Friday, January 30, 2009

Wedding Planning

I've been engaged for almost 6 months. I don't have a wedding date.... I don't even have a year. I don't know where my wedding will be.... I don't even know what city. I'm starting to think the wedding will never happen....not really it will happen, but every time I try to decide something I get stressed out and change the subject.

I've never really known what kind of wedding I've wanted. Growing up my thoughts ran the spectrum from eloping in Vegas, to a destination wedding on a beach in Mexico, to a more traditional wedding in a big tent somewhere in Buffalo. Before Peter and I got engaged we pretty much had the same idea about a wedding. We wanted something small, and then a big party. I'd have the dress, photographer and a nice dinner for the wedding (with only parents & siblings) and then a big party catered by Dinosaur BBQ at a park for the "reception." Unfortunately, I've learned that it's way more complicated to plan a non-traditional wedding than what is the norm. It probably doesn't help that I'm neurotic about people drinking & driving, and am dead set on an outdoor venue. Basically, I have no clue what we're going to do.

We'll eventually get married. I'm sure of that much. I'm ready to be married; I'm just not ready to have a wedding. While my indecisiveness is undeniable when it comes to wedding planning, I've never for a second doubted that I want to get married to Peter. I think this is pretty big for me. I'm absolutely horrible at making decisions. I can hardly pick a restaurant for dinner, or outfit to wear out. Perfect example: I made Peter spend literally 45 minutes with me at Dicks deciding on snow pants. Once I picked the style I had to decide between black or white. You can ask Peter, but I'm pretty sure it was an excruciatingly painful experience for him. I'm the kind of person who thinks EVERY decision she makes must be 100% correct. I have to be 100% sure that I am not making a mistake, or (as I see it) I will be a failure. So, when I say that I've had zero doubts about the man I am planning to marry, that's pretty big. It also offers me comfort that some things aren't difficult, and that when it's right, you just know. Thus, I will just continue to pour over all my wedding magazines in hopes that the perfect wedding for me will appear before me one day. And if it doesn't, then oh well. A wedding last only a day, but a marriage will be forever!

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Hmmmmm, Snow

Muffin absolutely LOVES going outside, so when I opened the door today for her to go out this morning (without her leash!) she was thrilled.... that is until she felt the frigid breeze and put her paw on the cold snow!


Muffin contemplating if it's really worth it


Her single step out into the snow

Friday, November 21, 2008

Skinny Bitch

Last month my mother began telling me about the book, Skinny Bitch. She actually didn't tell me that much about its contents, but she insisted that I read the book. She lent me her copy which I began reading on my plane ride home from Vegas. I just assumed it was another diet book. My mother likes to read all these things and then pronounce that "this diet" is her "new thing!"

So, I started reading the book, and it was okay. It talks about "healthy eating," which is always something I'm into reading about. Then I started reading the chapter on artificial sweeteners. As soon as I began to read it I realized why my mom wanted me to read this book. She is so anti-artificial sweeteners, it's ridiculous! She comments all the time about diet pop (I've been known to drink quite a few on a daily basis) and how I should just drink regular pop. She also likes to refer to sugar-free gum as "poison gum." She could talk 'til she's blue in the face about artificial sweeteners being bad for me, causing cancer, etc., but I never paid attention. However, when I started reading about it in Skinny Bitch, I couldn't believe it. Aspartame really is the devil and Splenda isn't much better. I'm not going to go into details, 'cause it would take a long while, but I recommend reading up on it. So, I woke up the next day and stopped eating artificial sweeteners. No more Splenda in my coffee (no coffee at all actually, I've moved on to herbal tea). No more diet Pepsi, diet Coke, Coke Zero, Propel, Sugar-free Red Bull, etc. No more Weight Watchers treats (all made with sucralose) or even Weight Watchers yogurt. I stopped it all. Crazy. It wasn't nearly as difficult as I thought it would be!

The book also taught me a bit about the meat industry, organic stuff, going vegan, etc. Now, I never will be, and don't desire to ever be vegan, but the book definitely raised many interesting points. It's kind of a one sided book, so I don't recommend it to anyone who wants a really educated point of view. I think it was a pretty good jumping off point for me though. Next on my lost is The Omnivores Dilemma. Like I said, I really don't intend on ever being a vegetarian, but I'm willing to have some substitutes and am looking for alternatives. Peter and I even made some tofu tacos last week! They were actually good! Surprise, surprise!

