Makes me sad...

My husband sent this video to me. We are both teaching compassion in our classes this week. I used the news video to help get my students on the emotional level needed to write about compassion. Thought I'd share it with you.

Click here to view the CNN News Video of Polly the Kitten.

It makes you wonder about some people. Why? Many of my students related it to the symbolisim of the mockingbird in To Kill a Mockingbird.

Is this depression?

I'm not exactly sure how to go about writing this, so I'm just going to write. I think I'm depressed. Well, maybe depressed is too strong of a word. I have nothing to be depressed about. I am happily married, I have a great job that (so far) has not been affected by the economy, and I now have two families that love me.

Yet, my usually energetic, take on the world, I can do anything attitude is failing me. I'm tired all the time, I've cancelled on two parties this month, and I spent my 4 day weekend doing nothing. This is not like me. Ugh. I know that some of it may stem from the dislike of my master's program that seems to be growing; but that can't be all of it.

Have you ever felt like this? I feel like I am always the most responsible person -- the one that gets things done, the one everyone trusts; but I don't want to be that person right now. I want it to be okay for me to flake, for me to crawl into bed and let everything fall apart without feeling guilty. But I can't.

I talked to my mom about it a little, but my issues always seem so trivial after talking to her. She always mentions my brother... now that could be its very own blog. My brother.

My brother was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder when he was 22 years old; he is now 33. He is currently living in a dual diagnosis group home and is attending outpaitent care 5 days a week. He's trying to get a job at Starbuck's and interviews this week. They agreed to interview him knowing that he has a felony on his record and lives in a group home -- kudos to them.

I really don't know where this post is going. I think I just needed to write without a set purpose. I cancelled my personal training appointment tonight and I've already decided not to go to my master's classes tomorrow night. On Sunday I'm going to my parent's house. I'm hoping that makes me feel better. Ugh. Bleh. Thanks for reading, sorry for not being my usually happy self.

Calioc

I can't believe I'm done!

Yes... I actually finished writing all of my thank you's! It only took me 3 months :-)

It felt so good writing that last note; like a huge weight is off of my shoulders. Now, I need to start working on Christmas cards. Yup, we are going to use a wedding picture for the Christmas card. I also need to start working on creating our wedding album. I think we are going to use mpix.com to create the album. I have a friend who is a pro photographer that is going to help me design it. We purchased a digital only package from our wedding photographer, so I have to purchase any albums or pics separatly. Which, by the way, is great because it turns out that I don't like our photographer! I did some VERY TASTEFUL boudoir photos for my husband's wedding present, and I really wish I had used her as my wedding photographer, but I had already signed a contract with the guy that did our engagement photos. C'est la vie.

I am going to try to update more regularly -- all of the mundane and crazy details of married life. If anyone ever has any ideas about what you want to know or hear about - just post a comment! Now that I've joined the married club I am sure I will have a different audience, or maybe those of us that have been following eachothers wedding blogs will continue to follow our married blogs.

The dress dilemma is still on... I'll keep ya updated.

Bye for now, Calioc

What to do with the dress?

First off, my dress has no garment bag -- it is just hanging in my closet like any other dress. The no garmet bag thing is a fairly long story that I wrote about earlier. I have two major stains on my dress: 1) the train and bottom of the dress is pretty much grey and black from dragging on the floor 2) I did spray tanning before the wedding, so some of it rubbed off on the dress -- mostly on the inside of the dress, but a little at the armpits.

So, the issue is -- what to do with the dress? The dress with alterations and tax ran me about $750.00. It will cost me about $200 to get it properly cleaned. According to Weddingbee, one of the best places for dress cleaning is Wed Clean. I've called around, and their prices are within range of everyone else.

If I keep the dress, I need to get it cleaned. If I sell the dress, I need to get it cleaned. Places like the Goodwill won't take the donation unless the dress is cleaned. Most places that sell dresses online charge a posting fee (about $25.00).

