Busybody

I don't know what, exactly, prompted this change, but while I used to be perfectly happy to wallow in my own filth, ignoring my e-mails in favor of lying on the couch with an open box of Pizza Hut breadsticks resting on my chest while watching old episodes of The Family Feud, I have now become some sort of taskaholic, running from to-do list to to-do list with the fervent obsessiveness of an Ethel Merman fan.

Not that I want to go back to living in a pet-hair-clogged super toilet, but really, I think I'm starting to take things a little far. For example, Ben is out of town this weekend. Instead of relaxing and enjoying a few hours to myself, I accomplished the following things:

• Finished thank you cards (praise whatever deity controls thankfulness-related endeavors!)


• Went to lunch with a good friend


• Bought a Christmas present for my mom (on behalf of my dad, which sucks, but it's all the costliness of buying a present with none of the glory)


• Cleaned every room of my house, including the bathroom, which still smells chlorine-fresh 24 hours later


• Vacuumed-- twice


• Emptied the trash, which is no easy feat, because we have one of those metal horseshoe garbage cans with the impossible-to-remove bags


• Did two loads of laundry


• Wrapped remaining Christmas presents


• Went to the grocery store, narrowly avoiding the blizzard that has settled over Cleveland (and which, annoyingly, prevented me from going to the Browns game today, which is what I was actually supposed to be doing instead of all this)


• Answered all my e-mails


• Made a CD (using a burner; I did not actually go to a studio and make a CD, although I think the world would really clamor for a copy of Kim Oja Sings Neil Diamond in the Voice of Tom Jones)

And now I'm writing my blog, which was the last thing on a long list of to-dos I had amassed for myself. There are still a few more things that need to be accomplished today, such as walking the dog and packing my lunch, but then I think I'll finally have accomplished my entire list.

I guess I've been trying to catch up ever since the wedding, but really ever since I got engaged, and with the latest flurry of to-do activity I am pleased to announce that I am finally, blissfully left without anything to do. The possibilities are endless-- do I work on a novel? Organize my file cabinet? Reread the entire Harry Potter series? Stage a Clue marathon?

All I know is, my chest is in for some major table duty tonight! Watch out, arteries, because the Pizza Hut breadsticks are back in the picture!

You're welcome

Number of thank you cards written tonight: 26

Number of thank you cards sealed into envelopes with this error: 25

This! This is what I get for wanting to be cute and have Ben sign the cards in his own hand-writing! Twenty-five cards going out saying "Love, Kim & "!

People who will be receiving this limited edition fuck-up card include:

1. The minister

2. The DJ

3. My boss

4. My mom's boss

Oh, my God. Please kill me now. Because there is no effing way I'm opening those envelopes and fixing this. Not tonight. Probably not ever. Because I don't have enough sticky labels left to redo the addresses, and by God, I am not doing them by hand!

Maybe? People will think my fancy ampersand is, like, a fancy, fucked-up letter O? And that I just decided to sign all my cards "Kim O," like in a fun, familial way?

Okay. If you're one of the people who receives this particular card, I apologize. If you really want, I'll have Ben stop by your house and sign your card next time we're in town.

Love,

Kim O

Please and Thank You

The wedding has been over for almost two months, but I'm still struggling with getting my thank you cards out. Not that I'm not thankful-- really I'm nothing but thankful-- but the idea of writing 67 thank you cards makes my stomach clench up in the most unpleasant way.

There's also the added stress of being known as "the writer of the family," which is hilarious since I haven't written anything longer than a humor column on my insane urge to pee in like three years; but still, having this moniker comes with some expectations-- that you'll eventually write a best-seller and buy your dad a Ferrari; that Oprah may pick your book and yell excitedly about it in her weird baritone and millions of women will buy it and it will be made into a mini-series starring Kirstie Alley; and that you will write unique, one-of-a-kind thank you cards that accurately convey the true warmth and appreciation that one's contribution of a Deluxe Downy Ball Fabric Softener Gift Pack has afforded you.

So far, I have written ten of the aforementioned 67, but at least two need to be rewritten in light of recent developments (developments I could probably have avoided addressing in my already difficult thank you letters if I had gotten them done in October, as I had originally planned). And I am unsure when any more will be gotten to in light of the holiday season, which has T-boned me like a drunken Santa on a souped-up sleigh-- if I don't get my butt in gear, I'll have to add a sizeable amount of Christmas thank you cards to the pack.

