Finally!

Guess what we received today?? That's right! Our own wedding invitation...finally. It was postmarked January 11, so it's either been languishing in some dark corner of the post office or stuck under a postal truck seat. Though it didn't show up in our mailbox. I found it leaning against our front door, so I presume the mailman accidentally left it in our neighbor's box...but for how long?! Maybe the neighbors (which ones?!) have had it for a week now and have been trying to solve The Mystery of the Envelope with the Same To: and From: Address! It's the latest and greatest Nancy Drew novel.

On a serious note...

I'm trying not to hyperventilate. Eight weeks until the wedding. Eight WEEKS. When it was months away, I was okay. Now it's WEEKS and after seven of those, we'll be at DAYS. And then HOURS. And then MINUTES. And then it will happen.

I am about to lose my shit over here and the only thing keeping me from doing that is my flimsy sense of decorum in the office. Well, that and the crazy-looking, windblown Angora bunny on my monitor. As I told Chris, I can't tell if I'm looking at the rabbit's face or ass. And that shit makes me laugh.

I feel like wedding planning has kicked into high gear. I've been making secret phone calls from work to set up appointments with the vendors, making JetBlue Airways very very happy with all my travel, buying fabric, scribbling down shedules and details, and obsessively opening and recording all the RSVPs as the come in. Oh, speaking of which, Anonymous Decliner Count: 2.

On a totally unrelated note: I might hate Carlo. I'm pretty sure I don't love him. I have moments where I feel tenderness towards him, but it evaporates pretty quickly as he starts getting into all kinds of shit he's not supposed to be in. He nearly reduced me to tears last night and this morning. I don't remember the last time Chris and I had a meal where neither of us had to get up and haul a Carlo off the kitchen counters. Oh wait, yes I do: the day before I brought Carlo home. Last night was particularly bad. I was home alone, trying to get my voicemail issues resolved by AT&T and eating dinner, and every two minutes, I had to squirt Carlo with the water gun or physically remove him from my dinner or the kitchen sink. I thought seriously about putting him outside and hoping someone who likes stupid, annoying cats would pick him up. But I don't think those people exist, so I kept him.

But I feel this blinding rage come on when Carlo starts up with the constant yowling and chewing and into-shit-getting. I'm afraid I'm going to become a kitten-shaker and that'll eventually translate into me being a baby-shaker. What if I’m a baby-shaker? I like sweet, quiet babies, but even the sweetest, quietest babies have not-so-sweet and dear-god-I've-gone-deaf moments. And what then? What if I turn out to be a raging baby-shaker? You all probably hate me now (all three of you), and believe me, there's no shortage of self-loathing going on over here, so get in line. And you've been forewarned: I might shake you if you start up.

Zit's terrifying!

I have a zit on my chin. No big deal, you're thinking. It happens. Yeah, but you haven't seen this zit. A facialist told me that women tend to break out on their chins when they're stressed. The level of stress this zit indicates makes me a veritable medical miracle. I should be dead. No human can handle that level of stress.

This zit is the Krakatoa of zits. It's threatening to eat my entire face, starting with my chin. It feels like someone cut a fat grape in half and stuffed one half under my skin. Oh, and the grape is made of concrete. It's the zit that ate Manhattan. It's Godzilla. It's turning me into a lopsided Jay Leno. Seriously, it's a wonder I can even keep my head straight, seeing as my face is five pounds heavier on one side.

Excuse me. I have an appointment with the freak show folks. They're putting me on display as the human zit.

p.s. I got another check for $12.11 from Comcast of New Haven! Yeah!

To whet your appetite for a longer post later

Chris has a small injury to the skin on his lower back. The tag on a pair of his boxers came off and apparently, it was stuck on with gobs of glue that dried kind of rough and spiky. Last week, he complained that it was irritating his skin and I checked it out last night…indeed, there's a small spot on his skin that's red and scabby. He asked me what it looks like, and I reported that it looks like a cat's asshole. Is it wrong to tell the Internet that it looks like your boyfriend has a cat's butthole right above his butt crack?

Who are you?

It happened! Someone sent in an RSVP card without a name! So M___________ will not be attending, unfortunately. The person even thought to write "regret" next to "will not attend" but failed to tell us who s/he is.

Aaaand, we still haven't received our own damn invitation. Where do you suppose lost mail goes? Barring an incomplete address or insufficient postage, where does it all go? I suppose some of it gets put in the wrong mailbox. And some must just fly or fall out of the mail trucks. Do you think some postal carriers just get fed up and stuff mail in the trash? Does it fly under/behind machinery at the post office? Does the janitorial crew sweep up at the end of day and collect a pile of dropped mail and kind of shrug and figure "eh, whatever"?

