Life's been good to me so far

I'm really enjoying participating in and moving through Holy Week. Palm Sunday Mass was so, so beautiful (when we got home Grant asked how church was and Aaron piped up, "really good!!" so you know it had to actually be...) We went to the Holy Thursday Mass tonight. Tomorrow I'm taking the kids to an afternoon Stations of the Cross thing and then going to Good Friday Mass by myself later in the evening. All seven of us are going to the Easter Vigil on Saturday night.

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Yesterday was my 4th wedding anniversary. I don't know how many of you remember the insane dress debacle that went down with the zipper on my wedding gown but it seemed pretty ironic to me that I found myself freshly showered, moisturized, scented, and struggling and sweating to get a zipper up in my bathroom on the dress I'd decided to wear on our "date night", yesterday afternoon...I took it off to find the spot where it was sticking. I had my brother and Annie help. I ended up laying on the bed, once Grant had gotten home, with him using tools to make it work.

ONE DAY I will manage to get into a nice dress for an occasion with my husband without a team of helpers or any extraneous tools.

We had a great time. We had a delicious amazing off the chain holy shit I die dinner at Texas de Brazil (where they will ALSO send you a "one free meal when you buy the other one" for your anniversary, what-what!), and did some great bargain basement clearance shopping outside of Borders, and then went and walked on, sat on, splashed on, talked on the beach.

While we were there we got to see the beginning of a striking red moon rise and watch a man strip naked and do tai chi in the wind. Then we sat on some hotel's wooden lounge chairs and kissed for awhile. It was nice.

And ended better, back home. I fell asleep hours earlier than normal in a sweaty contented heap. All in all every day should end that way.

Purchased at the bookstore (everying from 1.99-5.99 per item!):

(For Me)
-How to be a Movie Star, an Elizabeth Taylor biography. What? I like biographies, ok!
-The Scalpel and the Soul; The Power of Hope, by a DOCTOR. This is the kind of book I have been looking for - both for my own book's research and personal survival - for a LONG TIME.
-The Forest of Hands and Teeth, on idiolecto's recommendation, because I trust her taste in everything but ESPECIALLY BOOKS.
-Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana by Anne Rice
(For "Grant")
-She Comes First: the Thinking Man's Guide to Pleasuring a Woman
(For Grant)
-The Book of Useless Information - this will be his latest dinner table book, brought out to read from while we're eating, I am sure. It's replacing puns and a double wide "Would You Rather?"
(For Us)
-Sex Deck
(For Everyone)
-Story Cubes

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Today was crazy. I woke all the kids up with french toast casserole and bacon. The van needed an oil change and new back brakes. After dropping it off, the kids and I took the free trolley and went and saw Rio, then had a pizza, then picked it up. Except that doesn't capture the route confusion, waiting time in between things, going by the college bookstore only to find it was closed, or walking all around that occured to make it last so many hours. It was still a good, if tiring, day, but it was a lot to lead up to church with all of them, especially since it was just me and "church" involves driving a half hour each way. We were alright, but it was way more stressful than it usually is on a Sunday morning. And this is the first Serious Business day of my period, which made for lots of insteresting near emergencies and bathroom stops.

I think it was a great day for the kids all things told. Lots of alphabet, I Spy and other sorts of word games, lots of teaching moments (in the movie and the Mass), blah blah blah. Elise had never seen a movie in the theater before.

I'm tired.

But I don't sleep anymore. I'm really starting to suspect I'm approaching a point of just NOT SLEEPING AT ALL, EVER. Like last weekend due to various circumstances there were 50 hours during which I slept ONE hour, like right in the middle almost. Grant was talking about reporting me to the authorities as a witch because I still wasn't acting tired :p Really, though, it's nuts. And stupid, because I spend far too much time in a sleepless delirious haze adding to my tumblr queue and reading fanfiction and then I can't function as well as I should be able to during the day. But...I can't give up my time to myself. And I can't stop being a good mother or a wife or whatever. So...I'll sleep when I'm dead?

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It's so rare for me to see Aaron really immersed in doing things with his brothes, so this is kind of awesome. Mario drawing contest:


(Girls blowing bubbles)




Uno:


♥

I think we've gotten over a hump and now Isaac and Jake are old/smart/independent enough that they CAN do things Aaron is interested in sometimes.


Off to collapse for like...an hour before Grant wakes me up to go take him to work, and then I come home and take a nap until the kids drag me out of bed and it chores and schoolwork time until Stations of the Cross...maybe then I can nap until Mass once G is home.

