in which I offend everyone

Dear readers, help me. This post was written last week - one of many posts where I try to come to terms with feeling, well, a bit weird about the whole blogging thing in general. I have been puzzled, bewildered and downright down about the whole thing. So yes, it's cynical. But I think all of the below still stands. I'm uncomfortable, and struggling to reconcile blogging with me. Quitting blogging is on the cards. Please help me work out what to do.

Now: the post...


So you may have noticed that I haven't posted a lot lately. Yes, I've been busy with work and all the rest, but that wasn't the reason. It was a conscious decision. The reason? I've turned into a complete cynic. It's not pretty. I had to step back.

It started with a small reaction to oversharing. "Why," I thought, "must I share my every waking thought with the world?" Small moments were being ruined by my brain making a mental note: "ooh, significant! Must blog this!" So I had to take a step back. My life does not need another layer of mental commentary and when I'm having a nice time, I don't want to be mentally wording a witty blog post about it.

Then I went to see the friend who will also be our photographer. Some interesting conversations took place (and I realise, the following will be mortally offensive to some people. I am sorry, people. I like you. I really do):


Me: [performing a mime] "So they stand there, holding their trousers and dress up so you can see their shoes. Which are normally Converse."
Them: [Photographer friend plus wife] What the f*ck? You can't see their faces? They take pictures of their shoes???
Me: Yes. And they jump a lot. And sometimes they hold things up like signs saying Mr and Mrs, or Polaroids of their face.

I later showed the assembled a pic of a couple both holding signs on an engagement shoot with arrows to each other saying something like 'cupcake' and 'muffin' and the look of horror on their faces was exquisite. Then Photo friend said: "I feel like I could throw up." Then there were jokes about him doing some shots right there and then of us gazing dreamily at each other and lying on the grass. This was a JOKE, btw.

And I thought: when did it all become such a display? This isn't me.

And I know it is not: no wedding is a show (except are. And you're on show. And people are judging you. So it sort of is unless you elope. And even that is a statement about how you want to be seen).

I feel there is a bit of a p*ssing contest going on here, with everyone competing to be the most alternative alternative there is; to spend the least, to be the most crafy. Or competing to see who can opt out of all this the most.

And we're all agonising over the details, or making a show of not caring. And it's even such a cliche to say that none of this matters, and that your wedding will be different. Because will it, really? We've covered every base, considered every option. I am starting to feel like there's nothing left for me. I'm losing excitement.

And by opting out of what I feel to be traditional and trying to do something different, I now feel like a cliche myself. I even read the other day that 'bunting was over'. Well excuse me. None of my friends or family think it's over. It's just a fricking wall decoration. I think blogging is harming my sense of perspective.

Not everything is a statement of adherence or defiance to tradition, or to a new, modern vision of alternative perfection. It's not always a statement. Except it is if you blog it.

by the numbers

This week:

Friends of friends I have Facebook wedding stalked: 5
Coffees drank: 1 (willpower cracked 20 minutes ago)
Lbs gained: 1
Wedding things done: 1 (my sort of rate)
Time taken doing said wedding thing: 2.5 minutes
Times other people have mentioned the wedding: 8, and this will potentially quadruple this weekend. Maybe even sextuple or octuple.

blackboard plant pots

This is a lovely idea, from Design Sponge - make your own blackboard paint (surprisingly easy) and then paint up some plant pots!

home

(The M1 north, in the rain. Taken by me.)

This weekend, I went to visit my parents at home. It was a regular visit; a trip out, a family meal. Spot of shopping with my Mum. Pork chops for dinner.

My old room has just been redecorated, almost a decade after I left to go to university. I returned at holidays, and for a few months afterwards, but the room stayed the same until a few months ago.

Now my brother has left home too, his room is a sort of mixture of half of his things, with my Mum and Dad's stuff slowly encroaching (I noticed sewing books, where once was an over-sized stereo).

His notice board, once filled with homework to-do lists and missives from ex-girlfriends is still there. The only thing on it now is pinned in the bottom corner: a photo of my Dad, aged 20-something, laughing at something and looking for all the world exactly like my brother.

Before I left, I went upstairs and wandered in absent mindedly. I stood there for a while, looking at that photo and his pictures still on the walls and thinking about the baby he's having with his partner. Philip Larkin kept going round in my head:

Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,

Shaped to the comfort of the last to go

As if to win them back.

a traitor to the cause?

