Sometimes it takes me several weeks to grow the balls to write a post about what’s really been on my mind.

This will be one such post.

Most of the time, my silence on here can be attributed to me spending time working on things that take me far away from a computer.  Lately, though, my silence has been due to a general pissiness about something I wasn’t sure I should talk about here.  After much thought, and permission granted from Alex, it seems like the cathartic thing to do, so here goes…

The pissiness stems from a very specific topic: BABIES.  Or, to be more specific, me and Alex having a baby.

I’ll give my mom a moment to freak out.

The concept of having a baby is fairly new for me.  Not because I was formerly of the I’m-never-having-a-kid camp, but because I figured it would not be on my radar until well after marriage.  Then I up and fell in love with a man who already has a kid.  I’m not sure I can explain this in a way that non-stepmothers can fully understand, but there is something about being a stepmom that makes me desperately want to be a mother… a BIOLOGICAL mother. This took me by complete surprise, smacking me over the head not too long after Alex and I got engaged.  I spent a lot of time hearing, “No, I want DADDY.”  Or, “No, MY mommy.”  I was also rather taken aback by the attitude so many people — even people you don’t expect it from — have towards stepmothers.  Stepmothers, apparently, are not “real” parents.  I don’t share blood with E, so my opinions, and knowledge, and experiences raising him don’t count for much with more people than I ever anticipated.

It took until after Alex and I got married for me to be sure that I’m ready to have a baby (he’s been on board for a while).  And now that I’m ready, I want it to happen NOW (because, as all my readers probably have figured out, I’m FANTASTIC at being patient).

Which brings me to the reason for my pissiness.

The trouble with “trying to get pregnant” is that it’s not something you can will to happen.  It happens when it’s meant to happen.  I know people who got pregnant on their first try, before they were even serious about it, and I also know people who have been trying for well over a year and have nothing to show for it.  Alex and I haven’t been “trying” for very long at all, so this is not about “having trouble.”  It’s about being totally and completely unable to control the situation.  I LOATHE this, I loathe it with the passion of a thousand suns.

Here is what I’ve learned so far, as I have struggled with the concept of not being about to control this at all:

• It takes 2 weeks from the time you conceive for your body to begin telling you that you’ve conceived.  I had to look that up.  This 2 week waiting period is not part of the normal space-time continuum.  Really.  It’s not.
• It’s really, really easy to mistake stupid things (gas, too many cups of coffee, the smell of nasty Chinese food) for pregnancy symptoms.  Especially when you’re waiting around to see if you got pregnant 2 weeks ago.  You have a big lunch and suddenly it becomes easy to convince yourself that your bloated stomach is your uterus expanding, not the 6 pieces of pizza you just ate.
• People will inevitably come out of the wood work who you never even knew wanted kids and declare themselves knocked up the moment you decide you would like to have a baby of your own.
• The best way to take your mind off the fact that you want to be pregnant and you’re not is to have BARE MINIMUM 3 hobbies with which you can be distracted at any given time of the day.

Right now, that’s all I’ve got.  I don’t intend to write about this much, but I’m interested to know if any readers have words of wisdom, or similar experiences to this, so if you have a comment, do share!

© 2010, The Table Has Shoes (and Other Ambiguities). All rights reserved.

I’ve been horrible about posting lately, and I’m sorry! Unfortunately, there’s a chance I will continue to be horrible about it for another week or so, because Alex and I made a big decision last week and it has created loads of extra work for us in this last month leading up the wedding.

We put an offer on a house. And it was accepted… just in time for the tax credit! We couldn’t be more excited, but now we’re scrambling to get everything done so we can close on the house in time for the tax credit deadline.  Will I write a post detailing the whole experience?  You bet!

By the way, buying a house 4 weeks before your wedding definitely falls into the following category: things you probably shouldn’t do if you want to remain sane.

© 2010, The Table Has Shoes (and Other Ambiguities). All rights reserved.

Not too long ago, I asked my readers to help me out with a relationship dilemma of sorts: do I cede territory in the kitchen to Alex from time to time, or don’t I?  The verdict was a resounding “let the man cook,” so last Thursday night I turned over my chef’s knife, in spite of my apprehensions.

Let me just tell you all… it was HARD.  Really hard.  It took every ounce of my self-control to not hover, or supervise, or check on him when I heard banging that made me cringe (banging that turned out to be Alex pounding the chicken tenders).  I squirmed in my chair in the living room.  I tried to distract myself by doing laundry.  When that didn’t work I decided perhaps we ought to open a bottle of wine with dinner.  IT WAS REALLY, REALLY HARD TO STAY OUT OF THAT KITCHEN.

