Not Waving but Drowning

Every so often life becomes too much. Murphy's Law kicks in and everything that can possibly go wrong actually does. Things start piling up and it's all I can do to keep my head above water. In the past few weeks:

- Our register at work broke, but we turned it into a positive situation and took the opportunity to upgrade to a Point of Sale system. Which means I've spent the last week squinting at spreadsheets, inputting products/brands/suppliers/UPC's by hand, making mock-invoice after mock-invoice trying to get used to being a member of the 21st century. Brian calls me Grandma.

- Our favorite (and only) employee Dre had to go back to school in PA so we've lost him until he comes back in December for break. He also happens to be a good friend of ours so it's sad x2. Brian's dad is working with us again so there is the silver lining. I like working with him and it's great to see him all the time. He mainly works at the warehouse, though, and the store definitely suffers with only two people working there.

- The wall that's unstable in our warehouse is getting repaired, which means workers in our way for the next week or so and the door not being able to be used.

- The day that wall started being fixed, someone knocked down, as in, destroyed, a DIFFERENT wall (holding up the only good doorway we were able to use). With our forklift. And we don't know who did it. And we're being held responsible anyway. And my dad's decided to get involved. And now it's REALLY hard to receive/transfer orders since we can't get in/out of the warehouse easily. Fun for everyone.

- Our chinchilla Sammy got sick and passed away due to a kidney problem that he was born with that just started showing itself out of nowhere. It was pretty quick and terribly sad and I still don't know if I've fully allowed myself to deal with it yet.

- The fire inspector gave us a list of things at work that he wanted us to change for this years inspection. We've been spending the past two weeks moving stuff around and putting up shelving (1. Stop using furnace closet for storage), getting an electrician to fix/put in new lighting fixtures (2. Remove all clip-lights), getting Dre's brother to build some sort of holder for CO2 tanks (3. All compressed gas cylinders must be chained/stored properly). They're reasonable requests I guess, except the furnace is OFF being that's it's been 88+ degrees for the past 2 months and we remove the boxes when we turn it on because we have common sense. And our clip-lights are not a fire hazard because we have them secured properly and nothing flammable is around them because we have common sense. The CO2 thing I can't argue about, though.

- I am so backed up on writing checks and dealing with my paperwork it's not even funny.

- Someone hit my car with their door in a parking lot and did serious damage. This is only two months after getting it fixed when someone hit it with what looked like a baseball. Silver lining: when they fixed my bumper they didn't attach it properly so this is killing two birds with one stone. I am without a car for the next few days though and I have so many errands to take care of.

- We upgraded our credit card terminal and switched our processing to our local bank. Which required me to learn new technology, set stuff up and talk to customer service people on the phone. My own personal hell so even though I said I'd call on Monday I've been avoiding it like the plague.

- Today I decided to get my work bag caught in my front door which led to it shutting on my heel and taking about 3820342 layers of skin off. I left a blood trail from my door to my bathroom and almost fainted from the pain. Definitely worst injury I've gotten in a very long time.

- We've been working on finding a venue for the wedding, which is exhausting and stressful. We've been trying to get back to our planner in a timely fashion just to get things out of the way but it's so hard when you have a thousand things going on. At 11:30 tonight we finished up looking at a list that she gave us, checking out each place and given them a quick critique. Sounds easy but with my work papers strewn all over the table, knowing that I should REALLY be dealing with them, it's kind of hard to focus on whether or not this studio is TOO studio-like or if this terrace will be large enough for a ceremony.

Feeling the way I feel right now I'd REALLY love to make some yoga time, which is laughable because you can't make something that doesn't exist at the moment. I wish I were a Hindu goddess with 10 arms, then maybe I could get all of my things done.

New Favorite Song (& video)

2 of my favorite female musicians on the same track? Yes please. Nicki Minaj and M.I.A. - Teqkilla remix. Download here: http://neetrecordings.com/blog/



Plus Kid Sis came out with a new video for Big N Bad:

Wedding Planning

In less than one year I will be getting married. I don't think that has really set in yet. I watched a few episodes of that Kleinfeld show Say Yes to the Dress and all the brides are all bubbling over with emotion. They go off on these romantic tears about how absolutely lucky they feel to be spending the rest of their life with their fiance and how their wedding is going to be the best day of their life. Is it wrong that I don't feel as excited? Don't get me wrong, I do feel that way about Brian, I just don't gush about it the way those girls do. I keep thinking of the wedding as one big party that will just finalize everything. We both knew that this was going to be the obvious next step in our relationship so it was just a matter of "when?".

