Colorless Green Ideas

2004-04-23T10:03:00.000-07:00

Mawaige

TH's description of "married" vs "unmarried":

The difference is, before we were saying 'We're doing this today, and we're probably doing this tomorrow', and now we're saying 'We're doing this today and we will be doing this tomorrow'.

Awwwwwww. Lucky me.

2004-04-21T10:45:00.000-07:00

Appearing More Grown Up

Last night we bought new, matching dishes. We have never had 8 (8!!) place settings of matching dishes. Our dishes have always been thrift-shopped and garage-saled, and charmingly mismatched before, but, somehow, in the last few months, the mismatched-ness of the dishes has gotten less charming and more lame, so we had to make a change. I also organized the silverware and utensil drawers last night, which are now more less crowded and much more sensible.

I purchased Quicken Delux 2004 at Costco, and I am planning on setting up the New Budget Tracking Tool™ on the computer this weekend. I am alarmingly pleased about this. Tracking our spending habits! Seeing if we really do spend $400 a month on groceries! Oh, the excitement!

We're also considering buying a new, larger TV. The unending whirlwind of drama is certainly dead as a doornail at my house! And yet, I am pretty happy with my boring little life. Odd.

I am also going through the intensely boring and paperwork-heavy process of changing to Our Last Name. I have some feminist guilt about this, like I’ll be called into the boardroom and have my buttons snipped off, and my umbrella turned inside-out by angry women, growling “How can you give into this repressive patriarchal tradition?!”, but I’m afraid I don’t feel repressed by this at all, just tired of filling out paperwork. I really like the idea of a family name, and TH is my chosen family, so, eh, I’m changing.

2004-04-20T10:03:00.000-07:00

Movin' on (to the left)

Annoying Neighbor, who lives next door, is moving out, probably at the end of June. TH & I (and our roommate) would like to move into her apartment.

Annoying Neighbor has a larger apartment, on the corner of the building that’s away from the street. The bedrooms in her apartment are along the outside wall, so bedrooms don’t share walls with another apartment’s living space. (In our current apartment, our bedroom shares a wall with our other neighbor’s living room. He’s not too loud, but it would still be nice to have our bedroom not share a wall with someone else’s apartment.) Neighbor also has a much larger basement storage space— large enough that TH would probably want to fix it up & move his office downstairs, which would be nice for him (to have a completely dedicated working space, rather than a dedicated desk in our living room). And if TH had a separate space, he might let me get a dog— something I have wanted for years, but TH wants to have a designated dog-free space for himself before he agrees.

Neighbor’s apartment is still carpeted, although the other apartments have had the carpets removed (hardwood underneath!). I know the landlord intends to remove the carpet from Neighbor’s apartment too, and I’m hoping that he’ll allow us to paint the whole place while he’s doing that. We started painting our current apartment, but we got bogged down by the wedding. Since it’s so much easier to paint an empty space, I think we could get Neighbor’s apartment completely painted in a couple of weeks, and then move in to a fresh, colorful, new space!

It seems a little superficial, but it’s looking like TH & I are starting to get things going in a good direction— we’ve got a new budget that will help us meet some of our financial goals (paying down debt, saving some money, etc), TH has some new freelance projects in the offing that may make actual money (gasp!), and it just generally feels like we’re right on the cusp of some good stuff. Moving into a new space would be great, and, more importantly, moving into a new, inexpensive apartment that we’re 100% happy with (we’re about 90% in our current one) will help remind us that we’re making our choices for good reasons.

TH was freaking out a little bit at the end of last week, and seriously considered applying for a middle-management position just to make money. TH is a web designer, and he's been chipping away professionally for the last 3-plus years. We've made a lot of deliberate sacrifices and adjusted our post-college expectations a great deal in order to keep TH on a satisfying (if not financially prosperous) career path, and I don't want to throw that away lightly. I think it would really help us keep to our chosen direction if we were really, truly, okay with staying in our current living situation. You know, so we can say “It would be okay to stay here forever!”, and really mean it.

It’s important to me that we make major compromises in a considerate way—for example, I am strongly opposed to having TH take the afore-mentioned middle-management job, because he would end up working 45-55 hours a week at the lame job, and would want to keep at least one freelance project, which would mean he’d be crazy-busy for about 99% of his waking hours. I estimate that this state of affairs would make me seriously miserable in 1-3 months, on the outside. Plus, TH would lose the forward momentum that he’s been slowly building professionally, which would be bad for him—and it would make me feel that my personal efforts in this direction (namely, working full-time and being the primary breadwinner for 3 years) was a wasted effort. All in all, it’s just not worth if for the money he’d make. If we need more money (which would, admittedly, be really nice), TH can almost certainly find a more congenial part-time job, and work 20 hours a week or so somewhere while keeping all of his freelance stuff going, and still have free time to spend with me. This sounds like a much better solution, to my mind.

