The pallava before work

This morning was very strange. Alan had already gone off to work (he leaves at unearthly hours) and Diana and I were busy getting ready.

I was bathing when I noticed a huge, squishy lump on the base of my one toe. It wasn't like a blister but almost and I was worried that it might be some sort of spider bite and the tiny spider eggs hatching inside and eating me from the inside.

That was it! This needed drastic action. And support. I jumped out of the bath, wrapped my towel around me and headed for the door to find Di to show her my toe.

As I reached for the handle, a giant grasshopper thing was right there. Being super creeped out already by the possible creatures devouring my insides, I screamed and yanked the door open and ran toward Di yelling "There's someone eating my toe!" only to find her coming running to me in tears saying (Names changed for obvious reasons)"Mike blocked my emails on FB! I don't know how he did it but now I can't email him at all!"
She quickly examined my toe and we decided that there was probably nobody actually inside it. Then she helped me to get rid of the grasshopper, I threw some clothes on so that we could go and she could tell me about Mike in the car but I heard her yowling out in pain and rushed to find her with her contact lens dislocated. I found the contact lens in her eye, removed it with her suction and by that time, Mike had unblocked her.

What a morning! We were laughing about it in the car on the way to work. Alan would've seriously laughed at us had he been home.

A big thank you to the people who go above and beyond

As I mentioned before, weddings bring out the worst in some people but they also bring out the best in some people. We have had a fair amount of stress from this wedding and a handful of people have always been there to go the extra mile to make things work and/or happen or cheer me up or make things fun and I quite honestly don't know what we would've done without them!

My 4 bridesmaids have been my saving grace on many an occasion with everything from designing and making the bulk of the invites to advice on dresses and veils and hair to be willing to come over late at night to help me to pick Alan up to put him in the car and take him to hospital after one of his bachelor parties caused him to have alcohol poisoning (thank goodness the pharmacy meds worked and he almost feels himself again) to being so ready to jump in and bake a cake if need be to fighting with people for me when I just couldn't manage to taking over doing the ceremony when we were let down. I cannot thank you ladies enough for everything you've done! You truly are wonderful friends to me and it makes me feel less stressed and able to take on the world.

My mom has been super. She's been very busy at work with our sewing needs, including Alan's pants that needed altering and she's been so excited and interested and supportive and on my side when people have been difficult and it's just so nice to have her behind me.

Al's mom has also been excited and involved and it's so nice to see that our relationship is supported by both sides of our families.

My friend Nicola who is flying in early to help with anything that needs helping with. She's our usher and our decor adviser and she's just been so interested and involved in trying to make our day really beautiful and go smoothly.

And then my friends who listen when I need to talk and give advice when I need it and stand up for me when it warrants it and guide me when I'm losing my way, I would be lost without them too.

Overall, it's been a pleasant experience despite the nonsense people try and cause and it's because of the support of these people.

Thanks so much all of you!

The little things

Who would've thought that planning a wedding would prove who your friends are and are not, who you can rely on and who not and who is jealous and bitter and who not?

Sometimes I feel like I live in a soap opera and that vanishing somewhere else, alone with Al where nobody else knows us, will be the only way to put an end to the drama. I have taken it a lot better than usual because I am excited for us to get married and start our new life together but it shouldn't be that the excitement helps to dilute the frustration and hurt and anger, they should not be there in the vast quantities that they are already.

Things going wrong like a lack of flowers or my dress being too small or the venue wanting to change the part of the venue we use despite our contract I can handle. I can change the type of flowers, have the dress altered and fight with the venue.
But when people who are or are not involved in our wedding just cause trouble to cause trouble, it is not right. While I can ignore them or ask them not to, I cannot control how they choose to behave and it is frustrating.

What bugs me is that it's so completely unnecessary but for whatever reason, causing as much trouble and stress as possible is paramount on their agenda.
I am being nice and friendly and even apologetic for their behaviour toward me (have you ever!) and other people and yet they persist. I have had enough! If it was their day, I would never try and ruin the experience for them and cause as much trouble as possible but perhaps there is some underlying jealousy and bitterness. I hope it blows over or they immigrate or something really soon!

Super quick fix for a sore ankle?

I am quite desperate. I managed to scrape my ankle down the side of a pavement the other day and it stung like any scrape would and bled a left a bit of a hole but I thought it would just be a little sore and get better.

By yesterday afternoon, I'd started to notice that it was hurting a lot more than on just the skin and by last night, it was swollen and Alan was piggy-backing me up and down the stairs.

This is a big problem. We have to do our first dance in 3 weeks and 6 days and we're in desperate need of practice. Di is going to practice with Al in the meantime (thank goodness for friends who dance!) but I also need to practice and it's just not a good idea to practice on a sore ankle.

So, does anyone have any advice on healing a sore ankle in incredible time? Like so fast that time goes backwards even! ;) I'm really just desperate to get back into things.

Dancing in your sleep

Have you ever had those incredibly lively dreams where you wake up more tired than when you went to sleep? I have no idea what I dreamt last night barring that there was lots of music in the background all through my dream and it was loud and lively.

When I was little, I once woke up with my hands in the air and I distinctly remember that I'd been dreaming about doing ballet.
I also walked to my parents room on multiple occasions and woke up in the morning confused as to how I'd got there so I wouldn't be surprised if I was jumping around the room last night in my sleep.

