Stuff People Say – Cake

Angela — I saved a piece of cake for you.

Brian — Oh.

Angela — You don’t want it?

Brian — What kind is it?

Angela — Slightly used. [holds out a slice of frostingless red velvet cake]

Random Saturdays – Best Laid Blogging Plans

So, I had this great idea to do a weekly post on all the planning of all the events (not just marriage related) coming in the first half of this year.  I was going to give funny or useful or dumb synopses of advice I had read or was given.  There were going to be planning sites and photos and comical stories.  I’m lazy and busy, though, so none of that happened.

Work is killing my soul.  It’s killing Ben’s too.  It’s terrible.  Neither of us like working for the company, but it still has certain perks (401K matching, flexible work from home schedule) that we need right now, even if neither of us knows if we’ll be handed a pink slip on any given day.

We were trying to buy a house and our first loan guy at Quicken Loans was great, but the second guy was not.  We got another guy who was great, and then got stuck with the lame duck again.  We requested another person and got a great woman working on our loan again.  We were basically being passed around Quicken from person to person.  We did most of the work.  I’m not quite sure what our realtor or the seller’s realtor did other than send us documents to sign, often the same documents to resign multiple times because they told us to sign in the wrong place or forgot to update things like, oh, the value of the house before having us sign the documents.  I don’t think I’d recommend anyone use any of the people used unless you really want to do most of the work yourself just to get the deal to go through in about a month’s time.

Minecraft’s birthday party was even cancelled because of rain.  All around us, people are getting laid off from work, being diagnosed with cancer, getting divorced, and a slew of other problems.

There are good things still happening, though, and we’re trying to remember that.  I have a great team of people at work.  Ben’s boss fought to save his job so far.  We got to celebrate a couple of good friends getting married.  We got married ourselves.  We were able to plan some last minute fun stuff to celebrate Minecraft’s birthday.  We now own a house that’s perfect for us, and I think we have made a lifelong friend out of the seller of the house.  Most importantly, we have a wonderful group of friends and family who are very loving and supportive of us.

Still, I know that when man plans, god laughs.  So, I’m not too surprised that nothing has gone exactly according to plan.  However, I do believe that life happens the way it needs to happen when it needs to happen.  That, of course, has continued to be true over the past few months.  For that, I’m extremely grateful.  I even found a bakery that has a red velvet cake that I like and a red velvet cake recipe that I like.  This was thanks to Minecraft’s birthday cake stencil not making it here in time, which coincided with him telling me that his favorite cake is red velvet (my least favorite cake).  So, I made an old fashioned red velvet cake, that was only tweaked slightly.  Our current big tasks are planning the reception (which is in the future as of the writing of this, but is in the past as of the posting of this), working on moving out of the old house and into the new house, and trying to keep it all in perspective as a busy but blissful life.

Way to start off Spring 2015!