The danger is, of course, if we made a major compromise for short-term reasons—for example, to become financially able to buy a house in the immediate future, as opposed to “sometime in the next decade”—I’d be concerned we’d get tied up in house payments and car payments and life in general, and it would become hard to go back. Right now we maintain a fairly modest standard of living—one car, an inexpensive apartment, etc—and I’m almost entirely comfortable saying “We can stay at this level if it means we’ll be really happy”. Shifting to the larger corner apartment would solidify that, especially if we could get it all painted! Because, honestly, while having a nice place is important to me, having a nice life is even more important. And, certainly, if it was a choice between a genuinely miserable existence vs. going back to banking, I’d go back to banking, but if it’s a choice between having a fulfilling-but-low-paying-job and a nice apartment vs. a high-paying-but-awful-job and a nice house, I’d rather have the fulfilling job and the apartment.

2004-04-07T10:01:00.000-07:00

Breathe into the paper bag!

Saturday! Saturday! Saturday! Saturday! Saturday!

It’s actually going fine, and we’re getting stuff done, and people are arriving. TH’s friend O arrived from Germany last night, and he is a great, low-impact, houseguest who is also a semi-gourmet cook, so, score! It’s a shame his wife & daughter couldn’t come, but he brought pictures.

My parents arrive tomorrow, and my sister & brother-in-law on Friday. I think the in-laws are all coming Friday as well, but I’m not sure.

In the meantime, I’m trying hard to experience and enjoy these days-before, instead of just getting through them. It’s a bad habit of mine to just sort of wait through days preceding major events, like Christmas, or big parties, and it ultimately just causes me to lose a week or so of time I could have enjoyed, but didn’t. I’m going to try hard not to do that this week.

2004-03-26T11:44:00.000-08:00

Disintegrating Disaster Family In-Law

I shouldn’t be surprised that the Disintegrating Disaster Family In-Law has had yet another major breakdown, should I? No, no, I shouldn’t, because, it’s been nearly 2 weeks since:
-16 year-old BIL, driving on his learner’s permit with MIL, totaled the car (no one was hurt, thank god)
-50-plus MIL went in for surgery to deal with some problems stemming from her hysterectomy

What now, do you ask?

Well, MIL cleverly left over $1,000 in cash in her purse when she went in to surgery. She left her purse in her house, where her 16-year-old son was going to be staying, unsupervised, until she was released from the hospital. BIL had some friends over Sunday. Sunday the house was “robbed”, and $400 was taken from MIL’s purse. BIL insists that the house must have been broken into, because his friends “just wouldn’t do that”. Mmmmmmkkkay. The $400 was part of the money earmarked to pay for their tickets and accommodations in Portland for the April Wedding Bash.

After the “burglary”, BIL went to stay with a family friend. While staying with the family friend, BIL asks for, and receives, permission to surf the net on the home computer. (Family friend has previously been using said computer for email only, using MS Outlook.) After BIL uses the computer, family friend notices that it is “buggy”, and a file name has been changed in a weird manner. Diagnosis: Trojan virus messing about with the system. Note that the OS still seems to be working, but is “buggy”. It is revealed that family friend has no virus protection on the computer, and has never had any. (WTF?! This is the computer equivalent of standing outside with no pants on, your wrists handcuffed to your ankles, and $100 bills flapping between your cheeks, yelling, “HEY WORLD, I’M TOTALLY DEFENSELESS HERE!”)

Family friend decides that OS must be reinstalled to fix the problem, but her OS is not a legitimate copy, and the (burned) disk is scratched, so she cannot reinstall using her (pirated) CD. Another friend, who “knows about computers”, tells family friend to get another copy of Windows 2000, because “that new stuff is unreliable” (WTF?!). Family friend then
-takes BIL to the hospital, where MIL is resting under Dr’s orders, after surgery, so BIL can tell MIL that he “broke (family friend’s) computer, and needs to buy her a new OS”. Family friend is a hospital nurse, and should know better. But family friend is wigging out because, although she has access to other computers with email capabilities, she must have her computer fixed RIGHT NOW. Excuse offered is that her grown son in Japan must be able to email her daily, or he “gets weird”. We know grown son, and this is patently ridiculous. Family friend probably gets weird, but grown son is just not that sort of person.
-drives BIL around and buys a $300 copy of Win2000 (WTF?! $300?!), which she insists that he must pay back, in spite of the fact that SHE HAD NO VIRUS PROTECTION, and she could very easily have purchased an OEM copy of WinXP Home for $100.

(TH & I were recently forced, through a combination of stupidity on our part and bad luck, to replace our hard drive and OS, and buy new virus protection. We bought a hard drive, WinXP Pro, McAfee Virus Shield, and Personal Firewall Plus, for under $300 TOTAL. We did not force anyone else to pay for a cent of these costs, because the primary triggers were some dumb oversights on our part—no virus protection, and lack of regular backing up. It sucked most tremendously, but these things happen.)

