Now that I'm on the 3WA portal, I want to post more often. And yet, diddlyfuck happened today, other than doing major, major filing of very high stacks of paper. Oh, and Pineapple mentioned me in her entry! I feel all mushy. I believe I'm gonna have to wing thishere entry...

I actually caved in and *gasp!* signed up for the Wedding Channel boards under an assumed name, then idiotically signed up for them with my e-mail that's currently being forwarded to work and that it turns out I can't access from home now. Gah. And I was so looking forward to posting on the "Whirlwind" section, 'cause I relate and all. Oh well, something to do while filing again tomorrow. Lord, I'm starting to worry if I'm falling for the whole wedding porn thing or something. Not that I'm like one of those chicks who just wants to get married, period, doesn't matter to who really. More like the other way around.

However, it is disturbing to feel my identity adjusting like this. I was a very single person mentally before this, hence the journal title. I HATED weddings! Couldn't stand 'em! As a kid I was bored off my ass to be the only child there (I'm sure my parents must have whined and wheedled to their coworkers whose kids were getting married to invite me). While reading WC today I was baffled at happy account after happy account of happy small children dancing at weddings and how much fun they had. I was like "That was supposed to be fun?" And as a teenager I just got irritated at being pressured to get married. I wanted to smack my Aunt Helen for saying "You're next!" at my cousin Ron's wedding. And good lord, I'm proving her right. And here I thought the next wedding on either side of the family would be Alicia's.

I still feel embarrassed about things. That I've gone around for years saying I won't do this, I won't do that, and now I apparently am. That I've very rudely laughed in people's faces about it. That instead of being all cautious and rational and whatnot, I broke my rules. No wonder I'm afraid to tell- the reactions I may get from those who don't know may be spectacular.

Who the hell is this lovesick nutcase with the wedding books hidden under her bed? Hell, a lot of the time I'm still like "Did I really get engaged? I know I was there and all, and presumably I said yes..." I haven't told the story of our engagement on here before because in all honesty, I really don't remember a whole lot about it! I must have been in shock at the time, because when I'm really astonished at something I tend to forget everything around me but what I'm feeling. We were sitting around on the floor looking at his photo album, and he was talking about the various weird genetic stuff in his family for some reason, blah blah blah... and then he came out and said it. I think I babbled something about would this be right away or would it be a long engagement, because it better be the latter, and he said it would be a long one, and presumably I babbled something akin to yes after that. (God, sometime I should ask him what on earth it was I said, but I'd sure feel stupid asking that of all things!)

The next day I was all "Um, should I consider myself engaged now?"

Actually, I still kinda feel in shock. To some degree, it doesn't feel real because I'm not "out" all the way yet. Very few people in this town know about it. Today at work they had some kind of party or other and one of the guys there was getting married. Instead of "Oh, that's nice" like I normally would have thought, I thought "Oh. Whoa. We've got something in common there." Since the guy's got a few decades on me, it seems weird that little old me and him have that in common.

I looked over at my handfasting/engagement rings, which I love, and thought about how innocent they looked, how non-revealing of their purpose in the way a big honkin' tacky-ass diamond would be. I don't want a big tacky-ass diamond, mind you. I was actually ranting the other day to him about why is it that diamonds are the wedding stone for purity and all that crap, and why isn't it a ruby for passion? He's all "I'll get you a ruby, dear." I seem to be becoming one of those chicks the guys used to gripe at me about whenever I wore ANY kind of ring on the wedding finger. My logic's always been that why waste the finger just because I'm not married, so I'd stick pink stoned rings or class rings or fake plastic ones on it, and then get griped at by guys about how I was confusing them. (Dude, I wasn't engaged in the EIGHTH GRADE...) When I argued back that these were obviously NOT diamond rings here, they argued that some people get creative with their wedding jewelry, and technically anything could be a wedding ring. Apparently I'll be one of those after all. I never really thought about the matter much before. I guess that's why Hill removed her ring from that finger the other day after she asked me if it was the left or right that was the wedding finger, despite my saying "Wear it wherever the hell you want to."

And oddly enough, it's starting to bug me that my parents don't know about the engagement. And it was me who wanted to keep it quiet first! (He agreed with me on the parent bit though.) NOT that I plan to tell them ANYTIME soon, mind you, because I'm not a complete idiot who likes to shoot herself in the foot for fun. I know better. But sitting there at dinner last night with them, there was someone missing who should have been there. And I thought that within another birthday or two (probably not the next one, since I'll still be in this town and it'll still be on a weekday), he will be. It was just strange.

Part of me is embracing the whole thing, while the other part is going "Oh holy crap, what do I do?" I keep wondering about stuff like what do we do about the holidays? (That was the one time of year I liked being single on.) Do I have to start going to his family's stuff now? (Probably not until the engagement's announced, though. At least, I'm not forcing him to be around mine until then.) Alternately, I start having freakouts about stuff like I heard on Tuesday, which is just way jumping ahead in the worry department. Though hey, at least this actually won't be a problem after all. And yet somehow I can't even handle thinking about wedding planning for very long before I want to go hide under the bed. I think that's part of why I want to tell Mom: I want to find out if she's going to want me to do an actual ceremony, vs. me being allowed to elope without worrying about all those arrangements. To some degree, I feel stalled because I can't tell. Not that I'm going to be working on wedding arrangements ANYTIME in the near or farther-off-this-year future (I should be job hunting first, you know), so I really don't know why it bothers me so. Well, that and Mom's cracks about how boyfriends don't last but family is forever keep sticking in my head, and I want to prove to her otherwise :P

Lord, is this journal going to go from total spinsterdom to constant wedding kvetching? I hope not. At least, I sure hope not THIS early. I never even had a wedding planned out as a kid like all the other girls did! The only time I did that was when I had to for home ec homework. Which, for the record, featured "us" getting married at the San Diego Princess Resort because I liked the water over there, by an Elvis impersonator because I insisted on being weird. The rest of the thing was devoted to me designing the clothes. It was obvious where MY priorities were... did I mention I took this class the year I was designing bridesmaid's dresses for my fashion competition? Coincidence, I think not...

Hmmm. I really need to have more active days at work so I have something else to talk about besides wedding yammering.

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