You may have noticed that there have been no diet updates for a while. This is not because I've fallen off the wagon - I definitely haven't. But because I felt like a bit of a traitor to the cause.

Non traditional wedding blog land - which I think I can safely say, is where we pretty much all live - is all about being searingly honest and practicing love and self acceptance. I keep reading blogs where people talk about how they've accepted their weight in the run up to their wedding, and blogs that make a point of celebrating deliciously curvy brides.

These are great things. I love that it's this way. Self-acceptance = effing brilliant.

But I felt like that by posting my weight loss up here, I was somehow being a bit of a traitor to all that. Shouldn't I be practicing being happy as I am?

(You should all know, by the way, that I'm talking about more than a few kilos here. I still have much weight to lose.)

I don't think it has to be this way. Self acceptance is good, but then so is self-awareness and knowing what matters to you.

We all know that weddings are a stake stuck in the ground of life: a markerpost, an important point that we want to remember. That's why we spend money on them and spend so long thinking about the ritual of it all, even if we're going against the tide. Rituals they still are.

I had decided long ago to lose some weight. I was sick of feeling like I wasn't myself, and like my body was an impediment to my life. The knowledge of the wedding added to that: the stake in the ground held a post saying: 'this is the start of a new phase in your life. How do you want it to begin?'

Yes, I'm a dieting bride-to-be. What a terrible cliche. But we're all going on, or have been on journeys here (ugh, I sound like I'm on some sort of reality TV show) and here I am, on two.

We make a big point of being accepting of curves and of people of all shapes and sizes. I certainly know I do. Happiness, not size, is what matters.

But dieting is the big shame, implying judgement of people who aren't dieting and of people who accept their shape. It's neither of these things. But considered, sensible dieting - a change in the shape you accept - should be as celebrated and accepted as any blog post on why you love yourself, and everyone else, just as they/you are.

I love that I'm losing weight.

(For those of you wondering: just over two stones (12.7kg) lost, four or five (25-31kg) more to go)

on asking your friend to marry you

So at the weekend (you may have seen the drunken tweet), we asked our friend to marry us. Not as in put rings on our fingers (duh!), but as in conduct our ceremony.

A friend who's never done anything like this before. For two people who dont' really know what they're doing but just have an inclination that this could be fun and mean something good.

But to begin the story proper, let's go back a few steps.

When we first got engagaed, J joked and said we should ask this friend to marry us. He's got the right sort of personality to manage a crowd, and once, years ago, as a sort of joke, got ordained on the internet (not that we're religious, it just seemed like a relevant daft detail to add in here). I agreed that he would be brilliant.

But I didn't like to ask a friend, and as you may have seen from previous posts, I thought we should get a humanist as a sort of middingly official option.

So we went and met the humanist. She was very nice. But J was not keen. Not keen at all.

"Why would we have a stranger do it? We might as well go to a church and have a vicar that doesn't know us as have someone else who doesn't know us."

Also, humanists weddings aren't cheap.

J was set on asking the friend from the start. I wanted to as well, but part of me felt bad asking a friend and thought a more formal option would go down better with our families.

As it turned out, I was wrong. We would ask our amazing friend.

So we met our friend at the pub. I'd asked J to let me be the one to ask him. We started drinking.

We drank some more.

Then we squeezed in another before going to the restaurant.

Then we tootled off for dinner. We drank an entire bottle of wine over starters. Then we got a second

J kept looking at me. I couldn't honestly conceive of how to broach the subject. So the second the friend mentioned the wedding (in passing, I may add), J leapt in.

"Actually, we needed to ask you something about that."

Cue me. Everyong looking at me.

"Ummm... Well. Umm."

Then altogether in a rush:

"Wellwhenwefirstgotengaged, Jsaidweshouldaskyoutomarryus, half-joking"

Then calmer:

"But then we thought about it, and it didn't seem like such a joke. We went to meet a humanist but it's not for us. We thought a friend could do it, maybe - but the only friend who we know could do the most amazing job, is you."

If I didn't know how to ask, then he didn't really know how to answer. He said yes immediately, though flustered and he kept saying it was the most amazing thing to ask and a complete honour."

We all hugged many times. By this time, however, we were red wine-happy, muddling our words, knocking bits of food on the floor and very nearly causing a red wine lake across the table. I think there might have been some slightly misty eyes. There were certainly some brilliant hangovers.

congratulations...

...to My Spare Thoughts', who is now betrothed!

Hope you had an amazing day - and continue to have them for evermore.

We want to hear all about it!