He's too what?

When it comes to wedding planning and the obligatory worrying about details and time lines I have decided that Hubbs and I are best likened to these two chairs. He is comfortable and cozy. You could curl right up and take a nap. This chair is full of patience and seems like a nice place to just wait it out. I am not like that.


I am much more like this shaker ladder backed rocking chair. It is a fine place to knit or rock a baby to sleep. It is not someplace you pull your knees to your chest and take a nap. It is a classic (I too am a classic when it comes to wanting to have things a certain way and wanting more than anything to know when, why, how, how much and by whom). I hate not knowing.

Currently, the hubbs and I are trying to reschedule our "paper wedding". We are getting married before the actual wedding in September for many reasons. It started out as all about the health insurance as I will eventually lose mine through work when my clinicals are over and I start my externship taking me out of the ED and into the back of an ambulance for the final push of school. The cost of health insurance through school is so obscene that we decided that getting "paper married" so I could join his policy early was the best plan. The reasons seem to have multiplied from there. Several friends of ours did the wedding before the wedding thing and all of them are very glad they did. All of them claim to have felt like the paper wedding was a special time for just them that set them up to feel more excited and relaxed on the big day allowing for focus on friends and family and fun on the "Day".

Unfortunately the Hubbs and I hit a bit of black ice this fall and though we were slated to make it happen over my holiday break from school we decided to wait and spend some time really working on putting strong habits and tools in place so that we might weather the inevitable storms ahead with all the tools possible. Basically, we never fought, argued or struggled before this November. We didn't. Some couples say that but we really didn't. We struggled with the outside world sometimes and had to work through obstacles but they were always external obstacles and we always just stood back to back and worked it out together. This time it was different. There had been a breech in the fortress and I didn't know until it was too late that I was responsible for the severity of some of the contributing factors. My being so focused on school and grades had left Hubbs feeling a bit abandoned. He knew fundamentally, the reason for the long hours and stress and so he didn't want to put it on me to have to make it better. I want to say now that he did not go have an affair or anything profoundly stupid like that but there was a system failure. It was not pretty.

Anywhooo....I digress. So now we are trying to get the rescheduled paper wedding off the ground. Our dear friend who will be marrying us in Sept is going to be marrying us this time too. We have a few friends who will be joining us for beers and likely, I will have to get up and go to school the next day. I am excited about this. I want to know when this will be. My school schedule is about to get crazy with clinicals beginning in 2 weeks. I had really hoped to have all of this off my plate before I had to move onto clinical and honestly, planning a wedding. Our dear friend happens to be a lawyer and devoted husband and father to two beautiful daughters. This translates to busy and usually in deep doodoo with his wife already for having an impossible schedule without the added fun of trying to fit in a night at a bar marrying some friends in the middle of one of their busiest months. Basically we suck for him right now.

Tonight, on my way to work, Hubbs and I were talking about how we were going to pull this off and I was feeling more and more hopeless. I think sometimes I take his laid back, easy chair approach to things as a lack of concern, enthusiasm or commitment. He truly does not sweat the small stuff. That said sometimes I think he neglects to sweat the big stuff and it leaves me feeling panicked that if I don't do (fill in the blank), it won't get done. This is unfair of me for 97% of our lives. Our bills get paid, the dogs eat, laundry comes up from the basement and the rent check goes out on time. A Christmas tree even appeared and was decorated in the living room without my orchestration. I am a very lucky woman and in the relative sense I should shut my mouth and thank my lucky stars. I am not that kind of woman however, I am the open your big mouth and realize later that you should apologize kind of woman. I am also the type of woman who believes we are more than our gender roles and expectations of ourselves. I like to be challenged and am attracted to people who aspire to grow and learn continually. I also don't want to plan a dammed wedding by myself. Its not fun.

My best girls are on the other side of the country with brand new babies, off the coast of Japan on a navy ship doing anti-piracy actions, living their own freshly married or engaged lives or becoming DOCTORS. I don't have a lot of ladies near by and my mom lives at the other end of an entire day's travel to the other side of the country. There won't be showers and all of the traditional fuss. I am a little bit on my own here.

I have support from some new friends who have offered generously to help but I feel a little bit like there is nothing to help with yet as I don't know what I need to do. I DO know that we need invitations sent out. We need a photographer and we need speakers for the party. I also know that there will be a thousand other little things that I will need help with and won't have time for. What I want is a united front. I want to know what he thinks and wants and I want him to pick a few things from the ever expanding to do list without me having to melt down first. I want him to read my mind. He doesn't see the need to worry about this or that. He just trusts that it will happen and usually, it does. But this is our wedding and time is money in the WIC. Waiting can be the difference between yes and no or 300.00 vs 1,000.00. It sucks but its true.

So we had a long talk about how his chill attitude leaves me feeling a little psychotic and like I must nag to see results. He explained that my impatience leaves him feeling as though he wants to say not now just to teach me to wait. It all seems fair enough and nobody got upset. However, I do think its something to bring up next time we are with our "guy" Tim. I want to learn how to communicate better so that we get things done without nagging and I can chill out without him feeling the need to teach me a lesson in patience. Now that I have worked through all of this in blogland I think I see that this is all part of it. This dance of triggers and anxiety, patience and love is the dance of life. Weddings put all of that into a high powered magnifying glass and turns up the gain. In the grand scheme of life I think we do pretty well. I need to remember to keep wedding perspective and life perspective in their proper places.

Fittness Day 17
Eliptical 75min - 900kCal
Pilates 10min