Total potential losses up to this point: $700, for a family that lives on probably $500 or less a month

Additional complications:

MIL was also told by a nurse in the hospital that the surgical repairs will hold up fine, provided that MIL never lifts anything over 10 lbs, EVER AGAIN. MIL is currently in the process of selling her house on Lummi Island, so she can move to CA and “start a day care” that will somehow make enough money for MIL & BIL to live in the very very expensive Santa Cruz area. There are all kinds of major practical problems to this plan, which TH & I have pointed out repeatedly. MIL is unhealthy, 100 lbs overweight, asthmatic, has severe allergies, has chronic depression and fatigue, sleep apnea, and Type 2 Diabetes. MIL is also not certified to run a day care in CA. MIL was also planning to run this day care from a rented house. It’s clearly completely insane, but MIL continued to insist that this was a workable plan.

However, strict medical orders prohibiting lifting more than 10 lbs pretty well kills the (non-viable) “plan” in a way MIL can comprehend. MIL is sure that the nurse “must have made a mistake”, but is going to check with her Dr. If her Dr. confirms the “no lifting” rule, MIL will probably end up with $100,000 (less taxes), no house, no marketable skills, and no plan.

She will, most likely, move to CA anyway (losing the low-income health insurance she & BIL now have in WA state), and throw in with her brother, J, who is on the lam from $30,000 in credit card debt (no, he won’t declare bankruptcy, we tried to convince him already). BIL will go through his senior year of HS in a new school, and then be plan-less too. BIL also has no job experience, no marketable skills. He doesn’t even have a driver’s license! J has some marketable skills, but no recent verifiable job experience, and doesn’t want to get an over-the-table job because of the credit card debt. I imagine they will eat through the $100,000 in a 3-10 years, and then there will be nothing.

I have no idea what to do, if we can or should do anything at all. If it wasn’t for the BIL, I’d probably just say “whatever, they’re adults & it’s their right to screw their lives”, but BIL is going to be seriously, possibly permanently impacted by this. And TH is not going to have an easy time watching his mother ruin her health & life in poverty and misery. The compassionate thing to do would be to take them in, but we’re living paycheck-to-paycheck on my income as it is. It’s possible that by the time the $100,000 from the house runs out, we might be in a position to deal with them, but that is a HUGE burden to have hanging over our future.

It’s the Disintegrating Disaster Family In-Law! Don’t you wish you had one?! You can totally have mine!

(For extreme contrast, yesterday my parents went to my sister & BIL’s civil ceremony yesterday, and then they all went to dinner. Sister & BIL just bought a condo, are planning their big wedding for July, are stable, self-sufficient adults. Second sister is a professional social worker with her own small house—also stable & self-sufficient. Dad is retired on a state pension as of 2 years ago, and is happy and healthy at 55. Mom is due to retire on another state pension this year, and is also happy & healthy at 55. Mom & Dad own their home, a 98 Toyota Camry, and a new Toyota Highlander. They come into town, stay with my mom’s sister or in a hotel, and buy us dinner. They shop at Eddie Bauer. They are boring, but at least they aren’t jumping from crisis to crisis and slowly imploding and causing unending stress!)

2004-03-23T15:32:00.000-08:00

Fly by

Less than three weeks until the April Wedding Bash!

-I made our wedding-night hotel reservations. King-sized bed... bo-chicka-bo-chicka-wow-wow!

-I made an appointment for my dress fitting next Saturday, but I'm hoping I will need minimal or no alterations, since the size 10 was really close to fitting before, and I've slimmed down a bit since the order.

-I made an appointment to meet with the photographer Wednesday (tomorrow!), just to go over shots & whatever.

-Bought an (expensive! But on sale so the price was less than I was dreading!) strapless bra this weekend (tried a bodyshaper with a built-in, and the strapless ones have no chance with the D-cup boobage. No.F#cking.Chance.)

What's left? Uhhhm, this:

-Finalize ceremony & vows (haha) and email or snail-mail them to everyone participating in the wedding. Since we're not having a formal rehearsal, this is the best way I can think of to let everyone know what they're expected to do & when, so no one shows up and says "You need me to what?!" and runs away.
-Centerpeices (TH's job, including buying plants, scheduled loosely for the end of March)
-Get film for our freinds (who we're going to encourage to take candid photos-- tomorrow!)
-Figure out if we're doing a guestbook & get stuff if so. TH had a really good idea about this-- he thinks we should carry the guestbook around and encourage each guest/couple/family to write or draw something personal. We'd also use this as our recieving-line subsitute. (tomorrow!)
-TH's suit needs to be tailored (end of the month)
-TH's shoes need to go in & be assessed for repair (tomorrow!)
-TH needs to decide about his shirt & tie (don't ask me, I keep bugging him)
-Final guest count to the caterer along with 95% of the balance owing (tomorrow!, since we'll be there to meet the photographer)
-Figure out who is taking the out-of-the-country groomsman to the airport the day after the wedding, cause it won't be us!

Whew!

2004-03-10T10:24:00.000-08:00

Four weeks

This morning, while I was in the shower, a part of my brain switched on, and started wailing "Ohhhhh myyyyy gooood!". Because the April Wedding Bash is in four weeks.

