She preferred to pout in a corner about not getting her way, so I spent mind numbing hours figuring out the perfect combination myself. Of course, this wasn't good enough for my mom (who was still fuming over the awful unfairness of Matt and I having a table of 9), so she emailed the coordinator and asked her for the dimentions of the tables as PROOF that she couldn't fit 10 at a table (I wish I were joking, I really do). Then, and only then, was she able to accept that she really couldn't have 10 people at a table.

2. The Ring Bearer. I don't think I've mentioned it - or if I have, it hasn't been often - but the ring bearer at our wedding is going to be our dog, Tommy. He's a big part of mine and Matt's life, and while Matt wasn't initially enthused about the idea, he finally admitted to me last night that he's "glad Tommy's in the wedding." Anyway, I digress. Everyone has adored the idea of us having our dog in the wedding. I got him a harness to make him easier to handle for our friend who we've given the title of "Ring Bearer Usher" and plan to stitch velcro to the top of the harness and the bottom of the ring pillow to make it work. I also got him a bow tie so he'll fit right in with wedding party (though he is thrilled neither about the harness nor the bow tie). My mom wrote me an email today asking why don't we put Tommy in a top hat. In response, I wrote:
There's really no feasible way we could put a top hat on Tommy - he already hates the bow tie enough!! Plus, none of Matt's groomsmen are wearing top hats, so I'd like Tommy to "match."

To which she replied:
Sorry about the “top hat” suggestion! I can feel your disgust for what I said through your e-mail!

Did I miss something here? I read my email over and over again for hints of sarcasm and could find none. Probably because I wasn't feeling particularly snarky when I told my mom Tommy wouldn't be wearing a top hat, and it's not so much that my mom minds that he won't be wearing a top hat, but rather, she's upset due to the fact that she thinks he won't be wearing a top hat just to spite her - she thinks I turned down the idea not because I didn't like it, but because it was her idea, which is, of course, absolutely insane (incidentally, I've been using that word a lot lately to describe my mom).

3. Picture Frames. As somewhat of a rip off from my brother and his wife's wedding, I decided that at the table where we'll have the guest book, I'm going to put framed 8x10s of Matt and I, my parents at their wedding, and Matt's parents at theirs. Matt's mom sent me home with their entire photo album to pick out whatever photo of theirs I wanted to use (she's been such a Godsend throughout this - it's nice to have at least ONE mom maintaining her sanity). I told my mom to pick out an 8x10 photo of her and my dad from their wedding for me and that I was then going to get three matching frames. I got an email from my mom today letting me know that she'd picked out a photo and asking me if I wanted her to get a particular frame for it. I told her no, "please don't frame the 8x10. I'm going to get three matching frames," and she must've sensed some level of "disgust" in that email as well because her response was, "Fine. I'll be happy to let you spend your money on a frame."

I don't really know what it is about the wedding that has brought out this highly sensitive side of my mom. She has, on some level, always had a tendency to take everything personally, but not like this - suddenly, everything is a personal insult or attack aimed at her. Matt thinks it's because she's having mixed feelings about "losing" her daughter, and if that were the case, I wish she'd release her emotions the same way my dad has by watching all of our old home videos from when I was a little girl. Regardless, nothing can seem to deter my excitement for the wedding and our Mexico honeymoon. I've discovered that if I force myself to speak slowly, deliberately, and monotonously to my mom, it prevents me from getting angry at her for her recent actions and for the most part, I've just ignored her over-sensitivity. I suppose if I get angry at her for getting angry over the ridiculous stuff she's gotten upset over, it doesn't make me any better. In just 11 days, this'll all be behind us! :-)

I'm Already There

2006-07-20T14:57:00.000-07:00

When my alarm went off this morning, the song playing over the airwaves was Lonestar's "I'm Already There." And I started crying - crying over the deployment is something I haven't done for a long time now, but as I lay there listening to the lyrics that strike so many familiar chords (Matt had already left for work so I was alone), I couldn't help but remember what a long, lonely road we'd just trekked down. We've been so busy since Matt got home - something always to do, one thing after another - that thoughts of what we've endured have been pushed to the backburner. Out of sight, out of mind. It's hard to believe that it's been 4 months now that Matt has been home; it's hard to believe because those months went by so quickly and I remember 4 months seemed like an eternity when Matt was gone.

I was talking to my dad not too long ago about the wedding (constantly reminding everyone how many days are left until the Big Day has become a habit of mine - I even end my emails with it), and he had a good laugh about how many things in my life I've waited for and how they always came quicker than I imagined they would: waiting to turn 16 to get my driver's license, waiting to graduate high school, waiting to move out of my parent's house and into the dorms, waiting to turn 21, waiting for Matt to come home. But I simply cannot group in the deployment with all the rest of the periods of waiting in my life - everything else I've ever waited for never involved those awful deep feelings of loneliness, never involved that sick feeling of worry when a relative story breaks on the news, never involved eagerly anticipating phone calls in the wee hours of the morning, and while in retrospect it's easy for me to shrug off 14 months with a simple nonchalance, I don't think I'll ever be able to say that those months went by quickly nor could I ever belittle their significance by saying looking back they don't seem "that bad." I remember the weight I carried with me every single day Matt was gone, and even though I don't constantly think of the days of our deployment anymore, I won't ever forget the wait.

We went to Sacramento this past weekend for a wedding. The bridezilla in me said that the only wedding I'll go to this year will be mine, but when Matt's mom told me that she'd already RSVP'd for us, I was struck with the dilemma of not wanting to go because I'm slightly stuck up or going because I know how much it would bother me if someone RSVP'd and then didn't come. Of course I went for the latter. I've been so annoyingly exact about every teeny tiny detail and I know, while it wouldn't have directly bothered me the day of the wedding, I'd be steaming later when I found out we'd paid for someone who hadn't even bothered to show up despite saying they would. I even sent out emails to all mine and Matt's friends who said they were going to RSVP for 2 people "just in case" and told them I'd personally kick their asses if they RSVP'd for 2 people and ended up not finding a date. Oh yes, I've been a peach. After idle threats, I nicely informed them that it's much easier to add a person to our list than to subract one.

Anyway, I digress, and really, this post isn't so much about the wedding we attended this past weekend as it is about our drive to it (and why I should possibly invest in a horse-drawn carriage and save everyone a headache or two). As most of you already know, I had quite the saga with my Jetta up to and including the day I sold it. If you've just recently tuned in and don't know, you can either read my past posts or take my word for it that this car and I were terribly mismatched. What most of you DON'T know is that regardless of being a mechanical dream, the Toyota I owned before my Jetta suffered quite a bit of wrath while in my ownership. Mainly dents and dings and all the telltail signs of a real good driver.

Now that I'm in possession of the Honda, I've been doing everything in my power to take the best possible care of it since it's not my car. I still have minor issues with how slow it is to get going from a stopped position, but truth be told, the fact that I actually can not speed in this car is probably a good thing (I always call it my golf cart with a govenor and every time I remind Matt that I want a V6 when we buy a new Camry, he rolls his eyes at me; we both know it's a terrible idea, that I'll rack up more speeding tickets in a year than most people do in a lifetime, but we also both know that I'll get my V6 because it'll be "our" car for the next 10 years). When the Honda's steering wheel started vibrating around Thursday of last week, I noticed right away because it's very important to me that we return this car in the same condition we received it (which is already impossible thanks to the asshole who hit us in a parking lot. Damn you, karma!!). Of course, I didn't think anything of it because, well, the car is so OLD. Sometimes old people shake, so can't old cars shake too? In my defense, I did mention the shimmy to Matt and check the tire pressure (and by "check the tire pressure," I mean, I pushed my thumb against the tire and thought it felt okay).

When we left for Sacramento Saturday morning, the vibrations were no worse, but there was a noticeable shimmy after 70 mph. Real noticeable - it felt like the car was about to fall apart. Matt sighed exasperatedly like he always does when he's about to lecture me on taking care of my things, and as expected, went into a really long diatribe on how I have the worst luck with cars (it's something I can't really argue with either. I mean, I really don't have the best track record when it comes to cars). I'm sure you can only imagine how much it drove the point home when not 10 minutes later the front passenger tire blew up. I always imagined a blow out being much worse than this one was (and to be fair, I'm sure the seriousness of a blow out varies with every circumstance). I heard the tire blow up and I felt the car drastically jerk, but it didn't really register. I yelled out "Oh my God!" more due to the shock of a sudden deafening sound than the sideways pull of the car and probably would've kept on trying to drive if Matt hadn't said, "Pull over."

The passenger side fender is RUINED. The blow up of the tire managed to rip off part of the siding of the car, dismantle part of the bumper, and leave hideous black rubber marks everywhere. This did nothing for my defensive argument to Matt about how I do not have the worst luck with cars, and after Matt put on the donut (which really made the car look like a golf cart), we drove the 2 hours to Sac in complete silence. It was tedious and long (we couldn't go over 50 mph with the donut) and gave me a lot of time to think about the benefits of just giving up on cars and using a horse and carriage for all my transportation needs. But then I figured, knowing my luck, the horse would probably break a leg walking up a hill or something. As it turns out, the tires on the Honda were not much younger than the Honda itself. We had to get 4 new tires in Sacramento and were told that the tire that blew up looked defective because of the way it blew up. Besides, I don't think it's possible for cars to have problems because of the luck of their owners - the car had been sitting in a garage undriven for God knows how long.

Anyhoo, no new wedding updates because everything is pretty much done - now it's all about waiting and anticipating. 15 days!!!!

Wedding Updates

2006-07-03T14:47:00.000-07:00

I know, I know. I've mildly (ahem) flaked on updates. But I've been busy, things have been hectic...excuses, excuses. Unfortunately even this post isn't going to be much of an update, but I've been feeling a little guilty about neglecting my blog so I thought I'd do a little picture posting to make myself feel better.

I had a practice make-up go-round a few Fridays ago, my final dress fitting last Wednesday, and a practice hair appointment this past Friday, so things are getting down to the wire. I myself can't quite believe the wedding is just a month away. I keep thinking how far away it seemed when Matt was gone and now I can make the statement that our wedding is next month. Holy cripes!! If only time had flown by this quickly while Matt was deployed - I would've shrugged it off with some nonchalance like Matt being gone was no-big-deal. After all, it sure went by fast (uh-huh....).

Anyway, my last few weeks have been filled to the brim with last minute details. The wedding coordinator at the casino we're having our reception at just up and quit - no email, no warning, no nothing - so we had to get in contact with her replacement to pester and make sure that everything was okay in the contract and set to go off as planned. Getting all Matt's groomsmen (who are scattered throughout the western United States) to get into a Men's Wearhouse to be fitted has been a project all its own. We had a handful of guys who were hurt that they weren't Matt's groomsmen (I know, I thought that was more of a girl thing, too), so we gave them small duties and put them in tuxes for the sake of feeling important. We have 13 (!!!) people in tuxes, which will end up amounting to about 10% of the guests. I find it humorous when Matt makes references to its similarity to prom when he's the one who decided to make a penguin of nearly all our friends. Regardless, I wouldn't care if we were picking up bums off the street to wear tuxes at our wedding so long as they went in to the store to be fitted in time.

Apart from the expected glitches and minor obstacles, planning has moved forward relatively smoothly. Nerves have started to set in mostly because I have very little faith in people's ability to do things that are asked of them and to do them in time (yeah, I'm one of those people who would just rather do everything herself, but unfortunately I lack the capacity to become another person and go into the Men's Wearhouse to be fitted for their tux for them). Well, I'm sure everything will go just fine, and if not, what're ya gonna do? Best to just smile and shrug it off rather than ruin your day, right? To wrap up the post, I have a few pictures of all of the fun "getting ready" things I've been doing these past few weeks - make up, hair, dress fitting (yes, there's dress pictures!). You can check them out here. I'll try to be better about updating, but no promises as I have a feeling time is going to be tied up primarily in the wedding for the next 33 days (and then the honeymoon).

Running on Empty

2006-06-14T13:01:00.000-07:00

Oh man, do I need a vacation. I can't wait for our honeymoon, lax days digging my feet into the pristine white sand of the beach - that's the life. Instead of hitting snooze this morning on my alarm, I accidently turned it off, and when I woke up on my own later and was therefore a bit late to work, I didn't even care. I'm so burnt out, so tired of the day-to-day mentality, I offered no explanation for my tardiness or even bothered to care in general.

As it turns out, having this wedding is much like taking a vacuum cleaner to every nook and cranny of our checking account. I can't complain too much because it is no one's fault by my own that we've been breaking budget left and right - I am absolutely unfaltering on my dream wedding - so I've had to take the sacrifices we've had to make in stride. It's only temporary, and it'll be oh-so-worth-it in the long run. I went to Tahoe over the weekend to help count RSVP cards with my mom while Matt was having a night out with the boys, and my mom was telling me how she recalled hearing my sister-in-law (my brother's wife) tell her mom how she couldn't wait till the wedding was over and how appalling that was that she could have such an attitude. But here's the thing: I couldn't cut into my SIL for that comment and partake in my mom's favorite pastime of gossiping because I know what she meant. It shouldn't be confused by thinking that such a comment means I'm ungrateful or that I don't want this wedding because nothing could be further from the truth. Mostly I just don't know how wedding planners do it for a living - deal with the stress, the thousands of errors from the vendors, the daily (and extremely worn out) conversation about the budget and where corners can be cut. Perhaps it's helpful that it's their only job - to plan weddings - and it's not with their money. Currently, I feel sick, tired, run down, and incredibly, insanely excited. Really - despite the consistent nonstop flow of my life and my enormous disdain for all things monetary, I can't wait to marry my Matt in front of all our friends and family. It's true that no wedding is ever impeccably perfect and regardless of how mentally beat up I currently feel, undoubtedly one day I'll look back on this time with fond memories; however, at this exact moment in time, it wouldn't break my heart to just fast forward to August 5 so I can start reaping the benefits.