I keep thinking of things I've left out, and I'm really trying to record EVERYTHING. I forgot to say how much I loved all of our reception food - Todd and my Pa grilled hot dogs and hamburgers, and my Aunt Deana had brought pasta salad and AMAZING BEANS. I know it sounds silly, but seriously...the beans!! I've been eating the leftovers for 2 of my three meals a day ever since. They're baked beans but so seasoned and sweet and tasty, with crushed tomatoes and ground beef blended in, and topped with A LOT of bacon. Mmmm. She even made a special no-meat version for Ananda :) And she brought all kinds of hamburger toppings, including a crockpot of sauteed mushrooms and onions. My mother brought potato salad and cheese ball and crackers, and my Nana brought a couple of those big carved out watermelons full of fruit salad. There were salsa and chips and pretzels and just generally a huge table of abundance. Perhaps best of all, Beverly volunteered to package up all the leftovers and take them down to the Salvation Army for homeless people.

Also, I completely warped my dress. The boning in the torso still looks as if I'm wearing it :x I think my chest is just way too massive for formalwear, particularly of the strapless variety. When I bought the thing, I wasn't nursing anyone afterall. I mean...the two bra sizes up were more than enough to compensate for the 30 pounds lost.

And I love our rings. They're white gold bands with engraving inside (Everlasting love and a life less ordinary). I love taking it off and looking at it and thinking about the symbolism of an unbroken circle. I love that it doesn't catch on things or spin and bother my other fingers, like my engagement ring (which has a ruby sticking out of it) always has. I've even given the kids big raised scratches with that one. But this goes with everything, and blends right into my hand, and...I don't know I just love it. There's no way you can look at it and think it's anything but what it is. It's just the right weight and width and already feels like a part of my body. I've planned to move my engagement ring to my right hand, but it's driving me bonkers since I'm not used to anything over there and I think I might just bring it out for special occassions.

So...after the reception and the goodbyes, we retired to the conference room in the back of the cabin Grant and I were staying in - we being me and my mom and Todd, all of my kids, my Nana, my sister and brother, Shaun, Grant and Bobby. Bob (bro) taught Annie had to play Checkers, and she beat him, and I was nursing Isaac...I had some great conversations with Bobby J. I feel like I know how to be his friend now. He got Jake to sleep for us, and seemed to really enjoy holding him as he slept for a long time.

Then the "situation" I referred to in the last entry happened. I spotted something on the back of Isaac's neck. I thought it was a spider at first, then I realized it was some other kind of bug - and it wouldn't brush off. It wouldn't PULL off, and Isaac cried when I tried to pull it. It turned out to be a tick with it's head embedded in him. EWW! So I nursed him and promised him the applause of everyone in the room, while my sister dictated what her husband, Frank, was reading to her over the phone about tick removal from him EMT textbook. A safety pin, a lighter and some tugging later, with three different people holding him down on me, Grant managed to get the whole thing out of him and we put it in a bottle just in case Isaac develops symptoms of lime disease (!). He was startlingly good for all this, partially I'm sure because he was nursing the whole time, and recovered pretty much instantly.

I changed out of my dress and into jeans and a long sleeved tshirt. And...whoa :P The inside of my dress was stained with communion juice, full of crumbs, and I kid you not there was even a dead cricket in there! I told everyone that and we laughed uproarously.

Everybody cleared out, then, and took all but (sleeping in the adjacent room) Jake with them. Grant and I sat on the floor in front of the minifridge with a picnic of straight from the bottle red grape juice and the cake that had mousse for filling, which we were eating out of a pan with a single plastic knife (all we could find). I told him how nothing was how I had pictured it, but it was all good, and I felt I'd been searching for him or wishing he was there throughout the whole reception, but also had a great time catching up with so many people. We put our foreheads together and prayed, and I felt like I was going to burst from being happy and thankful. We talked about abundance, because sparkling red grape juice is ridiculously expensive and we normally never buy it, but right then we had a bunch of extra bottles to spare, and food is something we budget out and plan ahead, but we had this big feast - enough to send HUGE containers to homeless people via Beverly. And of course that so many people cared enough to come from cities all over Florida.

