the sun is out

you know what i miss about london? its weather. i mean, sure, we had some days that were ridiculously cold for summer or even spring. there was rain one second and sun the next and there was really no point in trying to dress for the weather because every time we blinked it was different. and yes, i did leave with a cold that i'm attributing to the changing weather. but still, it was so nice there, and the last couple of days were absolutely beautiful. and then we come back to the wonderful dc and its lovely heat wave and i never want to move from in front of my air conditioner again. yesterday evening it was a hundred and four degrees outside. how is that even legal? i mean, if people have sued termites for eating their houses and whatnot, why has no one started a case against the sun for cooking humanity?

you know what else i miss? at every crosswalk, painted on the street right by the curb, were the words "look left" or "look right." i'm not sure why exactly i fell so in love with that idea, but after a lifetime of being told to look both ways before crossing the street this just seemed so much better.

other small things that were different were: stop lights turn yellow before both red and green instead of just red, they have tkmaxx instead of tjmaxx, and their soft serve ice cream is a lot creamier/heavier/whatever than ours (but still awesome).

anyway, i'm going to continue to sit here in the air conditioned apartment and convince myself that since we got so much stuff yesterday i do not have to enter the heat ever again. i'll go outside when fall gets here.

*Dear Prudence - The Beatles

stretching out like rubber bands to kiss the cheeks and shake the hands

so i just got back from london and have decided that i am kind of sick of trying to write blogs that recap the summer. mainly because it seems like i never have time anymore and by the time i get to writing the post, so much has happened in between that it ends up sounding wooden and laundry list like. but because part of me feels like all of this should at least be mentioned somewhere, this post will be a quick recap of everything from the wedding to this point. starting tomorrow (because hopefully i'll get back to blogging daily again) i will not be doing any more summer recaps.

so anyway, after the wedding we spent to more nights in jeddah (my side of the country) before going over to dammam (his side of the country). a lot of his family was not able to come to the real wedding so they put together a dinner in my honor/second wedding. i had a hair dresser make up lady come to the hotel room to do my stuff for me, and it was a disaster. because it was not really a wedding wedding, i told her to do something simple with my hair. she said she had the perfect simple hairdo for my face shape so i said okay and let her do her thing. she had half of my hair hanging down in my face while she worked with the other half so i couldn't see what she was doing until the very end when she pulled the hair out of my face to design the bang part. it took all of my will not to start crying and the only thing that stopped me was that she had already done the makeup. she had put my hair up in a tower on the top of my head. a roll of hair, a braid, a roll of hair, a braid, and then a final poof of hair. it was really tall. i looked like a character from a dr. seuss book. i wish i took a picture of it but i was too busy freaking out to think of it. we were supposed to leave the house at eight:thirty and she finished eight:fifteen so i just let her go and then started freaking out when my husband came in. we ended up taking apart the tower and by the end i looked okay, but it was awful. and i was nervous about meeting his whole family which made it worse. but the dinner was fun. we talked and danced and ate and my dress turned black from the street and it was a struggle getting in and out of cars. but it was fun.

his side of the country was ridiculously hot, though. even in the middle of the night it was sweltering which didn't make sense because the sun was gone so it should cool down. it didn't. also, it was awkward doing the whole shaking hand-kissing cheek thing with his family. on my side of the country we do right-left-left or however many lefts you want. his side does all right. i didn't realize this until ten or so awkward times when our heads would get confused and almost hit into each other. i picked it up though at the end.

after spending a week in his side of the country, we went back to mine for two days, and then we came back to america. there were a couple of days spent in exhaustion and then we were on a plane again to london. and oh my god i loved london. it was beautiful and the people were awesome and there was so much to see and do and i need to go back. as soon as possible. it was kind of expensive, especially since the dollar is worthless compared to the pound, but it was still awesome. when we got there, though, we found ourselves cut off from all forms of communication. this meant that i couldn't meet up with a friend, i couldn't contact my family, i couldn't check my email, or basically do anything. though this just gave us less things to distract us from the city. we did the main attraction tour (big ben, westminster abbey, buckingham palace, etc.), we saw stonehenge, went on the london eye, a river cruise, a harry potter tour (of course) and had a picnic in hyde park. we also went to a few museums, and oh my god are their museums cool. the science museum was mini compared to most smithsonian museums over here, but it was the coolest thing since the printing press. the museum of natural history was really cool, too, but i think all natural history museums are cool on principle. we also went to disneyland in paris for a day which was awesome. there is still so much i want to see and do there though, and i am planning my next trip from now.