On a brighter note, I sold the monster, missing grill emblem and all. In fact, I sold it on Thursday not long after I made my post decrying my terrible collision with irony (pun intended). I had mentioned I got a phone call from a girl who wanted to come look at it that day, but I had, unfortunately, driven the Honda to work, and she was unable to come look when I got off work due to our conflicting schedules. On my drive home from work, I got a call from the girl's parents who were very excited about coming to look at the car behind their daughter's back - they came over immediately to look at it, poke at the tires, scratch the leather; they test drove the car, and by God, they bought the f***er, very few questions asked (which incidentally is probably exactly the way the sale with that car needed to go).

After I'd signed over the title and filled out a Bill of Sale (and we exchanged information so I could mail them the missing emblem), Matt and I went out for dinner and few beers to celebrate unloading such an egregious problem. I was slightly melancholy - God knows why - and even got a little teary-eyed after a couple beers, commenting to Matt that, "if I had known it was the last day I'd ever have the Jetta, I would've driven it to work" (to which he, understandably, rolled his eyes). I have an uncanny habit of getting attached to inanimate objects, but I woke up the next morning with "Ding Dong The Witch is Dead" in my head which speaks largely on how I really felt about the car. The car is officially no longer our problem, and the Honda's not too bad - it gets me from point A to point B, though the superficial part of me can't help laughing hysterically when I catch a glimpse of me driving the Honda in a window reflection.

Yesterday marked one year of my ownership of Freedom the deployment kitty (unfortunately she's not terribly fond of Matt). Monday marked one year since Matt went back to Afghanistan after his R&R. It was strange to think that a year ago we had been exchanging our goodbyes in the airport, hugging, crying. "See you in 9 months!"

I often fantasize about how my future will turn out - daydreaming, if you will. I'm constantly playing out scenarios in my head, scenarios that are somewhat predictable because of the path we've chosen in life. While Matt was deployed I found it extremely difficult to picture life post-deployment. Diving head first into a deployment is rarely a comfortable situation and never a predictable one; it's a path that is arguably chosen for you (oh, sure, I know it's easy to say that a soldiers have chosen deployment when they enlist in the army, but the timing of a deployment is never something that can be planned - it just happens). No matter how close to the end of the deployment we got, I found that I never knew or was even able to guess the way it would end.

I remember watching Matt board onto the plane last June 12 and thinking to myself that this could be the last time I ever saw him. It's morbid, but it's the reality of war. And even further past the mortality worries, there's also the constant wonder of what so many months of separation can do to your relationship. I can't recall exactly where I first heard the quote or who said it, but I used it more than once in Military Bride: "Distance is to love like wind is to fire: it kindles the great and diminishes the weak." Hoards of relationships in our unit had already failed due to infidelity during the course of the deployment, and hoards more ended at the close of the deployment because time had further frayed the edges of a love that was apparently already threadbare.

During the deployment, while I consistently felt physically alone, I never felt as though the ordeal was something I was facing by myself. While I was lonely here at home, Matt was lonely on the other side of the world. Never once did I view our respective loneliness as separate entities - granted we weren't always readily available to support one another in our darkest hours, this was something we were doing together. And we were going to come out of it together. CaliValleyGirl recently wrote a post about Deployment as Couple's Therapy, and for us, it truly was (though, like she says, "That is not to say that my boyfriend and I needed couples therapy before he left, however, I do think that our relationship actually benefited more from our separation, than was harmed."). I think it's so important not forget that, notwithstanding distance, you're still a part of a pair, half of a whole, or however you want to look at it. I knew so many wives who made the deployment all about them and their sufferings - this isn't about who was left behind, and it's not even necessarily about waiting. It's about being supportive and being capable of looking beyond yourself in order to offer that support. The love that can survive a deployment is the kind of love that needs to be more prevalent in the world - it's that selfless (and truly unconditional) love that can handle anything. I'm so grateful to have Matt home safe and sound and so grateful at how our relationship has pulled through. It's damn good to have him home!

Is It "Hit and Run" if the Other Driver Doesn't Realize They've Been Hit?

2006-06-08T15:43:00.000-07:00

I am never ever selling a car privately ever again. It's a toss up whether it's more stressful to own the car or to try and pawn it off on someone else. When you want so badly to get rid of something, it's the lack of interest that really brings you down.

Last weekend Matt and I went to San Francisco to visit Matt's great aunt and to catch an A's game in Oakland while we were there (I have pictures from the game, but unfortunately my mom took them and hasn't yet figured out how to operate the camera with her new computer, so hopefully I'll add those pictures to this post next week pending the outcome of My Mom vs. The New Computer). On our way home we stopped in Sacramento to pick up our spiffy "new" 1990 Honda Civic, which is in excellent condition considering it's 16-years old, and which, humiliatingly enough, I bottomed out backing out of Matt's parents' driveway as they stood at the bottom of the driveway waving goodbye. Hey, thanks for the car. So much for the "I'll take good care of it" promise...

I started running an ad for my car last Saturday in the local paper, and we left it parked in a busy parking lot with a "For Sale" sign and my cell number taped in the back window while we were out of town last weekend. This combination produced a phone call Sunday evening - you can't even imagine how thrilled I was to get a message from a potential buyer. Apparently when you're selling a car, the first call is always this exciting. Unfortunately it didn't produce much. I returned the girl's call to discover much to my dismay that she couldn't have been more than 16, lived in a town over four hours away, and didn't want to get financed through a bank, but would like to make payments to me. Yeah. Right.

I don't really know what I was expecting in selling the car - the two "reliable" sources I know who'd sold their cars privately made it sound like they'd snapped their fingers and found a buyer, so I was extremely discouraged, nevermind I've only been actively trying to sell the car for about a week. Tuesday I cleaned the hell out of my car - scrubbed it to the nitty gritty, literally. The car hasn't been this clean since we bought it. I emptied everything personal out of it and snapped some modelesque photos ("Yeah, baby, that pose right there. BEAUTIFUL!") which I posted on cars.com on Wednesday. As my luck would have it, the ad had not been posted even 3 hours on cars.com when I left my office for my lunch break and proceeded to rear-end an enormous van with no brake lights. I swear to God this stuff only happens to me.

We were right in front of a 7-11 when said "accident" took place, so I expected the man driving the van to pull over into the parking lot so we could to the customary exchange of insurance information, phone numbers, contract to surrender first born child, etc etc. Except, the man didn't pull over. This surprised me a little - the last time I got rear-ended, I was so upset I didn't even wait for a parking lot and just got out of my car there in the street. I started flashing my lights at the guy, waving my arms out the window like a maniac to signal the guy to pull over at his earliest convenience, and otherwise making a wonderful fool of myself. We passed a shopping center - huge parking lot - and the guy just kept on going. I stopped following him when he got on the freeway because obviously there's no good place to pull over there. If it had meant that much to him, he would've pulled over immediately, and I honestly started wondering if he'd even noticed the wrath of my Jetta at a whopping 5 mph. The worst it did to his van was smudge the bumper a little with the paint off my cheap plastic bumper.

Luckily, my car didn't fair too badly either, though I did lose the VW emblem that sits in my grill. There's now a big, gaping symmetrical circle in the middle of my grill where once the silver VW initials reined in terror. I returned to the scene of the crime in hopes of finding that damn little emblem - when you're selling a kind of crappy car, you have to bank a lot on the looks of the it, and that big gaping hole is about attractive as an open wound. I had to call the parts department of the dealership and order a new one which surprisingly was not too terribly expensive and could probably mean the difference between a sale. The downside was that the part had to be shipped and wouldn't arrive till Friday, at the earliest; I figured this wouldn't been an issue since the calls haven't exactly been pouring in. Out of fear of damaging the Jetta even further while waiting for the emblem, I even took the Honda to work today, I was that confident I wouldn't get any calls on it.

As you've probably well guessed by this point, I received not one, not two, but THREE calls from potential buyers today. Honestly, I get one call all week and I get in a wreck and it's like my car is suddenly a hot commodity. One girl was ready to look at the car today, so I was a little sour that in all my infinite wisdom I decided to take the Honda to work today. I'd be willing to show the car without its trademark in the grill - I mean, I've ordered the thing and that has to count for something, right? I have two people coming to look at it tomorrow, so I'm crossing my fingers that something comes of this - it would be a dream come true if I were able to sell the car within a week ('cause, you know, then I wouldn't have to pay insurance on it this month).

I guess there's a couple morals to this story, the first being that if you're selling a car, you probably shouldn't drive it if you can help it - it's just tempting fate. The second moral I can't exactly remember - something about irony and life being a bitch - and the third moral is that if you are going to sell a car, cars.com is a lot better than your local rag. Apparently more people browse the internet than read the paper. Go figure.

Setting Up Your Married Kids with Your Friends' Married Kids is the New Setting Up Your Single Kids with Your Friends' Single Kids

2006-05-31T15:20:00.000-07:00

Most of mine and Matt's friends are single (save for one of my girlfriends who recently started dating one of her coworkers and another one of my girlfriends - who is 23, mind you - who recently started dating an 18-year old high school senior. Yeah...we're still having sit-downs about that one). We've reached the point where, while we still love our single friends - they do make up the majority of our wedding party and come in handy when we need time without each other - we would certainly love to have some Couple Friends that we can share. My friend A (the one who's dating her coworker) and her new boyfriend are a start; he's older - in his early 30s - and is the most decent guy she's dated in...well...he's probably the most decent guy she's ever dated. We have a lot of fun with them and they're certainly a start to making friends in coupledom, but the grown up in me is yearning to throw a dressy cocktail party complete with h'ors douvres, quiet conversation, and easy listening in the stereo.

In passing I happened to mention to my mom that Matt and I were having a difficult time finding these elusive "Couple Friends." (I should mention that my mom is the quintessential dive-head-first-into-your-kid's-social-life mom. Before I met Matt, she always had a "nice boy" she wanted me to meet.) It gets tough during this time to make new friends: both of us have coworkers who are significantly older than us not to mention Matt has not a single coworker in a happy relationship; we're not going to school full-time and I've never met a good friend in a class anyway (except when I was living in the dorms where I was likely to see more of people in my classes); and how else do you make new Couple Friends in your early- to mid-twenties? We have no kids therefore we're unable find common ground and befriend the parents of the children we send our kids on playdates with (ah, the vicious circle of "setting up" your children). The only other option it seems would be to set up our single friends with our other single friends, but unfortunately, that is an option we've already exhausted.

My mom - apparently suffering withdrawals from being detached from the ability to "set up" her kids as all of us are now married (or nearly married, in my case) - took it upon herself to call up one of her friends whose daughter and her husband also live in Reno, and since, we've been unable to escape the throes of having this couple shoved in our faces (we still haven't actually met them, so there's a good possibility that on their end they're also suffering the same spiel of us being such a "neat couple." Maybe one day if we do meet we'll find common ground on the topic of our nosy mothers/mother-in-laws). It started out with my mom calling Matt one day when she knew I wouldn't be home and cornering him into a conversation of how her friend's son-in-law and Matt have so much in common because Friend's S-I-L lays tiles for a living and Matt works with concrete for a living. She makes a point of mentioning how they're also having such a difficult time finding a nice couple to hang out with and leaves Matt with the couple's phone number (which incidentally, we totally forget about).

Next we had my mom's friend calling us (which honestly leaves me wondering if my mom called the other couple - do you suppose they discuss these things? That they have a "method"?). She left the world's longest message on our answering machine to the tune of some magical journey we could embark on with her daughter and son-in-law where we would retrieve the Holy Grail and save the world (I'm being mildly facetious there - the message was actually something about her son-in-law losing his assistant and how she was hoping Matt would know someone needing a job. The urgency of the need of a new employee seemed low, once again leaving me wonder if this is all part of the "method" - one couple helps the other couple out with a dilemma, couples bond, become the best of friends, everyone comes out happy, even parents who also happen to be friends with each other - I'm sure the moms have already planned a quadruple date).

Coincidentally (or please hope to GOD that it was merely a coincident), I happened to run into my mom's friend today - she was getting a pedicure at the salon where I have my nails done. She didn't spot me when I walked in the door, so I grabbed up a magazine and buried my face in it in the waiting area debating how rude it would be to pretend I didn't recognize her. Well. It registered pretty damn high on the Rude Scale, and I simply can't be that awful of a human being. I went over and said "hi," and she immediately asked we'd gotten her message the other night and if we planned on giving her daughter and son-in-law a call. I said yes, she said that was wonderful because she was certain me and her daughter would get along swimmingly (she didn't actually say "swimmingly"), and we exchanged the usual banter that is exchanged between a girl and her mom's friend.