Sunday, November 16, 2008

My New Favorite Website

Peter randomly found this website a few weeks ago. I needed to share 'cause it's my new favorite place to kill time.

http://www.zooborns.com/

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Ending an Era

I've decided to delete my myspace page! I feel it's time to let go of it! Soon facebook will disappear as well, but for now I'll just delete the myspace! The only reason I think I held onto it for so long is my blog that I had on myspace. I didn't realize how much I wrote on it. From Leigh Ann & Jenny getting married, to the October storm, my horrible poison ivy, to the Justin Timberlake concert, they were all documented on that blog! I just spent a while reading it one last time before deleting it & I decided that there are a few blogs that I will copy over to here because they're important to me... for some reason....


This one's a classic:

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Evil Kitty

Current mood: awake

Category: Pets and Animals

It started out as a lovely Sunday afternoon. Peter and I were planning stuff to do since the football season had come to a close (FYI: I won $114 in the playoff fantasy league I was in ). Peter decided that we'd go shopping 'cause he needed clothes (he shops maybe once a year, so who am I to stop him!). So, we go shopping for a while and wind up back at my apartment at 3:30pm with nothing more to do. Peter decides we should take Muffin to Petsmart. Now, I always mentioned doing this, but Muffin can be a bit unpredictable lately, and she hasn't been on her harness since it's gotten cold, so I'm a little apprehensive. In the end, we decide to take her.

So, we head out in the freezing cold to Petsmart on the boulevard. As I carry Muffin in she begins to shake uncontrollably. Aparently she's a little overstimulated! I put her down and she goes right under the shelves. I pick her up and she just looks like a paranoid drug addict. I show her the fish and she couldn't care less. I show her the birds and she's slightly intrigued. She'd be more interested I'm sure it there weren't dogs roaming around. So, Peter and I decide to take her to a quieter section of the store. We go over by the cat stuff and she falls in love with those carpeted cat climber things (ya know, like big scratching posts, with little holes to go into). It's like a field of them and she's up high and so she's happy. Now, Peter and I are getting a little bored. After she spends about 15 minutes in these things we show her some more stuff and then decide it's time to check out.

We head up to the registers and on our way pass 3 cats in cages that are up for adoption. Muffin doesn't like other cats, so I hope she's not really paying attention. Well, these ladies who are with the adoption place start asking questions about Muffin and want to pet her and stuff. I'm not too comfortable with this whole situation, and aparently Muffin isn't either. One of the ladies goes to pet her belly and that's all Muffin needs to FLIP OUT ! She starts screaching like a little kid, bites my wrist repeatedly, and attempts to wrestle herself out of my arms! It was like I was being mauled by a wild animal. I start to walk over to the door and just throw Muffin on the ground. Some worker comes up to me and says, "Honey, she's scared. I think you need to take her out of here." I wanted to say, "No f*#@!n' kidding you stupid b*$#h!!!" Instead I scooped Muffin up and headed out to the car. Peter was right behind me. He put down the things we planned on purchasing 'cause he had the car keys. We get to the car and he was gonna go back into the store and buy what he had put down, but I told him, "We can never go into Petsmart again!!!" We drive off and I never look back. After this whole incident I felt like a mother whose child throws a temper tantrum in the store. I was so embarassed!

I look at my hand which is red and scratched and punctured with teeth marks. It's bleeding and hurts quite bad for the rest of the day. I am currently on Augmentin to avoid cellulitis. (I've done some research and I guess like 50% of cat bites become infected! Great!)

I threatened to send Muffin away to live with her father, but we're getting along a bit better now. It'll take some time to repair our relationship, but I'm sure it (and my hand) will recover just fine.


Just because….

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Letting Go

Current mood: relieved

Do you dig my new picture and background? Keep in mind that I have no internet at home, so I do all of this crap at work!

So, I read this article in one of my many, many magazines today. It was called something like, "When you lose a friend," or something like that (No, this is not about death or funerals, so don't worry!). So, I read this article about this girl who had a friend that all of a sudden seemed to fall off the face of the earth. She stopped returning calls, e-mail, letters, etc. She thought that maybe she had been in a horrible accident or something tragic had happened in her family, etc. In the end she realizes that her friend just cut her off for some unknown reason and she just needs to stop questioning everything she had ever done. She had to accept that she would never know what had been going through her "friend's" mind.