We have an appointment today at noon to go over details with the caterer/event planner lady, and figure out where tables will be and things like that. We were planning on meeting with the photographer afterwards, but that meeting had to be postponed. I was originally planning on not coming back to work after the noon meeting, because we were going to do other stuff, but when the photographer cancelled, I said I would come back after all, like a good girl. But now I'm not sure I want to come back. It might be a better idea to take the afternoon to try and simmer down, and maybe have a long lunch with TH, and watch some TV, and go to bed early.

2004-03-01T10:44:00.000-08:00

So Monday that it hurts

So, my friend C, who got me this job, who is one of the reasons that I keep thinking that I can slog through here for another year, until I go back to school, is putting in her 2 weeks notice today. She hasn't found anything else yet, but she's sick of working here, and hating it, and having it compromise her quailty of life. So, lame.

In addition, we received the new employee costs for medical & dental insurance. My premiums will be increasing by about $25 per paycheck, which should completely eliminate any benefit from the raise I'm supposed to be getting effective today. In fact, my take-home may decrease a little! Huzzah! Love this job!

so, crap.

2004-02-27T12:10:00.000-08:00

A Lot Of Others Said It Better

I've ranted and raved, and cried joyfully along with happy people I've never met, and I've sent flowers, and cheered, and signed petitions, and sent letters, and I can't think of a way to say it better than it's been said by others already.

So here, and here, and here, and here.

The moral righteousness of these couples is not for you to judge. It's not the place of the government turn moral judgements into law when no one is being harmed in any way. No religious group or religious figure will need to change their beliefs. No one will be forced to marry a same-sex couple who doesn't want to do so (judges and other civil officiants can chose to marry couples, or not, it's not required). You don't even have to like gay people any more than you did before. And, I don't know about you, but my marriage is the same this week as it was two weeks ago.

"Using the institution of marriage to legislate bigotry won't strengthen it. Only opening it up to all loving couples can do that."
From a letter written by a friend, to President Bush.

2004-02-26T13:50:00.000-08:00

Day of Girly™

One of the benefits of having a severely underemployed husband is getting a massive income tax refund ($2,500!!!! Really!!). Most of this massive refund is going smack onto the pile o' credit card debt-- whoo-hoo.

However, I am using about $100 of the tax refund to pay for an official Day of Girly™, which will include a facial (I've never had a facial!! Whee!) and a massage (I've had one massage previously, and oh.my.god. I need more of those. I felt almost stoned, I was so relaxed...). After the Orgy of Spa-ness, I shall take myself to lunch, wherever I want, and order whatever I want to eat. Then I shall go home, and, I don't know, shave my legs or something.

2004-02-23T10:12:00.000-08:00

Outfitting

I'm glad T.H. is involved in the planning for the April Wedding Bash-- I really, really, am. And I'm glad that he's the kind of guy who cares what he looks like, and doesn't just say "Just rent me a tux", because that's boring, and it doesn't really go with what we're doing, and I hate tuxes.

But for heaven's sake! It took me under two hours of store time to buy 2 (two!) wedding dresses, shoes, and accessories. I bought a vintage dress that I later decided not to wear, then bought a taupe bridesmaid’s dress. It took under an hour of store time for each dress. I found some sparkly hairpins this weekend, a rhinestone choker on eBay, and a pair of sandals on clearance at Sears. All of these things cost under $300, and took less than two hours of combined shopping time to purchase.

We spent from about 4-8pm Saturday and 1-5pm Sunday, looking at and trying on suits for T.H. And we’re not done yet—we have to go back today, because he’s not sure which of the three he’s got on hold he wants. Plus, his outfit is probably going to cost more than mine. Suits are absurdly expensive. I guess I wasn’t making an educated guess before, but apparently, if you’re looking at buying a suit, you should count on spending $200-500 for a decent one (not a really nice one—those cost $500-1,500, and are out of the budget). Oh, and getting a decent one for $200 requires finding a really good sale. Who knew men’s clothes were so difficult?

2004-02-20T15:31:00.000-08:00

Love from me to you

Okay, I'm sorry, but I'm excited & happy for all of
these people, and I want everyone to feel loved on
their wedding day. I think it's aggravated as a tragic
side effect of having only six weeks or so until the
April Wedding Bash.

Send flowers to a couple waiting in line to get
married in San Fransisco! You can call any of these
florists and request that they deliver to a couple in
line, and they'll take your order and tell you all
about how happy everyone is. It made my day!

-- Flowers on the Bay at 888-217-9119
-- FTD through your local florist, can also work
-- My Flower Shop at 800-883-1185
-- Mariner & Co at 800-797-7744 (who I called, $50 for
a mixed bouquet)

If you can't or don't want to pay for an entire
bouquet plus tax & delivery, go to this page. Darrenbarefoot is collecting money & having volunteers in the SF
area do to the flower markets and deliver bouquets
without the delivery charges florists add on. You can
donate $1 or $100 to help make someone's day even more
meaningful.

Links to many happy people getting married (if
you are a sucker like me, oh, will you cry, so be
warned. I totally cried.)

I do, in fact, have another post swimming around, but it's big & complicated, and it may take a bit for me to get it out in a format I am ready to share...