After the incident at the salon, I called Matt and left him a message about how this couple must be our "couple soul mates" or something for the continued insistence from my mom, her mom, and now, apparently, God is in on this, too, so needless to say, we should probably call them. Or maybe it's all just a part of the "method."

Things with the wedding are great - I just can't seem to get a firm grasp on how quickly it's coming at us. We finally registered on Sunday, which ended up being a nightmare. Matt is the stereotypical "please don't make me do anything" groom, so I was grateful to get him to at least come register for gifts with me. Unfortunately, the first store has a very poor system for registering (and it's a big name store, too, but I'll spare them the publicity, be it good or bad) - they have one of those scanner guns, but they have no bar codes to scan!! One has to actually type in every single SKU number. Now, the whole reason we registered at this store in the first place was because Matt's mom recently bought us a very nice bread knife (don't ask...) at this store and we decided to register for the rest of the knife set. All the knives at this store are in a display and have NO VISIBLE SKU NUMBERS thereby making it extremely difficult and time consuming to register for these knives - while Matt, who has minimal patience when it comes to anything, stood around and looked at pots and pans, I had to wait for a new employee go through stock books, computer logs, and catalogs to find the SKU numbers for our knife set, and then, when she finally find them, I had to type them in as she read them off to me, each knife individually. Poor Matt - this is like his personal hell. Thankfully the other two places were much easier and would've been more enjoyable if the first store hadn't ruined Matt's entire day...

Yesterday I had my dress alteration appointment. It felt so great to have my dress on again, I almost broke down into tears. It just keeps getting closer and closer at an ever-quickening pace. As it turns out, I gained a little weight since I bought the dress, so where it was a little too big initially, it fits perfectly now (and I mean perfectly), so instead of having to pay for pricey take-ins, I only had to pay for a bustle for my train. I was telling the cashier how great it was that me gaining weight saved me some money and she told me I was the first bride she'd ever met who was actually glad to have gained weight. Well, if the dress fits....(get it? It's a play on the saying "if the shoe fits." Get it?? Har har). Also, after the help of an unnameable source, Matt was able to track down his long lost groomsman. Everything is falling into place beautifully - I only hope things stay this way. It's when things start to go wrong that I start to go crazy! :)~

Well, I'll Be Damned

2006-05-25T13:20:00.000-07:00

I finally got my car back on Monday, and you'll never believe what was wrong with it. In fact, you might find it humorous considering that not only was I without my car for 2 weeks, but the first shop I'd brought it to had claimed defeat after a week and told me to take it to the dealership. God knows, I found it hilarious. Really. I think it's great that I was without my car for 2 weeks for a problem that could've been fixed in a day. Needless to say, my "speed dial mechanic" holds that title no longer. Here it is: the problem with my car, the reason that my fans would not shut off, is because of mice. Yes, as in the little gray rodents. They'd chewed up my wires and shorted a bunch of crap. My coolant was leaking because someone (be it Jiffy Lube or the mechanic formerly known as my speed dial mechanic) had put on my coolant flange WRONG. And my air conditioning, well, I don't know what was wrong with it - the guy might as well have been speaking jibberish when he explained the problem to me - but the important thing is that it works now and it didn't cost a fortune to fix (though thanks to Volkswagen charging $109 an hour for labor, it cost over $800 to fix everything).

After picking the car up, I felt a tiny bit of remorse about selling it. It's in excellent condition right now - running like new - and so it's been in the shop 3 times for major things, but what are the odds it'll happen again? It's so cute, so fun to drive; I have extremely mixed emotions about my car. The other day I saw a girl driving a rickety old Volvo and it was like a glimpse into my future with the Honda (believe me, there are days when I wish I could overcome my superficiality). When I alluded to my dad that I was thinking of not selling the Jetta, I thought he might climb through the phone and give me a good firm shaking. The Jetta has been nothing but problems, he does not want me driving such an unreliable car blah blah blah. And I know he's right - I know I want to keep the car for all the wrong reasons; despite it's major faults, I can't help but have a soft spot for it - it's just so damn cute!!

Nonetheless, the plan is still to sell it, drive the Honda for a while, and buy a new car at the end of the year when we're well away from the financial burdens of the wedding. Matt and I went to get some Chinese take-out last night, and while we were driving there, Matt said, "You know, one day we'll look back and laugh at the fact that we owned a Jetta." And he's absolutely right. Right now I still own it and I'm still attached to it on some weird emotional level, so I can't fathom not having it around to torment me with it's bizarre problems. I keep reminding myself how nice it'll be to have 6 - 7 months without a car payment, how we'll be able to save up a nice fat down payment for a brand new, fully functional car at the end of the year, how it is just a car, after all, and how one day we really will look back and laugh at the fact the we owned a Jetta.

This past weekend we had our "Catholic Engaged Encounter," which, I won't lie to you, was mind-numbingly boring. We'd listen to one of two married couples talk for a little while, separate to write our thoughts and feelings in a notebook, and then regroup with our fiance to read what each other wrote and discuss. I can see how the weekend would be beneficial to a couple who had communication problems or had just met (and I'd have to say in either case they probably shouldn't be getting married), but Matt and I have been together for nearly 4 years and lived together for almost as long and we'd already discussed all of this - I would think any couple getting married would discuss these topics, not just Catholics who're put through this weekend. I didn't think it was too tormenting - I could certainly think of worse ways to spend the weekend - but Matt...well, Matt thought it was worse than Kandahar, and I could've withstood the weekend just fine, but it was the 22 continuous hours at the retreat (and the hours after too) of listening to Matt complain that made the weekend horrendous. Matt claimed he was going out with his guy friends Sunday after we got out and by the time that rolled around, I was all but pushing him out the door. I love the hell out of the man, but God knows when he really doesn't want to do something, he won't shut up about it until he's free of it. After we received our certificate on Sunday, we left the chapel with Matt literally shoving me out the door, hissing "Go go go!" in my ear.

Wedding planning is otherwise going mostly splendidly - I do love an organizational challenge. Matt's had problems getting a hold of one of his groomsman, and after going through the archives in his email we discovered he hasn't heard from him since December. This has got me worried about filling an empty groomsman slot and it has Matt concerned about the well-being of his friend. The phone number Matt has for him is no longer good, and he's had a large number of emails go unreturned. Unfortunately his friend has just about the most common first name/last name combination ever, so searches in the white pages returned 13985710298 results. We tried Googling him and I mentioned Classmates.com as a possibility, but if he ever did put his info in at Classmates, it was probably in the same manner most everyone's put in information at Classmates - in passing with no intention to ever pay for a membership or update address information. His mom had a different last name that Matt can't remember, so it would seem our only remaining option is to try and find his brother through the army (who also has a different last name that Matt at least knows but can't remember how to spell). Does anyone have suggestions of finding people??

Next week we're mailing out invitations, and I can't quite believe that the ceremony is just over 2 months away. Matt proposed to me right before he deployed and during the deployment the wedding seemed aeons away. Suddenly it's barrelling upon us like a runaway freight train, and I find myself juggling an ever-growing to-do list (we haven't even registered yet!!). People keep asking me if I'm nervous - I hate the myth that everyone gets "cold feet." Nervous? No. Stressed out about getting everything done in time? Yes. But mostly I'm just really, really happy. I get to marry my best friend! I get to spend the rest of my life with the tall, dark, and handsome man of my dreams, and I can't wait :)~

The Fakers

2006-05-17T13:15:00.000-07:00

I hate head colds more than any other sickness. Really. I'd rather have a chest cold or even the flu, but nothing makes me feel as disoriented and groggy as a head cold. This one seems to have settled only into my left side - only my left nostril is plugged, I can't hear out of my left ear. It's quite an anomaly. I've been popping DayQuil like candy, but nothing can shake the feeling that there's a fog clinging to my brain behind my eyes. I HATE being sick. Almost as much as I hate my car. ALMOST.

I felt fine yesterday morning and slowly but surely this cold crept up on me throughout the day and had me resting my head on my desk in full-blown misery by the end of the day. I called Matt at 4:30 and we briefly discussed me dropping off my Jetta at the dealership (I must admit, it felt GREAT to drive my own car even if it was just for 15 minutes. Despite how much of an electrical nightmare it is, it is the cutest, most fun car to drive) before I let loose on a tangent about the agony I was suffering. Matt - God love him - whipped together some homemade chicken noodle soup from scratch for me (which was delicious, BTW), kept me well drugged with generic cold relief meds, and even watched American Idol with me regardless that he really hates it. I love being babied when I'm sick - almost as much as I love babying Matt when he's sick.

Today I still feel like shit, but I have my own box of DayQuil (so I don't have to steal it out of my boss's desk) and since there's no kleenex in the office, I've been toting around a roll of toilet paper with me all day. I'm quite a sight, walking around with my DayQuil and toilet paper, infecting the entire office. I'd call in sick but since I took so many paid days off during Matt's deployment for his leave and when he got home, I have very few vacation hours left for the wedding and honeymoon, and one can't earn vacation hours if one doesn't work! Se la vie....

Yesterday I called an old friend to wish him a happy birthday, and it was the first time I'd talked to him for a long time because of unusual melodrama - the story behind this guy is a post all its own, hence the title "the fakers" (but I'm getting to that). For all extensive purposes, we'll call this guy "Bob" - more to protect his identity than anything because I don't doubt that if he were to ever stumble across my page there'd be no question as to who it is I'm talking about. You see, Bob is the one who introduced Matt and I.

Bob has never been a constant in either of our lives. He was my roommate when he introduced me to Matt, but after I moved in with Matt, he had a tendency to disappear from our lives for long periods of time and reappear when he needed something - he's one of those friends, the fair-weather kind. Before Matt deployed, we hadn't heard from him for at least 4 months, he didn't make an effort to see Matt before he left (though I'd left numerous messages on his voicemail that Matt was leaving on Jan 5), and so he never said goodbye and it wasn't until a while after Matt deployed and many phone messages later that Bob finally called to ask for the address to mail stuff to Matt (he never ended up mailing anything) and after that, I didn't hear from him again until the news started running stories about the unit's homecoming.

After Matt got home, Bob wouldn't STOP calling. He'd elbowed his way back into our lives full-force, and was being a little...strange...to say the least. All of a sudden he wanted Matt to go fishing with him, to go do all this stuff with him, to be the best of friends. Matt went fishing with him a couple times, but it got to the point where Bob started calling every single day about fishing, and after you haven't heard from someone for nearly a year and they abruptly start calling non-stop, well, it's just not normal. I came home from work one day to find Bob lingering in our driveway talking to Matt (about fishing no doubt), and as soon as I pulled up, he rapped on my window, I rolled it down and he said, "Can Matt go fishing with me? He told me I'd have to ask you." Please keep in mind that Matt had only been back a few weeks at this point, the deployment was still an open wound, and I was still suffering from Matt withdrawals, trying vainly to make up for lost time, and the fact that going back to work and maintaining normalcy was interferring with that was weighing heavily on me. I told him no. I told him I needed to spend more time with Matt and incidentally, we'd already planned on going couch shopping that day, so I told him that, too. Bob's response was, "What the f**k? You used to be COOL" and then he flipped me off.

"Fakers" is the term we've used to dub those who played little to no part in the deployment but expect to reap all the benefits of a homecoming. They pretend to be greatly affected by the absence of the person who was deployed regardless that they contributed nothing to help the loved ones that person left behind - it's like the person who does no work in a group project at school but still pulls off an 'A' because of the efforts of everyone else. It's ridiculous, it's unfair, and it's extremely inconsiderate of the people who really WERE deeply affected by the deployment (and even more inconsiderate if you happen to flip one of said people off because you believe you deserve some sort of retribution for doing absolutely nothing). Fakers can be friends or family members, and if you've ever experienced a deployment, you've more than likely crossed paths with one.

Bob is a faker. He's a faker with a motive. He made that motive terribly clear when he recently stopped by our house unannounced (I hate unexpected visitors - it's such a pet peeve - and they always overstay their welcome because they were never welcome to being with). He plopped down on our couch and made himself comfortable, apparently totally oblivious to the fact that we were in the middle of dinner, and he asked, "So what am I doing in your guys' wedding?" Now I pose this question to you given what you know from what I've told you in this post, does the fact that this person introduced us (and therefore played a small role in our "happily ever after") mean he should automatically be given a role in our wedding?

Matt has five groomsmen - three close childhood friends, one of our good mutual friends from Reno, and a guy he got to be good friends with while he was deployed - my brothers are ushers, and I have five bridesmaids (which is irrelevant since we're definitely not going to be putting Bob in a dress). There's really no room for Bob - we were planning on asking him to do a reading since we're having a mass with our ceremony, and that seemed ample, but we were both a little taken back that he had the audacity to assume he was in our wedding and to ask us about it, especially considering how little he's done as far as being a friend is concerned. Matt kind of sputtered over a nice way to answer Bob's bold-faced question, as I sat there with my mouth agape, totally speechless (an incredibly rare state for me to be in).

Interestingly enough, Bob's calls and requests to take Matt fishing completely ceased after that, and it wasn't until yesterday when I called to wish him a happy birthday (which was a total bust - his birthday was on the 10th, not the 16th) that we'd talked since then. I'm not really sure what to do in this situation - he's put us in kind of a weird position where we feel almost obligated to somehow include him in our wedding. He did introduce us, but it's not like he could even be a runner up for Friend of the Year. I think asking him to do a reading is substantial, but he's so melodramatic, I'm sure there'd be some bad blood between us always if we didn't stuff him in a tux as a groomsman - even our dog has a bigger role in the wedding. Ohhhh what to do...what to do...

