Pay Less for the Dress or More for the Stress

I bought a wedding dress.  I went shopping with my mother and tried on a few gowns and barf, barf, barf, I am not all that excited to be a bride.  I do not like white.  I do not like being fancy, pancy.  I found one dress I thought was surprisingly tolerable, although awfully quinceanera-ish, but the price was too high for me to like it all that much (I am cheap).

I went online and found it on amazon.com for a bit cheaper.  Regardless of how much I actually even liked the dress, I bought it (because I can appreciate a good deal).

The next few weeks were filled with intense paranoia as I recall a friend who had bought her wedding dress online and it came out cheap and awful (I like cheap prices, but not cheap looks).  In the end she had to buy a new one and was not able to return the busted one.  

The dress I ordered is not returnable.  Crap.  I email the dress maker with a few questions  and the response is in slightly broken English and poor grammar. I get more worried.  I look up where the dress coming from and it is some place in China.  I start having pangs of guilt that I am contributing to some Chinese sweat shop with awful carcinogens floating around in the air while ten year old children are half naked and starving and beaten and made to sew cheap wedding dresses for five cents a day. 

I look up reviews on the seller...something I probably should have done before financially committing to this whole transaction (need to get one of those bracelets: "what would Trevor do?").  Some reviews are positive.  Some are negative.  The positive ones are again in broken English which makes me think they are staged and written by the person who is running this scam.  Damn, I hate being scammed.  

And what's worse, I realize the seller is called George Bridal....like a cheap knock off of David's Bridal.  I hate David's Bridal.  And this is even a step down from that...his cheap imitation brother, George.  And there's no apostrophe..... more grammatical inaccuracies!

The dress finally arrives in a one foot by two foot duck taped garbage bag.  I do not even want to open it, just throw it in the trash!  I lock myself in the bedroom and anxiously peel back the tape.  Holding onto the 1% hope that this dress might be wearable, I tear open the plastic...and my worst fears are confirmed.  This is not the dress I ordered...

There are circle domes sewed into the bust, with under wires of the torso exposed.  The seams around the waist and down the sides are haggard and exposed.  The material looks like it is made out of a screen window for a tent.  There is no jazzy belt like in the picture.  I want to cry.  I curse myself for being the hasty, cheap decision maker that I am.

Then I realize it's inside out.

In actuality, when it is right side in, the dress is not that bad.  So I will reluctantly pat myself on the back for finding a nice relatively inexpensive dress,  although I still feel slightly guilty about the poor child laborers in China that I might have made up.    I am still talking myself into really liking the dress.  I just cannot get all that excited about a plain white dress.... B-o-r-i-n-g!  I have already taken a scissor to it once for some minor alterations, but I am seriously tempted to slice up some major modifications.  The fact that it was cheap, only eggs me on....  I've done it before...

The Midnight Baby Tamer

I recently played on a community soccer team with some of my co-workers who are married with a one year old baby boy.  Our games are every Friday night and one particular night we had a late game at 9pm.  My friends didn't want to bring their baby to the game because it would have been past the baby's bed time and they were having a hard time finding a baby sitter.  So I go ahead and volunteer my services.... I'll just have Trevor watch the baby for you!

Trevor and I head over to our friends' house before the game.  The baby has just gone to sleep for the night.  Easy peasy lemon cheesey.  Trevor gets the run down of instructions for the night:

Baby is asleep in his bed with a fresh diaper.

Baby will not wake up till we get back

Just sit in the living room and watch tv.

In the off chance the baby does wake up and starts fussing, just hold off and maybe he'll go back to sleep.  

If the baby starts crying for a while you can take him out of the crib and let him hang out.

If you can't get him to calm down he can watch tv.

