ding-dong ding-dong

yes, i can hear wedding bells.  and no, i’m not engaged.  i’m sure there are people that have read my posts (albeit not that many based on my stats) and thought “this chick is crazy!” or maybe ”enough with waiting for the ring already!”   “get on with your life and stop being so presumptive!”   and/or  “you’re engagement/wedding obsessed!”

but i feel like i need to clarify the situation a little.  so, yes, i’ve been expecting a ring.  but it’s only because i’ve been told  i’m getting one.  after a year or so of M not really knowing whether or not he ever wanted to get married, one day he decided he absolutely wants to marry me (one of the happiest moments of my life!)!  so from that point on it’s been a life full of discussions about the details.  when?  where?  who?  etc.  the discussions have been between the two of us.  as i’ve complained about before, he gives me these little dates to mark as “i’ll propose by then” and he fails to meet them over and over.  i get really bent out of shape each time, not because i don’t think he’s going to do it, but because all he has to do is tell me before that date that it’s not going to happen.  he’s given me details about the things that keep setting it back (it’s mostly about my ring) and once he finally shared that with me it all made more sense.  i’m not a patient person.  and i hate being kept in the dark so i need details and he’s given me them lately.  it’s put my mind at ease (slightly more so anyway) and i’ve told him no more deadlines, i can’t deal with them anymore.

the other night i decided to make some confessions to him because it’s been eating me up not telling him.  i usually tell him EVERYTHING!  so after he got a little nervous he told me to spill it… and i did.  i gathered my courage and struggled for the words but finally told him about…

• the bridesmaids dresses i bought a couple of months ago.  i’ve known all along that i was only going to have these 2 girls so when i saw these dresses, and they were $20 i couldn’t help myself.  i bought them and shipped them off to my sister immediately.  partly to get rid of the evidence, and partly to run them by her and S to make sure they were cool with them.  it turned out my sister loved it so much she had me go find her one in another color and she’s wearing it to a black-tie wedding this week!

i waited for his reaction and after a moment of silence i got it.  laughter.  not mean laughter but you’re-being-silly-laughter.  which is good but not what i expected.  he laughed because we’ve been planning the wedding for a while, we’ve worked on guest lists, discussed venues, food, etc. so i shouldn’t have been so worried.  so i decided to tell him some more and i told him about…

• the dress appointments i have scheduled.  i said all along that i wasn’t going to try on dresses until i have my ring.  but i’m going home this week and i don’t really foresee any other times when i can go dress shopping with my mom, sister and S.  and it’s extremely important to me to do this with them.  (in an effort to be practical i also have an appointment here tomorrow to narrow out the styles that aren’t worth trying on when i’m home… i have a feeling mermaid and trumpet fall into this category… thanks for the hips mom).   

and his reaction was just about the same.  more laughter.  he knows that this has been an important detail for me and originally i really thought we’d be engaged before this trip so it wasn’t going to be an issue.  it all just feels so weird though.  i know it’s just practical but i haven’t bought a single wedding magazine because i’ve just felt it would be wrong (on some bizarre level) to do before i’m officially engaged.  but yet somewhere along the lines i decided to make a purchase and it’s kinda been downhill from there.  i have yet to spill the beans about these other wedding related moves…

• candy buffet jars.  i bought them on the same day i got the dresses.  once i put the dresses in my cart i knew i was crossing that line and figured what the hell.  i saw these awesome jars and they’ve been sitting in my closet floor ever since.
• wedding invitations.  no, i haven’t bought invitations but i have won them.  you heard that right.  i won a wedding blog giveaway!  i was so excited when i found out.  not only because i never win anything but because we’re now going to have letterpress invitations!  i’m so excited!!  i can’t wait to tell him and actually get to pick them out.
• a handbag.  to the naked eye no one would know it’s to be used on my wedding day, but i saw it and loved it right away.  i’ll post pictures of all this stuff once it’s official and i feel a little more comfortable with my purchases.
• i may or may not have already started designing our wedding website (since almost everyone will be from out of town) and save the dates on my computer

as of right now, that’s all there is.  i know i know some of you still think i’m crazy and maybe i am… a little.  but i swear i’m not fully.  i can justify all of it.  and just because i don’t have a ring doesn’t change the fact that we’re planning a wedding, we’re just doing it backwards.  once i do finally have the ring we already know where we’re headed to secure the reception site and who’s church we’re going to use. 