To those of you whom I owe a thank you card, please rest assured that I am extremely thankful, not only for your gifts, but more importantly for your well-wishes and for daring to come to Cleveland in the first place (we have a lake!). The cards will be in the mail posthaste-- right after I make up my Christmas list, clean up my house, decorate for the holidays, get rid of the thirty pounds of wedding-related reading materials that I have acquired in the past year, attend a free showing of The Golden Compass, rearrange my Netflix list, make several batches of Chex Mix, and finish the three library books I started reading before Thanksgiving.

I promise.

Okay, so clearly I haven't exactly done anything to make this writing group happen yet. I think I was hoping that I would wake up one day and be some sort of writing group starting guru, or that woodland creatures would have just set the whole thing up for me, so I could just log on and look like a hero. Lest I appear to be an Indian-giver of writing group promises, I will get this thing up and running. I just need to overcome some general malaise, which mainly seems to stem from the fact that, now that the wedding is over, I have so much free time that I literally don't know what to do with it, so I do absolutely nothing.

This is not strictly true; Ben was out of town this weekend, so on my first weekend of alone time since long before the wedding, I accomplished the following things:

1. Bought speakers for my laptop, whose own internal speakers had died long ago.

2. Listened to the shitty music I have on my laptop through my new speakers (for instance, right this very second I am listening to the "Strongbad Techno" song from Homestar Runner, and I just got done listening to "P.I.M.P." Oh, and Genesis' "No Son of Mine" just came on, so I'm going to have to skip it so that I don't fall to the ground in a gelatinous goo of total gaywadness).

3. Packed away my summer clothes, so my closet is now capri-free.

4. Thought about writing thank you cards, a little.

5. Watched season 7 of The Simpsons, arguably among the best of the seasons. Actually, I like season 7 of the season better than I like the actual, real-life season of spring. So that's saying a lot.

6. Pretended like I was going to work on my craptastic novel that I've been working on since high school, but didn't fool anyone, so went and watched reruns of I Love New York II.

7. Made the best Chex Mix, like, fucking, ever.

Oh, and, Becki's boyfriend Joe, who just happens to be the Philadelphia Eagles Birdman, was in a promo spot during the third quarter of the Eagles game yesterday, so I watched that about seventeen times. God, I wish he had been at the wedding, so he could have done that squawk.

(Note: I forgot to skip "No Son of Mine," and I just noticed it's still playing. Why do I have this? Of all the Genesis songs I could have, why this one? I wonder if I have that one about the homeless people that was on this same album. God, I was obsessed with this album when I was in the fifth grade. That's why I grew up to be such a lameass.)

So this week, Ben and I are rededicating ourselves to doing post-wedding wrap-up stuff (which is not nearly as much fun as pre-wedding stuff, because I know there's not going to be a big party after I finally buy the stamps for the as-yet-unwritten thank you cards), and then maybe I'll be ready to start the writing group. Those of you who expressed interest, do not despair! I promise it is just over the horizon.

Although it appears I'm going to have to go through and delete some of my mp3s first.

I've been trying to come up with something interesting to blog about for the past few days-- I promised that, upon my return, I would be a blogging machine, right? But thus far, nothing really of note has occurred. I did get a really bitchin' haircut (only one day after returning from my honeymoon, which prompted my boss to announce that "pretty soon, I would be going on an All-McDonald's Diet and going to sleep in flannel pajamas with a chastity belt underneath," because apparently cutting one's hair is tantamount to Giving Up Entirely), but hesitate to comment on it further until I can get a decent picture of it to share with you.

But other than the new 'do, there just hasn't been much happening. Or maybe there has, but because the wedding was such a gigantic event, it makes all other events in my life seem insanely small and lame? Possibly.

Either way, I'm beginning to worry that I have become boring. What's worse, I fear that I may have been boring for some time now, but had the crutch of Discussing the Wedding to fall back on.

I guess it's kind of like when you go on an amazing vacation, and take tons of pictures, but as soon as you return and people start asking you about the trip, you can't think of anything to say, other than, "it was really, really fun." Also: "We went putt-putt golfing," because you always go putt-putt golfing on vacation. We would have gone in Mexico, but such a thing did not seem to exist there. Which is silly, since the whole thing could have been Mayan-themed, which would have been awesome.

