Allergies

I am an allergy sufferer. I never had allergies until this past summer, when all of a sudden they sprung up on me. I had no idea what was happening. All I knew was that my throat itched like mad, which was very unusual. Well, I went to the doctor and gee, turns out it was allergies. So I got some medicine that did wonders. Now, apparantly I have spring allergies as well. I got some free Claritin samples from my doctor, but they have not been doing the job. They're not prescription strength, so that may have something to do with it. They aren't completely terrible-they help a lot, just not enough to have me not wanting to tear out my eyes and throat. Lucky for me, I have another doctor appointment scheduled for tomorrow and I'm going to beg him to write me out a very strong prescription as well as hopefully get some allergy eyedrops. I didn't even know, until I got allergies, that you could develop them. I always thought they were like food allergies-either you have them or you don't. As it turns out, many adults develop allergies. My roommate (who is pre-med and often tells me things like this) told me its largely due to the fact that we are such a clean society, or something like that, so we're not exposed to that many things as often and therefore are more susceptible to things such as allergies. Lucky me.

This could be worse than PMS

Addresses Galore

Yet another post about wedding plans. I think there will be a lot of those from now until the wedding. Eric and I are slightly behind on what we need to do, so we are devoting almost our entire evening this Thursday to working on getting things done. As for me, I have been working on what I can on my own, which basically comes down to getting addresses of my friends, and cousins who get their own invites. I've been doing really well-I only need a few more. Then I need to call home and get a few addresses for friends of the family, neighbors, etc. I've been working like crazy to get them all-I think I facebooked or emailed close to 2 dozen people, plus like I said I also have to call home and get some. I also printed off pictures of updos, so I'll have to put those in a safe spot to save for when I actually go do my trial run for my hair in late July/early August. Otherwise I've been thinking of what we still need to do, and stressing about things like tan lines and makeup, since I'm getting married in the middle of August, and I run, which means sports bra tanlines. Plus I have only halter swimsuits. I'm not exactly sure what to do. And with the makeup I'm completely lost. I can't even pick out my own foundation, let alone foundation that will match my tanned skin. And lipstick is another worry for me-there is red in my dress, but I don't want to try to match it, because it will look ridiculous on me. That, and I just heard that you shouldn't try to match your makeup with your dress, you should just go for an all-over beautiful, matching, glowing face. I suck at makeup. Eric thinks I should just get it done, but my lipstick would wear off throughout the day so I still need to worry about that. I know it's a trivial thing to worry about compared to things like paying for the wedding, but if the bride isn't gorgeous, the wedding is not going to be good. Oh, and I'm sortof worried about getting my dress alterations done in time (no offense to your mom Alan) so I need to call Michelle and ask if she can have it done by July 1st. I'm just worried she'll want to do something else after I get the original alterations done, plus I'm a worrier and I can NOT handle it if I get the dress the day before/of the wedding. No can do-I need it a good month or more ahead of time. So, I need to call her sometime soon.
On a positive note, my cool sister in law (Laura, in case you guys can't figure it out) called the other day to ask if I needed anything from her, which actually we sortof do, in the way of flowers. So, since she rocks at that apparantly, she is going to help Eric and I make our own flowers. Not sure exactly how to go about it, the actual making of them part (the buying them should be relatively simple I assume) so I'm putting my trust into her. If, as I've heard, she did the flowers for her own wedding (is that true?) then I am not worried. One less thing to get stressed about!

And when the sky is falling, don't look outside the window

Hair, Favors, and Music

Eric and I have been working more on wedding plans, especially since the big day is only 4 months and 2 days! We realized we needed to figure out our music so we could let the people who are singing at our wedding know, but I still haven't told one of them what songs we're doing. I need to get on that. We picked all of our music, and I'm very pleased with our choices. It was a tough call which song to use for our recessional-there were 2 or 3 that we really liked so finally we just picked one. We're hardly going to be in the church for that part anyway. Now we just need to let the church know which songs we're doing and figure out how to get the actual music to our cantors so they can practice, and figure out when they can practice with the organist if they even can. I hope the two of them will be able to get together before the wedding to practice together. We're having one of Eric's RA friends and a friend of ours from high school. They're both really good (otherwise we wouldn't have asked him) so I'm very excited for the music.

For some reason I got caught up looking at possible wedding updo's online last night, and of course once I started I couldn't stop. There are some really funky hairdo's out there, for lack of a better word. I can't believe some people would have their hair like that for their wedding. Then there were a lot that I thought were pretty but just not right for me. I did find a good number of hair do's that were fantastic, pretty much perfect. I want something simple, but not boring, and it has to be beautiful and fancy and elegant. I know, simple and fancy? I'm pretty sure that's a contradiction. We shall see. One thing is certain, my hair will look great. I'm going to eventually have to schedule a trial run for a couple of weeks before the wedding, and then the actual day of, plus my nails, and my bridesmaids' nails, and their hair, etc., etc., etc. Whew I'm going to be busy over the summer!