does this take the romance out of it?  no.  the message and outcome is the same. 

when he does propose will i have that moment of oh-my-god-i’m-so-surprised-i-had-no-clue?  no and i don’t need that.  i’ve already had that moment with him, when he finally decided i was what he wanted for the rest of his life … and i’ll never forget hearing that.  and i will be surprised when he actually does it because at this point i have no clue what is going on which is awesome because i love a surprise but i never get them because i have ZERO patience and can sniff them out a mile away.

anyway, i’m still not buying any magazines until i have a ring.  and it may seem ridiculous to you but i need to stand by some level of “that’s crossing the line” and that’s where i choose to put it.  with all the blogs i read i don’t think i really need magazines for any reason but i think at this point i just want to buy one… just because you only get to do that for a small time and i don’t want to miss out on it.

  

 

~ today i learned… women are blessed with more taste buds than males.~

oh the ’stache

okay, so this is for all those people ending up at my site wondering about LC’s ’stache.

it’s a little something i like to refer to as the sun’stache.  it’s not caused by hair.  there’s no dark hair there at all… but you can only see that in person.  it’s a hyper melanin pigmentation (or something like that) called melasma.  it’s not usually a genetic thing when you see it on 20 something girls, though i’m sure there are some people out there for whom it actually is genetic.  in girls of this age it’s normally caused by a reaction from birth control.  the extra estrogen hormones create an excess of melanin which in turns darkens the skin pigment in certain areas when it’s exposed to sunlight… normally where men DO grow excess facial hair, above the lip and in the sideburns area.  so the tanner you become, the more noticeable the spots become.  unfortunately there isn’t much that can be done to fix it once it starts.  the options quickly become   a) go off the pills   b) try to lighten the skin in those areas with a lotion that has hydroquinone (a bleaching agent) and glycolic acid in it  but it’s not hte most effective method at all as it may not make any noticeable difference and these creams ain’t cheap when they have a decent amount of these chemicals in them.

how do i know all this?  well last summer i started to see my own sun’stache appear and i freaked out.  i looked in the mirror under the best lighting and every angle possible to make sure that there was no hair there.  after checking with my Dr. sure enough she explained it to me.  once winter came and my tan faded it faded too… i completely forgot about it until this summer when i started getting tan again.  i used the creams last year, didn’t see much of a difference.  some Dr.s will say that you should change birth control to make it go away, claiming that the lower estrogen doses will help you avoid this.  i can call bullshit on that with 100% certainty as when i developed this i’d just started on one of the lowest estrogen dose pills out there.  and with all the pills i’ve been on before i never had this happen. 

so hopefully LC is thinking about what she’s going to do to fix hers too.  as for me?  i’m requesting a new pill-less method of birth control this week.

maybe the Today sponge? anyone? (c’mon seinfeld fans)

  

  

~ today i learned…the letters KGB stand for Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti… translated to Committee for State Security ~

what a weekend

it was a great weekend overall.  over the course of the last few years my weekends have become fairly predictable.  M and i meet up after work on friday and then we split for work on monday morning.  i do love this, spending so much time with someone you love never feels like a hassle or gets on your nerves.  then every once in a while we’ll spend a weekend apart, he’ll go away on a trip, i’ll go away, or one of us will have company in town.  this weekend was the latter.  i got to spend time with someone i’ve been very glad to have met and made such good friends with.  and while i always miss M when we’re apart it’s nice to sometimes just pull yourself away from each other for a little bit.  i’m not trying to make anyone roll their eyes, because i know when i was not part of a couple like this i sat back and bitched about the friends i lost to their new relationships.  you know those girls who suddenly spent all their time with their beau and you never heard from them anymore?  yah, i didn’t want to be that.  but there’s a reason for it.  and i haven’t sacrificed my life for him, i still have friends and i make alot of effort to never lose them, i just prefer being with him and we like spending so much of our time together. 

