Amanda and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day

Today was crappy. I woke up feeling pretty good, which surprised me since I enjoyed a few too many margaritas at my birthday bash last night. About 20 minutes later, my instincts did not let me down, my body just hadn't caught up to my recent early rising courtesy of my new, loud, early bird roommate. Just a short while into the day, the headache and cotton mouth kicked in, only to be followed by a slight turning of the stomach. I complicated the matter by accidentally switching my zyrtec for a medicine I need to take with food and pretty soon my insides were in a tizzy.

I knew a shot of grease would give me a good kick in the pants and headed to the deli for a tasty Bacon, Egg, and Cheese sandwich (which will go with my new bikini quite nicely, I'm sure.) Unfortunately, I didn't get the grease fast enough and instead was overwhelmed by the smells and sight of not quite done chicken patties and had to make a brief detour to the ladies room. Blech.

I started the day in a foul mood because the rest of my coworkers got to go to a conference, that was probably neither entertaining nor educational, but it was away from work-including a woman who is quitting tomorrow!-but 3 people had to be here to cover and since I'm on overnight duty tonight, I got volunteered, which not only meant I was stuck at work, but I was also busy!

Then I had to show one of our new interns around on a unit I don't even cover.

Finally, I had to show 2 new younguns the ropes...aka they followed me everywhere I went for 3 hours while I narrated my every activity. Good times.

So, I was angry. It actually felt kind of good because usually I like to stuff that stuff way down and just feel sad about it, but today I was pissed. Of course, no one cared enough to change anything, but still...

But, you know what? It's all good because tomorrow I'm going to the BEACH!!!!

The weekend is sure to be filled with sexy lingerie and drunk women. I'll be sure to share the juicy details upon my return.

birthday girls

This Sunday three lovely ladies will be celebrating their birthdays.

Amanda



Shiloh



Lily Rose





Last year on my birthday, Shiloh Jolie-Pitt came into the world. A few years ago it was Lily Rose Depp. Since such hot men are having their daughters on my birthday, it's only natural that one of them would invite me to their parties. I'll keep you posted.

mad for plaid

I recently purchased these shorts for my dear spouse to be.





However, he refuses to wear them. They've been sitting at his house for two weeks now. I finally asked, "are you going to wear them or not."

The answer, no.

Yesterday, I was wearing a pair of long madras patchwork shorts from American Eagle.
"Do you like my shorts?", I asked.
He said, "Yeah, they're cute."
"See," I said, "you could wear your shorts. You like these."
He replied. "You're a girl. Those shorts are cute---for a girl!"

I tried to consult my roommate, Evelyn about this predicament. She thinks he's not preppy enough to wear those shorts. I maintain that I can make help him be preppy enough. At that moment from the other room you can hear the boy who was watching something crazy on TV shout,

"OH OH OH A Gorilla got out...mumble, mumble, mumble...It's an APE!"

And that's when I realized that this is a battle I will most definitely lose.

43,538 minutes

That's how much time we have until the wedding. It's one month from today.

These are the things I have to accomplish in that time:

find a rehearsal dinner dress (and shoes, and jewelry)

make everyone realize they cannot bring their kids to the wedding (so find a sitter and a place to store the children)

Make sure fiance's groomsmen get their measurements to the tux lady

convince fiance to wear the tie I bought him for the wedding even though it contains PINK

make ringbearer pillow

change the bout. color one more time

finalize details for next day brunch (invites, food, etc)

Honeymoon (as in, everything except our flights, which are the only thing we've taken care of.)

monogram bouquet ribbon

decide readers' texts

make guestbook on ofoto

make wedding cd

buy rest of bridesmaid gifts

help fiance figure out something to give his fellas

buy parents' gifts

final dress fitting

frame bridal portrait

wedding announcement

bridesmaid luncheon seating arrangments

bachelorette weekend!!!

finish bulletin (get info to printer, tie ribbons, decide hymns, flower dedication, etc.)

