Despite being a fairly low-key bride (or at least, trying very hard to be a low-key bride), I have somehow morphed into that girl. The one who is a week away from her wedding and incapable of concentrating on work, despite her best efforts. It’s not that I’m obsessing about things that need to get done for the wedding, or making sure I lose those last 30 pounds, or anything like that. Not at all. I’m just…distracted. It doesn’t help that the main task I have to work on at present is kind of sucking the life out of me – it’s important, but tedious. I don’t often run into these kinds of things; my job is often more interesting and challenging than this task would indicate.

Yet still I sit here, in “Look! A shiny object!” mode. I suppose everyone must have a hobby, and once my mind starts to wander, it is unlikely to come back to the ranch all that soon. The segues that I make can really be quite remarkable. For example, I’ll start out thinking about how it’s a nice day outside, and I’d love it if I could go for a walk. From there, I get to thinking that I need to be more careful about my sun exposure (although I already am extremely careful these days, after many a burn in college that I would refer to as “pink” and my friends would refer to as “3^rd degree”), and wondering if I can still find that sunscreen I used to use. Can I still get it at Sephora? Because I tried using the less expensive stuff, and it demolished my skin – dang sensitive skin. Kind of like when I used to drive up to New York and back all the time before my car had air conditioning, and ended up getting sun poisoning on my left arm from it hanging out the window all the time as I drive. And I don’t understand why they are always doing construction on the farking Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. I moved there in 1998, and I would swear that some of the same traffic cones are still up. Do you think those traffic cones are recyclable anyway? That reflective paint may mess something up, but I’m not sure. What is it that makes the paint reflective, while we’re at it? I mean, it’s not like you’ve got little, teeny mirrors in there or something. Or maybe you do, what do I know? I hope we can finish painting the house soon – we don’t have a lot left to do, actually. And once that’s all done and taken care of, we can spend our weekends hiking or relaxing or things like that. I’d better go get my Interagency Parks Pass, too. I wonder what parks those get you into? I want to go hiking again, now that the weather is getting a bit warmer. I’d like to try biking, too. I have a bike, after all. Will I ever manage to train for and complete a triathlon? Not Iron Man, of course, because I think you have to be on crack, metaphorically speaking, to do that to your body. I wonder what Whitney Houston is up to these days? Wait, wait. I forgot that “Whitney don’t do crack”. Silly Mandy. It sure is a nice day outside.

I need help. And yet I managed to e-mail all of our vendors and confirm details with them, AND do some things for my actual job in the process. Hurrah for me!

Go Mandy, it’s your birthday. We’re gonna party like it’s your birthday…

Small Things

I’ve noticed that when things get difficult or stressful, you really start to appreciate the small things more. Things you might not have noticed before. For example, the move went really smoothly (a miracle in and of itself), and Special K and I have been at the house often since then to get things unpacked and organized. The only thing that I didn’t like about the area was that the two large grocery stores nearby were on the old and rundown side, with not much of a selection of things. As someone who likes to cook, that’s kind of frustrating. There’s also Whole Foods, but we can’t afford to do all our shopping there, it’s too expensive. (Although it’s certainly good for some things.) So last night we found a nice, shiny new Safeway, five minutes away from our house in the District, and it just made me so happy.

A grocery store.

For some perspective, although there are lots of wonderful things happening for us now (like the fact that we’re getting married in nine days!), the last couple of weeks/months have been so incredibly stressful in other ways. After putting a lot of money into it lately (money that I didn’t have, mind you), my car has decided to start making another scary and unidentified noise. I have had 10 years and 120,000 low-maintenance miles, but if it’s getting to the point where I’m putting my mechanic’s kids through college, I can’t keep that up. Special K got clobbered with a huge-mongous tax bill this year. There are serious family health problems to deal with, other financial stresses to deal with, and it just feels like a bunch of difficult things are happening all at once. This doesn’t make us unique, things like this, and far worse, happen to other people every day. But it still sucks when it’s happening to you.

As with all of these things, if I have a plan for how to manage it, I feel more calm. Like I’m doing something instead of sitting around and feeling sorry for myself. So we have a plan. I’m not saying it’s all going to be easy, and life will always be filled with rainbows and puppies, but we have a plan.

And a nice, shiny, new Safeway.