anyway, a weekend like this past one was definitely needed.  once she arrived we went out for beers at the local smokey bars, took a rickshaw home, did some damage to bank accounts and lines of credit at the outlets, had a fantastically romantic dinner for two with a bottle of wine in a dimly lit restaurant, drank white russians while cookies baked, and caught an early brunch.  and she liked scungili!!  it was nice to get out of the apt, to spend some time with someone i don’t get to hang out with on a regular basis, to be able to talk about relationships and problems, and families, and whatever we wanted to talk about.  i know i have a tendency to drop the ‘ol “M this” and “M that” into conversations but i can’t help it.  it’s one of those subconscious things that i hear once it’s left my mouth and i cringe a little telling myself “shut up notsojenny.  there’s more to life than your man”  but at the same time i can justify it because he’s such an important part of my life, i just can’t help bringing him up sometimes.

all in all, it was a successful weekend on many levels.  the weather was gorgeous!  i finished up birthday gifts for everyone that i need to drop off when i head to CT this week.  i showed M the shoes i bought my brother in law and he really liked them, he loved them when i told him the price.  so we hopped in the car and headed back to the outlets, he now has them in black & brown and i returned a pair of pants that were too short (story of my life).  we ate leftover lamb sausage for dinner with some extra fixins, i knew he’d be excited that i had leftovers… he was curious why i didn’t bring home any scungili though… oh well, it was too good and we finished it all off : )
then we ate cookies and snuggled up in front of football where i began my napping.

it was a good weekend.

and my place is SO clean!!

  

  

~ today i learned… more males are killed by lightening than females.~

TFIF

i didn’t post yesterday.  i knowhtat  when i was going to sleep wednesday night i started writing a post in my head, something had happened and i was gonna blog about it.  then i woke up thursday morning and could not for the life of me remember what it was.  i thought on the entire drive into work.  i pulled up my “write new post” page multiple times throughout the day but i was blank.  i had just had nothing to say.

i thought about a post dedicated to how i’ve realized a connection between my singing voice and my period and wondering if professional singers get this too?  does Madonna schedule her tour around her menstrual cycle?  because i’m no celine dion, anyone who knows me will vouch for that, but that doesn’t stop me from belting out any song i know (even some i don’t know) at the top of my lungs.  this usually happens at home when i’m alone, or even in the car.  in the car by myself there’s usually a little shoulder action to jazz it up.  actually when i started singing in the car with M i knew i really loved him… that was before we ever started dating too.  anyhow, i was going to comment on the fact that the week before my period i seem to be able to carry a tune better than any other week… at least it sounds like it in my head.  and then the week of my period?  oh heaven help us all.  it’s bad.  and for me to say that?  i’ve heard my voice when i used to tape record myself singing, i can’t imagine it’s much different 20 years later but i just don’t have a tape recorder to find out.  anyway, that was going to be my post.

but instead i’ve been cleaning.  and making lists.  lists of what still needs to be cleaned.  lists of what to pack for my big trip to CT and my meet & greet with NKOTB (that’s right… eat your heart out!)   i’m going to pick up my car from the shop in a little bit (they finished it a day early!) and then i’m coming back to finish cleaning.  tonight i pick up an awesome friend from the train station and then the fun girl’s weekend will commence.  i got really excited last night when i decided to take her out for scungili when she gets here… oh i hope she likes scungili!  and then when she leaves M will be back in town… then next week i have 2 lunches with friends, 1 night of drinks to catch up with an old roommate, and a meeting for my women’s club function that i volunteered for (there will be wine… that’s the only reason i really go!).  then i have my annual and a couple hours later i leave for CT.   all this and i’m still supposed to be getting work done too. 

things are getting crazy.  hopefully they won’t leave me blank but instead with plenty of stories and inspiration.

thank fuck it’s friday

have a great weekend everyone!!
  

