Those simple acts that suddenly make me feel my age.

Buying a couch.

Planning a wedding.

Changing my name.

Moving into a townhouse.

Discussing politics over dinner with friends.

Wearing my hair down.

Becoming an aunt.

Making dinners.

Road trips.

Going to the gym.

Do such acts really carry so much weight in adulthood?  Or do they simply emphasize what’s already becoming?

…of sore & strengthened muscles.

…of sunny days & melted ice.

…of forgotten snowboards & dusty sleds.

…of my first niece & re-kindled relationships. 

…of Castle &  HGTV.

…of wishes for snow & wonders of time.

…of wedding planning & impatient saving.

…of lessons in waiting & making peace.

In short, this is the winter that just simply, isn’t.

Well, she’s gorgeous.
She’s got soft skin fur.
She’s got big green eyes.
She’s fit & trim.
She’s got just the cutest little nose.

Yup, she’s win me over. Meet Mischief. Who, by the way, is very aptly named.

She’s the let’s-play-under-the-bed-at-midnight cat.
The no-manners-in-your-face-give-me-loving cat.
The I-find-myself-in-the-oddest-places-cat. (Seriously, in the glass cabinet, on a shelf in the closet, a dresser drawer, behind the fridge & the backseat of a car, to name a few.)
The I-want-to-sleep-in-the-middle-&-under-the-covers cat.
The I’m-a-master-at-climbing-clothes-&-walking-precariously-on-edges cat.
The let-me-kill-animals-&-leave-them-on-the-front-step-for-you-to-find cat.
The I-want-to-sit-on-the-computer-keyboard-cuz-it’s-warm-even-if-it’s-making-lots-of-noises cat.

But she’s also the wake-me-up-in-the-morning-with-kisses cat.
The lay-on-your-chest-&-keep-you-warm cat.
The hold-no-grudges-never-stop-loving-you cat (even if she’s kicked out of the room for knocking things over).
The one-look-&-you-melt-my-frickin-heart cat.
The I-have-softer-fur-than-dogs cat.
The I-know-exactly-when-you-turn-on-the-heater-fan-&-will-sit-in-front-of-it-forever cat.
The second-half-of-nick’s-heart-belongs-to-me cat.

& nothing makes me more sad right now than the thought of moving out & not getting to see her every day.

I have been getting so annoyed by comments I’ve encountered after someone makes a mistake or mis-speaks, like “Oh, I’ve got pregnancy brain.” ….or “I’m not firing on all cylinders today” (but if you say this every day, are you really ever firing on all cylinders?) …or “oh, I’m just so tired today.”

I don’t mean to pick on these people making these comments.  I’m plenty guilty of making similar comments.  But lately, I have been wondering why.  What is the reason for this need to have a reason for saying the wrong word or making a mistake?  Sometimes, it just happens.  I was recently an observer of a conversation that lasted about ten minutes, each of the two involved going back & forth in re-iterating their excuses……TEN MINUTES!!   How about we just move on & let it go?

I have a job that requires me to ask almost complete stangers for intimate, personal information around things like finances and relationships.  I also happen to be a person that sometimes doesn’t even ask friends for personal information for fear of prying.  I’ve struggled with this for a while, putting off phone calls on conversations that might be awkward to have or talking around the subjects in hopes that they would understand what I’m asking.  But yesterday, it hit me.  I need to be more direct.  & honest.  I need to specifically say what it is I am asking about and why.  & do you know how well people responded?  I got so much more information and so much accomplished yesterday.

I see that these excuses are more of a gut reaction than a thoughtful response to the situation at hand.  & I understand that not every environment is safe enough to let down our guard & bear the rawness of our souls.  & I even see that my losing patience over someone else making an excuse is a little ridiculous.  But I think I almost take it as a personal attack when someone makes excuses to me, that they don’t trust me, that they don’t think they can be real with me, that I am going to judge them, that I’m not a safe place.  & while I know it’s really not a personal attack, I want people to feel safe around me, to let down their defenses.

I also want to be the person who is willing to ask the blunt question, just in case it’s the right question.  I’m not there yet, but I’m trying.  I think that, in general, we treat each other too fragile.  We tiptoe around each other in case of hurting their feelings or making them angry.  But in so doing, I fear that we make each other weaker.  We don’t give them the credit that they are strong enough to take the pain & turn it into something good.  & maybe, just maybe if we did, we’d have a world full of stronger, more confident people.

This really came to light in a recent heart-to-heart with my oldest sister.  As the youngest sister, I always looked up to her.  I still do.  But as we’re getting older & I am about to join her in experiences like marriage, pregnancy, having kids, I realized that I don’t need her to protect me anymore.  What I need from her is to share her experiences in these things.  I need to know that not everything is as perfect as it looks.  & that there will be come really hard & rough times ahead.  At the end of our conversation, it hit me: this is the time, we need to be more raw & real with each other.  How else are we to help each other?

