Raining, cloudy and crummy outside. Forecast for tomorrow is for more nasty, rainy, chilly windy crap clouds garbage weather. The gym downstairs is entirely wrapped in plastic and reeking of paint. It's supposed to re-open tomorrow, but from the looks of it, that ain't happenin' for quite some time.

Need. Exercise. Please send gym equipment. Thanks. 

So far, I’ve only had the ‘pleasure’ in wedding planning of wrestling with the implications of hurting other peoples’ feelings, but today I got the ‘pleasure’ of having my feelings hurt. I suppose that’s to be expected. It’s a two-way street around such a big occasion. Sometimes you wield the spongy whack-a-mole club. While other times, you’re the one sticking your head up through the whack-a-mole hole and you get bonked on the noggin.

My favorite uncle, who lives in Ireland with his awesomely fun wife and their two-year-old son, whom I’ve only met as an infant, emailed to tell me they aren’t going to make it to my wedding. They are opting instead to take their full four-week vacation this year at once, and the time that it worked with both of their schedules was June. And so as it turns out, I won’t see them this year.

When members of your family live in another country, the only supposedly guaranteed time you’ll see them is weddings and funerals. So the fact that they would purposely plan to not attend a family wedding, well. Just, wow.

It doesn’t exactly seem like a slap in the face. I know they aren’t specifically shunning me. They just wanted to carry out this dream four-week vacation. Right?

But then the other side of that coin is that they are choosing their vacation over witnessing the biggest thing that’s ever happened to me. I’ve always looked up to them and I enjoy their company. I want to see them, and they are choosing to blow me off. And that stings.

I’ve officially been whacked over the head.

This morning I got up at 5:30 a.m. to take a spinning class. I’m neither sane nor rational at that hour, which helped me get out of bed in the dark. It did not, however, help me to remember to shut off my alarm properly, which means that I hit snooze instead and left Steve to suffer through a full seven minutes of agony and scrunching a pillow over his head until I remembered to come make sure that I shut the thing off.

The spinning instructor was delightfully perky, and I marveled that I was in a room full of these mythical creatures called “morning people.” Spooky. Except some of them seemed pretty damn grumpy, so maybe I’m wrong about that. The class seemed kind of cliquey and the teacher introduced me as a newbie, so it seems this is a regular group. I kind of like my anonymity in the gym, so I was a little disappointed to learn it’s not a class full of transients that I would be lost amongst should I decide to continue with the morning disease.

In other news…

Yesterday I bought two audio CDs. One is the full seven hour, unabridged version of Getting Things Done, so that I can completely defy logic and half listen while I work, which is frowned upon in the world of GTD since I’m supposed to be all focused on one task at a time, and “mind like water” and all that, when I’m really approximating “mind like mud.”

The other CD is about self hypnosis, which I listen to in the car. The psychiatrist (or is he a psychologist?) on the CD explains that there’s nothing hocus-pocusy about hypnosis, and that it’s more like imaging or pretending, so what I’ll really be doing is what I like to call ‘brainstorming’ about what I want to accomplish. I think in the end, it will be helpful to unwind with a little brain imagery after a long workday so that I feel refreshed upon walking in the door. That’s the plan anyway. Let’s see if it works.

I’ll try anything, clearly.

While I’m training for this 10-mile race and feel it’s within my right to eat the Eastern Seaboard, I bring you:

1. Tostitos Hint of Lime. Sour cream and onion chips and Doritos also fall under this category; I don’t have as much unbridled hysteria when around them, although it’s close. I will occasionally find myself examining individual chips to determine the spot with the highest concentration of powdered flavoring for optimal tongue placement when I put the chip in my mouth. Please tell me somebody else does this.

2. Fritos with jalapeno cheddar dip. Inexplicably delicious. Gooey cheese with salty, crunchy chips. On second thought, entirely explainable.

3. Ice cream of any kind, but specifically Edy’s Take the Cake. Yellow cake flavored ice cream with frosting swirl and multicolored sprinkles. Like a child’s third birthday party in my mouth. I don’t even like your standard bakery birthday cake, but mix it in with ice cream, and it becomes my holy grail.

4. Pizza. This was a tough one for me, moving down to the DC area from New York. Ah, New York. Where pizzerias put shavings of authentic sweet Italian sausage onto pizza as your sausage topping. Someone please explain to me how, once you leave New York, warmed-up frozen breakfast sausage is acceptable as a pizza topping. (I’m talking to you, Papa John. Better ingredients my ass.) I’ll admit though, my standards have lowered, and I’ve pretty much given up my quest for awesome pizza, and I would eat Papa John’s any day of the week. Just not with that crap they put on it that masquerades as sausage.

 

Not to be confused with sharks that have laser beams attached to their heads. Or ill-tempered mutated sea bass for that matter. (If you’re confused, that’s an Austin Powers reference.)

This is going to be the Busiest Week Ever. Not to be confused with the Best Week Ever.

Although next week could possibly be the best week ever, because I will have a feeling of triumph and success after all of this non-stop toiling.