The day after we got engaged, Will and I took my ring in to be resized because Will "grossly overestimated" (his words not mine) the size of my ring finger and then took the train into the city together. Will needed to go in for a final and I had some books due at the library.

Because I had a good two hours or so to kill I took my sweet time browsing through the three floors of the library including the "growing up" area of the sociology section and the section on wedding planning. First of all, can I just say that I never cease to be entertained by the progression of the sociology section of the library? It runs roughly like this: love, dating, marriage, deciding to have kids, raising kids, divorce, feminist studies!

No kidding! That's really how the section progresses!

After letting myself have (yet another) good chuckle, I wandered around trying to find the wedding planning section (it was hidden up on the top floor in a far corner between the books on quotes and the books on entertaining) and sat down to do some perusing.

Will and I aren't sure when the wedding should be. At this point, we just knew it was going to happen eventually and, because my engagement wasn't even twenty four hours hold yet, I was still very gung ho in "let's play with the idea of a wedding!"

But you know what? Those getting married/wedding planning books? Freaked me out! Every single one of them was full of long lists and "how to handle overbearing relatives that insist you do things their way" and horror stories of overbearing friends and family, ceremonies gone wrong, dress disasters, you name it. Had Will not been taking a final exam I would have sent him a "we're eloping" text message. Instead, I shoved all of the books back onto the shelves and hightailed my little ass right out of there. If I hadn't been in the library I might have let out a shriek and broke into a run. Because? Yikes!

For my entire life I have known that I don't want a huge wedding. I don't want it to be an ordeal or even an Event. I have only wanted a small wedding with close friends and family–nothing too complicated. But then, a few days ago I was walking to the store and while I was listening to my iPod, I shuffled into a song that I love and that would be a great song to walk out (after the ceremony) to. And then I thought "wait a minute! I'm a freakin' tech theater major! I live for putting on a show! I can't have something simple!" and visions of projector screens and complicated lighting started dancing in my head.

Luckily, most of those visions have passed, largely because we just won't have the budget for them. Still though, I kind of like the idea of having something really unique. Oh and I've changed my mind about the song. I can safely say that the music? Will probably not be settled on until I am more than halfway down the aisle at the ceremony itself.

So far, the only decisions that we have made are that the wedding will either be in the spring or in the fall and it will most likely be indoors. I really like the idea of an outdoor wedding but? I really really hate bees. And the carrying the flowers thing? Kind of leads to having to deal with bees. And? Just? No.

It's one of those things that, because we both agreed to take our time and just enjoy being engaged, of course we cannot stop talking about it or thinking about little details. I promise to do my best not to let this blog become all wedding! all the time! but, well… I'm engaged!

First, thanks to everyone for all of your congratulations!

Second, thanks to the lovely La for the link which has tripled my traffic!

So. Yes.  This engaged thing.  To answer some general questions: Nope, we don't know when it will be.  Nope, we don't know where it will be.  Yes, you are all invited!

Right now I think that Will and I are both stuck in an almost limbotic state.  We're both incredibly excited at the idea of being married and want to run head first into the wedding planning stage.  At the same time, we are both terrified and realizing what a huge commitment we are making and are okay with just being engaged for now.

What's amazing is how antsy I was to get married while we were dating.  Now that we're engaged I swing back and forth between "Yay! Married!" and "Yay! Long Engagement!"

I do know how great it has been to finally announce the engagement on my blog.  All I wanted to do last Monday night after we had calmed down a little was jump on my blog and announce it, and it took all of my energy to hold myself in check.  Never before have my two worlds seemed farther apart and all I could think of was the phone calls with people shrieking "I had to find out by reading your blog?!?"

I am going to try not to become "all wedding all the time" but, at the same time, I have a week's worth of "ohmigod I'm engaged!" stories to tell!

So I've been hinting at having BIG NEWS for about a week now and I thought that I would wait to post it until tonight so that you could all read about it on your Monday morning….and because there were a few people in my 3-D world that I had to tell first because if they found out by way of my blog I'd never hear the end of it! So, because pictures are usually better than words (and because one of my birthday presents was a verrrry fancy camera and I've been having fun with the self timer) I have decided to post the following pictoral announcement:

Am I the only one who, when extremely tired, starts hearing the Sound of Music parody song from Phil Hartman's last show on SNL, in particular the Chris Farley part "I neeeeed to sleeeeep in a van down by the river…"?

Anyone?

No? Just Me?

I kind of figured.

How is it Friday night already?  What happened to Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and today?

Okay, actually I know what happened to them, but now they all seem like kind of a blur.  This whole week has been a "I'm going to" and then getting distracted and not getting it done and then you know? Not so much with the caring about not getting it done.

So yeah, this is not the post in which I reveal my big news but that is coming soon.  Which would you prefer? A big Monday morning announcement (don't think I don't know that half of you skip over the weekend posts) or something sooner?

Once again I find myself sitting in front of Last Comic Standing thinking "wow, I want to do that!"

The only problem is that tonight I am too tired to bring the funny!  This has been a CRAZY week!

Crazy!

Last night I got into bed, turned out the light, stretched and…woke up nine hours later.  No joke.

When I was younger I used to be able to sleep through anything.  I lived on the Co-Ed floor in college (my school was small and we only had one) and slept through many a morning of "hallway pinball" in which my floormates threw basketballs down the hallway, the goal being to bounce it off the walls and doors as many times as possible.  Earlier on, the only way to wake me up in the mornings was for my Mom to roll around on me. I have slept through earthquakes and wall rattling thunderstorms.