Pick Your Title:"It Figgurs" or "Un-flipping-Believable"

2006-05-16T10:53:00.000-07:00

We had a great weekend - Matt's parents came into town and we went to Tahoe to finalize all the rehearsal dinner details. It's going to be fantastic and I'm thoroughly excited for it! The dinner's going to be outside on patio overlooking the lake, we'll have a huge screen playing a DVD of pictures of Matt and I and pictures of when we were kids, the menu is mouth-watering, and we have free-range of a microphone (uh oh).

After much deliberation, I decided I want the entire dinner to be RED. My wedding colors are navy blue and white, but I bought this gorgeous red gown to wear to the rehearsal dinner, so instead of going overboard with the red, white, and blue (not to be unpatriotic - the colors together just aren't very wedding-y), the colors at the rehearsal dinner are going to be red and ivory. In my mind, it would be absolute sacrilege if the entire dinner didn't revolve around my dress.

Matt's mom is making all the rehearsal dinner invitations and response cards - since we're having a sit-down rehearsal dinner at a place that typically hosts receptions, we have to keep track of how many of each entree we need and thus it was decided it would simply be easier to send out separate invitations for the dinner. And this way we can have red invitations for the dinner and keep with the blue theme for the wedding - I don't mean to be hard to please, but I know exactly what I want our wedding to be like and for such an important day, I could hardly settle for anything less.

Saturday night Matt and I saw Frank Sinatra, Jr. (I'm an enormous Frank Sinatra fan and the show was called "Sinatra sings Sinatra." Actually, our first dance song at our wedding is a Frank Sinatra song. Anyway...) We had a great time - the show was nice, but I think it'd be pushing it to say it was great. Undoubtedly the music was wonderful, but instead of the typical "lounge show" that are common at Reno casinos (sitting at tables in a ballroom), we were all shoved into a conference room and forced to sit on the most uncomfortable chairs ever created - it certainly wasn't unbearable, but for 50 bucks a ticket, I expected something at least comfortable.

We also found ourselves sitting behind the apparent president of the Frank Sinatra fan club. It's the guy who not only knows every single song, but gets piss-your-pants excited over each and every one, the guy who yells out "I BOUGHT IT" when the artist plugs his CD, and this one was all but head banging....to Frank Sinatra. At the end of the show - before FS, Jr. had even said "good night" - he grabbed his wife and who I imagine was his mom (considering it was Mother's Day weekend) each by a wrist and literally drug them to the front of the room, most likely to bombard the stage. It was obvious his wife was mortified by her husband's behavior - I suppose it's possible that he could just love Frank Sinatra that much but I'm thinking alcohol played a small role - the man was way too over the top to be sober. It's tough to say he "ruined" our FS, Jr. experience because in all reality, he was actually pretty amusing.

Sunday we went out to brunch with Matt's mom and dad to celebrate Mother's Day and after they had headed back to Sacramento, we took our dog to the park because it was the most gorgeous day of the year yet. It saddens me to know it'll more than likely snow again - without fail, it snows in Reno/Tahoe every Memorial Day. I'm hoping this will be the one year it doesn't - it's supposed to be 90 tomorrow - but every year I hope it'll be "the one," it never is. Well, a girl can hope.

And oh, yes....my car - still don't have it. Today is Day Eight, and there is absolutely no hope of getting it back today or probably even tomorrow. I've kind of reached my breaking point with this whole ordeal - I called Matt BAWLING on Friday when I got the call that I wouldn't have my car for the weekend, and I know that my sobbing won't alleviate the situation any, but it's incredibly frustrating to try and work out two entirely different schedules with only one car, and it's terribly exasperating that I have such an unreliable car. When I talked to the mechanic on Friday, he said there was a guy who specialized in Volkswagens coming in to take a gander at it on Monday and hopefully they'd get it back to me by Monday. Nope. I waited until 4:30 yesterday afternoon before I called them. I talked to a receptionist who really had no idea what was going on, and I feel slightly bad because, well, they've had my car for so damn long and I wanted to talk to someone who could tell me what was going on, and I made that crystal clear to her.

Apparently the fan module wasn't what was wrong with it. They don't know what's wrong with it - they'd completely taken my car apart and were totally stumped. So I'll get to pick up my car today (after they put it back together again), but only to drive it for 15 minutes or so to bring it to Lithia Volkswagen - this shop has admitted defeat and suggested I take it to the dealership for repairs. On the plus side, I don't have to pay for any parts and labor from this shop; since they couldn't fix it, I don't have to pay for it. I think that's very nice of them, especially since there's no doubt in my mind the dealership will probably cost twice as much. When I called the VW dealership yesterday to schedule my Jetta in for maintenance, the guy said it's $200 just to DIAGNOSE my air conditioning. I sputtered some obscenity in disbelief - I mean, really, it's just proof positive that Nazis STILL are in charge of Volkswagen. I think when I drop it off I'll tell them to fix everything else that's wrong with it first and once I know how much that's going to cost me, then I'll decide whether or not I care enough to get my A/C fixed.

In light of all this, I have totally swallowed my superficiality and come to the realization that I cannot and will not drive such an awful car for the next 5 - 8 months of my life. Matt's parents have an extra car that desperately needs to be driven - it was Matt's grandma's, only has about 27,000 miles on it, and now spends most of its days collecting dust in a garage (except on Thursdays and Fridays when Matt's mom drives it to work so it can stretch its wheels). It's a 1990 Honda (Civic or Accord, I don't remember) and they have very graciously offered to let me use this car for as long as I need. As soon as we get the Jetta back, we're going to put it up for sale and rid ourselves of this nightmare. It's a great time to sell it - just out of the shop it'll be in tip-top mechanical condition - and I have, in fact, worried myself sick over this Jetta (seriously - I've fretted over it so much, I now have a cold).

Originally the plan was to pay massive amounts on the Jetta monthly so that when we traded it in we wouldn't be upside down on the loan, and in addition to a couple thousand, it would be a substantial down payment on a new car. After a lot of thought, we realized we can have just as big a down payment (if not bigger) if we just sell the Jetta now, rid ourselves of a car payment for the next few months, and save money instead of continually throwing it at the Jetta. Not to mention the thought of having a car that won't consistently have weird ass shit go wrong with it - despite how old and boxy it is - is a very appealing one. So today the Jetta goes from mechanic's shop to service department at Lithia Volkswagen and we wait some more, we stretch ourselves thin over our single, solitary vehicle for the time being, and when we finally get the damn thing back, we joyfully run ads in the paper, on the internet, and even tape up a sign inside the car and rid ourselves of the f**ker.

[Insert Expletive Here]

2006-05-12T11:05:00.000-07:00

Are you there God? It's me, Erika.

I would really appreciate it if You could find it in your heart to somehow get my car back to me today. We're going on Day Four here, and while I know certainly it's not YOUR fault that my car is such an awful piece of crap, there's got to be something You can do - a wave of the hand to just miraculously fix it, or perhaps an epiphany to the mechanic working on it - to get it back to me today.

I think my coworkers are starting to become concerned as I've taken up silently chanting to my cell phone in hopes that the mechanic is capable of communication via ESP and will pick up my brain waves that I not only want - but desperately NEED - my car. I think my friends detest me for the insanely long and whiny email I sent out yesterday that I wrapped up with the statement that, "...if you think your car has problems, just think how much worse it could be if it were a VW Jetta."

You see God, I've lost sleep over this car - I stay awake at night feeling guilty for the lives it's affected (me for not having a car, Matt for having to give up his truck so that I could drive it, Matt's coworker for having to become Matt's personal chaffeur) and fretting over how much this is going to cost me and how much that will inevitably affect our honeymoon. It's disheartening to get the phone call every day that begins with, "We're hoping to have it back to you by tomorrow", to have the people who're TRAINED to know how to fix this stuff tell you that your car is "a nightmare." I want to cry, I want to scream - I certainly don't need to tell You how uncomfortable I am in a situation I can't control.

God, You know better than anyone that I'm not one to pray for silly, frivolous things, but the absence of my car has made the transition from inconvenient into ludicrous, and anything You can do would be a big help. In all honesty, I gotta tell Ya, despite how much I hate the Jetta, I must admit - I miss it a little.....

Amen.

Update at 3:27 p.m.: Just thought I'd let you all know I won't be getting my car back today. Hopefully Monday, but currently I'm doubting if I'll ever get it back. In the words of the mechanic, "We fix one thing, and another thing breaks." Whoo. Well, on the plus side, if they can't figure out what's wrong with it and end up having to send it to the dealership, I won't have to pay for anything.

This Moment Brought to you by Matt and Erika

2006-05-11T09:32:00.000-07:00

I'm not going to post about my car. I know - I'll give you a moment to recover from that. All you need to know is that I still don't have it and I vehemently hate it. Instead this post is about one of those moments - the ones that couples have that are unique to that couple and reaffirm just exactly why you love this person so much, when you say to yourself, Oh that's so typical of Matt [or insert your significant other's name here], and that's the kind of stuff that made me fall in love with him.

Matt's parents live in Sacramento, which is a boring (albeit scenic) 2 hour drive from Reno (and despite what that sentence may have led you to believe, this post is not about the drive so the fact that it's boring and scenic is terribly irrelevant). This is the time of year where the strawberries in California are the ripest and yummiest and are considerably easy to come by - you can't throw a rock without hitting a wooden shack (I'm tempted to call them kiosks) selling strawberries. When we went out to Sacramento last weekend to visit Matt's grandma, his mom had bought us a pallet of these mouth-wateringly delicious strawberries, which is a LOT of strawberries. Undoubtedly, I love these strawberries, but they go bad fast, so suddenly you're hard pressed to stuff your face with them or else risk wasting food. In short, I love them, but not THAT much.

Matt's parents are coming out to Reno this weekend, and since I don't possess the ability to say no to Matt's mom, she informed us she'll be bringing out another pallet of strawberries for us regardless that we're barely even halfway through the first pallet. UGH. It's hard to stomach all these strawberries - I think the only fruit I could eat indefinitely would be raspberries - so we've started making strawberry shakes, and Matt makes a really good strawberry shake. Ice-cream shop quality.

On Tuesday, Matt decided he wanted a strawberry shake so I asked him to make me one, too since he was making one for himself anyway. He asked me if I would mind making them and I declined for two reasons: 1. He's way better at making them, and 2. I was watching House. I'd just as soon go strawberry-shakeless than miss a second of House. And I told him so, so begrudginly he got up to make shakes, saying, "Fine, I'll make you a shake, but it's going to be a small one." I told him that was fine, I didn't want a huge one anyway.

Matt makes the shakes, I crank up the surround sound when the blender is going and huff and moan because I can't hear what smart ass remarks Dr. House is making to his patients, Matt turns off the blender and tells me it's too loud and to turn it down. This goes on until Matt finishes the shakes and then hands me - he's so silly, God do I love him - a shot glass filled with strawberry shake. "That's all you get. I said I was making you a small one."

Car Update

2006-05-10T16:23:00.000-07:00

Just a brief post to update those who care (and to drive crazy and torture those who do not) about the status of my car. My wonderful, wonderful car. .: sigh :.

WELL. They (meaning my mechanic) put a new fan switch in - cost me a pretty penny too - and that got the fans to stop going crazy. But in the spirit of my Jetta, the solution could not be this simple. Jettas are irrefutable proof that "Occam's Razor" is bullshit.

Anyway.

Before the end of the day yesterday, They called me to inform me that I would not be getting my car back that day. Fine. I figured as much. None of my car's trips to the mechanics have EVER been a day trip - why, it'd be an anomaly of the highest degree. When I still hadn't heard from Them around 1 this afternoon, I started to get a little nervous so I called to get an update. I'd barely given the guy the first syllable of my first name when he interrupted me with, "Oh, the Jetta. Right. Well....."

So They got the fans to stop their incessant fanning, but now the car wouldn't stop overheating - that's an ALL new problem, sure my coolant was leaking and my fans were working overtime, but the car had never overheated. They were going to put in a new thermostat and hopefully that would solve the problem (huge emphasis on the "hopefully" there). I'm chewing my arm off at this point, contemplated the consequences for dropping the car off in Mexico and telling my insurance company it was stolen (no, not really).

They call me around 3:30 to let me know that the fan switch - the brand new one that I just spent a good amount of money on - won't "stick," whatever the f*** that means, and the fans are not shutting off again. I am LIVID. Not at the mechanic, of course - it's not HIS fault my car is the anti-Christ. He procedes to tell me that They are "baffled" and had to consult with the Volkswagen dealership. The new theory is that there's something awry with my fan module, which coincidently would explain my coolant leak, my fans not shutting off, AND my malfunctioning A/C (three problems, which, I may remind you, were supposedly "unrelated"). So it just so happens that the dealership has a fan module in stock and are going to bring it by the mechanics, but if you've ever had to buy a part from a dealership, well, you can imagine how I'm feeling right now. They're not cheap. It's looking now like this trip to the shop is going to cost in excess of $600, and if you would please excuse me, I need to go vomit now.

