Christ is Risen! Alleluia!

Happy Easter, everyone.

Today we're going to be doing the family shuffle between my mom's and his aunt's. I don't know how long we'll do both families on holidays, because it really is exhausting to fit it all into one day, but since he's living with Kim now, it's manageable. Also, I don't know how we'll choose. We both have said that it's important to divide our time equally between the two families on holidays. It isn't fair to each other or to our families to just go to one side's house for everything. While I love Matt's family and he loves mine, we both want to see our families also, they want to see us, and I don't want him to feel like he's missing out on spending time with his siblings any more than I want to miss out on spending time with mine. So for now it's the shuffle. It's a pain, but it's worth the occasional difficulty for one day.

I was remembering last Easter season, and how I was just overwhelmed with joy because CHRIST IS RISEN. I know what you're thinking, but this was before Matt, so it wasn't the first flush of loving and being loved back. I know it was truly a fruit (gift?) of the Holy Spirit, the joy which just filled me and overflowed from me last year. I can remember sitting on my bed at night, saying prayers before I went to bed, and the sudden thought "HE IS RISEN" would flash like a thunderbolt through my mind. Then the excitement and wonder and joy would overwhelm me. Cross-legged I would bounce on the bed like a child and supress the giggles which just seemed to be bubbling up through me, because how would I explain to Allison why I was laughing if she heard?

This year is different. This year, I think, I am too distracted by the wedding plans to hear the voice proclaiming he is risen. And knowing that alone is enough for me to know that I need to stop and reset myself. Or rather, I need to let the Spirit reset me, to make sure that there is the space and time and stillness to here that joyful proclamation. There is great joy in preparing for marriage, in the sympathetic play, in the partnering, and in looking toward hopeful goals for our future together, but even that is nothing compared to the joy of knowing the Lord is risen, and that He has plans for me. "For I know well the plans I have in mind for you, says the LORD, plans for your welfare, not for woe! plans to give you a future full of hope."

I do not ever want any relationship in my life to come between me and the Lord, and I know myself well enought to know that I can easily allow that to happen. If I cannot hear that voice, it is not because he has stopped proclaiming, but because I am not listening. So I need to reset, to reach out to God and spend time with Him. I want to live in that moment again, in the sudden realization that everything He said He would do has already been done. He has won every victory, overcome every snare of the enemy, and rescued us from all danger. I want to live in the gratitude and confidence that that knowledge brings. Most of all, I want to be able to hear that voice within me, feel the vibration of that voice against every fiber in me and have the joy that the spirit brings.

Easter Tridium

Alter Servers leading the crowd on the procession through the streets of Manchester

Easter at Ste. Marie is a big deal. Every year we follow the same schedule of events, beginning with the Holy Thursday mass, which ends with a procession through the west side of Manchester from Ste. Marie to Sacred Heart. I think of it as a Catholic version of Take Back the Night. Bill and I sit in a truck with speakers and a sound system on the back and sing songs, while the entire church follows us, carrying candles and singing along. The alter boys lead the way with a crucifix and incense. The celebrant walks in the middle of the crowd, carrying the Eucharist. The procession is so large, it requires 3 police cars and 2 mounted police officers to organize traffic around us.

The neighborhoods we process through aren't the best in Manchester, and every year as we go through them, I look at every house and pray for the people inside, praying that as Christ passes by, He might make their lives more holy and that through Him they might be healed of the anger or sorrow or addiction which seems so prevelant on this side of town. There was one anonymous man who screamed "Shut UP!" repeatedly as we passed by, but most people came to their windows or stoops to watch quietly. A few years ago, a woman driving by in a car called out "Bless you, Father Marc," so loudly that she could be heard above everything else. Being in the truck, I'm also keenly aware of how visible I am. Someone I know from work might drive by to see this (to the secular eye) bizarre parade and see me at its head and decide that I'm "one of those" people, a fanatic. So I every year forces me to examine ways in which I am ashamed or embarassed to be a Catholic and reconcile myself to God for these things.

On Good Friday, Bill and I are in the truck again as we lead another procession through Mt. Calvery. The youth group kids present the Living Stations at various points along the way, and the priests pray with the crowd at every stop. This year was the first year in a while in which Easter is late enough for the snow to be gone from the cemetary and it isn't raining. I actually got a little bit of a sunburn, my first of the year.

Tonight is the Vigil, a three hour event with many readings, blessings, the baptism and confirmation of the RCIA candidates, and the celebration of Christ's rising. It starts at 8pm, and Matt and I were planning on going out to dinner with friends afterward. Hope to see you there!