2004-02-13T12:18:00.000-08:00

Valentine

T.H. has never been a big V-day guy. Once, to demonstrate how arbitrary the once-a-year expression of affection can be, he bought roses for a woman every day, February 10-17, except Valentine's Day. She got annoyed with him for missing Valentine's Day. (Why, yes, this was during his very early 20s! However did you know?)

I don’t especially mind T.H.'s Valentine-avoidance, though I have gone through periods of feeling differently—notably, when I worked in a bank in which every other woman received an enormous wad of flowers on V-Day, and spent the day looking pityingly at me while I explained over and over “You see, he feels that it’s more important to express his affection in a personal way on a daily basis”, and they all shook their heads sorrowfully behind my back and whispered “The poor dear… making these transparent excuses for that slacker of a man…”.

He has, in fact, gotten me very thoughtful gifts the last several years—quirky handmade cards, custom-burned CDs, and so forth, and I am appropriately aware that I had a wonderful spouse who loves me and thinks up ways of expression his devotion in a unique way.

This year, I recieved a wonderful CD of songs (that will also be playing during the April Wedding Bash).
Featured highlights:
Elvis-- "A Little Less Conversation"
Rosemary Clooney and Perez Prado-- "I Only Have Eyes For You"
Harry Belafonte-- "Will His Love Be Like His Rum?"
Doris Day-- "The Way You Look Tonight"
Louie Armstrong-- "A Kiss To Build A Dream On"
Frank Sinatra-- "Old Devil Moon"

I am blessedly lucky.

2004-02-11T12:09:00.000-08:00

Incoherent

It’s not actually very surprising, given that:

· we’re less than a week out from Valentine’s Day
· there seems to be a rash of bloggers doing wedding-prep
· there are a lot of op/ed articles and comments floating around about marriage
· there’s a lot of media attention being given to marriage—straight, gay, and temporary
· we’re right about six months out from summer, also known as Wedding High Season, so all of the advertisers and contributors to the Wedding Machine (a.k.a. How To Have A Lovely Wedding—You Must Order Your $4,000 Dress At Least A Year In Advance, Or You Are Not A Prepared Bride! Use Our Handy Checklist!)
· I’m actually only—what? 6? 7?—weeks out from the April Wedding Bash (and I just last week ordered a dress, because I changed my mind about what I wanted to wear. We’re not doing the April Wedding Bash right at all—in fact, I mentioned in passing to T.H. that I think we’ve done everything totally wrong, judging by the formbook.)
· My sister & mother are freaking-out busy planning my sister’s July wedding, which is by the formbook—her dress was ordered months ago and was delivered last week, and my mother keeps calling to wig out about dessert forks and matching linens. (This would be why the April Wedding Bash is not being planned according to the formbook.)

All of these discussions and issues swirling around weddings, marriage, divorce, the sanctity of marriage, etc etc, have given rise to so many thoughts and opinions and comments in my mind that I actually can’t straighten them all out enough to create a coherent entry, although I have tried. So instead of being coherent, I’m just going to bung down some of my many thoughts about marriage. These are just my opinions—feel free to comment, or argue, or whatever. I, not surprisingly, have a lot of strong opinions about this, and I want to get some of them out in the open.

Weddings are something that can be fun, can be stressful, can be a waste of time, and can be lovely. Sometimes the Wedding Machine gets going, and people forget that after the Wedding, they’re married—i.e. in a marriage, which takes work, and also the correct mix of people. My first (nearly temporary, it was so short-lived) marriage is a decent example. I was in a relationship that wasn’t healthy, with a guy who wasn’t right for me, and married him partially because I didn’t want to call the wedding off. No, of course it wasn’t quite as simple as that, but that was certainly part of it.

Of course you can be happy and single, or be happy and unmarried (but not single), or be happy and married, or whatever. Marriage is nice, definitely, but that doesn’t mean everyone has to do it. And it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a commitment-phobic weasel of you don’t happen to want to get married.

On the other hand, there must be something important about getting married, right? I think so… but I don’t really know what it is, or how to describe it. I do know that before T.H. decided that he was ready to get married, I spent a fair amount of time & mental energy justifying (to myself and to others) the fact the we were committed but not married. And most of the women I know who are in long-term non-married relationships have done this. Those whose boyfriends, at long last, decided that they were ready to get married, were, without exception, ecstatic to announce their engagement/marriage. I don’t think that the ecstasy about getting married makes the previous justifications a lie, but it’s interesting. And it might be just me. Or just me & my friends. Or just girls. Or just an odd type of social pressure that causes this reaction in most girls. I have no idea, but I think it’s interesting.

I think denying gay couples the right to marry is ludicrous. Gay couples do not, not, not pose any risk to the sanctity of marriage. Please—how could seriously committed couples pose a threat to the sanctity of marriage? Marriage is tricky, and a lot of straight people don’t take it seriously enough—that’s a much more dire threat to the sanctity of marriage. And refusing to allow a social institution to evolve along with the society that validates it will just make the institution obsolete. I mean, a woman used to become her husband’s property when she married, and marriage as an institution seems to have survived that evolution without tearing apart society. Come on.

