more cheese, less whine

yeah, so, um...I've had just about enough of my whining, haven't you?

This site has sort of become my release valve for frustration and negativity, and really, it's gotten a little tiresome. Reading back over the last month or so is like listening to non-stop Eeyore, but with more bitter thrown in with the mopey. And enough is enough.

I'm not saying that I plan to go all kittens-and-rainbows or anything, but I've had enough of the pity party. The only thing really keeping me from getting the things I want is me. I put things off. I refuse to follow my own plans. I can't seem to get off the couch and fix what's bugging me. And instead of sitting here bitching about how hard everything is, I've decided to just go ahead and do something about it. One thing at a time.

Hardly revolutionary, I know. :)

So anyway, I started with the house. I woke up Saturday as a girl on a mission. By the time Saturday was over, Rob, Noah, and I had teamed up and conquered most of the rooms of the house. The Steenky Bathroom was even de-stinked, a task I've been putting off for ages because it was easier to just use the other one all the time and pretend this one didn't exist. We didn't get all the laundry done, but we never do. If we do a load a day during the week, it won't be too overwhelming next weekend.

The thank-yous are still unfinished, but they're not unstarted. That's progress. One night with nothing good on TV, and I won't have to feel guilty about THAT anymore either.

And just to clarify, my issue with the thank you notes isn't that I think I have to do them all myself, or that Rob hasn't volunteered several times to help with them. He would gladly help, if I could just turn the job over already. I want to write the ones to my family, and to my friends he doesn't really know. I fully intend to pass the ones for his friends and family into his more-than-capable hands. So why haven't I?

Well. Because I know he'll do them. And then in 3 days, when his have all been received and read, while mine are languishing unwritten on the countertop, I will feel more guilty than I do already.

It's not that I hate writing thank-you notes, either. I don't. In fact, once I sit down to do it, I actually kind of like it. What overwhelms me is the creative writing aspect of them. How do I make up a sincere blurb about every gift (even the ones I hated), and not sound like I'm just schmoozing? Especially when schmoozing is so completely out of character for me? And I don't want to sound like I'm sending a form letter to people. "Thank you for giving us x. We love it/them/cash!"

I think the reason I've taken so long to start on the thank-yous (besides just being lazy) is that I want them to be so great, and so memorable, and so sweet and poignant and so completely perfect in every imaginable way, that I don't want to start until I know the perfect words. And even when I think I have the right thing to say, I hate it the minute the ink dries. So I start, and I stop, I buy more cards, and I start again. And the further we get from the wedding day, the better I think the thank yous need to be, because I made everyone wait so long for them now. I know I'm totally overthinking it, and getting a crappy thank you card from the happy couple in 3 weeks is infinitely better than getting a well-written one in a year, but I can't seem to help myself.

Sometimes, I hate being a perfectionist. Of course, it wouldn't be nearly so bad if I was the sort of perfectionist who completes projects but is always disappointed by the results. Leave it to me to be the sort of perfectionist that is loathe to even start for fear the project won't turn out exactly as planned, but can't bear to hand it over to someone without the same pathological fussiness (read: Rob).

So yeah, thank yous. They're coming. I'll try to delegate, or at least tie myself to a chair until they're all written, addressed, and stamped. And then I'd have to drive to the nearest "letters go in, but you can't get them back out without violating federal law" public mailbox and dump them in before I decide I'm an illiterate troll and have the urge to write them all over again.

I also promise to stop babbling here about them. Like, right now.