Hallowedding is On!!!

So a month ago I was not even thinking about getting married and tomorrow I'm running to the courthouse to elope! Cool!

We weren't sure that was going to happen what with Hurricane Sandy drowning Annapolis in a fit of superstorm rage.

I've learned a couple things about myself, weddings, and others since I am eloping:

• Long line bras are really hard to close.  I'm going to need an army tomorrow to close mine.
• I hate veils and fascinators with a passion.  There is nothing worse about having something on my head that might slide off every five minutes. Screw throwing the bouquet ... throw the veil!  It's stupid looking ... looks like a napkin.  Kill it with fire. 
• Once the shock of, "Oh crap I have to get married!" wears off, it was neat to see that Greg really wanted to get married. He was really upset about the hurricane yesterday and worried ... and then this morning he was all, "Today is the last day you'll be my girlfriend!"
• Glitter is like an invading crop.  It just gets everywhere.  I will be washing glitter out of everything for ten years.
• People want to come to courthouse weddings and I feel bad because this is not the wedding I want people to come to.  I want people to wait for me to plan something nice, with me in a nice dress that I got a gym membership to look good in.  What was my prep to fit in to a dress I'm eloping in?  Endless Oreo cookies and pizza.  Seriously.
• I still haven't called my dad because do I really want to be like, "Hey Dad, I'm planning a wedding for next year but I'm getting married tomorrow!  Kay bye!"  I haven't seen him in almost two years and this thing was rushed like crazy.  I don't want to just pull him in because I'm eloping.  I'd rather wait for the BIG wedding!
• I really wish that my cat could come to the wedding. :(  She was there for the proposal!
• I wish there was such thing as upper arm control top pantyhose. They're like thighs.
• I'm not really all that girly.  I hate that I feel like I should be wearing a veil and a long dress and wear makeup when on a daily basis I lay around in PJs with dirty hair.
• Weddings are really fun to shop for but a pain to plan, even elopements. 
• I wish we had done this years ago, but I don't think I would have appreciated it.  Getting married has never been that important to me. In 2003 it was more important to get to know Greg.  In 2004-2005 it was important to find a job so I could get a car. In 2006-2012 we apartment hopped a lot, so there was never a good time to do this. This is the first time where I feel like we have a home together and that we have something to lose.
• For the first time ever this year is the first time I've started to like myself on the inside.  I feel like I know who I am now.  There have been some people in my life who do not accept me for who I am and that was a struggle. I have learned I cannot really control what others think of me or what they chose to accept about me. And since I have learned that what others think of me does not define me, I have learned to love myself. I think in turn this is allowing me to love others.  I hope that throughout the years I am with Greg I can show him I love him in many ways.  He has already done so with me.

7 Days Out: Hallowedding is getting 4 rings?

Some updates!

Our rings: We ordered rings from TypeRings.com and yesterday morning we were told that they were out of stock and would be unable to fill our order in time.  They gave us the option to cancel the order, which we did so we could order new rings from BlueNile.com ... and they came this morning!

... And then TypeRings.com sent me another email after we received these and said they produced our rings anyway and were going to give them to us free of charge since they couldn't guarantee them by the wedding.

What????  I know.   So now we have four wedding rings?  I honestly don't know.  Well, at least we have rings in time for the courthouse wedding. :P

Flowers: Eff flowers.  This isn't my real wedding that I've been planning since I was four.  No, this is my courthouse wedding.  On Halloween. When else will I have a chance to just be me?

Instead I'm pulling rank on something borrowed and I'll be carrying this borrowed down the isle thanks to my friend David and his wife Shirley:

Next post will have me trying to make my own veil ... what?  You missing some stupid Donald Trump tweet or something?  Like you have something better to read! 

My Small Skinny Hallowedding: 10 Days Out

This is not normally a wedding blog and when I started it I was not expecting to get married on Halloween. Honestly, I was not expecting to ever get married. While I believe in love, I do not like the idea of marriage. I feel like it says that if you want to break up that you have to pay a fine for getting together in the first place. Everyone else seems to feel differently.  Now that we're signing paperwork, all of a sudden my mother is getting a son. My boyfriend is now more than happy to call me his wife, even though we've been living together for years and have known each other since high school. And, um, I'm a bride.  For years I told Greg I did not want to be a bride.  No ring, I would lose it.  No dress. No standing up in front of people saying vows.  No dancing. No. Not no to Greg, but no to marriage.

