And so it begins

It's the Monday before the wedding. Chris is working in Newport Beach (Mapquest's 1/2 hour drive? Took over an hour. Stupid L.A.), I'm working in my dad's study at home (it's weird working with 3 cats running around, harassing me, each other, and their reflections), and everything is starting to go nuts. Last week, someone sent us a news clipping about how the Queen Mary just declared bankruptcy. Awesome. Supposedly, hotel and catering services won't be affected. I'm just glad our wedding is this weekend and not, say, 3 months from now. I doubt anything can go catastrophically wrong in five days. *Knock on wood* But then I got a call today from the restaurant where we're having our rehearsal dinner and guess what? Big fire last night, so now we have to find a new restaurant for the rehearsal dinner and get the news and new directions out to people. Fun! I'm waiting for all my hair to fall out. Again, *knock on wood*.

Vacation from an angry cat

Officially, we're at one week and counting. Chris and I spent the day cleaning the apartment and packing everything we need for one week in L.A. and one week in Hawaii. Eeee! I'm so excited about our honeymoon!

It's a little stressful trying to pack everything we need for the wedding. I'm paranoid that I'm going to forget something important. I'm glad the dress is down there. Since we're driving, I'm employing the 'pack everything that will fit in the car and sort it out later' tactic.

We're taking the cats with us to L.A., where my family will catsit them while we're on vacation. In light of that, I dropped the boys off at a groomer this morning, thinking I'd pick them up in the afternoon with their nails trimmed, fur fluffy, and little black clouds over their heads. Not 20 minutes later, I get a call: Carlo is a hellion and they can't handle him, so no bath or nail trim. Gah. I don't know what to do with this cat. When I picked them up in the afternoon, Carlo was still pissy, hissing and growling at anything that moved. He's...yeah.

The NRA's new anti-PETA slogan...

Guns don't kill people; cats kill people.

A padded room would be nice right about now

Is crying in option? Is there crying in wedding planning? Huh? Is there? How about wailing? Or tearing my clothes off and running wild through the streets? Damn this neighborhood and its distinct lack of easy-access liquor stores! Nah, I don't want the liquor, I want the ciggies. Wedding planning is making me want to smoke again. Oh wait! I have an old, stale pack in my nightstand. Ahoy! I'll take my miracles where I can find 'em.

Uprisings-R-Us!

Chris and I were walking back to our car after dinner the other night, and passed by a plain storefront with lettering on its glass door. Out of the corner of my eye, I read "Insurgence Agency." Of course, I quickly realized that it was, in fact, an insurance agency, but it got me thinking (and laughing) about how an insurgence agency would advertise itself.

We are a one-stop-shop for all your insurgency needs! Need to overthrow a dictator? Stage a coup? Start a rebel uprising? We can do it all for you! Whether your operation is small-scale, like a Latin Club Rebellion, or larger, like a governmental overthrow, we have agents who specialize in helping you make your insurgency operation the best and most efficient it can be. Need weapons? Provisions? Able-bodied soldiers? We will get you top-of-the-line supplies and armies. The best part? Our price! We will NOT be undercut. If you find someone who offers the same services for less, we'll refund you the difference PLUS 10%! Call now and we'll put together a free quote for you. Let US help YOU with your POWER PLAY!!

So do you suppose I'll show up on FBI lists now?

Don't cry for me, Argentina. I've got my own tears.

I am dumb in plenty of ways, not the least of which is my contacts. I’ve worn corrective lenses since the 4th grade and grade school/junior high was a veritable parade of unfortunate eyewear. You might say I made a spectacle of myself. Ba-da-bum. Shut up. Anyway, I had the big-ass plastic frames in all sorts of colors: pink, blue, lavender. Late in high school, I tried contacts, but since I have a bit of astigmatism, it was either shell out big bucks for the fancy soft contacts, or suffer with the rigid gas permeables. Guess which I had? I lasted about 6 months with the gas perms. It got to the point where I’d wake up every morning and want to cry when I thought about putting in my contacts. First, the putting-in dance was just a huge pain—when something is coming towards my eye, I tend to blink and/or back away from it, neither of which is exactly conducive to getting the contacts in. It sometimes took me a full 15 minutes to put them in. Then, all day, I’d be blinking furiously, as my eye tried to reject the foreign object that was hugging it so close. They were scratchy and uncomfortable and it hurt to open my eyes all the way. So then people started thinking I was a snob, because I’d tilt my head back and peer at people through squinty eyes.

Needless to say, I went back to glasses in a hurry and have been wearing them ever since. Luckily, I started choosing nicer frames that flattered my face and didn’t look so dorky (though, coming full circle, I now wear a pair of purple, plastic frames, but they’re cute!). But with the wedding coming up, the vanity monster reared its ugly head and there I was, in the optometrist’s office, getting fitted for contacts. As it’s now almost two decades since I last tried contacts and I earn my own money, soft contacts for astigmatism are affordable, so I went for it. It’s still not like my eyeballs are floating on puffy clouds or anything, but it’s doable. I think my eyes are naturally a little dry and sensitive, so I’m always putting in re-wetting drops, which is a comedy routine unto itself.

Watching friends who’ve worn contacts for 20 years, I’m astounded when they casually tilt their heads back, squeeze a single, perfect drop of liquid out of the little bottle, and it falls right into the target eye. Me? Well, I’ve got the head tilting down. Everything else is a crap shoot. I go through rewetting drops like a baby through diapers because over half of the drops miss my eye or I blink. I even got the drops in my ear once, which...yeah, don’t ask. I have no idea. Now I have this routine where if I get the drop anywhere near my eye, I roll my head around, trying to direct the course of the drop into my eye, never mind all the dust and dead skin cells the formerly sterile liquid picks up. But the process always ends with me toweling off my face and neck.

So if you see me with tears streaming down my face at my wedding (and yes, thank the heavens for waterproof makeup), I might be crying tears of joy and happiness, or I might’ve just put drops in my eyes.