  

~ today i learned…horses and rabbits cannot vomit (still nothing compares to the frog )~

factimus maximus

everyone has some random facts about themselves, and things they do.  sometimes it’s hard to tell anyone because you assume they’ll label you as crazy.  after reading through comments left on other blogs i’ve learned that some of the stuff i do, stuff that i think would get me labeled, is stuff alot of other people do too!  so as a community service i’m going to list out some of the things about me that i know at least one other person out there is afflicted with too so we all don’t feel quite so alone in our weirdness…

- i read my mail in the bathroom.  it’s the first thing i do when i walk in the door.  i’ll read an entire magazine or catalog just sitting in there.  i guess it’s just my way of decompressing after a long day.  i find it so relaxing to just spend time sitting in there… even when i don’t have to go.

- i talk to myself.  all the time.  out loud.  i have entire conversations with me.  i think know i got this one from my mom (along with many others).  i’ll talk about my day, bitch about something, i’ll have an entire conversation.  when i had dogs i used to talk to them.  i always assumed they were in agreeance with me though.  if i ever thought they disagreed and we had a conversation about it then it might be time to call it quits.

- i know this one will gross most people out but… i smell my socks.  not in a freaky disturbing way.  i just smell my socks when i take them off.  i don’t even know why.  i guess it’s just a measure of how active my day was or something.

- i despise the sound of whistling.  i’m not sure when i began to dislike it, but i do.  and whenever i hear someone do it, it makes my skin crawl.  i basically scream inside my head.

- i’m always paranoid that i didn’t flush.  i’ll go back and check multiple times.  of course it’s only gotten worse since that one time i checked only to see that i actually hadn’t.  it’s just so routine to get up, turn around, and flush that i forget whether i’ve done it or not.  when i’m out in public i stress about it for a long time once i get back to my seat.  i try to envision those last seconds and whether i remember doing it or not.

- my mother drives me insane.  so maybe this isn’t an unusual thing but the woman is crazy!  i love her more than anything in this world though, nothing will ever mean more to me than her, but after about an hour with her i need a break.  she’s too intense.  and god do i hate being so far away from her.

- i keep stock on pregnancy tests.  i’ve always taken them when a relationship was in trouble.  i don’t know if it’s because i’d get nervous that something terrible was going to happen or if it’s because i hoped that if i was it would save the relationship.  no matter what, i’m so not ready for kids and glad that something like that never changed a relationship from where it was headed.  i’m right where i’m supposed to be.

- i check my email waaay too often.  and i’m always hoping there’s going to be something amazing in there.  and i’m a little bummed every time there isn’t.

- i set my alarm clock ahead by a random amount of time.  i don’t calculate it because i don’t want to know exactly how much.  but i set my alarm to make up for that time.  if i want to get up at 7:30 and think my clock is about 30 minutes fast, i’ll set it for 8.  defeats the point, i know.  my car is set fast too… i have no clue how fast but i think it’s approaching an hour.

- i don’t like walking around in bare feet.  i take my shoes off the second i get home but have to have socks or slippers on immediately.  i go to sleep with my socks on, but get too hot and take them off in my sleep.  whenever i change the sheets i find miscellaneous socks strewn about.

- i laugh when i’m nervous.  job interviews, funerals, dates, whatever.  it’s like an awful tick, i hate it.

- i watch too much Law & Order on some days.  then i have a hard time leaving the house or staying in it.  i called my boyfriend up in tears once because i was convinced someone was in my place.  turns out i had just watched an all day marathon.

- i glance in the mirror too many times a day.  especially if i think i look good, i like to take it in on those days to make up for hte days when i can’t stand to look in the mirror.  i guess i’m vain, not completely convinced though but probably am.

- i’m so anal retentive about being prepared for anything.  i play out entire conversations in my head over and over.  i even write them out sometimes.  i have to prepare for every possible outcome.

- i don’t like people seeing my ears.  they stick out and i hate the way they look uncovered.  if i pull my hair back i use bobbypins to hold the sides over my ears, i wear a fleece headband that covers my ears when i go running so i can put my hair up in a full ponytail… even in the summer.  i’d rather go out of the house without makeup than with my ears showing.  (i do have to admit this has gotten better since i’ve been in the relationship i’m in… i don’t care as much about how i look to others)

- i get irritated when people say that they look like someone famous… especially when they look nothing like them.  it’s one thing for people to tell you that you look like someone, it’s another to insist you look like someone fabulous.

