I’m still smitten

I’m not sure whether I’ve mentioned how Turtle and I originally got together, but this video reminded me of the whole thing:

Back when we were still just coworkers, we spent several weeks playing Scrabulous and sort of flirting over the little chat box they had there.  I got her to join Facebook (because I wanted to get to know her, sort of – I needed an in! But I told her it was so we could play Scrabulous.  Word games are a good way to snag a spouse?) and then I spent a lot of time looking at this picture and feeling fluttery.

Finally, one Friday night when I was supposed to watch a movie with my mom, she sent me a message; I’d just scored really high on some word and she said, “I’d be mad if I weren’t so smitten.”

Swoon.

From there, it all just sort of started: I saw her two days later, we had a seven hour date, and I didn’t kiss her goodnight.  Don’t worry, I made up for it the next day.  I spent the first month of our relationship not really talking; I was afraid we would run out of things to say to each other and that our relationship would be doomed: maybe we had nothing in common, maybe she was secretly a crazy cat lady, maybe our age difference would be a big deal or my friends wouldn’t like her.

Well, here’s what I have to say to that, Bird-of-the-Past: thanks for giving it a chance and finally opening your mouth.  And Turtle-of-the-Past? Thanks for speaking up, for waiting for me to finally find a voice and words and trusting the whole crazy thing.

 

the first picture of us as a couple, about a month after we started dating

When we first started dating, Turtle would not let me take care of her at all.  She got a cold and banned me from her apartment.  To someone who needs company and someone to make me tea and bring me tissues, this was a completely ridiculous response to getting sick.  When you are sick, you need someone to take care of you, and you let your girlfriend do that.  Turtle’s response to that: Oh HELLS no.  Leave me alone. Seriously, I think she wouldn’t even let me bring her a blanket.

Last week, as she was lying on the couch crying about how we were torturing our dog, she asked me for a box of tissues.

Look how far we’ve come, you guys.  So tell that someone you’re smitten with that you’re smitten, because smitten is a good word and it makes people fluttery and then they’ll wear makeup and those cute jeans the next time they see you and then you’ll have an awesome wedding and a cute-if-high-maintenance menagerie.  If that’s how you want it.

Who spoke up first in your relationship?

And I get a new name!

Having realized that structure is essential to my mental well-being and that getting out of the house is absolutely vital for my sanity – and thus the general health of my marriage – I have made big plans to leave the house today.  I wrote down time frames and everything.

It seems, however, that I am out to get myself, and I make little deals with myself all day to get out of actually stepping through the threshold and out into the world.  Example:

Me1: “Bird, you will walk the dog at 2pm and then get your butt to the library and apply for some jobs and graduate schools! Okay?”
Me2: “Sure!  That sounds fine, and totally reasonable, except I just put in this banana bread and I can’t very well leave it baking alone in the house.  How about I walk the dog at 3?”
Me1: “Well, fine, you can walk the dog at 3, but then, to the library you go!”

I’ll spare you the whole monologue, but let it suffice to say that it is 4:27 and I am sitting in a rather comfy chair in my dining room.  Foiled again!

But here’s what I am doing: setting things up that I just cannot get out of.  For example?  Roller derby.

I know, I know, we broke up.  We broke up twice, or maybe three times now.  Yes, it’s an on-again-off-again relationship.  But you know that first true love who you promised to always love, forever and ever, no matter what, even if you married other people and had families you would always love each other at least somewhere in your heart?  Well, Roller Derby and I did that.

While I’m not skating right now and I’m unemployed, I realized that I sort of need roller derby, especially since otherwise, I would never leave the house. So, as a former coxswain, I have decided to be a referee.  I have been to 3 scrimmages in this role, and you know what? It’s kind of awesome, and not enough people talk about how awesome it is.  It’s roller derby without getting hurt; it’s roller derby without the jitters before the whistle blows – because, ahem, I am the one blowing the whistle.

I have a ton to learn: the rules, in detail, the hand signals, how to skate while paying attention to whether other girls skating are following those rules, all while not falling over or getting run into or skating into the coaches yelling at them from the sidelines.

Anyway.  I don’t have much to say beyond that I’m excited, that I am leaving the house, and that, while my heart has been broken once or twice (or, um, three or four times) by roller derby, I’m still really, really excited to be a part of it again.*

Now tell me: what do you do to get out of the house?  How do you keep from going crazy?  If you think I’m not going crazy, just wait for the video on tomorrow’s Flying Dingo.  Yes, a video… of dog boots.  Coming soon from a Crazy Near You.