Nothing, however, tops Alan. One night I woke up as he jumped out of bed and stormed out of the room. He then proceeded to walk into the room next door and dig through all our then unpacked boxes. He dug and dug and dug for ages and I wondered what he was looking for but left him.
Eventually the digging stopped and he didn't come back. I decided to get up and go and see what he was up to.
I found him sleeping on his 3/4 bed under the electric blanker that was just lying loosely on the bed. I leaned over and gently squeezed his arm and said "Al? Why are you here? What's wrong?" and he woke up very confused and didn't know how he got there.
He later told me how he'd once slept walked at his grandparents house and used their dustbin as a toilet to urinate! His grandmother realised what was happening and stood watching him and giggling as he lifted the lid of her dustbin and urinated in it and then courteously put the lid back down.

Hopefully we don't ever decide to sleep walk/dance/wee in the middle of the night when we have guests over for our wedding! ;)

All in a name

I'm not double-barrelling my surname nor am I keeping it. I do like it very much but Alan's surname is nice too so I'm happy to change.

I will admittedly miss some of the strange comments I've had from people when hearing my name and although my mom swears it wasn't intentional, I can't help but wonder if they thought it would be funny to name me after a comic book character that is published by Harvey Comics :)

Punished for your existence

I am most annoyed. A while ago, a friend of mine attended an event where she knew nobody but Alan and her boyfriend. She was looking forward to going because she gets along well with Alan and they were bound to have fun.

During the course of the evening, the organiser and my friend were getting along well until the organiser asked her name and realised that she was a friend of mine and then things changed.
Later on, my friend got up to come and fetch Alan's housekeys in the parking lot from me and during that time, the event organiser jumped up from her seat and squeezed in between my friend's boyfriend and another guest. My friend returned only to find that there was not enough room at the table for her anymore and the organiser just looked at her and said "Sorry, I stole your chair" and left my friend to go and sit at a completely different table behind everyone by herself for half an hour. Talk about being a good hostess!

I have spoken to the organiser and if she reads this, I am making this very clear: I like you, you can be very nice but be mean to my friends one more time for no good reason and I won't be very nice back to you anymore! Just hold your nasty ways in, please when you're around people who don't deserve it or else you can get lost out of all of our lives because I don't want to put up with troublemakers!

Alan amiss

Last night and this morning was most distressing for me because Alan just didn't come home and his phone was off.

When you live in a country where people get hijacked and taken hostage or mugged or get hit by drunk drivers, a million things fly through your mind and panic starts to ensue very quickly.

His work colleagues, bosses, my friends, his friends, my family, his family and just about every other person we could rope in was helping to look for him.

I found him at home. He was fine, just very, very apologetic and tired-looking.

It's all fine now but please peoples out there, let someone know where you are if you go out by yourself in case the people who realise you're missing get half the world phoning hospitals, police stations and checking security footage of public places you like to go to. Not cool. But phew!!

The duck

A while ago I went into a toy shop with Di who is mad about plush toys. I think that they're nice but it's very seldom that I actually see a plush toy that I think "Oh wow! That is so beautiful/cute! I'd really love to have it and shove it at the top of my cupboard so that Fatty doesn't get it" but then I saw this duck. He was a big, fluffy duck with sad eyes and the cutest little fat stomach. He wasn't cheap though and I have more important priorities than buying myself a duck but I'd go back every time we went passed the shop and just go and look at the duck.

Last night, Al came home late from work. It turned out that he wasn't working late at all. When he came home, he handed me a big packet and inside the packet was the duck! Not just the duck but a very happy looking hippo too. So cute! He thought the hippo looked a little like Fatty and so he bought it :)

Fatty was so excited by the arrival of these giant teddies and I had to ensure that she knew that they were mine and not hers this time. I sternly said "Only kisses, Fatty! No biting!" and so she gave the duck a lick and very gently tried to pry it away from me. I had to go upstairs and find her own teddy and then she was happy.

Ways to deal with breakups

I recently found out about a breakup that had happened in July. The situation was very similar to a breakup I had many years ago and this led me to think of the ways I went about dealing with my sadness and anger.

The first thing I did was to change my routine so that I was doing something different and it wasn't the same things I did with that person which would make me dwell on it and make me sad so no, routine had to go.

I started going to watch movies once a week on a Saturday afternoon by myself. I just liked going alone because I could watch what I wanted to (no romance or mushy anything movies) until I felt better and then I could go back to compromising to watch what other people also wanted to watch.

So the one Saturday afternoon, I was having a particularly bad day and was feeling very miserable and grumpy and so my dad asked if I'd mind if he came with me. I was hesitant because what if I wanted to watch heads being chopped off and he didn't but I agreed anyway.

Arriving at the cinema, there were only 3 choices: Heads being chopped off, mushy-mushy stuff or a Football movie. My dad asked what I wanted to watch and so I chose the Football movie thinking "Ok, well, there's no way it can make me feel worse nor can it freak me out."

What we didn't realise was that more than half the movie was in Spanish with tiny English subtitles. I sat watching the movie trying to read the subtitles to understand what was happening but they were too small and soon I gave up and just stared at the screen wondering what in the name of macaroni was going on.

My dad seem completely engrossed. He stared intensely at the screen. At least he was enjoying it.

About 20 minutes in, he leaned over and whispered "Aud, can you see the subtitles?"
and I whispered back, "No. Can you?" "No" he said. Then a 2 minute pause, "Aud, do you know what's going on?" "Not a clue." I responded. "Do you?" I asked. "No." he said and so we watched this movie in complete confusion until the language changed to English and by that time, we were so lost, it was way too late.

It certainly kept my mind off of things and it was very funny sitting there totally clueless together :D