Then the first week in October Greg's out-of-pocket insurance premium increased by 360%. WITHOUT WARNING, GUYS. My benefits, however, have stayed the same. And we were like, "Oh crap, we have to get married now." We picked Halloween so we could have a fun anniversary to remember. At first we were going to keep it a secret because his brother Jeremy has been planning a wedding for the past year, and now we're up and getting married less than two weeks before the big day? Is that a forgivable offense?  Well apparently so, because everyone seems to be happy we're finally making it official and it's not like we are throwing a big shindig and making people attend two weddings in the same month. We're running to elope at the courthouse and nobody is officially invited. We can still always renew our vows and invite people next year or something.

So here I was expecting a two year engagement and now it's ten days before my wedding day.  Let's get to details:

Us:

(This is me on my 29th Birthday.  It's my favorite photos of us.)

Wedding rings:  Have not come in the mail yet.  We ordered them from Typerings.com on October 11th.  If we don't get them by the wedding, we'll just use some cheapo rings and then swap them for these:

But I really hope we get to use the ones we want.

And, of course, my engagement ring:

Anne Arundel County Circuit Court is really pretty in a quaint looking part of Downtown Annapolis! I served Jury Duty there back in 2009 and while I was there I saw some couples get married so it has been in the back of my mind that I could always get married here if I absolutely had to.

We'll eat here:

 Red Robin, hands down, is our place. We always go there to celebrate everything and it has been our rock when other restaurants have let us down.

My wedding dress!  I plan on wearing it everywhere as long as it fits.  I've always wanted an LBD!

And no, I won't look like a lean little noodle in it.  ;-)

Necklace.

Bracelet.

A wrap.

I haven't decided on hair, shoes, veil, or flowers. That's my next step.  I feel like I should give local businesses some, well, business, but part of me wants to try my hand at being crafty and pinteresting.  Pretty last minute though.  We'll see!

Greg's still deciding what to wear. He thinks probably a white shirt and black pants and two different color vans. :)  He has a closet of vans in all different colors in the same pattern.  

We're also stick deciding if we want to dress up in Halloween costume. Maybe paint our faces. :)

Is it weird that I hope it rains that day and is dark and spooky looking? 

I can't wait to start planning my vow renewal!  I have all these ideas!

FAB FRIDAY ... Zombie Sweet Valley High Wedding Edition!

It's time for another installment of FAAAAAB FRIDAY DAY DAY DAY DAY DAY ...

1. BMI, BODY FRAME, AND SOME SWEET VALLEY HIGH REFERENCES! Let's talk about the BMI theory of weight loss for a second. Usually it is MAD JANK because it does not account for different body frames and muscle mass in athletes or bone loss in older people. However, you CAN make it work for you if you're not old and you are a couch potato like me!  Hooray!  What you do is you calculate your body frame by calipering your elbow bones and then comparing them to a chart. Find out how to do that here! If you have a small body frame, you want to add ten percent to your BMI.  If you have a medium body frame, your BMI is probably fine.  If you have a large body frame, you want to subtract ten percent.  I have a large body frame, so I multiply .9 to my BMI to get my real BMI. I made it work for me!  My ideal weight, then, instead of being 130 lbs is now 145.  This is cool because at 130 lbs I'm a freaking size 2, but at 145 I'm a perfect size 6, just like the Wakefield twins!  We know the Wakefield twins don't weigh no 145 lbs.  That's Robin Wilson and Lois Waller territory, guys. 



2. ZOMBIE BRIDES? My wedding is in less than two weeks!  Wow!!!  I'm having a Hallowedding at the courthouse. I have decided I'm not going to dress in a Halloween costume but I'll try to capture others doing that if I see them. :) LONG LIVE ZOMBIE BRIDES ... or Long Undead Zombie Brides because they're not alive?



3. KITTY ATTACK! So, the last few weeks my kitten has become a tearing machine.  She has poked holes in our screen door, scratched my face to bleeding, and ripped some of my comforters.  I finally girded my loins and clipped her tiny claws.  Life is so much better!  Her paws are like little cotton balls smacking my face when she tries to wake me in the morning.  I can sleep in!



4. NEW SCALE! After my other scale broke the same day I started this blog, along with my digital camera, I wasn't able to continue my "like a pregnant lady" updates with photos and survey.  But!  Last night I got a weight watchers scale on sale!  Ech, I've gained two pounds though. Now I need a nice digital camera to take goofy "look how huge my belly is" photos!



