Life in the Slow Lane

I may not have the slightest idea what color scheme will tie together "my" special day but I've been planning the important things: how I will write thank you notes. When the course of the day typically includes writing between five and 25 letters, you have to plan for writing any additional correspondence, (Can we use this excuse to pardon the delay in my response to personal emails?) and thank you notes following a wedding certainly qualifies as additional correspondence. So I've been planning. First and foremost is the need for appropriate stationery. I hope this will justify the acquisition of some way snazzy cool note cards. Kindly forget the fact that I already have well over two hundred blank thank you note cards in my possession. I suppose one of these days I will have to find a Stationery-ics Anonymous. Of course, I don't have a problem with it yet. I could quit whenever I wanted to. Secondly is the question of keeping the text of the message alive...

The last day that I was house sitting, the neighbor came over to introduce herself and gush about me getting married. Frankly, I was surprised she knew and even more surprised that whoever had told her had been excited enough to gush enough that she could gush. But I did my level headed best to answer all the questions. "And when is the date?" "April." "Oh, the daffodils will be lovely!" I wasn't sure where there had been any daffodils involved at all, but she flipped open her date book she was carrying, and there, the week of my wedding, was a news clipping about daffodils. She continued to share with me how perfect this particular flower was for my purposes and then excused herself, commenting over her shoulder about the need for me to start gathering addresses. Right. Note to self. In the lunch room at work, idle conversation about the weather turned to "So have you picked your colors yet?" While the sheer number of people asking this q...

And I quote: "She has no empire and has kissed no frogs. She is not royalty and holds no court. And yet, on this, the most memorable of days, she lives in a palace, where ladies in waiting carry out her every wish and attend to her makeup and hair while chefs of world-renown prepare a celebratory feast, fit for a king and queen, but made just for her. So it's easy to see why she cannot shake the feeling that today, she is a princess." And that, my friends, is the secret to the $7,000 dresses and the $3,000 cake ("It makes me believe that the cake really is a window into the soul of a wedding"). However, there is no way that I am about to part with that kind of money (even if I had it) in order to feel like a princess for a day. No, I've found a man who plans to treat me like a princess for a life-time, and friends, that's priceless.

Maybe engagement is like a rollercoaster. You wait for a really long time for a ride that whips you up and down and in and out and maybe even upside down and before you can catch your breath, it is over, and you hope that maybe someone thought to take a picture so you can at least pretend to remember what it was like.

I wander into the kitchen to check what time it is. The microwave reads five minutes faster than the stove, so I peak at the clock in the living room. It reads 10 minutes to 8, but I have a vague recollection that it was that time on that clock when I started my laundry three hours ago. The digital clock next to my borrowed bed has to be at least 10 minutes fast, maybe 15, but certainly not more than 20. I know this because it is about ten minutes slower than the alarm clock on the right side of the bed in the master bedroom. The alarm clock on the left side of the head board is half an hour slower than it's twin glaring from the other side of the room. I lean on the door frame in the office, trying to decide whether the clock there is more likely to be on time or not. It's analog, and one of those that have pictures instead of numbers. If it is a canary past a cardinal o'clock, will my laundry be done in the garage where the clock read fifteen minutes after six when ...