So please, if you’re tempted to make an excuse for yourself today, just ask yourself why & if it’s truly necessary.  Let yourself free of the need to defend yourself.  Be proud of who you are, mistakes & all.  Excusing our flaws makes us defensive & hidden.  The world needs more openness & genuineness (is that a word??).  A bit more rawness.  A bit more honesty. 

It would do the world good, I think.  & me.  It would do me good.

Some people disbelieving that New Years Resolutions are ever followed through.

Some people believing that if they want to change their life, they will do so without waiting for the clock to strike midnight & wipe our slates clean for the new year.

Some people, perhaps, feeling too old to still be believing in the magic or existence of a clean slate. 

All good & valid reasons for resistance.  But I’m seeing a different side to resolutions this year.

I’m no stranger to how days can turn into years with the slight blink of an eye.  I see New Years as the universal acknowledgement of the passing of time.  & I see it as the perfect time to look back at a year of love & laughter, heartbreak & mistakes, sadness & lessons learned.  It is the perfect time to not let time pass you by.  Those of us able to do so without the reminder, all the more power to you.  But for those of us needing the reminder that the clock is ticking, that our lives are passing us by, let this be it. 

At times, I’ve  thought poorly of commercialized holidays like New Years, Valentine’s Day, Halloween, even Thanksgiving & Christmas.  & those thoughts have brewed from the idea that we should live these things every day, not just on this one special day.  But I’ve come to understand that these special days can serve as reminders to us of how we want to be living every day – loving, present, thankful, giving, kid-like.

I’ve always thought that the new year was about starting over, forgetting the past, moving on.  But our pasts follow us.  It’s true.  So perhaps the clean slate refers not to our pasts, but to our futures.  Our pasts cannot be erased or forgotten, but the future can be rewritten at any moment.  & so much resistance to change is that we cannot see anything, but what is currently before us.  We cannot see how or when that change would occur, how or when it would be able to break through the rigid routines we’ve set upon ourselves.  We cannot see a way out.  The year before us is looking eerily like the one we’ve left behind & we’re full of excuses as to how nothing can change, how one little adjustment might bring the whole thing tumbling down.  So the magic of the clean slate lies in wiping out the “shoulds” and the idea that our choices and decisions of this next year have already been chosen for us.

All that to say, here are my 2012 New Years Resolutions:

(1) Get married!  …I’ve been called on this, saying that I can’t really count this one as it has been in the works for last year, but hey, I’m excited!  Biggest event of my life, right there.  & there’s still a lot of work left to be done in order to pull it off so it’s #1 in my book.

(2) Up my intensity at the gym.  …I’ve got the consistency down.  But let’s just say that some of the days I’ve gone have been more for show than actual progress.  My initial goal was to just get there.  But now that I’m doing that, I’ve decided I need to push myself just a little harder.  Enter….R.I.P.P.E.D, an intense 9 week workout course.  I’m going on my third week & it feels so good to be so sore.  (Most of the time.)

(3) Read more books.  & good books!  ….it’s getting so frustrating at how many words I have forgotten, how small my vocabulary has become, how uncertain I am of spelling.  So tell me please of your favorite books!

(4) & of course, cook more dinners.  ….the biggest struggle for me of all time, it seems.  But thanks to Pinterest, I’ve been collecting delicious looking recipes to try & come February when we move into our new apartment, I’ll have a bigger kitchen with COUNTER SPACE.  So that’s at least two excuses cut off my list of reasons why I often eat a well balanced meal cereal for dinner.

I’m actually kind of hoping this last one is like the gym.  One night in October, I had a thought of the gym & went the next day.  I have been going consistently ever since.  I have yet to figure out where this motivation is coming from, maybe it’s a maturity thing?  But it hasn’t been much of a struggle to get myself to the gym.  It’s just something I do now.  It’s a priority.  But I’m hoping that the desire to make dinners come similarly.  How do you do it?  How do you figure out what to make every night & then actually do it?  That’s a level of planning that I have yet to conquer.

(5) & lastly, continue to search for balance.  As I write this, I’m wondering if it is my desire for balance lately that is fueling my motivation to go to the gym.  This last one takes me back to “Eat, Pray, Love”.  If you haven’t read it yet, do so please.  It could change your life.  Or at least make you think.  I need more books like that.  Know of any?

So forgetting the whole idea of New Years Resolutions, what are some changes you want to make in your life?  How do you want to live differently this year?  What do you want to do more of in your life?

Anyway, I digress. To celebrate our six months, we went couch shopping for the new place & came away with these:

Holy pillows, huh!! But I love them.

