Anxiety, depression, laziness...Can the nameless wonder change? page 317

[namelesswonder]

NK, I think I have that issue with lightly toasted.

Hey, another silver-lining that I realized earlier this week: I haven't thought about doing anything physically self-destructive (self-injurous thoughts) in at least a few months. At least, I can't remember having thought that. I think staying on 5-HTP has done me a world of good.

Nor have I had the urge to drink or consume as a form of therapy. Stress sucks, but I DO manage it.

[Finnegans Wake]

IF I get drunk (it's happened three times in my life), I get giggly, everything's about sex or yo mama, and I tend to fall asleep. When I'm lightly toasted or buzzed, I'm at my most condensed: a philosophical, go lucky engineer. I try not to linger too long at toasted/ minorly drunk, as that's when my mind finds the dark little corners I haven't sealed up yet.

See, I'm the opposite. Light buzz, and I'm witty and flirtatious and man of the town. Halfway through a second bottle of red, I'm throwing Neruda and Schopenhauer and Shakespeare into the blender and hoping my handwriting is legible in the morning. And yes, the dark little corners of the mind allow creeping thoughts to see a bit of moonlight when farther along.

[namelesswonder]

FW, this just makes me imagine you in your rough-and-tumble days of youth, wearing all black and stomping around in boots or something (er...I feel like you said something to that affect, but maybe I am envisioning with some elaboration). While re-visiting those times is not always pleasant, the mental image it conjures for me is hilarious. I see you, as you are now, in black punk-rocker clothes and spikey boots. I'm not sure why this is so funny to me.

For some light-hearted amusement today (which I sorely need)

My cat, in a shoe box, 4+ years ago. Check out that fluffy cheek.


Me, my baby mohawk, and terrible posture, from June of 2006, shortly before high school graduation. Fiancé was there, we were running around some port town in MA taking pictures, videos, and being goofy. They were free-running, I just documented and looked grumpy, I guess.

[Finnegans Wake]

Glad to give you a chuckle, and yes, that's pretty much the misspent youth of FW in a nutshell. I pretty much hated the clubs, always felt very pissy there with all the little preening schmoes, and was always much more into staying home, putting on my vinyl Second Edition and splattering paint a la Pollock, and thinking about how I was going to blow up literature, man, because I had ideas that were like... beyond beyond. Most of my friends then were ~6 years younger and still into clubbing, but we also had fun doing the drinking/whatever/bonfires in the woods kind of thing.

Then suddenly everyone got married and settled down and here we are!

[justyouraveragecavemen]

Then suddenly everyone got married and settled down and here we are!

This past weekend we (wife's high school friends and their spouses) went to the mountains and stayed in a cabin overlooking Gatlinburg, TN. We acted like none of us had kids for a couple days.

Today is the first day I feel normal again. Normal as in not drunk or hungover. We lived it up though. It was a blast. I highly recommend liver water-boarding on occasion.

[jenn26point2]

So I have a rather large bill for lab work (over $100) from getting my thyroid tested earlier this month. BIG ASS SIGHS. At least I get paid Friday.

See if they will let you make payments. Our hospital does. I was paying $25 a month, plus whatever I could come up with, until it was all paid off. They are willing to help, but you have to ask for it. And while paying something off slowly may not appeal to you, it's better than being broke for a month.

1. flowers. They die and frankly no one remembers them. The one exception to this is perhaps the bride's bouquet. For flower girl(s) if you have one, try to see if you can get discarded petals from florists - ones they would throw away. You are just throwing them on the floor anyway.

I splurged on flowers b/c I don't like silk flowers. I had an enormous bouquet and the bridesmaids had smaller ones. I spent probably $700 on my flowers. I was told to "dry" them in the freezer... note, white lilies do NOT do well in the freezer. I should have spent the money to have it preserved. But... that having been said, the rose pedals are in a box in our basement. *shrug*

2. The dress - sure you want to look nice. That said you can look nice without spending $800. Do you need lace, ruffles, and frills? Chances are if you said yes you will end up looking like Honey Boo Boo or someone going to their Quincenera. Perhaps a thrift store for a kick ass vintage gown or Craig's list.

I spent $1,000 between dress, poufy underdressthing, tiara, veil and bra/corset thing. I didn't wear the bra/corset thing. I looked much better and less "overflowy" without it. My dress now hangs in my daughter's bedroom closet... probably turning yellow.

3. The booze - open bar? Not if your friends drink like mine. F' that noise.

What he said. We did a free keg and that was it. If you wanted mixed, you were buying.

4. Food - if you have any culinary schools in the area you may want to check with them. Our community college has a culinary club. We cater weddings and such at far lower rates (and often better food) than caterers in the area.