*Side effects vary, but already I’m working out religiously, because how can you not want to be in shape when surrounded by women made entirely of muscle and brute force?  I feel better already. Also, now I don’t have to feel sad every time I see that I still have a Roller Derby tag on my blog. Woo hoo unexpected side effects!

The End/I’m always covered in fur

So my last day of work was last Friday and for some reason I expected some downtime.  Did I already talk about this?  It’s all sort of a whirlwind of craziness.  The plus side is that I do need to eat but I don’t have time to shop, so tonight I threw a bunch of ingredients we had around the house (canned beans, frozen veggies, soy “hamburger”, some herbs) into our slow cooker and things smell delicious.  Sadly, it still needs another 20 minutes to cook slowly, so I thought I’d pop in and say Hello! I’m not missing!  I am just, once again, terribly (wonderfully?) covered in other people’s cats.

us, covered in our own animals. I promise these are our only cats. We are not crazy cat ladies... though I think becoming a crazy dog lady is not a bad goal.

Also sadly, it seems that this trend of being covered in other people’s pets (or feeding and cleaning up after other people’s pets) will continue for the rest of 2010, and I am not going to have the time I would like to dedicate to thoughtful blogging.  Lucky for me, many of you have time off of work and so will not be hoping my blog has new content so that you can procrastinate.

So, my friends, here’s to the new year a few days early!  Thank you to my faithful readers; even though I don’t know who most of you are, I appreciate knowing that you’re out there reading.  And thank you to the regular commenters for helping me feel like I’m saying something worth saying.  Lastly, thank you to those of you who have approached me in person or emailed to say you like what’s happening over here: it always seems to come when I need it most.  You all make this worth doing.

Happy New Year!  And Merry Christmas, if that’s your thing, and also happy birthday to me, my wife, and my dad.  See you next year!  No, seriously, I’ll be back in full swing 1/1/11.  Hooray!

Cheers,

Bird

The Thrill of the Chaos

Some people enjoy the Thrill of the Hunt or the Thrill of the Chase… it seems, my friends, that I enjoy the Thrill of Being Ridiculously Busy.

though I am capable of relaxing! see??

Since I’m leaving my job in less than two weeks, and I know it might take me a long time to find another job, I decided to start stocking up on money-making activities here and there.  I mentioned I was looking for something extra and a friend called me when her company needed some data entry done; I put up my petsitting cards at a local petstore (guys, I know it’s owned by PetCo, but I love UnLeashed – such a good petstore!) and now I’m walking and doing some positive-reinforcement training with a puppy in town on top of my regular clients; I stopped in at my favorite cookie-only bakery (okay, so there’s only one of those I know of, but it would be my favorite even if it wasn’t the only one) to buy cookies and on a whim asked if they were hiring – now I’m working there a few hours a week.

sky's the limit on insanity!

So I’m basically working four jobs through Christmas, and yes, I am a little bit stressed out, but also – I feel SO GOOD.  Every free moment is a moment I could do something with.  Quick! I have five minutes while the water boils for tea! Time to make that Christmas ornament I’ve been putting off! Okay, here’s another ten minutes before I have to leave: I’ll put tape on the windows and put the plastic up in a few days when I have fifteen minutes to spare.  I am getting an absolute thrill from being so damn busy.

At the end of the day, I am exhausted and usually either asleep or incredibly grumpy (sorry Wife!) by 9:30 at night, but I also feel so productive.  Maybe I don’t have a Thing, but maybe my Thing is trying to keep my head up without losing my shit.  In a good way.

It's all a delicate balance, sort of like a giant chess game. Like THIS giant chess game.

Are you someone who prefers to be busy than, you know, relaxed?  What do you do when you have too much time on your hands?  Does anyone besides somewhat crazy me ever actually feel like they have too much time on their hands?

Happy Tuesday, everyone!  Hopefully my posts don’t start sounding a little manic as these jobs pick up… please tell me if they do.  Or just sit in the corner being quietly entertained by me, and occasionally check in with my wife to make sure she’s doing alright.

*All photos from our Awesome  Honeymoon, which I may or may not someday get around to telling you about.  Er, about which I may or may not someday getting around to telling you. Yeah.

