An invite to disaster

Adam and I are getting married in five weeks. I know this because our friends Dan and Abbey are getting married one month before us, and my justification for not planning anything has always been, "Dude, Dan and Abbey aren't even married yet."

So of course I knew I'd have a breakdown right after their ceremony. Others would be crying with elation for the happy couple; I'd be crying because I hadn't locked down anyone to do hair yet. (I also know, from "simultaneously" planning weddings with Abbey, that theirs is going to be kickass in all the ways ours is not. They have a THEME. They have COLORS. I've seen her to-do list. Their wedding is going to be like the Oscars, the time Bjork wore the swan costume. People are going to talk.)

I thought this weekend would be a good time to lock some stuff down, so that we could go away next weekend and actually enjoy the multiple choirs and performance art and dogs in tuxedos and custom-made cakes and all the other awesomeness I'm sure will appear. Also, this is the last weekend before our wedding that Adam and I are actually in town and have nothing to do. AND Paige is going on a walk-through for us on Tuesday, and asked for a timeline of the day in advance. I promised her I'd get it done, because if you're not answering to Paige, you're answering to no one.

I also thought it was relatively perfect timing because we FINALLY have everything we need to get our invitations out. The invitations have been a work in progress for over a month. I had this grandiose idea for them, one that involved me learning calligraphy. Obviously, that didn't pan out. The backup plan was using something called a "computer" to address the envelopes, and since I'm the one with all this administrative experience burning a hole in my ballgown, it was up to me to do the mail merge.

Well, I put it off. Adam designed the envelopes a week ago, but since 40 percent of my guest list has moved since the save-the-dates went out, it took me some time to come up with a decent list. I was frantically texting friends who were obviously out DOING SOMETHING with their Saturday nights, begging them to back away from that guy and text me back a new address, STAT! And then it was 8:45 pm. Time to print. Adam's sore throat meant that he would stay behind, and I'd venture to Kinko's on my own. And Kinko's, my friends, closes at 9 on Saturdays. The guy behind the counter's glare dared me to enter.

But whatever. There's always Sunday. I'd print them at 9 am, when Kinko's opened, and we'd have a restful day stuffing envelopes and drinking tea with honey. But of course I can't leave the house before noon on Sunday. And we get to Kinko's and I announce what we're there to do, and the two guys working there look TOTALLY BAFFLED and then tell me that they only print on 8.5 x 11. I'd really be better off with an ink-jet printer...like the kind people have at home.

Let me say this about this. That Kinko's was totally empty, and paying two adults a salary. MAYBE THAT'S BECAUSE THEY TELL PEOPLE TO GO HOME AND USE THEIR OWN PRINTER.

I have a mini-fit. All I want to do is kill. Or mail some invitations. SOMETHING has to move forward with this wedding, and Lord knows it's not going to be finding a bra that's appropriate for my dress. I want to accomplish something that I can TALK about. (At work, I mean.) (Also, 40 bucks says I never find that bra and just end up skipping it.)

Anyway, Adam and I split up and reunite at home. He arrives after I do, toting the most glorious, lucky find in the entire world: a printer.

He found it on the street. On top of a trash can. It was like God wanted people to receive our invitations on Tuesday.

We're only missing one thing at this point, and that's a cable to connect laptop to printer. Adam has one at work, but that's all the way in Berkeley, and we're COMMITTED to getting these things out this weekend. So we decide to rent a car and swing by the Office Depot on the way to Adam's appointment at Urgent Care.

All is going well. We have a printer, we're able to get a car for enough time to fit everything in, we traipse into Office Depot and immediately find what we need (including almost $60 in black ink) and I get Adam to Kaiser in time.

I'm super-giddy. And even though I know that I'm so so so bad at these things, and even though I'm sure Adam didn't expect I'd ever be able to do it....I tried to hook up that printer.

But you know those plastic cases that computer cables come in? The hard, bendy plastic that you have to cut open? I was JUST THINKING how dumb it was that they put paper over the contents, because who can tell where you're cutting? when...

I cut the damn cable.

I cut the cable in TWO places, because it was looped over.

I can't believe I did that.

