Originally posted May 7, 2006 on our wedding website

As our wedding website so helpfully points out, we are 138 days away from the wedding. One house is sold, things are packed (usually whatever we happen to be looking for at the time), and we are finding out what it is like to live together.

Two cooks, one kitchen
I always swore that if I ever went out with a man who could cook. I would marry him. Well, Andy does and I am. We've revived my "recipe of the week" experiment from a couple years ago, and have been eating really well for the last month. Which has led to...

The couple who exercises together had better have separate alarms
In one of those "We're in love so all activities together are good" moments, we decided to start exercising in the mornings. At 5:00. Aside from the fact that nothing is fun at 5:00 in the morning, the exercise portion isn't bad. It's the alarm clock. Because our power keeps flickering & knocking out all electric clocks, Andy bought a new one from Costco that resets itself automatically AND keeps the preset alarms. So far, so good. However, we now sleep with the blinds drawn so that the light from the display doesn't interfere with the nearby airport. That's just on the low setting. It's a bit like sleeping in Las Vegas but without the Elvis impersonators. The second problem with the clock is that we frankly can't operate it. It goes off repeatedly, or not at all, and after turning off the alarm without waking me up Andy was fired as Prime Wakerupper. So now we're sleeping in a bizarre blue neon tint and I'm back to using my cell phone as an alarm clock.

Registering
Initially, with combining two houses, we thought it would be difficult to find things to register for. Luckily, our possessions decided to rescue us from this dilemma by chearfully breaking. Now instead of surplus items, we are sans blender and we can't even manage toast without the risk of repeating Toni's "English Muffin Flambe" incident.

The Dress
Trying on wedding dresses is unlike anything else in life. I foolishly thought that I, a 35-year-old businesswoman, was capable of dressing myself. Nope, not in bridal world. All of a sudden I needed someone to explain how to even get into the 10 pounds of clothing that goes UNDER the dress. Forget putting the dress on--that required another person's help altogether.
As a salesperson, I must give credit to David's Bridal. Yesterday I decided on a dress, so then the "upselling" began. OF COURSE you need a tiarra. Unless you are part of the royal family, I don't see any "of course" about it. OF COURSE you need a veil. Why exactly? If I'm spending a huge amount of money on a dress that I will only wear once in my life, why is it a given that I would spend $100 for a scrap of material to cover it up? It is truly an experience, and while my feminist side is simply appalled, the salesperson in me is grudgingly impressed.

Living with two engineers Engineers are not made, they are born.
Thanks to Andy's six-year-old son, David, I now know the difference between two-way and three-way switches, what GFCI means & does, and what resistors do. A few weeks ago he set up a computer network in our house. I don't think it's just that David knows things I don't know--I think he qualifies as a seriously bright child. I showed him how to embroider something with my sewing machine, thinking he might like to decorate the apron I got for him, which would be the liberal arts person's response. The engineering response was to go construct a sewing machine with Tinker Toys, then to explain how it worked without missing anything. At the age of 5 he was not only constructing electrical circuits from a kit designed for 8-year-olds, he was reading the instructions. Andy isn't even as much of an engineer as David is. David had to correct him that it is GFCI and not GFIC. Andy looked it up and sure enough, David was right. Personally, my money would have been on David to begin with. I was a bit nervous about becoming a stepmom, but now on Saturdays we play Simon Says on walks, make pancakes into all sorts of interesting shapes, play with Legos and Tinker Toys, and this weekend we made up dances & had a band going in the living room. Can't beat that. :)