Internet, I fear that I am getting sucked into the deep dark hole that is wedding planning.  And having friends.  And, okay, having to get work done.  So really I guess I fear that I am getting sucked into the deep dark hole that is known as life.  Apparently I am perfectly ordinary.  Who knew?

Each of these bloglets really deserves its own fully thought out blog post but who has the time?  Not me!  Instead I will simply arrange these things chronologically.

The Wedding Invitations, response cards, maps, directions and registry information have all been printed and assembled.  Stamps have been purchased and I have a stack of wedding invitations sitting on the table waiting to get mailed.  The part of making our own wedding invitations that took the most time? Choosing a font.  Seriously.  We went through THIRTY EIGHT font choices before finding the “perfect” one.  The deciding factor? Will’s deciding that this font’s W’s were neither too pointy nor too round.  I wish I was kidding.  We are using “Cotillion” for the font nerds out there.  Once the font was chosen it took from Thursday afternoon (yep, I printed out the invitations while I watched the Michael Jackson coverage on MSNBC) until midnight of last night/this morning to get the invitations ready to be mailed.    The second hardest part of putting together the invitations?  Finding one of these.  I had to go to six stores before I found one.   The invitations will be mailed later today–after UPS delivers the second season of the Closer from Amazon.  I want to get the mailed today but at the same time I’m hoping the UPS guy takes a while because I would like Will to be there with me when we put the invites in the mailbox and he probably won’t be home until seven or eight.

On Saturday night we went to see Rent at the Keller Auditorium.  Will bought the tickets for me as a birthday present knowing that Rent is one of my favorite shows ever.  An added bonus?  Anthony Rapp and Adam Pascal are reprising their roles as Mark and Roger (roles that they created as parts of the show’s original cast) for this tour and on Saturday I got to watch them.  Yep.  It probably sounds cheesy but watching Anthony Rapp play Mark is something that I have wanted to do since I first heard the soundtrack to Rent.  I had chalked it up to a “never gonna happen” (especially since Rent is no longer playing on Broadway) and I am not ashamed to admit that I geeked right out when he walked out on stage in full Mark costume.  I might have hooted and hollered a little bit. Adam Pascal was also excellent but I’ve always found Mark’s story more compelling than Roger’s.  And getting to see the original Mark in La Vie Boheme? Shoot me now because, theater wise, it does not get much better than that.  There is more theater geekery that needs to be written but the time! I do not haz it!

Sunday we went out to the coast with our friends Jen and Steve.  It was a beautiful day.  We all got sunburned and I got to sit through four hours of male machismo penis comparison as Steve drove like a maniac to see if Will would keep up with him and Will kept up with him to prove that he could.  Two hours there and two hours back my mantra was “Be a winner Steve! Just because you can pass someone does not mean you should!”  I am not ashamed to admit that there were a few moments when I was absolutely terrified. TERRIFIED.  I’m talking pushing myself back in my seat, grabbing the “oh shit” handle, trying not to throw up and almost bursting into tears TERRIFIED. After we got back I made Will promise that from now on we’ll just meet them wherever we go.  Will was a little “I’m a good driver! I know my limits! I can keep up!” until I pointed out that if he gets a ticket for reckless driving it could prevent him from getting a job after he graduates if the company does a background check because “I had to prove that I could keep up with the guy I was traveling with” won’t fly during an interview.  Other than the scary scary driving though, the trip was fun. Even with the sunburns.

Yesterday was spent working in the morning and then spending the afternoon and evening finishing up the wedding invites.  I also tried out the Wii’s All Star Cheer Squad and it? Is way boring.  It is nowhere near as much fun as We Cheer.  Today I will spend sitting on the couch, waiting for my DVDs to show up and catching up on work.

Who knew so much could get packed into so short a time?

In the last couple of days we have lost three legends: Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson.