We decided to go to bed and I felt so shy and silly, because I had bought lingerie and I don't ever wear lingerie and we, like, know each other too well to put on some kind of show or something...I ended up kneeling on the bathroom floor to pray, to get it through my head that we were actually married and sex could really be something God ordained and totally right. So I was just really honest and shy, with the whole lingerie bit, and we were laughing and he thought I was beautiful and everything...worked out really well? When I first came out of the bathroom he kissed me and said, "You're my wife." And I don't know why, but it had a really profound effect on me. I just wanted to close my eyes and hear him say it a million times.

I spent a lot of time that night lying awake, feeling happy with him sleeping there, and thinking about Grace...and forgiveness, and how no matter how much you sin, or screw up...no matter how much you take advantage and do it your own way and all...it's still not too late to get married and enjoy it all on God's terms. It's like the prodigal son coming home, you know, the Father is waiting there for him with open arms - even though he only came home out of desperation. You know?

We went out to lunch the next day - Grant, the kids and I, and Shaun, Bobby, Bob and Laura. We went to a little Italian place and shared pizzas and I couldn't stop thinking how much I loved them all. Laura who had baked our cakes and done Annie's hair and who I can trust implicitly with my children, Laura who grew up with me and knows it all like nobody else can, Laura who's gonna have her OWN baby now. And Shaun who we couldn't have made it through last fall with Jake in the NICU without, Shaun who tells A and A amazing stories and gives them things we could never afford and brought up all kinds of things we wouldn't have had room for. With his wack ass sense of humor, and style, and all his unique ideas. And Bobby, who I've been completely there and back again with and somehow now know how to interact with without mind numbing lust OR cold blooded rage...I felt like he was happy to see the kids and proud of them without resenting us, and without being miserable the whole time that he isn't always there. And, of course, all the kids themselves. Isaac sitting up making faces, Jake asleep on Grant's lap, Ananda sitting by me acting shy, Aaron being silly. And my brother who is turning out so well and used to be my kid before I had kids. I was seriously about to cry to the point that even something as lame as "Lean on me" on the radio was about to push me over the edge. Me and my siblings grown up and a new crop of kids coming on next. *sigh*

I did NOT want to leave, as we packed up. I love the Conference Center, almost all of my highest spiritual points have been there, and I didn't want "getting married" to end so soon, either. We don't have trees like that, here. But we were rushing, because the directors needed us to clear out for the next event and Laura had to get back. All the kids were in the van with her, and everyone else was gone, and Grant and I went to this "prayer labrynth" thing they have.

It's so cool...It's a maze of rocks that you follow. The center is right there and you could easily step over the rocks to get to it, but instead you take this crazily winding and unbelievably long and convoluted path, around and around, twisting and turning. It's designed in a very thoughtful way, with a thirteen pointed star to represent Jesus and the 12 disciples, and trees you have to step around in your path here or there, and benches to stop and rest...it's supposed to represent life, it's all a metaphor. You're never more than like 10 feet from the middle, but you walk 800 and something feet. In not just woods but THOSE woods. For me they're that, anyway...sometimes he led and sometimes I led and sometimes we walked together. When we got to the middle we kneeled together, forehead to forehead, and prayed.

I left my (bouquet) roses at the foot of the altar.

Ideally, next year for our anniversary, I'd like to leave the kids somewhere and spend the weekend there just he and I. I'm not sure if that will be something we're comfortable with or not - Jake will be a year and a half, Isaac will be 3, A and A will be 5 and 6. We'll see. It would be sweet.

The ride home was...terrible. Isaac was whiny, Jake was fussy, Aaron was hyper, and we were stopping a LOT, sometimes to allow Laura to puke and often at reststops crowded with a dozen tour buses worth of middle schoolers teeming everywhere. It took hours longer than the ride up and reaffirmed our normal conviction that you ONLY DRIVE ANYWHERE WITH SMALL CHILDREN IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT. It will be a cold day in hell before I attempt another trip in the light of day.

But then we were home and now we're married, and, oh yeah, I have some pictures to show you guys :)

( +a million...by which I mean 36 )

What a week!

Monday - I mostly cried and tried not to throw up, from anxiety and a sense of impending catastrophe and general vulnerability.

Tuesday - I panicked and felt nervous but at least was relaxed and laughing when Grant was around...before he got home I bribed Ananda and Aaron with candy, to watch Isaac and Jake, and then hid in the bathroom talking on the phone to my mother. Perhaps this can convey a sense of how far gone I was.