5. MY FRIEND DAVID IS COMING OVER TONIGHT! We are going to watch Zooey Deschanel movies with NO SHAME WHATSOEVER.

Coping With Food

I had a severe headache in February. The pain was located on top of my head on the right side and behind my left eye. It may have been a tension headache or a cluster headache or a migraine.  Sounds and light caused a horrible sharp intensity. Everything in sight looked blurry as I could not open my eyes far enough to escape seeing my own eyelashes.  I could not walk upright without collapsing.

My boss thought I was having a stroke and had EMTs from the second floor Fire Department come to take my vitals.  My blood pressure was a staggering 195/130. All I wanted to do was lay down and drink a gallon of water.  The ambulance took me away with a sheet over my face to block out the light. I was injected with anti-nausea and narcotics.  I vomited the entire night, still in pain.  Nothing worked. They ruled out stroke with a CAT scan and meningitis with a spinal tap (which caused even more pain for the next coming week). I barely made it home, sick every fifteen minutes. I fell asleep with my head in a trash can.

The next day the headache was gone, but the pain from the spinal tap would not subside. I took so much Vicodin that I felt like I was going out of my mind. The feeling of being this drugged and still in severe pain caused my mind to race. I feared I was going insane. I felt I was breaking.

I called my mother.  In hindsight, I feel awful for what she must have heard on her end. I am sure it sounded like I was going through a nervous breakdown. She must have felt just as helpless as I felt. Never showing it, she talked me through a guided muscle relaxation exercise, helping me slow down my breathing with counting, focusing on just my breath.  I held onto this exercise for dear life. It made me feel as if there was a place inside me that was untouched by pain, a place that could expand and promote healing.

Our text mentions that guided muscle relaxation treats a great deal of ailments from stress to headache to back pain.   I find it interesting that as doped up as I felt on Vicodin I felt a great deal of pain and anxiety until my guided muscle relaxation.  Even guided muscle relaxation, as amazing as it is as a method of coping, does not treat pain entirely. I lived on Ibuprofen for several weeks.

A car accident in July lead to severe lower back pain in August. Back injuries are tricky. Other types of injuries are able to be bandaged, splinted, or set in a cast. Beyond back braces, most back injuries involving the lower spine depend on not bending and maintaining the normal spinal curvature. Each time I went to take something out of the oven or even stand up from sitting down it re-injured my back tissues.  I constantly have to readjust my sitting positions to prevent this from occurring. 

I woke up one day and was completely unable to bend enough to sit upright. I had been avoiding the doctor for a month, but being inactive had caused a 25 lb weight gain and a host of other issues.  Fearing painkillers and their effects, I turned to overeating to cope.

I wanted my life back.  I made an appointment to start physical therapy that day.  Twice a week I laid down on a heating pad while they administered TENS for fifteen minutes. The rush of endorphins from the electrical stimuli made my back feel strong enough to do the exercises used to retrain my posture and behaviors.  I left each visit feeling very strong. Two months later, I feel much stronger.

I guess it is time to address my food addiction.

(I wrote this for my Psyc Class but wanted to share it here too. :))

Fab Friday via With Sandwich ANNOUNCEMENT EDITION

No blogging this week (darn school!) means I'm due to participate in another FAB Friday courtesy of the amazing Lauradini who can fly in the air between hoops and inside plexiglass boxes! Oh wait, that's David Copperfield. But Laura is pretty awesome!



1. Greg and I are getting married at the courthouse on October 31, 2012. I TRICK OR TREATED ME A GROOM, GUYS. We were going to wait until I graduated to get married, but his health insurance went way up and we're in our tenth year of our relationship. Plus, now we can finally have an anniversary where it is not almost 100 degrees outside because BLECH.

2. I tried Stephen Colbert's Ben and Jerry's flavor Americone Dream while watching the Vice Presidential Debates last night ... and I liked it. I want to have a moment alone with it.

3. Nice to know at the ripe old age of thirty my feet are still tough enough that I'm not wearing a jacket or closed toe shoes in these cold temperatures. I haven't even turned on the heat yet. I refuse! It was summer just three weeks ago. I am loving the bite in the air.

4. ORIOLES AND YANKEES GAME FIVE. GAME FIVE. GAME FIIIIIIVE.

5. I got an A on my first paper this semester ... and the professor commented to the whole class about all the great things about our paper and it was my paper for almost every example. So exciting!