Anyway, I'm hoping to get my Person of Interest Mojo back shortly. Actually, I just thought of something way better to blog about than what I just wrote, but I think I'll save it for tomorrow-- I can't blow all my interestingness at once.

Will post more as soon as...

1. Office where computer is kept is reverted back to its normal state, away from its current state of Giant Messy Wedding Present Holding Pen

2. I get tired of my new shredder, or run out of things to shred

3. I work up the nerve to call my very nice but still somewhat intimidating photographer to find out how, exactly, we go about building our album

4. I find a way to re-enter society as Kim Oja, Married Girl, rather than Kim Shable, wedding-obsessed engaged girl who can talk about nothing other than her wedding

Until then, please enjoy this picture of Mexico, and please, don't be shy about goading me into posting, as I will likely recline in my living room under my souvenir Mexican blanket watching reruns of "The First 48" until the end of time.

PS: This picture was taken at Xel-Ha, which is where they filmed the movie Blue Lagoon, which means that I have gone swimming in the same water as Brooke Shields. I find that sort of gross.

Ojas at the hitchin' post

Greatest. Day. Ever. Thanks to everyone who made it so special-- those who were present, and those who were present in spirit. Special thanks to the greatest maid of honor and matron of honor ever, Ashley and Megan, and to my new sister-in-law (weird!) Becki, and most thanks of all to my wonderful, amazing, astounding husband Ben. If you want to check out more pictures, or if you were in attendance and have pictures you still need to upload to fulfill your friendly honor (hint hint), go to our Snapfish site.

Now, to Mexico. Ole!

The last you'll hear from Kim Shable

With the wedding rapidly approaching, I have decided it best not to try to cram in any more blog posts until after I get back from my honeymoon, at which point I will officially be Kim Oja. Thus, this will be my last blog post ever as Kim Shable.

This concept weirds me out a little-- not that I don't want to change my name, because it's obviously my choice to do so. But it still seems a little scary-- what if Kim Oja is nothing like Kim Shable? What if she enjoys collecting Hummel figurines and surfing the Web for midi files of her favorite Sousa marches? What if she's not funny? What if she's not nice? What if she's lame?

Since Kim Shable and Kim Oja will (soon) be the same person, I realize these fears are ridiculous. But still, giving up the last name that you've had for twenty-eight years, it's fucking weird.

And more than a little sad-- most of my friends know me as, and call me, Kimshable, as if it were all one word. And there are no male Shables left to carry on the name-- my dad and his brother only had one child each, and we were both girls who married. So by taking the Oja name, I officially close the door on the last of the Shables.

Which is a silly thought-- if I had stayed single forever, there would still be no kids to carry on the name. And if I kept my name, I would still want the kids to have Ben's last name. But it's still very sad, knowing my time as a Shable has come to a close.

I hope Kim Oja is cool. I hope she writes a book that makes her famous. I know she'll be married to the man that she loves, and she'll always be happy.

And I've already been practicing her signature, and it looks pretty rad. All in all, an auspicious start to what I know will be an amazing marriage.

Things I will have time to do when this wedding is over:

1. Shave my legs more than just for bridal showers and dress fittings

2. Eat real meals, instead of nineteen fistfulls of garlic bagel chips from industrial sized bag purchased at BJs

3. Answer e-mail (I hereby declare E-MAIL BANKRUPTCY on all e-mails currently awaiting answering in my hotmail inbox)

4. Monitor TiVo for reruns of Adult Swim cartoons and shows featuring Will Arnett

5. Dwell on the fact that I have a creepy mini-crush on that kid who played George Michael on Arrested Development and is currently rocking it hardcore in Superbad

6. Order photos of the last nine months' worth of events from Snapfish (always uploading, never buying)

7. Write on my blog more than once every ten days or so (sorry, guys!)

8. Actually eat lunch, rather than spending lunch arguing with the people at the Aurora Inn, who apparently have no recollection of the block of rooms I reserved there

9. Go back to avoiding craft stores, instead of spending hours in them choosing just the right fake nasturtiums

10. Sleep. Oh, sweet sleep, I miss you.

Meanwhile, I refuse to give up the fact that our wedding is going to be mega-kick-ass. So in the end, it's all worth it. Superbad!

