It's easy to get wrapped up in what's happening with E. Her disorder requires so much energy and focus that everything else takes a back seat to it. It has been that way since I met R. It takes real effort on my part to keep her disorder from putting me into a tailspin, and the same is true for her dad. That's why he hasn't returned her Friday evening and Saturday phone calls yet. Yesterday he sent her an email, telling her that he supports her efforts to get better, but he has to get off the "emotional roller coaster."
It's unhealthy for me to focus so much energy on her problems. For one thing, when I focus so much on her, I seem to experience a bit of a break from reality. I avoid having to deal with my own life, and while there's comfort in that, it's not good for my own mental health. I've been told as much from professionals.
So this posting is all about me. Woo hoo. Where to start? Well, it has been an exhausting week. My mom left on Sunday, after a week or two helping me with weding projects. She stayed with a family friend, so every morning after work I picked her up and brought her over to the house. A huge burden was lifted from my shoulders, but at the same time it was tiring. Friday morning I got off from work after a long week, and both my mom and sister came over. The house was soon filled with the three of us loudly debating our ideas about the invitations. R had taken the day off from work, and it was too much for him so he went out into the yard and gardened all morning. I was beyond tired. After the last night of a long week of work, all I wanted to do was curl up in bed. I was also on my second day of my 800 calorie a day diet, so I was feeling it. But I had to stay up and make decisions. My sister finally had to go home to pick up the kids, so it was just my mom and I. The two of them had vetoed my font (Sloop- subject of a much earlier post here!). They said it was too hard to read and too fancy... So I had to pick a new font on the fly. After much annoyance adjusting the paper margins and trying several different sizes of several different fonts, I went with Zapfino. It's nice... Of course, shortly thereafter I did a web search and came across this website: http://www.ihatezapfino.com/! Too funny!
After so much invitation planning, in the end I went with something very simple. Family members kept telling me to follow the KISS principle... So the invites have no clever pop-up feature, no special hand drawn flourishes... In the end the invitation ended up being a printed piece of cardstock with a piece of Japanese paper (printed with ocean waves) attached on top, and a piece of vellum on top of it all. It's all attached with a piece of ribbon. This isn't a very good description.... Maybe I should post a photo. Anyway, it's very simple but nice. It got stuffed into a vellum envelope, so it's possible to see the Japanese paper on the front (faintly). I didn't hand-address the envelopes (I know, I know-- Martha Stewart would be dismayed... I hear her over my shoulder, "tsk, tsk!") My writing isn't nice, and anyway, it would be tough to write on vellum... So I printed out clear address labels. I didn't follow the latest and greatest addressing rules. For example: an unmarried couple living together-- place each name on a separate line, etc, etc. I didn't do any of that. I hope nobody is offended. Etiquette is a dying art, what can I say. I would have liked for it to all be a certain way, but in the end at least it got finished. I sent them out yesterday after work.... Once again, I was exhausted after a long night of work with too few calories... I took them to the nearest post office, the very charming Assistance League of San Pedro Post Office on 8th @ Weymouth.
I was thinking about how cool it would be to later tell guests that their invitations were mailed from the only 100% volunteer operated post office in the country (read more here). It makes a nice story... The story lost its warm fuzzy quality when I actually arrived at the post office. The woman behind the desk was less than friendly. I asked her if the invitations could be hand-canceled, and she replied curtly, "if we have time!" I guess it wasn't what she said but how she said it... I walked out of their feeling small and powerless. The tears started flowing before I could climb back into the safety of my car. Yeah, not exactly the story I was hoping I could tell, but cest la vie. It's done! Now I just have to make a half-dozen or so more that will be hand delivered to their recipients. So I'm not totally done yet (the fun never ends). Close enough, though!
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