I seriously don’t know where time goes sometimes. Two years ago, I had just gone on my first date with this really great guy and now I’m marrying him in 18 days! Things are really getting crazy. I have studio portraits this weekend, Bryan and I are also meeting with the minister and applying for our marriage license. And sometime this weekend, we’ll also sit down and figure out a seating chart for the reception. So plans are coming along at a fast and furious pace.

I’m so ready for a vacation. I was able to work from home last week and am going to work from home tomorrow. I get about 3 times as much done at home as I do at the office. I would be so productive if I worked from home at least once or twice a week, but that will never happen. They told me that this is a one-time deal just so that I can get everything done that needs to be done for Thursday.

Another beautiful sunset as usual! Wow, if we would just take the time to look at the sunsets, this world would be a much better place. Bryan and I watched a DVD called “Why People Don’t Heal and How They Can” with Caroline Myss about a week ago. It was fascinating. She talked about chakras or what she calls databanks, and how some people communicate with wounds. It really made a lot of sense. It’s just another thing that seems to come at the right time. Lately, I’ve been feeling more at peace with my life, even if it doesn’t seem like it sometimes. It’s like, I’m at this moment in my life right now and I need to enjoy it because tomorrow it will be the past. Does that make sense? I still get worked up about things and stressed out, but I’m making an attempt to take things in stride, at least, more than I was before. So I look at a lot of things that have happened in the last several months that have come along when I needed them to (it’s a bit of a weird list) - the Unitarian Church, the film Garden State, deciding to apply to grad school for library science, the Caroline Myss DVD. I told you it’s a weird list, I’m sure there are other things that I could mention but they just aren’t coming to mind right now.

So the Olympics are over and now the Republican National Convention is on. It’s only been one day and I’m already tired of hearing the garbage that the Republicans are talking about. Tonight’s theme is Compassionate Conservatism. Give me a break! George W. Bush compassionate. If he’s compassionate, then compassionate means hurting people and making policies without thinking about what it will do to the people in this world. If he’s compassionate, then compassionate starting an disgusting war where many innocent people are dying, Americans and Iraqis, must be compassionate. It’s such a sick way to describe a man that has hardly shown a bit of compassion for the world and this country. He’s abused this country’s trust after 9/11 and he’s abused his power. I saw a bumper sticker this past weekend that I think said a lot - “No one died when Clinton lied.” Clinton lied and his family was hurt deeply, but no one was killed because of it. Now we have hundreds of American soldiers that have died because of Bush’s lies. The Republicans thought that Clinton lying was a reason to impeach him, but they think Bush is an honorable man, who has brough honor and dignity to the White House. I think they are so wrong. He hasn’t done anything that is even near honor or dignity. I don’t know how the man can sleep at night, but then again, he has a direct connection with God. God wants him to be President. I don’t believe in the God that is the old man in the sky, but I do believe anyone who says that God wants him to be President is playing a very dangerous game. It’s playing the same dangerous game that the muslims who claim that Alah is on their side play. Using religion as a means to hurt other people is SO WRONG!

Well, I should go eat some dinner. I had big plans for tonight but I had to update my blog and now it’s 8:30. Oh well, I did what I had planned to do, but of course, I didn’t expect it to take as long as it did.

Have a great Labor Day weekend!

While watching the Olympics, I got quite a bit of knitting done. I am about 8-10 rows from being half way finished with the giraffe blanket. When I’m finished with my current set of blocks, I’m going to weave in my hundreds of ends (or so it seems)! I’m also trying to figure out how I can reknit one of the giraffes. My attempt on the first giraffe was quite terrible and I want to rework it without taking out almost 30 rows. I think I may just tear it out and knit it for the stitches that I can and then for the “edge” stitches, which are my main concern, I’ll just pull the yarn through the spot where the yarn would normally be twisted. This whole blanket is worked in intarsia that seems to make it that much more difficult to figure out how to fix my poorly knit giraffe. Here’s a (very poor) photo of the blanket. If you have any advice on how to fix my sickly giraffe, please leave me a comment! I need to take out the poor giraffe’s body, the neck and head are fine and the legs are sewn on after the blanket is finished. I’m going to post this on Knitter’s Review for advice.