I never really followed Farrah Fawcett’s career, but I had a big ol’ childhood soft spot for Ed McMahon and, obviously, I was a fan of Michael Jackson.  I watched his concert specials on HBO.  I danced to his music in my bedroom.  His videos were some of the first I ever saw.  I have vivid memories of sitting in my room and watching the Billy Jean video on my tiny black and white television set.  I own the DVD of his #1 videos.  Okay, I do not know where it is right now, but I know that I own it.

I will admit that this afternoon, after the Coroner confirmed his death that I sat on my couch and shed quite a few tears.  It wasn’t a sob fest or anything but it was definitely more than a sniffle.

Some of my tears come from the staggering amount of cruel and crude remarks being made about him.  Yeah, okay, he earned his “Wacko Jacko” nickname.   And yeah, the last decade and a half or so of his life was surrounded with gross and sludgy controversy.  But that does not mean that his entire life was a joke.  The sum of a man’s life should not be based solely upon a fraction of his years on this planet. For God’s sake, look at all of the good he did while he was alive.  Have you forgotten We Are the World and all that it inspired?  Show some effing respect for Chrissake.

I hope that, wherever he is right now, he is at peace.  If there is a Heaven, I truly hope that he is in it.

And Farrah and Ed too.

Heyyo!

To be honest, I have no idea how this I first became inspired with it, but sometime around the age of seven or eight I fell in love (love) with the idea of cheerleading.  My love ran so deep that I even checked out books about it from the library at school and, when I was nine, I saved up my allowance and bought some toy pom poms from KayBee Toys at the mall in Hilo.  I would spend hours playing around in my room doing the step-touch step-touch “Ready? Okay!” thing.  At one point I declared with absolute authority that my life goal was to become a professional cheerleader.

I’m sure my Mother was thrilled.

Then, when I turned ten I discovered reruns of the Monkees’ show on Nickelodeon and decided that my true calling was…wait for it…to be a professional tambourine player and yes, I saved up my allowance to purchase a kid sized tambourine from KayBee Toys.

I think it was at this point that my Mom gave up hope of my ever choosing anything resembling a “normal” career when I eventually grew up.

So, yeah, the love for cheerleading went the way of most childhood obsessions (I also wanted to be on Kids Incorporated and may or may not have once declared New Kids on the Block “better than the Beatles”…though to be fair, I was still a couple of months away from really discovering the Beatles) and then, in the seventh grade I went to a football game at the high school.  And there were cheerleaders there.  Real high school cheerleaders! With the cute skirts and sweaters! Shouting and cheering!  And I decided that I would be one of those cheerleaders.

I might have done it too if the school hadn’t cut cheerleading my sophomore year.  And, you know, if I hadn’t been the school freakazoid…not that being the school freakazoid kept me from joining the hastily assembled Dance Team my Senior Year.

So…yeah.  I have a soft spot for cheerleading (the kind of soft spot that sent me to watch Bring it On in theaters).  It’s one of those things that I have always wanted to do (it? is right up there with Play Annie on Broadway on my list of dreams that I am officially too old to accomplish).

And yes, it is kind of embarrassing, thanks for asking!

So…do I even have to tell you how hard I started drooling when I was sent a link to information about the We Cheer and All Star Cheer Squad games for the Wii?  Dudes!  I could pretend to be a cheerleader! In the safety of my living room! With the blinds drawn! And away from the prying eyes of all of the people who would, undoubtedly, laugh their asses off at me.

Look.  You may have your “always wanted to be the next non-batshit crazy-Van Gogh” or “always wanted to be a real life James Bond.”  or “I could have totally invented the world’s awesomest computer system if Steve Jobs and Bill Gates hadn’t gotten in the way” or “I can write just as well as Shakespeare.”  I? Have my “I always wanted to put on the tiny skirt and go jump around like an idiot in front of everybody I knew while I cheered on boys who were playing a sport I totally do not understand.”

So.  We rented Wii’s We Cheer last night.  Because the characters look cuter (Will says they look like Bratz dolls but whatever) than the characters on All Star Cheer Squad.  And I pushed it into the Wii this morning (wow, that sounds way to dirty).  And?

