Thursday, March 29, 2012

Red, i see red, i see red, i see red, i see red.

Find a heart that will love you at your worst, and arms that will hold you at your weakest. I think I have found that heart and it’s definitely got two of those arms attached. I feel extremely lucky and blessed. I can whole heartedly say that now that Engagey and Wedding are on the scene, I have magically fallen in love with Fiance all over again. Perhaps it’s being surrounded by cake and flowers all the time that does it. Who knows. But as Wedding hurtles toward us at break neck speed, it pays to take some time out to reflect on the relationship, what it means now and what we are in for post wedding.

More and more these days we are faced with friends and loved ones in the midst of relationship dramas. Add to this the seemingly never ending stories of friends of friends and complete strangers alike, going through whirlwind marriage break ups to rival even that of Kim Kardashian, you have to wonder where and why it all goes wrong.

I don’t know if I’m just ultra sensitive to it given my current state of wedding mania but it seems to be nearly weekly that I’m hearing of a called off engagement, a quickie divorce, or simply the breakdown of a long term relationship. Although I’m guessing it never ‘simply’ at all.

Did these girls go through the same thing I’m going through? Experiencing overwhelming feelings of love for their partner combined with an insatiable desire to make them happy forever? 

Lord knows no relationship is easy. Times get tough and arguments get had. That’s just a given when two people share their life, bed, breakfast etc.  If we were all the same, that life would be insanely boring. And I for one am an absolute stickler for a good argument. I love it. I find one of Fiances most frustrating traits is his inability and therefore resolute refusal to indulge me one single out and out screaming match. It drives me crazy. The moment he senses an difficult moment is brewing, he becomes a clam. I become a fierce dragon and he becomes a clam. A smart clam that knows anything he says will be twisted and manipulated and misconstrued just to maximise the ferocity and duration of precious argument time. Well I have news for you my molluscular companion, you’re friend Ronan Keating is wrong this time. You don’t say it best when you say nothing at all, at all. You say it worst when you say nothing at all. Your silence is fuel to the fire. But still, I have to pull out all the stops and come out with some outrageous, embellished statements in order to extract any kind of response from him. But usually it’s just silence.  “JUST FIGHT WITH ME GODDAMMIT!!” I am going to make chowder out of you.

I have sneaky strategy, based on building the pressure slowly. I guess it’s a bit like fishing. Start with a little bit of bait. No bites. More bait. No bites. Maybe throw some fishy burley in to encourage a bit more action. Hmmmm. Be patient, he will bite eventually. Hide the hook so he won’t see it coming, frame the argument in such a way that he will no longer be able to maintain his stubborn silence. Because we all know that silence does not constitute any kind of defence. Argue your innocence. It’s the only way through this. You know what? Fuck it, I hate fishing, don’t have the patience for it. I’m going in for the kill, time to ramp this baby up. So the pressure builds in the form of ridiculous, conniving remarks now crafted with one goal in mind. Bang. I’ve broken him down. He finally responds. But it’s always in this preposterous, high pitched whingey voice and the words tumble out of his mouth so fast that the punctuation and the oxygen is left behind. Words spilling over, drowning me in outlandish decibels. “OMG – shut up!” Fiance’s second most annoying trait. But it is effective. Mission accomplished. I do not wish to pursue the argument any further for two reasons;  a) I’ve already won b) the noise and the speed of said noise is so unbelievably irritating, I’d actually prefer the clam treatment. Sometimes it’s actually hard to keep a straight face after the squeaky speedy argumentative fiancĂ© appears.

Some other soccer wags and I have discussed perhaps introducing a card system into the house, much like those used by the referee during a match to warn and discipline offending players.  After years of careful observation, it seems that once they’ve fouled on the pitch and aroused the attention of the ref, they undergo this amazing transformation into the nicest guy in the world, instantly showering the opposing, downtrodden player with affection in the form of hugs, back pats and hand shakes. “Sorry mate, sorry, I’m sorry – you right? Didn’t mean to hurt you mate. Come here and give us a hug. You right? You’re alright. See ref, he’s fine. I didn’t do anything wrong ref. Let me explain to you what happened.” The biggest production ensues to try to convince the ref they didn’t mean it, it was an accident. It usually doesn’t work and the ref flashes his yellow card in their face, regardless of their Oscar worthy performance,  at which point they skulk off muttering obscenities under their breath.  Yellow means you have been naughty and if you do it again you can’t play anymore. Two yellows equals a red. Red is bad. There is no coming back from a red. Red equals sin bin to go and think about what you’ve done. Sometimes, if you’re really naughty, you can get a red straight away with no yellow warnings.


So, as long suffering wags, I could see how this method could be more effective than my current argument inducing strategy. You’ve pissed me off so you get a yellow. Cue pleading and begging for forgiveness (as per above) . Yellow cards trumps a clam. Or if it’s really bad, no argument, red card, get out of my face. Or maybe just get out.  Which leads me to believe that perhaps a few red cards have been involved in all these break ups lately. Whether they are the result of a single act or the culmination of several yellow card warnings.

