Today I managed to last until 6:30 or so in the evening before I caved to the heat and Poppy (who spent the whole day hiding from the heat in the bathroom cabinet)  and I retreated into the bedroom to let Bert the air conditioner cool us off.  Right now Poppy is sacked out on the book case and I am looking at my all crossed off to do list and feeling mighty proud of myself for getting everything done that I needed to get done. I might spend an hour or so working on some of the things I wanted to get done today so that tomorrow won’t be work-packed or I might just crash in here and watch television until bedtime.

I kind of need an evening of just vegging out.

And can I just say that a certain monthly issue is almost over and I haven’t been this relieved to see it go in a long long time.  Seriously.  I thought my head was going to spin around until it freakin’ flew off this week.

Though…the week is not yet over…

I am fairly sure that I can say, with authority, that it is TOO DAMN HOT.  As evidence I offer up my unhappy face at being too warm:

And I’m going to follow that up with the makeshift office that I have created in our bedroom:

That is the foot of our bed (likey the ikea bedspread?) and one of the end tables from the living room set up in front of Bert (the portable air conditioner) and a fan.  Bert is set at 70.  I am only just now starting to feel cooled off.  Incidentally that is West Wing on in the background though I feel that I should be honest and tell you that, while it will always be one of my favorite shows, it is just not doing it for me today.  That might have something to do with the fact that I am tired and cranky and retaining water and too hot.  Aaron Sorkin himself could show up to perform soliloquoys from his show and I think I would still be like “duuuude.  Go awayyyy.  I have no patience for you!”  (after I finished  freaking out at Aaron Sorkin teleporting into our apartment of course.)

Next week the temperature is supposed to go down into the mid seventies/low eighties and I am beyond ready for this.  I know that I complain every winter about how much I want it to be warmer but I do not mean “over 100 degrees” warm.  I mean “high 60s/mid 70s warm.”  The kind of warm where you can still wear jeans and oxfords with a regular t-shirt and the sun feels happy and cheerful, not “I am going to shine on you so hard you feel like you’re being pushed through the concrete while your brain catches on fire with my forcefulness!”  So yeah.  I’m a picky S.O.B.  And right now, I’m okay with that.  Seriously folks, part of the appeal for Will and I about the Portland area was that it was supposed to be milder weathered than Roseburg.

I have been trying to get work done all day since I spent Monday (and yesterday as it turned out) doing wedding stuff and Will’s sister is going to be here for at least part of tomorrow.  It looks like I will be working through the weekend, but that is okay because our plans are to camp out here in the bedroom and wait for the temperature outside to lower back down to something more reasonable.

In other news (possibly the most abused phrase on this blog), I have decided that I am going to redesign this site after the wedding.  I’m not going to relaunch it like I did last summer but I am going to overhaul the design and the sidebars and I am seriously considering doing the entire design by myself.  From scratch.  From my brain.  Which is kind of terrifying because I? have no idea how to do that.  This comes mostly from adopting blog templates and having to tweak them within an inch of their lives to look and behave the way I want them to.  So… does anybody know of a good “build your own WordPress theme” tutorial that I can start looking at once I’ve gotten caught up with work?

I had a longer post planned but seriously?  I really need a break from wedding planning.  The wedding planning has turned into this:

“It’s whatever you want.  Its YOUR day.”

“I really want this.”

“No no, you should do this instead.”

“But I don’t like that, I want this.”

“Be reasonable.  This is better.”

or

“The decisions are entirely up to you, just tell me where to stand.”

“I really like this.”

“No, I don’t want that.  Choose something else.”

“This?”

“No.  It isn’t traditional.

“But I’M not traditional.”

“But I want a traditional wedding. So we’re going to do my thing instead.”

*sigh*

Dear… People,

I am here to tell you something and pay attention because this is important.  If you are going to go visit someone who lives in an urban area it is neither cheaper nor more convenient to bring your own towable portable housing:

A) Most urban areas do not have readily available portable housing accommodations.  They have hotels.  And motels.  And narrow streets that are not tow-your-portable-housing-with-you friendly.

B) In the event that you do manage to find portable housing accommodations within the city limits, it will be just as much if not more expensive than getting a hotel room for the same amount of time.  Added point? You are not in charge of cleaning your own hotel room and it comes with hot water, electricity and a working toilet.

C) Most portable-housing-friendly grounds are located well outside the city as that is where most portable housing enthusiasts prefer to stay.  This means that you have to find a place to park your portable housing and then you have to drive (sometimes for miles and miles and miles) to go see the people you came to see.  (Though in my case it is far more likely that we will be doing all the driving to and from.)

In short….people who are bringing towable housing to the wedding…perhaps you should consider a hotel room instead because trying to find an acceptable towable-portable-housing park that is close by, affordable and with all of the necessary amenities is stressing me out.  Of course, some of that stress could be from the fact that it is not MY person for whom I am spending all of this time doing all of this research and making all of these phone calls but we won’t go into that.