We Cheer for Wii is EFFING HARD.  (Huh.  Also horrendously dirty.) Oh. My. Effing. Gawd. It’s like Guitar Hero and Dance Dance Revolution but…HARD.  Really horribly oh my god it hurts and why can’t I do this?!? hard.

But that didn’t stop me for playing it for approximately two and a half hours today (until my arms begged me to quit because wow. Ouch)!  By the way, two and a half hours is how long it took for me to pass ONE level.  Of all of the songs I tried and all of the times I tried them, I got ONE pass.  I iz not good at this game.

Which is exactly why I will play it more tomorrow.  And every day until it has to go back (Sunday) and I rent the All Star Cheer Squad so I can compare the two.  Because dammit, I will own one of these games because I WILL be a homebound only when nobody is watching because I am pathetically uncoordinated cheerleader.

Ready? Oh-Kay!

Last Friday I decided to make fried rice.  I found a pretty good fried rice recipe in the Taste of Home Cookbook a few months ago and I think I have the process pretty much down.  But first I forgot to pay attention to the rice and, um, oops.  Not so much with the able to use it.  So we went to the store to buy more rice.  When we got home I got busy preparing everything and discovered that I had also forgotten about the fact that I had thrown away our peas and carrotts mixed vegetables because of all of the times I let them thaw out completely by accident during the Dental Week of Hellishness.  Um.  Whoops again because I was not about to ask to go back to the store.  But! Guess what I discovered and you probably already knew?  Fried rice when made with frozen corn and broccoli is just as yummy as it is with peas and carrots! In fact, I’ll go out on a limb and say that Friday’s batch was my best batch yet!  I have decided to name it Summer Rice because the colors (yellow and green) were all pretty and summery.

On Saturday I learned that my vacuum cleaner is falling apart.  I learned this when it somehow melted through one of its “make the brush turn” knobby things which then became dislodged and got sucked part way up into the mechanism before the vacuum cleaner went all “hey! what the hell is that thing?!?” and decided to spit out incredibly hot chunks of plastic all over my freshly vacuumed carpet.  Thankfully I was almost done with the first round of vacuuming.  Sadly, this was the day I decided to use some carpet deodorizer and discovered that the vacuum cleaner, before it tried to melt through and eat itself, had barely sucked any of it up.  I later learned that Will knows how to replace melted through knobby things with extra finagled wire hangers.  Even though I was mostly terrified of my new Frankenvacuum, I ran it over the floor another time in an attempt to get up the rest of the Glade.  It mostly worked.  And it felt like I was trying to push a car that was out of gas and chugging along on gas fumes across my floor.  Also? Poppy now REEKS of blackberry Glade smell even though we gave her a thorough wipe down and made sure that her fur was Glade free.

On Sunday we went downtown so Will could get some work done and I could…hang out while he got some work done and then we went to see the Proposal.  The Proposal is a pretty cute movie that does exactly what you want it to do: it makes you laugh and gives you a good excuse to chow down on overpriced popcorn for a couple of hours.  During the movie Will and I leanrned something awesome:  we can both use straws again without accidentally injuring ourselves (we were both prohibited from using straws for a few days after having our wisdom teeth removed)! This is an amazing development! We spent the rest of the afternoon drinking things through straws and, eventually, giving ourselves jaw aches…just because we could!

Yesterday we went to dinner at a friend’s house where we learned…that it is fun to have dinner with our friends (okay, technically we already knew that)!  We met some other friends of theirs and I bonded instantly one of them as he is a fellow Idaho escapee.  Sure we moved when I was four but it still counts!  I also learned that I am kind of in love with my Costco membership.  We went in last night to get beverages because Will offered to bring drinks to our friends’ house and I very nearly purchased a forty ounce bottle of Pantene Conditioner and a ginormous bag of ginormouser baking potatoes.  If only we hadn’t been trying to hurry.

