my kind of eggs

This week has been really busy, mainly with school stuff. I forget that my "school world" doesn't know that I have a whole other life and that they actually expect me to sit and do things.  This week consisted of a lot of sitting and doing things.  My body does not do well with little sleep.  I've never been one of those cool people that can pull an "all nighter" or get "no sleep" the night before and still exist normally the next day.  I need my sleep. I need my comfy nights. I need my quiet homey time.  Didn't get a lot of that this week...BUT it's okay because I'm going to be a wife in like less than two months.

And if the Backstreet Boys have anything to say about it, we just might have found J's outfit for the wedding. More on that later.

My favorite part about the week was Thursday night- we went to a book signing for Alicia Silverstone's new book The Kind Mama at the Barnes and Noble in Santa Monica.  I was SO EXCITED.  I have always loved her and she's one of those people that I feel is my "friend type".  I would love to hang out on a front porch with her and breastfeed.  Kind of like what I plan on doing with my friend Ashley.  We were in the second row in this little event room, so it was a very up close and intimate setting.  She talked about her book for a bit, and then answered questions.  I was so impressed with her poise and knowledge...sometimes you have this image of someone in your head and then you meet them and the energy is totally off- they are not what you expected them to be, or don't seem all they are chalked up to be - but she was definitely a ton of chalk.  She's exactly how I pictured her.  I got really really nervous when we went up to get our book signed and felt like if I opened my mouth I would awkwardly cry (yes, so awkward, I don't know where these feelings come from!) and she was so sweet and wrote "Dear Julie and Catherine, Congrats on your wedding! And I love you for being vegan" So excited.

And I LOVE her book.  It's making me extra excited to be pregnant.  It's so great to be able to have a point of reference to look to that feels like *you*, that resonates with what you believe, your values...I think the experience inspired J and I to really make being healthy a priority.  We have a tendency to enable each other...when it's late and we are both just getting home and hungry it's easy to pick up pizza or go for whatever we are craving.  We do eat pretty healthy but lately we have been a bit more lazy with it..

Tomorrow is Easter and while I don't follow the whole religion thing, I will always celebrate some bunnies and baby chickadees.  And the only eggs I will ever want are my partner's frozen ones, thank you very much.  You can keep your babies, I'll have my own.  On that note - I just went to the store and got lots of vegan and organic candy for our basket.  Why does a celebration for me have to equal suffering for another being? It so doesn't.

OH AND SCANDAL HAPPENED THIS WEEK.

and I am well aware I am rambling...it's because I am trying to be disciplined and write even when I don't feel like it.

Alicia and I

two months to go

This week has been nonstop.  I can't believe we are getting married in two months (less than, actually!).  Getting the RSVPs back is so exciting...it's all seeming so real now.  I've been slightly alarmed and how not stressed I have been.  The one time I got stressed was when we were trying to design/order our invitations - dealing with computer shit drives me nuts. No thank you.  Other than that, we have just been slowly chugging along, doing things here and there, but nothing overwhelming.  I had this vision of "wedding planning" in my head (thanks to like, everything I have ever read, even on APW!) that it would entail J and I, at midnight, dark circles around our eyes licking envelopes, empty wine bottles everywhere, drowning in a pool of streamers and table cloth samples or some shit like that.  Instead we'll kind of remember something we have to book, and in the next week or two we do it, and then onto the next...The things we have yet to do are: decorish stuff (I'm making a few things, we're putting together our own flowers and stuff- I wish I could make lots and lots of things and be super cool but everything we make has to travel from LA to Colorado), my hair person, plan our music, write our ceremony, solidify our DJ, J's outfit, and then decide on tablecloths and I guess more "day-of" stuff too.  But I'm really not worried.

This week we ordered our wedding bands!  I can't wait to see J's.  They have to keep my engagement ring to make my matching one so I will go ten days without it which will feel so weird.

We also saw The Book of Mormon Tuesday night! Holy shit.  SO freaking funny.  Seriously awesome. And of course it made me jealous and really really really miss theatre and miss being on stage and singing and dancing with my friends...those people really have the life.  There is no feeling in the world like that.

On Wednesday I picked up my wedding dress (!!!!).  So surreal that that part is "over".  I was walking around looking at all of the dresses again and wanting to keep trying them on.  I kind of wish I had let myself have more fun initially during that process.  J and I decided from here on out, for these last two months, we are not going to hold back on the (vegan) cheese.  I realize I always look back and wish I had been more "in it" or milked it for all its worth and you only get married once and I'm going to be a bride dammit.

Lovely Bride in West Hollywood

Thursday I took the dress to the tailor lady (thank God it's out of my possession now, makes me nervous) and that night I got to meet three of J's friends who are coming to the wedding that I haven't met yet.  It was so great to meet them AND the icing on the cake was that Starbelly (pictured in portrait below) was actually friendly for 98 % of the night.  It makes me heart so warm and happy to see her occasionally act like a...dog.  AND I can't meet people without having flowers in the house and I am so excited about these blooms (omg how desperate housewife do I sound)....getting ideas for the wedding floral arrangements!  But seriously, fresh bright flowers in the house makes me so happy and honestly does brighten my day.  A vase of them is sitting at the kitchen table where I do all my work and it makes everything I do at that table fun.

Starbelly in bloom

Memoria

I remember the first time I heard Nirvana.  In the back of a strangers car (not like it sounds), with the windows rolled down and the sun shining through the leaves of trees, like a movie.  Heart Shaped Box, changed my life forever.  It's pointless to try to put into words what Nirvana has been and is in my life, or what the illusion of kinship with Kurt has been and is (pointless before coffee at least).  Few people touch your soul like that, or mine.  When I found their music in high school, I had a friend, I was appreciated, I was seen for who I was.  I was fine just as I was.  My feelings, insecurities, my sensitivities were all validated.  It was, and is, the greatest gift art can give.  And it's always been my driving passion in life, the caramel soy fuel driving what I want to do with my time here.  If I could give a half of an ounce of what feeling Nirvana gave me, I will be more than satisfied and possibly slightly less indebted to this enchanting, beautiful, fragile universe.  There's no feeling like that music.  No other sanctuary, no home.  It's odd that it's been 20 years.  It's not like I knew him.  I was four.  But that's what is so immortal and penetrating about the soul- we extend beyond the boundaries of body, of time and overlap constantly in a pool of collective karma.  We're only bound by the ropes we weave ourselves.  When days like this come around, I'm reminded that I don't want to weave rope.  I want to choose to feel, to free-fall, regardless of the risk, and to feel my heart beating on the table; i want to feel every tick of the time others passed up.

 Time has always scared the shit out of me.  Because it means loss.  But on this morning, with my heart slightly heavy but wholly thankful, I'm choosing for it to be a pathway, a vein, connecting the specks of our being to one another - the glue holding this sphered ballerina rotating the sun, our life force, our heart.

Thanks for feeding my soul and being a friend in my head.