We are at 8 more sleeps until wedding day, and boy do I need that sleep! All of it. Every extra second. You see, anxiety dreaming is a thing I do very well, always have. But unfortunately, an extremely stressful work situation kicked all that into overdrive this week. Last night I had 3 wedding related nightmares. One was that my wallet had been stolen and I was unable to pay any of the vendors, therefore they did not show up for my big day. In another one, the venue had double booked themselves and I was asked to leave and find another place to have the wedding, while I ended up screaming at her about how I paid for it and she couldn’t just send me elsewhere at the last minute. This one is rooted in reality, based on a review of the venue where this once happened early in their business and reading that has haunted me ever since, despite the fact that they’ve clearly got their act together now. And then I dreamed that we had brought so much stuff to the venue and I couldn’t manage to find anything I needed for the decor despite having all this stuff, and no matter how much I dug through all that stuff, I never found my decor, causing the ceremony to run later and later and later because I couldn’t decorate. Oh-wait-I just remembered another. I dreamed that it was the day of the wedding but I never got back to the officiant and so the ceremony itself wasn’t prepared and it was all my fault.

It’s all very silly and all very on brand for me. Upon waking I wondered exactly what was up since I am not actually feeling particularly stressed about the wedding itself. That’s when I realized it was the work situation instead. I assure you, there’s someone at work I’d LOVE to be hollering at but that would be unprofessional. And while I generally have work-related anxiety dreams, because the wedding is the big deal in my life right now, that’s just getting superimposed on the work-related situation. Thankfully I did take the majority of the week off next week, that should help some.

But I think there’s an interesting common theme in these dreams. The common theme is that I am all by myself in these decisions and circumstances, I have to handle everything alone and everything rests on me to make perfect. That’s not my reality at all. This is something I’ve been thinking about a ton lately. The reality is that even though this is a very small wedding, there are loads of helpers. There’s my sister in law doing photography, our wedding is in such capable and beautiful hands. There’s my soon to be sister in law, the planner, the director, the one with extremely capable hands that I am leaving the bulk of the set up to. There’s my mother who will likely shoulder a good amount of my own anxieties as the week progresses, and then lend her hands and ideas in set up. There are my cousin and his family, all of whom have been assigned tasks or will take tasks on. There are my aunt and her family, messaging me eagerly asking how they can chip in and help. There are Mr. Ink’s brother and sons who I know I can ask to do any little thing and they’ll hop to it because that’s how they are. There’s Miss Butterfly who has been ridiculously unteen-like during this entire planning process, helping out the whole way through. There’s Miss Marja, lending her hand and ideas and taking on any work I’ll allow her, and making amazing suggestions that get easily implemented into the plans. There are the groomsmen, both as much my friends as Mr. Ink’s, both being helpful and lending levity to all situations. While my dreams cast me in a role of make or break, shouldering every concern all by myself, my reality is much richer and fuller than those terrifying dreams.

But most of all, there’s Mr. Ink. The person who, somehow intuiting that I am feeling reflective, asks me in the evenings “How are you feeling about the upcoming wedding?” and listens carefully as I pour out those reflections. Who, despite really hating to be put on a schedule, quickly agrees that he’ll handle the things I have assigned him in the time frame I’ve assigned it. Who suggests that we hire an expert officiant to create a truly lovely ceremony instead of me trying to come up with something on my own. Who creates a reception playlist and then apologizes that they are all loves songs and he just can’t help himself because that’s just how he’s feeling right now even though he knows sappy songs aren’t really my thing. (In this situation, they are totally my thing.) Who continues to keep the household running, cooking dinner, grocery shopping, doing dishes, without any complaints while I invest my energies in wedding planning and host preparations in a very short time frame.

Quite frankly, while something may go wrong on the big day and it’ll be out of my control, there’s no way for things to go completely off the rails. With all the helpers, it’s just not possible at all! And I know that this knowledge is what is leading to my low stress levels right now, my time for reflection, and my very high anticipation of the upcoming week.

Shall we talk knitting then? Let’s. I never did cast on that cowl that I twisted the other day, instead, I decided a partly finished sock would be more my style.

This is the same yarn I have made socks for Mr. Ink from in the past, so you may somewhat recognize it. I plan to knit to the toe and then start the next one. This way I can knit different colored heels and toes if I need to, depending on how much yarn I have left over. I really cast this on so I could knit on it during a movie I didn’t really want to see, but since then it has definitely come in handy as mindless knitting in additional situations. This is my current work project, though it’ll go home with me today since this is the last day I’ll have an actual lunch break to work through before vacation.

Know what else got done? The deep cleaning of the bathrooms which had been on my list for last weekend. I finally did them both last night. I had been sort of waiting for Miss Butterfly to assist me as she’s been assisting me with all the various deep clean projects thus far. But, yesterday at work I realized part of my hang-up was that I didn’t feel like trying to maneuver around someone in a small bathroom while also giving directions. I was doing that enough at work and my brain was too fried to do it at home. So last evening, figuring all this out, I decided to instruct Miss Butterfly to do a few other tasks she could easily do without any additional prompting from me, took my podcasts and cleaning supplies into the bathroom and got down to business. Felt good to do some proper scrubbing and I definitely felt more accomplished once it was done.

On the list for this weekend is the kitchen, absolutely my least favorite deep cleaning job and yet the one that always makes me the happiest when it is complete. We’ve got a number of other things to get done as well, and all of them wedding prep related. So, I leave you with a few Rose photos I took this week. She loves Mr. Ink easily as much as she loves me, and I decided to record some of that this week.

She’s such a sweet little love bug.