In other news, I have been eyeball deep in work stuff and wedding stuff.  It is good because working helps me earn money to pay for the wedding stuff and I like checking wedding stuff off of our to-do list but at the same time it sucks for my blogging energy.  How ironic is it that blogging and this type of writing is what I really want to do with my life but I still put everything else first because this is still my “hobby”?  Note to self: To turn something from a hobby to an occupation perhaps it should be the first thing on your list of priorities and not an “I can’t do my fun stuff until my work stuff is done” item. Yeah, like I’m going to listen to myself.

People, we are down to the nitty gritty.  The wedding is in 49 days.  FORTY NINE DAYS.  We still need a cake.  Will and my Mom both love the cupcake idea but I am not so smitten.  Sure it would be easier, but at the same time, I kind of want the pretty pretty cake.  I don’t so much care about the eating of the cake (as I will likely flip my cake upside down anyway since I am not a fan of most frostings) but I kind of want it to be pretty and displayable and cuttable for traditions’ sake.  We also need to order our rings (though I think our jeweler has the kind of rings we want already in stock, I talked to them earlier today) and figure out what Will is going to wear.  He keeps going back and forth between traditional tuxedo and just a nice suit.  At this point, as long as he isn’t in his pajama pants or in ratty jeans and his Vans shoes I really do not care.

After that, the decisions are more like “how intricate do we want the decorations to be?” and “should we have wedding favors for people to take home and if so, what should we do for those?”

And, of course, finding accommodations for the towable portable housing that is close to the church and reception site.

Oh I’m sorry, did my hair hit you in the face as my head spun around?

Last night Will and I decided to have dinner at the Sweet Tomatoes here in town (for the record I have decided to call pretty much everything on this side of downtown Portland “here in town”).  Yes–Will ate salad for dinner.  On purpose.  And it was his idea.  For those of you who live in areas where the salad bar restaurants are in good supply count your blessings.  Sure there are plenty of vegetarian eateries here in Portland but Will and I? we are omnivores and Will patently refuses to eat a meal that does not contain meat (thankfully he consideres bacon bits meat).  But anyway, I digress.  We went to Sweet Tomatoes.

The last time we drove out to Sweet Tomatoes we couldn’t find a parking spot (which is why those of you who live in an area where Sweet Tomatoes-esque restaurants are in plentiful supply should count your blessings) so we ended up going to Sonic instead.  Last night we managed to find a parking spot so we went in and? It turns out an entire pee-wee soccer league had decided to have dinner there too.  Yeah.  It was crowded.  And kids were running everywhere.  If there had been an animatronic mouse it could have been a Veggie Chuck E’ Cheese.  But the food was okay and we left feeling full and happy and not gross.

Today we walked (walked!) over to Olive Garden to partake of their unlimited soup, salad and breadsticks.   And, once again, we left feeling full and happy and not gross.

I feel a little bit like tomorrow I should take us to McDonalds to make up for it.  Or just have three meals of nothing but greasy bacon. Mmmm.  Bacon.

I had a whole entry almost written about going to Grant Park yesterday with Wendy, Katie and Patty (who I cannot link to because she does not have a blog) but then the Jackson 5 version of Rockin’ Robin came on my iTunes and I could not stop myself from rocking out a little bit here on the couch and doing some serious and…energetic (there might have even been a tiny bit of flailing) couch dancing and internet? Will did not notice.

It is official: my fiance is completely and totally used to me.

I knew there was a down side to this whole spending evenings in the same room most of the time thing.

Oh my god I only got ninety minutes of sleep last night.  And, in spite of that I still managed to get more done today than I did yesterday even though I felt like at any moment my head would start spinning around and fly off.

Of course, that’s not exactly hard since I didn’t exactly get anything done yesterday.  Yep.  Yesterday’s blog post was the only thing I got written all damn day.  And today I managed to eke out 900 words before my brain said “hey! too tired! why are you making me work!”  So I did some transcribing work instead.  You don’t have to think as much with that!

And with that I am signing off of the internet today and doing some knitting.  Or maybe some sleeping.

Dear….Someone,

Please hire me to write witty witticisms about my daily life for large sums of money.  ‘Cuz I? Kind of rock and I can be funny and…you know.  So…yeah! Hire me! Woo!

In other news: have you seen my focus? I seem to have misplaced it.

Today is the day of the self imploding spiral.  I have a project that I want to work on (thankfully it is not due any time soon otherwise I would not be able to be blogging right now) but can’t get my brain to focus on it.  I’ll write for a while and decide that I hate the approach I’m taking and erase everything I’ve just written.  Then I’ll get irritated with myself for not being able to get anything written.  Then, because I’m irritated with myself for not getting anything written I have a harder time concentrating on the project.  And then, because I’m having a harder time concentrating on the project I have a harder time pushing aside the frustration, which just makes me madder at myself.  So I take a minute or two to stare out the window, take a few deep breaths and relax.  Then I will write something, decide I hate it, erase it all and the process starts all over again. Thank goodness this is all done on computer now because otherwise I’d have the EPA all over me for single-handedly deforesting half the continent (but while I’m thinking about it,  note to self: buy printer paper because we are out).

I have been doing this since 9:30 this morning.  It is almost three in the afternoon. My brain is reaching is max capacity for self loathing and frustration.