I've been trying to get ideas for dresses and colors and stuff but I figure I'll wait until we get a venue so I can plan around that and visualize it all put together. To help with everything we decided to hire a wedding planner because 1. The thought of doing all of that by myself made me ridiculously anxious, 2. I attempted to find a venue on my own, called 1 place in 2 weeks and felt totally defeated after finding out about their 150 person minimum (we have like 65 guests so far) and 3. I work 6 days a week and honestly just don't have the time.

Her name is Lisa Anderson Green and so far I love her. I'll be honest, the first thing that stood out to me was the French Bulldog on her main page. Is that wrong? We set up a consultation and we all just clicked. She gets us and is everything I'm not: organized, regimented, experienced at wedding planning. Perfect. At the beginning of each month she's going to email me with what we need to accomplish and then we need to get it done. I love deadlines because I procrastinate unless I have them. Working with her is going to make everything perfect, I'm sure (especially since I don't know what "perfect" should be, and she probably does). She also has a blog that gives great planning/hiring pointers.

We have a new meeting scheduled for Tuesday (yes, she makes me schedule things...so organized) and I can't wait to get started.

Thine ever, or never.

When I was 16, my dad gave me my own copy of The Select Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. I say, "my own" because from the day I discovered it I would always steal his copy (I actually still have his, despite having my own, on my bookshelf). I feel like everything I've ever needed to know in life I could learn, whether by literal interpretation or inference, from Emerson's writings.

Lately I've been feeling a little lost. Not terribly, not "winter"-lost, not quarter-life-crisis lost, just like I'm searching for SOMETHING. Some sort of answer to a question I haven't asked yet. I'm not sure I've ever felt this way before. Usually I know what's wrong. Even if nothing is actually "wrong," I can usually figure out what's causing me to feel that way. When I can't, I do some soul searching. Emerson is definitely a worst case scenario. I haven't found my answer yet, but I stumbled upon another answer in the mean time.

I've been getting emails and text messages from a friend of mine lately. I shouldn't say "friend," as-in: current...more like a once-upon-a-time friend. Long story short (sort of): we were friends, she and her bf rescued a dog that was being abused but the new dog didn't get along with the dog they already had, Bri and I wanted to help by keeping the new dog but our landlord wouldn't allow it, they were having problems in their relationship (the dog was coming between them) and placed the blame on us, stopped calling us, started avoiding us, she and I emailed back and forth which pretty much ended with her more or less saying, "I can't separate our friendship from the dog situation so I can't talk to you anymore." I know that sounds pretty nuts, but it's true. I took the whole thing pretty hard, being that she was the first friend I let into my life in awhile. I totally let my guard down and she turned out to be a mistake. Our last conversation was in March of last year.

The recent emails caught me totally off-guard. She missed me and didn't know where we stood and just wanted to touch base. I told her very honestly how I felt, that she hurt me by ending our friendship over a DOG that was never my responsibility but who I still helped with, that I thought it was pretty ridiculous and I wasn't about to set myself up to be hurt like that again. She wrote back with some nutty things, making up lies ABOUT me, TO me. Things that I supposedly did or said to her that never actually happened. This whole thing took a lot out of me because up until maybe two months ago I was saying to Brian, "I still can't believe what happened with them...how crazy was that?" It still bothered me because up until the "break-up" point, I considered them to be great friends. Part of me wanted to be like, "Sure, all is forgiven, let's be friends again!" but then logic kicked in and said, "You've already seen how she reacts to stressful situations, you don't want to be on the receiving end of that again."

The whole process of meeting new people, opening up to new people, spending the time and energy feeling them out, learning them and deciding where you want things to go, eventually TRUSTING new people...it's so difficult for me. By nature I'm a private person, always have been. Take that, and the fact that I've had a whole lot of what I though to be great, unbreakable friendships turn bad out of nowhere, and you've got someone who is convinced that they don't need friends. There's always that nagging feeling that I might WANT friends, though, despite all the bad experiences I've had.