But, it was also important that I let Alex do his own thing, and make what he wanted to make for me, without giving the impression that I had my doubts.  And after the fifth time I reminded myself of this, a miraculous thing happened: I started to smell what he was cooking.  It smelled good!

Alex, as it turns out, was making chicken stir fry with rice and salad, a meal I would be perfectly happy for him to make again from time to time.  Here are a few pictures of the finished product:

Thanks for all your input – you all really helped on this issue!

© 2010, The Table Has Shoes (and Other Ambiguities). All rights reserved.

I’m a control freak.  I don’t know if this has ever come up before here, but it’s true.

My need to control things doesn’t usually cause major problems in my life.  I like to have things planned out, and I hate surprises, but most of the time it’s not so bad. At least, it was not so bad until Alex and I moved in together almost a year ago, and it started to manifest itself in the most bizarre way ever: in the kitchen.

Just so everyone has some background, there are 3 things you should know about me and my kitchen:

1. It is MY kitchen.  It has been ever since I left college and immediately moved into my own apartment.  I set it up the way  that works for me to cook and bake, and if someone moves something it makes me really cranky.
2. I can get really anal about how my kitchen equipment gets cleaned.  To the point where I don’t want anyone except me to clean that room.
3. I dabbled in catering for a few years before going to graduate school for science, and I worked in a restaurant kitchen for a stint as a prep chef.  This experience gave me some very specific ideas about what does and what does not constitute a decent meal.

When Alex and I were dating, my need to control things in the kitchen wasn’t much of a problem.  I cooked things for him, and I cleaned them up, and he enjoyed it (except for the time I made an herb salad that consisted primarily of parsley… that he didn’t enjoy.  Maybe I will write a post about that one day soon.).  But when we moved in together and got engaged, Alex started to make more noise about my kitchen control issues.

Why would he do that? you might ask.  It’s a good question, and I didn’t really understand it at first, either.  After all, why would any guy question being served home-cooked meals on a regular basis?

The answer, revealed after several disagreements over dinner, is this: Alex likes to cook sometimes.  And he doesn’t like they I don’t really LET him cook.  Oh, he heats up Spaghettio’s occasionally, and he makes a mean slice of toast, but touch my chef’s knife?  I DON’T THINK SO!  He made me dinner on my last birthday, and I ultimately made the poor guy so nervous that he wound up serving me slightly pink chicken.  He has not picked up a pot or pan since.

The fact that I do all the cooking, not because he can’t cook but because I don’t WANT him to cook has been the topic of conversation with some of our friends and family recently.  Bottom line: Alex would like to cook sometimes, but  I simply can’t get past my need to have control over the kitchen all the time.  It’s an impasse.  My mom has suggested I let him cook 1 night per week, but I am so scared I will be served Lipton noodles with chickpeas (an inside joke, sorry), that so far I’ve had trouble stomaching the concept of turning over my apron for an evening.  It’s also been suggested that I could regret discouraging him from cooking down the road, when we have kids running around every day and I don’t have the time/energy to cook a meal.  That one got filed away under “noted.”

So I am taking this quirk to my readers!  Do any of you have a suggestion for how a control freak such as myself can come to terms with “allowing” my future husband to make an occasional dinner or two?  Should he just be thankful I am making dinner at all and let it go?  Is there a middle ground?

Thank you in advance for you help!

© 2010, The Table Has Shoes (and Other Ambiguities). All rights reserved.

Does anyone have a really fabulous recipe for lemonade?

You see, life has just thrown an extra-large quantity of lemons at me, and I need to find some way to make something out of them to keep my sanity.

As I sit typing this post, it is roughly 2 months and 2 weeks until Alex and I tie the knot.  Everything is all set up: all our vendors are confirmed, my dress is ready, the invitations have gone out.  We’re good to go.

… Or so I thought.  Apparently all the planning and organizing and thinking things through in the world – because if I’m being honest, I have planned and organized and thought through this wedding more than I have ever planned or organized or thought through anything in my life – will not prevent everything from unraveling around me, making my cozy cocoon of completed checklists shred to pieces before my eyes.

Don’t worry, nothing has happened to stop the wedding from happening.  Everything with Alex and I is great.  But I would say that arguably the worst thing OTHER than the wedding not happening has occurred.  We found out last night that we have to move… TWO WEEKS BEFORE THE WEDDING.