I could keep it and not clean it -- but why? I could just throw it away -- but OUCH! I mean, I've never paid this kind of money for a dress before and it just seems wrong to throw it out.

What should I do? I'm very conflicted by this. If I had an overwhealming feeling to keep the dress for sentiment or possibly my daughter, then this wouldn't really be an issue. But I don't feel that way, but I also don't feel like I should just get rid of it either.

Advice?

happily ever after

Hello everyone in blog land! I've been MIA with work and worrying about life, so I haven't had much of a chance to even read the blogs let alone update my own. It has been over two months now and people keep asking me if I feel different now that I'm married. The answer is no. I feel exactly the same. Maybe it is because we lived together for over a year before saying "I do", but there isn't this big "OMG we're married" -- it just feels normal; right; the way it is supposed to be. There were a few big moments:

• Opening our joint checking account and putting eachothers names on things
• Getting my new SS card and Driver's License
• Preparing to buy a house together

And... now everyone is talking about kids. I'm 35 and I'm not getting any younger (so they tell me). We've talked about starting right away, but have decided to wait at least a year before trying. Our parents, actually it is mostly his parents and grandpa, are pushing for us to start sooner. His parents even offered for us to move in with them so we could buy a house sooner and get started sooner! Ugh. Never!!

I am also in the middle of working on my master's degree, which isn't really going very well. Because of all the wedding stress over the summer I ended up getting an incomplete in one of my classes, and I have until December to complete the last paper and get it turned in. I'm also having a hell of a time with my master's project. I just can't get into it. Whatever had me motivated to start my master's in the beginning is no longer there.

I've sent out one wave of thank you cards (For gifts we recieved prior to the wedding itself), but the rest are sitting in my living room staring me down. I thought I would be all excited about writing them, but honestly now it feels more like a chore. I'd rather do the dishes than write thank you's. Isn't that horrible???

Okay, so if anyone is reading this, what should I post about next? I'm pretty sure I never finished my wedding day story, or should I post about the honeymoon? What do you want to read???

The Wedding Day

I'll be honest with you, my wedding day memory isn't as crystal clear as my wedding pictures. Everything happened so fast; like the entire day was on fast forward. In the morning I had my cup of tea as we waited for Dionna (the make-up and hair artist) to arrive. It was not as stressful as I had expected in the morning because we planned our time out really well; Dionna was scheduled to arrive at 7am and we needed to be at the UCLA Faculty Center at 2:00 pm (the W is only 1 block away from the UCLA Faculty Center). We all got are hair and make-up done on time; include my mom and mother-in-law. I also finished making me veil (I will save the details on this for another post)!

**

The only issue that I know of (remember, my wedding day coordinator Elaine dealt with all of the real issues that day) was that my photographer seemed to just not listen to me the whole day. First, he didn't set up the pre-wedding pictures in the location we had discussed. Elaine had to argue with him until he finally moved to the original location, but once he was there he didn't use it the way we had discussed. I'm still a little upset about this. Overall the pre-wedding pics turned out nice, but we should not have had to argue with him about it. The other issue with the photographer was at the end of the night. I only paid for him to be there until 9:15pm, but instead of just leaving at that time he decided to try to talk me into paying him more to stay later. Even after I told him to leave, he kept bugging me -- mind you at this point I'm not in the mood to make decisions. Elaine talked to him, and he decided to stay without the extra pay. Weird. The reason why I didn't really care is because one of my friends, Carolyn Love, is an amature photographer and she had her cameras there. Carolyn took all of the "getting ready" pics. Either way, it all ended up working out. I will admit that I do love most of my posed photos, but I am not super happy with my candids.

**

Once we got to the faculty center, the girls all got dressed. It was actually a lot of fun! My friend Carolyn Love took pictures of us getting ready. Once we were all ready we took our wedding party pictures and some family pictures. We also did a staged photo of Daryl and I seeing eachother for the first time. That was actually kind of fun. I hid behind a tree while the photographer posed Daryl, and then I snuck up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder.

