Oompa Loompa Doopity Doo, I've Got Another Puzzle For You

This may be an anonymous blog (well, anonymous from my family at least), but I will disclose one identifying detail so you can understand my latest plight.

I am pale.

Not pale like the olive-skinned girls who look in the mirror during the winter months and lament in a high pitched voice, "I'm soooo pale!" because their skin has not retained the same bronzy sheen as during the summer. No, I am pale like the gauzy hue of a piece of thin wax paper. Or the almost glowing iridescence of a full moon.

In fact, during the winter, much like a piece of wax paper, I am practically translucent.

I am a natural redhead (or at least, I once was, now it's more auburn) - but my skin has retained its natural paleness. I make Nicole Kidman and Julianne Moore look like the Coppertone Girls.


So when I tried on my wedding dress (in ivory) and stood in the dressing room against the white walls, my parents, the seamstress, and I all simultaneously realized that my skin was lighter than both the dress and the walls. I was like a floating head of hair. I was the gecko bride.


Which resulted in a conundrum that I have faced before. But never on such an important day.



How do I get a tan without subjecting myself to cancerous rays of light and/or potentially orange, hand-staining artificial methods?



Now normally, I would just pop on a little Clarins self-tanning lotion (the stuff is the BEST) and end up a nice hue of bronze and accept the corresponding streaks on my hands and deliciously orange color deposits on my knees and elbows. (I chose this path last year for my brother's wedding.)


But on this day, I don't really want to risk orange streaks (or even brown ones, for that matter). I want to avoid the telltale sign of fake tanner which is pools of brown tanner next to pearly white skin. Not to mention, I'm acutely aware that there will be a ton of "hand photos" (that whole wedding ring thing and all) and I don't want to focus on my striped hands when perusing through my wedding album over the next 50 years.

So what to do?

Operation Anti-Loompa. A quest to seek color, but without streaks or orangeness.

Sort of like the "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" of the tanning world. All of the taste, but none of the bad side effects. And no Fabio.

I have been in a spray tan booth before, so I knew that while the color could be good, the streaks could be bad. This is why I thought that having someone hand spray me with the stuff (using a machine that is frighteningly like a spray paint gun) would be my best bet.

However, after standing stark naked in front of a bored spa employee who, after spraying my body with a misty substance, left me to stand in all my glory in front of three giant industrial-strength fans (in a room that was about 50 degrees to begin with), I began to doubt my decision. (Or perhaps hypothermia was setting in and my faculties were not functioning properly.)

And right I was. Though the color wasn't bad, my feet looked like I had stepped in cheez whiz and my hands looked like I had dipped them half in orange paint.

It was back to the drawing board.

So I continued to look on the Internet for alternate tan options and found a spa which did a "body bronze." In essence, a woman will actually put the tanning lotion on you (and by having someone else out it on you, it hopefully avoids those pesky spots and stripes).


If nothing else, the application process certainly beats the ice-cold-spray-and-stand I was forced to endure last time. This time I got to lie on a heated spa bed and have some chick rub the lotion onto me. It was basically like a poor man's massage (if a poor man was forced to pay a ridiculous amount of money to turn himself brown). Not bad.

And the results?


Also not bad. I got home and looked at my hands. Nary a stripe. And the color? A nice light brown. Hopefully not overwhelming (since the goal was not so much to have people say "When did you get back Jamaica?" as to comment "Oh, you don't look as sickly as you did last week.").


So I was ready to call this a success.

Until.

I undressed for bed. And I looked down at my stomach, my legs, my arms and my back.

And they were covered with spots. Hundreds, thousands, of SPOTS. Red spots.

I ran into Mr F. "Look at me!! Look at me!!"

"What? I see. You're brown. It's nice."

"No! I'm allergic to the dye! I'm not brown, I'm red. And bumpy!"

He motioned me over to his side of the bed and turned on the light. "Hmmm. Yeah, you're definitely having an allergic reaction."

(OK, I'm not going to say it yet again, but I think I definitely have an Edding-Way Llergy-A.)

I stared at myself in the mirror and counted the days until my wedding. On one hand. Because that's all there was.

Then I popped three Benadryls and slept like a baby.

The next day the red dots had mostly cleared up.

Now I just have to figure out how to avoid turning my ivory wedding dress orange via contact with my artificially-colored skin. But that's another conundrum for another day.