The trick to being happily married (or committed, or whatever) is to figure our your own way of doing it. Everyone’s relationship is different, so everyone needs to work out their own give-and-take, and who does what chores, and all that. Whether you’re happy will depend a lot on who you’re with, how well you get on with them, and how willing the two of you are to work together. There aren’t any absolute rules, and it’s not something that can be defined easily or simply.

Marriage isn’t all about having or raising babies, but you can sure get wonderful babies that way, if you want to. (Congradulations!)

2004-02-03T13:58:00.000-08:00

Pause

I can’t think if any way to express this without undue whining, or putting a (probably excessive) amount of time into justifying and explaining my motives, so I’ll just cut to the chase:

I’m busy in my real life with things that I find fulfilling—friends, activities, the April Wedding Bash, going back to school, etc etc.

I may or may not have readers (I can’t imagine there are more than a few), but regardless, I don’t get any feedback from this site. I suppose that, considering the fact that well-know bloggers are plagiarized and receive cartloads of hate mail, there are upsides to this, but the issue is that I don’t have a lot that I want to put online for myself right now, and I don’t have any exterior motivation for continuing to do this. Talking into a dead phone, so to speak, gets old after a while.

So while I’m sure I’ll continue to read other people’s sites, I doubt that I’ll keep updating here. It’s possible that I’m wrong about this, and next week I’ll have something to say, but if not, well, then, that’s okay too.

2004-01-28T11:52:00.000-08:00

Shameless Bid For Compliments

T.H. and I, having determined that:
a) living in the blah-white-walled apartment was lame and lacking in style
and
b) we're not going to move for a while (our rent is absurdly cheap-- a mortgage, even with the tax savings, would be more expensive)

decided to paint our apartment. We started with the bathroom, which required:
1 coat of primer
2 coats of dark pink on the cieling
3 coats of red on the walls
plus touching-up, and painting the cabinet, which I haven't done yet. It was a loooong process, since, on average, one coat on the bathroom walls took 4 hours, with all the corners and heaters and painting around the toilet.

But now, at last, our bathroom is a glorious deep red, with paint curing at glacial speed, because it's in the bathroom being perpetually moistened, and I want some people to say "Wow! That looks great!", so I feel better about having slaved away on this project for a week.

Therefore, before:

And after:

Incidentally, the Catholic decor in the bathroom is a sort of outgrowth of the our tiki-style decor in the living room/kitchen. We're appropriating Polynesian pop in those rooms, so we're appropriating Orientalist pop in the bedroom (for that slutry harem effect!), and Catholic in the bathroom. The explanation is not intended to start a religious discussion-- it's just so you know why there's a gold Jesus on the back of the toilet.

2004-01-22T09:53:00.000-08:00

Hello Teacher

I’ve been pretty solid on the decision to go back to school and become a high school teacher for over a week. I realize that being pretty sure for a week sounds awfully lame, but I have to work with what I’ve got. I asked my brother-in-law, who’s 17, what he thought, and he said “I can see that. You’d be pretty good” which, coming from a boy who has also said (referring to me, but not, thankfully, in my presence) “You need to love people for who they are, but, sometimes, that woman is a b#tch”, is tantamount to a ringing endorsement.

Several of our friends, and all of my co-workers, have also been surprisingly enthusiastic. The only semi-negative comment so far is from a friend who said that I’d be great for those 5 kids who cared, and a real pain in the @ss for all the rest. But then, those 5 kids who care are the 5 kids I’d really be there for. I’ve been lucky throughout my educational travails, and had a number of excellent teachers. A good teacher can take a student in a new direction—can make Shakespeare and The Iliad accessible to a student who might otherwise consider those things too highbrow or too snooty. A dramaturg is in much more of a preaching-to-the-choir position—and besides, there’s no law that says a high school teacher can’t research and publish articles too, or even pick up work as a part-time dramaturg in the summer.

I feel pretty good about this decision—it will allow us to stay in Portland, it will allow me to be reliably-employable in a field I enjoy, it will allow us to make a decision on having children when I’m around 33 instead of 34-35. All in all, I’d say this is a good direction to go.

2004-01-15T14:01:00.000-08:00

Thanks

Thankfully, the bathroom is painted (though the towel bars and décor and curtains need to go back up, and the light fixtures and cabinet still need attention). Thankfully, I have (at least for the moment) a strong leaning towards becoming a teacher. Thankfully, my husband has not requested a divorce, even though I have been consistently and fiercely grumpy for over a week.

We are starting a several-week dance class this evening, so that we may attempt to not look like uncoordinated @sses while dancing at the April Wedding Bash. Happily, we are going out to dinner after dance class—it’ll be like a date! And I will try very hard not to get testy and snappish during the class (this is a hazard, discovered at a few previous community dance classes).

(New Year’s Resolution? New Year’s Direction?)
I read some surprisingly simple, but refreshingly good advice recently, on a website that I found by following a series of links, and, consequently, I have no idea how to find it again. I inflicted it on another blogger already today, but I shall restate it here, for my own benefit.

