The Future!

This evening I'm sitting here typing on my computer and about to publish these words for people all over the world to see. Meanwhile, my dishwasher is cleansing my silverware and my Roomba is vacuuming my floor.

Nobody a generation ago would have even imagined this. My grandparents must have their minds blown daily.

My friends, the future is here.

"A" Student

This week has been hectic at both jobs. That doesn't mean, though, that my time at work has been all bad.

On Tuesday I was walking down the hall after school when one of my kids saw me and walked towards me. I was surprised because he's full of street-smart swagger, and even though he likes me very much he doesn't acknowledge me in the halls because he doesn't want everyone to know he still gets Speech.

As we neared each other he pulled a paper out of his pocket. "You wanna see my grade?" he asked me. This is a common request among my students. It's almost touching - many of their parents don't care or aren't available to ooh and ahh over good grades, so they'll often show other people who will care. And since I always care about my students' grades, I get a lot of wrinkled papers bearing A's and B's handed my way.

"Sure," I said, taking the sheet from him. I gasped. "Oh my gosh! What's this grade for? A project, or..."

"The quarter," he said, turning slightly pink.

"This is for the whole quarter so far? An A? A 99%? Isai, that's amazing!" I said. He wouldn't meet my eye but couldn't suppress his grin.

"You'll have to show it to your girlfriend," I teased him. "Tell her you're the smart one in the relationship now."

"No, she'd get mad," he said, still grinning. "She wouldn't let me get away with that."

"Well, nice to see she's keeping you in line," I said, turning to walk off. "And hey," I shouted as he began walking down the hall, "congratulations again! That's awesome!" He shot me another grin and left. I smiled to myself - it was nice to see him feeling smart and successful.

Bridal Magazines

Lately I've become interested in reading bridal magazines. At first I had good intentions - I was only going to buy one, and only so I could see what trendy ideas I could recreate myself for cheap. And, in my defense, my plan worked. I got some good ideas of crafts my mom and I could make to cut corners and still have things look impressive.

Then I got another magazine as a little gift from someone at work. And I bought another one when I was out with Mike. And I got another to read during my lunch hour since I'm sick of the newspaper. And at this point, I'm not reading it to get fake-it-for-cheap ideas. I'm reading it for the same reason most women read bridal magazines - for the pleasure of shaking open those glossy pages and, without saying a word, reaffirming your status.

No, not my status as a bride, silly. My status of not being as gullible as all hell.

See, bridal magazines embody everything that's wrong with the wedding industry. It's the message that you have to spend a ton of money, endure a bunch of stress, assume that your wedding is the center of your family's universe, and make everyone around you jump through your wedding-day hoops so you can have a wedding that's "beautiful," or "memorable" or "magical."

It's silly. To me, what will be beautiful and magical will be the opportunity to wake up next to Mike each morning for the rest of my life. Spending ten grand on a wedding, while certainly memorable, wouldn't be a positive experience.

So I like flipping through bridal magazines becuase it gives me the smug sensation of knowing that I'm getting married without going insane. "Six thousand for a wedding dress? A thousand for a honeymoon suite? Someone bothered to coordinate the color of the cake frosting with the flower girl's shoes? Oh boy," I crow as I toss each magazine aside, "Everyone who's getting married is stupid except for me!"

And then I log onto eBay to look for wedding shoes. I wanted to wear flip-flops but my mom nixed the idea. Ah well, you can't win 'em all.

Photo Blog

I love it when people post photos to their blog. You get to see what they see, view what they thought was important or beautiful enough to share. I'm especially partial to 1,000 Words a Day, and the fact that it's Mike's makes me only a little biased.

Go look!

Dress Acquired!

Well, I got my dress. Yesterday my mom and I went to a David's Bridal store. I chose that store not only because they'd have a lot of dresses, which would increase my chances of seeing one that I'd like without shopping around, but also because they were cheap. And so am I.

I got there and initially it was just as I'd thought - highly pastel, chirpy salespeople, weeping mothers, the whole nine yards. I had looked at pictures of dresses online so I had an idea of the ones I wanted, so my mom and I hurriedly grabbed some in a couple different sizes.

When a dressing room became vacant we were hustled over and I began trying on dresses. I had no idea that wedding dresses were so absurd to put on. There's a zillion layers of fluffy stuff and it's insanely heavy. I found a hole in the center where my body was supposed to go, wiggled in, and waddled outside to be buttoned up.

This is the first one I tried on which, unfortunately, didn't work out too well. The bottom edging looks cool, but it kept flipping up, and the back thing doesn't really stay all nice and swept out in real life. I also tried on this one, but in real life it's less billowy and more saggy. Plus all those billows are held in place with tacky rhinestone things, which you can't really see in the photo.

I also tried on a few more that my mom and I randomly pulled off the rack - one had a square halter top that did my broad shoulders no favors, and another had beading so heavy that it could deflect bullets.

***WARNING - Mike, stop reading!***

See, Mike's a little superstitious and doesn't want to see my dress until the day of the event. Ah well, it'll be a surprise. The dress I wound up choosing was actually the second dress I tried on. When my mom saw a picture of it on the internet she hated it because it has black embroidery. But when I tried it on, it fit great and looked very nice, so my mom loved it despite the color. You can check out my dress by clicking here. It's a photo album by FreeWebs, which is actually pretty cool. In the pictures I'm wearing a tiara and veil from the store, but I'm not getting those. I'm making them. People who buy that stuff from bridal stores are suckers - at Michael's I found a great little tiara for twenty bucks, and a veil kit for fourteen. I think that at David's they wanted $140 for the tiara alone. Screw that.

So, the wedding is coming along. We have a few more big things to cover - photographer, wedding bands - but it'll all get done. Weddings are SO much less stressful than I thought.