Fast forward a year…

Hi guys,

Welp, it’s really been a year. Over a year, in fact. In that time, it’s entirely possible I’ve lost every. single. reader. I had. Hopefully a few of you have hung on to me in your RSS feeds, allowing my little link to wallow away to nothing, hardly even noticeable in your daily blog skimming. Perhaps, when you saw the link light up again, you forgot who I was — I know I do that fairly frequently with infrequent posters.

No blame if you’ve forgotten who I am. I’m just thankful you’ve kept me around all this time. It’s been a busy year to say the least. And at the same time, not all that busy at all. I spend most weeknights vegging out with my husband. (Last time I wrote, he was just a fiance.) Our weekends are often busy, but just as often not-so-busy.

Between planning a wedding, working the 9 to 5, and simply living life, you’d think I would have forgotten about this little corner of the Interwebs. Instead, I think about it nearly every day. Usually in that 25ish mile commute, as my hands grip the wheel but my mind wanders above the Interstate, I think about it over here. I think about how I genuinely miss getting everything out on “paper”. And even more so, how I miss interacting with the people who used to read my jumbled thoughts. I think about potential blog posts, rarely crafting an entire post in my head like I used to, but just thinking about wisps of posts that’ll likely never get written. A topic, a sentence, it all flows in and out again as easily as it comes to me.

And so I often think about coming back. “Next week,” I say. Or, “this weekend, I’ll do it.” For just about 386 days now. Today, it finally happened. And that’s about all I’ve got for now. No major revelations, but hoping that it’s not another 386 days and that the wisps keep coming and maybe starting knocking around enough to put to “paper”.

In the meantime, here’s a little peek at one of my favorite days of the past 386.

Husband and I, happy and newly married, in the park outside our first home (the tall white building behind us).

A Supergirl Recap

Today, I’m guest posting over at Tomorrow Is Another Day. Angela was so gracious to allow me to invade her space while she enjoys a vacation to one of two destinations, depending on the Air Force’s plane schedules. I’m anxious to hear about her travels, but in the meantime, head over there to weigh in on my honeymoon options!

For those of you who wandered this way courtesy of Angela’s place, welcome! I wish I could say I had some profound post to welcome you to this neck of the woods, but, well, I don’t. I swear I meant to, and then, well, shiz got busy.

Since I can’t put together a coherent original post, I thought it’d be a good idea to provide a little introduction on who I am, by way of a smattering of past posts. Hopefully that alone will entice you to add me to your reader, and I figured my regular readers might enjoy a little catch-up as well.

Some of the posts are a bit, um, old, which just goes to show how rare my posting has really gotten. Which just means if you add me to your reader, you can promise I won’t clog it daily. See? Glass. Half. Full.

So, who is Super Girl?

Well, I live in Detroit. Like in the city limits of Detroit. You know, south of Eminem’s infamous 8 Mile. I like to think this gives me street cred. (It doesn’t.)

I have three kidneys. Organ donation is cool, yo.

I’m getting married to a boy I call DD. It’s exciting and only slightly terrifying.

I used to work in a job that was killing my soul. Slowly. I traded that job — and the 4 block commute — for something that has improved my mental state, even though it adds 60 miles to my car 5 days a week.

I do yoga. “Do” is a fluid term, as I consider it a good week if I make it to class once. But, this one time I did a headstand. That was cool. (Sadly, it hasn’t happened since.)

So, that’s me. Who are you? Say hi, and make yourself at home.

The Registry

This past weekend, DD and I registered for the wedding. Sure, we’re still over 8 months out, but I enjoy being ahead of the game. Also? I’ve kind of been looking forward to registering longer than I’ve been looking forward to the wedding itself.

I swear I’m not totally gift-grabby, though what bride doesn’t stalk her registry? Honestly, I’m just so excited to choose things for *us* and begin to coordinate the stuff that will make up our to-be-determined living space so that it feels like home.

As excited as I’ve been about registering, I’ve been just as terrified of it. I was terrified of making decisions on which sets of pots to get and which color towels to get and blah blah blah. After all, part of the point of this is to find and receive things that will last us well into our married life. And I won’t lie, I was also afraid of trying to find common ground with DD since I know our tastes are different.

After a solid two hours in Bed, Bath and Beyond, we exited in one piece with our relationship still intact and with a lengthy list of items. No fights were had, not even a small skirmish.