Maybe that doesn’t sound like a big deal.  But for us, it is.  We aren’t just moving a few streets over, or one town over.  We have to move to a whole other county.  That whole other county is 50 miles north of where we live now.  It’s also 50 miles north of where the wedding is.  Our current lease, in a bizarre twist of fate, ends 5 days before the wedding.  We’ve known for some time that we weren’t going to renew the lease for another full year because we’re buying a house.  The hope had been that our landlords would let us stay here month-to-month until the end of the summer, but now we’ve been informed that they aren’t interested in letting us do that.  So we have to get out by the time the original lease ends.

Life’s a bi%ch, isn’t it?

This new development throws all kinds of big hairy monkey wrenches into the month before the wedding.  For example:

• All our gift registry delivery details will now have to be changed, since we won’t be here anymore if packages get mailed to our home address.
• We have to add at least 1 extra night on to our hotel stay the weekend of the wedding, since we have many people coming in from out of town, and it seems pretty darn crappy for us to not be around to see them before the wedding.
• Alex will have to drive MUCH farther and longer to pick up E for all the wedding events, something that gives both of us agita.

Worst of all, we will be coming home from our honeymoon and living with one of my parents until we have the home-buying stuff settled and closed.  We always knew we’d be living with one of them for a few months while we waited – we just didn’t know we’d start our lives as newlyweds there.  It’s more than a little bit depressing (although we do know that this means we will save more money than we expected, which is not a horrible thing).

Bottom line: I currently feel like the rug has been yanked out from under me and I can’t find the ground to steady myself.  Maybe I should be asking for a recipe for hard lemonade…

© 2010, The Table Has Shoes (and Other Ambiguities). All rights reserved.

One of my absolute favorite things about wedding planning is not the wedding planning – it’s the honeymoon planning! I’ve written about honeymoons before, but this past weekend Alex and I achieved a momentous CHECK on our “to-do” list for our wedding: our honeymoon is now PAID IN FULL!! And after the cruddy winter the East Coast has had, who wouldn’t be psyched at the prospect of heading for Hawaii in a few short months?
Choosing Hawaii was easy, but not, for Alex and I. He felt strongly that we should go someplace neither of us has been before, and I’ve been to Hawaii before. In the end, we chose to go there because it’s much more affordable than Europe is right now (our runner-up choice). We’ve managed to make the trip new for both of us, because while I have been to Hawaii, all my time there was spent on Oahu, and we will be spending most of our honeymoon on the other Hawaiian islands.
Here is the final version of what we plan to hit while on our honeymoon – with a special shout-out to Kelly, who has been awesome to us while we planned out trip.

Our first stop is Oahu – because you have to fly into Honolulu, and because if nothing else Alex really wants to see Waikiki Beach and the North Shore.

Photo Credit: Destination360.com

Photo Credit: Aloha.com

We’re also hoping to stop by the Dole Pineapple Plantation, for some pineapple ice cream. We don’t have enough time to go to Pearl Harbor, so I have promised Alex I’ll dig out my photos from the tour I took when we get back!

From Oahu, we’re going to the Big Island, Hawaii. There are 2 main items on our agenda while we’re there: hiking Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, and doing the Mauna Kea Summit and Stars excursion (which we have pre-booked through Liberty Travel). The Summit and Stars excursion is something we are really excited about – we can’t think of anything cooler than star-gazing on Mauna Kea.

Photo Credit: NPS.gov

From the Big Island, we’re going to make our way to Maui, where we will hopefully relax after all that hiking and sight-seeing. There are a few things we’re hoping to do on Maui, though:

• Go to a Hawaiian luau

• Watch the sun rise over Haleakala Crater (which, I’ll be honest, I don’t think is going to happen).

Photo Credit: about.com

• Drive the Road to Hana in our rented convertible… which we’re told is absolutely worth the extra $20 per day by the 3 couples we’re friends with who went to Hawaii on their honeymoons!

Photo Credit: hawaiitravelreviewed.com

We’ve also heard there are a few wineries on Maui that produce pineapple wine, which sounds intriguing.
Anyone have other suggestions or ideas for honeymooning in Hawaii?

© 2010, The Table Has Shoes (and Other Ambiguities). All rights reserved.

Not too long ago, I wrote a post about how I planned to attempt the Couch to 5K challenge, both in preparation for the upcoming wedding and to get myself in better shape, for health.  It was an endeavor I knew I could not undertake on my own, so it was lucky that Whitney decided she wanted to try Couch to 5K at the same time as me.

The original plan was that we would each start the program on March 1.  Sometimes, though, life happens, and things come up that tear down the best laid plans.  Which is why Whitney started her program a month ago, on February 1, while I started yesterday.  (You can check up on Whitney’s progress here, where she is maintaining a log of her runs and accomplishments.)  I decided to stick with the original plan of starting on March 1, primarily because the weather around here stunk more than a skunk in a sauna this February.  I also have enlisted Alex to participate in the program with me.  He will be running with me most weeks, keeping me motivated, and hopefully getting in shape himself.