Gma and Gpa on Brad's side gave us a pig for the wedding. MIL and FIL roasted it. We all sat around on Thursday before the wedding and chopped the cooked meat. MIL froze the chopped meat. Day of ceremony, she threw it all in a roaster with some BBQ sauce. Cheap right there - if you have someone who will gift you a pig...

She paired it with some homemade potato salad (she worked at a school and her boss was nice enough to let her order the stuff on the school's account and pay the school back, for the discount), baked beans, and chips. I got a 5 tier cake, 2 large sheet cakes, and 4 cheesecakes from a local non-commercial cake baker for $356 or so dollars. The cake was to feed 300 people, and we ended up taking more than half of it home.


Another note - why are you paying for your guests to attend the wedding? No no no... you're inviting them to take part in your special day... they can come or not. But you should not be responsible for the costs. Reserve a block of rooms at a local hotel and tell them where they can stay in the invite, but make the hotel well aware that you are not paying the cost. No one should expect you to foot the bill for them attending the wedding.

My major expenses were dress ($1,000), flowers ($700), cake ($350ish), church/officiant ($400), organist ($100), photographer ($750). The rest was spent on decorations, gifts for the wedding party, and Brad's tux. Invites were free b/c we ordered them from the place we got our tuxes from. Oh, and the reception room was $200 b/c StepMom worked for the county fairboard (we had our reception in a banquet hall at the county fairgrounds). Used Brad's truck as the 'get away' vehicle, so no limo fee.

Weddings can TOTALLY be done on the cheap. I had $5,000 to spend, so I did. If I were to do it again, I'd go cheaper and pocket the rest of the money for a nice vacation. Oh, for our honeymoon, we went to Table Rock Lake in Missouri with the intent of camping (in a cabin - guess that's not really camping) and fishing. Fishing sucked, so we spent most of our time in Branson, Mo.

[jenn26point2]

Wanted to add something to #4 above. If BBQ pork is something you'd consider, you could start buying up pork roasts now and storing them in a freezer for preparation later. Pork roasts are relatively cheap. You can usually get a really nice sized one for about $10.

[canio6]

Weddings can TOTALLY be done on the cheap. I had $5,000 to spend, so I did.

This is about what my first wedding cost. I didn't consider $5,000 cheap given the money I was making at the time. That said it is less than the cost of flowers at some weddings. Wedding #2 - $40 court cost. $200 for dinner. $240. Yeah, that was cheap, and actually I enjoyed it a hell of a lot more.

I am beginning to understand that I have a different idea of cheap

[naiadknight]

Ours was under $5k. We probably could've gotten off cheaper, but I LOVED the ranch and we had the $5k set aside for the wedding before we started planning. I think our grand total was around $3k for what we paid, excluding everyone else's contributions. My parents insisted on paying for ALL the food, Dad and Uncle insisted on doing the cooking, his parents tried to pay for the cake (I was two steps ahead of them on that), his Mom did my hair, and we DIYed almost everything but the dress and suit. I got the decorations at the dollar store. Music was my MP3 player that we ghetto rigged to their system.

[namelesswonder]

I didn't mean to say we are paying anyone to attend. We need to pay for transportation from a hotel to the house, most likely, as it's in the middle of the woods and there is no room for parking (for that many people). I've read that reserving a block of rooms may result in you picking up the cost of any rooms that aren't booked by the dates reserved, so I'm aware of that potential issue. I'm estimating that if people stay at least one night, we'd need to book at least 10 rooms, but that depends on how many more local people (people in MA, not flying in) attend and decide to drive back that night. My mom suggested that maybe people would like to camp out on the property overnight, but again, there needs to be somewhere to put the cars.

Pre-cooking the pig is an interesting idea. I kind of imagined hacking off bits at the reception (immediately after ceremony in the back yard). Fiancé's family had a pig roast for his high school graduation/going-away-to-the-Army party. I think a family friend would be able to provide a pig and would probably not make us pay for it.


My grandma's property. This is pretty far zoomed out because I wanted to show how long the driveway is (the house is not that large however). The trees and shadows kind of mask the open areas, but I've roughly circled them. I thought the ceremony could be back in the spot behind the house, the other former garden area could have some seating (maybe, or maybe just blankets for picnic style), and Princess Hill could have a small tent with refreshments. The property extends past the swamp, but it's all hill and trees.

There is also some open area by the pond, but it's fairly small. People might like to sit down there, however. Actually, the ceremony could be nice down there. We'll see.

You can also see the path that my grandfather cut through the woods with his tractor, 30+ years ago. It's fairly overgrown now. It's that diagonal line through the trees below "gardens" going to the lower left-hand corner of the image. That path goes down to the swamp (though you can also just walk straight through the woods behind the last open space behind the house, we cleared a lot of smaller trees there so it's kind of a shaded park) and up through the hills to the back of the property (40-50 acres).