Here are a few keys to our success:

• Research. I spent many hours perusing BBB’s website to get an idea of china patterns I liked, bedspreads I liked, and kitchen appliances I wanted. When we got there, I was able to quickly narrow down a few choices that gave us a jumping off point to make a final decision together.
• Lists. It’s the kitchen stuff I’ve been most excited about updating and expanding because currently most of my stuff is hand-me-downs. Over the last couple months I’ve kept a list of things I’d want as I came across them. When I had to bake cookies, it reminded me that I really need cooling racks. It also reminded me to get a bigger mixing bowl. When I made soup, it reminded me that I’d like a bigger stock pot. I also printed off several “what to register for” lists from the Interwebz and used those just to make sure I didn’t forget anything.
• Compromise. DD doesn’t cook at all, so he let me rule the kitchen department. He held the gun, I told him what to scan. When it came to picking colors for bedding and bath, we compromised and each picked a color. I decided to be OK with neutral bedding instead of trying to talk him into a pattern that I’d like, but he wouldn’t. And as for the china, well, I really have no idea how we came to that decision so easily. It was my greatest fear as far as finding something we both liked and the choice came scarily easy. Maybe our tastes aren’t so different after all.
• Helpful Staff. Our salesperson walked us through the china and fine gift section right away, which made it super easy to get that knocked off the list. Once we selected a pattern, she added everything in that category to save us time. We can of course go in and delete things we don’t want. After that, she gave us a quick “tour” of the store, pointing out the brands/products that were least likely to be discontinued or were the best in their class. That was helpful for the few things I hadn’t researched, like pots and pans. She was also good about leaving us alone but still being available if we had questions.

There were a few things that didn’t go perfectly as planned:

• Sticker shock. Even though I’m not buying the stuff for myself, I was still well aware of how much some of our items cost. There were certain things I really wanted to include, regardless of price. But once those were added, I was afraid the other items we’d picked were too high. This lead to a slightly heated discussion in the knife aisle where I refused to select the $200 set and opted for an $80 set. First world problems, clearly.
• Storage concerns. DD and I don’t know exactly where we’re going to live yet. The goal is a 2-bedroom apartment in Detroit, but we won’t start looking for a few more months. As the china settings and coffee makers and kitchen aids piled up, I grew increasingly concerned about where the hell we’d store everything. But, the beauty of registering early is that we can always remove things if we need to, and do it well before any pre-wedding parties, so I’m not too worried.
• Really use v. want to use. As DD and I wandered the aisles, I had grand visions of dinner parties that would require fine china and fancy serving trays. DD had grand visions of morning coffee and evening espresso. But truthfully, will the visions come true or will the serving trays and dishes and espresso maker collect dust in the corner? Only time will tell I guess!

Super Outfit (and Super Girl) returns!

I’m breaking the blog silence to discuss something VERY important.

It’s not Casey Anthony. It’s not even the Royals’ impending USA tour. Because according to recent media, those two things are THE! MOST! IMPORTANT! EVAR!

I disagree. What’s most important to me these days? What to wear for our engagement photos.

We’re getting them taken in a few weeks and heading to Michigan State University to have them done. Both DD and I went there, and while we didn’t know each other in college, I figured that since we’ll have plenty of wedding photos in Detroit, we might as well get some additional photos at one of my other favorite places.

But, as per usual, I’m pretty stupid when it comes to fashion.

I’m really hoping not to buy a new outfit, but I suppose that’s an option. I’d like to have two outfits — jeans and then a dressier option. But of course, the original options I thought I’d selected just don’t look as good as I thought they did. Or, maybe it’s just me. So…enter YOU!

Without further ado…here’s the first few options. I could scrap the dresses and go for white or black capris in addition to the jeans. I love the wash and fit of these jeans, so I’m definitely wearing them, I just need to decide on a top!

Also, yes, the photos are bad. And yes, I did crop half my face out. I’m trying to maintain some semblance of anonymity on this thing, however futile it may be.

Dresses!

Option 1, the shirt dress. I really liked the idea of this. I like the way it fits on top, but sometimes it can look weird on the bottom. I’ll likely pair it with red pumps (as shown in the second photo) and would also likely try to find a red belt to go with it and break up the dress a bit — right now it just has a black belt that came with it.

 

 

Option 2, the pink, cotton dress. This is a late add after I wore Option 1 today and decided I maybe wasn’t totally sold. This is one of my go-to dresses for summer weddings, but I don’t think it’d be too formal for our photos. It’s summery and comfortable, but also has some bunching/static cling issues because of the fabric. Might be annoying to worry about during the photo shoot.