Then there was the ceremony, which I must say was amazing. I will write about that later. Goodnight!

Pro Wedding Pics are Here!

I know it has been awhile since my last post. I've been crazy busy with work and school. I got my professional wedding pics over the weekend! There are almost 400 of them, so I picked some of my favorites and posted them on a wedding pictures site. If you are interested in seeing our wedding and honeymoon pics go to http://singhiphotos.shutterfly.com/ The tabs to go between the different sets of pictures is at the top. To view an entire album, simply double click on any picture in the album.

Enjoy!

Excitement the Day Before

We've been married for 21 days now; we've been back from our honeymoon for two weeks, and today is the first chance I've had to write a post! I'm going to write several posts on the wedding and honeymoon so I can break it up a bit. I'm going to write about the good and the bad -- so for those of you who want to keep your rose colored wedding glasses on, I will warn you before I post the bad side by putting that section in between ** symbols.

Overall: the wedding and reception were absoloutly amazing -- beyond anything I had imagined while planning. The honeymoon was perfect -- I am so glad we decided to do an all inclusive. I highly recommend the UCLA Faculty center for weddings and receptions and I also highly recommend going to Sandals Ocho Rios for your honeymoon!

Day 1: Settling in and the Rehearsal
UCLA is just far enough away from the OC that we had to get a hotel room the night before the wedding. My bridesmaids and I decided to get a 2 bedroom suite at the W rather than getting separate rooms. The plan was to check into the W in Westwood at 2:00pm (the check in time we were given when I made the reservation), go up to the room, unpack, relax a bit, and then go get our nails done at 3:30. The rehearsal was scheduled for 6:00pm, so this would give us plenty of time to get ready for the rehearsal.

**
So, we arrived at the hotel around 2:30 pm and first there was a problem with my credit card. When I travel I don't carry all of my credit cards with me, so since we were going to Jamaica for the honeymoon I didn't think it was necessary to bring everything in my wallet, so I cleaned it out. I only brought one credit card with me, one with $1000 available on it - just enough to cover our $650 hotel room. So I gave the guy my card when we checked in and he said it was declined. I was shocked, so I asked him how much he was running it for. He told me that they run it for double the expected cost at the end --so he ran it for $1400! I explained to him that when I travel I don't bring my big cards with me, so I only brought one that would cover the cost of the room and a few incidentals. He told me (three of my bm's were with me: Lisa, Meghann, and Nicolle) that I would need to put the $1400 down or I could not have the room. Then he proceeded to tell me that "the large suites are generally reserved for their high end clientel". Seriously, was the insult really necessary? After a bit of arguing with him, and me asking twice to speak to his manager (which he never let me do), I finally gave him my visa check card, so they could take the $1400 out of my checking account while we stayed, and then I could pay the balance on my cc. He threw out a few other insults while he was at it; one about how he has never rented out a suite for only one night, another telling us that we would have to sign a form promising not to "trash" the place or have more than 4 people at a time in the room, and another reminding us that there could be no noise after 10 pm. Seriously, how old did he think we were? I am pretty sure he decided that we were not the "proper clientel" for the W and decided to treat us like trash. After all of that he proceeded to tell us that the room was not ready and that we would have to come back at 4:00! So, we left our stuff with the bell hop and went off to get our nails done.
**

I love getting mani-pedi's! It was a lot of fun to sit there with my bm's and be pampered and to relax after the bs at the W. We were looking forward to getting to our room and getting ready for the rehearsal. So, we get back to the hotel and get our room keys. The bellhop said he would deliver our bags to the room, so we only carried up what we needed to get ready. We went up to our room, and it was big and beautiful but...

