glasses, etc.

Note to self: do not leave dogs alone in basement with glasses on bedside table. They are now chewed to pieces. Good thing I am not completely blind. Is it just me, or are these dogs being particularly trying as of recent? I am trying, trying so hard, to be patient with them, but it's too much to team teach an all day (read: meets from 9-12. 1-3, and 6-8) theatre course with incredibly gifted kids, to plan a wedding, and to properly care for two puppies. I took them this week because The Fiance is teaching his graduate course again this summer, leaving him in the Twin Cities for a long stretch of hours, and kenneling them on a night with the upcoming holiday seemed too difficult. But I will not (do you hear me, fiance? oh yes, he doesn't read this blog), WILL NOT take them next week. If he wants me to be a sane person, he is going to have to deal with their chewing, which also included destruction of a very beloved Statue of Liberty hat he bought after we sun burned our ears on the day we got engaged. I'm beginning to rethink this whole dog thing. :)

In other news, Emily is on her honeymoon (or honey love moon, as Sam so wonderfully puts it) and we have booked ours. I also have two more events that take up swaths of time in the near future: North Carolina with two girl friends and one week of a poetry workshop. I desperately am looking forward to these three things, a relief from the feeling of drudgery I often get as I stumble through lesson plans in a very tired fashion, a relief from the Midwest and all the frustrations that go with it, a relief from the disappointments I bring into my world. I've been trying to keep myself up, up with positive feelings, up with a good attitude, but sometimes these things weigh me down.

I am reading a book Emily lent me, The Conscious Bride. I've only read the first twenty pages or so, but in it, the author encourages the bride-to-be to wallow, accept the anger and madness that goes into planning a wedding. I don't think this is what is the little pit of [something--is it sadness? anger?] that has taken up residence at the base of my heart, but I'm a little restless, and I think the world "frustrated" has bounded around in my mind a little more than it should.

A great deal of it is combined stress--the feeling that I am a person who is stumbling to catch up with her life. In just a few days, I can officially announce I am getting married in one month, and I'm not one hundred percent certain my guests will have chairs to sit upon when they arrive for the ceremony. I am currently living in a house that made me very unhappy in my teenage years and though we've all grown out of a lot of those behaviors, I find myself worn down anyway. And I'm teaching, which is wonderful, but the timing is rough. I want to write; tonight, my poetry writing group is meeting, and I am sitting here in the rain, on a night my mother has given me off (and she had the afternoon off, though it was spent running errands for dressmaking--it's all a matter of stumbling to keep up) and I want to be there, writing poems, reading books, working on a little knitting or sewing project. Instead, I am here, in the muggy humidity, with a broken elbow, and never enough sleep. And now, very funky looking glasses.

I hope I don't seem too complaining or wallowing. I promise to return, less in a fog of a nap, where I've woken up and things haven't magically fallen into place for me, and I just want to curl up with my stack of dusty Netflix, but instead, I should probably prepare for tomorrow's lesson, or figure out how many favors we ought to order, or wonder if we shouldn't just try to have our rehearsal dinner at the vineyard... I promise to return in better spirits, but for now, I am muggy with disappointment. (And at nothing specific, which is so ... well, frustrating.)

I need to remember: simplify, simplify.

If I were at home, I would curl up into The Fiance's very strong arms and he would tell me to just take it one thing at a time, and I would kiss him on the lips, and he'd help me tackle whatever to-do list is weighting me down. So I will close my eyes, imagine this, and start through that list. Now, if I could only just find that list...