“It’s Official, We’re Engaged!”

The time has come to share with the whole world… my mother is engaged. She is planning on get married next month during Memorial Day weekend, the same weekend that she met her fiancé last year. My mother is giddy with excitement, I have never heard her so happy before and I am so glad that she found a great guy whom she will be able to spend her future years with.

Ok… now that I have said the requisite, “so happy for her” schpeel (which I truly do mean)… here is my slanted take on the entire thing. My mom has become so different in this last year. Not bad, just different. For example, hiring a photographer for her annual Christmas party... really is this necessary? She has taken relatively normal things and made them into a very big, overly stressed about, deal.

Now I am all for making the ordinary extraordinary, making daily life special and memorable, but she seems to have taken this to an entire new level. For example she told me last night, “OCG, I am so excited that you are going to be home in May, this just works out perfectly… you will be able to help me pick out a wedding dress and everything!”

I responded, “Mom, I do believe that a nice white suit is wholly appropriate for a second wedding.”

She had decided that since she was a hippy girl for her first wedding and had merely sown her sundress to wear for the occasion, this time she would do it right and make it memorable with a real wedding dress. I can see where she is coming from, and I support her in her choice. Hours upon hours spent at dress shops because I don’t yet have a job and she is ready to take all the time in the world with me? Priceless.

In addition, when I returned to Portland I had planned on staying for about a month with M&M. He has a large two bedroom flat and is only occupying one of the rooms. I told him I was definitely interested in staying there, at least until JP and I are able to find a place to live… however I never followed up with him.

I spoke with him the other day and he told me that another friend of his just asked if he could move in. This means I might be staying at my mother’s house upon my return to Portland, which I am not too happy about. Not only will I be there in the midst of the crazy preparation crunch for her second “Big Day” but if I don’t find a place soon I will have to stay with her and her new husband, in their “honeymoon stage”… that could ruin me for life…

Even worse is that when I brought this up last night, she said, “I will be two floors above you, you won’t hear anything. And don’t worry I promise not to scream in the middle of the night.” I proceeded to throw up a little in my mouth… When’s the last time I ate corn?

I am very happy for her. If anyone deserves this, she does. I will also now have two step brothers and a smokin’ step sister… keeping the family stock up, gotta love that…