The Jiffy Lube Theory

2006-05-09T13:26:00.000-07:00

I once had a friend who drove one of those Volkswagen New Beetles - you know, the cute bubbly kind. I talked to him quite a bit about the quality of VWs before I purchased my Jetta, and I distinctly remember him telling me that the only place he could get his oil changed was the Volkswagen dealership - that Jiffy Lube or the like wouldn't do it because it was a "German engineered car" and that somehow made changing the oil that much trickier than, say, on a Japanese- or American-made car. I found this a little unbelievable and asked him if he'd tried going somewhere other than the dealership or if this was something the dealership had told him. It was something the dealership had told him, the cunning bastards! I took my Jetta to Jiffy Lube and was not shunned because I was driving a "German engineered car" (though, truth be told, it was actually manufactured in Mexico).

I HATE Jiffy Lube and have recently managed to link them back to my continual problem with leaking coolant. I know, I'm nuts, right? How could JIFFY LUBE have anything to do with my coolant springing a leak not once, not twice, but THRICE. Fine then, I'll tell you.

Jiffy Lube trains their "mechanics" to be a bunch of money hungry conniving bastards. I go there for convenience - there's a Jiffy Lube close to my office, there's a Jiffy Lube close to my house, and they really do live up to their name of being "jiffy" - and despite consistently trying to siphon an extra $20 - $100 out of me, I must admit that I've never had a complaint about their customer service. But that's just the thing - the you need this, this, and this done to your car in addition to an oil change. Look, I brought the thing in so you could change my oil, so change my freaking oil!! Without fail, every single time I bring my car in for an oil change, I need a) a new air filter; b) a $60 "engine flush"; c) a radiator flush; or d) all the above. It doesn't matter if I said yes the previous time, they tell me I "need it" the next time. Really? So you're telling me that the air filter you gave me 3,000 miles ago is so crappy, I already need a new one?

It wasn't until about a year of driving the car that I started really having problems with it (though the "check engine light" came and went sporadically during that entire year) and it wasn't until a trip to Jiffy Lube that I first started having issues with my coolant. They had told me I needed a "radiator flush," I said no, and I remember it struck me as terribly coincidental that shortly thereafter I started having issues with my coolant. That was when the misfiring cylinder started causing issues with the performance of my car (nothing quite like trying to get going on 3 cylinders), I brought my car into a mechanic recommended by a friend (who has since become my speed dial mechanic), had the leaking coolant fixed while it was in, and everything was just fine until I went to Jiffy Lube and got my oil changed at which time the coolant light started going crazy again. Hmmmmm.

I ignored it - as I so often do when lights start blinking and beeping in my car (I like to think it'll go away on its own) - and in December when I had to have my car towed to my speed dial mechanic because it absolutely refused to start despite how many times I turned the key and the string of insults and curse words I yelled at it, I had them fix the leaking coolant again. And again, it was just fine (say it with me now) until I went to Jiffy Lube. Granted, it could be just an incredibly strange coincidence, but strange coincidence or not, I no longer plan on getting my oil changed at Jiffy Lube. In fact, I'm starting to think there's something to this "only get your oil changed at the dealership" thing.

My speed dial mechanic called me this morning to let me know that in addition to the problems I had listed off to him over the phone yesterday and in person this morning, I also needed new brake pads because (to quote him) I had virtually "no front brakes." I trust he's not trying to get a few extra bucks out me because he never has before and because I have noticed the ear-drum-exploding, finger-nails-down-a-chalk-board sound of my brakes squealing, most notably when I'm in reverse. Luckily the warranty will be covering my leaking coolant; after 100,000 miles my warranty becomes null and void. Guess how many miles I have on my car? 99,960, I shit you not. Looks like I brought it in just in the nick of time, and to anyone who, like me, decides to purchase a Jetta despite all signs pointing to "DON'T F**KING DO IT," I strongly suggest you make sure you can get a warranty with it and you do it in full force. I paid about $1000 to purchase the extended warranty and so far the warranty has paid for about $700 in repairs, so I lost $300 on the cost of the warranty, but that's better than having had to pay for those $700 in repairs out of pocket.

From the sounds of it, I should be getting my car back tomorrow (pending they can exorcise the demons from my cooling fans). I put up a picture of an A4 as the wallpaper on my work computer as a reminder of why I have to drive the Jetta for the next 8 months. When I told Matt that, he started laughing and said the Jetta's not "THAT big of a piece of shit." Easy for him to say - he doesn't have to drive it every day. :)~

On Jettas

2006-05-08T12:02:00.000-07:00

I know I've had a lot to say about my car as of late, but GOSH it's infuriating, so I have a few more things to say about it (and will probably have a few more in the coming days), so please bare with me here. I need to vent.

We've decided to get the car fixed. In fact, I'm bringing it to the mechanic tomorrow morning and am crossing my fingers that I'll have it back by the weekend. I often wonder how I survived in the days before I turned 16; I've become so dependent on my car, the biggest pain in the butt of it breaking down isn't necessarily how much it'll affect my wallet, but the fact that I won't have my car. Undoubtedly, though, I'm not extremely happy about having to take money away from the wedding to fix the most unusual of problems. I have to disrupt the lives of one of my coworkers to make them drive out of their way to come pick me up at the mechanic after I drop it off tomorrow morning, Matt's going to pick me up after work, and then he'll carpool until I get the Jetta back so I can take his truck to work everyday (Boy do I love him - he's so selfless...and I need the truck more since I can't carpool as NONE of my coworkers live in our part of town).

I felt like a worried mother listing off the irksome symptoms of her sick child. They pretty much know me by name at the mechanics. Next they'll know the sound of my voice, I'm sure. "Problems with the Jetta again, huh?" Well, I'm hoping after this bout of throwing money at it, it'll hang in there until we trade it in and it becomes someone else's problem.

I remember the first time I drove that damn car, how much I loved it, how my butt started to get hot and I discovered to my delight that the car had heated seats. I loved everything about it - the sleek black body (not nearly as boxy as the older models), the cute antenna sprouting out the back like a little tail, the moon roof, the leather interior, the heated seats. We'd looked at Jettas at so many other dealerships, I was absolutely sick to death of car shopping and salesmen. When my boss mentioned to me that one of her friends worked at a dealership and they had a 2000 VW Jetta sitting on their lot, I was down there checking it out within 20 minutes. And I fell in love with it before I even drove it because I'm superficial and it was beautiful. I couldn't believe my ears when he told me the price - $2,000 less than every other 2000 Jetta we'd looked at and this one had LEATHER INTERIOR. The test drive sold it; I just couldn't take it home till I finished some paperwork and got approved for financing.

I remember that same night taking Matt by the lot to show him the car. It was late so there were no salesman hanging around, but there it was, parked it the front lot with a big orange "SOLD" sign hanging from the rearview mirror. I was giddy. I remember taking Matt to the dealership that weekend so that he could test drive it; I remember the day I brought in my down payment and got to take the car home. I think of all those memories of the car - like it were the birth of a child - and it breaks my heart that, looks be damned, it's just a piece of shit. With leather interior. LOL.

I was reading through my old posts about the Jetta on my old blog and it made me laugh (albeit out of the ability to relate and not so much out of humor) to find someone had recently left their "Jetta story" in my comments. It seems that everyone who's ever owned one has their own story of problems they withstood and while it may seem easy to argue that ALL cars experience their share of problems at some point or another, there is nothing quite like the kinds of problems that befall the Jettas. I have yet to meet a Jetta owner that doesn't have a complaint about the car - I imagine if the car were to morph into a human, it would be a drop dead gorgeous high maintenance hypochondriac bitch.

It seems appropriate that I paid about $2000 less than the Kelly Blue Book value of the car because that's about the same amount of money I've put into repairs of the car in the last year (and that's NOT including the regular maintenance I've had done, i.e., oil changes, fixing burnt out headlights, getting new tires). Here's a list of what's ailing my car this go round:

The coolant is leaking. AGAIN. The FIRST time I brought my car in (for the misfiring cylinder), I had a coolant leak fixed. The SECOND time I brought my car in because it wouldn't start, I had a coolant leak fixed. Now, again, that awful little red coolant light blinks and beeps at me every time I start the car and in intervals of about every 5 minutes thereafter. I topped it off and that got the beeping and flashing light to stop for about a week, but it's back at it again.
The engine fans are possessed. They continue to run for 5 - 10 minutes after I shut the car off, every single time. The interesting thing is that the car is not overheating and the fans go on even if I don't start the engine - if I just turn on the accessories to, say, roll up my windows, the engine fans will start running like mad. They're overworking. Fabulous.
And, as aforementioned, the air conditioning is not working, which apparently is the least of my problems...

I asked the mechanic if they could all be related - it certainly SOUNDS like they should all somehow be playing a part in the malfunctioning of each other - and he said probably not. To him, they sounded like 3 pretty unrelated problems. Exasperating, but not at all surprising - NONE of my cars problems have ever been related.

Ultimately it was decided that the best thing to do would be to get it fixed - it will be worth more as a trade-in, I'll have air conditioning for the summer. I was thinking we could just hold off until after the wedding and get it fixed then; it sounded a little crazy to be getting the air conditioning fixed in September when I no longer needed it, and surely we could've survived the whole summer, but it was the other two problems that were the determining factors in bringing the car in instead of waiting on it. Actually, we were driving home the other night after seeing M:iIII (which I thoroughly enjoyed, by the way) and my coolant alarm started beeping at me and it was Matt who decided we had to cut into the wedding fund. His exact words were, "If you don't take this piece of shit in to get it fixed, I'm going to take a bat to it." Of course, my smart ass response was, "Only if I can have a few swings at it, too!"

I was reading an article at ConsumerReports.org about used car buying - pointers on getting the best car for the best price - and one of the tips it provided was "not to fall in love with a particular model." Oops. I've always fallen in love with a model - that's how I do my car shopping - I buy my cars for purely cosmetic reasons. I wanted a Toyota Tacoma - so my first car was a Toyota Tacoma. I wanted a VW Jetta - so I shopped for a VW Jetta (and only a VW Jetta - I was insulted when it was suggested by a salesman that I buy a Taurus instead). The Tacoma was incredible - I can't say enough good things about that truck, and if you want a reliable, well-built car, truly, Toyota is the route to take. When I bought the Jetta, I sold the Tacoma to Matt and even though it's become a little rickety in the transformation to a work truck (with all those dirt roads, it's only natural that the belts would start to squeal a little), it's still going strong at 130,000 miles. My Jetta - 5 years and 30,000 miles newer - is no competition in reliability to this truck. The truck has been to the shop less in the last 8 years than the Jetta was in just 2005.

Admittedly, I've also already made a pretty firm decision in the purchase of my next car, the A4. But that's just how I shop for cars - much like I shop for groceries, I go in with a list and get what I came for. However, I have learned from the errors I made in the purchase of my Jetta. I got a membership to ConsumerReports.org and have extensively researched the dependability of the Audi A4 (and have come to the decision that it would be foolish to buy anything older than a 2004). This car has to last us at least 5 years (or until we can afford our Mercedes - I have expensive taste), so it's important that we purchase something that won't end up costing us thousands of dollars in repairs. I'm not totally attached to the A4 just yet - I really like the Mazda6 and the Toyota Corolla and if we purchased one of those, we'd be able to buy a 2007 instead of getting a used car, and I must admit that I have somewhat of a soft spot for the new Toyota Yaris (the sedan. I hate hatchbacks) - but I do have a tendency to point out every single Audi A4 we see on the street and I have been known to make sexually lewd comments when one passes us on the freeway (that really cracks Matt up).

Well, we'll see. In my mind I'm already driving something else. I have to wait 8 months before I can finally rid myself of this nightmare (I'm fully convinced that "nightmare" is synonymous with "Jetta"), but hopefully we'll be able to go 8 months without any further problems (let's cross our fingers, right? So far the record for "longest time out of the shop" with the Jetta is 6 months). I'll update again when I find out the diagnosis...

.:Sigh:.

2006-05-04T10:37:00.000-07:00

There's always something not quite right. Nothing's ever perfect, so life (or my butt and my car in this case) always manages to surprise you with a left hook. The glass is either half empty or half full, but how come the damn thing is never just FULL? Where the heck is my waitress?!? I digress...

So things aren't really that hectic, but my claim to fame is making mountains out of molehills (gosh, Erika, why don't you throw a couple more cliches into the post....). First, my car. If you've been an avid reader of mine since Military Bride, you're familiar with the relationship I have with my car - what a joy it was for me during Matt's deployment, never causing me any sort of strange and costly problem (if you weren't an avid reader and just recently tuned in, that last statement is just oozing with sarcasm). There was the time my cylinder was misfiring (not to mention the leaking coolant, the wheel bearings, and the cracked belt). And then there was a few months later in December when the damn thing wouldn't even start (if you want to sift through the post to read about the car, it's in like the 7th paragraph).