The art of beauty

As the wedding grows closer, I find myself attempting, often in vain, to somehow correct the years of bad habits and master the unlearned arts of beauty maintenance. On my list this week:

1. Fade embarrassing tan lines
2. Curb insane sweating
3. Artfully shape brows

The tan lines are going to be an issue, because for some reason, my tan never really goes away, which is really great, except that I have tan lines from my past three bathing suits threatening to draw attention away from my sassy dress. Solution: go tanning ($7).

As for the sweating, I figure-- outdoor bridal shower? Outdoor wedding? Many hugs from people who do not want my constant patina of perspiration on their nice dresses and suits? Solution: procure prescription strength Secret deodorant ($8).

And my brows? Manly and wild, like the great forests of Tennesee, they must be contained. Solution: plucking (free!).

Sounds like I have it all under control. But you would be wrong. So, so wrong.

For all three beautification rituals collided in a shocking miasma of decline on Tuesday, when, armed (no pun intended) with a liberal coating of prescription strength anti-stink and sporting a bald spot in my left brow that apparently no one can see but me, I entered the stand-up tanning bed, only to learn that even the most powerful anti-perspirant is no match for the 100-watt bulbs of fury, and that, when exposed, the skin under your eyebrows can burn.

So now I am a stinky, piebald, sunburned mess (although I will say that after my stinging all-over burn subsides, my tan lines WILL be almost gone), just in time for my engagement photos, which were earlier tonight, and my shower and bachelorette party, which is this weekend. After which I will be sealing myself in a large Ziploc baggie to prevent any further damage. But you might have to let me out after awhile, due to the stink.

It lives

I really am sorry for the lack of communication lately-- I know I got on a roll there for awhile, and even extricated myself from the You Should Blog More section of Pen and M's blog. But I am sorry to report that absolutely nothing of interest has happened to me lately, with the exception of the following things:

1. Ben's sister and her boyfriend are coming tomorrow to take us to the Football Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Which, as you know, I would not normally find interesting. But it just so happens that Becki's boyfriend is the Philadelphia Birdman, Eagles superfan of high local acclaim (so I am told-- as a some-time Browns fan, I recognize only the superfandom of Big Dawg). I have been informed that there will be many other superfans there, which will allow me to indulge in my lifelong love of mascots, both official and unofficial.

2. I picked up a copy of my mentor Joe Mackall's newest book, "Plain Secrets," which is about the Amish. I happen to love the Amish for many reasons, among them the fact that I personally know two people that lost their virginity to an Amish, which you have to admit is totally interesting. Anyway, I will read this book soon, in theory, so long as I do not first die from a massive paper-cutter wound while attempting to assemble the final pieces parts of my invitations. But you should read the book right now. Go on! What are you waiting for? You're not going to learn about the Amish sitting here reading this! Except for the fact that, aside from the virginity thing, I'm also obsessed with the Amish because they got rollerblades before I did, which I thought was totally unfair.

But other than that, my life has mostly consisted of handwriting addresses onto envelopes, struggling to learn how to print things on both sides of a piece of paper ("Why the fuck is it printing upside down now? I will kill you, bastard printer of Hades!"), and staring forlornly at my bike, who it appears will remain locked in my garage for the rest of the summer.

Two ways to end a pity party

I was having one of those shitty days, which I have about once a month or so (or, for about a six-month period while I was in graduate school), during which I feel that no one likes me at all, and that my disappearance would have about as much effect on the world as the cancellation of "Family Matters" (which, I'm sure, at least a couple of you assumed was still on).

I don't really know what prompts these days, but I do know that a friend once told me (during my six-month bout with extreme self-perceived unpopularity) "If we were to organize a weekly 'We Love Kim Shable' party, you would wonder why we weren't throwing them twice weekly."

Rereading that, I don't know if I should have held on to that particular statement as long as I have.

All I know is, I was feeling totally unpopular and nobodyish, until I got home and two things happened:

1. My passport arrived two weeks earlier than the earliest they said it would. This makes me feel extremely important, as there are constantly stories on the news about people who applied for their passports in March and still don't have them. Of course, the ultimate irony in all this is that, since the time I ordered my passport back in May, Ben and I have changed our honeymoon plans to go to Mexico, for which I currently don't actually need a passport.

2. While walking the dog, Jeni and I saw a man in the street taking pictures of something with his cell phone. As we approached, we saw a gigantic black bird perched menacingly on the fence of the baseball field-- a buzzard, something I have never actually seen before in real life. We watched it for about five minutes, and were particularly enthralled when it hopped off the fence and began eating a dead squirrel in the road. Once we dropped Che off at the house, I ran back to try to take its picture, but it was already gone.

