Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Top 5 Tuesday

Dear Internets,

Firstly, thanks for letting me know that I'm not the only person who says "vicious cycle" instead of "vicious circle." Yesterday, I did my best to break out of my vicious cycle by eating three healthy meals and going to CrossFit. Unfortunately, I also had one of those awful nights in which my mind was going 95 miles an hour (or... a lot... of kilometers per hour) until 4:30 a.m. I only got about three hours of sleep, but I'm going to try to avoid letting that derail me.

I thought I'd try something a little different today. Back in the days of my second blog (I didn't really know what I was doing, so I started with TypePad blog and my own domain, then took a giant step backward to a MySpace blog), I used to do a weekly post called "Top 5 Tuesday." It was like my bullet points posts, only better organized. I thought a Top 5 Tuesday post would be a nice change of pace for this blog. (Like ham for Thanksgiving or something.)

Without further ado, here are The Top 5 Things That Kept Me From Sleeping Last Night:

5. Imaginary blog posts. For some reason, I start mentally composing blog posts when I can't sleep at night. I used to get up and actually write down my late night ideas. Then I realized that "great ideas!!" from 2:00 in the morning are rarely even coherent ideas the next morning. They still keep me awake though.

4. Work stuff. I've been stuck on a problem at work. It's boring and computer-y so I won't get into it, but it is not so fun.

3. Second job stuff. Things have been weird there lately. One of the office staff people called me about a minor problem a couple of weeks ago when Bailey was sick. I shouldn't have answered the phone (I'd been crying all day) but I did, and now I feel like they think I'm some sort of crazy emotional weirdo. I don't know whether to try to repair the damage or cut my losses and just have one job for a while.

2. Bailey. As I've mentioned before, he got really really sick a couple of weeks ago. The vet had no idea what was going on, and was saying scary stuff about possible liver or kidney failure. For a few hours, I really thought we were going to have to put Bailey to sleep. He is doing much better now, but he lost about 10% of his body weight, and the vet still isn't sure what happened. I have to make sure Bailey gets enough exercise for stress relief but not so much that he loses any more weight (he was a skinny dog before he lost any weight - he's skin and bones now) and be really careful about what I feed him. I'm sure worrying about the situation isn't really helping anything, but I can't help it.

1. Early onset wedding stress. Before I got engaged, I figured Achilles' and my wedding was going to be a completely low stress and fun celebration. I was not going to be a bridezilla; everyone, including my (one) bridesmaid, would wear what they wanted, eat cupcakes, and dance to fabulous music (even the Macarena, if they really wanted).

Ha. Hahahahahaha.

Internets, something turns screwy in people's brains when they hear the word "wedding." Among other things, I've already been told that I'm too old to wear white (I'm 28), our budget is "ridiculous" if it doesn't include fancy table linens (I don't even have the energy to summon words to express how little I care about table linens in any way, honestly), and that I'm nuts for wanting to allow kids (my 3-year-old nephew is one of my absolute favorite people in the world - I don't care if you have kids at *your* wedding, but I'd like for him to come to mine and Achilles'). One person already threatened not to come to the wedding over one of those three issues. The crazy part is, I'm sure the same people would freak out if I wore a red/pink/blue dress or we spent a ton of money or we *didn't* allow kids. It's hard (for me at least) to believe it, but there are actually people out there who want to be everyone's hop on backseat wedding coordinator.

***
Thanks for letting me vent, Internets. You're a real trooper. I'm feeling much better now that I wrote this all out.

Yours much less stressed-ly,
Jane

7 comments:

Kim said...

"...but there are actually people out there who want to be everyone's hop on backseat wedding coordinator."

There are a ton of those people...BEWARE.

Anonymous said...

Money usually keeps me up at night... I'll start crunching numbers and then I'm up for hours... ugh Hopefully you sleep well tonight! :)

Anonymous said...

DUDE! I totally write blog posts in my head and I'm always so sure they're AWESOME. Until the next morning then I'm like...meh.

Also, I suspect that when a wedding (or even babies) are involved everyone has a damn opinion. I say do what you want and if someone refuses to be there then they're bad people. I mean COME ON. It's your wedding for pete's sake.

doahleigh said...

I do my best writing in my head when I can't sleep. Once when I was in college I wrote this whole thing in my head at night, then I got up and put it down on paper. The next morning I wrote the rest of the article and turned it in. My professor raved over the part I had written in my head at night and was only so-so on the rest of it. I need them to invent a machine that transcribes my nighttime thoughts I guess.

Also, I'm planning a wedding too, and I'm determined to keep it low-stress. So far it's working, and I'm so happy about it. I refuse to let my wedding become anything less than a happy event.

Elizabeth said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Elizabeth said...

Weddings bring out the worst in some people! Stand strong, and stick to the things that really matter to YOU. You're going to be the one reflecting on the day in ten years, not your critics!

Anonymous said...

I've never heard anyone say vicious circle - how odd! It's vicious cycle, all the way. OMG, I am so with you on the late night blog post thing. I had a great idea (I think) while lying in bed last night but fell asleep and now for the life of me cannot recall what it was :@