Time Flies When...

A.) you're planning a wedding
B.) you're starting your own business
C.) you're adjusting to your own new schedule as well as the schedule of your live-in loved one
D.) you've just discovered that Netflix offers Wi-Fi streaming of Bones Season 1-6 (commercial free viewing WOO-HOO!)

Well, that about sums up the last month (at least) of my life.  I'd love to write a witty, awe-inspiring blog of how I'm spending my last few months of bachelorette-hood, but the truth is that my "bachelorette" days have been far, far behind me for many years now (good thing I wasn't keeping a blog from age 19-25...).  Now that the holidays are over (thank God-I love Christmas but it was a bit stressful this year), we are in full wedding mode.  I don't want to go into too many details, but I am definitely not dealing with the stress well.  I don't think I've quite reached "Bridezilla" stature yet (please don't ask my mother for confirmation of this as I'm sure she disagrees), but I was pretty much done with the wedding once the dress was picked out.  I've been very lucky to find special vendors and a wedding planner who completely understand what I want, and as far as I'm concerned at this point, I'm just showing up and getting married-which, after all, is the point.  The problem is, there are still a lot of questions I'm required to answer, and after about two I start to feel all wound up in the pit of my stomach, my ears start to burn, the room starts to spin, and I feel the need for a priest, some holy water, and a good old fashioned exorcism.  Blake deals with this in several ways: leaving the room (if possible), not asking me any questions about the wedding (if possible), or delaying the questioner (if possible).  When all else fails, he just reminds me that we can elope at any point, then I feel guilty since I'm the one who wanted a wedding to begin with.  So far he still wants to marry me, which means the subliminal messages I've been playing while he sleeps must be working.

Last October I quit my job at Microsoft, for several reasons.  Quitting my job and all the decisions we had to make following that is a story in itself, but ultimately I decided to do something my mom and I had talked about for the last year.  I decided to start my own business.  I learned to quilt last year, and I have known how to sew, knit, and crochet for years, but I had always done it as a hobby.  My mother also sews, and we had joked for some time how we could have our own craft show booth someday.  Well, I took it to the next step and decided to do it right.  I set up shop on Etsy with the intention of eventually having enough inventory to do a craft show.  Eventually (which for the time being means "after the wedding") mom will begin stocking her own inventory, and I want to do my first craft show in October.  There are many things that go into starting any business, no matter how large or small, and I am keeping track of all the steps-my real fortune may be in a "How To (or NOT to, only time will tell)" book that features helpful practical hints like, "Don't try to start a business when you are planning your wedding unless you have unlimited funding, God-like patience, and a metabolism that can handle 4 glasses of wine at dinner.  Even then, you may want to think twice."  I digress.

Minus the funding, patience, and metabolism, I have opened shop as The Sewprano.  I am extremely proud of myself to have gone as far as I have to this point.  I don't have a huge inventory, and I don't have much listed yet, but my goodness, just to be recognized as a business took a lot of work!  There was paperwork to be filed, tax numbers to be acquired, and websites to be set up.  I have learned how to "Photoshop" (I can't afford Photoshop so I use a free online program called Gimp that I like very much and is very similar), and I have learned to create my own logo, blog background, headers, etc.  This requires a lot of time on the computer, and I'm still trying to get stuff made to list on the Etsy site, so all in all it's slow going.  The point is-it's going!

Sooooo, with all that you can imagine that Blake and I are still struggling to adjust to our life together.  I absolutely love being home when he walks through the door, but we are still very much on different schedules.  I am trying to figure out the whole "work at home" thing with the whole "housewife" thing, and I've never been very good at housekeeping to begin with.  I haven't quite got into a routine yet of when I do chores and when I work on The Sewprano, when I work out and when it's ok to watch Netflix.  Unfortunately, by the time I've figured it out for the day, Blake has walked through the door and is ready to relax, preferably with me.  I don't relax-well, ever.  When I do, it's not until 8 or 9, and by then he's almost ready for bed.  We're slowly striking a balance between our schedules and our natures by keeping open lines of communication, taking things day by day, and making out madly after disagreements.

Which means we're ahead of the curve with the marriage game in my opinion.  Now if we could just survive the wedding.