Today I did not learned that it is worth it to buy the more expensive trash bags because the box that was only eighty nine cents at WinCo last week? Was eighty nine cents for a reason. Never again will I be sucked in by the lure of crazy cheap trash bags. Because hauling out the entire trash can and having to hoist it up over my head to dump its contents into the dumpster while trying to keep the lid of said dumpster from crashing down upon me? Was not an adventure I ever wanted to have.  This? Helped me to learn that I really need to spend some more time with the Wii Fit.

Tomorrow I hope to learn whether or not Wii Cheer is worth buying as I may or may not have rented it from Hollywood Video.  It may or may not be up against All Star Cheer Squad as a fun new game for the Snarke House (for me anyway–I bet there aren’t enough fancy sports cars in the world to get Will to try it).  I am kind of afraid that the lack of moving space in our living room will cause me to accidentally put out my own eye…which, if we’re being honest here is something that I could do perfectly well in a completely empty room.   Also? It is expensive as hell to rent Wii games from Hollywood Video if you do not have a Power Play membership. Holy cats!

Today I bought one of those dentist kits at Fred Meyer and can I just say? I am a little bit obsessed with using that lighted mirror to look at the backs of my teeth.  The thing that I find most surprising about the backs of my teeth is how much healthier they look than the fronts of my teeth.  No kidding, if I were to flip my teeth around you would never guess that I’ve had the dental issues I’ve had over the course of my 31 years on this planet.  You might be weirded out by the backward teeth but I’d get over it.  Tom Cruise’s teeth are totally off center and nobody focuses on that (the weird and creepy persona he’s worked so hard to build might have something to do with it).

I’ve been wanting to sit down and really…write.  I’ve owed a thoughtful post to this blog for over a month now and you know what? Today is just not going to be that day.  Maybe tomorrow will be that day when I have the house to myself for most of the day but tonight?  Tonight is for sitting on the couch next to my WoW playing fiance’, surfing the internet and watching the second season of Burn Notice on DVD.

In wedding news:

We bought invitation kits at Office Depot a couple of days ago and my goal is to have the invitations printed off and ready for the mail by Monday.  The invites won’t be anything super fancy, but they will get the job done and we won’t catch any flack for using the “You’re Invited!” invites from Target that were awfully hard to pass up last week.  Somehow I think that using birthday party invitations from Target might be going just a little bit too low budget, even for us…but we are TOTALLY buying our Thank You cards there.  Because I just do not understand why the thank you cards after the wedding have to be super formal.

Did I tell you that I found a dress?  And that my Mommy bought my wedding dress for me as a wedding/birthday present? It is a pretty dress that, I have been assured, comes with spaghetti straps because remember, my ONE major criteria for my wedding dress is that it not be strapless.  I? Am not a strapless girl.  I am a long sleeves and four sweaters girl, but I cannot wear that to my wedding.

I’m still trying to figure out shoes.  A long time ago I was joking with my Mom about wearing Doc Martens and knee socks and I kind of fell in love with the idea.  This is mostly because I am not a fancy shoes girl.  I have worn heels exactly three times in my life: each of the three nights we performed Our Miss Brooks in the eleventh grade.  So, yeah, I am not a fan of being forced to wear heels or any sort of uncomfortable shoe on my wedding day.  The other major reason I am not in favor of super fancy shoes is that I have to shop in the Girls’ section (as opposed to the Women’s section) in shoe stores.  Me haz tiny feet and shoes stores do not stock size 5 anymore.  The fancy shoes in my section are all patent leather mary janes and that got me thinking…and searching…and I found these and I kind of love them.  I don’t think I’ll be able to afford brand name Doc Martens but surely I can find something similar in style in a less expensive shoe store.  And? I think I’ll like them best in brown.  You may begin your “you’re kidding right?!?”s…..now.

We also have our photographer: my friend Jennifer offered to do our photos and that makes me happy as pie.  I am not a…natural picture takee, so knowing that one of my oldest friends will be on the other side of the camera takes away a lot of stress.  And I know she’s an amazing photographer, so we’ll definitely get awesome pictures!

