Friday, October 24, 2008

Another night alone?

I don't like this rotation that Adam's doing...of course, I'm sure he doesn't like it either. At least he should be home around noon tomorrow rather than having to stay until 6 like he did last time. Almost 40 hours in one continuous shift. We decided it wouldn't be that bad to work all 40 hours at once if you had the rest of the week off. Of course, you'd still have to spend most of the next day recuperating from the crazy long shift. I'm not sure what specialty Adam will end up going into, but I'm not really looking forward to tons of nights on call during his residency.

So. I think its time for some photos to be posted. I actually want to start with the week before the wedding, in which many, many, projects were completed. I'm doing this partly so I'll remember ears in the future, and partly because I don't yet have photos from the wedding. They're on their way and should be here at the beginning of the week. However, I know it will take a few days to sift through them and pull out our favorites. Alright, I'll start off with ThursdayFriday the 21/22 of August. For Thursday's report, lets just say that the reason Thursday was run into Friday in the previous sentence was because it was run into Friday in real life. I think we might have had 2 hours of sleep Thursday night... Adam had the whole week off before we came home, and he did quite a bit of helping me gocco our favors and also ran a lot of errands, etc. Still, we ALWAYS wait until the last minute to pack, so why would this trip be any different? We actually spent most of Thursday night loading general wedding crap that had spent the last 19 months (wow...long engagement) piling up in our apartment. At least it started feeling like crap when it was 3am and we were running out of room very quickly in Adam's car. This was without any of our actual luggage... So, I slept a bit around 5am and I believe Adam actually just stayed up finishing some goccoing. In two very short hours and drug myself to work on Friday. My lovely and wonderful boss let me leave work Friday around noon so that we could get going. However, we still had to pack, remember? So, I think we finally left around 5, just in time to hit rush hour in Memphis! YES!! Wonderful start to our trip! There isn't much to say about the actual trip except that we spend most of the drive sifting through our music and working on our wedding play list. We didn't even have a first dance song at that point! We made the trip as useful as it could be, because at that point, every second felt like it was needed.

The trip went well, until we hit about two hours of stopped traffic between Nashville and Knoxville. There had been a huge wreck about 11am and at 10pm that evening, they were just clearing up the wreck. We heard via Adam's phone and data plan that both sides of the interstate had been closed. Seeing as how we were in one of those middle-of-nowhere spots that didn't have an exit. So, at that point, it was ok that we didn't leave until 5....we wouldn't have gotten home much sooner than what we did and we probably would have been pretty pissed. Of course, the inevitible happened just as we ran upon the traffic: I just announced, "Let's stop at the next exit...I have to pee"...I'm not sure that those words should ever be uttered on a road trip unless the car is safely within walking distance to the next exit. As Adam also needed to pee, we contemplated all the options we had at that point. There were no empty bottles...don't laugh, I've done it before, and I'm sure that some of you have at least contemplated it....don't lie, now. The terrain around us was going to be treacherous in the dark as there was about three feet of level ground, completely lit by car headlights, before the ground dropped off sharply. I really didn't want to risk one of us breaking our leg a week before the wedding, so we sat in pain until we got through the mess. I don't really remember what time we finally got home, but we didn't get to sleep until 5am Sat morning, that I do know, because on Saturday, it was up at 8am to be in Knoxville by 10 for my final dress fitting. I'll stop here as Saturday was my wonderful, fabulous bachelorette party! Adam did his thing too that night, but it got crashed! All in good fun though. Amanda took photos of my dress fitting on Sat morning, but when she sent them, they didn't go through for some reason. (pssst...please send them again). So, instead, here's me in the dress when we found it last Christmas. The look on my face here was, "did we really just find my wedding dress in 2 hours?!?"

ok...well, wordpress doesn't seem to want to upload photos tonight.  ugh...i guess this post will have to remain photo-less for now.  Sorry!