Meet Mr. and Mrs. Cranky Pants

Just so you don't think that it's all hearts and flowers in the soon-to-be Vigneau household, here's how Tuesday night went: I got home from work and dropped off my things. Matt picked me up and we headed to our NFP appointment for 6:30, but we were running late because I was a little pre-occupied with the new toy I bought.

I am the proud new owner of an iPod Touch.

I've been wanting one of these ever since they came out, and when Matt's brother got me a deal on an 8G one for $150, I said yes and picked it up from him on Monday night. I was up until around 1 am that night playing with it, and then I was up again Tuesday at about 5:30 am playing with it some more. I don't have wireless at work, so I wasn't able to play with downloading apps until I got home again.

So after we got back from NFP we had a few projects to work on, the main one being the programs for the wedding. Matt had been working on them for a week, and I'm going to preface this by saying that they turned about beautifully, and I think they're a little funky and very cool. But Matt and I have very different aesthetics when it comes to print design. He likes a lot of rugged, distressed, and more modern fonts. He likes mixing many different font styles on the same page. He doesn't like nearly as much empty space as I do. I like spare and clean design, no more than two fonts, lots of white space and repetition of images or themes.

So when you have two people working on the same desktop publishing item, and those people disagree about the basic elements of style they want to use on said item, you are bound to find them butting heads. Repeatedly. It started off mostly okay. He had chosen a font on the inside which is more classical and less twisty and curly than he usually goes with, and I knew that was for my benefit and in an effort to please me. He had downloaded a background image of blue hydrangeas to go with the flowers the girls would be carrying. And he had used the quote from scripture which I suggested, even though it was one he wasn't thrilled will. But. Since Matt had been the one to do most of the heavy lifting on this project, he was less open to feedback on it than he normally is on things like this. And since I was pre-occupied with the touch, turning to play with it whenever I thought he was going to be working on it for a few minutes, tempers got a little hot and we both got a little snappy.

"Babe. What do you think of this?"

(glancing up from the iPod, my finger still tracing a pattern on the touch screen) "Um, it's good. It's a little close to the edge on the top, isn't it?"

"I don't think so, see how it's all evenly distributed?"

"Yeah, but it's still too close to the top."

A few minutes pass, and then, "I need the list of songs. That's you."

"Yep," I say, and pluck a wrinkled and torn scrap of paper from the drawer in the end table by the couch. "Here you go. I'll get you the songwriters in a minute."

I got to my laptop and begin Googling. "'Hail Mary Gentle Woman' is by Carey Landry. That's C-A-R-E-Y L-A-N-D-R-Y. And 'Sing Alleluia' is for closing. That was written by --"

"--How do you spell 'Alleluia'?"

"A-L-L-E-L-U-L-I-A."

"Spellcheck says that's wrong."

"Spellcheck's stupid. It's A-L-L-E-L-U-L-I-A."

"Are you sure? I don't think that last 'L' is right."

A little testier now, "I'm sure, that's the way it's spelled. The last 'L' is..." Pause as I review in my head what I spelled out loud. Crap. "Oh, wait. That's wrong. You're right, it's A-L-L-E-L-U-I-A. Sorry."

And so it went on all night. I looked up the writer of "Sing Alleluia" and the first couple references I found listed Jennifer Knapp, so I told him to put down her, but then I thought that might be wrong so kept searching and found the correct writers, and their names took up way more room and threw off his design. He asked me if I thought the words along the side could be read, and got annoyed when I said that they couldn't be. I started playing a game that required headphones and didn't hear him when he told me it was ready to test print. When I did print, it was printing very slowly, and he asked in frustration, "Did you print it in black and white?"

"I chose 'draft.'"

Big sigh.

"What? I thought 'draft' was black and white."

Finally at 11 o'clock, it was finished. Well, there are a few picky details still left to fix, like a missed hyphen on one, and I realized yesterday that we didn't include the names of the readers. So maybe it was more like, we were finished. We went into my room, sat down on the bed, and talked. We talked about why we were each so testy, and how we could have handled things differently. We talked about our perception of things, why we reacted to each other the way we did. We talked about what we would do the next time things started falling apart the way we did. And we prayed together for more patience, more consideration, and more gentleness with each other.

Not our first fight as a couple. But our first fight about really stupid things. Is it weird that I feel a sense of accomplishment to get past that marker?

Update on the dress

Last night I went to the bridal shop and met with the store owner about my dress. I am sort of semi-satisfied with the solution. As soon as I got there, she told me that she has already ordered a new dress and is having it rush shipped, and it should be here in two weeks. She ordered it two sizes larger, so that we don't have to worry about the seam allowances being clipped, and I am of course not paying for any of this.