Now, I do LIKE to run.  I don’t like how I feel AFTER I run, because between asthma and my blood pressure, I usually have a recovery time of at least 20 minutes, which is lame.  I’ve been looking forward to starting this running program, and to joining the ranks of people who can say, “yeah, I run.”  To me, that just sounds cool.  I thought about going nuts and spending loads of money on fancy workout clothes and other running paraphernalia, like a GPS tracker so I’d know how far we’d gone, but then I realized that, a) I have plenty of old but still functional workout clothes, and b) right now there are much better things I can spend my money on.  No GPS tracker for me.  There is also no C25K iPhone/iPod app for me at the moment (I have an iPod Touch, by the way, not an iPhone).  Alex and I tend to talk while we run, so I don’t have faith in myself to use the app properly – and it’s not free.  (I am a cheapskate with the iPhone apps, if they aren’t free, I generally will not download them.)

After some discussion, we decided to try running at Kensico Dam first.  It’s off the road, but is paved and flat, with loads of people there at any given time of day, even in this crappy weather.  Here is what the route looks like, courtesy of MapMyFitness.com (which is a fantastic resource for runners looking for routes, by the way!):

I’ve got to say, I really enjoyed our first run.  We stayed pretty true to the C25K program, walking half the time and running half the time.  It was chilly – probably a tiny bit below 40 degrees (Fahrenheit) – but I did not need to use my inhaler or stop to catch my breath once.  Alex did well, too, and I suspect he could have run more than he did but held back because of me.

I’m really psyched to go running again tomorrow, especially since we’re going to try out a different running route.  I’m not planning to bore everyone with daily updates on our progress, but I am thinking of doing weekly updates through the end of the program.  Does anyone have suggestions for a different level of frequency for the updates?

© 2010, The Table Has Shoes (and Other Ambiguities). All rights reserved.

As we get closer to our wedding date, I asked Alex if he would be willing to share something he has been thinking about regarding the wedding here on The Table Has Shoes (and Other Ambiguities).  I am proud to present you with the fruit of his labor:

From the Groom’s Point of View: How Do You Choose a Stand-In For Mom?

My mother has always been my guiding light and I have been able to count on her for as long as I can remember. But my mother is no longer physically with me; she died over 7 years ago from a massive internal hemorrhage in her brain stem.

She had been taking COUMADIN^® to break up a blood clot in her right atrium. This weakened her endothelial lining and facilitated a cerebrovascular attack. The doctor essentially told me that they would keep her alive on life support in hopes of preserving some of her organs so others may live. She was only 57. That day changed my life on multiple levels, one being that I lost any chance of being able to dance with her at my wedding.

I strongly believe in the American custom of dancing with one’s parent.  And I intend to up hold this tradition the best way I can, so I need to pick a surrogate. I have at least five female family members from which to choose:

• My mother’s cousin once removed, Pauline, who has been to every memorable family function in my life. I have very fond memories of being one of many cousins enjoying summer breaks at her family home.

• My godmother, Serena, who was technically first in line as my mother’s proxy and was the first person I considered. But Serena lives in Vermont and we probably won’t have an opportunity to practice dancing together.

• My mother’s closest cousin, Evelyn, who gratuitously took in Murphy and me as tenants after my mother passed. Murphy was one of my mom’s three cats that needed a home.  During my 6 years under her roof, I had an exciting life engaged in local politics, studying for my Master’s degree, and thinking up conversations to have with my future fiancé during our biochemistry class. And there is always the fact that at 71, Evelyn can still dance circles around me.

• My first cousin, Erinn, who is by far my favorite relative.  And even though she lives a few thousand miles away, I need no rehearsal to dance with her. She is truly like a sister to me.

• Christina’s mother, Betty, who has openly accepted me and was the first person I turned to when I needed help designing Christina’s engagement ring. She is someone I like and admire, and not to mention a terrific holiday chef.

All of these family members mean a great deal to me, so it is not going to be an easy decision. Not to mention that I also have to choose a fitting song. If Mom were around I would have found an appropriate Neil Diamond song to reminisce to.  Each of the above women represent a different aspect of my life, and finding an unforgettable song to match is probably going to be harder than picking which relative to dance with.

Hopefully Alex will share what his final decision on this turns out to be.  Stay tuned!

© 2010, The Table Has Shoes (and Other Ambiguities). All rights reserved.

