Thursday, October 25, 2012

I'm Moving!

You can now find me here:

 Fantastic Mrs. Ford

This is where the Husband and myself will keep you all up to date on what is happening with us.  And I'll probably continue my rants there as well.

Happy Fall!

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Before I Continue...

Ok so I came here today thinking I would tell you all why we've been so crazy busy, but then I have about a million other things swimming through my head today and I just can't concentrate on that right now.  What I am going to do is a mental dump so it's all out there and you can read it or not but it will hopefully make me feel better.

So let's start with a big question- should I start a different blog now that I'm married?  I feel like there's a fundamental life shift that happens when you get married (even if nothing else actually physically changes) and that it may warrant a new blog completely which means I may dump this one ... but I'll link it until the 3 of you who read this can change your bookmarks or links.  Even though I highly doubt the Husband will ever post anything at all I feel like the blog should include him.  Am I being weird?  It's almost like I need to shed all "singleness", if that makes sense.  Pondering.

Moving on, I'm starting a bucket list.  It's the tail end of marathon season (I guess) and I'm seeing everyone's pictures and posts on Facebook about their marathon adventures so I threw a little hissy fit and said to myself, "Dammit!  I'm going to run a marathon!!!" even though I completely hate running more than 5 miles.  So of course I called my mom and told her that I was going to run one next year and she laughed and said that it was on her bucket list so we should do it together.  BUCKET LIST?!  Perfect.  That's what I need, so I can reference it and actually have a way to track that I'm doing things that I actually want to do.  I am actually super excited about thinking up what I want to do and see in  my life.  Of course, I'm also excited about a marathon.  My friend Jenn just called and in the course of our conversation said she wanted to do a marathon (totally unprompted by me so this has to be destiny) next year so looks like I have 2 buddies!

Let's revisit the newly married thing again; it's insane to change your name.  There, I said it. Could they make it any more of a hassle?  There was never a question that I wouldn't change my name, but now that I'm in the middle of getting it all done it's a big fat suck fest.  I got like eleventy million copies of our marriage certificate so that I would "easily be able to change my name" (so says the clerk at the county office).  Let me tell you that the copies make no difference and that everywhere you go to change your names has a whole different set of hoops you have to jump through to prove you are who you are and you are a newlywed JUST. TRYING. TO. CHANGE. HER. NAME!  They act like I'm a criminal trying to steal someone's identity.  If only Heather F had more money than me, I'd be happy to take her identity.  Gah!  I cannot wait until it's over.  Apparently that takes like a year before everyone gets with the program (according to friends). 

Also, LET'S ALL FREAK OUT ABOUT HALLOWEEN!!!!!  You guys, I effing love Halloween through New Year's Day.  It's the best chunk of the year.  It's when all of the awesome happens.  I especially love Halloween, mostly because it's an excuse to dress up, but for many many more reasons. First, you get to dress up.  And I'm not talking about "It's an excuse to get a slutty costume" but more of a "who can I transform myself into" thing.  If I could legitimately dress in costume on a regular basis I would.  Let's also note that I don't do slutty costumes (in public or where anyone but the Husband will be) and it irks me to no end to see women showing their goods like I want to see them (I don't, mostly) in the namesake of Halloween.  If you are going to be slutty, be it and don't blame it on Halloween!  

Secondly, I love decorating.  LOVE IT!  I will find pretty much any excuse to decorate my house for an occasion.  I've always been drawn to darker and creepy decor so Halloween is the time when I let my creepy side take over.  I literally spend my whole year from January to September looking for darker odd objects to decorate with for Halloween.  I'm talking macabre trinkets like taxidermied creatures and old apothecary jars I can place around to creepy-looking antique photos I can replace my photos with. I the Husband would let me I would decorate my whole house in a slightly-Harry Potter- meets-haunted-house theme.  He pretty much finds it ridiculous that I could want more Halloween decorations than Christmas, but I'm getting close!

Yet another reason I love Halloween is the mood it puts me in to watch scary movies.  There is nothing better than curling up on the couch with a comfy blanket, a cup of hot chocolate or cider and getting scared of out of your  mind.  It's the best!  And the Pacific Northwest is awesomely foggy this time of year which adds to the scary factor.  

So those are the oh-so-important things banging around my brain today.  I'll be back tomorrow with some more life updates!

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

18 Days and It Feels Like Months Ago

BF and I got married 18 days ago and it's been a crazy hurricane of events ever since!  Also, I realize that I can no longer call him BF but it's such a habit and nothing else has a good ring to it... so it'll change when I become clever and figure it out.