I hope to get more knitting done this week, but time is at a premium at the moment and knitting time is very limited.

About two weeks ago, I officially graduated from physical therapy for my elbow. I’ve been so busy with wedding plans that I haven’t had time to sit and knit. Last night, I was watching the Olympics and had to do something. So I picked up the giraffe baby blanket (I’m going to finish the blanket before the baby turns 1!) and knitted about 9 rows. It doesn’t seem like a lot in the number of rows, but the amount of work that goes into one row makes it seem like more when I’m actually knitting. I also was able to knit about three rows on Sunday night because of the Olympics! I’m sure as the next month goes on my free time will become even more squeezed. The wedding day is exactly one month from today!!

I’m glad the Olympics are on, it gives me an excuse to sit on the couch each night, something I haven’t done in a while. :) Btw, the giraffe blanket is the one on the cover of the Vogue Knitting Baby Blankets book.

After the honeymoon, my knitting will have to pick up as I’m teaching four classes a week starting in late October. In early October, I’ll be teaching two knitting classes, one youth and one adult, and two handmade paper classes. In late October, I move to teaching all knitting classes - four total classes three nights a week, two are on Tuesdays, so it won’t feel like a ton of work, I’m hoping! :) I didn’t expect to be so busy in the fall. I was hoping I would get one or two classes and I ended up with four. I didn’t think about how much time that was, but I’ll get through it. In the spring, I’ve already decided that I’m not teaching three nights a week.

For those of you that have asked about how did I get tendonitis - my doctor says it’s from my job, where I sit in front of a computer 8 hours a day. It could be from knitting if I was knitting a lot more. I had to move my mouse from the right side of my keyboard to the left. And I have to stop and do exercises every hour to keep it from coming back. If you’re having tinges of pain by all means see a doctor about it. It might save you from having surgery later on. Looking back I wish I had taken better care of my hands and wrists when I was younger so that I didn’t have to have carpal tunnel surgery when I was 23 and trigger thumb surgery last year. But it made me very aware about the little pains that can turn into big pains that require a lot of work. It took me quite a while to recover from carpal tunnel surgery and a lot of time to recover from trigger thumb surgery last year. My knitting has never gone back to pre-trigger thumb surgery levels. Part of that is time and other interests have creeped into my life too. :)

Do you ever see a film that really touches you? One that you identify with so much that you feel like you’ve known the characters a lot longer than the two hours you’re in the theatre. Bryan and I saw Garden State this past Friday. It couldn’t have been a more perfect film to see that day. I really felt like I was having a transitional day and Garden State just really touched me that day. Bryan and I were talking in the car afterwards and we felt like we could see ourselves in the characters. Not so much as in that it’s the story of our lives, but more like we really connected with the characters and the experience of feeling very in transition and not having a “home” like you did when you were a child. We’re officially starting our own little two-person family next month by getting married. We’ve been a two-person family for the last year since we moved in together but it will be different being married. I’m not sure how to explain it, it just feels like it will be a bit different, I guess because we’ll have experienced the wedding and we’ll officially be a family. And we’ll start working our own home, which I have to say is a bit difficult in an apartment. There is a line in the movie about how after you leave home (your parents’ home) it doesn’t feel like home again and that maybe we won’t feel like we have a real “home” until we’ve established ourselves and have a family of our own. I totally believe that.

I was so touched by Garden State that I kept crying afterwards. You absolutely must see this film! It’s not sad, it’s just something that many people in their 20’s and early 30’s will identify with. Oh, and the website is really great! :) There are so many little things to be found on it that you don’t see at first glance. I also think the soundtrack may need to be added to our music collection. :)