& also to celebrate six months, I received these from two lovely ladies:

A million thanks to them for thinking of me. I am so happy to know them.

It feels good to have them on my side, especially knowing all the things that are still left to do. Don’t get me wrong, we have certainly accomplished a lot. But suddenly all the details that seemed I had forever before needing to make decisions are before me. Bridesmaid dresses, groomsmen attire, invitations, flowers, hair & make up…these are the decisions I’ve really been struggling with. I just don’t know. Too much money, just not right…I haven’t found something I LOVE yet. I’m working on it though.

& right around our six month countdown, winter finally hit New Hampshire! Snow, freezing rain, sub zero temperatures. It’s here!! Yay for snow!

 A Very She & Him Christmas.  I love it & I want it.

You see, at this moment, I am enlisting your help in making some wedding cake (or non-cake) decisions.

So, take a moment to relinquish any concerns of hurting my feelings & give me your most honest opinions.

To help you in your decision making, let me walk you through the evolution of my ideas.

Originally, I found myself liking the looks of cakes with lace designs, like these:

I felt like the lace designs matched with our vintage theme.  & I felt like they were so intricately simple.  How’s that for an oxy-moron.  Intricate in the design, simple in the over-all look.  Not cluttered.

But in my research, I was gathering that this kind of design could cost big bucks.  Not exactly what I was hoping to hear.  But a nudge to look at other options, like these: 

in different colors, of course.

So I was pretty content with this idea.  Until this weekend, when I ate a chocolate covered strawberry & my taste buds exploded with summery flavor.  & I got to thinking….how many people actually eat the cake at a wedding?  & would they prefer something different, a change from the traditional wedding cake perhaps?  Especially on a hot summer day?  So that brought me to ideas like these:

strawberry cheesecake cupcake

adorable

How you liking this so far??  Reminds you of summer right??  A couple problems though, I know.  (1) Not everyone likes strawberries.  (2) Strawberries are not in season at the time of our wedding, which could end up leading to costing big bucks anyway.  (3) The red & white colors do not match our blue & orange color scheme.

So you see my dilemma?  I need your help.

One of the most pressing questions is, do you think guests are more likely to eat this kind of a treat over cake?  Or at least just as much as?  Or does cake not always get eaten, not because it is cake, but because they would rather dance or drink or are too full from dinner?  If you were a guest at a wedding, what would you prefer?

To solve the problem of not everyone liking strawberries, I’d be interested to hear everyone else’s favorite summer treat.  Send me your favorite summer treat recipe & we’ll put it in to vote!

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I forgot how much cleaning is involved in decorating.  I’m suddenly trying to put decorations in places that haven’t been cleaned maybe ever in much too long.

But I have to say that I was quite pleased with the outcome.

How did we get here so quickly?  We’ve already been engaged longer than we have left til the wedding. 

I just can’t believe it sometimes.

I will say, though, that seeing all the winter wedding ideas going around sure has made me think how fun it would have been to get married in the winter.  Just think, I could have gotten away with playing Christmas music at the reception!  Maybe I still can.  You’ve heard of Christmas in July, yes? Oh, I’m just kidding.

Our wedding planning hit a bit of a plateau back in October, but ever since I found my wedding dress, we’ve been full steam ahead.

It’s quite unfortunate that I have to go to work, sleep & anything else besides wedding planning.  I’d really rather not sometimes.

I do have to admit that I had a bit of a bridezilla dream nightmare.  I dreamed that our wedding venue had asked us to switch our date to a week before & we agreed, but on the day of the wedding, I realized that I had forgot to tell EVERYONE ELSE!  So no cake, no limo, no photographer, no guests.  I had my dress though!  (This dream was right after finding my dress in PA.) 

So, after having that dream, I’ve decided there will definitely not be any switching of the dates.  (Not that there was any danger of that happening anyway.)

So in the planning flurry that ocurred after finding the dress, we have accomplished so much.

The first big ticket item we decided upon was our honeymoon.  We had been planning on these cute little cottages in Maine, but recently decided that we wanted to get away for a while.  So, that’s just what we’re gonna do & kick back on the beaches of St. Lucia! 

The other big(ger) ticket item we booked was our transportation, so we’ll be riding to the wedding in style in a limo!   

We’re also getting much closer to making several other decisions, which I will keep you posted on.  In just a little while, I expect I’ll be looking for some advice from you all, as I’m currently playing around with some ideas…exciting stuff!  Although, I’m not offended if you’re not as excited about it as I am.

It’s hard to believe that at the next mile-marker, we’ll be SIX months from the wedding & IN the year we’ll be getting married!

& since we’re counting, let me just say that I’m going on two months of consistent gym time, at least two times a week!  I’ve never been so proud of myself!  Wedding day shape, here I come!!