buy cake trinkets

make dj play list

one million thank you notes

toss, sort, give away, and pack my crap

buy fridge

move

marriage license

communion bread

bridesmaid bouquet ribbons

Actually this is not the end of the list, but I'm about to have an anxiety attack, so I've got to stop. Don't be fooled, I actually am happy that the wedding is only a month away!

umm, yeah

So Kelly from The Office, her name is really Mindy Kaling, not Mindy Ephron. I actually knew that, but when I started typing I second guessed myself. I remembered that while I was checking her comment status, I also noticed that many of the posts were authored by Mindy Ephron and since I am a true fan, I wanted to get her name right. Once again, self doubt has ruined me and that is probably why she won't let me be part of her "team"

honesty

I don't play tennis. A small part of me longs to when I see folks walking in their tennis whites to the court at Figure 8 island in the summer, but alas it just not my game. I actually took tennis lessons for a while when I was growing up. My coach said I had a lot of potential, but I was lazy. Pretty much the story of my life ;) I had a pretty good forehand and backhand swing, but I just wasn't into running for the ball. Man, when the ball came to me though, you'd better watch out. I was killer on the ball machine.

I do not play tennis. But, I do desperately want to wear a tennis skirt. I love them. I think they're so cute. Everytime I go in a sporting good store, I covet them. At Marshalls, I try to convince myself that it doesn't matter that I don't play tennis. The skirts are at such a great price, I could buy one just to wear around the house. I could shuffle and hop side to side in my den pretending that I play. I could jump up in front of the mirror like I'm executing the ultimate serve and watch the skirt float gracefully back down to my legs. I really, really, really want a tennis skirt. Perhaps it's the middle school cheerleader in me, or the crazy person.

I also really want an ice skating dress.

busy bee

Yesterday was pretty eventful:

I actually took advantage of my costco card, finally buying more than just a bag of salmon or some milk and cheese. I FILLED the cart.

We made over 100 exam bags for the students at Salem College.

The Office! I won't say more in case you haven't seen it yet.

We checked out and then put an offer on a house! The sellers have until 8 to let us know. They're waiting on a sister in Cali to help them decide. If we don't get this house, I will be convinced that we are meant to be homeless. Cory and Topanga didn't have much when they started out and they did just fine. (Bonus points if you catch that reference.)

humbled

I love the office. love. it. So, when I found Mindy Ephron's blog (Mindy plays Kelly on the show), I was all over it. She posts about her favorite purchases...comedy and shopping in one place, count me in.

I really enjoy reading her posts and recently noticed that there are very rarely any comments posted. So, I began to think that perhaps I would write a comment on Mindy's blog. I hoped that she might then check out my blog and we would become fast friends.

She recently posted about underwear or something like that and I seized the moment. I sat for a minute trying to think of something witty yet appreciative to write. I crafted the perfect response and entered the appropriate security information.

As I waited for the comment to go through, I was elated. I was trying to decide whether I'd tell anyone what I'd done. I couldn't believe I'd been the only one to notice that she had very few fans on her blog. Of course she'd appreciate the support and friendship too, of course. Sharing would allow friends to support me as I waited for her reply. (I felt like I'd just sent her a note. Mindy, do you like me? Check yes or no.) Of course, it might also be fun to have friends just notice Mindy's regular comments and see that we're buds.

Fortunately, that problem was quickly resolved. A message flashed on the screen clarifying why Mindy has no fan following. Comments on her blog are limited to team members. I quickly hung my head in shame and signed off.

I'm totally committed. honest.

Winston-Salem is one of the shooting locations for the new George Clooney flick Leatherheads and there have been many George and Renee spottings about town. I was telling my dear fiance how I hadn't heard of any John Krasinski, you know my tv boyfriend Jim Halpert, sightings yet.

Him: What would you do if you ran into him?

Me: I don't know what I'd do. Kiss him probably.

Him: No,you wouldn't really kiss him. What about me? You'd just want to be friends.

Me: You're right. Friends who kiss.

and they're off

Well, they've actually been off for a couple of weeks now and we're starting to get them back too, but since I shared some pictures of myself (which were unfortunately much larger than I intended), I figured I'd go ahead and share these too. Yes, we were silly and took pictures of us putting our invitations in the mail. I have been planning to make a scrapbook of all of this wedding madness, but so far, I just have a bag of supplies and one page.

