I haven’t worn a wedding ring since I was pregnant with Eden. My hands have never slimmed back down to the way they were pre pregnancy. With our tax return, I was able to order a new ring. So I designed a ring that would utilize the small sapphires and diamonds from my original ring. (The part of my ring with the stones crapped out on me shortly after the wedding. The jeweler did a poor job or applying the stones to my band. So I was just wearing a plain band.)

I’m going today, after over a month of waiting, to pick up my ring. I’m freaking out because the jeweler called yesterday to tell me he didn’t set the stones like I wanted them. I wanted them set flush into the band so that it looks like they were just dropped into it. He put a small ring of white gold around each stone, so it’s not totally flush. At this point I don’t really even want to go pick it up. My appointment is at 11am and I’ll update you with how the ring turns out. Until then, I’ll pace the floor in worried anticipation.

UPDATE:

Well, it’s not exactly what I wanted, but I think I like it. It’s going to take a while for me to really decide. The pictures are horrible, I couldn’t get a good photo with my camera, but I hope this will at least give you some sort of idea.

I’ll try to get some better pictures later.

There’s a diamond on the top and the bottom and four sapphires on either side.

When asking for ideas in designing my ring, a very wise woman wrote this to me.

My point in telling you this? You just might want to consider a design that’s less than perfectly symmetrical, less than “perfect” in some way. Because that’s how life is, that’s how marriage is, and seeing your wedding band can remind you of it. When I have the presence of mind to notice my engagement ring when I’m in “a bad space,” it’s a good reminder of life’s messiness, and yet life’s wonder.”

I’m thinking of this as I think about this ring. Life isn’t always what you want, but that doesn’t make it any less beautiful, right?

For weeks now, I’ve been trying to break in to a blogging clique. But I’m throwing in the towel. I’ve posted comments to their every post, I’ve read with anticipation and it just isn’t happening. It’s like high school all over again.

Ahhh, well. I guess that I’m just going to have to get used to the fact that I’m just not the coolest evar. That my cool rating might be just a 7. Such is life, eh?

EDIT: I’m not going anywhere, don’t worry. *wink*

Yesterday the pet rat bit Honor. I was in the bedroom doing my makeup, he was at the front of the house in the playroom. He started crying and I could tell he was hurt, but I figured that he had just fallen down (which he does frequently) and I could hear that he was coming my way. I turned around and saw that his hand was totally COVERED in blood.

He kept saying “owie, mouse, owie, mouse”, and after I cleaned him up, I followed the trail of blood (on my newly cleaned CARPET) and it ended at the rat cage. It took forever to get the bleeding to stop and it was swollen all day yesterday. But today it’s looking much better, thankfully.

Eden keeps telling everyone, “The rat bit Honor. The rat has to go bye-bye.”

The thing that’s surprising to me is that I didn’t freak out at all the blood. I think I’m beginning to expect these things from him.

This weekend I planned a really fun memorial weekend activity, shampooing the carpets. These dern carpets were SO disgusting; it’s just what happens when you have Honor living in your house for any amount of time. Luckily we only have carpet in the bedrooms and back hallway. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to do the whole house.

So we loaded every single My Little Pony and dump truck out of the playroom, all the kids furniture out of their bedroom (there were some My Little Ponies in there too) and some of the stuff out of our bedroom. We planned to leave our bed in there and just clean around it.

When we arrived at our house, carpet shampooer in tow, we decided that we should take our bed out of the room so we could get the carpet totally clean. The problem was that we had piled ALL sorts of things on top of the bed. We’re talking like four loads of clean laundry and just about everything else that was on the floor or side tables. I distinctly remember that my glasses and the remote control were on the bed as well. You know, it’s funny when Jim’s carpal tunnel kicks in; he informed me that he could NOT shampoo carpets, his poor wrists… So I started shampooing the carpets while Jim loaded everything out of our bedroom.

After a long day of shampooing and ice cream smearing (see previous post), we wanted to watch a little TV. We weren’t able to load anything but the beds back in the rooms because the carpet was still damp. We searched and SEARCHED for the remote control (and my glasses were missing too.) Jim didn’t remember seeing it on the bed, so we assumed that it must have gotten piled into the laundry basket will all the laundry. We dug around in the laundry and couldn’t find it anywhere so we resigned ourselves to watching TV in the living room. (Aren’t we so spoiled?)

The next day we loaded all the everything back into the rooms and folded all the laundry (it took stinking forever!) and STILL no remote or glasses. We searched the whole house, all the time Jim insisted that he never saw the remote or my glasses. But it turns out he did, in-fact, see the remote and glasses and even thought to store them in a “safe” place.

He stored them in the trash can.