I feel like there should be other photos to post related to this portion of the trip, but honestly, I don't remember what photos we took...lack of sleep, I suppose. You're probably lucky I remember anything at all about these early days. Adam and I broke down and paid for a flickr pro account, which is good cause that whole 10megs a month free uploads just wasn't cutting it. I (and sometimes we) take WAAAYY to many photos, and now my standard photo on my wonderful, beautiful Nikon D80 is about 8 megapixels each. I could probably get about 3 photos a month uploaded. And of course, I never remembered to actually upload the photos each month. So, when we get past uploading our honeymoon photos to Flickr, I'll look to see if there's anything fun to add photo-wise. If I get dress fitting photos, I'll come back and upload them to this post too.

Well, I might be an old lady and go to bed before midnight on a Friday night. Oh well, I don't really sleep enough as it is. I hope everyone else has a lovely evening!

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

time to write, but not much to say.

I was planning on writing a blog post tonight (which, I guess I am technically doing) because I'm home alone tonight (for the first time as a wife), as Adam is doing an overnight rotation at LeBonheur. Well, really its more like a 37 hour rotation, but we'll try to look on the bright side. However, I don't really have much to say. I took my shower at 9pm and just rummaged through the fridge for dinner after getting home an hour and a half late and going for a run. Its probably a good thing that I don't live alone. I might be a sad reclusive woman with 12 cats! Ok, probably not 12, but I think I'd have at least two if it weren't so expensive to own pets at our apartment.

I was hoping to have photos to begin sharing with you but we haven't received them yet. Brian said he was sending them out last week, so I think I'm gonna double check with him to see when he actually sent them to make sure our post office Adam and I really did have a lot of fun that week, even though we were exhausted and working on projects until almost 3am each night. Think of how much wouldn't have been done if we didn't have wonderful people helping us! I think I've mentioned them before, but we really did appreciate people taking the whole week off of their jobs just to help us with our wedding! What lovely friends and family Adam and I have!

Since the wedding, I haven't quite been able to shake the addiction of looking at wedding blogs. I've definitely shaved down the amount of them that I'm reading, but there are lots of blog writers who have had their weddings a month or so after our wedding, so I have to hang around to see their photos of the weddings I've read so much about over the past months of my own planning! Other reasons to keep reading wedding blogs - awesome give-aways and contests. I'm a bit sad to say that I didn't win the contest I asked many of you readers to vote for, but I was surprised to even have one of the top entries as I put it together at the last minute! Here's the result for any of you who didn't get a chance to see it:

frst inspiration board

I'm rather excited about how it turned out considering I only had a few actual photos from the wedding. I've been going through my saved photos that I used for inspiration and pulling out the ones that I liked the most. I had always intended on putting together an inspiration board before the wedding, so as to actually have some inspiration all in one location rather than in numerous bookmarked websites, torn out magazine photos, and random photos in 5 folders on my computer. However, seeing as how many photos I found had direct impact on the wedding, I thought it would be cool to see a board of photos I've saved compared to a board of photos from the actual wedding.

So, that's about all....I'm going to spend the rest of the evening watching The Daily Show and The Colbert Report - the best way to get the news of the day! - and look for some bridesmaid dresses for Heather (I haven't forgotten you, I promise!).

Oh, one more important announcement - my brother is engaged! He proposed to Brittney last Friday on her birthday by surprising her in New York! I haven't gotten all the details yet, but the most important detail is that he asked and she said yes! I'm so excited for them!! Dane told me two weeks before he proposed and I was a good girl and only told two people, both who lived out of the state and who weren't individuals they would have called themselves. I had to tell someone!

CONGRATULATIONS BRITTNEY AND DANE! WE LOVE YOU!

Thursday, October 16, 2008

This morning began

...with good coffee, rain tapping on the window, and a blueberry cake doughnut. If only it was tomorrow morning, I would be at home on the couch rather than sitting in my office at work. I think I want one of these umbrellas from the Umbrella Society for days like today when I have to walk in the rain.

umbrella-1.jpg umbrella society 2 umbrella society 4umbrella society

Oh, I think I'll have soup for lunch...