While I was looking for wedding updo's, I was directed to a webpage that supposedly had some ideas. I didn't really find anything but the website itself was a do it yourself wedding suggestion kind of thing, and I only briefly looked at it, but I think it might have some great ideas, and not that expensive. In fact, I think I found what I want to do for our favors, besides the little candy bag things we're doing. I've wanted all along to do something else, and something that is special or unique to Eric and me, but there really hasn't been anything that is plausible or affordable. Even the thing I found doesn't have any special significance, except that it's really cool. I'm not going to share it yet since we're not sure we're going to do it, and I don't know if Eric would want people to know everything we're doing for the wedding (plus he's concerned it will be out of season but I say who cares? what's practical about a wedding?) so I will wait to say what it is, but it's a really fun, cool, and probably inexpensive idea. I'm very excited. Later this week we're going to go shopping for it, and soon we're going to have to start shopping for decorations (I realized earlier today or late last night that I have no clue what we're going to do for pew decorations, oh great), and hopefully soon Libby will call from Epiphany about when we can do all the things we still need to do. I'm getting very annoyed, because it's about 4 months to go, we still have a ton to do, and she is very, very slow in getting to us. I think it's rude-Eric called over a month ago and she said she was working through the July weddings. I think it's about our time. I already don't know how we're going to fit everything into our schedules, plus the other wedding plans. It's getting to the point where I'm going to be the slightly annoyed but still polite bride. And to the point where I've started to have dreams about the wedding. Only one that was borderline "nightmareish". I'm sure once it gets even closer, I'll probably have more, and worse, dreams. Can't wait for that to happen.

These are a few of my favorite things

Snow

It's snowing right now, as I type this. In fact, it's been snowing all day long, and I think most of last night. I thought it was supposed to have stopped by now. Actually, I thought it was supposed to have stopped sometime in March. Now it's almost the middle of April. It's not so much the snow or the cold that bothers me anymore. It's the fact that I brought back all of my tank tops, and I haven't been able to wear a single one. I am getting so sick of my winter clothes. I don't even have my sweaters at school anymore, so I can't mix up my wardrobe at all. I feel like I'm wearing the same 5 shirts every week, just switching up which day of the week I wear them on so I don't weart the same shirt to the same class twice in a week. I actually dressed nice today just to give myself a change, how sad is that? I am more than ready to have 75+ degree days. My sandals and tank tops are crying out to me, as are my capris and gauchos. I hear we might make it to 50-something this Sunday. Wow, heat wave here we come!

The West coast has the sunshine
And the girls all get so tanned

Welcome to the World Coen!

Yay! Gina had her baby last night. Coen Bryan Andersland, 8 pounds, 20 1/2 inches. I'm going to see him right now-I thought I'd be one of the first in my family to see him but I'm actually one of the last, save for the other college kids and Matt and Laura. Well, time to go-I'm super excited!

Gaslight

Tonight in philosophy of film we switched topics, so instead of watching a bunch of happy-ending love stories (basically, the actual name is "comedies of remarriage") we're watching melodramas, or more specifically put, "melodrama of the unknown woman", which promises to be a very intriguing and thought-provoking topic. It's hard to describe in a few words what exactly we're talking about, but a lot of it has to do with women's voices being shut out (or down) by men, how marriage or just relationships with men in general cause a woman to lose her voice, to be ignored, that sort of thing. We're also doing something with motherhood I think, which I take it to be how the role of a mother overwhelms a woman's independence and voice apart from that, how she loses herself within it. I think part of this topic includes women's knowledge, how they know and their identity apart from men. At least, that's what I'm taking it to include.

We have to write a paper on one of 4 movies, and I'm choosing the first one, Gaslight, partially because we get 3 weeks to do it instead of the normal 2 since we don't have class next Monday, and partially just to get it done so that I don't have all of my big assignments at the end of the semester. Plus the movie was really great, so that sealed the deal for me.

The movie we watched tonight, Gaslight, with Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer, was about her getting married to this guy who drove her crazy by insinuating that she already was crazy, that she was always forgetting and losing things, or hiding things, hearing and seeing things, and he set things up so that she almost couldn't help but think it, like giving her something and then later on finding a way to take it without her noticing it and then blaming it on her "losing" it. He also found a way to make her doubt her past, so that she really had no way of knowing what she remembered or could believe actually happened. She had nothing to check any of her knowledge against except his word, and he was able to twist the truth and other people's perceptions of her so that it really seemed to everyone, including herself, that she was crazy. It was really creepy to watch him do these things and her fall apart and become crazy because there was no way for her to not doubt her reality. He called it an illness and used it as a way to keep her trapped inside the house, without letting her have visitors or go places because she would break down (because of things that he would do that made her feel crazy). In a way, his power of suggestion made it so that she thought herself to be crazy, but he also set things up so that there really wasn't a way to know anything for certain. It's almost like Descarte's method of radical doubt that he used in the Meditations, except obviously different because she did not want to doubt, and there was no way she, by herself, figure out what was true to her, if what she remembered was actually true or not. Even when someone else was able to make her know that what she thought was real actually was real, he found a way to turn it around on her until the very end. Then, in one of the final scenes, when she learned the truth about everything, she turned his method around on him and made him think he was crazy, just for a moment, before she acted like she really believed she was mad in order to get her revenge on him. It was, in my opinion, a brilliant scene. Well-acted, well-written, and well-directed. It was a great movie, both eerie and fascinating.

I never knew that everything was falling through