Wednesday - He was here and we worked all day long, and I saw things starting to come together...we loaded Shaun's whole van with ice chests of food and some formal clothes, and sent him up, and then my sister had the whole cake ready to move and we were loading our van, and printing programs, with the finalized ceremony emailed to Don...we got to the conference center at 2 am and tried to get the kids to sleep with semi-success. I was really beginning to feel things were falling into place and might actually happen.

Then (dun dun DUN) Thursday came along.

We all got up feeling we really had things under control, and went out to Denny's for breakfast. I got a sandwhich that looked good, and then gave it to my poor pregnant sister when her eggs had her headed for the bathroom to puke. Shaun and Grant went back to the center with the kids while she and I went and bought (3 dozen multicolored) roses for Annie's basket, (10 bottles of) sparkling red grape juice for a toast, and more ice for coolers. It was the most celebratory cartload of goods I've ever purchased :)

The two of us headed back just in time to see my nana and pa arriving - my mom, Todd and Bob were already there. Teresa, Chuck and Mindy's girls had arrived in town the night before but stayed at a hotel. So far so good, right?

Laura headed for the auditorium to assemble the cakes she had brought. She had a 3 tiered stand, 3 very large chocolate cakes to cut into three thin layers each, and a huge amount of chocolate mousse and strawberry preserves for filling in between layers. Plus chocolate to grate onto the sides and curl onto the tops, and strawberries for garnish and 2 kinds of frostings. Needless to say, we are fools and she was still in there assembling it 2 hours later when the minister had arrived and was ready to start. That wasn't a big deal though, as so many of our guests were late.

And THAT wasn't a big deal, because of my FREAKING DRESS!

*sigh*

Beverly, this very kind and generous but also very pushy and gossipy older woman had come into the cabin where I was getting ready to "help me dress". I was fine with that, as I needed help with the Zipper of Doom anyway. The lady who replaced it did a really questionable job and I was kind of nervous about it. Well...soon it was my nana on her knees behind me, Beverly leaning in from above, and my sister in a towel coming from the side in between, all working to get this zipper up for, oh, 20 minutes? We had waited until it was about to start to get the dress on! So that was already 20 minutes late. I was starting to panic when my mother came in, and I had her go get Todd to try to yank the dang thing up. It wasn't too tight; they could overlap the fabric. But the zipper was sticking badly in more than one spot, and just wouldn't go past another one period. They had even used the tiny scissors someone had run and retrieved from Grant's keychain-swiss army knife to snip some threads that were blocking teeth already.

Todd came in, apologizing for seeing too much of me, and attempted to get the zipper up. After some swearing and heavy breathing and me beginning to think it was hopeless - we heard the zipper go up! Not much, just a second of zipping, but there was a big collective "Whoo!" of appreciation - my aunt Diana had joined us at this point, and my mother in law. Some more silence and struggling, and then a slightly shorter zipping noise, and everyone was out and out cheering.

Then Todd suddenly said "DAMNITT" as something let go, and the room got very quiet. The mechanism that slides up and down the teeth of the zipper had BROKEN IN HALF. He looked like he was going to cry, and left so fast it took me a second to realize he was gone. "Go tell him this is NOT HIS FAULT" I ordered my mother, and then proceeded to start Freaking Out, mentally.

I was standing there holding up this thick gauzy fabric in front of me and staring at the wall with my mouth open. Somebody made a joke about duct tape that I didn't think was funny, and someone else asked if anyone had 20 safety pins on them, which really depressed me...but then Beverly had an epiphany and ran out, got in her car, drove to the store, came back with needle and thread and sewed me into the dress.

By the time she was halfway done it was after 5 (we were scheduled for 4). Todd claimed there were "a lot of people out there" but couldn't identify any of them. Someone brought me Jake and I nursed him while she was working on the bottom - there are pictures that will be uploaded, of me nursing Jake as I'm sewn into my wedding dress. We were about 3 inches from the top and my friend Jess was in the room, relieved to have just gotten there from Tallahassee and not have missed it, when Todd burst back in and said "You have to come right now, the preacher's leaving and he can't wait another minute!" I have since learned that poor Don had actually GOTTEN A SPEEDING TICKET on his way up there, trying to make it on time, only to have to wait all that time :x He was supposed to be back by a certain hour because of a function involving his autistic son, too.