Of course we still need to finish paying for the location, find Will something to wear, hire an officiant (the guy I like hasn’t ever gotten back to me, so even if he contacts me now I don’t think I’ll hire him because I’d be afraid of him spacing the wedding day…plus…he’s expensive) and figure out food.  Will’s Dad offered to cook (for $500) but nothing is set in stone.

First, the backstory:

Earlier this week Will had an interview for an internship out in Troutdale.  He ended up getting out there with a bunch of time to spare so he drove though the town to see what it was like and fell hard.  Will?  Now loooooooooooooooves Troutdale.  We’ve become fairly certain that he didn’t get the internship but Will? Is still totally in love with the town.  He wants to move there someday (or somehwere exactly like it).   This? Has me concerned because, as we have well established by now, I am not a small town girl.  Just like Will gets claustrophobic in crowded grocery stores (or doing any activity that was not originally his idea but that’s another blog for another time), I get claustrophobic and restless in towns with no library, no movie theater, no bookstore, few sidewalks… you get the idea.

But?  Last night we found ourselves sitting on our couch at 7ish moaning about being bored.  I suggested going for a walk, which was quickly shot down (by the man who keeps complaining about how he needs to get more exercise but again, a post for another time).  Will was so bored? He didn’t even want to play WoW.  I suggested driving out to the beach.  It’s only about a ninety minute drive out to the coast from here and I figured we could drive out, hand out while the sun finished setting and then head back in because? We were that bored.  It was after the beach idea that Will suggested driving out to Troutdale so he could show me why he liked it so much.

So! Off we went!

Troutdale is pretty.  The “downtown” area is very quaint–a bunch of antique shops all in a row that have been refurbished on the outside.  The town also looks like it is growing–there are quite a few new townhouse and condo units in the surrounding hills.  For the most part, though, the charm of Troutdale is solely in it’s natural setting.  It is twenty minutes from Multnomah Falls and the Sandy River runs right into it and around it.  There are quite a few scenic overlooks that seriously? Felt like we were driving by a green screen because they were almost too pretty.  We ended up taking the scenic road out to the Falls and it absolutely lived up to its name (and that road? Is TERRIFYING).

Will hadn’t ever been to Multnomah Falls before.  I think he was surprised at how beautiful it is there.  He tried valiantly to get me to hike all the way to the top, but I was about to pass out by the time we got to the bridge (Will’s version of hiking is walking super fast while taking super big steps which means that while Will “hikes” I “jog” to keep up) so we “hiked” back down.  Will also tried to get a good picture of the falls on his camera phone but I doubt that any of the shots really do the falls justice.

Yeah–we weren’t smart enough to bring the camera with us.  When we left, we figured we’d go for a quick drive, no muss no fuss.  Now? The rule here? ALWAYS bring the camera!

My mouth is starting to heal.  My cheek is still torn up but it is getting better.  Will’s mouth is, of course, healing with flying colors.  We have both agreed that–in a few weeks when we are confident that we are out of the “dry socket” woods, we are going to go buy very large fountain drinks from somewhere and then suck up mouthfuls of the liquid though our straws and spit them out, just because we can.

Blogverse, Will and I? We desperately miss using straws.

I do not have a whole lot of other news.  I spent today rushing through a project because we thought that Will’s youngest sister would be staying the night tonight and had planned for her to arrive this afternoon.  As it turns out? She doesn’t get here until tomorrow and now I suddenly find myself with a little bit of free time and I have no idea what to do with it.  I feel like I should be working ahead just in case, but part of me wants to just veg.

I spent the weekend finishing up my awesome client’s project and helping Will through the first couple of days of his “hey, they took my wisdom tooth!” ness (his recovery? Far smoother than mine which is so not fair.  And also? I think he and I are so over dentistry stuff for a while).  So now I kind of just want to curl up on the couch and watch the first season of Bones on DVD.

Mmmmmm. TV.