To paraphrase:
“Treat your significant other as you would like to be treated (in a relationship)”

I need to become better at remembering to do this. I am sure it would make my life a better place to be, since I had already established that sniping ill-temperedly at your loved one produces undesirable results, and a strained atmosphere, which is not good for the home, makes the cat jumpy, and will give you a bad complexion.

2004-01-14T15:48:00.000-08:00

Recant-ish

T.H. just informed me that, in actual fact, The Roommate:

a) went to bed at 8:16pm
b) had informed T.H. a few days earlier that he had an interview for a promotion at work this morning (he just didn't tell me)
c) has been waxing enthusiastic about how great the bathroom looks

so apparently, I'm just not very nice. Darn.

I keep thinking that Righteousness is with me, and it keeps turning out that its actually Petulance with a holographic sweater of Apparent (But Illusory) Righteousness.

2004-01-14T11:20:00.000-08:00

Painting Makes Me Angry (or it could be lack of sleep)

Well, I would have finished the painting last night, but at about 6pm, as I was slaving away, The Roommate came and tapped on the door. I said, “yes?”, thinking, reasonably, that he needed to use the bathroom or something. However, what he said is “Are you painting? Because I really need you to stop painting by 8 tonight…I’m not sleeping very well, because of the painting, so I really need to have you stop by 8.”

Ahem.

No doubt, my extreme tiredness contributed to my fury at this announcement. I managed to bite back the ill-tempered responses and say “I should be done by then” without screaming, but I wanted to say is:

“Oh, I’m sorry I’m keeping you up—I’ve been sleeping just fine. Oh, wait, wait. I haven’t been sleeping—I’ve been painting until midnight. I’ve been in here working my fingers to the bone in order to get this work done as quickly as possible so that we can all have a nice, painted, reassembled bathroom as soon as humanly possible. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that my efforts to improve our communal living space with a great deal of personal effort and expense was inconveniencing you. I’ll be sure to keep that in mind in the future.”

Or, alternatively:

“F#ck you, you inconsiderate @sshole! I’ll be finished when I’m finished!”

Now, I know that The Roommate needs to be at work early—he has to report in by 7am. However, however badly he’s been sleeping, he’s still been getting to bed a lot earlier than I have, and I work at 8:30am, so I think he’s coming out ahead. In addition, he’s getting a much-improved, shiny-new-painted bathroom, requiring no effort on his part. And he knew ahead of time that we were painting the bathroom.

I may be being unreasonable, but this is one of the reasons I shall be truly glad once we can afford to shoot him out into the wide world on his own, so that he may find someone else to share rent with and we can live alone, with no outside spectators. T.H. has his moments, but at least he knows better than to complain at me for keeping him up if I’m keeping him up by doing housework that he’s dodging.

Plus, after all this crud (and I did stop at 8pm, although I was not done) he stayed rather obviously awake, blasting angry 80s punkish rock until after 9.

I could probably have gotten finished in that extra hour.

Grrrrr.

(when I’m done I’ll put up some before & after pictures, in a shameless bid for compliments on my hard work—because the praise of a sole husband, bound by law to say things like “It looks great honey!”, just isn’t enough for what will probably be 4 days of work and 5 total coats of paint.)

2004-01-12T11:07:00.000-08:00

The Future Lovely Red Bathroom

I spent the whole day yesterday priming the bathroom and painting the ceiling, and I'll be heading home early today to start on the walls. The bathroom is a total disaster currently, but I'm sure that it will look spectacular when it's finished. The only downside (besides the obvious horrfic-ness of painting) is that the pretty new paint makes the gross rusty light fixtures and baseboard heater look even more awful than they did before. I'll be buying some sandpaper and Rustoleum to deal with that every soon.

2004-01-09T13:04:00.000-08:00

Guns, Germs and Steel

I am back at work today-- nice in some senses. Unfortunately I'm still riding the not-feeling-good wave like a pro, and sort of want to crawl under my desk and sob until someone calls in the guys with the nets and I don't have to worry about it any more, ever. (Do they even have the guys with the nets anymore, or do they just send you to the Mental Ward at County Hospital, where you share a room with Hannibal Lecter?)

I've done some preliminary looking-in to the teacher certification program, and it looks pretty feasible. Now I just have to decide if I want to be a teacher. Would you be interested in a high school level, multi-disciplinary English/Sociology/History teacher who encouraged interactive learning? Would you be pleased if your kid had one, or think, WTF is this?! Field trips to the theater?! Thesis statements?! Who does that woman think she is?

2004-01-07T22:44:00.000-08:00

Housebound

If the weather shapes up as expected, tomorrow morning will be the start of Day 3 stuck at home, playing Xbox and watching the DVDs we got for Christmas. Being holed up here is getting to me, and the absurd policy of my employer, who requires me to use paid leave (vacation, sick time, and the like) for snow days, or just take unpaid time (which I cannot afford to do) is highly annoying.

T.H. can, and will, continue to work from home as usual, with the added extra bonus of a bored spouse who keeps piping up with pointless observances about:
a) the cat
or
b) the weather

Also included at random are actual possibly-important statements about painting the apartment, the April Wedding Bash, my career worries, and the state of our finances. No warning will be issued before a significant comment, but. of course, T.H. will be held responsible for hearing, remembering, and appropriately-responding to anything of importance.