What does this mean? Is it a sign of some sort? A sign that I shouldn't be so down, because at least I get to sit on my couch eating Cheez-Its instead of scavenging for carrion? All I know is, it's a lot harder to feel bad about yourself when there's a three foot tall raptor hanging out outside your house.

Shaby's back/tell a friend

Hiatus over. Was I missed? I suspect the answer is "You were gone?"

It was a much needed break, as I was beginning to-- and I am not making this up-- develop hives regarding my wedding status. But much has been accomplished, both wedding-wise and un-wedding-wise in the past ten days.

Wedding-wise:

*Bought wedding bands
*Bought sassy new wedding shoes
*Picked readings (one by David Sedaris!) and readers, and vows and other ceremony jargon
*Chose, ordered and approved invitations
*Tentatively chose favors (which are shockingly uncool, but still very cute, and their having been chosen immediately eliminated all signs of hives and irregular stomach issues)
*Fired DJ and hired Rocco
*Worked on registry (An issue: how many more things could we possibly need? This is why there is now a memory foam leg-separating pillow on my registry.)

Un-wedding-wise:

*Rediscovered fervent passion for shandies-- half light beer, half lemonade, all delicious
*Watched copious amounts of TiVo, including old favorite "Home Movies" on Adult Swim
*Read half of "The Little Friend" by Donna Tartt before mysteriously stopping
*Got weak little tan at beach
*Listened to the song "Dance Tonight" off Paul McCartney's new album 800 times

Now that the wedding stuff is a little more under control (until the invitations arrive, I guess, and I have to face the agony of either doing the correct thing of hand addressing 125 envelopes or printing snazzy labels instead), I intend to proceed through life with more of a Don't Worry, Be Happy, Bobby McFerrin-esque attitude. I also intend to e-mail the people I have been ignoring for the last three months, and possibly fall into a Harry Potter based coma. All in all, a nice, relaxing hiatus.

But I'm back, bitches. So be warned.

On hiatus

This is just a short post to let you know that I am going on hiatus for a couple days. Move me to the "blog more" section if you must, Pen and M, but know that I will return, stronger and more venerable than ever before!

In the meantime, I am giving myself a much-needed break from all things wedding over the 4th and just relaxing. Thus far, this includes:

1. Eating 3/4ths of a family-sized bag of (reduced fat, at least!) Shearer's Kettle Cooked Potato Chips

2. Going bowling after getting let out of work early-- I have my own ball, which I keep in the trunk of my car! Convenient!

3. Trying in vain to set up a Twitter account, which I am convinced would be awesome, even though I don't know anyone who uses it and it does seem vaguely annoying. Thoughts?

Anyway, I WILL return soon, so please don't abandon hope, ye who enter here.

Update (8:33 p.m.): So I did succeed in joining Twitter. Will I use this utterly mundane, ultimately soul-killing device? Probably. Probably most often when I'm out at a restaurant and Ben's in the bathroom, which is when I feel the most life-suckingly bored. Luckily for you, Twitter makes a special app that can let you see what I'm Twittering, which I have pasted right here onto my blog. Oh, the joy of it all!

Fall Into a funk

I must admit, this whole wedding planning thing isn't exactly shaping up to be the non-stop funnapalooza I had anticipated.

Now don't get me wrong-- I definitely still want to get married. That isn't the issue. The issue is, I want someone to plan the entire thing for me, and have everyone magically show up, and all I have to do is look sassy in my dress and dance with my sexy, sexy fiance.

But right now, we are drowning in tiny details. Like the favors. A quick poll: do you care what the favors are? I am very favor-oriented, and have hoarded every wedding favor I have ever been given. So that might explain why I am so fixated on having The Perfect Favor. But it turns out that such a thing does not exist, and many of the favors out there are unbearable, such as the leaf-shaped "Fall In Love" soap petals that Ashley so abhors.

Yes. My wedding is in the fall. I understand your delightful play on words. So let's not print it on all semi-decent favors, thus ruining them irreparably.

And the guest list, which, at times, ranges anywhere from seven thousand people to me, Ben, the dog, a justice of the peace, and a random homeless witness. Do not even talk to me about the guest list, or I will burst into tears.

