cheese and whine

It's time for a small and not especially well-written gripefest.

I'm tired of filling out job applications, writing cover letters, and tweaking my resume! Tired of it, ya hear?! I couldn't even get an interview for an elementary school receptionist position. How insulting!

But more than the tedium of applications, I'm tired of not being employed. It leaves me with way too much time to sit in front of the computer screen looking at wedding blogs and stressing out about how to decorate the reception and other decisions that don't really matter in the end.

I have an interview in Waco on Monday. Praying that this job is it.

the bottom line

The average wedding in Texas costs more than $26,000, according to one statistic I read.

That's like all of my student debt, plus almost all of our wedding budget. Unbelievable!

This would be an impractical amount for my family to spend for a wedding, so I've been scouring the web for stories from brides who have planned low-budget weddings. I've discovered a few things:

Most of them keep their guest lists short. Really short. Sometimes it's just family.

Most of them are best friends with a whole slew of people who have the precise skill sets they need in their vendors -- their aunt is a baker, their cousin is a photographer, or their grandparents happen to own a manor with several acres of beautifully-kept grounds.

A lot of them do short, afternoon weddings.

Most of them take a nontraditional approach. This could mean anything -- nonfloral decorations, casual attire, receptions in local parks, or even foregoing the white tiered wedding cake.

I had some good, nontraditional ideas, but my enthusiasm was not enough to convince my mother.

I pushed for a carnival-themed reception for months. Visions of cotton candy were dancing in my head, but my mom refused to accept hot dogs, funnel cake, popcorn, and soft pretzels as "wedding food."

(Side note: Who even likes "wedding food" anyway? Wouldn't something different be refreshing? I think so.)

So my parade, unfortunately, has been rained upon.

I'm also playing with the idea of a fiesta theme: paper decorations (tissue and crepe paper flowers everywhere, papeles picados, etc), fajitas, salsa, guacamole, margaritas. Ooh! Buñuelos.

Who doesn't love Tex-Mex? It beats cheese cubes and finger sandwiches any day of the week.

a perfect match?

I hate bridesmaids dresses. I don't care what the David's Bridal catalog says -- there is no cardigan, necklace, or interesting belt in existence that is going to make that royal-blue bubble hem monstrosity into something wearable in the real world.

I started out with the notion of mismatched bridesmaids dresses -- sending each girl a few paint chips in different shades of pink and saying, "Find something as close to one of these as possible." Part of this was laziness. Mostly, though, I just love the eclectic look.


Then I was on the J. Crew clearance website a couple nights ago and found this beauty --

in every size from 0 to 12. What are the odds?

So I called everyone, sent them a link to see if they liked it, and asked them to send me their sizes.

Today, before placing the order, I returned to the mismatched dress photos I loved before. I decided, again, that mismatched is more my style.

Back to square one. My wonderful friends have all agreed to carry the little paint chip index card with them and go out in search of dresses.

Where to work?

I'm hopeful and excited about job possibilities for the first time, and let me tell you -- it feels great!

I'm not sure why this shift occurred, or if it will last.

It could be the compliment on my writing I received this morning. I've realized not everyone can write, and it is one of the most marketable and transferable skills I've got.

I've also realized I don't need to limit myself to newspaper journalism. There are PR opportunities that don't involve promoting massive, soul-sucking corporations. I could work for hospitals, schools, local governments, or nonprofits.

Switching gears completely -- a conversation with one of my former teachers pointed out the need for Spanish teachers. I could teach. It would require some brushing up, sure. And an emergency certification. But teaching Spanish to Americans couldn't be harder than teaching English to Thais, right?

So I'm broadening my search, and hoping the confidence levels stay buoyed.

Picking up where I left off, sort of

I'm returning to my blog, once again -- partly at the urging of my former roommate, partly because I need to get my jumbled and sometimes-frenzied thoughts out of my head and into a place where I can look at them, and partly because I finally feel I have things to write about, namely:

Preparing for marriage
Planning a wedding
Hunting for gainful employment
And, possibly, cooking

I hope to make this blog as entertaining and informative as I like to believe my Thailand blog was. Anyway, enjoy!

ah-choo

Working at a desk all day is adversely affecting my posture, I think. And staring at a computer screen for eight hours certainly isn't doing my eyesight any favors.

I think yoga would help me feel better, but there's not a sufficiently large, flat floor surface in the house in which I'm currently living.

Speaking of the house I live in: it has a dog. I mean, the house doesn't have a dog. The owner of the house has a dog. I live there with her and her dog.

Anyway, my whole life I told people I was allergic to dogs and cats. My grandmother has dogs and a cat, and she always had to vacuum all the carpets and furniture and lock up the animals before we visited, or else I'd wallow in a sneezing, itchy-eyed state of misery for the duration of our stay.

But I never reacted to my aunt's Yorkies or her Pomeranian. And I didn't react to a high school boyfriend's Sheltie mix. I just put two and two together in the last couple of months and realized I'm only allergic to cats!

To be honest, it was a little jarring to find that something I'd always believed to be true of myself was actually not true at all. Here's to self-discovery and non-allergies!

mind boggled

Out of curiosity, I just added up all my paychecks and tutoring money from my 10 months of teaching English in Thailand. I was a little obsessive and kept exceptionally good records of everything I made and spent.

In that time, I earned about $7,300. Not much, right? And I brought home nearly $4,000 of it (in cash, on my person, on three flights, mind you).

My mind was just boggled at the amount of things I was about to do with a mere $3,300 in that length of time. Things like...

- Four weekend trips to various beaches (two to five hours away from Bangkok)
- Daytrips to various parts of the city and other provinces
- Four-day trip to Cambodia
- Three-week trip through Vietnam, Laos and northern Thailand
- Weeklong trip to southern islands
- Bought a professionally-tailored work wardrobe, including a black suit, five pencil skirts, four trousers, five long-sleeved button-down shirts, a tailored jacket and a little black dress
- And, you know, paid electric bills, got massages, ate breakfast most mornings and dinner every night, saw movies, had coffee and smoothies and bought loads of souvenirs and jewelry

If only my American pennies would stretch so far.