The jeans!

Option 1. This was my main plan and I’d pair the outfit with black slingbacks. But, if I wear the pink dress, it’d be way too much pink. Also, yes, I’d wear a tank top underneath…I’m not in this photo.

Option 2. A late add when the whole “too much pink” came up. I really like this shirt and I think it flatters me, but I’d hoped to go with more vibrant colors, like pinks, blues or greens.

Option 3. Just for fun. Similar to option 2, but a darker color. Again, if I go with the shirt dress, I wouldn’t do this since it’d be too much black. Honestly, I don’t think I’ll do this one anyway. While I like the shirt, it has a bubble hem that I’ve never loved.

What do you think? Should I scrap the dresses and try capris? And what shirt should I wear?!?!

Protected: One is silver, the other is gold

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After “that” happened

It’s just like me to announce an engagement and then disappear for weeks, isn’t it? For all the inquiring minds, here’s an update. For those who couldn’t give a shit, I do promise that this won’t become a total wedding blog. Notice the word “total”…I can’t promise it won’t come up again.

Basics
We’ve got the church and we’ve got the “hall”, which means we’ve also got the date next April. I really hate that word, hall. I wanted to do something different from the typical hotel ballroom or neighborhood hall, and I think we found it in one of the local yacht clubs. Their ballroom is lovely, their costs aren’t outrageous – though between all the liquor and snack upgrades DD wants, it’s definitely a bit more than I’d hoped to spend. Thank goodness we have parents who are helping and who loved the venue as well.

We looked at three places and there’s a small part of me that thinks we should have expanded the search to find something even more cost effective, but that would have meant looking at even more non-traditional locales that would have required us to bring in our own food, liquor, linens, etc. As much as I wanted to be different, I also didn’t want the hassle. Though I have experience planning events and my day job is as a project manager, I didn’t want my wedding to get so detailed that it becomes that heinous project I don’t want to manage.

The Budget
Though the wedding is 12 months out, I’m already having dreams and mild panic attacks. At first, it was about the location. Was I looking everywhere? Had I exhausted my options? Was I making the right decision?

Now, it’s about the budget. First, our current budget is much more than I thought I’d be spending on my wedding. The expense frustrates me, and the majority of it isn’t even my money! Second, there will be lots of hands in the pot; DD and I, his aunt, and my parents – who are picking up most of the tab. I’m trying to walk a fine line between involving our families and also making it clear that we (read: I) have certain ideas about our wedding. Thus far, they’ve been great. Fingers crossed. 

Though, I don’t think I will ever full get over the awkwardness that is the money. My parents and I have never really discussed money and in their minds I’m still their little girl so they shouldn’t discuss money. When I sat down with them to try to get a handle on how they were interested in helping (read: how much they were willing to give), it was nothing less than awkward. At almost 30, it’s hard for me to ask my parents to just shell out tens of thousands of dollars, but it’s also hard for me to drain my own savings account that could go toward the future for DD and me.

I think we’ve finally come to an understanding on who will be pitching in and with how much. I hope we have. Frankly, that’s the other thing about the budget that has me stressed. While we have a general idea of how much we have available to spend on each thing, I really have no idea if those estimates are doable in today’s Wedding Business. Yes, that deserves capital letters.

In addition, DD and I have very different ideas on where we want to spend money and where we don’t. For instance, I could give a shit about the late night snack, but I really want to rent fancier chairs. He’s the opposite – oh, and throw in the premium liquor, too!

Perhaps that’s why God made weddings in the first place. To offer the happy couple a little test on compromise and financial planning.

So that happened

Last Saturday, after a nice little date night, DD and I walked home and stopped in Campus Martius Park. To my shock and awe, he got down on one knee, and showed me this:

Obviously (since it’s on my finger), I said yes.

For now, that’s about all I can muster up for a blog post. It’s been a long week, and has only been made longer by my sudden and immediate interest in planning a wedding. I’ve gone into full-on project manager mode and much to my friends’ surprise, already have a guest list and several potential venue choices, even though we’re not looking at getting married until April 2012.I keep telling DD that I’ll calm down once we’ve got the location and date locked in, but somehow I doubt that will be the case.

But, with all of that planning, there hasn’t been much time to sit and write a blog post. So, I’ll be back. In the meantime, gaze at the pretty bling. It’s what I like to do in my spare time. That, and think about how adult I suddenly feel.