Too bad there are only two more days to figure it out.

Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right, Here I Am, Stuck in the Middle with You

Table assignments. Saving the best for last, I suppose? Just when you think you've got this whole "wedding thing" all wrapped up, you're left with this doozy.



I led myself to believe I was going to get a free pass on this one. After all the responses were in, I did some quick math, took out a piece of paper and jotted some names down, and WHALA! (Wala?), I was done! I decided tables of twelve were the way to go (why have two extra tables, when that means spending extra cash on two extra centerpieces and table cloths and everything else?). And besides, I like the idea of people sitting at large tables and getting to mingle with more people.



So the math led me to the conclusion that each branch of the wedding pyramid would get 4 tables to seat (that would be me and Mr F together, my parents and Mr F's parents) with likely a little bit of sharing between the three to fill in tables.



As I said, I jotted our tables down in about 15 minutes. I then dashed off an email to the Mothers asking that they pass along their seating arrangements in tables of 12.



Two days later I got my Mom's list.



5 tables. 8 people at a table.



Needless to say, Mom does not follow directions well.

When I casually mentioned to Mom (ok, so maybe it wasn't so casually) that she exceeded her table allotment, she pulled the Ace card.

She cried.

Time out here. Not to be melodramatic, but shouldn't I be the one crying big elephant tears? Shouldn't the bride be having meltdowns and temper tantrums to get my way? Is this like that book "The Wedding" by Nicholas Sparks (don't judge me for having read it, that's neither here nor there right now) where the Mother is actually the one getting married and not the daughter and it's a giant surprise to the reader and when you finally realize it you're like "Oh my God! It's the MOM!"?

"It's the MOM!"

I'm taking a moment. Hold on.

.........



........



.......


OK. So anyway, Mom is crying and telling me that she can't combine her tables with other random people because she doesn't want her guests to feel like she doesn't care about them. I'm trying to figure out how seating someone with another person translates into anything other than the statement "Math dictates that only 12 people fit at a table so I am seating you with eleven other people to add up to 12."

More importantly, I'm trying to figure out if the antibiotics I'm on will be rendered impotent if I drink a giant goblet of white wine while on this phone call. The orange bottle doesn't have a little sticker that says "don't drink while on this medicine" but I remember hearing that you should never mix antibiotics with alcohol because they won't work (not the alcohol, the antibiotics...I'm pretty sure the alcohol will work even better).

Oh, did I not mention that I have bronchitis and the wedding is a week away? Yeah, well if you didn't think I was allergic to my wedding before, I think we have indisputable proof now.

Since I can't keep my mouth shut, I ask Mom to explain why I should spend hundreds of extra dollars so that her friends and family don't have to break bread with others' friends and family (mind you, the "other" people we are talking about are Mr F's family and my friends - not exactly strangers off the street. Funny how Mom was all "into" the engagement and melding of families, until of course, her niece has to sit with Future Mother in Law's great aunt.)

At which point, Mom changes tactics and goes back to what a Jewish Mom knows best.

She sighs. And pauses. And then says "You do what you want, E&E." Her barely dried tears are still glimmering on her cheeks (and she declines to wipe them away). I recognize this ploy I know so well and greet it accordingly. Hello, Jewish Guilt! How are you today? I, for one, am doing shitty.

So what do I do? I choose the path of least resistance. Which is, believe it or not, just giving in to Mom. I tell FMIL that she must seat all of her guests at three tables and Mr F and I squeeze all of our guests (and some of FMIL's) at ours.

Done.

Or so I thought.

Until Mom gives me a diagram of where she wants her tables to be placed in the reception room.

All by her. At the front of the room. So that all of my friends will be wayyyyy across the room from me.

Keep following the path of least resistance and apparently you end up at the bottom of a lake of quicksand.

SOS, Please, Someone Help Me, It's Not Healthy

I know, I know. I've been MIA. Although it's not because I'm sitting at home, twiddling my thumbs (though does anyone actually "twiddle" their thumbs? Don't people just sit on the couch and watch bad reality TV or maybe consume too many hot buttered rums while lazily paging through year-old wedding magazines?). Anyway, I have been doing no such things. In fact, it has been quite the opposite.