so that's pretty much what i've been doing lately instead of blogging. i've been busy and things have been hectic. things should calm down a bit now, though. we just need to go shopping for a zillion things for the apartment and i need to get a temporary number since my phone is off until my parents get back and i need to get ready for school and apply to the phd program, but besides all of that, my days should go back to being pretty much pointless. yay.

*Rain Delays - Crash Parallel 

where was it that we last left off?

let me start off by saying that it is hot. really really hot. so hot that when the thermostat thingie last night said that the temperature in the apartment went down to 90 degrees, we were really excited. right now i'm sitting in the bedroom right next to the window with the fan going so it is not so bad, but the minute you step out of this room you might as well just step right into the oven. you probably wouldn't notice the difference. (our air conditioner is broken.)

anyway, back to the wedding. we left off right before we got to the hall, right? so we get to the right floor and the people outside the entrance to the hall are all really surprised to see us. apparently they didn't expect us so soon, though we were technically supposed to go up at ten and it was now eleven:thirty. so we wait outside of the hall on a couch for about ten minutes. or, my husband waited on the couch and i stood next to it because there was no way i was going to risk messing up my dress after the commotion it was to make it look like it wasn't shoved into a suitcase and carried across the world.

we were originally supposed to walk in together, but the hotel people thought it would be nicer for him to walk in first from one door and then for me to walk in from another. so we did. we met up on this small platform type thingie in the back of the hall and then proceeded the step-feet together-pause-step walk down the aisle with the photographer three steps ahead of us video taping and people sitting around us and my younger sister popping up and making me laugh everywhere i turned around. 

when we got to the end of the aisle, we climbed up a few steps to the stage, exchanged rings (which was actually a bit harder than it would seem because someone tried to put it on the wrong finger. hint: the someone was not wearing a wedding dress). after that, we went to cut the cake. we cut through each of the layers and the hotel person cut us a piece to eat or whatever. the first bite we fed each other ended up half down my dress (i mentioned it was big, right?). the second bite i think was when the two forks were held together and we each took a bite. the lady had cut too big of a piece for my fork and half of it ended up falling out of my mouth. the photographer wanted a picture of the cake eating without anything falling on my side, so we had another bite and i think that one ended up okay. 

we then went and sat down on the love seat on stage for us and shared a drink of some really really good strawberry juice that i really wanted to finish because it was so good but that was taken away after a sip. then after a minute of sitting we stood back up for our first dance or whatever (song: first day of my life by bright eyes). after that we sat back down and our moms came up to the stage to hug and tear up and say typical wedding day things like congrats and you look so pretty. then i was presented with a jewelry set from him which was really really pretty but i think i forgot to take a picture of it. 

after that my dad, uncles, and brothers came in and congratulated me and my aunts came up for a family picture (two days after the wedding my cousin told me that for these family pictures we had pretty much pushed the groom out of the way and put people in front of him. yeah, oops). after the pictures were taken it was a flood of family members coming up onto the stage, a little bit of dancing, and then my uncles and everyone left. a bit after that my husband left. then my friends came up onto the stage who i haven't seen since high school graduation. it was really awesome seeing them though they gave me a bit of an inferiority complex because they got so tall and skinny and pretty and one's a college professor and the other one's working at a bank and i look the exact same as i did five years ago and am hiding from the real world and jobs in school. but despite all the differences they were the same and it was awesome. 

each of these steps were done to a different song or song clip, most of which were chosen by me but a couple were suggested by the dj lady and cousins and then approved by me. 

