Day Three: pandemic wedding plans and cake hangovers

I did my work out at night for the last two nights, and gave myself the chance to enjoy not being hungover along with my coffee and my garden in the cool mornings. I think that is a good strategy for avoiding the beer-o-clock temptations - at least in summer. Not drinking has felt easy for the past few days, but  I'm also still just starting to feel completely refreshed compared to my terrible hangover Wednesday.

I don't talk about much, but I'm getting married soon. I say soon, like in the next week or two but I don't have an actual date. I don't even know what state I'll be in. To the extent that I ever imagined getting married, I imagined something low key. My parents clearly (and understandably!) want to make plans to celebrate, even in a limited way. I'm not a part of as many conversations with my partner's parents, but I can only assume they feel the same way. Our families live far apart and I don't feel comfortable asking either party to travel, so no matter what we do, someone's expectations will not be met.

My partner has a really demanding job and for the last week he has been out working in the field with no cell coverag. He gets two weeks off starting tomorrow, and we've agreed that we are going to try to do the paperwork part of getting married but we still don't have exact plans. He doesn't know how far he is allowed to travel, since his employer has some regulations that keep changing. I don't know how much vacation to take at work. I don't know when or where I'll be able to work.  I like my job, which I can do remotely provided I have electricity, internet and a moderate amount of space and privacy. Things at work are moving fast right now and I'd like to be at least partially available and I would at the very least like to be able to communicate how available I can be, but I don't know yet. Meanwhile my mom is sending me messages telling me she'll need some notice to figure out flowers and food so we can host a party. Flowers sound nice, but only if they have the potential to be a source of joy and right now flowers are another chore. Meanwhile, I've told my more extended family that we'll have a party some time next year because it doesn't make sense to plan a big gathering right now, and my grandmother has somehow interpreted this to mean that I want to have an EXTREMELY large gathering and is busy sending out speculative notes about whether there will be more that 500 people. Does it sound stressful? - it is! 

This relationship has forced me to get more comfortable with uncertainty, but that doesn't mean I like it. It is the kind of sustained low grade anxiety that drinking can't drown out. My partner grew up with this kind of environment, and he at least appears so carefree about all this. I wish he would take on more of the emotional labor of planning and communicating. Just because I don't want an elaborate wedding, doesn't mean we should treat it like it just paperwork, or my chore to figure out. I really do want to take the moment to pause and celebrate a commitment to life together.

Our engagement was similarly, uh, not cinematic. We'd already talked about a lot about the future, and basically agreed that we wanted to be married like a year before he actually proposed. We've talked about finances, and kids and how to plan our careers around each other, and how to get our families to meet each other. Meanwhile there is an actual hard important deadline, we need to be married before he goes on a a six month tour for work and we talked about that too. Our situation is complicated, and it isn't just about healthcare or power of attorney, it will also affect my access to community, resources like groceries, our ability to get housing etc. while he is gone. The time between deciding we wanted to marry each other and getting officially engaged, was about a YEAR too long for my taste. There was a time where we could have planned something low key and fun, but the time just seemed to evaporate without an official proposal. I tried to be a good feminist and propose to him at the top of a mountain with a goofy novelty ring that was sort of an inside joke from how we met. When I asked "Do you want to get married?" he totally didn't understand what was going, because talking about the future and being married was not unusual. He didn't get it until later in the day when I expressed that I was confused why it wasn't a big deal to him. Revisionist history, I try to forget that happened and he proposed the next week. I didn't need or want an elaborate proposal, and I don't need or want an elaborate wedding, but I do want it to be heartfelt and joyful, and mostly so far this all hasn't been joyful. 

I just made the base for a cake that I'm working on for my friend's wedding anniversary. I had offered to make then a weeding cake, and they decided to elope so I never got a chance to. He and his awesome wife are coming out to house-sit for us while we travel somewhere.  I'm trying to make it into a little vacation for them since they have been pretty cooped up in their city apartment since this all started. So I'm making a tiny wedding cake and champagne to leave in the fridge as a surprise for his wife. I've been channeling my creativity into the idea of making their house-sitting visit a romantic getaway, and that has been a good way to channel anxiety about my own - much more productive and joyful and long-lasting than drinking the feelings away. I do have a cake-hangover right now though and it doesn't feel good at all.