The one with diamonds…and smarm

A couple weeks ago, I made dinner for DD and I. As he was dishing up his pulled pork, he casually said

You know what we need to do next weekend?

I assumed he was talking about the massage gift certificates we needed to use, or the family we needed to see, or some other trivial task. Instead, he said:

We need to go ring shopping.

Without missing a beat (though, to be sure, my heart missed at least one), I replied that we could easily do that this weekend since we’d be out in the suburbs and could just stop at a jewelry store in the mall. See, while we’ve talked about marriage, it’s always been a “someday” conversation. In fact, just recently we’d had a rather massive miscommunication about the timeline I thought we were working against. So for him to be ready to look at rings…well…it was surprising.

That Saturday, after his nephew’s basketball game and before we went to dinner at my parents, we stopped by the mall and moseyed into a certain chain jewelry store that shall remain nameless. While I’m not a fan of buying engagement rings from chain jewelers, I figured it would be a good place to start browsing.

Apparently, we walked in the same day they were having THE BIGGEST SALE OF THE YEAR OMG!

Maybe it won’t be such a casual experience after all?

I explained that we were just looking to get an idea of what I liked. That we weren’t buying.

I began trying on rings and we began talking the 4Cs. I mentioned to her that I’m a princess cut, solitaire kinda girl, and would probably prefer a Tiffany Setting, or perhaps a Compass Setting. You know, something like this:

 

Or this:

 

I asked the saleswoman if she had either of these settings to try on. She didn’t. But of course, she said they could “do anything” so my setting of choice wouldn’t be a problem – and that if I didn’t like it, they had a 60 day, money-back guarantee. Which is great and all, but why would I buy something that I wasn’t totally sure about – money-back guarantee or not.

As we continued trying things on, another saleswoman joined us. It wouldn’t be until later that we’d realize we were moving up the chain of command. Even so, I felt like we were keeping things casual and were avoiding the hard sell. I mean, who buys an engagement ring in front of their bride-to-be anyway?

Then DD pointed to a ring off in the corner. The saleswoman took it out and quietly said “this one’s $17,000.” Until now, she hadn’t said the price of one.single.ring. I tried it on, politely ooooed and ahhhed and gave it back, just as the District Manager walked up.

Ding ding ding. Apparently, we’d hit the jackpot. I like to think that ring was attached to some secret alarm that, when picked up, tells the District Manager that there’s a live one on the hook.  

District Manager dismissed my notions of being surprised and gave the hard sell. TODAY ONLY! BEST PRICE! Blah. Blah. Finally, he just pulled DD off to the side to “give him some pricing”. As they talked, the saleswoman sized my finger, “just so I’d know it”.

And here’s why I’ve told you this very long story. For the sole purpose of what happened next.

District Manager (clad in a full business suit) and DD walked back toward us. As I watched them out of the corner of my eye, I saw District Manager spray something in the general direction of his face and then slide the offending item back in his pocket, all smooth-like

Dude. He totally sprayed Binaca in his mouth. BINACA!

Hey, I totally get wanting to be fresh and minty. But I thought breathe spray went out of style sometime in 1995. Aren’t there enough mints and gums on the market these days that you can keep your breathe fresh without looking like a completely smarmy salesman? Or at least could you wait until we leave the premises?

Somehow, we successfully made it out of their alive, with DD’s credit card untouched, and with only a little slime left on our clothes.

New Year. New You.

Obviously, the resolution posts are all over the blogosphere this week. I thought long and hard about posting something different, but you know what? I’m not known for my creativity. So I’ll just jump on the bandwagon.

Actually, I have a slightly different approach to resolutions this year, that I’m sure I’ll only have in common with 50% of bloggers, so I guess that’s a bit original, eh?

The approach is this: keep working on last year’s resolutions. What’s the point of making new ones if I’m still struggling with the ones I made? Why should we just forget the past and start anew when in reality, the path to a “new you” shouldn’t be confined to 365 days.

Though I struggled with my 2010 resolutions, I truly did (and do) believe in them. So much so that I actually wrote them down and put them on my fridge way back in January. That paper is still there and serves as a daily reminder — and a kick in the pants — when I’m slacking.

So, let’s look at this blog post as a status update. A review of the resolutions set last year and a look ahead to 2011.

Early to bed, early to rise. I’m awful at the early to bed thing. I must put down the remote and get better at this. I simply must. There’s absolutely no reason for me to stay up to solely to watch old Seinfeld episodes. As for the morning thing, I did quite well with this the first part of 2010. Then the wheels came off the cliched wagon.