My friends and I are off to our soccer game and leave Trevor alone to his baby-sitting duties.  Twenty minutes into his first infant baby sitting gig, the baby wakes up.  Baby starts fussing but not really crying.  Trevor lets him be.  Go back to sleeeeeep. Baby does not go back to sleep.  Baby starts crying....five minutes go by.  Baby starts crying louder.  Ten minutes go by... Time to get baby.

Trevor hesitantly slides open the bedroom door, sensitive to the fact that this baby who he has only met maybe three or four times in his life, probably has no idea who Trevor is, and is definitely not going to expect him to open the door when every other time that baby has cried in the night he was always greeted by the loving, beardless faces of his mommy and dada.

As Trevor opens the door the outside light shines on the poor disheveled baby's  face who is standing in his crib holding onto the rail with a face full of tears.  Trevor tries to sweetly console him from the doorway, "heeeeey baaaaaby, it's oooook. It's ok....."  The baby takes one look at Trevor, covers his sad eyes with his short toddler arms and drops to the mattress, throws his arms over his heads and ears, face down in his bed and doesn't make another peep.

So Trevor closes the door, and goes back to the couch with the Tv and a beer.  And within another fifteen minutes or so, the heavy breathing of baby snores is ringing through the baby monitor once again.

My Spidey Senses are Tingling

I've recently had a hard time falling asleep at night.  It probably started around the time they caught that creep in Cleveland. I should stop watching the news before bedtime.....  When not sleeping, I lay in bed and attempt to tire myself out by looking endlessly for new apartments, a new job, bridesmaids dresses, ceremony templates, wedding hotels, cheap substitutions for flower bouquets, shuttles, DJs, photographers.  You name it.  I may never sleep again until September 22. 

Three nights in a row I was up past 2am and then up for work at 7am.  On the fourth night, there is no way I am not sleeping.  I go to bed early around 10pm.  This is going to be a good night's sleep.  Trevor goes to bed an hour or so later and I slightly wake up for a second when he stirs but I am definitely going to go right back into deep dark sleep, no problems here.  That is until I feel a breeze of a tickle scurry down my arm hairs.  I halfway open my eyes thinking it was just the wind or just Trevor pulling a blanket off my arm.  But to my absolute horror I can barely make out a shadowy dark object moving across the blanket.....SPIDER!!!

I spastically flail to my feet, abruptly  knocking a sleepy unconscious Trevor in the head and torso and strip the bed (and a now wildly awake and fearful Trevor) of all the blankets, as I dash for the light switch and proceed to blind my shocked and exposed poor friend who could really use a good night's rest himself.

Trevor: What!? What the heck is going on?!?!?!!

Me: Ahhhhhh, there was slider crawling on me!!

Trevor tries his tired best to assure me it was not a spider.  That I was dreaming and he must have twitched.  I made it all up in my sleep.

After scouring the bed, the floor, the surrounding walls and coming up with nothing, I shut the lights back off.  He is snoring in less than 10 seconds.  I shake off the blankets and tuck myself into the tightest cocoon of sheets so that no spider or puff of air will be able to come in contact with my skin.   I lie awake again.  No use in even trying to get back to sleep with a spider on the loose in your bedroom.  No better time to start looking at bridesmaid dresses again, I suppose....

Wedding Panicking...I Mean Planning!

Some days I am smug with pride about how well I am handling all the anxieties that come along with planning a wedding, and hunting for a new apartment, and figuring out my next career move, all from across the country and all at the same time.  And then there are mornings like today when I awake from the wonderful dream that all my lovely white teeth are crumbling to bits and I'm crunching them, choking on them, spitting out blood and tooth bits, manically feeling my tender bloody gums with my tongue...  But then I wake up.  And although frazzled, I am relieved that I still have my teeth.  And now it's time to block off hotel rooms, figure out some more  people's addresses, pick out invitations, put together a script for the ceremony, contemplate cutting my wedding dress to above the knee, and convince my sisters that we all shouldn't wear high heels...  Is it too early for a beer?