I have been so busy, I haven't had a moment to complain. Well, on my blog, anyway. I had my first dress fitting (and yes, got a proper bra, complete with groping - but that's another story for another day), created my wedding program, sent out my invites, worked on the out-of-town bags, designed and purchased my rehearsal dinner invites, and no joke, that's not the half of it (and no the other half doesn't include holding down a full time job, because really, my office serves solely as a vestibule to hold all of my wedding projects at this point).

Anyway, this all began because I woke up one morning and I decided that I am done with planning this wedding and that all must be finished so I can go about living my life like a layperson (i.e., one who is not shrouded in alleged pre-nuptial bliss). Thus, I have now commenced Operation Wedding Overdrive (OWO - not to be confused with EVOO, as touted by her perkiness herself, Ms. Rachel Ray, a.k.a. my nemesis (and no, she doesn't technically know she's my arch enemy, but that's because she is so busy being so...smiley. I think my perfect day might start with a Bloody Mary and end with watching Rachel Ray cry hot sad tears because her magazine has folded.).)

But what finally drew me back to the blogosphere amidst the madness of OWO, you might ask?

Well, my wedding shower is in two days.

And of course, there's more.

I have a massive flesh-eating rash pioneering across my forehead.

I kid you not. Ok, it's not flesh-eating (thankfully), but it is a contact dermatitis. If that sounds medical-ish and scary, I assure you it is. My forehead is a DANGER zone. Give me some Cortisone or lose me forever.

Like the first snow of winter, the rash arrived out of nowhere last night. I spent a typical evening on the couch doing wedding-y things with my computer on my lap, Grey's Anatomy on the TV, and a glass of wine balanced precariously on the couch (a bad idea I know, but the couch is brown leather and wipes off easily). After I stayed up far too late I went to wash my face. Before leaning over the sink I glanced at my reflection and EEEGADS!, there was a giant array of red bumps across my forehead.

I immediately run over to Mr F, who is already lying in bed, and show him the rash. He is staring straight at the TV when he goes "don't worry, it's nothing." I turn off the TV and make him stare at my forehead. This time he says "Oh" and raises an eyebrow. And then he's silent. Well, that's not good.

"Can I do anything about it?"

"I think you should just sleep on it and we'll see what it looks like tomorrow."

So I woke up this morning and bounded over the mirror, hoping that like Sleeping Beauty and Snow White, that seven moderately restful hours would provide me with a creamy clear complexion (and perhaps even a line-free face and a coach made out of a pumpkin, or better yet, a Coach bag in a deep pumpkin color).

DOUBLE egads! Someone must have made the rash ANGRY because it had become enlarged and redder and well, bumpier. And it was picking up real estate on my forehead quicker than Donald Trump was buying up the Upper West Side. So I slathered my forehead in Cortisone cream and dammed myself for growing out my bangs for the stupid wedding.

And I closed my office door the whole day so I didn't have to expose my forehead to my co-workers' prying eyes. Which worked very successfully.

Except now I have my shower in two days. In the scheme of things, sure, I understand that a prickly red rash that's slowly making its way around my face isn't the end of the world. People will still be happy to see me (if not eager to hug me). And sure, it would be way worse if I got it for the wedding (assuming it will be gone by then, which at this point, sure as heck ain't a given), but you know, wouldn't it be nice if something were just easy? You know, if Cinderella didn't have to have the coach disappear and the glass slipper fall off and Sleeping Beauty declined luscious fruit offerings from strange elderly women?

But I suppose it's all part of the story that is supposed to lead to Happily Ever After.

Except that I think my Happily Ever After is about to come in ten minutes since I've just taken a Benadryl to stop the itching on my forehead and I already feel some major drowsy kicking in.

The End.

Of This Post.

Doctor Doctor, Can't You See I'm Burning, Burning?

I saw a therapist for the first time on Monday.

Now I won't say that there is a direct correlation between planning my wedding and the decision to see a therapist. It's more like the veil that broke the camel's back.

Mr F has been encouraging me to see a therapist for some time now given my proclivity to being overly stressed and anxious about just about everything. I have resisted mostly because while I think therapy is a wonderful thing, I tend to feel that it is something that makes much more sense for people who are dealing with "real" issues - like addiction, grief, or depression. Not so much for anxiety. It just seems so self-indulgent to see a therapist to deal with "stress" when people all over the world are sick, starving, and victims of violence and abuse.

