Save those turtles!

After reading this, I really wish I had some extra time and money, I would definitely go down to Florida to help. Hopefully the little guys survive the trip! It looks like their chances are better, though, if they're moved than if they just hatch and crawl out into a bunch of oil. That would be so sad... (not to revert to a second grade sentence, but it truly makes me sad to think of it.)

Read the original article here.

Time for some rest

Now that the big things are out of the way for the wedding, I am going to take a little rest. In my excitement, I wanted to start thinking about a lot of things, but now that those big things, like the date and finding a reception place, are tackled I think I can take a step back again.

Tonight we met up with Father Mike for the second time. We went over our 'test results' and found that we did agree on a lot of things. There are some areas that we will need to discuss once it gets closer to merging our lives together, but overall I am really pleased with how we both answered. I am sure that some people think things like this are dumb but it opens up conversation, and that's the whole point.

We also received the little booklet used for choosing your readings at mass. Mom had leant me her own copy from when they got married, but my new copy is a bit nicer with some updated photos (none of those 80s haircuts like her book, haha!) I must say, I am kind of excited to pick these out, though. Before my retreat, I don't know that it would have been a huge deal to me but... I don't know how to explain it, I'm just looking forward to choosing them.

In other news... my appetite is up lately. I don't know why, but it spikes from time to time. It's a good thing and I am trying to take advantage of it. I've been on a pizza binge and I ate about five pieces of pizza yesterday and I had three more today, so hopefully it'll help me gain a pound or something. Yeah, that'd be nice!

June Eighteenth, Two-thousand and eleven

That's our date! Jarrod and I aren't exactly the best decision-makers, but it became more clear that we would just need to PICK something and go with it. And June 18 is what we settled on.
Things are coming together so far so good. We picked the date, I reserved the church today, and will be reserving the reception place soon. Wednesday, we looked at the Kemp Auto Museum as a possible reception and we all liked it a lot so we are going with that. It will be a little bit different, but in a good, unique kind of way. The way they do it is they move the cars out of the middle of the room but leave the ones around the outer perimiter of the room. So, reception in the middle, cars around the edge. It should be really neat! Something funny is, in my mind I was thinking 'Oh, maybe I'll have on some Rat Pack-ish music for background during dinner' and as we walked through there, they were playing Frank Sinatra the whole time! So obviously I am not the only one who thinks that would be a good fit.
We are also set to meet up with my priest to go over our Foccus test stuff. It's not a matter of if we passed or not, but they compare your answers and just get you talking about different issues you might not have thought of before now. So we'll get that out of the way, and then as far as the rest of the Catholic preperation we just need to do a class. But no rush on that.
Mom and I are roughing it this weekend. Sort of. Dad is in Chicago-area for the Bloomington Gold and we are on our own. Last night mom barbequed hot dogs and we might hit up Quizno's for lunch today. Tomorrow night is an ice cream social out in the backwoods at this lovely little country church, so I may go to that with mom. Not sure.
Nothing else much to report. If you live where I live, watch the local paper this weekend for their On the Street opinion piece. Mom and I were interviewed yesterday while sitting at the riverfront and I am guessing my answer might be in there. Mom didn't answer but I gave a response, so I assume they may use it.

Zombie Jamie

I am sick today... well, it is becoming clear that I might have been 'sick' for a while now. For the past two months, a good night's sleep has been hard to find for me. I have been waking up coughing so much overnight that I have been averaging 4 hours of sleep a night. I cannot even tell you how annoying this has become. I think I can count on two hands the number of nights that I actually slept all the way through in the past two months. Now, it seems like it's getting worse and last night was definitely the worst one so far. I am a zombie today, walking around with my eyes half-closed, shuffling my feet, and having now energy at all. I think I'm even talking and thinking slower, too.

My doctors have had me try a couple things, but to no avail. Today, we are starting some antibiotics in hopes that this will do the trick. I do feel now that I may have picked up a bug somewhere and it's making matters worse. And that's certainly not unlikely: with so little sleep building up after a while, I'm sure my immune system is tired too and having a hard time keeping up. I really hope this works, because after this will probably be a tune up if it doesn't.