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

It's been a long time, baby

I want to apologize for the terrible lack of posting - I know I've said this before, but I do want to be better about posting, and since I want to review the week before the wedding (which was busy, wonderful, fun, and stressful all at the same time, and Adam and I couldn't have done it without some very lovely people who spent the better part of a week helping us. We love you lots!!). I got an email from our photographer last night letting me know that our proofs are ready! I'm so excited to see them. For any of you who didn't get the link from me when he posted a few on his website, you can see them on his blog. Here are a couple of my favorites:
 mom-and-shoes.jpg awesome-photo.jpg sparkler-exit.jpg

So, like I said, I can't wait to see the rest! And, Adam and I still have another session to do with Brian, which I'm not going to say too much about just yet.

I do want to update you on what's been going on medically with me. A month and a day before the wedding, I was getting very excited. I had a post planned - nothing too exciting, but something to mark the occasion. However, someone had other plans for marking the final month countdown. I woke up that next morning, august 6th, and as I was getting ready for work, I suddenly had excruciating pain in my abdomen. I had had some pain the previous evening and already had a doctor apt on the 8th. Well, let's just say that there was NO way I was going to wait two days for an answer to the horrible pain I was feeling. So, I laid on the couch until the doc's office opened at 8:30 and told them I HAD to come in that morning. There was only one way I had found to lay that didn't hurt as bad as other positions, so the 45 minute drive to the doctor was awful...in rush hour traffic, no less. The diagnosis was an ovarian cyst, which I later found out to be two of them growing into each other. After a prescription of controlled narcotics, the pain was just slightly more tolerable...and I spent the next four days on the couch, in the same position, eating only granola bars as everything else made me nauseated. I lost a quick 5 or so pounds in those days and also lost a LOT of time working on my projects. Even after I was able to get up off the couch, everything was difficult, even standing up to walk or shower. Soo....not much got done except a lot of worrying. There was talk of surgery, but with a long recovery period of 6 weeks or more (uh...I had three weeks, not 6...). If we did the surgery before, there was no way I would be recovered by the wedding...and if we waited, there was the chance the cysts could burst suddenly, requiring immediate surgery as well. So, the honeymoon to Jamaica was out...and there was even talk between Adam, Mom, and myself of how feasible it would be to postpone the wedding. We knew if that happened, we most likely wouldn't have the wedding until Adam graduated, unless it was a quick weekend thing. So, we just said we'd keep going as if nothing was wrong. I went to the doctor once a week until the wedding and we had to re-plan the honeymoon. Luckily we had bought trip insurance at the last minute and were able to get all but about 200 dollars back. I gradually had less and less pain leading up to the wedding, but still a lot of anxiety. After the honeymoon, I went back to the doctor and he decided everything looked fine and seemed to be clearing up on its own, so no surgery. There's been no problems since, but I really hope this is a one-time occurrence.

Since we've been home from the wedding and honeymoon (to Vail, CO), I've been on a bit of a wedding break. There was TONS of cleaning to be done and I still have craft supplies strewn about the apartment that need to be sorted through, but its much more manageable. I feel like I'm finally ready to begin going back through the wedding again, to share it with you as well as to keep it for myself. The memories are nothing but lovely and Adam and I both feel the wedding was perfect, even despite a few things we forgot to do (more on that later). However, I needed a bit of time to step back from the planning and details and just let it sink in that I am Mrs. Mabe - or will soon be officially...I decided to wait until after the election to begin changing my name so that there was no question of who I was. My vote WILL count, dangit!

So...I'm going to be better with blog posts, and I'm going to get to major work on my thank-you cards. Then...its onto rearranging the whole apartment...things just seem to be everywhere!

Ok...I should be in bed now...I got my flu shot today and I'm feeling a bit extra tired... Well, like I said, I'll talk to you soon!

Love, Mrs. Mabe