BUT she absolutely didn't take any responsibility for the screw up, and when she measured me she deliberately made the tape measure ridiculously slack around the bust and measured my waist about 2 inches above the natural waist so that she wouldn't have to admit that they screwed up the measurements. I thought about it protesting this, but ultimately it would have come down to me telling her she was measuring wrong and her saying no no, this was right. No good. So while I'm glad the dress will be corrected, I'm not happy with the attitude it was done with.

This weekend Matt and I unexpectedly wound up taking care of my niece and nephew on Sunday night, because my brother and sister-in-law had miscommunicated about each other's schedules. Before Joanne went out, Zack was talking with us about the wedding, and he was so adorable! First he was asking me about wearing a big dress, and then Joanne was saying that he has a special outfit, too. Then he turned to Joanne and said "Mommy, when can I get married?" Joanne said not for a long time, "Not until you're 25."

Then he asked "Who can I marry?" and Joanne said she didn't know, he may not know them yet. That looked like it scared him, and he thought about it some more. "Um, Mommy, you're a girl. I can marry you?"

"Well Zacky," Joanne said, "You don't marry someone who's in your family. You marry someone who is your best friend." Zack thought for a moment and then his face broke into a huge smile. "I can marry Ireland!"

Matt and I were looking at each other and grinning stupid grins. I remember having that conversation with my mom when I was young, about marrying my best friend. When I was a teenager, that seemed kind of boring. My best male friends were definitely strictly platonic - no attraction at all - and the guys I was interested in weren't necessarily ones with whom I could picture just hanging out with on a weekend, playing games, reading books, or watching TV. And while I knew in my head that I should marry someone with whom I was good friends, I couldn't seem to get the two pieces of romance and friendship to line up in anyone I met. Even in college, when things came closer to the mark, it seemed like the dating experiences I had were only glancing blows against this ideal - I might find someone I was attracted to that I could hang out with and play with, but our interests were so divergent that we ran out of things to talk about soon. And I had friendships that I tried to pursuade myself should be something more, but I couldn't seem to find the attraction, that desire to be snuggled up and close that I knew was also necessary.

Now, Matt's company is what I prefer above almost everything. I can't wait to tell him what's going on in my day, good or bad. I want to know what he thinks about everything (well, almost everything). I want to share all kinds of experiences with him, and I really and truly cannot wait for the day when we are in the same house. Coming home to him, waking up and telling him right away about this crazy dream I had before it fades, working together to clean the apartment, going on vacation together, I am looking forward to these things so much. Yes, the desire and romance is part of it, but if one were to weigh that on a scale which measured what I'm looking forward to, more and more it seems that the friendship, the partnership that comes from living in the same house and taking on everything from family crisis to bills to dinnertime as a team is carrying equal or even more of the weight.

32 more days.

Aw bummer... back to work

Two days off can do amazingly good things for you. I feel so much more ahead of the game now with the wedding preparations after these past two days, and I was also able to get in a little down time to read and just hang out with Matt.

The big thing yesterday was getting our marriage license. The computers for the state were back up and working again, so we were able to do that in the morning, as well as picking up the wedding dress from the tailor. By the time we got back home, I had developed a full blown migraine, so we took a nap on the couch for an hour or so. That combined with some very spicy chili for lunch helped eases the headache and clear my sinuses. I wrote out the rest of the thank you cards and then once Matt went to work I headed down to Nashua to drop the dress off at the dress shop.

I hit Michael's down there to get the rest of the candles and other things we need for the the centerpieces and favors, and I hit Target for allergy meds. Then to Hallmark to get a card, and I spent way more time than I needed to listening to all the Hoops and Yoyo cards. If you haven't heard of Hoops and Yoyo, you really should check them out:

When I got back from Nashua, I scanned pictures of Matt as a child from Kim's photo albums. I'll give Art the CD on Sunday, and he is going to make a slide show of us. I would post pictures in this entry, but apparently I left the CD at Kim's so you'll just have to wait to see adorable pictures of Matt in diapers. Sorry! Matt got home around 8, so we had dinner (steak tips and potatoes roasted on the grill... mmmmmmm) and then I finished scanning pictures while he worked on the wedding program. We have a cool idea for the design of it, but the printing of it isn't cooperating with us - publisher keeps adding an extra border to the top and right side, and that leaves everything off center. Really don't want to have to trim each piece, so we'll have to work on that some more over the weekend.

By 10, we were done. Or as done as we were going to be. So we played Left 4 Dead and got almost all the way through to the end of the game, until the final battle where we were ripped apart repeatedly by hunters and smokers. Stupid hunters and smokers. We'll get them this weekend.