APW = Awesome People Welcome

Sometimes I feel like a huge dork for still caring as much about marriage and weddings as I do.  I mean, of course I care about my marriage, and I’m still working on my wedding recaps, so yes, of course I care at least a little bit about weddings… but the thing is, I am still way more excited to read about/talk about/think about marriage and weddings in general than I thought I would be.

Luckily, A Practical Wedding has my back, as always.  This weekend was the second APW book club (though my first), which I suspect is just a matter of using a book as an excuse to get a bunch of smart, interesting women who don’t know each other to spend some time together talking about something that isn’t often talked about beyond floofy dresses and guest lists or outside of crises.  Really, how often do you hear people talking about their healthy marriages? Not often.

So I spent two weeks carrying around Elizabeth Gilbert’s Committed, which I never managed to reread (I had read it a few months ago), and then I dug out some leftover champagne from our wedding, bought some orange juice, and trekked into Cambridge for the Boston APW meetup.  There were probably fifteen of us there, and, sadly, we only realized we should take a group picture after most people had left.

I cropped this so we were all taking up a bit more of the picture, but i had to leave in our feet - people had some awesome shoes! Sarah's even wearing her wedding shoes (red Chucks)!

Apparently after the last APW bookclub, Boston was accused of being “wholesome”, so this time we all grabbed the wine bottles to show off.  Funny story: you may notice that most of them are still full.  Sad story: I didn’t realize all that wine was there until we took the picture, and then it was time to go.  Hopefully, Awesome Host Meredith is enjoying her some APWine.

You guys, the conversation was awesome.  I was surprised at how fun and easy and funny and interesting it was to sit around with 14 other strangers and talk about our marriages, or our prospective marriages, or the weird reactions we got to random aspects of wedding planning.  Yes, we talked about our dresses and caterers and whether we did or were going to do pre-marital counseling – none of that should be surprising, you can find some version of that conversation on any wedding planning website.  But we also talked about our marriages, and what is scary, and how to trust that you want to keep on doing this thing.  We touched on the hard parts, on the huge, difficult things that we went through with our partners that cemented or even catapulted the decision to marry; we talked about deciding to marry without a ring or an announcement and the strangeness of that.  We talked about parents’ relationships and the ending of parents’ relationships and how that set up our whole perspective on marriage.

Ah, anyway, you don’t care really what the topics were; I just don’t want to forget, because it all felt so important.  I left the meeting three hours later feeling really inspired.  I got home, announced that I was inspired, and then couldn’t figure out how to channel it.  Disappointing. Unlike the food at the meeting:

only half of the amazing spread... we ate the other half. yum.

Here’s what I’ve got for you: if you’re not already reading or commenting on A Practical Wedding, go do it.  If you have thoughts on marriage, you’ll appreciate it.  Even if you don’t read it all the time, go to the next book club! Especially if you’re in Boston!

Post-meeting, I spent some quality time doing what I love: writing here while cuddling kitten.

Did you go to a meet up Sunday?  What did you take away from it?  And did you actually talk about the book?

Butt Bruises, etc.

Some of you indicated that the quality of this blog (and all wedding-related blogs, really) would be vastly improved by an increase in the number of photos of butt-bruises.  And thus, I bring you the infamous bruise that I got while, ahem, playing roller derby.  By which I mean, the bruise I got while skating in a circle and then falling down.

thumbs up for bruises well earned by doing simple things.

I should add that this beauty is actually much prettier now than it was when Turtle took this picture five days ago.  Not sure how many of you get regular bruises, but they change colors and look really nice 1-2 weeks later.  What I’m trying to say is that roller derby is a very educational sport.