Here are some snaps of my fiance and his sister and I stuffing and stamping, a shot of the final product (oops I'd already changed into my jammies) and us dropping them in the mail. As soon as we did, we realized we'd put them in metered, but they're coming back, so it must have been alright!
















Perhaps now that I've actually shown my face, you all will feel more inclined to comment. Where is the love blogworld?

april showers

Our wedding is quickly approaching and with each weekend, we've had a lovely little pre-wedding event to escort us to the big day.

Our first shower was back in December, so it's not really an april shower, but I'm slack, so I'm telling about it now. It was an ornament shower and we received lots of lovely ornaments from friends and family to put on our new tree. We received so many ornaments, that I may actually have to get two trees.

I forgot to bring my camera along, so I just have a few shots. Here is one of the veggie tray...too cute for Christmas...




My first April shower was held at the tavern just off the campus of my alma mater. It was supposed to be held in the lovely arbor outside, but the threat of rain moved us inside. I was a little bummed, because it actually never rained, but we had a great time and got some pictures outside afterward.












I got some really cute individual group shots too, but didn't ask permision to post these folks on the web, so I better just stick with this...

The next weekend, my friends from High School threw us a little cook out in Charlotte. We had a lot of fun, eating, talking, and playing bocce, and they were kind to give us a lovely flower pot and some home improvement and gardening books from Home Depot.






The following weekend was crazy. I worked the Junior League rummage sale on Friday night, attended a friend's wedding on Saturday, worked an on-call shift at the hospital on Saturday night and then my beloved's family held a shower for us on Sunday. They were so sweet to work with my busy schedule.
This was his first shower, so he got lots of practice opening gifts in front of everyone (it's really a strange thing, don't you think? I want to be sure to give appropriate attention to the gift without boring everyone. The whole time I'm thinking, am I smiling enough, do I seem excited enough? Do they want me to pass it around? Do they want me to go on?--crazy.) He loved this shower because the gifts were more co-ed..under this pink paper, was a wet/dry shop vac. He opened it as soon as we got it home!















We actually have a couple of showers in May too. This weekend, our church friends in Charlotte are having a little shindig for us, and next weekend the eastern NC crowd is hosting an engagment gathering. fun fun fun

rain rain go away!!!

I'm supposed to have my bridal portraits this weekend. I've wanted to take them here for as long as I can imagine.














Because this is where I went to college and for years I watched brides posing outside my dorm window and dreamed of that day when I'd do the same. And because it's lovely.

Tomorrow, I'll be standing in those same spots, only I'll be in a mud puddle because it's supposed to RAIN all weekend. The forecast has changed this week from looking okay to looking gloomy, then gloomier, then 100% depressing. Now, I'm hoping it will change back. Keep your fingers crossed.

Either way I'll look like a princess tomorrow, or a freak. My hair appointment is at 9:30. My make up is at 11. We don't decide whether to move til Sunday until 1, so looks like I'm getting all dolled up no matter what!

why I felt a brief urge to stab a teenage girl in the face

Yesterday, I masqueraded about town in my secret identity, High Maintenance Girl! High Maintenance Girl takes a half day off work so she can get her hair highlighted. (Because High Maintenance Girl forgot to call ahead of time to make sure she didn't have roots for her bridal portrait.) High Maintenance Girl goes to a different salon to get her eyebrows and lip waxed. (Because HMG's stylist moved to a more expensive salon and HMG wanted to at least get the 20% discount at the old salon for her waxing.) HMG wastes away the afternoon shopping. (Because HMG does not want her fiance wearing clothes with ink stains to all of their wedding parties and HMG needs her groomsmen's tux ties to be the perfect shade of green so they match the bridesmaids, but do not look like they're headed to the prom.)

While I was jaunting about town disguised as HMG, my alter ego, Repressed Anger Psychbitch came out to play.

I have a confession to make. Until yesterday, I was a waxing virgin. Well, not exactly, I had tried waxing once. At home. With the strips. On my bikini line. Not a good idea.