Welcome to the Ool

A childhood friend of mine was lucky enough to have a pool in her backyard growing up.  Her family used to have a sign that said "Welcome to Our Ool.  Please notice there is no "P" in it.  We would like to keep it that way."  I thought this was hysterical.

Last night I went with a friend to her kids' swim lessons.  My friend gets in the pool first with her one year old for a mommy and baby group session while I sit by the side of the pool and watch her 4-year old in the shallow end.  All children must be supervised at all times, so I diligently keep my eyes on the girl while I quickly drift off to day-dreaming  about the good all days when I used to life guard at the Hazlet pool club....

I hated it.  Constantly scouring the deep end for sinking bodies and always either blowing the whistle or thinking that I should blow the whistle, but ya know I just blew the whistle like 5 minutes ago and I don't want to be that no-fun lifeguard that's constantly yelling at kids, and maybe I'd blow it if my boss was around, but these kids aren't really doing anything that unsafe. But I did just blow my whistle at that bratty kid for doing that, so I should also blow it at the good kid who did the same thing, just to be fair.  I hate blowing whistles!   Some kids were just bastards though.  You'd whistle at them for jumping in where they weren't supposed to and they'd think it's funny.  Then every time you're in that stand they'd come back and jump in in the exact same spot, just to see it you'd blow your whistle again.  Jerks.

Stop running.  Don't jump in the pool.  Don't hang on the lane lines.  Don't swing on the railing.  Don't dunk your friend.  Don't push your friend in.  Stop splashing.  No toys.  Gosh, the pool was no fun...

The pool still is no fun.  All these negative, bossy, "safety" commands are all I can think of as I sit by the edge of this pool with no responsibility for anyone besides this well behaved 4 year old.   Speaking of which, where is my 4-year old?  Phew. there.  Fine.

If I did have a whistle though, there is definitely one kid who would get it. He is running up and down the handicap ramp, knocking over toddlers, splashing babies, throwing toys.  One well-behaved little girl is sitting on the steps playing nicely to herself with a little doll.  This terror goes up behind her with a watering can and just slowly, and steadily empties it on her head.  She nudges and dodges the water stream like she is trying to brush a fly away, but she is so into her doll that she is completely oblivious that this boy is being a brat behind her. I am appalled.  Where are this boy's parents?!  Then he fills up the watering can and does it again.  Are you serious? Where are the little girl's parents?!  Should I stop this?

I look around and notice that all the parents are sitting in groups, chatting it up, laughing, totally oblivious as to what their children are up to.   This is happy hour for them.   They're not worried about their kids. This is their weekly social meet-up.  Sure enough, the kid who could not get any worse, suddenly requires his mother's assistance.  The bratty boy starts screaming at the top of his lungs "MOM, I GOTTA GO POOOOOOOOP!!!!!!   MOOOOOOOOOM, I GOTTA GO POOP!!!"

No one is responding.  No adult even seems to notice at all that this boy exists.  He screams this same lovely phrase 3 or 4 more times and I'm thinking 'would it be completely inappropriate for me to just drag this kid to the bathroom myself?!'  Should I just start walking around to these chatty parent groups and start asking "Hey so is that your kid over there?  I think you might want to take him to the restroom."?!

Finally the mom sees him screaming, and at this point he is wailing and crying uncontrollably.  She runs him out of the pool to the bathroom.  No one else stirs.   

Once the unconscientious couple are out of the pool area, I get up and look over the edge of the pool where the little boy was screaming about needing to poop.  And yes, there it was, breaking apart in the tumultuous current of the kiddie pool area surrounded by curious little children was this boy's freshly laid turd, a historically welcomed sign in the life guard world that it's time to get some chicken rings (yes, we had chicken nuggets shaped like rings) and hang out in the first aid office for a whistle-free 60 minute break while the maintenance team went scooping and chlorine shocking.... Pool closed. 

Perhaps it's time this pool club gets their own sign:  Welcome to the "L"...