These past few days have been like a whirlwind for my brain. I do not know where to land, what to settle on, what kind of sleep I’m supposed to getting, what kind of refreshment I need, etc. I have had a very VERY stressful past few weeks, and almost didn’t realize how stressed I was until it all dissipated yesterday.

Stress #1: The wedding. You all know about that already. This was actually my favorite part of all the stress– other than the fact that there were deadlines and budgets to be met, it didn’t even feel like stress. I love sitting down with a pen and paper and just getting lost inside my own head, visualizing all sorts of design opportunities. Sometimes, I will draw things out so that I don’t forget, but often, I am just staring for what feels like seconds and actually ends up being hours. In my head, anything is possible. When it comes down to actually making an apple garland STAY on a table without falling off…well, that’s why I have realistic friends who know what is actually doable in the world of 4D.

So I guess that doesn’t count. Or maybe it does. I’m really bad about staying under a budget, and I care so much about Lori and Greg (Jenny’s parents) that I really didn’t want to cost them any extra money. I told them we could do all the flowers and decorations for under $500, and I think it ended up being around $600. $75 of that was just apples!!! Apple pie, anyone?

There were also a few unfortunate hickups with the decorations that almost ruined the entire weekend, such as FedEx attempting to deliver the flowers at 8am on Friday morning. I did not hear the doorbell since I was ASLEEEPPPP, and before I knew it, the flowers for Jenny’s bouquet were sitting in a truck all day, riding around Fort Worth in the sun. I called FedEx, and they instructed me to meet them at the FedEx headquarters in the middle of NOWHERE to pick them up. After 4pm, of course. The entire day, I kept picturing Jenny’s wilted bouquet. Luckily, Chelsea and I got to them in time and put them in water right away. She even found a homemade recipe for flower food, based on sugar and vinegar.

And then there was the fact that Julie, my cousin, the awesome florist who was going to come show me the ropes since I’ve NEVER done flowers before, missed her flight on Friday. They got her to Las Vegas on Standby, but then had no flight from there to Dallas. The entire Bachelorette party on Friday night, I was worried sick– where will my 19 year old cousin sleep in Las Vegas?? I felt so responsible for her, but I was a million miles away. Luckily, she’s gorgeous, and the moment she cried one of the airline personal saw to it that she got free food and a hotel room. But there was a moment there were I thought to myself, “Omg, am I going to be googling, ‘How to Make Corsages’ the night before a wedding?”

Stress #2: We had lots of people come and stay in our house. Now, normally, this would be enough to make me stressed out, but it got elbowed out due to larger, scarier stresses. But there were moments where I looked at my kitchen and said to myself, “Sigh. We look like pigs. I hope our friends don’t think we’re pigs.” And then Clare would poop somewhere, and I’d think “Sigh. We smell like pigs. I hope our friends don’t think we’re pigs.” And then I’d look in our fridge….well, you get the picture. We also didn’t have enough blankets, due to the fact that a few days before everyone arrived, Clare had PEED ALL OVER our guest bedroom down comforter and I had to take it to the dry cleaners. This was due to an unfortunate bout of rainy weather, and the fact that we often forget that Clare is a dog, can’t use our toilet, and therefore must be taken out every 6 hours or so. Seriously, we forgot this.

Add on to that picking up everyone from the airport the afternoon we were supposed to be at the hall decorating, and it just made for a lot of coordination. I am NOT GOOD at coordination. In my head, it seems perfectly reasonable that I can pick everyone up at 1:15, get all the decorations in the car, and be 1/2 hr. away in Dallas by 2:00. Yes, people, this is why I was NOT a Mathematics or Logic Major at Biola. As you probably guessed, we didn’t get to Dallas until 3pm (it was POURING rain and we got lost), costing Lori and Greg an extra $30 (they were charging by the hour for us to come set up the reception hall– who does that??).

Stress #3: Health Issues. As all of this other stuff was going on around me, in the back of my mind was the scary news I received on Wednesday of last week. A few days after I got back from Christmas Break in California, I finally went to the dermatologist for an odd shaped mole on my back. I noticed that it was weird looking, and decided to look back at a picture I had of it from a few years ago. Startled, I googled, “moles that change shape”. The results weren’t good, so I set the appointment. The doctor took one look at it and said, “Yeah, we need to take that off”. It’s a quick 5 min. procedure, wherein the shoot you with some numbing stuff and then use a scalpel to slice it off. They then take it for a biopsy. I wasn’t concerned, until I received a phone call last Wednesday, wherein the nurse told me that the mole was highly irregular and would probably require surgery so that they could take out about 2 inches of skin underneath the biopsy site for further testing. They asked me to come in as soon as possible to discuss treatment options.

It freaked me out, to say the least. The last thing I wanted was a gaping hole in my back, just days after finishing up all this wedding stuff. And that was the least of my concerns if the tests came back abnormal yet again. Luckily, when I went to my appt. on Tuesday, the Dr. said he had taken an additional look at my results and said that if there was no history of melanoma in my family or personal health record, then we could wait 3 months to see if the mole reappears. If it does, he said, action would be necessary, but we could take the less aggressive route and wait until then.

So there you have it– my stresses for the past 2 weeks in a nutshell. I am glad it’s over. Now, I just wish all of our friends could come back and we could just hang out instead of having to run around like crazy!