Sooooooo 2 safety pins at the top it was. No bra, as Beverly couldn't make it work, but you couldn't really tell...except for how I kept yanking it up at the top every few minutes when I couldn't take it anymore. I rushed down to the outdoor chapel with Ananda, who had gotten a gorgeous bun with a rose on it while the Dress Fiasco went on, and Aaron, who was beyond adorable in his formalwear (we never did find a bear suit so he was happy to match Daddy). I had double handfuls of satin and lace, trying to keep everything out of the dirt and pine needles and still balance the white roses my mother had brought for me to hold and the card Todd had hastily written my vows on (we worked on matching ones before the ceremony, adapted from traditional ones).

And I'm out of time for now, so I guess I'll write up the rest of this soon. Don't worry, there will be a photo installment - but not until we scan things from disposable cameras, get stills from Shaun's video, and my relatives email me their digital pictures.

I realized last Sunday that, hey, it's getting closer and closer to the date. It's been a whirlwind ever since, mostly spent on the phone but punctuated by trips to the jewelry store and long hours talking with Grant about types of cake and food for reception and working our way through our counseling workbooks and that sort of thing.

I don't think I wanted to do anything before, in preparation, because it just didn't seem real. It's starting to seem real, now, and that scares me to death. I'm not used to really awesome, functional, planned things actually happening, and since it's getting close I'm daring to hope and thus becoming increasingly terrified of my own vulnerability. I keep finding myself so overly sensitive because I'm just afraid that it won't happen, under my giddiness. The more excited I am, the more I have to lose...I'm such a headcase.

There's no way it won't happen. The location is booked and paid for, the minister is scheduled, the rings are custom ordered. My sister is baking me samples and my dress is hanging in the laundry room and so on and so forth...but - someone will die! Or something will happen, some cataclysmic thing! Or, who knows! The funny thing is that I was so paralyzed by these nonsensical ideas that I nearly procrastinated to the point that it really WOULDN'T happen. Fool that I am.

So...Because of this denial, I didn't have anyone's adress ready and have spent like 5 solid days on the phone personally inviting people to my wedding. This is EXTREMELY time consuming because there is no way to call someone up and invite them to a wedding and then just hang up. I'm always talking to an aunt I haven't seen in a year who wants to hear all about the kids or an old church member who moved away and didn't even realize I was having a 4th baby or some such thing. Or playing phone tag to find out prices and availability, etc... I've apologized to the kids and put them on strict orders wherein I call them and answer questions and retrieve whatever they need/help/etc between calls. And, I've promised them that we'll still have tea with me focusing on them, everyday, although I don't let it drag out and swallow the whole afternoon anymore.

So far this is what I've got:
The ceremony will be at The Christian Church Conference Center, on April 20 at 4:00 pm, in the Outdoor Chapel. This is a Thursday afternoon. It will be officiated by Don Brammer with Shaun as Grant's best man and Laura as my Maid of Honor. Confirmed guests will be;
-My mother with her husband Todd, my brother Bob, and their stepkids Brandon and Destiny
-My Nana and Pa
-Laura and Frank
-Beverly Carpenter
-Glenda Harper
-Kathy
-My aunt Deana and her husband
-Grant's mom and husband Chuck, and Robby, Patrice and Nadia
-Grant Sr
-Mindy and her husband Greg
-G's Nanny
-His Uncle Mike
-Our friend Melissa and her boyfriend Alex (and yes, Shaun'll give you guys a ride)
-Bobby J

Then tentatively I'm hoping for;
-Robin Wooldridge
-My old counselor "Mr Nerenberg"
-Shawn Abrams
-Memo, who can only be reached through myspace and is in Las Vegas
-My Aunt Michelle, and cousins Annette and Andrea and Christina
-My dad, who is being a pisshead and talking about how he can't cover his shifts that day with the cab company, along with his longtime girlfriend Madie and stepgranddaughter Madie Rose
-Matt and/or Courtney Irwin, with Bobby
-Grant's friends and office partners Shari and/or Vince
-Jess

The ceremony will feature Ananda as flower girl (we've been practicing) and Aaron as what he misheard as The Ring Bear. He has been planning to wear a bear suit. I decided he is wiser than the rest of us and am hoping we can find him one, because that's awesome. We'll be having communion, guitar music and saying our own vows (Grant's written his...I'm still working on mine). Also exchanging white gold bands that have "Everlasting love and a life less ordinary" engraved on the inside. We should have them by next weekend. Grant came up with those words, and they have prior meaning for us.