6. My car is running like a dream after my tune up!

7. I drew WEDDING DAY! in a big blue and pink heart on my calendar at work.

I AM GETTING MARRIED AT THE COURTHOUSE ON HALLOWEEN AND I AM STILL BIG BELLIED AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO WEAR.

Fab Friday via WithSandwich

I've been pregnant but not with sandwiches or babies, but with schoolwork. Large amounts of schoolwork. The baby, my education, is kicking me sore. And those cravings and morning sickness are just brutal! Trust me, you don't want to see the sonogram because damn that's an ugly baby.

I asked one of my friends, Joey, if this blog was a bit too self-depreciating and he was all, "Yeah, a little bit." I mean let's be honest: as much as I want to stay body positive and awesome, there really are major drawbacks and resentment involved with not being where you want to be. Please do not misunderstand: I am so glad I'm not pregnant and I do not want to have kids ever. But I love the celebratory blogs of pregnant moms and I wish there was a way to celebrate what I have instead of lament over what I don't have, and all I have in common with moms right now is the belly ... and it's more side-to-side than back-to-front right now anyway so yeah.

While I'm stuffing myself into clothes that don't fit and analyzing risk and safety factors involved with working with single mothers and their abused children, let's explore something more fun for now:





LET'S TALK ABOUT FAB THINGS LIKE:

• Last night's episode of Glee. Did you see it? Guys, it was everything I've been waiting for. There will be no spoilers here, but words were said that needed to be said by many characters and I feel completely satisfied. What do you think?



• I will have access to the following food tonight at some place called Suicide Bridge (What a horrible name!):





• I went to go see Pitch Perfect with Joey and Kenny and I want to see it again and again!




• I am planning something fabulous to happen to Halloween but I'm not allowed to share yet. I mean, it's huge but not huge at the same time. I can't wait to be able to say what it is!




• My cat, who used to think everything was a toy, now has a favorite toy that she will play with to the exclusions of others.




• REMOVEYOURPANTS, who is the reason for the season, is back, guys! WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON'T KNOW WHO SHE IS? She is a flawless queen and you are all ... peasants.




• PAPA JOHNS IS PUTTING MEATBALLS ON THEIR PIZZA PLEASE DON'T CEASE THIS TOPPING! Unlike this guy I got it for $9 and could put whatever I wanted on it besides pepperoni so there.

Big Girls Are Done Crying

Yeah, you heard me.  I'm done crying or lying about why.

Here is the list of crappy things I've been crying over and I don't even care what you think of it.  So turn on your most determined, loud, badass rock music and read the pure determination in my words below!

I will NOT eat my feelings over the following:

1. -Some of my friends think it's totally fine to make sexist remarks to say heartless crap about poor people not deserving to be helped.  They're no longer friends, and it's not my job to tell them or to make it better and that doesn't make me a bad person.  And I'm done crying about it. (Tough cookie face.)

2. -I really miss my church people, but they're freaking far away and I'm tired on Sundays.  I'm going to do something to cheer up myself on Sundays instead of missing them.

3. -Someone in my life tried to kill herself last week.  She's alive. That is all I am going to say. I'm done crying about it.  I'm going to make this world a better place for her to live in and let people I love like her know it all the time, so I don't have time to mope about what could have happened or to think about mortality in general. 

4. -My bedroom is still a mess with boxes and I'm going to dig out like a champ!

5. -I have not seen my father in ages ... I am done crying over the lost time and stuff I don't like about our relationship, and the will I/will I not call him dance I've been doing.  All I need to do is call him.  I don't need to look beyond that right now.

6. -I will not eat my feelings over ANYTHING having to do with Glee.  LOOK AT YOUR LIFE, JENNY.  (That's my name, by the way) LOOK AT YOUR CHOICES!

7. -Look, I'm a really bad driver and driving is stressful.  I'm over all the times I've been pulled over and the accident I was in. I'm done with that.  All I can do is try harder.

My exboyfriend from a million billion jillion years ago (who I am not crying over! See? IT WORKS) once said I acted like a victim and as long as I do I will never grow as a person.  Or something.  Well, he's an ass for saying that because I was not doing that at the time, but I definitely did that this summer and I'm done.  Summer is over.  It's fall now. 

Look at all the things I have to look forward to!  New friendships, Cheer Up Sundays, Making the World a Better Place, Cleaning My Room, Calling My Dad, Glee Hiatus, And Not Dying On The Road!  Woohoo!