then i took a bunch of pictures with everyone and they opened the buffet. traditionally, the bride will wait on the stage and someone will bring her a plate and she'll just sit there while everyone eats and people will go up and talk to her if they want to. i have never really seen the point of that and instead went into the buffet with my cousin's daughters. and oh my god the reactions i got. i honestly did not think it was going to be a big deal, but apparently it is just not the way things work. my cousin kept telling me that i was supposed to be special and have stuff brought to me and my aunt was saying that i shouldn't be there and i kept trying to explain that i wanted to sit with my family and friends and not eat alone on a stage with a bunch of flowers to talk to. (two days later, my cousin was still talking about it.) i ended up at a table with my mom and sisters and it was fun. after that, my friend came up to us to tell us some bad news. my sister's camera had died early in the wedding and instead of going up to the room to take mine, she had borrowed my friend's camera. apparently though, i dunno how, none of the pictures she had taken were actually taken. maybe she was pressing the wrong button? no one knows, but there were no pictures. so i retook a bunch of pictures with people with my cousin's camera and then my friends, sisters, and a couple of cousins went back to the stage to dance. 

after a couple of hours, it was just four cousins and my sisters half dancing and half just standing on stage talking. they left and at two:thirty we started getting ready to go, collecting our stuff and whatnot. i think i got back to the hotel room at around three and then i proceeded to take out a million and seven bobby pins from my hair and peel off the dress which now had cake and flower petals in it and try to brush out the poof of spray and hair that was on my head and wipe of layers and layers of makeup. all while i was suddenly hit with a wave of pent up exhaustion and was trying to convince myself that this all really did have to be done before i could sleep.

the whole thing was a lot of fun, though. 

*Lying is the Most Funb a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off - Panic! at the Disco

everything is going wrong, but we're so happy

before i start in on the pre-wedding wedding day preparations, i think it should be mentioned that today i watched a harry potter movie for the first time for the last time. i think that knowledge was sadder than any part of the film (which, though i felt was really good was nowhere near as sad as i was expecting).

so anyway, let's go back in time to july sixth, two thousand eleven, something a.m. in the morning. after a night spent mostly crying (because, really, no matter what the occasion, change and i have never been able to meet with a smile. there are always tears shed between the two of us.) i wake up with eyes so puffy i could barely open them. seriously. it was bad. i tried ice and tea bags and cold water and everything else i ever heard took away swelling of eyes, but nothing seemed to be working. in the words of my younger, i kinda looked like our elementary school drama teacher on a bad day. now, you don't know my drama teacher, but she had those eyes that seem to bug out of your head. you know the kind?

after resolving to let time deal with the puffy eyes, i proceeded to walk around my house like a ghost who has forgotten where it was haunting and why exactly it didn't just leave earth behind. i then realized that i had a nail problem. see, the original hair and makeup person included a manicure. we changed from them, though, and the new ones didn't. there was no time to go to another place that morning, and all of my nail polish was in my room here in america. my sister had pink mood changing, black, and clear. everyone said no to the black immediately, the pink was too bright to work, and so i tried the clear. only, it didn't show. no matter how many layers i piled on. i then tried to paint my nails with lipstick using a makeup brush and putting a layer of clear nail polish on top. this actually looked really nice... until it dried completely. then my sister (with the help of google) found that mixing eye shadow and clear nail polish makes colored nail polish. so i chose a nice purple color out of my older sister's new eye shadow set thing, and proceeded to destroy it. i crushed it into powder and poured it into the nail polish and lo and behold i had a really nice color. day saved.

after lunch we went to the hotel suite that i would be getting ready in. it was me, my two sisters, my two brothers, my two nephews, and my two brothers. for hours. it was loud and i was nervous and getting a headache which made me irritable. not fun. my dad had forgotten his cell phone at home, so everyone was trying to call us to get stuff ready and they couldn't reach us because they were only trying his phone. my sisters were making the plates of food that would be sitting on each table and my parents were in the other room starting to steam iron my dress. for about ten minutes. and the electricity for our room was turned off. apparently, steam irons are not allowed. so we had to normal iron the dress and i will post pictures of it later but oh my god it was hard.