I know-- I know-- that our wedding is going to be super awesome, and will likely be talked about for generations to come, especially when I bust out my killer dance moves, which I imagine will be eighty times more entertaining when I'm wearing a 40 pound dress. But these little details are killing us.

So those of you who have been married, please tell me-- does everyone reach a point like this? Or am I some sort of horrible anti-bride, doomed to wander the earth in my tattered dress like Miss Havesham?

PS: Is my head really that big in comparison to my shoulders? Yikes.

Dear Evil DJ Company,

Why are you not returning our calls or e-mails? Is it because you know we're going to fire you and hire Marita's awesome grandpa Rocco to DJ our wedding instead? Because rest assured, we are justified.

Since entering into a contract with you, you have:

*Purposefully rescheduled two meetings to make us miss the $50 bridal show discount deadline

*Assigned us a terrifyingly bland DJ named Gary, who has a mustache, which everyone knows I am not all right with

*And might I add, that Gary actually refused to come to our house to let us meet him? And then, when he finally came, he mostly told stories of how he used to spin records at the now-defunct Beachland Ballroom?

*Sent me e-mails addressed alternately to Mr. Shable, Ben Oja, and, most confusingly, "Heather"

*Charged us three hundred dollars more than Rocco is planning on charging

And now, you're not returning our calls. So call me, so that we can end this horrible charade and I can delete the backlog of e-mails you've sent (to Heather) advertising all the wonderful extra services you provide (our names in lights on the dance floor!) for just a small additional fee.



We don't want to fight. We just want to party like it's 1999.

All best,
Kim

We are the champions

Please note! This entry is not entirely about the Cleveland Cavaliers. Only partially. So please read it, because I am bleeding readers due to my Cavs obsession. But dammit, I cannot help the love!

I don't know if you've heard, but Cleveland kicked all of your cities' collective asses at basketball (except you, San Antonio-- not yet, anyway), which makes Cleveland better than all your cities, using my false logic, even those cities that don't have basketball teams at all, and therefore can't even participate.

The Cleveland Cavaliers are now, officially, the Eastern Conference Champions, which has never, ever, ever happened before, and are going to the NBA finals, which, if they win, will cause this entire city to erupt into a chaos the likes of which has not been seen since Old Testament days. I, for one, plan to turn some people into pillars of salt. I won't tell you which people. But they'd better be ready.

This is something that the people of Cleveland have needed for a long, long time. Approximately since the time that our river caught fire. Which hasn't happened since, all right? So shut up about it.

But there is one major downside to this-- the Cleveland Cavaliers are eating up pretty much all of my free time. If I'm not staking out a table at a restaurant so I have a prime seat to watch the game, or actually watching the game, or discussing the game for hours on end with Ben and the people at work, then I am frantically running around doing errands that should have been done on the nights when I was watching the game.

Bike riding? Gone. E-mail correspondence? Spotty, at best. Blog posting? Pathetic. (Although Pen and M, I think you have to admit that even though I'm ONLY blogging about the Cavs, I feel that I should be upgraded back to normal blogging status.) I have only two modes: Game mode, and Doing The Bare Minimum of the Rest of My Chores In Order To Survive mode.

Not only that, but the Cavs are single-handedly forcing me to gain weight! Because why make a salad at home, when I can enjoy this tasty burger and three beers at Panini's while watching the game? I tell you, I went to try on my dress this weekend for the first time, and it felt as if all my vital organs had been squeezed into a small knot at the center of my abdomen. And, I had back fat. Not good.

So Cavs, I love you. I love you more than any non-athletic, book-reading trombone player really has the right to love you. But please, just hurry up and beat the Spurs in four games so I can bask in your reflected glow just long enough to eat one more plate of onion rings at Panini's and then return to my regularly scheduled life events.

Two weddings and a cookout

I know I've been absent from the blogscene for almost two weeks now, and I apologize (but come on, you didn't really miss me, did you?). But seriously, this has been a busy couple days, as I have been out:

1. Getting into a fight with Ben about the Cavs
2. Attending a wedding in Syracuse for Ben's cousin
3. Attending a second wedding less than 24 hours later back in Ohio for my good friend Marita
4. Eating too much food at a cookout at my parents' house
5. Booking an oboe trio to play at my wedding
6. Harrassing Ben about getting his save-the-date info together

and so on.

