Packing The Year In

Quite a few things are happening this year that I hadn't expected - pregnancy, working almost entirely steady since last fall, the small cat taking to pooping on the dining room rug, finding those Frye boots on sale, and also, getting married. When I ask my mom to give me a break on the wedding planning, I remind her that I hadn't planned on ANY OF THIS happening THIS YEAR. Its a lot to take in for someone who just basically likes to work and travel. Freelance and go to the Caribbean. Visit with friends, do some contract work, go away somewhere nice. That's all we really lived for. Now we have two separate registries going on and only two weeks of bachelorhood/bachelorete-ness before us.

Certainly being married won't change much around the household, as we've been living in sin for over a year already. But we will get presents! And we will call each other husband and wife. And the kid will be born into a two parent, legally authorized household. Which I could care less about but it gets the grandparents off our backs and well, its awfully romantic to plan a wedding while pregnant. All the hormones come oozing out as I look up passages to put into our wedding ceremony. I tear up at examples of other people's readings, and google their references to romantic writers and poets. Even though boyfriend and I will have none of that gooey claptrap. It's going to be good, but not retchingly sickly sweet.

The handiest part about this is that I never wanted a big white wedding - I think I avoided the topic completely, to my boyfriend's patient chagrin, because I never wanted to PLAN SOMETHING with my parents. I can't even plan coming home to visit them - there are so many minefields and pitfalls and ways to hurt people's feelings involved in the process somehow. But get knocked up and people just throw money at you and pray that you come up with some sort of plan - any sort of plan - and you only have a set amount of time do to it in. Which made it stressful for the few weeks it took to pull together a date and a venue. But after that you can just put the moms to work on stupid stuff you don't care about - like centerpieces and flowers -  while you get one of your friends ordained and plan the food and drink choices.

Because if it's one thing we care about - it's showing our friends and family that we still know how to throw a party. Having another party after the baby comes is a fine idea, but right now, its about me and him. So I'll take advantage of that.

E.