But, in other news, some random thoughts, since I'm having trouble putting together sentences today (heck, I don't even know if that made sense up there, and I'm not rereading it):
--My Lucky Charms were good this morning. They were a happy addition to my otherwise sucky morning.
--My reheated coffee wasn't all too bad either.
--Things are moving on the wedding reception front; hopefully setting up an appointment today to tour a place.
--Jarrod sent me an email that made me smile. When I told him I was home sick, my title for the email was ":(" and his reply was ":(-->:|--->:)--->:D" And I did just that, I went from a sad face to a smiling face :).
--Tomorrow Jarrod and I are going around town to take care of a bunch of things. I will be his chauffer, but it's going to be the hottest day of the year so far! And he'll be in a suit! Sounds like a fun day...
--I saw Toy Story 3 with mom, dad, and Jarrod the other night. It was great, more details to come in a later post.

Holy canoli!

So I dove into some heavy duty wedding planning today. I mean, I've been getting small things figured out, or at least thought about, since last week. But today I started finding out what it takes for the reception part of the day.

I cannot believe how much it costs to have a damn reception. Really. It is astounding how much it all is after you add things up. For the most part, everything I've found has separate a charge for the facility, separate charge for the food, separate charge for the bar, possibly separate charge for the cake, separate charge for decorations, and separate charges for other crap. And that's only for four hours! I don't know about you, but I don't think that is long enough. 6:00 to 10:00? Does that mean guests can't arrive before 6:00? And do they have to be completely gone by 10:00? I mean, I don't want to be out till one in the frickin' morning, but still. That will definitely be a question we ask, but still, I think four hours isn't that long. One place I'm looking into offers to extend that time for a cheap price, but another costs $5 per hour PER PERSON. Shit, that's $1500 more if you have 300 people. Just for one hour! That's an expensive hour.

Jarrod and I will talk things out a little more tomorrow and maybe start to decide we want to include and what we don't feel is necessary. Right now I'm trying to find a good balance [in my head] between price and making sure it's a really fun, good time for us and everyone there.

PS-I'm really happy with this new blog redesign! Blogger has some [much needed] updated templates now, so I'm trying this one for now. I love hummingbirds, so I may keep it. Otherwise, don't be startled if the design changes every time I write something new. At least till I settle on something.

Yay Tuesday

Don't you just love productive days? I feel I've had a lot of those lately ever since I started looking into wedding stuff. Today has been pretty good. License plates renewed, ring being appraised, picked up some Toasted Pecan coffee from our local shop, and what would top this all off in production is if I rode my bike tonight. Man, I haven't ridden it in so long. It's pretty sad.

On to other things...

At work, I am forwarded an e-newsletter from someone named "The Quality Coach." Said lady resides here in town, but I can't really remember who it is. Anyways, I enjoy reading what she has to say. Being a 'coach' of sorts, they are usually helpful, insightful, or just positive breaks in my day. Recently, the newsletter posed an idea that it would be so wonderful to have a channel of news that is solely for good news. I gotta tell you, that really struck me. Why couldn't this be possible? I somehow have a feeling that lots of people nowadays would tune in to get a 'good' fix instead of the usual Negative Nancy news we are usually faced with. Which leads me to my next thought I've been toying with lately...

Talking with Jarrod about something, I posed the thought that, "It's so much easier for people to be negative than be positive." Why is that? Why is it so easy for us to bitch and moan when things don't go our way? This may sound like an optimists idealistic view of the world, but really: when you consider your day, there are more than likely hundreds of things that go just fine but somehow you only focus on the ten or so ones that went wrong. And as the usual chain of events, you complain about them to whomever is willing to listen. Why is this? I am going to guess that the reason we are wired this way is because of things such as the news; when we are presented with negative people and media in our life that we consume on a daily basis, we too become negative ourselves.

Something else the Quality Coach does in every one of her emails is she poses a question or a challenge for you for that week. In that light, I am going to say that if you're reading this right now, why not try to focus more on the good? I'm going to give this a shot... we'll see how it turns out.

News

I'm pretty sure almost everyone reading this knows by now: Jarrod proposed! It happened this past weekend on Saturday morning. It is a great little story, so ask me sometime when I see you and I will tell you all about it. I am such a lucky person to have a guy like Jarrod, you have no idea. He is the last of a dyeing breed, I like to say, in so many ways. You just don't find many guys like him around any more, especially at our age. So it is so wonderful to be officially engaged.