Somewhere along the way I lost the ability to sleep through everything (probably somewhere around the time I lived with the crackhead Las Vegas roommate) and now everything wakes me up.  Did a grasshopper sneeze in Norway? It might just make me fall out of bed.

I am hoping to find a happy sleeping medium before I have teenagers because my sleeping ability is starting to resemble my Mom's while I was in high school.  And when I was in high school? My Mom would go into her room, close her bedroom door, put in earplugs, pull a pillow over her head and? get mad at me for making enough noise to wake her up (this usually involved something like eating something crunchy or turning the page in a book).

Fun aside:

Once, when I was about thirteen or so, I was listening to something (most likely either the Beatles or something l would now consider lame) on my portable stereo through my headphones and my Mom was insistent that the music was too loud and that I was going to blow out my ears.  So I would turn it down some and she would say "I can still hear it! That means it is too loud!" after a couple of tries at turning it down, I finally put my elbow over the controls and turned the whole thing off but kept the headphones on.  After a couple of seconds my Mom said "I can still hear your music! Turn it down before you do permanent damage to both of our ears!"

She, of course, has probably decided to not remember this.  (this is where a smiley would go if I believed in using an emoticon in a blog post)

Anyway, for me to fall asleep and not only not be woken up by Will playing his game until one in the morning but not wake up when Will came to bed?  Is amazing. And worth a longer blog post. Because it might not ever happen again!

Look at me, still not telling any details!  All in good time, I promise.

Even with the excitement of the weekend and birthday goodness, somehow I thought I would wake up this morning and be completely gung-ho "okay, let's get back to work and make-y the moulah" and you know? That just so has not happened. Instead today was spent trying to take a nap, running errands in the early afternoon and then a trip to the library and PSU later on to meet Will after one of his finals. I did manage to respond to a few e-mails and, in my quest to be a better blogger, will get around to responding to comments (hopefully) tomorrow. Right now, it is just after ten o'clock PM and you know what? I am absolutely exhausted.

Exhausted.

I think I will go put Joan of Arcadia in the Play Station in the bedroom and curl up in my bed and watch television with Poppy. Will, of course, is playing WoW because I insisted upon a WoW-free birthday. So, you know, 24 hours go by and he starts having withdrawals.

This morning I tried to take a nap after my Mom went home and I kept waking up and then drifting back off to sleep and even though the dreams I had changed each time I went back to sleep, they all had the same weird bug that "gave birth" to these horrible weird little spidery-praying mantis-y bright green spindly limbed "babies" by shooting them out like it was blowing bubbles. I don't know what the bugs were, but they creeped me out. I was also slightly disturbed by the appearance of a girl who moved away from my hometown in 9th grade and literally? I haven't thought of her since then. But in my dream not only did I recognize her but I was glad to see her and knew exactly who she was. Now that I'm awake, I have once again forgotten her name. Weird.

Today I did also two things that I haven't done in a while.

First, I talked on the phone with my one of my older brothers.  This older brother and I, when together in person, can almost communicate without words sometimes. We can sit together and understand the feelings and the thoughts behind the moment without having to fill up the space with a lot of chatter. On the phone, though, it's difficult. We don't see each other very often (once a year if we are lucky) so there are a lot of awkward pauses. Still though, it was good to talk to him and have him tell me that even though I'm 30, I'll always be nine and a half to him.

The other thing I did, and I'm not sure which is more significant, was go to church. There is a larger entry here as my feelings about my faith are fairly complicated. It is worth mentioning, though, that the chapel of the Lutheran church in the South Park blocks of downtown Portland is beautiful and that, if you need a moment to just–be in a church, the people who work there are very nice about turning on the chapel lights and letting you have your space. Again, there is a longer post needed for this topic, but I figured that I'd mention it, in case, you know, I forgot about it later on. My brain is incredibly pasta-strainer-like that way.

Oh yeah! And I finally bought one of those spaghetti measurer things from Bed Bath and Beyond this weekend! I have measuring impairments when it comes to the expansion properties of spaghetti noodles (or any noodles really) and always end up cooking enough spaghetti sauce for two people and enough noodles to feed France. Or to not even fill myself up. There has not ever been a happy medium in the pasta preparations in my house. Now that will be fixed.

And now I will stop my exhausted rambling and go curl up in my bed like I wrote about way far away ago.

Was good.  Really good.  Really really good.

You have no idea how much I want to do a detailed post on everything that happened over the weekend, but it needs to…percolate…for a bit.

Sorry to torture and run, but I have to eat lunch!

It is June 7th.  JUNE. 7th.  And I? am wearing thermal pants under my jeans because it is so cold. This? Is not okay.

The other day I left a comment on Jess's blog about the weather here and I said "God must be a Floridian Republican who wants to give the simpletons more reason to hate Al Gore."

Look, I know there is more to global warming than the planet simply being hotter than it used to be but this? this weather right now? Is not helping the environmentalists make their case.  It is really hard to prove that the planet is drying up and dying when it has been cold and raining for almost seven months straight.

My Mom is due to arrive in an hour or so (she said between one and two but in my family if you aren't a half an hour early for something then you're late) so I do not know how much I will be posting over the next couple of days.  For all I know, this could be my last post before I turn 30!

30.  Damn.