The many transitions that I’m experiencing in my life right now are all starting to come at the same time. The wedding will be the easy part, at least that’s how I feel. It will be such a relief when the wedding day is finally here. Mom & I have planned for so long and have put so much work into it. After the wedding, I’ll be teaching knitting and papermaking at two high schools’ continuing ed program and knitting at a park district. I know I’ll be busy with the classes and I have Stampin’ Up! that I’m sure I’ll be busier with this fall than I was this summer. I can already feel it picking up after the Lake County Fair. And there are other things that are happening that are part of a big transition. We decided we should put together a six-month plan, kind of where we think we can go and what we can do in six months. Not in the sense of where we can travel to, but more like where we would like our lives to go. Of course, we didn’t do that this weekend like we had planned, but we’ll do it soon. We decided to clean out the office yesterday and really clean up parts of the house. It just feels better even though there are areas that still need some work. My mom is coming this weekend, so we really need to kick it in gear later this week so it’s more than presentable for mom. :)

I was able to knit this past week. I knitted about 6 rows on the Giraffe Baby Blanket! I am now about 1/3 of the way through my third set of squares!

We’re getting down to the wire! 45 days until the wedding! I’m starting to feel a bit of a crunch now. I’m also getting a bit nervous. What I forget my name? What if I trip walking down the aisle? What if I start crying so much that I can’t even talk? I know I’ll be smiling so much that my cheeks will hurt and my face will be stuck smiling the muscles in my cheeks will be so stuck! :) The very last of the invitations are going out this weekend. I had to redo a few because I misspelled a few names and I was still waiting on a few addresses. So now they are all done. I just have to remember to slowly work on addressing the announcements, so that I’m not rushing to do all of them the week before the wedding.

Our engagment announcement ran in the Hutchinson News, the newspaper in my hometown, on Sunday.

Erica Lee / Bryan Voell
Mr. and Mrs. John Lee, Hutchinson, announce the engagement of their daughter, Erica Caitlin Lee, to Bryan Douglas Voell, son of John Voell, Mundelein, Ill., and Barbara Riffl, Zion, Ill.

The wedding is planned for Sept. 18 in Danforth Chapel in Lawrence.

The bride-elect graduated from Hutchinson High School, the University of Kansas, Lawrence, with a degree in social work, and DeVry Institute of Technology, Chicago, with a degree in computer information systems.

The bridegroom-elect graduated from Carthage College, Kenosha, Wis., with a degree in English, and Miami University of Ohio with a master’s degree in English. He is a public services librarian for the Fremont Public Library District in Mundelein.

This week, I’m working on getting the menus arranged for the reception and rehearsal dinner. I have a fitting for my dress on Saturday, my second to last fitting. We’re going to be making our final payment on our honeymoon! We’re going to beautiful Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island! I’m also ordering a small silver box for Bryan’s nephew, our ringbearer, to carry down the aisle. I don’t know what I would do with a pillow after the wedding and I figured a silver box would be nice because I can use it later as a jewelry box. I’m also ordering nice pen with a holder for the guestbook.

Next week, we’ll order our rings!! We also have to work on the ceremony program and our vows. It’s really getting down to the details! :)

I was so busy this past weekend with the Stampin’ Up booth and the Lake County Fair. It was very successful for us. Each person who worked at the booth has several people to follow up with who would like to schedule a workshop! I didn’t sell any coasters that I made, but I’ll save them for a craft show in the fall.

My afternoon started out yucky and didn’t get any better. I wanted to be home balancing the checkbook and getting the financial situation back on track. We slipped for two days and now we’re sorry, now I know - write everything in the checkbook register! And my evening meeting was cancelled with one of my hostesses for a workshop later in the month. I had a nervous feeling my stomach and I thought I should call the voicemail at home, so I did and I found out my hostess was cancelling our meeting for tonight, which is fine. I really needed to be home tonight working on stuff, but I figured I should check the bank website and my afternoon started to get yucky. I really wish sometimes that we didn’t have to work for money. I don’t know what I would rather do, but sometimes I think money should go away. It causes so many problems for so many people. I know, I know - don’t spend more than you have, but once in a while, you think you have more in your checking account than you really do for that one day. But we’ll get everything worked out tonight. :)

I really want to go home and be a good kitty mommy right now. Chloe had two teeth pulled yesterday and she’s been hiding for the most part since she came home from the vet. Right after she came home, she was totally exploring the apartment like she had to make sure everything was still there, and with the attitude, “I own this place right now.” :) George kept sniffing her yesterday after she came home, she must have smelled funny to him. :) I have so many new photos of the kitty babies that I need to post! :)