From Emerson's "Friendship" essay:

"Thus every man passes his life in the search after friendship, and if he should record his true sentiment, he might write a letter like this to each new candidate for his love: ---

Dear Friend,
If I was sure of thee, sure of thy capacity, sure to match my mood with thine, I should never think again of trifles in relation to thy comings and goings. I am not very wise; my moods are quite attainable, and I respect thy genius; it is to me as yet unfathomed; yet dare I not presume in thee a perfect intelligence of me, and so thou art to me a delicious torment. Thine ever, or never."

17 Year Old Me

"Memories of the past year seek me out. They don't want me to forget who I am, what I've seen, what I've done, and who I've become. I turn away, in hopes to solely concentrate on the present. Yet they persist...they nudge their way back in, and pry open the locked box in the back of my mind...releasing memories of all the pain and confusion I've known. I'm not that person any longer. I've moved on, turned down a different road than the one I was traveling on. I've made a new life here, wherever "here" may be. I know the wounds of the past will never heal, but the scars that face me everyday serve as a reminder of how far I've come. As the night falls down, on this small New Jersey town, my memories are a state away. Yet they're rendered back to me as consistantly as the flicker of the lightening bug that's flying around this yard. A backyard has never been so comforting, and I've never felt so at home. Stay with me, memories. I beg you.

Basically...I'm acknowledging this as a new chapter in my book of life. Change can be good, as long as you never forget your past. Distance is nothing to be afraid of. As long as I can look to the sky at night, in hopes of finding an answer, and the moon is still up above me...I know that I have a constant, and that everything will be alright. Believe me, I've been checking for it."

- written June 27, 2001

I wrote that 1st section sitting on my exboyfriend's porch in Paramus, NJ. He was older and had his own apartment - I had been staying with him for awhile to get my head straight. 17 was a rollercoaster for me. I had made the decision to leave school and work full-time, which is a decision that, to this day, I fully stand behind. It's what I wanted but by no means was it easy. In order for me to keep moving forward I had to temporarily leave the past behind me. My friends, my family, everything. I had to make myself feel like I was wholly starting over, otherwise I would have been torn in too many directions for my volatile and confused 17-year-old mind to handle. Most people at that age are being Seniors, going to prom, being stupid, immature and loving every second of it. I wanted nothing to do with all of that. I just wanted to LIVE already.

I AM ENGAGED.

It's true!

A few months ago we had a talk about getting engaged, which went something like:

Me: You know, if you want to get engaged you don't have to do that whole fancy/awkward getting down on one knee surprise thing. We're us, and that's weird, so we should just decide and do it together.

Him: So I don't have to make a whole big deal of it?

Me: No, that's not us. We should do it together.

Him: Ok, awesome. That's a relief.

Me: Good. So let's get engaged.

Him: Ok!

...and then nothing happened. We work constantly and lately have been focusing most of our non-work-related attention on making our new place look like we actually live there, so yeah, getting engaged after being together for eight and a half years really wasn't a huge priority.

Last Sunday (6/13) Brian and I took a drive down to the Short Hills mall in NJ because I had shoes to return to Bloomingdales and he wanted to get an iPad. Of course we drove all the way there only to realize I left the shoes at home and they were sold out of iPads. Of course. Somehow we wandered into Cartier. And somehow they had the most perfect ring in a size 4 3/4. And then, somehow, we were engaged. The girl in the store was more excited than we were, I think. She offered us champagne, which we declined, and said congratulations a ton of times. It didn't really hit me until we walked out of the store and I looked down at my finger. It was so strange to be wearing an ENGAGEMENT RING. I still feel like I'm 16 years old (and look about 20-max) so it's just crazy to me. We called our parents and they were all excited. I kind of wished we had waited a week so my parents could be back in NY to congratulate us in person, but they've made up for it over the past few weeks.

So, that's it. We're playing "grown ups" and it's weird, but I'm undeniably happy.

Lomography Light Painting Party

I just received an email from the NYC Lomography store about an upcoming party they're having. They're giving out glowsticks and flashlights and will be teaching how to "light paint" with plastic cameras. I've been having a lot of fun with my Holga so I wish I could go. Unfortunately I will be driving for 7 hours tomorrow to go to a tradeshow/party in middle-of-nowhere Pennsylvania. Oh well, free food and drinks, give-aways and catching up with/meeting people from our industry...better than a full day of work I guess.

Anyway, more info on the lomo party: INFO.

How awesome is that picture!? It came in the email. One day I will be able to do that, I swear.