And the Office Depot is over a mile away, and it's cold out today, and I already RENTED a car today, and Adam will be home any minute.

So I decide to try to splice it.

Luckily, he got home before I found any electrical tape. I mean, I would have just taped the two ends together. He almost fell on the floor laughing. (And I got out of ever being in charge of a project like this ever again.)

But then, this kid takes out a knife and starts peeling the rubber off the cords, and exposes, like, 100 wires, and then cuts THOSE open and then twists together five wires and came up with this totally hood connection that he swore wouldn't work, but it DID. That damn printer turned on! And it prints!

But it doesn't print envelopes as thick as the ones we have. It gets all the way to the return address, then it chokes and starts mangling it.

So there you have it. Maybe someday, some of you will be invited to our wedding. But it might not be this week. AND NONE OF THAT WAS OUR FAULT.

Blogging Sux

Here's the thing about blogging: One only feels like doing it in the heat of the moment. A gajillion blog post ideas run through my head when I'm stuck in line at the grocery store, or watching some moron at the gym, or, strangely, when I'm in the shower in the morning. But since I no longer have 8-10 totally free hours, alone, every day, those incidents are usually followed by going home and cooking dinner, or going home and taking a shower, or getting out of the shower and getting dressed and going to work. And while I certainly have blog post ideas at work during the day, I'm not so sure work-blogging is a very good idea. I feel guilty enough reading all of YOUR blog posts during the workday.

But the other thing that makes me feel guilty is all of you who have put me on your blogrolls, especially the ones that have the feature that note when the last update was. Four weeks ago. I was so proud of writing that. I wrote that before Adam got out of bed, and it made me feel like my entire weekend was accomplished. Because that was the point of the blog in the first place: to make me feel like I'd actually DONE something with my day, while all the rest of you were out being Productive Members of Society.

And now there's no escaping it. I used to track how many visitors a day I got (almost 300 the day after I posted that Adam and I got engaged!), and I just tried to go to that same tracking website to issue a comparison, but I can't even remember the name of it, so there goes that. What do I do? Take the blog down? I can't tell if that's more like cheating or giving up. What if one day I want to take on a multi-national corporation? Surely I should have a better platform than Facebook.

Also, I feel like I owe the people whose blogs I faithfully turn to daily, either at my 10:30 am snack break or my inevitable 3:45 pm slump. My days are better when you've posted an update. I really do want to know how your freak diet is going, or if you've passed the test you've secretly been studying for for months, or, best, what miracle your child has accomplished this week. My blog world is remarkably small, and I know everyone in it...except that Dooce woman. I love her, too.

So let's consider this a resurgence, because all the rest of you find time in your life to do things besides work and watch Must See TV.

Wicked thoughts

I think that as I get older, I get more and more frustrated with the people around me. It could just be that I'm in a bigger city and just spend more time every day being jostled around, but I'm now pretty intolerant, on the whole. Things like people swerving around on the sidewalk during the morning commute (especially if they're wearing headphones, which reduces the ability to sense someone trying to pass them) drive me up the wall. It's not a good way to go through life.

For Christmas, Adam got us great tickets to see Wicked. I was sitting next to two women with looooooooong French-tip manicures. Obviously, you all know the sort. And, despite the fact that they were in their 50s, one of them was toting a Bebe bag. I hope she had been shopping for her daughter, but her manicure indicates otherwise.

Their pre-show conversation mostly consisted of discussing where the odd-numbered seats were, since both of theirs were even. They also talked about turning off their phones--although they settled instead on just setting them to volume level 1. But the real kicker was when they started going through the Playbill. There was an ad for the movie release of The Lovely Bones, and one woman asked the other what it was about. She replied that it's about a girl who's murdered and tries to come back to help her family solve the crime. My neighbor asked her if it was a true story.

"I think they're telling us to call for help..."

I know it's been a long while since I've written anything, but when I received THIS over the New Year's weekend, I knew we were back in the game.

Many thanks to Abby Bridges, without whose decision to move to Brooklyn we may never have seen another set of Ikea instructions, and also to Liz "The Prototype" Peterson, whose diligence in chair assembly reminds us all to always, ALWAYS wear shoes when engaged in any sort of project that requires an Allen wrench.