That being said, the fear of blossoming into a fully formed version of my parents (who, the learned doctor informed me, are probably both dealing with severe forms of generalized anxiety disorder themselves) combined with quickly worsening and painful TMJ (from grinding my teeth at night from stress) finally was enough for me to agree that if speaking with a professional about my "issues" could ultimately make me a better person (better person = person not as crazy as my parents and with less physical symptoms of stress), then it was worth a try.

What is most fascinating is that I can write five pages on picking out china, but I don't have a lot to say on this. Mostly I'm writing in the interest of full disclosure and because I'm a little giddy at the recollection of our first conversation.

The Doctor begins by asking: "So, why are you here?"

"I knew you were going to ask me that! And I've been thinking about what I was going to say for the past few days. I think this has been a long time in coming. But the truth is that I've been really stressed lately and I have a lot of anxiety...about...uhm...hmm."

"About what?"

"I know this is going to sound funny, and I think it's really just a catalyst to get me here - and not the cause of my anxiety per se...but...I decided to come here because I'm really stressed about...Planning My Wedding."

"Hmmmmmmm." The Doctor looks down writes something (presumably "patient is crazy" or a picture of a bird going "cuckoo! cuckoo!") and leans back in her chair.

And then she said "OK, so tell me if you have any phobias."

"Wha???" Phobias? Did I hear right? Perhaps she said "tell me if you've picked out your phlowers?" No, no I think she did not.

Apparently what she did do was change the subject. Flat out just moved on. It was like I'd suggested we order a pizza and she responded with "Do you like my new sweater?" Not even a tacit acknowledgment of my statement.

I started to do my nervous giggle thing (which probably freaked her out more since I'm sure she suspected there were voices in my head telling me jokes) because at that moment I realized that even my PhD-holding-mental-health-professional couldn't provide any answers about the massive stress caused by wedding planning. Either that or I have a therapist with a severe hearing deficiency.

Well that's just about it. Except that it cost me $140 to learn that my therapist can't plan my wedding for me (and/or needs the Miracle Ear) and I got suckered into going back again in two weeks. I'm not really sure where this whole thing will get me (except for some potentially funny but unnecessarily expensive blog posts), but for those of you who are also stressed (but don't want to drop a Benjamin and a half on a shrink of your own), I'm happy to pass along her advice.

Unfortunately, most of this session focused on my crazy parents and my non-wedding-related issues so I have no advice to share, but I firmly believe that you should all stay tuned as I am certain that within $420 (also known in layman's terms as "three more sessions") we shall once again straddle the issue of the White Horse of the Apocalypse, the impending nuptials trotting toward me with advancing speed. Giddyup!

Heartburn: An Interlude

Do you remember when Ashlee Simpson lip-synched on Saturday Night Live a few years ago and it was a big "to do" and everyone's collective panties were in a bunch? (I didn't think it was such a big deal - because after all, doesn't everyone lip-synch? And doesn't everyone use remixing and backup singers in the studio and isn't that really the same thing? And so why are we all upset about this and not that?)




Ahem. So you remember that, right? And THEN do you remember, how post-jig, Ashlee gave a few excuses but finally settled on the fact that she had ACID REFLUX and she couldn't sing because her throat was burning? (Well if you don't remember, go look at the PerezHilton archives or something.) Well I'm pretty sure the public's reaction was along the lines of "Acid Reflux? Why on God's Green Earth Should We Accept That As A Valid Excuse?" And I too (while not thinking the lip-synching was a big deal) totally judged her, mostly for her lameness in concocting excuses and wrote her off as, well, a dumbass.





Ashlee Simpson, I hereby cordially apologize for my rash response.





Until just three months ago, I had not understood the severity of said Acid Reflux, or, as the laypeople call it "Heart Burn." I, of burn-free heart, did not grasp that when one becomes extremely stressed, say from the thought of performing live music for millions or, dealing with crazy parents to plan a wedding, the heart and throat begin to actually feel like ACID (as in the kind that burned the Joker's face all crazy), is slowly beginning a death march up your chest, into your esophagus and through the back of your throat (ok, I'm sure that's all medically wrong, but it's my pain and let me describe it as I so choose). Acid reflux sucks.





This is a new phenomenon in my life. Along with four gray hairs. And skin that's looking a little sallow. (Mr. F. said in the elevator to me the other day: "What's that weird makeup you're wearing under your eyes? I don't like it." I wasn't wearing makeup.)





My body is physically rejecting wedding planning.