A Shady Situation

Since when does the color white come in so many shades? I have realized that I have grown up in a generation that chooses to pick apart the basics with the goal to make them as complicated as possible. Not even black is safe. We now have charcoal, graphite and ebony, all of which have different twinges of blues and grays that play games with the eyes, driving even ROY. G. BIV himself crazy.

My first run-in with the complexities of basic colors was when I began shopping for my wedding dress. I realized that I would prefer to walk down the aisle in “soft white” opposed to stark white, opposed to ivory, opposed to cream, opposed to antique white, opposed to off white, opposed to pearl, opposed to just plain ole white itself. And the best was that one manufacturer’s antique white was another’s off white and ivory in one store was considered yellow in another. It’s like every shop I went to I had to learn a new language and embrace a new color spectrum just to get what I thought would be a simple white dress.

This shady dilemma has reared its ugly head once again, but this time on our home. Looking to add a kitchen island, the hubs and I wanted to match our already existing white cabinets. Trust me, they are white. Plain white. Standard white. Nothing fancy white.

Upon cabinet shopping we were blinded by the sample of what they called a “white” finish and opted to choose the more subtle, but still VERY white, “antique white” finish. Had enough “white” yet? Well, there is more.

We just got the delivery and in the box, the cabinets looked like the perfect shade of white, but when putting them in the kitchen, our new addition looked like a dirty gym sock. How in the heck can one white be so different from another? Our new cabinets look like they have a permanent shadow cast upon them… a shadow of stupidity that is, because we should have never have trusted our color instincts.

In all reality, and you know how I like to distort it, the cabinets aren’t THAT bad… its not like they are cream or off white… whatever that means. They will soon be dressed up with a new counter top and hardware, hopefully washing some brightness into the gym sock hue creating more of a “just bleached pair of tighty whiteys” shade.

Lesson of the day? Not all colors are created equal, not even the basics. What’s one person’s white, is another one’s ivory. And if life hands you an off shade, just embrace the differences AND your kitchen's dimmer switch.

We'll Always Have a Box of Cheerios.

Breakfast for dinner. Sounds easy enough, right? Wrong.

Since getting married, I’ve been on this mission to be the best wife possible, which includes a new found dedication to preparing home cooked meals.

Before tying the knot, I refused to touch raw meat, relied on pre-washed and chopped lettuce and couldn’t tell cinnamon from cumin.

But now, I’m trimming and handling raw carnage, buying and chopping fresh veggies and have a cabinet FULL of spices that I can name by scent alone. Not to be cocky here or anything, but I’m even impressing myself as I toast sesame seeds to garnish homemade chicken teriyaki and whip up banana bread after seeing a few forgotten bananas ripening on the counter.

However, last night took the wind out of my culinary sails as I screwed up the most basic of meals: breakfast.

My husband takes great pride in his breakfast making abilities, but my wifely confidence got in the way as I shot down his offer to help me prepare the morning fare for our evening meal.

Long story short, dinner preparations turned into a comedy of errors as I over estimated the time it would take to scramble eggs and under estimated the time it would take to nuke the bacon. And not only can I not successfully flip a pancake, I apparently can’t judge when they are undercooked and prefer to serve them with goopy middles that you discover only when slice into them.

Dinner was served and so was I.

Refraining from saying, “I told you I could help,” the hubs tried to hide his disappointment as he sifted through the pancakes to find the least runny one. Embarrassed of my failure, I quickly made my plate and tried to eat around simple items that had gone horribly wrong.

After a few minutes of eating by myself, waiting for the hubs to join me, and thinking “this isn’t THAT bad,” I heard a familiar jingle of cereal filling a bowl and realized that sure, its not THAT bad… it’s REALLY bad.

I stepped into the kitchen to find the hubs stuffing his face quickly with Cheerios to avoid having me see him admit to my dinner defeat.

I learned two things from this ego-checking debacle – first, a good husband never lets you see him scrape his inedible dinner into the garbage and second, you should always have a box of Cheerios on hand just in case.

Real Men Wear Eyebrow Pencil

I was in no way a needy or pushy bride-to-be. When comparing myself to the spectrum of brides, I would like to think I fell in the green hues, where I would freak out about missing wedding invitation envelopes, but didn’t demand that my bridesmaids all dye their hair the same color. I was emotional, but not irrational. I was picky, but not demanding. I had a vision, but I was open to suggestions. Basically, I was every wedding vendors dream.

It wasn’t until my then fiancé decided to buzz his eyebrows, shedding what use to be glorious strips of hair that framed his beautiful baby blues, that I FREAKED. OUT. It was my first irrational, bridal panic worthy of a reality show taping.

Before I go any further… yes, you heard me right. My husband buzzed off his eyebrows. 39 days before our wedding.

During a phone call at work, my hubby-to-be tells me that he “trimmed” his brows and thought they looked “a lot different than usual.” Apparently he “trims” them frequently and I thought nothing of it because his eyebrows have looked the same to me for the past five years. If trimming is his secret to being so handsome, please, trim away.