Every relationship needs a few yellow cards now and then, but repeat offences are not tolerated. Anyway, the yellows in our house are largely infrequent and mostly for made up offences. The moral of the ramblings today is to maintain an acute awareness of where you are both at, all of the time. You have to keep checking in and checking up on the health of your mojo. It's so precious. Ignoring it will make it go away. People  change and people grow, keep rediscovering each other and grow  together. Be conscious that it is probably not a fairy tale. It’s not meant to be. It’s having a hand to hold  tightly along the journey, a hand that is attached to the arm that will hold you at your weakest which is powered by that heart. The heart that will love you at your worst.

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

with a bit of a mind flip, you're into the time slip...

Hi. This is awkward. It’s been a while. It’s not that you haven’t been in my thoughts. You have been. Every day. Ok, that’s a lie, maybe every second day. If not once a week. God it’s been forever hasn’t it? I feel like such a bad blogger. Like I’ve abandoned you. Like I’ve abandoned myself. Because, at the end of the day, this really is nothing more than a self indulgent monologue. So really, that’s a good thing. Like I haven’t needed to have a chat to myself. Pah, as if. I talk to myself all the time. I have the BEST chats with myself. Until I get annoying. And then it’s back to awkward, nothing more awkward than the moment you realise you’ve pissed yourself off, nowhere to hide from that.

OK truth be told, I’ve got another excuse. I’ve been growing my nails, which makes typing a little difficult, which in turn makes me thoroughly question my need to blog. So please excuse any typos from this point forward. Nails.

I can tell you that Wedding is progressing in leaps and bounds. I’m actually growing weary of people asking me how the wedding plans are going as I can’t remember the last time I laid an actual finger on the wedding plan. Other than that time I glanced at my budget with overwhelming confidence that it was completely and utterly under control. Eek. I hate money. Actually no, that’s ridiculous. I love money, but when it’s in spreadsheet form showing money spent against money owed, and one amount is disproportionately higher, money gets a bit tedious. When it comes to wedding, I like to say money schmoney. Pfft. Money? Money schmoney.

It’s not like there is an actual blue print plan of wedding. It’s not like a house plan. I like to think of it as a masterpiece in progress. It constantly evolves and transforms itself at every turn/day/mood. It’s always lovely though. It reminds me of a recent episode of ‘Grand Designs’ in which the family was building this sustainable, crazy, amazing house based on the design that lived only in the patriarchs head. The timeframe wasn’t locked in, nor the budget. It was just this thing that they all had to have, the family completely got it, completely trusted in dads vision and that, eventually, he would create something so unbelievable. So, after 5 years they had a remarkable home kind of nearly on the way to being finished and a bit over budget. Meh. Budget smudget.

It’s been nice to have this time to sit back and bask in our betrothal. It’s the whole reason why we chose not to rush the nuptials - to avoid feeling unnecessary stress or pressure. I mean I don’t begin to profess that this process is without its stress, but it’s necessary stress. They are inherently different. But I’m totally in a time slip.

I’m subscribed to a few wedding blogs, one of which in particular is very, very good and therefore tends to become a sort of black hole in the universe for me. I can lose hours on this site. I’ve also taken to getting overly excited by incidentals. And I mean breathless with excitement. Giddy almost. It’s pathetic. But it’s so fun. My Achilles heel at the moment would have to be flower girls. OMG THEY ARE SO CUTE. One day I spent nearly two hours beside myself with excitement copy and pasting random flower girls and emailing them to MOB one at a time. A few days later it was flowers. Poor MOB. I get excited.

The day I found potential bridesmaids dresses? I very nearly wee’d in my pants. I sat in my chair at work almost convulsing with excitement. It can get lonely though. It’s not really a feeling that can be translated to other non-obsessed-by-anything-wedding types. They’ll just kind of glance at it and go “Meh – yeah it’s nice”. “Nice. Nice?” seriously. “Nice? It’s amaaaaaazing, it’s the most gorgeous little page boy outfit/ seating plan/invitation I have EVER seen.” Omg, invitations!? How can one little white piece of card with dove grey writing on it, be so god damn adorable? Ridiculous but its where I’m at, alone.  Funny, it has taken me a while to realise how little this means to everyone else who’s not me. It is a very solo project, but that’s ok. I still love it.

I’m only slightly concerned that I have actually lost track of time and keep telling people its 9 months when it’s actually 8. Hopefully I’ll catch up as the day gets closer. I’ll make up the time somehow. Hopefully not in my dreams. The ones where its 4:30pm on our wedding day and we’re not at our ceremony yet and we’ve just realised the photographer hasn’t turned up. No.

To counteract the loss of months, I’ve actually put myself on a new timeline. Wedding will be signed and sealed by September, to allow for other seemingly endless social engagements and activities to overtake that month and the next. So I’ve effectively discounted them from the timeline. They’re gone. So I think I also need to adjust how many hours are left and, in turn, the name of this blog. I’ll have to get around to that later. But there are so many other FUN things to do, like listen to potential ceremony songs over and over again. Seriously, I have three candidates, and I can not split them. Listening to them more, just makes me love them more, and I get a bit teary at times, which can draw some curious attention. Especially when I’m teary in the car on the way to work. People must think I really hate my job to be crying on the way to work. No, no, no, they clearly don’t know me - I usually do that on the way home. 

Another favourite past time of mine currently while I’m afforded such luxury, is honeymoon planning. Now THAT is fun. Dreaming of exotic locations where we have nothing to do except be Mr and Mrs, but that’s a whole new story. I promise I won’t leave it so long this time.