Matt and I have decided that we're going to sell the Jetta at the end of the year, which means I have to put up with it for at least another 8 months, and of course, in the spirit of any masochistic car, something would have to go wrong in those 8 months (yes, I know it's "inanimate," but seriously, the damn thing gets a kick out of breaking down and pissing me off). I hate the thing so much, it kills me that it's just about the cutest car ever. Well. Don't judge a book by it's cover (there it is! I knew there's be another cliche before the end of this post). Now it's the air conditioning. Normally this isn't a HUGE deal - the truck I had before the Jetta had no air conditioning and I survived many a summer in it. But that was in Tahoe where the hottest summer day averaged around 80 degrees. Reno gets HOT. Granted, it's really not much competition for places like Phoenix and Las Vegas that hang out in the triple digits for most of the summer, but we do break 100 quite frequently, and if there's anyone in the world who hates heat more than me, you'd be hard pressed to find them.

The worst part of the whole ordeal is the gorgeous black leather seats I absolutely HAD to have; they were the selling point in me buying the car. I didn't think ahead to the summer - to the pain in the ass of always having to put up one of those windshield screens, to always have to cover the driver's seat with a blanket or towel or else suffer what I imagine is something very similar to hell. If you've never sat down on a black leather seat after it's been basking in a hot summer sun all day, I envy you, you lucky bastard. Oh yeah, and the car is black, too. So picture for me if you will, a black car with black leather seats parked in a sunny parking lot on hot July day in Reno (which usually ranges around 95 - 105 degrees). Now imagine that car has no air conditioning. The intelligent thing to do in this situation would be to get it fixed, but that would mean dipping way too deep into the wedding fund which is...well...it's sacrilege. In December/January we're going to spurlge a little and buy an Audi (you'd think after the Volkswagen I'd never drive a German car again, but you'd be wrong); I told Matt I'd die a horrible death before I ever got black leather seats again. Tan would be okay though. When I was searching consumer reports on Audis, I found (not very surprisingly) that a 2000 VW Jetta was ranked one of the worst buys for used cars. Go figure.

And then there's the matter of my butt (which is completely unrelated to the matter of my car, incase you were wondering to yourself, WTF?). A lot of people eat when they're stressed out. Then there's the people like me who don't eat when there's a lot on their plate (pun intended). I get stressed, I can't eat. I lost a LOT of weight while Matt was deployed (and I say that with disdain). I'm 5' 7" and at my worst during the deployment I weighed 105 lbs. That's disgusting; I was practically emaciated. When I went to see Matt at Ft. Sill before he left for Afghanistan, he expressed genuine concern for my eating habits in his absence. I think his exact words were something like, "Jesus. Have you been eating at all??"

As you may recall, I was working out like a maniac right before Matt got home to kill excess energy. I was a good deal healthier - somewhere around the middle of the deployment when I started to get the hang of it, I was eating normally again (I can't say "healthy again" because I kind of doubt whether or not my definition of "normal" is synonymous with "healthy." I love cereal for dinner and have many other similar habits) - and was working my butt off. Or rather, working my butt up. Now I toe the line between 125 and 130 lbs (it fluctuates depending on the time of the month, if you know what I mean). Lots better. I don't look so sickly anymore.

Nonetheless gaining 20 pounds is gaining 20 pounds (and with all my working out, my butt is kind of bubbly now. Like I said, I worked my butt up. I rather like it...). When I decided last weekend that the weather has gotten nice enough that it's time to break out the shorts, I found, much to my dismay, that I do not own a single pair of shorts that fit. One pair that I literally used to be swimming in (I called them my "buttless shorts" 'cause, yup, you guessed it, they made me look like I didn't have a butt), I couldn't even get over my hump (my hump, my lovely lady lump...sorry, I couldn't resist). I was prancing around the room doing the Fit Dance (you know, the hip wiggle, the lay-on-the-the-floor-and-TUG, just please FIT, dammit!). I got them on, but it wasn't pretty. Thank God my favorite capris still fit (a little snug, but at the very least it's not a battle getting into them).

I just bought a fantastic pair of bermuda shorts at Target, but they're black, and certainly I can't wear them all summer, so after the weekend war of my Butt vs. my Shorts, I decided it was high time I buy some new shorts (we're also driving to Sacramento this weekend and the thought of making that hot ass drive 2 hour drive in a car with no air conditioning without shorts makes me cringe). I took a trip to Kohl's on my lunch break today (I'm just crazy about Kohl's) and find it terribly amusing that I called Matt "frivolous" a few posts ago because while I had gone in for a pair of shorts, I left with not only that, but also two new shirts and new pair of dress slacks for work (I've also learned that I love Daisy Fuentes). I felt so guilty leaving the store - especially after all the grief I'd given Matt for those God damn sausages - the first thing I did was leave a rather lenghty message on his voicemail trying to validate my spending. He'll love that message when he gets it...LOL. I guess we're both a little imprudent in our own ways. Admittance is the first step to recovery! Besides, now that I don't have to worry about particular colors bringing out the orangey undertones of my hair color, a few new outfits were in order :)~

A Trip Down Memory....Freeway....

2006-05-02T14:35:00.000-07:00

Well, we didn't go line dancing on Friday (much to my utter dismay, as you can well imagine). Matt's coworker's girlfriend (whose name is Roxanne and who indirectly caused me to have that song by the Police stuck in my head for the duration of the weekend) wasn't able to make it, so you can guess how upset I was. My friends were pretty upset too - after I'd told them I was going line dancing and they'd had a good laugh about it, they said I should bring a video camera because this was something they just HAD to see. Thanks guys. Thanks a lot. Of course, they were genuinely upset that I didn't go dancing; apparently they receive great joy from me making a fool of myself.

Instead of doing the boot-scootin' boogie, Matt and I went and got a bite to eat, Matt got a migraine (he gets a lot of those - runs in the family), so I rented Tristan and Isolde, took Matt home to baby him, and watched my movie as soon as he fell asleep (actually, he was still awake when I started it. I was reading him the opening credits and the next thing I knew, he was out...he's not as big a fan of tragic romances obviously).

We got all of our concrete work finished on Friday and it looks spectacular. I'll post pictures when the yard is totally done (we still have to get our wrought iron fence installed and get sod laid). For a while we had release all over our concrete, which is this powdery substance that dyes the concrete (I think...Matt would better be able to describe the purpose of this stuff, but he's not here, so instead you get my half-assed description. Anyway, the important part is there was this colored powder all over our concrete) - this stuff was a nightmare. Our poor dog has suffered an extremely sad existence during the remodeling of our yard - he has nothing to romp and play in, can only go outside for brief amounts of time to potty, and has spent a good deal of time cooped up in the garage when we're not home. During his potty runs, he took the opportunity to get as much of this release as possible all over himself. Between him and our two cats, our typically spotless house was a mess with black paw prints EVERYWHERE - all over the kitchen and bathroom floors (tile), all over the kitchen counters (thanks to the cats), all over our brand new couch (thankfully, it's true what they say about microfiber...it does clean extremely easily). Our dog went from border collie to black lab, and even after a good vigorous scrubbing, some of this dye has still insisted on sticking to his pristine white legs.

On Saturday morning Matt had to run to the North Valleys (small towns north of Reno that we Reno-ites have fondly grouped into one generalization: "the North Valleys") to drop off some things to one of his coworkers. I rode along with him so he wouldn't be obligated to work on a Saturday (pretty sneaky) and we grabbed a bite to eat at a dingy casino (though I must say, for being so dingy, the food was delicious). The drive back down 395 into Reno was somewhat of an emotional experience for me, especially being in Matt's truck. The deployment hasn't been a common topic of conversation between Matt and I. Every now and then we'll allude to spending nearly 15 months apart, but for the most part, it doesn't come up. There's really nothing to be said about it that hasn't already been said and sometimes I even doubt the existence of it. Did this really just happen? It sure doesn't feel like it. It's a vague memory; a blurred vision.

However, the Army National Guard base is in the North Valleys and the last time I'd driven down 395 in Matt's truck was a snowy morning, barrelling after a charter bus. While we were driving back to Reno after breakfast - despite the fact that Matt was with me - I was fighting back tears. It was like I was hit with an enormous brick wall and suddenly I felt the full force of everything I felt that awful morning I said goodbye to Matt for I-didn't-even-know-how-long. I reached out and grabbed Matt's hand and said, "Babe, I don't ever want to spend 15 months without you ever again." "You won't ever have to," was his response and he squeezed my hand. He didn't ask where my extremely random statement had come from. I don't think he needed to; there was something terribly somber about driving down that freeway. He was sitting right next to me, but my heart was breaking horribly because I remembered how it felt to miss him.

On to happier subjects...

Saturday afternoon I got my hair fixed. Fixed, indeed!! After the colorist washed out my hair and turned me to face the mirror, I was nearly peeing my pants in anticipation. It looks FABULOUS. No more apricot undertones. Here's my before picture (taken with an awful facial expression for an extra I-hate-my-hair-like-this effect):

Perhaps it's not as bad as I had lead everyone to believe. God knows I took the Before Picture and thought to myself, well, it's not that bad. I even started to think that maybe the extremely orangey yellow tones came from my parent's camera (here you can see a picture of me taken with my parent's camera for hair color comparison), but when I told my mom last week that I was going to a color specialist to get my color fixed, her severely mother-like response was, "Oh thank GOD. You would've just hated it if you'd gotten married with your hair looking like that. Imagine how the photos would've turned out!" I sure do love my mom...being brutally honest is one of her best (and worst) attributes. Here's my after picture (completely with a painfully dorky expression and a thumbs up for a job well done. Excuse the terrible photo - this seems to be a bad angle for me):

MUCH BETTER, RIGHT? Well, I think so anyway. Matt said he didn't even realize how bad it looked before till he saw how good it looks now (riiiight. That just means he didn't want to hurt my feelings before, God love him). I absolutely adore it - I've never been this blonde, and now I don't think I could ever go back to my icky dark natural shade. I can only imagine how it'll look even BETTER once summer rolls around and I get a tan. Ah, and for those of you wanting to see Matt in his cowboy hat, you can check it out on my Flickr. He actually looks quite sexy though that picture doesn't do it justice - he kept turning away from the camera and tearing the hat off right as I pressed the clicker. I'll get a good photo though...it's my new mission for the week LOL.

There's One in Every Family....

2006-04-27T15:39:00.000-07:00

I love Matt so much. Because he's my best friend. Because no one can make me laugh the way he can. Because he loves me - spoiled little rich girl attitude and all. Because no matter what we're doing, we're having a good time as long as it's together. Because when Matt really wants something he begins his sentences with, "BABY....I LOOOOOOOOVE YOU" and if the conversation is in person instead of over the phone, he rubs his head against my arm like a cat. It's so friggin' cute, I simply cannot resist it. He's just too damn silly!

I am the less frivolous of the two of us - not necessarily because I spend less, but working in accounting has taught me to keep track of where my money goes, so I spend less on unnecessary commodities. Matt, on the other hand, will spend it if he's got it. Thus, I am in charge of paying the bills and budgeting our money and will only let Matt have his debit card if he needs to make a large purchase (i.e. the concrete we're pouring for our walkway tomorrow). Last week I let Matt have his debit card because we were supposed to pour the concrete over the weekend and he needed the card number. He kept the card for a whole day and ended up spending $30 on sausages because they stopped in a deli. SAUSAGES!! What in God's name are we going to do with $30 worth of sausages?!?

This afternoon I got the "baby....I loooooove you" phone call at the office. We're going out to dinner with one of Matt's coworkers and his girlfriend tomorrow night. They're a little bit country (we're a little bit rock and roll), an older couple in their late 40s, and I have no problem going out to dinner with them, so I know there must be more to this plea. Oh we're not just going to dinner, we're going to a country dance club here in town. Pure Country. I don't dance. No, I can't dance. We're not taking ballroom dancing classes before our wedding for Matt - we're taking them for ME - and country line dancing? Yikes! That's a disaster waiting to happen. But there's more. Matt wants to DRESS country. I'd like to clarify here that I have no problem with people who dress like cowboys and cowgirls, it's just not MY personal style. I'm trying to be a good sport about this. I have a pair of riding boots from when I used to show horses and I'm sure I have some country looking things left over from when I worked at a ranch when I was 19. I'm sure I can dig up SOMETHING country.

But none of this is why Matt is calling up and being cutesy. He wants me to stop at a western wear store after work and buy him: a cowboy hat, a belt buckle, and a pair of cowboy boots. We are at a point in our life where we need to be extremely frugal because we need to save up for a wedding and honeymoon that's costing US a 5 digit amount (not to mention what my parents and Matt's are contributing). We both have good jobs and make good money and if he'd called up any time after August 5 and asked for such items, I would've said yes in a heartbeat, but when it comes to money, my mind is very single-tracked: SAVE FOR WEDDING. But the thing is, I can't say no to Matt, and when he points out how much I spend to get my nails done biweekly and how much I'm spending to get my hair colored this weekend (and how much I just spent on Arbonne tha, I feel like a big gloopy piece of crap. I've figured my hair and nails into our wedding budget, and I give Matt a hefty amount of cash at the beginning of every week to spend on whatever his little heart desires, but he wants a cowboy hat and boots and a big ol' ugly belt buckle for tomorrow night. ONLY for tomorrow night.