I had to bring the Nikon D70 back to the office. I guess they need it for weddings. I’m finding that I’m really surprised at how sad I am to have to give it up. I really, really, really liked that camera. And now I really, really, really need one. I keep searching my mind as to how I could come up with twelve hundred bucks. I wish I would have known that I couldn’t have the camera before we used our income tax return. The kids don’t need a college fund right?

So I’ll let you share with me in my commiseration. Here’s one of the last good photos.

I had a nice Mothers Day. Jim did a such a good job convincing me that he forgot about it that I woke up mad at him. We were talking about Mothers Day with the girls we were watching and Jim started freaking out saying that Mothers Day was next week because it’s always graduation Sunday. This is the first year in as long as I can remember that Mesa State College hasn’t had graduation on Mothers Day.

But (luckily for him) he came through with flying colors. The kids got me some candy and a Dora the Explorer card which was really appropriate since all Eden talks about all day is explorer stars and crocodile lake. Jim surprised me with hand blown margarita glasses and a shaker from Pier 1. (And you know how the rest of our day went, we had to test out my new glasses!)

My mom and little sis came over for lunch and we had tons of food! This is the desert I made.

It’s an ice box cake and the easiest thing I’ve ever made.

You layer Nabisco Chocolate Wafer Cookies with sweetened, whipped cream. I added some mint flavoring to the whipped cream. Then top with mini chocolate chips. Refrigerate for at least four hours and ta da! It was really, really yummy.

The superchic[k] show was pretty rockin. It was SO much more relaxed than the last show and I really enjoyed myself. My friends, five face down, opened. The show was just in time for the release of their new CD. Also LA Symphony played. They’re a rap group. Usually I’m not really into rap, but they were great, just their energy alone was enough to appreciate.

We did pretty good on ticket sales, enough to break even, so that’s a plus. I also learned an important catering lesson. For this show, rather than going with a regular caterer, I just ordered food from Olive Garden. It’s amazing how reasonable take out food is! We fed 36 people and it was only $200. There’s no way we all could have eaten at Olive Garden for that. Too bad I didn’t know that for the last show…

Anyway, one cool thing about my day yesterday was that I was running Melissa of Superchic[k] to Starbucks. She was asking about my super cool new coat that I got at Old Navy (of course) and asked how recently I bought it. It was just a few days ago, so we swung by and she bought one too. All I have to say to that is HA! Jim, see, my coat IS cool!

The concert went, well… I’m just too tired to write about it now, I’m going to take a nap and write more later..

EDIT:

Ok, Tuesday was such a crazy day! I was up at 6:45am and we got to bed around 2am. The concert went fairly well, except for the fact that the headliner didn’t even get to play. The concert was out at the fairgrounds and of course it had to be the windiest day EVER in Grand Junction. Toby Mac was almost done with his set when they decided that it was so windy that it was getting dangerous. I was sitting at one of the product tables when I heard the announcement that Audio Adrenaline wouldn’t be going on. I was shocked! I really think that most of the people came for Toby Mac anyway, so I didn’t really hear too many people complaining. It was so cold out there that I think everyone was just glad to come inside.

photo courtesy of my friend Kevin.

Other items of note:
*I drove many of the various band members around, including Toby Mac and Mark, the lead singer of Audio Adrenaline. They were all nice, just really…. normal.
*After the concert, the crew was bringing down the (huge wall of) speakers and they flew out and knocked a monitor onto the 40 thousand dollar sound board (that’s how windy it was.)
*There were 1217 paying people, which isn’t too bad for a Tuesday night. Not what we were hoping for, but it seemed pretty full.

I’m still wiped out. We’re doing one more concert, May 1 (Superchick), and after that I think we’ll all go sleep for a week!

I just got back from Sams Club. There I purchased 288 bottles of water, 192 cans of soda and various other items such as yogurt, hot tamales and salsa. Why you ask? Our company is promoting a large scale concert. These are national level Christian bands – Audio Adrenaline, Toby Mac, Kutless and Hawk Nelson. The show is tomorrow and I’m in charge of the food. No, I’m not dumb enough to prepare it all myself, but I’ve arranged for the catering and bought all the snacks and beverages. Let me tell you! Catering is so stinking expensive. I think we’re definitely in the wrong business.

When I think that we spent all of three maybe four hundred dollars on food for our whole wedding, I cannot believe how much it is going to cost us to feed forty eight people lunch and dinner. It’s amazing all the “stuff” that they require. Certain brands of tea, specific kinds of soda and the really strange thing: One (just one) 16 ounce bottle of orange Gatorade. Please keep your fingers crossed that I can find a stinking 16 ounce bottle of Gatorade!!! I guess it could be worse, they could be asking for a bowl of M&M’s with all the green ones picked out… it could be worse.

I will be so glad when all this is over.