This article struck a cord (chord? you know what I mean) with me. It made me feel not alone it a similar situation I experienced. Most of you know that I had a best friend in college, let's call him "Mike," that I spent most of my waking hours with. For four years he was my surrogate boyfriend and I his surrogate girlfriend. He had an actual girlfriend miles away and I, despite my lovesick tendencies, wasn't ready to settle down and have an actual relationship. So, we looked to eachother to have someone to hang out with. Movies, bars, dinners, and lots of other random stuff. So many people thought we were dating or we would inevitabley wind up dating, but we both knew how ridiculous that was. The idea never even entered into our minds. That just wasn't us.

So, we go on the leave Canisius and I stay in Buffalo to go to UB and he moves to Philly for school. We talk occassionally and I even go out for a visit for spring break that first year. Then, the phone calls and e-mails began to trail off. He stopped returning my phone calls and the e-mails were few and far between. I sent him birthday and Christmas cards and eventually he stopped acknowleding them. He even visited Buffalo several times (I only heard that through the grapevine) and never even tried to meet up me. So, I gave up on him, at least until one drunken night when I became nostalgic and decided to e-mail him. I asked him if he had ever really cared at all. I asked if he ever wanted to be my friend, or if I was just someone to fill in an empty space for a short period of time. (I'm sure it sounded more dramatic, but that's the jist of things.) Much to my surprise he replied within 24 hours. He told me that he decided to focus his attention on the people in his life that really cared about him and that I shouldn't take it personally (That's honestly what he said.). Then, the kicker followed. He wrote in a "PS" that he was married and expecting his first child in a two months. I think I blacked out at that moment. That hurt more than anything I could have ever been prepared for. I hated him for a long time.

I found out a few weeks ago that he's not married. WTF? That's when I decided I needed to let go.

Since then, I stopped trying to figure him out. I stopped trying to pinpoint the moment we stopped being friends. I stopped trying to figure out if we ever even friends at all. I stopped trying to convince myself that being with him wasn't a waste of time. I tried to stop caring.

In conclusion, the article I read today made me feel better in a way.... Of course, it made me write this blog on my feelings, but I think I've come to terms with the whole experience. Why should I waste my energy? It's been long enough...time to move on.

Monday, October 27, 2008

Fall Trip out West

Since I haven't updated this blog in FOREVER, and I don't have much time to do a quality post, here's some pics of the trip Peter & I took out west ealier this month. We went to Nevada, Arizona & Utah....

The Hoover Dam

The Grand Canyon

Bryce Canyon


Me & a hoodoo




Angel's Landing at Zion National Park


More Zion


Peter as Elvis

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Potty Training

As you are all aware, I have two cats. Muffin & Hallie are pretty good cats. Aside from Muffin's moodiness & past depression, and Hallie's asthma, I really don't have any problems with them. At least I didn't think there were any other problems.

Last week in the middle of the night I heard this banging noise. It was loud enough to wake me up out of a sound sleep. It sounded like someone was hitting a hammer on my wall. I stood up and was about to go check on what the noise was in the living room, but then I heard a familiar scratching noise. Hallie must've been in the litter box. Muffin was sleeping on the end of my bed, so I knew it wasn't her. Hallie must've been trying really hard to cover up her shit 'cause she was crazy loud, but it stopped and I fell back asleep.

This morning I woke up to the same scenario. I got up, went into the living room, and found Hallie banging on a JCrew box. She was sitting inside banging on the flaps and scratching the bottom of it. It sounded exactly like the noise I heard last week. It was crazy that such a loud noise could come from a cat and a box. So, Hallie hung out in there for a while longer and then fell asleep in a corner somewhere. That JCrew box has been around for several months. I was gonna throw it out a while back, but Peter said I shouldn't 'cause the girls love it so much. So, I've just left it in a corner and they go in it occasionally and bat around the tissue paper that's still in it.

Well, as I was vacuuming today I had to move the box and noticed a wet spot in it! Upon further examination there seemed to be several old wet spots that have dried. Yep, that's right, Hallie's been peeing in the box! I don't know how long this has been going on, but I'm pretty pissed about it (no pun intended)! How has this gone on without my noticing?! Does my apartment smell like cat urine and I'm unaware?! Needless to say, the JCrew box is in the dumpster!

So, now I've got my eye on Hallie. She definitely uses her litter box, but does she go pee anywhere else?! Is she marking her territory?! Now I'm paranoid!

Oh, and here's a random picture of Hallie sleeping, just because I think it's the funniest, most ridiculous pose ever!!!