We're tentatively thinking of having The Conference Center's in-house caterer provide barbecue and fruit platters outside in the picnic area; the other viable option is probably potluck style food, which isn't very practical with people coming from out of town. Then into the auditorium for cake (which Laura is making and will be 3 layers of chocolate, each with a different filling), a Big Surprise (and heck no I'm not telling!) and then the standard music and dancing sort of thing.

They have cabins that some of us will be staying overnight in, including my kids hanging with my family while Grant and I are Alone. That night before bed we're thinking s'mores around the fire ring for everyone who's overningting and then for the next day, well, there's a water park across the street from this place and some restaurants and a river with canoe rentals down the road.

I want Sara, Dama, and Heather to know that you are more than welcome to show up and bring your families :) Consider that an honor, not an obligation. I would be thrilled to see any of you but realize it's long and far and yada yada yada.

I would be happy to see a few others as well but those three are the ones I think MIGHT be nutty enough to consider actually coming ;)

So...I still have to finalize food, call my tentative peeps some more, go to our in-person counseling with Don next Saturday with our finished workbooks, buy Aaron and Grant's clothes and a bra that will work with my dress (it looks fine braless but I just can't shake the idea of that being ridiculous)...and Annie's shoes (she has a dress). AAAaaaaaaand get the final bookings for who will need a cabin.

I want you all to know I am a sappy puddle of mush. I sit up watching tv/movies with Grant at night and he catches me just gazing lovingly at his profile. There are little tense moments here and there because of the lack of time we each deal with, individually and together, but I've come to the conslusion reading these workbooks Don gave us that we are really, really, REALLY blessed. It's hard for me to believe some of the sample arguments and problems that they portray hypothetical couples as having...and if we're doing this well under huge financial strain with 4 kids under 6 (while trying to abstain from sex!), I imagine we'll be able to deal with most anything life throws at us. We really do laugh together and talk about silly things and hug a lot and do favors every single day.

This past weekend we're trying to renovate. We bought the kids new mattresses with our tax return money and cleaned their room and the dining room spotless. Grant also went nuts on the crowded kitchen counters and the bathroom. We're buying Shaun the materials to make us a new dining set (he is good at this sort of thing) since ours is two chairs short and falling to pieces, and combing Craiglist for new (to us) couches. It's exciting, all this wedding planning and house redoing.

AND I'm losing weight still! Veeery gradually now, but still I have no idea how. Seriously you guys, I've spent the past 3 days gorging myself on lasagna and chocolate cake after a week of inactivity from being sick or on the phone around the clock, and I'm down a pound. It's tandem nursing, I'm telling you. Jake-aroni is 18 pounds, 28 1/2 inches of squirming, rolling, sitting, squealing nearly-6-month-old, and he's still getting nothing but breastmilk. And Isaac is only eating like 2 meals a day for all the nursing he's doing (you might remember the quantities of food he USED to consume...) I wake up starving every morning and make my vitamins a top priority, because I can tell I'm making an INSANE volume of milk. If nobody nurses for 2 hours, I'm engorged. But that rarely happens. I've lost 37 pounds since Jake was born (from 217 to 180). I'm waiting until like a week before the wedding to see if and how I need to get my dress altered.

Ok, I'm out of time. I think I'm going to cheat and use a few minutes to leave a couple of comments because I really miss some of you. But I tell you, I don't know where I could fit the computer in right now even if it wasn't Lent.

I'm having a bit of an intense night. Finding myself wounded by every obscene and vulgar thing on tv, bruised inside from my own lack of self-control...Happy and at peace with my re-found connection to the Holy Spirit but wanting to go deeper. Talking to Don (pastor I'd like to do our ceremony) last night really made me remember how it was to regularly be in contact with people who saw the whole world from a Christlike perspective. The man is a walking vessel* and just hearing his voice effected me so much.

I sat outside on the sidewalk tonight, as I am wont to do, and talked to God for a long time about how scared I am of really going out on a limb and trusting Him the way I have before. I felt reassured by every breath of wind, and realized that I do a lot of very compulsive and questionable things to cope. I run to the internet, grab something to eat or start having fantasies of some kind at every point throughout the day that I get bored, sad, impatient, lonely, *insert other negative feelings here*. I've been very aware of these "opportunities" that I have right now - to walk through Lent one step at a time, to abstain until our wedding, those kinds of things. I know I will feel a deep sense of loss and dissapointment and a fresh swell of bitterness if I let them pass me by unused.