I have always heard that wisdom tooth extraction comes with a lot of pain and swelling, so I was expecting that.  What I was not expecting was that, by the forty eight hour mark (which just passed about twenty minutes ago) the worst pain in my mouth would be from the Novocaine and anesthetic injection sites.  Seriously?  It feels like it used to when I had braces and the wires would poke out of the back brackets and impale my cheeks.  It is sharp and it is pinchy but it is not unlivable.  I also wasn’t expecting the itching.  The itching at those sites comes in waves.  I’ll go a few hours without it and then have a few minutes of “oh my god give me a fork or something so I can scratch back there!”  Obviously I haven’t been scratching back there (not that stupid) but holy crap.  The itching.  The itching that I cannot scratch.  Halp.

The most unexpected thing of all, though, has been the complete sappage of my energy.  I spent most of the first twenty four hours after my appointment sleeping.  And not on purpose.  After my last blog post I laid down on the futon with a bag of peas on my face and promptly conked out (horrible swelled up face snoring and all) for a couple of hours until Will woke me up so that we could go to bed.  Awesomeness?  The bag of peas stayed perfectly balanced on my face the whole time (and thawed, which smelled super).  Then I woke up at 6:30 to see Will before he left for his last final (yay! last final of the semester!) and at 7, when he left, I laid down on the couch (again with the (re)frozen peas) and passed out until about 11.  I was up long enough to take a shower and go to the store for cat food and eat some pasta for lunch and then, at about 2ish I laid back down thinking “oh I’ll just watch one episode of Burn Notice while I peas my face some more” and woke back up at 6:30. Smelling of thawed peas.  Whoops squared.

Apparently unexpected oral surgery makes me very very tired.

It hasn’t, surprisingly, affected my ability to eat solid foods, provided that I chew on the other side of my mouth.  The unexpectedness of having two major dental procedures done on the same afternoon was made a lot easier by the fact that both procedures were in the same general area: upper left wisdom tooth, and an upper left molar.  I’ve had plenty of practice over the last few weeks of chewing on the other side of my mouth so I, thankfully, haven’t been limited to a broth and pudding diet.  I just take tiny bites and take my time chewing so that I don’t accidentally bang my teeth together and I’ve done just fine, which is good because as soon as the gauze came out on Wednesday all I wanted in the world was a McDonald’s Chicken Nugget meal.  I am fairly sure that not even pregnancy cravings will be that strong.  And you know what, the Hi-C orange drink that I ordered to go with those Chicken McNuggets and fries?  Was the best thing I have ever tasted.  Never in the history of my life has a beverage been so satisfying.

In other dental news: tomorrow is Will’s wisdom tooth extraction!  And it is the same tooth that I had pulled! I’d say that he is totally copying me but he’s had this appointment scheduled for over a month.  Between the two of us, I am sure that our apartment will be a laugh riot this weekend.

In unexpected niceness news: I had hoped that yesterday would be a productive day for working (because typing is not exactly tiresome) but when I woke up in the evening after having accomplished nothing and e-mailed my client to apologize, instead of getting angry, she gave me an  extension on our project so that I could take today and the weekend to rest.  I love it when my clients are awesome!

When I woke up today I figured that it would be another day of working working working–and trying to ignore the “wow, my back tooth really hurts and is kind of making that half of my skull throb.  What is that about?!?” ness that was happening.

When I woke up today I did NOT think that I would spend the day taking the train across town to the emergency dental clinic in North East Portland and getting a root canal and having one of my wisdom teeth (which turned out to be “almost” infected) pulled. I did not count on having to be given four (FOUR) shots of novocaine (and I think something else but I’m not entirely sure).

But that’s what happened.

And now I am off to lie on the couch with a bag of fozen peas on my face because? Um? My numbing agents have worn off.   And? Ouchy.

Wow, has it really been almost a week since I last posted?  That’s insane!

Rest assured dear internet, I have not forgotten about you.   I have just been very very busy.  I got hyper focused on a work project that took two full days of my time, my Mom came to visit for an early birthday celebration (since she has to be at work on my actual birthday) and today I put in a full work day and about an hour on Wii fit.

Also?  Tomorrow I turn 31.  Weird.  Much deep thoughts are happening–also the begginings of kind of an awesome blog post.