The weddings were of particular interest (although I'm sure there are some of you out there that would love to hear the particulars of my fight with Ben, which ended with me sobbing about how Sasha Pavlovic is purposefully trying to sabotage our chances at success), because they were the last two weddings I will ever attend as a single person, so I was trying really hard to inconspicuously take note of every single detail.

I did learn, at Ben's cousin's wedding, that Puerto Rican-style dancing is really fun to watch, but really, really difficult to do, especially when there's no alcohol involved. It also strengthened my resolve to not do the dollar dance, because surely no one would dance with me, and I would have to do the Carlton on the dance floor just to avoid looking unloved.

And at Marita's wedding, I learned that Marita does everything way cooler than me, and my wedding will look like a BBQ at the state park in comparison. And I learned that too much alcohol mixed with a lot of jumping up and down is not good for you.

All in all, an excellent weekend, especially since I got to meet Ben's family, who were totally awesome and really, really funny (and they laughed at my dumb jokes, which is a sure way to gain my trust). And of course much love to Marita and Chris, who (curiously enough) did the Carlton by dancing the wedding party dance to Sugarhill Gang's "Apache."

Congratulations, Kathy and Jose and Marita and Chris! Now, don't mind me as I shamelessly copy all your wedding secrets.

Done and undone

Done:

• Called Direct Loans re: student loan default letter. No answer, but I'm not as worried anymore, as I now have the letter in my possession, and have found that it doesn't actually have my name on it anywhere, meaning it was probably just mailed to the wrong person. Will begin obsessively calling tomorrow at eight a.m., just to make sure.

• Purchased corset for wedding. Not as easy as it sounds, as it also included a quest to find the apparently no longer open Solomon's Corset Shop, famous in Cleveland for its excellent corsets and mean employees who tell you your bra is wrong and saggy, even if it is made of cast iron. Ended up at David's Bridal, where I also bought my veil. The only downside-- my mom had to see my boobs. Gross.

• Washed and dried four loads of laundry, although sadly, got purple fabric softener spots over 80% of the whites.

• Wrote two new columns to send to the Dispatch while doing the ill-fated laundry

• Watched season finale of The Office-- twice! Anyone who wants to begin obsessively discussing the season premiere should contact me immediately.

• Harrassed Ben about making his guest list.
  

Undone:

• Did not mail save the date cards, as one half of guest list is missing.

• Did not upload new songs to MP3 player in an effort to get it to stop playing the same songs over and over and over again.

• Did not ride bike.

• Did not sign and mail contract for oboe trio for ceremony as promised.

• Did not return Netflix.

• Did not begin rereading Harry Potter series, despite looming release date of book seven.

Good news/Bad news/Weird news

Good news: Despite rumors to the contrary, I have easily conquered the mail merge, effortlessly producing beautiful labels on clear sticky paper to be applied to my awesome, awesome save the date cards. (By "easily conquered," I mean "conquered after seven tries." But still!



Bad news: According to my parents, I have received a vaguely threatening letter from school, stating that I have defaulted on my student loans. First of all, let me state categorically that I have NOT defaulted on my student loans. I have, in fact, made every payment early since the first one in November 2004. This does not, however, stop me from having terrifying thoughts of somehow having not been informed about some clause stating that I needed to hand-deliver each and every copy of my cancelled checks to the registrar's office in that horrible building on-campus that smelled like sweat and pencil shavings, and that now, I owe the school some catastrophically high amount of money that will prevent me from taking a proper honeymoon, and I will end up spending it in Hershey, PA.

Good news: the Cavs won, which must mean that they are not pissed that I called their playing pathetic. This is probably a good sign that LeBron will, in fact, be attending my wedding, and bringing a totally awesome gift, and probably high-fiving me, at which point I will pee my pants.

Bad news: My MP3 player (which, Frisby, is 1G SanDisk Sansa) is still only playing the same songs-- fortunately, it has selected new ones, as I was getting really tired of fucking "Bad Day." The list is now:

• The Real Slim Shady, Eminem
• Stacy's Mom, Fountains of Wayne
• Seven Nation Army, The White Stripes
• Ready to Go, Republica
• We Can Work It Out, Stevie Wonder (still)

Weird news: Two girls at work witnessed a chipmunk attack and behead a bird, which I thought very odd, as chipmunks are supposed to be vegetarian, forcing me to worry that the chipmunk has rabies, and might charge out at me at any time and gnaw on my ankle, turning me into a rabid monster a la Teacake in Their Eyes Were Watching God, and someone will have to shoot me.