My First Real Bridezilla Moment

It finally happened. I swore it wouldn't. I swore I would be patient, flexible, and realistic about the budget, the style, and other people's perception of how important my wedding was. But I called the dress shop today, and I became bridezilla.

I spoke with the girl who had worked with my whole bridal party. I explained that I had given a lot of thought to what has happened with the dress, and that I really felt that there was no way that I actually gained that much in the bust. I told her about Land'sEnd.com's virtual model, and that I checked the measurements I had put in in October against the measurements now, and they haven't changed. I told her about the conversation I'd had with the tailor about how something like this could happen, and how the seam allowances are clipped and the dress can't be let out. And see, this is the thing. I wouldn't have even lost it, except she initially wouldn't admit that there was a possibility that they screwed up. She began by telling me that she had been doing measurements for 10 years and she trains people in the store on how to do it. And then she said that she also makes her recommendation based on how much "gap" there is on the sample dress when the bride is trying it on. And then she tried to imply that the tailor wasn't actually familiar enough with wedding and formal dresses to be able to tell if they ordered it correctly.

So that's when I lost it. I told her I'd had a horrible week, beating myself up emotionally because I was "too fat for my wedding dress," that every girl dreams about her wedding dress and to have something like this happen is heartbreaking. Then I said that my whole wedding party had gotten their clothing from them, spending a lot of money and giving them a lot of business. I said that I have many friends of marriageable age, and I couldn't imagine recommending this shop to my friends because the risk of such a bad screw-up was unacceptable. In fact, I could imagine steering my friends away from the store at this point. I told her that I don't know what they can do to fix this, but I wanted to give them an opportunity to make it right.

She called me back about 20 minutes later and said that they had checked the sample dress's seam allowances and they weren't clipped. And again implied that my tailor didn't know what he was talking about. I told her I had seen it with my own eyes. Then I had to explain to her about what I mean when I say "clipped," because she didn't know what that meant. For those of you who don't, when you make a dress you make perpendicular cuts to the seam allowance every inch or so in order to get the seam to lay flat and smooth. She said she'd call me back.

She called back 10 minutes later and asked if I could bring the dress in to the store, because the owner wants to see it, and they want to take some measurements themselves. I told her I can bring it in, but that the one thing which would be worse than things the way they stand now would be to have no dress at all on May 9th. She said she understood that. So, we'll see what happens.

Happier things... Matt and I went shopping today and found a great luggage set on sale at Kohl's. I also got a bathing suit, and he got several items off the winter sales rack, including a really nice winter coat. I also called The Flower Cart to make sure we are on track with them and they are still good and ready to go. Matt called the jeweler, and is waiting on a callback from him about the rings. We also stopped at BJ's and bought a lot of chocolate for the candy bar. We have made a decision about most of the music except the entrance song, and we've asked my nephew Michael and Matt's sister Therese to read for us. We booked the hotel, and I will call them the week before to ask what Catholic churches are nearby and what their Sunday mass schedule is. We couldn't get our marriage license because the state of NH's computer network was down (April Fool's moment?) so we'll try again tomorrow. Matt's working on the programs at work right now, and I'm about to head out the door to go to Michael's craft store and the grocery store. Good times.

And the hyacinths Matt bought me this weekend are blooming and starting to fill the whole apartment with their fragrance. Here they are, with my fabulous blue suede shoes:

A little time off

Well, sort of. But I've taken today and tomorrow off to get things done, because it seems like there is still so much to do, and now we're down to only a little more than a month before the wedding. Wow!

So, here's the list of things that I'm hoping to get done in the next two days:

• call the jeweler about the wedding bands - what's the final cost and when will they be in?
• check in with the florist
• choose music for the ceremony
• choose readers for the ceremony
• get our marriage license
• finish thank you notes from shower
• purchase the rest of the centerpiece supplies
• book the hotel in NYC for our wedding night
• purchase the rest of the supplies for the favors
• purchase ink for my printer
• design & print programs
• get seating diagram from the Red Blazer
• begin to assign tables for those people who've RSVP'd already
• get in touch with those who haven't yet responded to find out if they're coming
• design placecards
• print engagement photos
• put together photo album of engagement photos
• order candy for the candy bar
• order gifts for the wedding party
• call tailor about the dress
• scan the rest of the childhood photos and get them onto a CD for Art
• buy luggage
• return the first set of wedding shoes I bought

and then, apart from wedding planning:

• clean apartment
• go grocery shoppping

Daunting list, but we knocked out the ones in green last night. Today we'll get the marriage license, make lots of phone calls, and after Matt goes to work I'll hit the stores and do some shopping. While he's at work he can begin the program designing, and we'll print tomorrow.

Hopefully I'll be able to report that we got a lot done when I post back here!