Anyway, so the last you heard from me it was a couple of days before the wedding and I mostly wasn't stressed out except for a couple things that ended up working out, but I got over it all and everything went so extremely well I couldn't hardly believe it.  Thursday afternoon BF and I packed our cars full of suits and dresses and center pieces and pomanders and, of course, our luggage.  We had to drive separately to fit it all and then I drove across town to pick up the bouquets and boutonnieres from our florist which were AMAZING and fit perfectly our venue and the attitude of the wedding.   I had forgotten that there was a music festival happening the same weekend as our wedding at Edgefield and was wondering why there were masses of dreadlocked wanderers bedecked in tie dye attire roaming the streets and the McMenamins property so it made for some fun people watching the entire weekend. We checked into McMenamin's Edgefield Hotel and lugged all of our stuff to our room.  We then changed for the rehearsal dinner, met with our family and the Reverend and then ate some awesome food! We decided that since some of our friends were staying at the hotel that night we would go out with them for a bit to catch up.  I don't think we stayed out that late because we knew Friday was going to be long, so we called it a night after a few drinks and a round or two of pool.

Friday morning was an early one!  We got up and ate a hearty breakfast around 7am and I met with my hair and make-up magic-maker, Courtney, at 8:15am.  She got to work on me while BF and the boys played the short course (golf) at Edgefield.  I spent my entire morning sitting very still and trying to not blink-cry as Courtney delicately placed individual false lashes on my lids (not something I could do very often) and then as she expertly airbrushed my make up on.  My Matron of Honor, D, awesomely brought me some sort of hot chicken sandwich and fries which I was so thankful for but then only ate 4 bites of because I was a bit jittery.  I want to say that in my case, I wasn't at all nervous to actually get married, but I was nervous that things wouldn't work out the way I wanted them to... but I think I'm so used to being in control of events at work that letting other people handle things for me was really what stressed me out about it all.  So the morning kind of crawled by because I had to be still for hair and make up, but it was so worth it because it turned out amazing!  Our photographer showed up to take "getting ready" photos of the girls around 2pm and that's when it started to feel real.

After the pre-wedding ceremony photos I about died of boredom because I had over an hour to wait before I could do anything at all.  My mom stayed in my room with me while the bridesmaids rounded up the groomsmen and got in their places and ready to walk.  I finally got to walk up to the area where our ceremony was and wait in the hall;  I got all sorts of congratulations from the masses of hippies wandering around which helped distract me from being bored and nervous.  The music and our processional finally started and then I surprised myself and got super emotional!  I don't even know why, but walking down the aisle with my dad was really hard... and I have never really been a daddy's girl and I haven't lived at home for YEARS so I don't know what it was.  We finally made it down the aisle and then the ceremony started.  Because BF and I worked with the Reverend ahead of time we already knew what he was going to say, which made it feel super slow to me, but everyone else thought it was a pretty quick ceremony.  I was afraid to make eye contact with BF for a couple of reasons, 1) because I was a little emotional 2) because I was afraid he would made a weird face and make me laugh inappropriately 3) because I sort of caught him looking at my cleavage and 4) because the sun was shining at an angle that made it hard to look that way anyway.  I think it was a good thing I couldn't look because I had a hard time making it through part of the vows (oh, emotions) so the Reverend told me just to nod which got a few chuckles, but worked! A few times throughout the ceremony we were serenaded by the music festival sound checks which was pretty funny and then a plane took off during our reading of "Oh, The Places You'll Go" by Dr. Suess and went straight up behind us (we were told it looked really cool, but we didn't get to see it) so it was a memorable ceremony.

Finally the ceremony ended and we were off to sign the license, take more pictures and get back to our guests.  We LOVED LOVED LOVED the reception.  Not only did we have BBQ chicken and brisket for entrees, but we had pie and cake!  I cannot tell you how much I love pie (too much, in fact).  My friend Paul was our awesome DJ and a couple of my high school friends came and played an hour of live music (including our favorite The Darkness Song, which was so awesome I couldn't stand it!).  I did a quick change into my "party" wedding dress which was just longer than knee length and a lot lighter so I could dance more freely.  All in all it was an incredible wedding day and we were exhausted by the end of it all.  

We drove home after another hearty breakfast on Saturday and spent the rest of the weekend recovering at home and trying to get ready to go back to work on  Monday.

Pictures to come soon (hopefully) and more about our hectic few weeks! It definitely does not feel like it's only been 2 weeks, but marriage has been good so far and we cannot complain.