Everybody has days like this at work no matter what kind of job they have.  We all have the “I just want to put my head down” days.  And, as I mentioned, my project is not due any time soon so I don’t have the added looming deadline pressure.  I am also lucky enough to not have a boss who peers over my shoulder or give me grief about not meeting a quota (thank God because I’m really good at doing that to myself so no outside assistance is necessary).

It is days like this that I wish I had the time/income to really just concentrate on blogging and writing funny essays and things that I like.  That is what I really want to do (watching Sex and the City does not help with this whole “being a columnist would so rock” dream) but paying the bills has to come first and right now paying the bills means ghostwriting and content producing for others.  So far nobody has said “Erin, we want to pay you a giant sum of cash just to write about your life.  Go to it!” so, my little plea for wealth and fortune to be narcissistic on paper stands.

Check it out! I just brought this blog post full circle!

Also? up there? just now? I spelled “said” as “sayd.”  I think that is a sure sign that I should chalk today up to a no go. I mean really.  I give up on today.

For the first time in a long time this was a weekend of doing abso-freakin’-lutely nothing.  Will was in Bend (he’s home now, yay!) and after UPS delivered my Sex and the City and the Closer DVDs on Friday evening I pulled our comfiest blanket onto the couch, curled up and did nothing but watch television until… right now.  I watched the third and fourth seasons of Sex and the City and almost the full third season of the Closer.  It? was awesome.  It has been a long time since I have had a couple days of doing nothing but lying on the couch, watching my own stuff on TV without having to deal with a bunch of other noise or activities.  I didn’t leave the house at all–not even to get the mail–and the most taxing activity I did was nuke left over fried rice and taco meat in the microwave (though not at the same time).

I feel rested.  And ready to get back to work tomorrow.

Ladies and germs, we have an officiant!

Both of today’s meetings went really well.  So well that I would very much like to be friends with both of the people I met with and kind of hope that ends up happening.

Our officiant, Heather, is just a few years older than me and we have tons in common.  Our whole meeting was spent nodding and totally getting each other.  I feel absolutely comfortable putting our wedding ceremony in her hands–mostly because she already feels like a good friend, which is quickly becoming a theme for us.  I chose our venue because the ladies who run it are awesome and easy to get along with and would be people that I would actually invite to the ceremony and to the reception.  One of my good friends is doing the photography.  Will’s Dad offered to do the food.  I am loving that our wedding is starting to feel more like a bunch of fun people hanging out together and less like a Big Event in which I am In Charge and Must Coordinate Everything.  It is helping me relax quite a bit!

So yay! We have a venue, we have an officiant, we have a photographer (thanks Jen!), I have a dress and a seamstress to help make necessary alterations (which is what you need when your butt is a size four but your boobs are a size zero, hello pears I feel your pain).  Next up is figuring out the cake and then finding something for Will to wear.  Will by the way is very scandalized at my Docs and knee socks idea and wants me to promise that, at the very least, the shoes will be white.  I have not yet made this promise because the more I think about it, the more I love the idea of the brown Doc Marten Mary Janes (or the cheap version in the same style).  I am not sure if this is just my stubbornness kicking in or what.

The mortgage guy, Gary, was also very helpful and at no point during our meeting did I feel like I was being sold to or that he was trying to make promises that he couldn’t keep.  He was very big on the “take your time and go one step at a time” approach, which I really like and made me feel quite a lot better about my credit situation (which, I am not afraid to admit, is abysmal).  He offered to help me put together a definite road map to getting us “mortgage ready” in the next year or so.  He was also very emphatic that if it takes longer for us to feel comfortable about starting the loan process then that is okay.  I truly felt like he cared more about helping me than earning a commission.  Case in point: I am not paying one single cent for his help and won’t unless we decide to do our mortgage through him which, at this point, I would totally be willing to do someday.   He also gets major points for making me feel like much less of a loser than I did when I walked in (seriously, I was really stupid in my early-mid 20s).  I walked out of our meeting (during which, in addition to talking credit and mortgages and interest rates we also spent a fair amount of time comparing iPhone apps and talking about rural life -vs- urban life) feeling so much more confident about the whole process.

In other news, today Will left to spend a long weekend geeking out with his friends over in Bend.  It’s a repeat of last year’s WoW-apalooza but this time around most of them barely play WoW anymore.  I feel like I should be revelling in the “all mine! I can do whatever I want! No video game noise in the background! No having to figure out what to do while he plays Knock Out on the Wii or waiting until he’s ready to go to bed! All my stuff all the time!”ness of having the apartment to myself until Sunday evening but you know what?  I am in a complete and total “okay.  I have watched some Sex and the City on DVD.  Now what?  I’m bored! I miss Will! I’m turning into a total girl! Waaaaaaah!  place.

I cannot decide what to do: crochet, read, knit, play We Cheer, eat something (and if so–what should I eat?), watch TV, re-watch the second season of Sex and the City on DVD (the third and fourth seasons get here sometime tomorrow along with the third season of The Closer), watch the seventh season of Friends on DVD (it was on sale at Target) or just go to bed early.  I think I have too much freedom.