I also started thinking of how I hide behind Grant, from my own faith. I judge his actions and his state whenever I wish I were doing things the right way, I say "We should blah blah blah" and act as if I can't move forward or grow without him, because I'm scared of being apart, and I lean on him when it holds me back AND holds him down. And that's not good for either of us, or us.

I have a very deep desire to be cleansed, to start the rest of my life on the right foot. I want to be ready for marriage as a sacrament, and worthy of this incredibly, crazily important role of "Mother", and all of it...

I actually feel called to give up the computer for Lent. It's one of those tugs inside of me that I'd rather ignore because it makes me feel kind of queasy. Really, giving up the computer for Lent and abstaining (like, in thought and deed) until the wedding is a huge crazy deal, I feel like I will have a very hard time here and there but an amazing time and a lot of peace and like I could be transformed into a whole new creature at the end of it all. I want to grow again. I like Tina+Jesus, who happily teaches classes full of little kids and brings dying strangers fried chicken and paperbacks, not Tina-Jesus who hates everyone elses' kids and sees others as kind of a hassle.

So, yeah. Stepping out of my comfort zone, leaping from the cliff and keeping my eyes open on the freefall, all of that sort of thing. I forgot that "faith like a mustard seed" can REALLY FEEL like endless possibility, and change everything from the inside out.

( *The story of Don, just one of several ministers who changed my life and brought me to unfailing faith )

OOOOOOook So I woke up this morning thinking how it's a weird paradox that I would feel differently about a wedding if I were close to God, since I'm only far from God because there has been no wedding. And thinking I'm kind of a fun killing bad person in general, because I didn't attend a single prom or homecoming dance in high school, OR my graduation ceremony, even though all my friends were going, I had available dates, and I was at the top of my class - and I've never looked back and wished I had. I just honestly didn't want to. I never went to a football game either, and tried to skip the pep rallies. I just don't give a crap about that kind of hoohaw. But, like, obviously my own wedding is different than a themed dance the school is throwing or something. I think I've just been so deeply upset and dissapointed about the wedding falling through over and over that I haven't wanted to risk hoping for it anymore. It feels dumb to get excited because I can't stand to keep talking it up and then forgetting about it again.

So. I talked to Grant a little this morning, I wanted to run down to the courthouse and get our license like NOW, but he has to unload all this wine from the van before we can even put the seats back up, and he has to get this other newsletter printed so he can send it out, it's late as it is, and it really felt like "Fine, we just won't ever get married, at all." I wasn't thinking that, but it's how I felt. And he said something about us doing better to browse jewelers and get invitations right now. It made me realize that I want to do the license part because it seems official - it expires so it gives us a deadline, and it involves signatures and legalities. It's REAL in a way that trying on my dress or something is not.

After he left I went to the website of the place we want to do it, and called the new director on the phone about the old deposit I left (a couple of YEARS ago) and the pricing I had worked out with the old director who's an old friend of mine (Glenda, for those in the know). She gave me a tentative date that might be a possibility, about a month away, and the next soonest is a month after that. She's going to call me back about that date, and pricing, after she talks to Glenda and searches for my records, and is mailing me a big information packet including info on their new caterer and a bunch of stuff for me to fill out.

So then I looked through whitepages.com for a long while until I had 4 numbers to call, each of which MIGHT lead me to the minister who walked through the cold rain with me for half the night telling me I could be a good mother, when I confided in him at 17. This man prayed for me and bought me pizza...we were out of town in Cincinnatti at a youth ministry event and nobody else knew I was pregnant yet. I didn't have parents to go home to. He's the first person who ever referred to me as a mother. I got ahold of his dad, on the fourth number, who gave me the number of the church he's with now.

And now I'm finding myself all giddy and silly, grinning and thinking it's impossible to be "far from God", because He's always right there. Sometimes we just don't pay attention. I've had some pretty thick walls up, in any case.

For the record, my engagement ring is white gold with a teardrop ruby. It's absolutely PERFECT and I couldn't believe he'd picked out something so right on, when I first saw it. So...wedding rings o_O I've done a lot of looking at claddaugh and celtic knot type things, we've also considered plain bands with engraving on the inside. We'll see, as my mother would say.

Having squeezed all this in around diaper changes, diaper laundry, fruit chopping, etc etc - I'm nursing Jake as I type this one handed - I'm finding myself rather backed up here...I suppose I need to think of what we're having for tea and start this 32 bean soup and sweep and mop and clean the living room and get Annie started on something...