And, the planning begins...

I got myself a binder and have printed off a few things. I signed up for theknot.com as well, like almost everyone seems to these days. Wow, what a wealth of information it seems to be; I can't imagine planning a wedding the old way where you had to call everyone and all of this information wasn't right at your fingertips. I feel this will be one of the most helpful times in my internet history that I actually am really grateful for the invention of internet.

I am beginning to think that I'm even weirder than I already thought, haha! No, what I mean is that my tastes just don't mesh with what most women have in their weddings these days. It is just a bunch of little things and it all just goes to show, once more, that I am not your typical girl. For example, I hate strapless dresses. Why do there have to be hundreds of choices for those? Seriously, in the little dress-browsing I've done, I've found probably 70% strapless, and the other 30% account for sleeves, halters, small straps, etc. That's just one example, but there are a lot of other little things that I am different on.

Hugs

Though this is a few days late for Memorial Day, I still wanted to post. I stumbled on it yesterday and it is a great video. Thank you to all the troops out there who put their lives on the line and do things that I am not capable of so that I may live and enjoy the things I do. And, as the video reinforces, a large thank you is also due for the families who stay back home. Enjoy the video and I dare you not to cry...



And you wonder why hugs are my favorite?

My day

It's my birthday today. And it has been going quite well so far. I started my day out right with some Kaldi's Highlander Grogg, a local brew of coffee that is delicious. It has hints of maple and Caribbean rum in it and puts any other coffee I have purchased so far to shame. Tasty. We also 'celebrated' at work today too. I believe that I am the only June birthday, so it was just for me. I was asked what I might like for a meal, and I said that an Italian meal sounded good (something the office has done before) with, specifically, fettucine alfredo. Yeah, I know I'm usually a spaghetti girl but I am also sorta picky about it. I don't care for a sauce with mushrooms, onions, or peppers in it and with my luck, someone would have fixed it that way, and I certainly didn't want to offend anyone by not eating the dish they fixed per my request. Conflict avoided by just going with fettucine. We also had a yummy salad, some broccoli, some awesome awesome fresh-cooked garlic toast (seriously, the girl brought in her little grill and made it in the office; you could smell it halfway down the plant), and some chocolate cake. It was an excellent spread.

Tonight I am excited because, also per my request, we are having beef strogonoff with angel food cake. Afterwards, Jarrod and I will head out to downtown and see couple friends and share a drink. Nothing over the top, just nice, small, and special; the way I like it.

I know that some people, mostly men in my encounters, don't put much emphasis on birthdays. However, for me I always feel it's a great day. It proves yet another year of living with CF and keeping it at bay, which is quite an accomplishment. So, that's exciting.

In other news, I signed up for the Scenic Regional Library's summer reading program today! I went in and checked out "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card and signed myself up. If I read eight books by the end of July, I get a free recycled tote! And I am then also entered in a drawing for a larger prize. I will most likely read eight books by then anyways, so why not sign up? It was pretty cute seeing all the little kiddos sign up with their parents, too.

And you know what would be the best birthday present ever? Getting a full night's sleep tonight! (See previous post if you're lost.)

Finally

Well, here I am in what has become my "normal." I am up coughing with not an end in sight.

For the past two months (at least) I have had some sort of interruption or determent in the process of trying to sleep. At one point, I went for over 30 days without one full night of sleep, and I cannot even begin to describe how frustrating that is. Just try to imagine it. For a whole month... yikes.


I am finally fed up. I just emailed my doctors to see what we can do about this. At this point, I have no clue. I don't know if I am really "sick" or what is quite going on. I have never faced this sort of problem before for this length of time; the waking up part is not shocking, what is shocking is that it has not stopped. Which is probably why it has taken me this long to finally do something about it. I just kept hoping and hoping that this all would diminish, maybe I would sleep two nights per week all the way through and not wake up every night... it's easy to see how desperate you can become and how the very, very small things become very, very wonderful victories. But, it just seems I can't quite kick this, whatever the heck it is, so I need some help. I just pray that whatever my doctors decide works and that I can start sleeping again like normal people do.