while all of this was going on, i was waiting for my hair and makeup people to come. they were supposed to come at four. you know what time they ended up coming? six:forty. yeah, i was pretty panicked. so they come and decide that they don't want to start until seven:fifteen because apparently the styles i chose wouldn't take them more than half an hour tops. i sat and talked with them which was pretty fun. the makeup lady had been with her fiancee for eight years and decided that she hated him but couldn't think of a way to break it off after that long so was trying to make him miserable so he'd break it off. they finally started on my makeup (during which they ate the snacks that the hotel gave us and drank the water). the makeup took longer than expected, surprise surprise, and before the hair lady even started the photographer came to take the pictures.

of course, she was told to wait, and wait she did. for about an hour. because the hair took longer than she expected it would too. and with the constant cloud of spray she kept around my head and contacts that were dying to dry out, my eyes started to water. so the makeup lady kept frantically trying to keep me from looking like a raccoon with mascara running down my cheeks. the hair lady finally finished, and they both did an amazing job despite the fact that they have no idea how to manage their time.

i got into my dress which was so puffy i could barely fit through doorways, and found out that i had apparently lost weight and it was noticeably big on me. nothing to do about it then, though.

it was finally time for the pictures to be taken so i moved into the other room where the photographer had set up. i took a million pictures by myself in all kind of awkward and weird poses that she put me into - like pretending to run away or squatting facing the wall but twisting my torso so my front was facing the camera and tilting my head sideways and holding my arms in some weird position over my head (i swear they expect you to be freakin acrobats to be pictured by them) and then my parents and husband came up to take pictures with me. we took a million more pictures and then the photographer decided we were done and it was finally time to go down to the guests. it was about eleven:thirty by this time.

after a morning where it seemed like whatever could go wrong did, i was surprisingly calm at this point. the nerves that had been attacking me all day seemed to suddenly disappear. i think it was more the thought that, no matter how much i embarrassed myself it would all be done soon than the fact that i really wasn't nervous. remember how i mentioned that i don't like being the center of attention? yeah, that's because i tend to make an idiot out of myself every time i am. anyway, we went out to the elevator and rode up to the fifth floor (the suite was on the third) to where our guests were waiting.

*Let's Dance to Joy Division - The Wombats

why should i go out? why should i even move? just another lazy day afternoon

so my blog views have reached a record low, i've lost a few followers, and i have a backlog of posts i need to read that is going to take me at least a couple of hours, but i'm back! i think. maybe. i hope. we just arrived back in america and this is the first chance i've had to get online since my last post. anyway, i get on facebook to let my sister know we got here and am hit with a flood of harry potter stuff. is it bad that i completely forgot about the movie up until this very moment? and i don't even know if i have the energy to go out and watch it before we leave for london because i'm just so exhausted from these past few weeks. that is so unlike me.

after writing that start of the post at around six yesterday, i went into the bedroom for a minute, laid down on the bed, and suddenly there's a very annoying alarm going off telling me that it is three:thirty in the morning. (the alarm was supposed to only be for yesterday to wake us up to check our bags, apparently it was never unset.) i then stayed in bed for a million hours, just took what i needed for my shower out if the suitcases instead of unpacking, put off all the stuff i needed to do today till tomorrow, and have otherwise just had a lazy day. after weeks of nonstop activity you have no idea how amazing today is to me.