Carlo is a whiner. Have I mentioned this before? Because I hate it. When he wants something, he'll sit there and whine for an HOUR. Non-stop. It's not just meowing--it has a particularly pathetic whi-i-i-ne to it. Ggggaaahhh...

Pondering

1. How is it that Chris's parents--in Ohio--have already received our invitation and we've already received replies from people in San Francisco, but we haven't received the invitation we mailed to ourselves yet?

2. Comcast Cable in New Haven keeps sending me notices that they owe me $12.11. I cancelled that account in May and I've already cashed the $12.11 check they sent me. And I called Comcast to ask them to stop sending the notices. I'm planning to save them all up and send them back to Comcast with a note. Now, should the note say just, "WHAT?!" in 30pt type or something more like "WHERE THE FUCK IS MY $12.11?!"

3. Carlo (the bad seed) is not afraid of much. Loud noises don't bother him, lumbering people don't faze him...but if you sneeze? He goes diving for cover. If he's already hiding under something, he goes scrambling for a new hiding place. If I could just sneeze on command, he'd never prowl the kitchen countertops again.

On the importance of editors, or justifying my paycheck

I went to this site today thanks to Miss Doxie's hilarious post (I am so going to get fired because I can't help yelping with laughter at work sometimes) and found this sentence:

"The Common Indian Myna is a medium sized chocolate brown bird, about 12 cm tall, with a black head and neck, a yellow beak, eye patch, feet and legs."

My first reading brought me to the conclusion that mynas are special creatures within the avian world because they have feet and legs. Unlike all those other birds that just screech to a halt on their feathered bellies. Clearly, the intention here was to say that mynas have yellow beaks, yellow eye patches, yellow feet, and yellow legs, and an extra "and" would've solved that problem nicely. Actually, the sentence also needs a couple of hyphens, lest readers come away with the idea that the birds are also made of chocolate. Which, yum!

I've been feeling at a loss for words lately…nothing interesting to post. The Holidailies thing gave me writer's block, but I felt compelled to at least try to post something every day, so I'd end up posting something I wasn't at all satisfied with, which only exacerbated the writer's block. I'm all about vicious cycles.

I've also been feeling like the most boring person ever, mostly because the majority of my brain has been occupied with wedding planning. Dilemma du jour? Sweeetheart table vs. head table. Scintillating, no? At least we got all the invitations printed and sent out. Locals may already have them. I'm sorry for black lines on the RSVP cards and direction cards. The laser printer I used was a bit fussy and not all the sheets fed in perfectly straight. By the time it came to assembling the invitations, I was fed up and ready to be done and told Mae and Julie—despite their protestations and need to be anal about it all (THANKS! by the way)—that I totally didn't care how they ended up looking. Which I didn't. But now? Maybe a tiny twinge of regret. But I’m not going to stress over that now. especially when there are so many other things to fret about. 72 days to go!

Oh! I learned a new word today, too: "floccinaucinihilipilification"—the action or habit of estimating as worthless. I'm totally going to start using that.

Working in Vegas

So clearly, I failed to post an entry everyday, especially towards the end there. But I have a decent excuse for petering out: I was in Las Vegas for work, covering the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Interestingly enough, the Adult Entertainment Convention (or somesuch) was also going on at the same time. Coincidence? I think not. After all, the vast majority of CES attendees are middle-aged men who work in the computer industry.

I discovered, though, that within the realm of techno-geeks exists various sub-realms. One entire hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center held the auto tech category. Actually, the term "tech" is used loosely there. The "Pimp My Ride" guys had a booth, so the show encompassed body work companies and the like. The stereo guys, apparently, were the real dick-show, in the sense that they're not even into getting amazing stereo sound into your car anymore. They have a contest for who can create the LOUDEST sound (bass)...but this sound is the kind that leaves your insides liquified and your knees buckling. Even the booth babes in this section are of a different caliber. Throughout the rest of the show, booth babes abounded (and bounced). A lot of them were pretty, hot even, in their skimpy outfits and shampoo commercial hair. But the auto tech booth babes...I think some of the Adult Entertainment Convention folks were doing double-duty. Not that I'm surprised, though, because have you seen those car magazines?

I'm glad to be back, not the least because we were staying at the Stardust Hotel, which...ick. It's still raining here. I'm going to start collecting scrap wood today for my ark.