Today’s installment of Random Tuesday Thoughts (inspired by the Un-Mom) is brought to you by the 3 W’s in my life: wedding, wealth and work.

One. Steve’s meeting tonight with a friend of his aunt Pat’s  who we hope will be our wedding officiant. His name is Anthony, and he is a Native American guy who loves rituals. He helped with our nephew’s Bar Mitvah–yes, a bit untraditional–and also held a little ceremony for Pat when she got her master’s degree. He’s very spiritual and mystical in a way.

Steve is in charge of our actual wedding ceremony. There are a few things I want to make sure happen–some special way to include the children, for example–and a few things I don’t want to happen–no unity candle, please–but other than that, I really want to be surprised. I will write my own vows based on the traditional ones (why change what works? except for the obey part. Nope, not gonna say obey). But other than that, I don’t want to know.

I wrote our entire ceremony for my first wedding. I was such a control freak, that when the minister rephrased my words, I visibly bristled. Yeah, I used to be that uptight. This time, I want to be in the moment, not worrying about what gets said. I want to experience it anew, not have it memorized like I did before.

Two. I love that Steve wants to be very involved with the wedding. His first wedding was about his ex and her mom. He says he was pretty much shut out of any decisions. We have an agreement that I will receive his ideas openly and not shut them down right away, that I won’t make any decisions without him. Because, after all, a wedding is about the COUPLE not the bride–despite what most brides think.

Three. Yesterday, I initiated a distribution from my old retirement account. I am going to pay off my credit card debt, some old taxes, get my car’s body damage fixed and pay for my portion of the wedding.

If Suze Orman is reading this (hi Suze!) she wants to kill me. Listen, Suze, I hear you. I know I’m 40 and I don’t have much saved for retirement. However, Capital One sent me this lovely letter the other day that explained, due to the poor economy (and despite the fact that I’ve been a customer for 17 years and have never once been late), they are raising the interest rate on my credit card from a fixed 9.9% to 26.74%. Really Capital One? Fuck you. No seriously. Here is your entire payment, except for $10, so you can’t close my card.

Ahem. So, rather than watch my money increase by 1% a year (it’s all been in a money market for the past 18 months) and watch my credit card debt jump, I’m paying it all off. And getting my car fixed. And paying for the wedding, which was going to go onto another Capital One credit card I have that has a zero balance and a 9.9% fixed rate. Which I also got the same letter about, although that rate was only going up to 22.74%. Only.

I was going to take the tax hit anyway because I recently rolled a 403b over into a Roth IRA (and you pay taxes when you roll it over), so now I get to eat another 10% on the amount I’m taking out. To me, it’s worth it. Suze may think it’s dumb. But since I was strategically paying off my debt, I’ll now have all that extra money to put toward building up my savings. Which is more important nowadays anyway.

Four. I want to write about a nasty situation that’s occurring at work between me and some “colleagues” but I can’t. Suffice it to say, I made a mistake, apologized, and my apology was thrown back in my face. I’m very upset about it, because really, what I did is pretty common in my line of work, and my apology was sincere. And my professional integrity was called into question. Had this person called me lazy, that would have been one thing, but to question my integrity is quite another.  I’m quite shaken up. I don’ t like to be anything but perfect, and to have my non-perfection thrown in my face–and so nastily–is awful.

Five. Speaking of work, I feel like I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. I took on the central story for my upcoming magazine, which is highly scientific and quite complicated. Usually, I can mull over something for a few days then pound it out. Not this one.

I’ve been dipping my toe into it for weeks now, delaying the publication date. I can’t get it together. Essentially, I’m scared of it. I have to write it today, and I know I’m avoiding here, but also, I take blogging as a warm up exercise to my real work. Now that I’ve confessed my fear, I hope the words start rolling. One way or the other, even if the story sucks, it has to get done today.

So now I’m going to get to it.