Things I Do Not Recommend

This may become a regular installment because I often find myself in situations that I do not recommend. So, to start:

1.       Drinking wine and online shopping. This is not something I do often, but after a few glasses of wine the other night, I decided that what I needed to do was start knocking things off of my to-do list. One of these items, “go through my starred email,” really could have been postponed indefinitely, but at the time it seemed like something that I Had to Take Care of Right Then. Anyway, one of the starred emails was a message from Amazon reminding me to check out their current batch of $5 albums (so important, I’m sure, self). In the past, I’ve found some great albums and usually will buy only one or two, but not this time. In the sobering light of day with my five new albums  I knew that I spent money for NO REASON on music I didn’t give a crap about, but my biggest mistake was clearly the purchase of Now That’s What I Call Music 39. I seriously bought this; JP was just amazed that this franchise is still a thing. I think I was justifying it to myself because it was only $5, and I was bound to like at least 5 of the 12 songs on there (I don’t). It is home to such hits as “Good Life” by the OneRepublic and “Who Says” by Selena Gomez. OMG! I am the (not-so) proud owner of a Selena Gomez song!! But now I keep listening to it at work even though I hate it both a) in the hopes that it will grow on me, and b) as a kind of self-torture to reinforce the message that I should never purchase something so ridiculous EVER AGAIN.  Sigh. I am lame. Please tell me I’m not the only one who has made inadvisable purchases under the influence of libations!

So many things…

This post is going to be a mixed bag. I have a little to say about a lot of things. Sort of a post of all trades, master of none, eh?

First of all, I think my body is rejecting me. This happens pretty regularly.  If I really looked into it, I would probably find out I had some kind of food sensitivity/intolerance to something I’m currently eating every day. Either that or my generalized anxiety about everything is stressing me out, and I need to take up yoga. (Must add this to to-do list….)

Which brings me to the fact that the wedding is only ONE MONTH AWAY! ACK! I am freaking out about this. Not the marriage part, that is fine (although let’s be honest, if it wasn’t, this is the LAST place I’d want to talk about it). The actual wedding part, though, is becoming a huge stress for me (see previous paragraph). One million things left to do! One million trips to LaGrange to make before the big day—which leads to one million dollars being spent on gas. John Paul is also driving me nuts because he is so laid back about everything BUT NOT in a positive way! More in an “Oh, yeah, I’ll get to it” or an “I haven’t decided yet…” way. PUNT!

HOWEVER, kudos to him because he (finally) finished painting the study! It looks awesome, and I want to hang out in there all the time now. The walls are this great muted orange color, and thanks to my fabulous soon-to-be MIL, we have these amazing bookshelves for me to display all my books. Actually, she gave us so many, I told her she’s just enabling my book addiction. Yikes. This room is part of my dream house:

Author Neil Gaiman’s Library

Anyway, times are tough, but not that tough. I may be stressed, but I’m super excited to be marrying the man of my dreams, THIS GUY:

Life Organized Neatly

My roommate moved out yesterday. Did I tell you I had a roommate? It was just for eight weeks. He is my college friend who was doing a law internship in Atlanta and wanted to live closer to work than his parents’ house in Marietta/at 26, who really wants to live with their parents all summer? But now he is gone, and I am blue. JP says this is dumb because Trey (roommate) was rarely around due to mandatory law firm social events (?) and that not living with him will be about the same as living with him. This is true and very practical (aside: JP often refers to himself as “a practical Warrick”), but I will still miss the opportunity to watch episodes of True Blood together and discuss our collegiate shenanigans.

Oh, well. Maybe now I can convince JP to finish painting the study. Practical Warrick himself started painting one wall the week before Trey moved in and hasn’t picked up a brush since. I think he was trying to blame it on the fact Trey was living in the guest room limiting the space he had to spread out his painting supplies. I’m not 100% on what this has to do with anything. It’s driving me nuts, though; not because I’m super clean or anything, but because every time I go into the study to try and find something I have to step through, over, and around ladders, paint cans, drop cloths, et al. My dream is to model my life after this blog. (Or at least the opposite of this.) Particularly when I go into certain stores and the way things are organized in conjunction with the lighting and music makes them feel so much more restful than my house. What is that about? I wish I lived in a Pottery Barn. Or even a Fresh Market.

                                                                                                          

Disregard that ladder on the right. Who put that there? JP??

Do you ever wish you lived in a professionally designed space? If you did, where would all your stuff go?

Let’s Pretend Like This is Real Life

Today is the last day of our SCUBA course that takes place in a pool. Don’t worry! We still have a few more instructor-guided dives in the water, but they are in an actual body of water, not the neighborhood Y where the swim team is practicing just a few lanes over and blasting Lady Gaga over the loudspeaker (I’ve got no beef with Gaga, but I am excited to see some fish).

I’m not going to lie, though. I’m not super good at this whole SCUBA thing. I’m actually relatively concerned that I might drown. You see, it’s just not intuitive for me to breathe only through my mouth like it is for some other people. ALSO, sometimes when I get stressed out (e.g., at the bottom of a pool strapped to a significant amount of weight) I forget to breathe at all, which apparently can lead to pulmonary tears. Yikes.

So this morning JP looks at me all serious and is like: “Elisabeth, since this is our last day in the pool, I need you to take this seriously.”

“Um, okay.”

“Because this is the last time [our instructor] Connie will be with us.”

“Yeah, I got it.”

“And I know she’s really nice, but in the real world, it’s not going to be like that, so when you go to the pool tonight, let’s pretend like this is real life, okay?”

And then I punched him in the nose. OMG. Like I’ve been goofing around this entire time because I think I’m so funny or something! I think the more likely explanation is that I’m just a spaz who’s just not good at SCUBA diving. Pretend like this is real life…ridiculous!

Car Troubs.

I had so many fun and exciting things to tell you about today, but (sadly) I'm dealing with Tiregate 2011 in that I have to unexpectedly replace all four of my tires. See you never, tax refund! What makes it worse is that my car requires special "high performance" tires that I keep high performance running into/on/over things. SIGH.


To cheer youme up, here's a silly car-related music video.

 Haha. This video is the best/worst!

Mope. Mope. Mope.

Things are going pretty lamely today. I didn’t get something that I really wanted, and on top of that I’m also dealing with some worrying family issues. I’m pretty good at keeping what many would consider #whitegirlproblems in perspective, but that doesn’t keep me from still feeling a little blue about everything that’s going on with me right now. But instead of sulking my way through the rest of the day, I’d really like to come up with something that might cheer me up. I’ve considered taking myself to a delicious dinner and/or buying myself a prize, but the thought of spending my limited funds on something I don’t really care about just makes me feel worse. Any suggestions? I’m definitely looking forward to going home and putting on my jammies.

What do you do when you’ve got the blues?

Being an Adult

I like being an adult.

I like choosing what I eat.

I like going to bed whenever I want (usually early).

I even like getting up at 5 a.m. and going to gym every day (or at least I like it more than I dislike the crushing guilt I feel when I don’t go).

What I do NOT like, however, is when a certain fiancé’s former roommates from boarding school are not adults, therefore they get drunk on Tuesday nights, and therefore they drunk dial certain fiancés despite living two time zones away (i.e., what might make for a mildly obnoxious drunk dial in TX makes for an extremely obnoxious one in GA). I also do not like when certain fiancés forget to turn their ringer off so that at 3 a.m. when said drunk dial comes in, I am woken up to the following:

Seriously, wait for the chorus.

Fact: It’s going to be a long day.