anyway, i really will be starting my wedding posts soon, but before that, let me just give a brief overview of what a saudi (on our side of the country at least) wedding is like. you know, for those who grew up with the more western ones. it'll save me some words in the other posts. so the wedding starts off without the bride and groom - she'll be off getting makeup and hair and pictures done. the guests all start arriving where they will be greeted by the bride's family (mom, sisters, aunts, etc... basically whoever is free at the moment to stand at the door and greet guests). when the guests enter the hall they sit at one of several tables equipped with chocolates, finger foods, tea, and coffee. there is also a dance floor and music playing for those who want to dance, and waiters walk around occasionally bringing stuff like juice and whatever. after hours of this, the bride and groom come down for what is called the zaffah. this is basically a set of several steps depending on what the hall is like which includes things like throwing flower petals, walking down the aisle, cutting the cake, drinking juice, dancing, exchanging rings, and whatever else you want to do. the bride and groom will then reach a stage thing, sit down, people will come up to say hi to them and stuff, pictures are taken, and then the buffet is opened, the guests go eat, and the wedding is basically over. a lot of the time the groom will go away after the zaffah and the bride will stay and hang out with her friends and family who will have been covered up while the groom was there. i always hated the idea of saudi weddings because they seem to be more for the guests than the bride and groom, but i actually had fun at mine. i was slightly surprised because of my general distaste for being the center of attention. more of that later, though.

i am now going to go order a pizza and try to work up the energy to walk across the street and watch harry potter.

*Lazy Day - Plain White T's

so i've officially been married for a week now, and i haven't been on a computer since the day before the wedding. since i am exhausted, this is not going to be a real post. i know, i know, so disappointing. anyway, i just wanted to post something because i feel like being online and not blogging is blasphemous. i will be writing a series of posts dedicated to the wedding in the upcoming days because there's a lot to write about and pictures to post and i just don't think that - with my tendency to use a hundred words to write what could be said in ten - i could fit it all into a reasonable sized single post. this past week has just been a whirlwind of traveling and visiting people and parties and i'll put all of that in a post, too. hopefully i'll have time to finish all the posts before i leave saudi arabia (saturday morning) or at least before we go to london (tuesday). even if i write them all and then have them  posted automatically later.

anyway, for tonight i'll just leave you all with a piece of advice: get married; you get lots of pretty presents.

close your eyes, clear your heart, cut the cord

i was originally going to have this post be published later and just pretend that i wrote it tomorrow. but then i thought that we know each other well enough that lies and tricks aren't necessary, right? right. tomorrow i'm thinking i'll be much too busy to type up a post and well, what's a couple of hours anyway?

being an avid lover of words, it always surprises me when words fail me. to be completely honest, though, i could write pages and pages trying to describe the thoughts running through my mind right now and i still wouldn't even come close to making you understand. i would write in circles and jump through loopholes, write myself into corners and then fly off on random tangents. i would contradict myself with every sentence and make barely enough sense to buy a gumball.

so you know what? i'm not even going to try.

why'd i bother writing a post at all if i'm not going to write anything of meaning in it, you wonder. well, i'm getting married. me. and i felt like this should be documented somewhere. so here i am. documenting this. the next time i write in this thing, if everything goes according to plan, i will be officially married. i still think it's crazy and probably one of the hardest things i've ever done.

wave goodbye, wish me well, you've gotta let me go.

(i almost put that lyric as the title, but felt that the one i chose was more about me and this second one is more like to my family. you know, just in case you were wondering.)

*Human - The Killers

the hardest part is letting go of your dreams

so. what's your stance on dreams if you don't mind me asking? i'm not talking about goals and aspirations and those sparkly things that help you get through the day. no, i'm more concerned about those other things that keep your mind occupied at night when you are otherwise dead to the world. you know, the tv show that your brain puts on for the inside of your eyelids that you sometimes wish would just get cancelled already. yeah, those dreams.

you see, i've been having some dream trouble as of late. and by trouble i mean they are getting really effing obnoxious. not only do i wake up from them completely exhausted (i mean, really, body. i don't feel like my last days of non-marriedhood should be spent fighting the urge to fall and down and cry about how tired i am. plus, these black circles may be hard to cover.) but also, it is just really not the time to be dreaming any of this. i chalked them off to stress the first couple of nights, i said that my mind is just struggling to hold on to the sameness it has always known when i was shoving change down its throat like a celebrity giving charity (speaking of celebrities and charity, i have a really great story to tell you guys later). but it's been a while and you'd think my mind would have worked through its issues by now. only, it hasn't. and i really, really, really wish it would.

so anyway, where do you stand on dreams? how many of them actually mean anything and how many of them are just your brain putting out the trash at the end of the week? should people listen to dreams or should they file them under nonsense to be forgotten like the list of world capitals i had to memorize in high school? what would i regret more: listening to my dreams or ignoring them?

but most of all, how can i get a good night's sleep without having to suffer any dreams? i really miss sleep.