Speaking of roller derby, tryouts were on Sunday, and we’re supposed to hear about the first round of cuts today.  The whole thing is a complicated process that I will try to explain while not boring all of you who have no interest in standing on eight wheels and hitting people.  If you’re interested in how the game works, check out this video:

Anyway, late last week the Top Secret Tryout Location was revealed in an exclusive email, and on Sunday about 70 potential freshmeat showed up for tryouts.  We were numbered, photographed, and warmed up by skating for a few minutes before being divided into four groups.  During the official warmup, we had to do things like balance on one foot at different times, skate *very* low, and go through series of squats and coasting.  After that, we spent time at four different stations: interviews, stopping (where we demonstrated three different stops), learning a new skill, and backward-to-frontward transitions.  After that there was a surprise (uh, yay?) Hell Skate, which was ten solid of minutes of solid skating – not sprinting, exactly, but fast, good form, and did I mention ten solid minutes?  Um, I’m a bit out of shape.

me, in full blurry derby-tryout gear

Anyway, blah blah blah that was all the technical stuff I had to say, and here is the non-technical stuff:

It was kind of awesome, and completely inspiring.  I only really met the people in my group, but I got to skate with everyone during the warm-up and hell skate, and there was an awesome variety of people there.  Clearly a huge age range, some ethnic diversity, and definitely a wide range of skill; the thing that seemed to stand out for everyone, though, was how hard they were trying, how hard they were pushing, and how excited everyone was to be there.  I came home sore and excited, and also pretty stinky.

In the car on the ride home, I got to spend some serious quality time with a friend of mine I talked into trying out (Hi E!), and this is a huge part of the roller derby thing, too.  You guys, you do get to hit people, and that was a huge part of this whole thing when I worked at the rape crisis center; I had a lot of anger I needed to get out, and derby was a safe place to hit people while getting a huge endorphin high.  Since then, it has transitioned into something else: it’s still a place to find some great endorphins, but it’s also a place to meet amazing people and really make connections, whether they’re connections with my shoulder into their side or the connections we make in the car on the way there or on the way home.

Group 4 rocked: thinking of all of you today!

We hear from the league today about the first round of cuts: keep your fingers crossed for me and for everyone else who’s ready to put their heart into this thing.

P.S. Please <a href=”mailto:littlemissroughit@gmail.com”>email me</a> any and all awesome derby name ideas.  I once had two, but they’ve both been stolen from me; they were Rumble Pie (#3.14159) and Little Miss Roughit (#8 legs, and the inspiration for this blog), just to give you a sense of my style.  Grammatical and literary-inspired names are more than welcome.

P.P.S. Someone came up to me at tryouts and asked if I wrote a blog because her friend reads it! Someone I don’t even know!  You guys, I’m famous.  Thanks, Friend of Roller Girl, for making me feel famous.

Dear Past Miss Bird,

The past month of marriage has been awesome, but you knew it would be.  You’re pretty smart.  Here’s the thing, though: you don’t know everything, and you can’t prepare for everything. You’re doing a great job trying, but here are some lessons I’d like to share with you:

There will probably be drama.  It will probably not come from places you expect, and will come from places you don’t expect.  The point of this is not to say that you should be paranoid and always on the lookout for it, but that, really, you should stop worrying about it, because you can’t do anything about it.  Whatever the drama is, it has nothing to do with your wedding – it’s just a reason to bring up something that is already there.  It will not matter on your wedding day, so why worry about it now?

Identify the details that are really, really important to you, and make them happen. The rest of them just don’t matter, and they don’t have to be amazing.  You can spend the morning stamping table numbers two days before your wedding, and you will get compliments on them.  They’ll be cute, and everyone will notice the flowers more, anyway.

Good job picking vendors you loved.  Trust yourself on that one: if you don’t love them, move on.  It makes all the difference in the end. On that note: skip out on David’s Bridal, even if the dress looks pretty! The customer service will sour the whole thing.

Find the things you would be willing to let other people help with early, because people will appear to help, and they want to feel useful.  Take advantage of this; it’ll make them feel good, it’ll make you feel good.

EAT THE FOOD. Stop being nervous.  I know, easier said than done – but the food is GOOD. Eat it. (But only eat enough that you have room for pie afterward.)

 

Take advantage of every opportunity to be celebratory with people you love.  Again, they want to be involved, and you will be so happy you spent the time with them.

And, self? Even if you don’t do any of these things, it will be amazing.  I know you’ve read that on a hundred other websites and you’re thinking, “blah blah blah, I know, I know”… well, it’s true, and you don’t know.  But you will know.

With love,

Ms. Bird-Turtle

Do me a favor…

…and help me find something to do with myself?

When we were in the midst of wedding planning, I would occasionally turn to Turtle and say, “I think I’m going to have post-wedding depression. What will I do with all of this energy post-wedding?”