I do not want high maintenance eyebrows. I like the natural look and I particularly like the ease of it's care. My eyebrows aren't particularly unweildy. I have no dark stay hairs lurking in between and they aren't particularly long or shaggy, but I decided I'd get a professional to help me clean them up a bit before the wedding. This turned out to be a relatively easy procedure. Much easier than the at home venture, so I decided to go for it and let her wax my lip too.

Again, there is not a lot of action on the lip, but I must have a lot of pigmentation there because it does tan easily and I feel incredibly self conscious when the sun hits my tan lip and makes the tiny blone hairs look suspiciously like a teenage boy's first mustache, so I said, wax away!

Afterward, she put some stuff on too soothe my lip and brow and said that when she uses that stuff her redness usually fades in 2-3 hours. Hold up. 2-3 hours! How did I not think of this part?! I have stuff to do. High Maintenance Girl has to make up for that credit card she just paid off. I asked her if I should hide at my house during that time and told her about this time http://amandanothingmore.blogspot.com/2007/05/when-collagen-just-wont-do-from-myspace.html

She assured me it wasn't that bad and I went on my way.

After inspecting myself in the rearview mirror, I decided it was safe to go in Panera. I planned to order and sit at my booth with a magazine to let the redness wear off before I continued my adventures. I inspected myself one more time in the restroom mirror before I got in line. A little red just under the brows, but that was hidden in my eye sockets and a little red in the middle of my lip, but nothing atrocious.

The line was kind of long and two lovely high school girls got in behind me. They went back and forth debating what they would order. One thought about ordering ceaser salad. The other thought she should go for it. I will go on record saying, I do not love teenage girls. They bring out every weakness in me and every bad highschool memory, even though my highschool years were relatively painless. I often find them rude and obnoxious and snotty. I do like them individually, but in groups, they scare the crap out of me.

And, of course, they can smell fear.

A few minutes later, randomly interjected into their conversation, I hear these words.

"I forgot to wax my lip."
"That's okay, I forgot to wax my unibrow!"
"I can tell. Ha. Ha.)

So, this was clearly directed at me. This is the moment when Repressed Anger Psychobitch came out to play. I'm sure at that point that my waxing wasn't noticeable at all because my entire face was red. It took all I had not to turn around and grab that girl by the hair-or at least give her an ugly glare, but then I knew she'd see the wax marks and laugh at me again!

I tried to rationalize the experience.

They can only do it behind your back, Amanda, if you said something to them, they'd cower in shame. Unless they didn't.

They're insecure about their bodies. They have make other people feel low to be able to stand living in their own skin right now.

Remember, Mean Girls, and Queen Bees and Wannabees. You know what this is all about, let it go.

But, I couldn't. I sat there through my entire lunch thinking about that moment. Lord, please tell me this is now how my life will be every day when I have a child.

when collagen just won't do-from the myspace archives

As we rounded out a fun filled weekend in NYC my mom and I were killing our last 30 minutes in Times Square before our car arrived to take us to the airport. We have a laundry list of things we have to do when we go to NYC and while many of them are related to Christmas and didn't need to be checked off on our impromtu September visit, we did have to grab some cheesecake from Roxie's before we left.

As we made our way to the deli, we spotted a young lady getting her eyebrows waxed at the Anastasia salon in the 24 hour Sephora by the hotel. I was blessed with, I feel, fairly reasonable eyebrows, which I'm sure to everyone's dismay, I do not wax, or really even pluck save for the few stray hairs that clearly do not belong. I am a really low maintenance kind of girl and I'm just not that willing to commit to too much primping. I have, however, been considering a basic brow shaping that would be pretty easy to keep up and according to my mom, this Anastasia is apparently the shaper to the stars. She is the shaper of all shapers, so I thought maybe this was the time to check it out. I decided not to have the eyebrows done because it was 32 dollars and if I was going to spend that I would have bought the cute bag I'd seen on the street the night before. (While the spur of the moment trip was a lot of fun, it didn't allow much time to budget and save...so I did it on a shoestring.) I know I can get a brow wax for less than that at home, it may not be from the shaper to the stars, but I could get someone to do it with thread who will whisper sweet Korean nothings in my ear. As I worked my way out of the store, I paid homage to my friend Amanda, and checked out all of the fun products on display.