**
It wasn't the room I had requested. It was a smaller room than the one I had put a deposit on. I specificaly requested the two bedroom suite with a separate sitting room so the make-up artist would have a place to work on the day of the wedding. I was told that would not be a problem since I made my reservation 6 months in advance. At this point I was frustrated and just wanted to get ready for the rehearsal - so Nicolle and I started getting ready. Lisa and Meghann (I had 4 bm's but Kara met us at the hotel later) decided that they would try to take care of the room situation. In the meantime, our bags were delivered -- but 4 of them were missing! This part is really long, so I'm not going to get into the details, but the short of it is that while I'm getting ready my bm's told me that we would be changing room right then and there. So, I threw on a robe and they took me to the new correct room and they took care of making sure all of our luggage got to the new room.
So, we continued getting ready in the new room. Then I get a call from Elaine (my day of coordinator) saying that the rehearsal would have to start a little late because the ceremony area was being used. This was good news because we were running late due to the room changes. As we were almost ready to leave, the bellhop brings up 3 of the 4 "lost" bags and then tells us that they can't give us the 4th bag because there are wine bottles in it and they don't allow guests to bring their own alcohol. What? Who are they to look inside our bags? I wasn't the one to deal with this - Lisa got on the phone to deal with it (she is a travel agent and she used her status to get things done!). Eventually they delivered the 4th bag to our room and they told Lisa that they were going to give me a $100 room credit.
**

Okay.. I need to take a break now. I will finish this post later (8/30/08).

Time to continue...(8/31/08)
We arrived at the rehearsal around 6:30 and everyone else was already there. Apparently Daryl thought for a just a moment that I had gotten cold feet! Elaine made sure the rehearsal went well and it was actually a lot of fun. My dad was very nervous and had a hard time walking at a slow pace, but eventually he got it.

After the rehearsal we did the dinner. It was in the same location as the wedding, but in a different banquet room. They had it decorated beautifully and the food was amazing!

I could ramble on about it forever, so I'm just going to give you the highlights. The best thing about it was having all of our family there, because we knew that on the wedding day we would not be able to spend time with them. Daryl's parents had a bottle of Dom that they had been saving for a special occasion, so we broke that out at the rehearsal - it tasted like honey!
His mom also made blue and gold cookies shaped like flowers that were used to decorate the center of the tables -- they tasted great.

The food was excellent, so it was a good precursor to what would happen the next day. For me the biggest highlight of the night was surprising my grandma with a birthday cake and gifts -- it was her 90th birthday on 08.08.08; the night of the rehearsal. She was so happy and shocked!

When the night was over I had a special gift for Daryl that I gave him and told him not to open until he was alone. We had already exchanged our gifts to eachother the day before - I got him a Citizen Eco Watch and he got me diamond earrings. The rehearsal coudn't have been any more perfect than it was.

Okay, I will post separately about the wedding and honeymoon. Bye for now!

Update 09.01.08

**

So, the girls all go back to the hotel room to have our slumber party. Which would have been perfect except that I noticed that my dress was hanging outside of its garment bag and I decided that I wanted to get everything ready for the next day. At this point we realized that the garment bag was missing! Somehow as everything was being transferred from the other room, the garment bag got lost. Apparently, no one thought to put the dress in the bag before transporting it. I made the mistake of assuming that the hotel had made this mistake and I yelled "how stupid are they carrying a wedding dress 4 floors in an elevator without putting it in the garment bag!" When all of a sudden my moh starts crying -- how was I supposed to know that she was the one that did it? Anyway, this caused some drama, which eventually worked itself out with a long bubble bath, a long talk, and some champagne. In the meantime, the W hotel is still looking for the garment bag which was left in the room (btw -- this was not one of those plastic cheapy garment bags, it was a nice fabric one with a special pocket for the veil). The following morning my wedding coordinator, Elaine, brought me her garment bag to borrow for the day -- we had to transport the dress from the hotel to the wedding site where I would be getting dressed.

**

Okay -- I will finish this in a new post!

Wedding Pics...

I only have a few that are worth posting... who knows how long it will take to get the professional

ones!

I will say that every thing turned out even more beautiful than I ever imagined! :-)

Just a tease...

No time to post for awhile, but here are a few honeymoon pics for fun!