Don’t worry, the down time will be short lived: derby tryouts start at the beginning of next month, if I decide to do them.  And there are about a million volunteer opportunities I should be taking advantage of… but none of it involves so much love, so many crafts, so many things to show to internet strangers! And, at the same time – and I thought this might happen – I am just way less interested in weddings than I was a month ago.  I even unsubscribed from some wedding blogs that I used to love.  Yay less blogs to feel bad about not reading! Boo less blogs for when I’m bored and don’t know what to do with myself.

Anyway, here’s what I have been doing: “wifely duties.” I’ve been doing a whole lot of cleaning, and I’m trying to channel the creative energy into creating delicious food.  That said, I am not interested in food blogs.  If I want to look at it, I want to eat it; and if I can’t eat it NOW, I don’t really want to look at it.  That said, I’m typing this while standing next to the carmelized butternut squash that’s baking in the toaster oven.  NOM NOM NOM.

So, okay, whine whine whine.  Speaking of favors, where’re the pictures? Where’s the good stuff?  Fine. Here are our favors, part 3. Or maybe 4. Sorry, I have no idea.

first, we started with our awesome wedding stamp. We had to stamp carefully so that the tree didn't get on the tags, and only the words were actually inked.

this project also features a pretty "thank you" stamp from PaperSource

we took the leftover strips of paper from getting our invitations cut to size, and stamped as many times as we could on each strip

This is a good time for me to mention that when I say “we” here, I really mean, “Here’s what I did, while my fiancee took pictures and said nice things like, Those are pretty.”

stack of thank yous

me, hard at work. Faithful photographer/fiancee not pictured. Notice quilt materials in the foreground.

Turtle gives the project a thumbs up, while multitasking and testing out the ribbon to tie it on... she's kind of amazing.

well, instead of tying a ribbon, we wrapped the jars in quilt square fabric; here are our pretty basil favors, all dressed up!

labels for the favors; I think I saw this somewhere on weddingbee a year or two ago, but couldn't find it anywhere when I went to post about it a few months ago... sorry to the person who inspired me for not being able to give you some credit!

our favors, all dressed up and ready to go! photo by E. Leonardsmith

So there you have it.  More details coming eventually… but I said that already, right?

I should also say about these favors that they were incredibly labor intensive, but they were also one of my favorite projects.  Each one really was just infused with the love and appreciation we had for all the people who were coming to our wedding.  We wanted to actively appreciate the people who were there, and we wanted to say thank you in a way that clearly had some thought and effort put into it; we also wanted people to be able to pick something they liked.  Not everyone likes tea (I know, I could hardly believe it either), but everyone likes at least one of the things we offered.

Um, the best part was that we made too many favors, so we got to take some home, and now we have extra lavender early grey! Oh, you guys, married life is so hard.

Did you have labor intensive projects that were totally worth it?

Wifely Welcome Back

eep! we got married!

After Turtle and I got engaged, things shifted.  This was something that I had not expected – it didn’t occur to me that we would really *feel* different, just that we would start planning a wedding, that it would be exciting, that we would be and know that we were more committed.  But it did change: one day I looked around at our cozy little apartment, and everything suddenly felt more like home.  It felt more ours, more solid, more like a wonderful sanctuary of our home.

Well, then we done went and got married (hi! I’m back!).  And our wedding was amazing, perfect, and our honeymoon was wonderful and also perfect, and besides saying things like, “What would you like for dinner, Wife?” and “Wife? Where are you?” and “Good morning, wife of mine,” things didn’t feel much different, which I have to say sort of surprised me.

And then today, we got up, I made my wife lunch, I drove my wife to work, and I came home and it hit me.  You guys, we’re married. And home feels more like home.  Everything somehow feels more secure, more treasured.  How strange and wonderful is that?

Okay, blah blah blah, being married is awesome, you want to hear about the wedding?  Well, we don’t get our pictures for somewhere between 2 and 7 weeks, so you’re going to have to wait for the awesomeness that our awesome photographers captured.  I got to see one picture and it was amazing, so I’m trying to be patient and remind myself of how awesome it will be to relive our wedding day in a few weeks.

but in the meantime, here's a pretty picture for you (photo by s. merand)