- i am obsessive about picking at my cuticles, fingernails & toenails.  i like to split the nails and then file them down.  i like to pick at my cuticles with a safety pin and then cut them off like i’m supposed to.  it’s not very ladylike and it’s probably one step away from being as gross as biting toenails but whatever.

i’m sure i’ve mentioned some of these before.  and i’m sure there are many more. 

  

  

~ today i learned… the sandwich is named after the 4th Earl of Sandwich to facilitate simultaneous eating and gambling (a man after my own heart!) ~

like totally gag me

they say that when it comes to children, stuff that would normally gross you out won’t.  something about it being your own children makes it less disgusting i guess?  i don’t really get this train of though but i’m decidedly putting alot of stock into it. 

apparently i have a weak gag reflex.  and it seems to be getting worse.  i used to throw up alot but it had nothing to do with my gag reflex, or an eating disorder, it had to do with my partying lifestyle.  i was young and my preferred method of enjoying my weekend outings was the good ‘ol boot & rally (for those of you who did not defile their bodies every weekend like i did and don’t know what that is, it’s when you drink until you can’t possibly drink anymore.  we all know that feeling when you know the next shot is going to make you puke, but in this method you take it anyway.  and as soon as you walk out from the bathroom, or alley, wherever, you go straight to the bar to get another drink.  is it a drinking problem?  i dunno, but it was my way of not being the wet blanket on the party.  it’s also why i went into work still drunk on many occasions).  anyhoo… i thought that this familiarity with the process of throwing up would leave me immune to the gagging stuff.  i was wrong.

recently i gagged at the dentist’s office when they were taking molds.  the second that goopy stuff hit the back of my throat my body screamed NOOOOO! and with people holding my mouth open the only way my body could say this was to make me gag, repeatedly, until they removed the goop.

when my nieces were visiting last month one of them choked on bacon at my kitchen table.  not only do i freeze when this happens (god help my poor future children because with all my years of babysitting under my belt i’ve somehow recently developed a debilitating fear of children choking to death in front of me… i freeze right up) but as she choked the bacon back up everything else she’d eaten came up too.  all over my tablecloth.  all over my plates.  all over.  and while i stood there frozen, not able to help the poor thing, i started to gag.  so i decided to turn toward the kitchen to begin cleanup while my sister and mom stuck their fingers in to retrieve the bacon from her throat.  as i handed over the paper towels i gagged.  as i pulled off the dirty tablecloth to clean it i gagged.  i couldn’t get near any of it without gagging.  i had to leave the room entirely at one point because it was about to go past just gagging.

then when we were down visiting one of M’s friends the guy’s daughter had some sort of cold or something.  she was all stuffy and you could hear it in her nose, that alone grosses me out.  then we were out at dinner and she sneezed.  and boogers went everywhere.  one even landed on my hand.  i tried to discreetly wipe it off with a napkin and i was able to hide my gagging.  but i couldn’t eat anything that was on the table after that.  i tried to dip a fry into my ranch and gagged.  it never made it into my mouth.  then later as we were about the leave the little girl was standing next to the table and she sneezed again… one giant slimy one was on her face, i gagged.  M handed her a napkin and she wiped.  but she wiped the giant glob across her face and up into her eye.  i continued to gag.  it took a good 10 minutes for me to stop gagging.  i just kept seeing it in my head and couldn’t stop.

one time after my niece was potty trained i was hanging out in the bathroom with her while she was going and for some reason i started gagging.  could have been the smell of #2 but it wasn’t anything extraordinary, just poo.  and yet, you guessed it, i gagged.

i don’t get it.  i used to change nasty baby diapers all the time.  i used to clean up their baby spit up and toddler vomit.  now i can’t handle any of it.  heck, typing the story about the snot made me gag just thinking about it again.  so why do they say that when it’s your own kid it won’t bother you?  do you just become numb to it?  or are there people out there that are bothered by it and can’t clean up their kids? 

because i’m just keeping my fingers crossed right now that it’s true… or else my children will be in for some serious cleaning of themselves, and M will not be thrilled either.

  

 

~ today i learned… Al Capone’s business card said he was a used furniture dealer.~