My matron of honor recently told me about her mother's venture into the world of lip plumping gloss and my mom and I had been talking about it on the way in. Mom swears she's allergic to the stuff, because it made her lips tingle when she tried it. On the way out of Sephora, I spotted a sample of lip venom and after considering the risks of sharing community gloss and weighing them with the benefits of buying more cheesecake with the money I saved, I smeared a little of the gloss on my finger and then on my lip (making no direct contact with the applicator.) It didn't really seem to do anything, but it did give a nice sheen.

A block down the street, I felt a slight tingle. Then the tingle turned into a burn. Now, I think my lips are actually normally relatively plump, but I thought if it was good enough for Paris it was good enough for me, so I decided to ride out the burn to see how I looked with Angelina's lips. Two blocks down the street, I caved. I had to wipe it off. My lips continued to burn. The pain was almost searing.

Mom and I parted ways as she headed off to find some fat pens (her souvenir weakness) and I went to get our cheesecake. After I woke the nice little cheesecake attendant out of his sleepy/drug induced dazed and assured him that I did not need an entire box of nine dollar slices, he noticed my lip rubbing. "I think you gotta rash", he said. "Oh, right", I replied, "yeah, I tried this lip stuff, not a good idea, are they kind of red?" "Yeah", he gestured, but not pointing to his lips, but all around his mouth, where I was feeling an incredible itching and burning. "I think you might wanna get somethin fa that. Ya might wanna try"...(SHUT UP YOU F-ING MORON AND GIVE ME THE CHEESECAKE SO I CAN GO CUT MY LIPS OFF WITH A BUTTER KNIFE AND BURY MY FACE IN A MANHOLE) 'maybe you should try soma that triple"..(seriously buddy, please stop talking because my face is on fire now and I'm pretty sure I'm starting to look a lot more like Ronald McDonald than Angelina Jolie.) "Hey, you don't gotta stand so far away. I'm not gonna bite you. Not unless you was a....a vegetable or somethin' (yes, he seriously said that. He's a quick one, that guy.)

Fortunately, about that time, my mom came in and I was able to pawn the cheesecake and the bill off on her, so I could step out of the store and stand in a corner. I hoped she would assure me that in fact, he was just making a big deal out of nothing, but instead when she saw me, she just laughed. I think maybe this is not a good look for me. And for the record, I don't think my lips ever actually got any more plump, the redness did, however, extend from my nose to my chin. It's good stuff, if that's the look you're going for.

Great tip for planning your wedding

So, if you really want to try something spectacular, plan your wedding while working 57 hours a week at one job and then add on three more and while you're at it, why not try to buy your first house too? Because you know what they say, what doesn't kill you...

So, last week we lost not one but two houses. We actually lost them both in the same day or rather the same half of a day, within two hours. poot. We stepped up our home buying process a few weeks ago. We realized we needed to become decision makers. We needed to act on our impulses, so we made our first offer. We shot low. 20K low because the house was really not worth what they were asking. It was smaller than we really need and much smaller than the price allowed, but it was in the cutest neighborhood and there was a little park right across the street. With a tire swing. A tire swing. And stone bridges crossing the creeks. So cute. But, also so expensive. It was probably fortunate that the realtor was an idiot who wasn't being honest with the owner about what the house was worth because we wouddn't have been able to live there long. The house has been on the market for 6 months and we were the first offer. The realtor lives in the same neighborhood, so he'd love for that house to sell high. We would not love that, so we passed on their counter offer of 3K down from the list price and no closing costs. Pshah, you fool. We're going to find a better house!

Unless, we aren't. Because that's how it looks today. Both of the houses we saw on Monday at 7 sold by Tuesday at 10. The realtors didn't even hear our offers. And now? Now, we can't look again until next week, but there isn't anything we even care to see right now.

I'm going to have to spend my first few weeks of newlywed life living on the street. Or worse! I may have to live in my fiance's dirty apartment!

planning the perfect southern wedding