Strangely enough, this is one of the reasons I love Matt so damn much. He lets me bitch at him for a while about our budget and saving money and how totally ludicrous it is for him to spend money on a pair of boots he'll only wear ONE night and he tries to convince me that he'll wear them more (it's like the little kid who tries to talk his mom into getting him a dog by promising he'll always take care of him), but the fact of the matter is, I don't WANT him to wear them more because I'm somewhat of a superficial snob. I talk him down into just a cowboy hat (which he talked me into going to buy for him when I get off work today because I'm such a sucker) because he said he'd get lots of use out of it at work. Okay. I love this about Matt because he always lets me lecture him about money because it's the part of our relationship that I handle. Matt and I fight and bicker over a lot of stupid things and a lot of not-so-stupid things, but the one thing we've never fought about is money. If it's true that that's the biggest problem in relationships, we're off to a good start (and it'll play an enormous factor in our lives when we start our business in a couple years and I have to manage our personal money and the business accounts). Anyway, I'm off to go buy a cowboy hat for my silly (albeit loveable) fiance.

Hair Color: Having it Done vs. Doing it Yourself

2006-04-26T14:39:00.000-07:00

Bridal beauty is by far the most important kind of beauty. Weddings have been set aside as one of the most important and defining days in a woman's life; to look subpar is absolutely unacceptable and it goes so much deeper than the perfect dress paired with the perfect hair style and the perfect make up. It reaches as deeply as the shade of your hair, the length of your fingernails, the clarity of your skin. Make up and hair style are things you worry about a month before the wedding when it's time to run through the practice rounds, but NOW is the time to start fretting over everything else - with more than 3 months till the BIG DAY, if some beauty method doesn't work, there's ample room for errors and for said errors to be fixed.

A few months ago I read an article in one of Matt's issues of Maxim that natural blondes will become extinct within the next 200 years. Regardless of whether or not it's true, blonde has been a head above the rest as my favorite hair color to be (on a side not, I am a natural blonde - when I was a kid, my hair was so blonde it was practically white, but circumstances - growing up, moving away from alway sunny Florida to a place more seasonal like northern Nevada - have slowly darkened my hair. My natural color is like that of Gwyneth Paltrow's long hair in Sliding Doors).

When I was in high school, I never ever dyed my hair. In fact, I was quite impartial to the whole "beauty" thing - never wore makeup, thought it was sacrilege to do anything unnatural with my hair. It wasn't that I was a "hippie." I just didn't care. My senior year is when I started coloring my hair. Literally coloring - I dyed it ORANGE. I thought it was spectacular - until I found out I wouldn't be able to attend the JROTC Military Ball with my colorful 'do and had to spend in excess of $200 to get it lifted out of my hair and become a normal color again.

My freshman year of college I picked up a bottle of hair color at Hot Topic with the intentions of giving myself some sweet candy apple red highlights around my face (I don't know...I went through this phase in my late teenage years....I think now of the spectrum and roll my eyes. Matt likes to tease me about it too). Unfortunately since my hair is naturally blonde, "candy apple red" turned out NEON PINK. It was awful. For the longest time I was known in the dorms as "The Girl with Neon Pink Hair." Humiliating. But nonetheless, a lesson learned. :)~

After I moved out of the dorms is when I decided to shy away from such bold colors as orange and candy apple red and stick with the naturals. When I was 18 and 19, I was a redhead. I enjoyed being a redhead, but the thing is, redheads were definitely meant to have blue eyes. It was too obviously fake to be a redhead with brown eyes, not to mention that when my dark blonde roots started growing out, it just looked wrong. I did thoroughly enjoy my crimson strands while I had them, but they were shortlived.

After my stint as a redhead, I went brunette right before I turned 20 (I know, my poor hair, suffering all this coloring - it was like one big frizz ball). The brunette I went with was very blah - or maybe it just looked very blah because I'd tortured my hair to no end and it had no shimmer left to give - and as if looking a little silly with shineless brown hair wasn't enough, I decided to go ahead and chop it all off. I told the hair stylist to cut it like Reese Witherspoon in Sweet Home Alabama which is not even CLOSE to what I got. I looked more like Ann Marie - the cartoon orphan in All Dogs Go to Heaven - except with no bangs. This is what I looked like when I met Matt, which to me just goes to show that looks don't mean everything: blah brown hair with a bad cut from an apparent student stylist. UGH. It took over TWO YEARS to get my hair back to its original length.

For the wedding I've decided I want to be blonde. And not my natural dirty blonde, but really truly blonde. When Matt first deployed, I had a girl living with me paying rent so we could save up money and as luck would have it, she was a hair stylist. Living with a hair stylist when you're a change addict like me is a dream come true. She kept up on my highlights for me during the duration of her stay and I thought she did a great job with my hair (until she cut layers in my hair and didn't tell me she was drunk until after the fact...oh it was apparent in my cut....luckily layers grow out quicker than cartoon orphan cuts). But then she moved out, and I'm cheap so I decided to start coloring my own hair again with $10 boxes of Herbal Essence Hair Color.

I've come to this conclusion: when you want to LIGHTEN your hair, you should never ever do it by yourself (especially if the ultimate goal is your wedding). I was reluctant to bleach so I picked out "Pale Light Blonde" as my color. Pale Light Blonde + naturally dirty blonde hair with highlights makes for a very interesting combination. My hair turned a very interesting golden shade of orange. YIKES. So I dyed again, this time with EXTRA Pale Light Blonde (I still hesitated over the bleaching). This really did nothing more than add yellow to the mix - my hair is a very interesting golden organish yellow color. It hasn't been enough to totally irritate me - and Matt seems to think it looks normal enough - but the other day when I realized I couldn't wear my corduroys because they brought out the YELLOW in my "blonde," I got really upset. Your HAIR COLOR shouldn't dictate what you can and cannot wear (I sound like a commercial). I threw a bit of a tantrum as Matt - bless his soul - tried to reassure me that my hair looks fine. Needless to say, this week found me in the waiting room of a color specialist pleading for the salvation of my hair. The color it is now is NOT the color I want it to be for my wedding, and though the cost of getting it done by a professional is a good deal more than my $10 boxes of Herbal Essences, I can't put a price on my hair looking perfect for our wedding.

The color specialist said my hair is "apricot." APRICOT. Incase you're drawing a blank as to the color of APRICOT, I'm putting a picture in this post. APRICOT. I'm in a bit of denial (if you check out my profile picture which is from Matt's reunion, you can get a pretty accurate depiction of my color). Anyway, I have an appointment on Saturday to get my color fixed, so expect some before and after pictures (and please, for the love of God, cross your fingers that I finally find the color I'm looking for!!).

Moving at the Speed of Life

2006-04-24T14:08:00.000-07:00

I can't wait for our honeymoon. And not just to celebrate our status as newlyweds, to yap into the ears of anyone who'll listen that "we're on our honeymoon" in the hopes of free upgrades, but for a break from the rapidity of things, for a vacation from life and its sometimes alarming, nonstop forward pace. I'm eagerly awaiting the opportunity to s l o w. d o w n.

I was talking to Christy this morning about this - the oncoming freight train called Life - and how nice it would be to just...pause. It seems silly taking into consideration that I just wished away the last year of my life more vehemently than I wished for a pony when I was a little girl (which was pretty damn vehemently). But now that Matt's home, it's like everything's been a constant go go go, and I would love, just for a little while, for things to come to a screeching halt. Our schedules have been so relentless, I feel I haven't fully had the opportunity to get over missing Matt and having him absent from my life for so long.

Matt had been home barely two weeks before he started working again - he commutes about 45 minutes each way, leaving every morning before I do, getting home after I do, and having about a 14 hour day from the time he backs out of the garage to the time he pulls back in. During the week, I see him on average 2 hours a night while we unwind and eat dinner and watch the news and then it's off to bed so we can start the cycle over again. Undoubtedly, I'm grateful to have him home, but in some ways, it feels the only difference between now and when Matt was deployed is that now I don't have to sleep alone. I feel like I'm still missing him.

On the other hand, despite how little I see him, he is home and no longer in Afghanistan and it's selfish of me to complain about seeing Matt "only" 2 hours a night. I know what it's like to have to go 9 straight months without even so much as a recent photo and don't even want to imagine what it's like for those few who'll never see their loved ones again. I know my greediness with Matt will pass, but I'm going through a stage right now where I have this insatiable need to make up for all our "lost time," and need to come to terms with the reality that that's just not possible.

On Saturday night we went out to dinner to an Italian restaurant that neither of us had ever been to and afterward we were planning on going to see "Thank You For Smoking." We stopped in a piano lounge downtown - one of our regular haunts - and ended up having such a good time, we blew off the movie. I couldn't for the life of me tell you what we talked about, but we were laughing and having a good time, and at one point I remember thinking that if we had as much time together as I keep thinking we need, I wouldn't enjoy the time we do have together nearly as much. Because we're both so busy with work and friends and still trying to find time for each other, I never take for granted the time we do have together - I enjoy our weeknights lounging around in our pajamas watching Fox News or "House" as much as I enjoy the nights we get dressed up for a nice dinner and drinks at one of our favorite ritzy lounges and it seems terribly asinine that I should complain about the very thing that's given me the ability to cherish every single second we have together. Se la vie. Such is life. Such is human behavior. I believe I just had an epiphany :-)~

The weekend was extremely rainy and dreary. We were supposed to pour the concrete for our new walkway and patio on Saturday but were unable to due to a sudden downpour. All Friday night it rained, all Saturday afternoon it rained, and yesterday, I swear we had a monsoon. My brother flew in from Alaska which was really nice because I haven't seen him since his wedding in September 2004 (I told Matt the other night that it's funny to think since the last time I saw my brother, he had gone to war and come home). My brother stayed at our house last night (I was thrilled to finally be able to implement my beautifully decorated guest bedroom). I went to bed early feeling kind of sick (I think I ate some bad shellfish at dinner...yuck) and could hear my brother and Matt discussing the stock market late into the night.

I changed the comments on my page so you don't have to have a blogger account to comment, but if you have nothing nice to say, I'm not going to publish your comment, so don't even waste your time. This is my blog, so if you want to be an ass, please don't do it in my comments.

Whose Wedding Is It Anyway?

2006-04-17T15:54:00.000-07:00

Happy belated Easter to all! We had a white Easter. Yup - on Thursday it was 67 degrees and everyone in the office was antsy with spring fever - by Saturday evening, it was dumping snow, but that's northern Nevada for you. We'd planned on spending the holiday with my parents who live in Tahoe and at 9:15 in the morning when we left our house it didn't seem so bad. In fact, it wasn't even so much as raining in Reno, but once we got onto the mountain pass that connects Reno to Lake Tahoe, we were in for quite an adventure. Snow was dumping on the summit and somewhere around the middle of the pass, the visibility got bad. Real bad. We were basing the curve of the road from one dark object to the next and constantly hoping those dark objects weren't cars. Nothing will make you lose your depth perception quite like a white out.

Thankfully we made it safely to Tahoe. We went to mass at the church Matt and I will be married in and the priest, worried about the safety of everyone driving, "streamlined" the mass from the typical hour into a half hour. We stuck around afterward so Matt and I could start filling out paperwork and get filled in on the requirements to get married in the Catholic church (there's a handful of 'em!) and when we were done with that, my dad practiced walking me down the aisle and Matt and I stood in front of the altar, grinning stupidly at each other. With just over 100 days left till the BIG DAY, it's really starting to hit home. On the drive home, I apologized to Matt in advance for what will become my inability to shut up the wedding in the months to come.

The truth of the matter is, I'm in heaven. This is my forte. I am an organized perfectionist and with the countdown to the wedding ticking down, I've shifted into overdrive and I couldn't be happier (though I don't think I can say the same for anyone who might derail my forward pace). One of my maids of honor (I have two...which is kind of a long, dramatic story...as it seems most stories involving crazy brides and their bridesmaids usually are) was still without a dress which had steam seeping from my ears and my head spinning. The dress shop said it usually takes 3 months for a special ordered dress to arrive and with just over 3 months left to my wedding and my numero uno maid of honor being the only bridesmaid who had yet to get her dress, I was about to lose my typically calm demeanor. After 2 months of pestering her that she absolutely could not get her dress any later than April 15, she finally made a trip out to Reno (she lives about 2 hours away, but don't let her being an out-of-towner let you believe that's any excuse for her to be dressless - one of my bridesmaids lives in Alaska). We got her measured and her dress ordered and as Murphy's Law would have it, she received a call today that the only way she'll receive her dress in time for the wedding is if we expedite the order. I offered to pay the expedite fees because I felt bad, but at the same time, I had been bitching incessantly in her ear for 2 months about getting her dress...Se la vie.

One of the requisites of receiving the sacrament of matrimony (or, simply, being married in the Catholic church) is that Matt and I attend an "Engaged Encounter" weekend. I haven't fully figured out what exactly this is - the brochure tells us it is "an intense weekend of marriage preparation" that will encourage engaged couples to "examine their own relationship" and "the focus of the weekend follows a natural progression from the individual - to the couple - to the church - to the world." It cost us $160 and will end up being a total of 25 and a half hours (on the Saturday of the "encounter" we have to be there from 8 in the morning to 9:30 at night!! That's a LOT of religion) and without the certificate we'll receive at the end of the weekend, we'll be unable to have a Catholic ceremony. We also have to meet with a "marriage preparation team." I know it probably sounds like overkill to non-Catholics (I'll be the first to admit that my religion is somewhat obsolete in certain aspects), but I think there's something to all this preparation - Catholics really drive home the part of the vows "TILL DEATH DO US PART." A good portion of the interview we had with the priest over Easter was verifying that we were absolutely certain we wanted to spend THE REST OF OUR LIVES together, that we understood all that entails, and that no one is forcing us into this union (i.e. a shot-gun wedding...LOL). A lot of people don't take the commitment of marriage as serious as they should - divorce rates don't lie - and I find it refreshing that Catholics are so hell-bent (no pun intended) on really stressing the finality and fidelity of marriage.