I don’t think I am alone when I say that as a bride, you often have to deal with a lot of advice that you JUST. DON’T. WANT.
For example, you and your fiance have not a single bone in either of your bodies that desires a wedding ceremony that takes place in a church. Not everyone understands this decision, so even your grandmother’s sister’s friend’s uncle’s goldfish calls you to ask if they can help you find a church for the wedding. Or maybe you want to use a non-traditional song for your processional, and your friend doesn’t like the idea, so you now have to listen to her ideas for processional songs every time she calls. Maybe it’s something as simple as whether you ought to have a signature cocktail served during the reception, or if you should go with the lobster or the filet mignon as the third menu choice for dinner. EVERYONE has an opinion to share. Sometimes the ideas are good, and sometimes they are just plain ugly. (And, yes, some of those things have happened to us!)
This doesn’t affect Alex and I as much now as it did when we started our wedding planning process, but in the beginning it was both overwhelming and frustrating. We wanted to make everyone happy, but we also felt it’s our wedding, and it ought to be about us, not about everyone we know. And when you shoot down an idea, or pretend you are taking someone’s advice and then obviously go in a different direction, feelings get hurt. There is a difference between asking for help because someone might know something you don’t know, and being pulled aside for a dissertation you didn’t ask for, right?
Then we got a piece of advice from a rather unlikely source: our landlords. They live in the apartment below ours, and they got married about 3 weeks before Alex and I got engaged. The first thing they told us when we told them the good news was this:

Everyone’s going to have an opinion they want to share. You listen, and thank them, maybe even say there are a lot of ideas you’re sifting through right now and you are certainly going to add theirs to the list. Then you do what you want anyway.

I know this sounds really simple, and perhaps even obvious, but when you’re in the middle of everything, it’s truly difficult to keep this in mind! Adopting this strategy has been one of the best things we did for ourselves with the wedding. It has actually worked out so well that we have decided to carry it over into all aspects of life – you know, for big stuff, like having kids and buying a house. There is so much advice to be had when it comes to these things, it becomes easy to lose sight of what you want, or what you envision, just because you don’t want to insult someone.
How do all other brides, or newlyweds, or anyone for that matter, deal with superfluous opinions while in the midst of planning your wedding, or your life?

© 2010, The Table Has Shoes (and Other Ambiguities). All rights reserved.

When I was a little girl, I did what many little girls do.  I watched Disney movies like Snow White and Cinderella, where the heroine gets married to the prince and lived happily ever after as his wife.  As a little girl, I wasn’t particularly aware that when Cinderella got married she probably stopped being ‘Miss Cinderella’ and became ‘Mrs. Prince Charming.’  And even if I had been aware of this change, it didn’t bother me much.  MRS. was perfectly normal – all my friends’ parents’ names were Mr. and Mrs. So-and-So.  OBVIOUSLY being married made their last names the same.  End of story, as far as little-kid-me was concerned.

Well, here I sit, 4 months before becoming a “Mrs.” myself, and let me just tell you, it’s no longer so cut and dry, this whole ‘Miss, now Mrs.,’ thing.

Suffice it to say, the concept of changing my name is throwing me for the proverbial loop.

It’s not a feminist thing.  It’s not even anything to do with Alex’s last name.  Truth be told, his last name could be considered an improvement on my own.  No… it’s more of an identity thing.  It’s as if changing my name in some way forsakes who I was before marriage.  Like I’m not a member of my family’s “clan” anymore.  Which brings me to something else that has been rolling around in my head for a few days now.  I HATE that a woman’s last name prior to marriage is referred to as her MAIDEN name.  The word maiden conjurs images of damsels in distress and white knights climbing up the tallest tower to claim a prize.  I don’t want to be a maiden, thank you very much.  It’s like saying a woman isn’t quite… right… before she’s married.

I’m sure this all sounds like I’m opposed to taking Alex’s last name.  Whenever people ask me if I’m changing “it”, I freeze up and grimace, which probably suggests I’m at odds with the concept (and also probably makes Alex feel oh-so-good.  By the way, WHY do people ask this question?  It’s a bit nosy, don’t you think?).  But that’s not it.  And I more than likely will adopt his name, because it’s a gesture to him and because I would like our kids to have 2 parents with the same last name.  I don’t want to put hyphenation on a child.  My balking is about giving up my last name, not about taking his.

My current solution?  I’m thinking about compromising a bit and changing my last name to his, but also changing my middle name to my “maiden” name.  I think this ensures I won’t be LOSING the name I’ve gone through life with thus far, since that is the crux of the issue.  I have a good friend who did precisely this when she got married, which is how I got the idea.  But it’s still scary, at least to me!

Has anyone else had trouble with the whole changing-your-name concept?

© 2010, The Table Has Shoes (and Other Ambiguities). All rights reserved.