As far as looking ahead, some life changes may actually force this resolution this year. If that doesn’t happen, I’ll need to find a different source of motivation, which could be a challenge. Stay tuned.

Work out more/Do more yoga. I aimed for 3x/week at the gym and 2x/week at the yoga studio and sort of succeeded. The wagon ended up in the ditch whenever work got busy. Hence why being a morning person and getting back to morning workouts would be ideal. As for yoga, I was relatively successful. The last few months, I’ve been back to twice a week, up from weekly or every-other-week early on in the year.

Looking ahead, I realize I need to start making yoga a routine and sticking to it. I need to stop allowing other things to interfere. I may also need a work out buddy!

Blog more. After three years of being around here, I’ve reconciled myself to the fact that it ain’t gonna happen. You’re just going to have to get used to me only sporadically clogging up your reader!

Eat better: low carb/sugar, more fruits & veggies. Again, some success. I’m still heavy on the pasta, but maybe that’s not such a bad thing, especially if I get better at portion control and mixing veggies IN the pasta. As for the fruits/veggies; I’ll eat them as long as they’re in my fridge. And since I grocery shop every 2-3 weeks, I only end up having fresh produce at home a few days a month.

Looking ahead, I realize I need to get back to more of a weekly grocery habit to keep fresh food in the house. Barring that, not much will change.

Make more out of my weekends, including church. I was rocking this at first, but now it’s sporadically successful. The trouble really is DD and our penchant for sleeping in way past what is acceptable for 30 year olds. When he’s not around, I’m far more likely to get up and out the door for an 8:30 yoga class or an 11:30 mass. When he is around, I’m far more likely to cuddle because he’s just so damn cuddle-able.

Looking ahead, I really think that in order for this to be fully successful, we’re going to have to make it a joint goal. While I know he’d like to change his ways, we’re both facing the same challenges with loving the bed more than the world outside the bed, so I don’t know if it’ll happen.

So there you have it. Time to embark on Year Two of my ongoing resolution to be better and rock the world.

One last observation. I’ve always felt that I’m a creature of habit and require routine to survive. Looking back on 2010 and the years prior, I’m realizing that I’m actually quite opposite. I tend to have a general idea of what I want to do in a day or week, but will quickly adjust it based on others — like DD, friends, family, etc.

Most of my resolutions would be easily achieved if I simply set a routine — and stuck to it. If I told myself that I could not work late on Tuesdays and Thursdays so that I could go to yoga. If I told DD that I simply couldn’t cuddle with him on Sunday mornings because I needed to go to church instead. If I told friends I couldn’t meet up for a spontaneous dinner because I had to go to the gym first. Truly, TRULY, a routine would solve all my problems.

But where’s the fun in a routine?

 

reverb10: Party, party

Continuing on the occasional reverb10 train, today’s prompt was all about the parties of 2010:

What social gathering rocked your socks off in 2010? Describe the people, music, food, drink, clothes, shenanigans.

For me, the biggest party of the year — and thus the one that “rocked my socks off”, was DD’s birthday party.

He celebrated the big 3-0 in October, so I threw a shindig at my house. At first I was going to do appetizers and beer/wine, but at the last minute, I decided to embrace the fall season and serve up some spiced (and spiked) cider, two kinds of chili with all the fixin’s, and, of course, some appetizers. I outsourced most of the cooking to my mom and dad, which was a pretty smart idea.

It was great to have DD and his friends over to celebrate the start of another decade in his life. It’s a decade that will be about us and creating a family of our own. (Or at least I hope it will be!) It’s a decade that will probably bring a few trials and tribulations. But, it’s a decade that I’m looking forward to.

Aside from the obvious party choice, my favorite parties are those that involve family. As I looked over my calendar, I remembered the 4th of July barbecue that DD’s aunt hosted. I thought about the quiet Thanksgiving evening we spent with my parents. It’s the stuff like this that mean the most.

I’ve never been a big party gal. I love a glass of wine as much as the next girl, but staying out late and downing shot after shot just ain’t my style. So, it’s the quiet parties that I tend to enjoy most. The ones when I can connect with people I care about and relax. The ones where I don’t have to yell over the din of music. The ones where I don’t have to sidle up to a bar and stand for hours on end.

Plus, DD’s aunt makes some pretty awesome appetizers.