*Sleep - My Chemical Romance

the car won't start

i'm pretty sure i've only mentioned a couple of stories on here, but i can't even count the number of times i've gotten to our car(s) and found it dead. yesterday was the latest instance in what i'm sure will continue to be a very long list of non-starting cars. we had just finished up with the dj person and gotten into the car when my dad tried to start it and it just sat there sputtering. after a few more hopeful tries, we accepted the fact that it was dead. two random oldish men came to help us, but i'm not going to get into that too much.

while they were looking under the hood, a younger guy came out of the apartment building we were parked in front of and the older dude asked him if he had jumper cables. the guy said no before the question was even fully asked and turned away. "he's such a jerk," my cousin said. "i hope his car doesn't start because he wouldn't help us." he coincidentally was parked right next to us. he got into his car without making eye contact and tried to start it. it wouldn't start. my cousin and i just about died from laughter because i mean, what are the odds? his car eventually did start, but it took a while, and you could bet he was wishing that he helped us. 

he drove off and the old guy drove my dad to the mechanic place nearby to get a new battery (i really don't know why they couldn't pick up some jumper cables). anyway, the guy gave us the wrong size battery (i just learned last night that car batteries come in sizes. yeah, i'm pretty stupid.) but my dad and the old guy didn't realize it. the old guy put in the battery upside down and the car was going spastic. it wouldn't start but the windshield wipers were going crazy though they were off. creepy stuff. they eventually got the battery in right, but since it was too small our car could barely drive the way to the mechanic. we got there and got the right size battery, but we think that stuff under the hood got messed up cause it was driving like the little engine that was starting to think maybe it can't. and the dashboard lights wouldn't work. 

we got home, though. finished all wedding plans and payments. and there are three days left of my pre-marriage life. with that said, i'm going to go eat some oreos. 

*Honey, I'm Home - Shania Twain

you're faking a smile with the coffee to go

you know those dreams that feel really real and tire you out so much that you wake up feeling less rested than you did before you went to sleep though you were pretty exhausted then? and you know how irritating it is when you just open your eyes on a morning like this and you are suddenly bombarded with prices for different electronics and links to each one and claims that you are liar and aren't really going to buy [him] anything [he] just knows it? and then to go out to sit by the router where the internet is not clinging to life by its fingertips and realize that for some reason the air conditioning is not on and you can feel the sweat beginning to bead on your forehead and upper lip but just don't feel like getting up to turn it on? and to top it all off, you know when you realize that though all you really want is to crawl back into bed but you can't because you have lunch plans and t-shirt making plans and plans after dark for wedding music meetings and the next best thing would just be to sit on the couch and cry because you're just. so. tired. but you can't because you have to be happy and bubbly all day? and then to have the stupidity and incompetence level of everyone around suddenly spike to all-time high when you just don't have the patience or energy to deal with it? yeah, it's one of those days.

on another note, though i was a harry potter fan for as long as i can remember, i never really listened to any of the music that popped up about the series. this song popped up on a blog i follow, though, and i felt it was fitting for the time:



speaking of music, here are a few songs from my summer playlist that i think are pretty awesome. you know, just in case you felt like adding a few songs to your music library. they're mostly slow-paced/accoustic/indie rock/slightly folky/whatever else songs so if you're more into pop/hip hoppy/rap stuff than you probably shouldn't click the links. (i was originally going to embed all the youtube videos but it made the post too long, so i'm just going to link to them instead. widflowers by tom petty. changing by the airborne toxic event. apples and tangerines by the phoenix foundation. corinne by metronomy. land of the bloody unknown by the middle east. sweet talk, sweet talk by the new pornographers. there are also a bunch of bob dylan covers that i downloaded when i realized that i couldn't steal my mom's cds because of joe's old age. i think jason mraz has a pretty decent one.

*Bad Day - Daniel Powter