beneath the sheets of paper, lies my truth.

7 days. one more week. week. of. wedding.

it's kind of crazy. this is a lot of transition.
it barely feels like it was 11 months ago that i moved into the roslyn, and just saturday i moved the last of my stuff out and into our apartment, while simultaneously moving into my parents house for the week.
moving into my parents marks the last time i can really do this solo. i will never really live with them again.
next week i become a wife, i move, and i meet a new piece of life that i have never ever experienced.

if any of this sounds negative, i don't mean it to be. i'm a little overwhelmed by all the change, though by no means does that mean that i am less excited by what next weekend holds.

i'm really excited to live with andrew. i'm excited to acutally be moved in and have a permanent home again. i don't like being in limbo, though at the same time i really like being with my parents right now. it's nice to be taken care of when there is so much to think about.

and let me tell you, there is so much to think about.

(an aside: i successfully changed my voicemail back to english. no big deal.)

on the list of things that only i would manage to do...

so my phone battery has decided to suck a lot, and lately has been running low or dying by the end of one day of use. i have heard that it is good to have your phone die completely and then get recharged, for maximum battery use.

the other night, my battery was beeping a notification that it was low. so i decided that i should try to kill it completely in an attempt to make it last longer the next day. talking on my phone tends to take a lot of juice, so i called my voicemail and was randomly going back and forth between the main menu, and the extended menu options, just to kill time.

well, i got bored of just listening to the menu options over and over as my phone refused to die. so in a stroke of PURE GENIUS, i button mashed. once i stopped, i heard the phrase "your voicemail language preference is now set to mandarin".

"shoot", i thought to myself, "this is not good."

so i proceeded to go back through the language options to see if i heard correctly. it assured me that my langage was set to english (little did i know that meant "presently" and did not include "after i hung up the phone from this voicemail options session").

then i hung up. then i decided just to check.

my voicemail is now set to mandarin. i cannot check it. i cannot get it back to english. telus lady could not get it back to english.

true story. i cannot make this stuff up.

all this time.

yesterday i was asked what my least favorite part of the wedding planning has been.

i didn't even have to think.

easily, hands down...

the guest list & seating plan. we're not even done the seating plan but i already hate it. it's extremely satisfying when a group fits perfectly into one table, but let me tell you... those are few and far between. once we have our final final numbers submitted, it might make it easier. so we just did the pretend one to see how easy or hard it'll be, and will go from there. as for the guest list... it was painful for me. literally painful. slowly removing people from the list hurt so much. i love people. i have long lasting attachments to them that they don't even know about. so to remove them from a list of people i wanted to have at an exciting day, really stank. that said, we did the best we could and just had to acknowledge the boundaries within which we were working (aka $$).

i get my dress today.

i have never been one to dream up my dress or wedding. i'd thought about it, sure, but never really sat down to imagine the perfect _________ or the perfect __________. so when i went to my fitting on monday, i really didn't have much that i expected. not in a bad way. just i didn't know how to expect in that context.

so, i go with my mom & my sister. i'm off to a great start as i slam my elbow into the car door (only minor bruising, don't worry). but after that, i put it on and (insert angelic high pitched vibrato singing here) it was perfect!!!!! i mean, there were minor changes, but the dress fit so perfectly, everything about it is just wonderful. jill, the wonderful woman who made my dress, is truly an incredible and talented maker of epic clothing. that should probably be her title on her card, if she had a card.

so now, we are 18 days from the wedding (insert a holy crap here). i'm really excited. especially after the dress. it made it so real to me! details are being taken care of, though on occasion i have been losing a bit of sleep as i think up thing i could be forgetting and give myself anxiety. unfortunately, with or without wedding anxiety i seem to be doomed to having a lack of sleep. hopefully this little bit of kind of insomnia goes away soon. i have a (almost) sister in law to see, marathon relay to run, an apartment to pack up, a move to do, and last minute things to take care of, and oh, let's not forget... I GET TO GET MARRIED!

dark blue, dark blue.

there are 26 days until i am to be wed.

i have found that i am feeling less and less stressed as time goes on. things that i thought mattered a lot, are mattering much less.

this weekend i feel quite ill, and consequently lost a rather significant number of pounds. that is okay though, as my dress fitting is in 6 days and losing weight that fast means gaining it usually isn't terribly difficult. i (re)learned that i have a marvelous family, fiance, and set of friends. andrew stuck by me all weekend and was so willing to make me jello and homemade grandma soup and refill my gingerale cup. my friends ashli & kate came over and brought me soup and more gingerale (i drank a lot of that stuff) and did all our dishes. my family called me every day to see how i was doing.

i was able to recover in time for two important events: a friends wedding on saturday evening, and my wedding shower on sunday!

saturday was pushing it a little little bit, but andrew and i made it out to winkler and back with no incidents (aka me needing him to pull over while i barfed on the side of the road). my friend sonya and i have been talking about our upcoming weddings for months and months now, and after all that, missing her wedding would have been devastating to me. it was gorgeous.

the wedding shower was absolutely delightful also! it was my very first traditional kind of wedding shower, and i liked it. it was a room full of really important ladies in my life, who overwhelmed me with love and generosity. my sister (and mom) put so much work into it, and it was just perfect.

so, with that, i get myself back to work. i am happy.