June 2013 - Oh Amy, Dear!

Bought the dress, went to the alterations appointment, got it hemmed, and took it home for the second time today! But of course it wasn’t without a mini heart-attack.

Before I left my alterations appointment four weeks ago, we set up a time for me to come back to try it on to test the alterations and to take it home. The appointment time we set was for today at 6pm. Since I had planned on taking the bus to/from the appointment (save your comments until the bottom of this post), I was going to try to change the appointment to an earlier time so I didn’t get home late. I also thought it would be a good idea to confirm the time since I hadn’t yet received any call (as I had in the past) reminding me of the appointment. It was a good thing I thought of that.

I called and spoke with a very nice girl at the store who said she’d be happy to schedule me a little earlier, since they had a couple of openings. She took my name and went to get the book (apparently they still do pencil and paper) to change my time. When she came back from hold, panic set in – I wasn’t anywhere on the list and she didn’t know where my dress and alterations ticket were. She said she knew it was still there and they hadn’t lost it though, so she wanted to call me back within a few minutes to talk about changing the appointment time – she just needed to find it first. Thanks for the vote of confidence.

It’s been almost two months since I last wrote a blog post, but not for lack of things to do. At the end of April, we found out that our living arrangement of four years was to be no more. The landlord was selling the home and we had 60 days to move out. Immediate frustration aside, I jumped right in to looking for a new place, hoping to take a step up in home since we would be getting married and starting our life together soon. Boy was I in for it.

First let me say: the rental market in 2013 is not the same as it was in 2009, the last time I moved. I did all the recommended things and even put a Housing Wanted ad up – after all, that’s how we found the place we’re moving out of. Not only did I get no fruitful responses, but almost every reply was some sort of scam. And even my daily searches left me going crazy and bursting into periodic crying fits. Places that looked too good always were, our first #1 choice never got back to us after we submitted our applications (and this place was WONderful), and whenever I tried scheduling a viewing I was either (1) told it might not be available by the time I wanted to see it, (2) treated very unprofessionally, or (3) was told a lease hadn’t been signed so they couldn’t take the ad down, but it was almost a done deal.

I felt utterly hopeless. I was trying to figure out where to move, working long hours at work, planning a wedding with an ever-shortening timeline, and maintaining life at home – all at once. Something had to give. I eventually decided I had to give myself a break from wedding planning if I was going to get anything done for moving. And just about then my body decided I needed a break from everything. Out of nowhere, in the middle of gorgeous weather, I end up with a serious cold (which I subsequently gave to my fiance and mother). I took the Friday before Memorial Day off to do some stuff around the house and ended up sleeping for a lot of it and the following weekend. Four day weekend in the garbage. That knocked my mental state back even more because I then felt like mother nature was going to foil even my best-laid plans. I was starting to worry that I’d have to move back out to East Portland, where I lived in a different part of my life – a part of life I’d rather not repeat.

An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure

When Life Gets in the Way of Wedding Planning