Ring-ing.

Another wedding post. I should have titled this blog "The Hell That Is My Wedding Planning." This one is kind of scary/disappointing/okay. If that makes sense. Probably not. It doesn't to me, anyway, and I went through it!

So, as you know (I think), I bought a wedding band from Kay jewelers that didn't work out. Attempt at a ring, round 1.

After that, I mailed out my engagement ring (yes in the MAIL and yes, it was horrifying even though I paid to have it insured and over-nighted) to the jeweler to made my engagement ring. In New York. He had my ring for about a month and a half as he made the custom wedding band that I designed to go with my ring. After a lot of phone calls (i.e. harassment) on my part because I was so worried about the process, he sent me pictures of the finished ring last week and it was beautiful. I loved it. I paid for it. And it arrived on Saturday, along with my engagement ring (yes!) and Bart's wedding band, safe and sound.
Unfortunately, the rings looked AWFUL together on my finger, because the space between my two knuckles is so short. They were also incredibly uncomfortable to wear because the two together were so very wide and super tight because they did not sit where they were supposed to. I wore them both around for two days thinking that maybe I just needed to get used to them being on my finger and to get used to the way they looked. We'll just cut the story short there and say that I cried Saturday and Sunday night.

Attempt at ring, round 2.

So, today I finally worked up the courage to call our jeweler to discuss the matter with him. The man, quite possibly a saint, assured me that another ring could be made in plenty of time for the wedding. I'm mailing my engagement ring, old wedding band, and Bart's band back out, hopefully tomorrow. Bart's band is going out with everything else because we (fortunately) forgot to ask him to engrave the bands. We settled on a beautiful quote. It is from Letter XXI, from Napoleon to Josephine. It reads, "To love you alone, to make you happy...this is my destiny." Because my band will be so small, we are going to break the quote up between the two bands so that, together, they form the full quote. Nice, huh?

Anyway, here is the sketch of (final) Attempt at ring, round 3
This is the sketch that our jeweler originally sent to me, that I vetoed in favor of the one that I have now. A nice, thin band that will be subtle and compliment my engagement ring instead of trying to take it over. It's what I should have gone with in the first place.

Beat Up.

Man, oh man. Today has been a really rough day. We woke not only having no hot water, but having only ICE COLD water coming out of both taps. Clearly, this kind of catastrophe would only happen on morning that I have to get up early for work. On a day that is normally my day off. Because I have to fill in. We had to pack up allllll of our shower things and work/school clothes and shower at the gym at ICO. I went to work with my hair dripping in the freezing air conditioning, and just because life was so great today, my hair frizzed right up like a white girl afro. We'll just say that my morning did not begin on a happy note.

To make matters worse, some crazy lady yelled at me at work because I asked her what her father's SSN was. You know, so I could enter his insurance information so they would pay for his office visit. I'm so unreasonable and irrational.

Then, Bart comes to me near the end of my (very) long day to pressure me into going to a--and I swear this is the truth--turtle race. After I have just had the morning from Hell and worked an extra seven hours of over time, knowing that I have to work early tomorrow morning, too. Really, Bart?

Bart also has thing about trying to convince people who don't want what he wants that they actually DO want what he wants. He does this most often with food and social activities. And he does it to me all the time. This is normally how one of these conversations goes:

Bart: What do you think we would have for dinner tonight? Burgers?
Me: No. I'm not in the mood. How about Chili?
Bart: Nah. Are you sure you don't want a burger, though? I'd really like one.
Me: Bart. You know I'm rarely in the mood for a burger. And I'd have to go shopping for the stuff to make one. What about BBQ Chicken?
Bart: Oh. No. But burgers are good. Are you sure you don't want one? Remember how good that last one I had at the restaurant looked.
Me: Fine. [or sometimes: NO!!!!!!!!]

So we basically had the same conversation, except with "turtle racing" and "bar" thrown in where "burger" is. This in itself didn't make me happy, but it only compounded my anger that I thought that tonight Bart and I were spending some alone time together. Apparently not.

And to make matters EVEN worse, Bart forgot to bring home ALL of my shower things (and his own) that he brought to his office at school, so now I have to go buy a bunch of stuff so I can shower for tomorrow.

This has just felt like a Beat Up Kari Day. It seems that no matter which way I turn, I'm getting the short end of the stick. Every time. I just hope that tomorrow brings a better day. At least I know it will bring hot water.

Old Town Art Festival

Last weekend our little area of Chicago threw an Art Festival that required a huge section of Wells Street to be blocked off. It was TONS of fun, even though Bart and I got poured on. There were literally over one hundred tents that sold everything from handmade jewelry, to blown glass to potstickers and Pina Coladas that were poured into hollowed out pineapples. The only down side was that Bart and I had no money to spend on a nice piece of artwork to bring back to NY with us next fall.

We did, however, have money for food and drinks. Okay, so maybe if we hadn't spent so much money on food and drinks we COULD have bought some art, but it smelled good, okay?!

One of the best things we had were, in Bart's case, an ice cold beer, and in mine, delicious homemade lemonade. We also had the world's best homemade guacamole and homemade tortilla chips from the Adobo tent.

It was so much fun to wander up and down the street and in and out of tents to look at everything people were selling. You wouldn't believe how many people commented on Bart's sweatshirt--at least 4 people selling at the Festival were from Massachusetts! I thought more people would think Bart was from Chatham, IL or something.

I also ate Celtic corn on the cob. It was soooooo good! It's sweet corn that is left in the husk and grilled until it's piping hot and cooked through. Then the husk is pulled back, all the way to the bottom of the cob and the corn silk is pulled out and thrown away. The people selling it dipped THE WHOLE THING in a huge cauldron (I am not kidding, folks, a cauldron) of melted butter and sprinkled it with Celtic seasoning. I'm not sure what the seasoning was made up of, but there was definitely salt and I'm pretty sure dried lemon zest in it. Delicious. There isn't a picture of me eating it for obvious reasons. I was picking corn out of my teeth all night and scalded the roof of my mouth, but oh well.

<----This was what we ended our night with. It took a lot of coaxing on my part for Bart to let me buy one and eat it since it is probably the most unhealthy thing a person could ingest. This, my friends, is a DEEP FRIED SNICKERS BAR. I'll just give you a moment to let that sink in.

So the way they make this amazing bit of deliciousness is that they dip an unwrapped Snickers into Funnel Cake batter and then throw it into a deep fryer. I'm not sure which freaked Bart out more--the fact that it was candy basically covered in more candy, or that it was deep fried within an inch of its life.

Anyway, the batter is made sooooo wonderfully crunchy in the deep fryer and when you cut into it with your fork, Snickers literally ooze out onto the plate. I probably should have waited at least a minute for it to cool, but I didn't and burned the roof of my mouth for the second time that day. Enter second homemade lemonade. I wanted another Snickers, but Bart was, probably rightly, terrified that I would die that night in my sleep of a heart attack if I did, so we left it at the one and went home.

What a glorious day :)