What else can I tell you? It all came together wonderfully in the two days leading up to the wedding.  A friend of ours created our ketubah within 24 hours, and another friend drove an hour to get it printed on beautiful paper, and a third friend made all the little lines for people to sign, and it is beautiful.  We designed our programs perfectly and then found out that the soonest they could arrive would be Monday after the wedding… but my college roommate skipped class to come up and help us make new programs, which we loved even more.  Turtle’s best friend made our card box and our quilt box and a wonderful sign to show people where to go.  Turtle’s college roommate showed up and said, “I’m coordinating your wedding,” and she did, and it was amazing.  Our caterer was as fantastic as we had hoped, our flowers were beautiful, and on a whim I bought Turtle a wreath of hair flowers that she had drunkenly mentioned wanting to wear at her wedding someday two years ago.  I was an awesome fiancee, and I hope to be an awesome wife.  So far, so good.

one way to be an awesome wife: Hold the snake at the post-wedding festivities, but do not bring the snake home. Success! Bird=awesome wife. (Also, this should be a preview for our amazing post-wedding activities!)

Anyway, more wedding-day fun to come sooner or later, but in the meantime, I will regale you with tales of invitations, wedding rings, bachelorette parties (ugh, still feel nauseated – and happy! – thinking about it), and pre-wedding take-out feasts.

So, um, how was your last week, guys?  Hope it was awesome.

David’s Bridal: the Final Battle

Yesterday was my scheduled Dress Pickup, Take 2.  Not sure if you read or remember the first part of this story, but here’s what you should take away from the whole thing: “dress pickup” means “dress fitting and maybe dress taking-home if it fits the way we said we’d make it fit, but we might not have made it fit right, so it may just be another fitting.” Just fyi.

Brief review of our last visit: my dress was so tight around the ribs that I could barely breathe, and I was still sore the next morning from trying it on the night before.  They gave me a hard time about letting it out.

I showed up this time prepared for battle.  A small part of me hoped that it *wouldn’t* fit so I could just ask for my money back, make some loud complaints, and then wear my suit.  We arrived and – shockingly (sarcasm) – couldn’t find someone to help us for our appointment.  Finally we went into the room where they actually do the sewing, announced ourselves, and someone brought me my dress.  With the wrong name on it, but it was my dress.  Way to show your customer service and organizational skills off, David’s.

I put the dress on, and… it fits.  It’s comfortable.  I look pretty. Turtle is pleased and obviously relieved that I am not about to throw a fit in the bridal salon.  Part of my throwing a fit plan was to tell all the shoppers there how horrible our experience had been.  Anyway: Turtle, relieved, moving on.

So I turn to go back into the fitting room to undress and I see: the hem is uneven.

Seriously, David’s?  I mean, I am no master tailor, and I’m not even sure how to use a sewing machine.  I tried once and failed.  But I do know that a hem is one of the simplest things to do.  The nice lady at our local place hemmed my pants perfectly in five minutes after only pinning one side of one leg – you, DB’s, pinned around the entire bottom of the dress and still one side was an inch longer than the other.

On the upside, they fixed it within half an hour.  The back still looks a wee bit uneven to me, but I’m not dealing with them anymore.

In the meantime, Turtle found her dress.  The second batch of J. Crew dresses arrived.

these dresses came in smaller boxes and pretty little bags. excitement!

folded all pretty and mysteriously...

She tried the first one on, and it was pretty.  I’m not quite sure what to do with the funny sash thing coming down the front.

pretty lady!!

She hemmed, she hawed, she thought maybe this was the dress.  I thought it was pretty, if a little toga-like.

And then, you guys – she tried the second one on.  And we were sort of, well, floored.  It was beautiful.  She was beautiful in it.  I might have gotten a little teary, and she stood there quietly for a minute and then said something like, “I think this is it.”

We took it to a tailor on Saturday and we’re picking it up this week. All so much easier than anything we did before this.

My pretty lady won’t let me show you a picture of her in her for real dress, but here’s the stupid uncomfy one from David’s – not sure if we’re selling it or doing some sort of giveaway (but if you know someone who’s interested, they should get in touch with us!):

after seeing her real dress, it's so clear that this was not the right dress... boo our decision making skills sometimes!

us, in the dresses that we're *not* wearing!

Did you get it right the first time? Are you dying to see how pretty she is in her real dress?  Don’t worry, you only have to wait 10 more days until someone somewhere posts a picture of us GETTING MARRIED. IN TEN DAYS (according to my countdown). omg.

In the meantime: just keep breathing, just keep breathing.

How are you staying sane?