So I walk into our house later that evening and approach him from behind as he’s working in our office, staring at the computer. I go to hug him and recoil in horror as he turns around showing me remnants of what use to be his eyebrows.

They were gone. Well, practically gone. He looked like the lead character in that movie Powder, minus the bald head and freaky supernatural powers.

He didn’t think they were “THAT bad,” and got so defensive telling me they would grow back and scoffed when I noted we have a similar hair color and that my eye brow pencil would be a perfect shade for him.

I spent restless nights thinking about how washed out and odd he would look in our wedding pictures. I would love him no matter what, eyebrows or no eyebrows, but if you read my last post, the one thing I wanted to run smoothly were the wedding pictures and his tango with a trimmer jeopardized our chances of having perfect photos (little did I know my 103 degree fever the day of the wedding would be a far bigger concern than missing hair.)

It was one week after the “incident” and my hairless hubby still didn’t have eyebrows. I had time to get over the situation and realized there were bigger, hairier fish to fry. We were getting ready for our bridal shower and as I was putting my makeup on, the hubs paced nervously around me and finally said, “um… you know that eyebrow pencil you were talking about? Can I see it?”

It was then that I realized that real men make stupid mistakes with a trimmer and that real men will also wear eyebrow pencil under dire circumstances. And most importantly, I learned that real men will do anything to make their wife happy. I’m so happy I married myself a real man… who, by the way, had grown back a full set of REAL eyebrows by the time we walked down the aisle.

One "HOT" Bride

Ahhhh… it’s good to be back. A lot has happened since I last posted. The most important thing to announce is that I’m officially hitched now – I bet after all my posts about the bridal madness I faced you didn’t think I’d make it down the aisle, right? Not only did I make it down the aisle, I made it down with nothing but grace, beauty and a 103 degree temperature. Yes, that’s right. I gave new meaning to the phrase “hot bride” and have come to realize that the survival potential of your marriage is promising if you truly don’t know if you’ll physically survive the wedding and question if you’ll literally come out alive.

During the madness leading up the wedding, late night seating arrangement planning coupled with a frantic work schedule and the spread of the swine flu, resulted in an illness that will put me in the bridal hall of fame.

And we’re not talking about a little “cough, cough, sniffle, sniffle.” We’re talking about a full fledged virus that put me into emergency care TWICE (the second time the day before the wedding) and equipped me with medicine that came with the warning, “if I were you, I wouldn’t take this pill and partake in any kind of champagne toast.” I was weak, I could barely speak because my throat was swollen shut and I was hotter than the serving dishes at the rehearsal dinner.

The days leading up to the wedding I realized there would be no way I’d feel physically well on the big day. I hoped that I would have a strong enough voice for my vows, I wished that my fever would go down just enough to be somewhat comfortable but I PRAYED that I would still look healthfully flawless because after all, memories will fade, but darnit, pictures get passed around for decades to come. I don’t want my great, great grandchildren asking, “why is Grandma Stejamoe so pale and sweaty in her wedding pictures? Is that what they looked like in the 2000s?”

So my main goal that day was nothing more than to turn my “fresh from the ER” look into “fresh from the spa that just happens to have on call nurses and doctors on staff” look. And may I give you a piece of advice? If you’re in a bind and need to get attention ASAP at a an emergency care center, just tell everyone that you’re “getting married tomorrow.” Not only will you be treated well before the guy who just lost a thumb or the lady who has a screw driver stuck in her eye, you’ll also get the nicest bunch of medical staff crowding your hospital bed sharing stories about their wedding and “oooh-ing’ and “ahh-ing” as you try to croak out what your flower colors are and what you’ll be serving your guests. Does it really take five nurses to get your blood pressure reading? Well, apparently when you’re talking about bridesmaid dresses, it does.

So with my new ER fan club, a hearty combination of medication and the fear of horrible wedding pictures, I sucked everything up and hoped for the best. Its now nearly 5 months later and looking back at it all, I just didn’t hope for the best, I got the best… the wedding was flawless, the groom didn’t faint, I looked HEALTHY in our pictures and we had hundreds of our friends and family surrounding us with love that day… but I made a point to make sure they weren’t surrounding us too much as I tried to tame my wedding crashing fever.

Oh, and did I mention that I was coughing so hard before I walked down the aisle in an effort to oust anything that would impede on my vows that I sprained my neck? Yeah, for the first two days of our honeymoon I couldn’t turn to look at my groom without turning my ENTIRE body. And I was in so much pain that I tried to convince the hubs that we should find a Mexican doctor to inject my neck with a muscle relaxer and that I was sure it would be safe. What a romantic honeymoon, right?!

I do get sad thinking back about how sick I felt on my wedding day, but I also think back and smile knowing that I have one heck of a story to tell. And you know how people will tell you that if it rains on your wedding day it means you’ll be rich? Well, I’d like to add another saying to the books… if you turn up in the ER the day before your wedding sick as a dog, it means you’ll have a healthy, happy marriage… or if nothing else, it means you’ll get some impeccable customer service from ER staff.