Over the weekend, I also got my shoes which were the missing element of my bridal ensemble - it is now completed, so today I set an appointment for my dress alteration. I'm excited for the alteration if for no other reason than to wear my dress again - I haven't put it on since February of 2005 when we bought it (though I do often pay it visits whenever I go see my parents) and God knows the damn things cost enough that you SHOULD be able to wear it for more than one day. Nonetheless, I do plan on trying to pawn it off on my daughter one day (who will inevitably crinkle up her nose and give me the same look and say the same thing I said when my mom suggested I wear her dress. "But it's soo obsolete and sooo not me").

And we booked our honeymoon - Cabo San Lucas, here we come! I know on my old blog, where I so shamelessly asked for donations, I said we were going to NYC. But then Matt came home for leave and he'd had to stop in Ireland so he said we just HAD to go to Ireland, and hey, I was up for it. How cool would it be to say we went to Ireland for our honeymoon? And then I started having second thoughts because honeymoons are for relaxing and relishing in our newly wed status. I had recurring nightmares of us driving around Ireland on the wrong side of the street with an inadequate rent-a-car and a map and the fights that would ensue (anyone ever seen the movie "Just Married"?). I didn't even have to mention to Matt that I was having second thoughts about Ireland because around the same time he mentioned to me that he was having second thoughts. Great minds think alike! So we settled on the beach honeymoon which is perhaps a little cliche, but there's a reason it's so popular, right?

I can't believe Matt's been home for a month now! I'm settling right into his nightly presence (though I still cry from time to time because I feel him curled up next to me at night and I remember how lonely I was while he was gone and how happy I am now...this post-deployment crying really is quite an anomaly); anyway, with the initial "HE'S HOME!" excitement simmering down, you can expect to be reading more wedding posts and perhaps they'll all be titled "Confessions of a Bridezilla." LOL :)~

Secret Laundry

2006-04-13T10:05:00.000-07:00

I thought one of the hardest things to adjust to with having Matt home would be getting back into the habit of picking up after two, but in all actuality, it's been quite easy and I've rather full-heartedly thrown myself into the role of Domestic Goddess. I can't cook - well, I can in the lowest sense of the word, but he who eats the food I make is a brave, brave soul. I make a mean meatloaf which is a pure anomaly because everything else I make is God awful (I even burn boxed meals like Hamburger Helper). Thankfully Matt is an awesome cook - he makes the most fantastically moist chicken that melts in the mouth - so to keep things in equilibrium, I do the dishes, clean, do the laundry, etc. I'm a little bit of a nut in that I just LOVE doing laundry. What I lack in cooking, I make up in washing and ironing clothes - whites so white, perfectly ironed creases in Matt's Dockers, and no stain stands a chance against me. I'm telling you - I'm nuts.

For the 2 years we were together before Matt deployed, we'd miraculously managed to share a full mattress, but after sleeping alone on that bed for 14 months and then trying to squeeze both of us back onto it...well, it just wasn't going to work. God knows I love the man more than anything, but he is a bed hog, a pillow stealer, and has the world's sharpest elbows. How he managed to sleep on those tiny little army beds for over a year is a mystery to me; he sure had no problem getting reacquainted with sprawling out, elbowing, and just straight rolling over me. We needed a queen (hence the new bed featured in the post below), but that wasn't enough. We had blue walls that I had developed immense disdain for that I never imagined would occur when I had the brilliant idea to paint the damn things blue, so we had to completely redo the bedroom (yes, I admit I'm slightly high maintenance and somewhat of a spoiled brat).

I digress....Because of the painting, we had to spend a couple nights in our guest bedroom and because of the new bed, we suddenly had an extra mattress, so I was inundated with sheets to wash in the laundry and because I'm a little bit crazy, I decided to throw towels into the mix too, and on top of that, Matt was doing yard work, so every day he had stinky work clothes to add to the pile. I reveled in my mountain of laundry, but since I was also hell bent on spending every available second holding Matt's hand so he wouldn't magically disappear into thin air, I got really behind, so for the past week or so, I've been doing laundry every single night, trying to get caught up but continually being pushed back again by my fiance and his stinky work clothes.

A couple nights ago, Matt commented on my nightly laundry, which seemed a little insane on top of my incessant need to get the dishes cleaned the second we were done eating dinner. He said I needed to sit down and relax. He appreciates always having clean clothes and an immaculate house, but it wasn't the end of the world if I let things pile up a little. It's like a Virgo's personal hell. He basically forbade me from doing laundry Wednesday night, so I thought I'd be a little sneaky and secretly wash the laundry unbeknownst to him (I know, absolutely batty). He leaves for work every morning around 5:30 and that's painfully early for me so normally I don't get up with him, but he couldn't get his truck started yesterday so I had to get up and help him. After he left instead of crawling back into bed like I usually would, yup, you guessed it, I threw a load of laundry in the wash. I figured I could get it washed and in the dryer before I left so by the time I got home from work I could fold it and Matt would be none the wiser (he just started this fabulous new job, but he works about 13 hour days, leaving before I do and getting home after I do, which is a bit of a drain on both of us, but that's another post for another day).

When I got home, I turned the dryer on for just another 20 minutes or so to release any wrinkles that had developed from the clothes sitting in a bunch in the dryer all day and got them folded and put away just as Matt called my cell phone to let me know he was on his way home. Success!! And as a result of my secret laundry, I am totally caught up from the mountain that had formed.

Matt got home and we exchanged our usual how-was-your-day small talk, hugs, and kisses that we always do before he jumps in the shower and changes into his sweats to start making dinner. I curled up on our fantastic new couch to watch "Everybody Loves Raymond" while Matt showered and when he came back into the living room, sweat pant and t-shirt clad, he was pointing an accusing finger at me and giving me a scolding look. Uh oh. I was racking my brain for things I might have forgotten to do that day - after all, what you don't do is always more important than what you do.

"You did laundry, didn't you?"

All I could do was bust up laughing. I cannot keep things from Matt, yet I had been so sure that I could get away with secretly doing a load of laundry that morning so he wouldn't have to gripe that night that I never relax. He knew because I'd washed his sweatpants and when he went to put them on they were still warm from the dryer. I missed Matt immensely while he was gone, but I also missed us, our goofy interactions with one another, our silly unconditional love for each other. Matt is my best friend - unable to be substituted by even the best of my girlfriends - and I don't think it was until last night when I was busted for secretly doing the laundry that I remembered how unequivocally happy I am with Matt and how much I missed that feeling. In fact, I'd gotten so adept at "forgetting" certain aspects of our relationship to make the deployment less painful, I don't think I'd even fully realized it had been missing.

This morning before he left, Matt wrote me a note that he loves me so much and he'll see me tonight after work and rolled it up and put it in my key ring so I would find it when I went for my car keys. It really is the little things that matter the most; I must admit I'd outlandishly romantacized Matt's homecoming into impossible scenarios - something that, according to the FRG booklets we received in the mail, is totally normal and typically causes some level of discontentment - but I'm finally starting to get it. I don't need the retribution for the 14-months we "lost" that I've been waiting for and expecting. I'm just happy to have him home, safe, out of Afghanistan. I'm just happy to be whole again, and that's all the retribution I need.

Without You Here, This House Was Not a Home

2006-04-10T10:15:00.000-07:00

It's funny how time is just trucking right along now that Matt's home. I sent an email to his mom this morning commenting that if time had seemed to go by this quickly while he was away, the deployment would've been a breeze. Nonetheless, now that it's over, it kind of feels like the deployment was a breeze. Strange how in retrospect 14 months can seem so minor.

We've started making huge renovations to our home. I met up with one of my girlfriends for dinner after work on Thursday, and the whole time I was acting like I was sitting on tacks. Matt had called me earlier to inform me that the new couch had arrived and that it looked great - that seeing in the showroom didn't do it justice and I really had to see it in the living room, so I spent all of dinner glancing at my watch just dying to see the couch. I know, what a great friend I am, right? But the couch looks spectacular. It's microfiber (AKA faux-suede) so after spending God knows how long on that showroom floor and being shipped to us wrapped up tightly in plastic, sitting on it had about the same staticy effect rubbing a balloon might have, but it was nothing a Bounce sheet couldn't take care of!

On Friday when I got home from work, we had a new driveway (which I must admit puts every other driveway in our neighborhood to shame), and our fabulous new Crate and Barrel bedframe had arrived. I assembled the frame on Saturday (all by myself 'cause Matt was finishing up the driveway. I'm still quite proud of becoming Miss DIY during Matt's absence), and on Sunday we had our walkway torn up for MORE concrete work that will be done this Saturday. It's really nice to be changing our house. We're transforming the house into "married couple abode" and moving away from "broke college student bachelor pad" which it was before I moved in, and in a lot of ways I feel like we're depleting the house of the lonesome memories I have in it from the last year. It's not a bachelor pad anymore and it's not a house where a lonely fiance of a deployed soldier spends her nights worrying and waiting - it's OUR house now. It's our home. Before I moved in with Matt, I'd moved 8 different times within 2 years, and I haven't felt this settled and comfortable in a house since living with my parents in high school. Now we're just lacking wall decorations....

I'm still adjusting to having Matt home. He started work today and had to leave at 5:30 this morning (I typically wake up around 6:30) and I got a goodbye hug and kiss while I was groggy and only half awake so waking up alone was reminiscent of the hundreds of mornings I had to do it prior to today. I had to go outside and check to make sure that our yard was still under construction, check to make sure our new couch was still in place, just to be sure that Matt really HAD come home and I hadn't imagined the entire thing. I'm a little on edge, like if I get too relaxed, he'll magically disappear into thin air. It's amusing how the subconscious works, and I know I'll see him when I get home from work today, but every step toward our normal pre-deployment existence (like Matt starting work again today) is just another thing that takes readjustment and assurance that he's not going anywhere. In a lot of ways, it's like the healing of an open wound. Soon enough, though, I know I'll finally get it into my head that he's home for good! Now it's just a matter of getting the stitches removed. ;)

Getting Back to Normal

2006-04-05T10:40:00.000-07:00

I was somewhat melancholy about the end of my deployment life - I'd gotten so used to being in the role "The Fiancee of a Deployed Soldier," I didn't quite know what to expect of becoming simply "The Fiancee." Thankfully the official end has been nothing short of spectacular. You get so adjusted to deployment life, so used to being alone, that it's not really until your loved one comes home that you start to realize just how much you missed them.

It has been nearly 3 weeks now since Matt got home. Three blissful weeks of complete normalcy - well, almost. I took Matt's first week back home off from work to spend every possible moment with him and imagined us being indulged in US: drinks every night at our favorite bar, romantic dinners in our favorite dimly lit spots, and while we did manage a couple nights for dates, the rest of the week was just your regular, normal stuff - an entire morning at the DMV to get Matt's truck registered, cleaning out the garage, grocery shopping, and we even went and bought our wedding rings. I'm glad we did normal every day stuff - I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed grocery shopping with Matt; it's the simple things that really get to you.

On the 27th I went back to work and the feelings of disdain that accompany the end of any vacation (no one wants to go back to work after a week off!) were multiplied fivefold as I was still harboring some feelings of all the times I had to say goodbye to Matt. But I survived a week of work with Matt being home and with that we've officially been re-initiated to normal life. We still have our moments of disbelief - I still blubber "I can't believe you're home!" incessantly, I made Matt come pick me up and take me with him when he went to see his friends because the thought of spending a few hours alone in the house caused an enormous lump in my throat (I felt a little bad and slightly pathetic, but Matt was very understanding), and when we made plans to meet up for happy hour at "our" bar when I got off work the other night, Matt hung up the phone saying, "Alright, I'll call you tomorrow!" - but these are all things that will pass with time. Old habits die hard, and while we're back to our usual pre-deployment routine, there's still lingering feelings of what we endured these last 14 months.

We've started completely redecorating our house inside and out which has been a fun project. Matt's taken charge of the yard - a new wrought iron fence, new concrete work, and GRASS (when I tell tales of the days when I used to walk barefoot on our lawn - the days before we had our dog - people look at me like I must be nuts), and I've taken over the interior. We repainted our bedroom, got new bedding, and a beautiful new Crate and Barrel bed frame (an early wedding gift from my parents). We've given new meaning to Spring cleaning - really it's more of a "Total Roommate Cleansing" to rid ourselves of anything in the house that's not ours - we donated our old couches to a church (along with an extra TV, 6 bags of clothes, and an old La-Z-Boy recliner) and went couch shopping for a new couch (an early wedding gift from Matt's parents). After 7 furniture stores (I swear, couch shopping is about a thousand times harder than shopping for a new car) we finally found the perfect couch, so today we had our carpets steam cleaned (since there's no furniture in our living room currently) and tomorrow our new couch will be delivered!!

Everything is so normal - so wonderfully normal. I wasn't going to move to my new blog until after the wedding, but now that Matt's home, it seems more sense to leave Military Bride just for the deployment and to start fresh with our post-deployment life. After all, that was then and this is now :)