2004-01-05T10:53:00.000-08:00

Endless speculation

My mother thinks that if I am going to go back to school and switch careers, I ought to become a high school teacher. This is an slightly odd notion, though not entirely unfamiliar/unexpected/unwelcome. I need to just pick a choice, hold my breath, and jump in, and then see how I like my new career. Yet I hesitate, frightened and indecisive, trying to chose between hedging my bets a bit (I'd be much more employable as a teacher!) and going whole hog, maybe-it'll-work-out idealistic (I might be employable as a free-lance dramaturg without a PhD!). I can't teach college without a PhD, I know, and I don't really think I want to have our lives, and where we chose to live them, entirely dictated by our careers, which makes a job that's more readily-available seem like a good choice.

This whole business is difficult and endless. There ought to be a manual for living life as a grown-up.

2004-01-02T15:14:00.000-08:00

I'm sure it says something about me that I wrote the phrases "Less stressed" "Better at letting things go that I can't help/change" and "Better at not becoming overwhelmed" on a list of Things I Want To Work Towards within less than two hours of calling my husband and sobbing because I spent a $50 Christmas check on groceries, because it's all part of the horribleness of our financial situation while we're waiting for his new job to jell into full time and we plan the April Wedding Bash and the Major Apartment Redecorating and I just don't know what else to do when I have $80 to last us until Wednesday.

God only knows why he puts up with this, and why anyone let me out unsupervised in the first place.

2004-01-02T10:29:00.000-08:00

Severe Weather Advisory

It's been snowing in Portland, which it's not supposed to do.

It's cold in our apartment, which I don't like.

We have a ton of plans for snazzing-up our place, which will be a lot of work.

The dry cleaners damaged my beautiful mauve dress and there's nothing I can do about it.

I'm grumpy and depressed and I can't decide on what direction I want to take my life (primarily career-wise).

It's not snowy enough that I was allowed to just stay home and be miserable there today, I have to be miserable at work instead.

And I'm not doing a very good job of starting off the new year on the right foot, am I? I think depressives should have to opportunity to postpone or redo any holiday that falls during a down period.

2003-12-29T10:59:00.000-08:00

Home Again Home Again Fiddle-de-de

Christmas was quite nice-- there was a media theme this year, apparently, with a lot of DVDs and CDs and books and things, which I enjoyed. I'm very glad to be home, in my own house, in my own bed.

I did not try to call my friend. I did tell her mom that I would be at my parents' and could be reached there, which is as far as I wanted to go this time.

I hemmed some curtains while we were at my mom's, because she has a sewing machine and I do not. Of course, the reason I don't have a sewing machine is that I hate (hate hate) to sew, so it was a kind of sucky task to set to. But now there are all kinds of curtains, and I'll probably be glad I did the sewing once they're hung up in all thier crooked-hemmed glory.

Just before we left for Christmas we decided that we're likely to be in our current aparment for another 2-3 years, and consequently it's worth it to paint and redecorate the place. Making these plans is kind of exciting-- we're going to paint lovely rich colors, reds and greens and prussian blues, and our apartment will be glorious once we're finished. The curtains are part of the process... I think the painting will be next. Fun times!

2003-12-19T15:58:00.000-08:00

blerg

Of course, the fact that neither her mom nor her grandma know where she is and said "She's having some problems again" is not promising...

Apparently, her ex-husband might have some idea.

It's like a holiday tradition of self-torture! Whheeee!

2003-12-19T11:35:00.000-08:00

Annual dilemma

I've talked about my friend Amy here before, more than once. I have also been a little bitter about this subject in the past. However, since it's Christmas time, and we are preparing to head to my parents' for the holidays, and because Heather #2 is talking about old friends today, I'm wondering again-- is it worth the trouble to try and contact Amy again? Or should I just go and see my family, and save myself the frustration and sorrow of trying again, for the umpteeth time, and being disappointed again?

The last time I attempted to get in touch with Amy, I took the 5-hour trip to my parents' house and she didn't return my calls. In fact, she didn't return my calls and was annoyed with me for bothering her, when I finally tracked her down at her boyfriend's house. Also via the telephone. I did not, in fact, manage to actually see her in the flesh, although I spent a solid 2 days trying to. She has not made any attempt to get in touch with me since then. I don't really want to ruin this visit with a series of frustrating phone calls-- but I also don't want to deny my friendship (if Amy still wants it, and I have no idea if she does). I don't really know what to do.

If you have any thoughts, please feel free to share them. I might not follow your advice, but I'm torn enough that I'll consider (most) suggestions...

2003-12-19T09:58:00.000-08:00

small hands put up a link to the (anti-gay) American Family Association's ("Promoting Traditional Family Values" and "America's Pro-Family Online Activism Organization") online poll about gay marriage. Apparently they are intending to show the results to Congress--though I would guess that they wanted to show the results of a poll of just their members, to get the numbers they wanted.

Anyway, go vote! Show your support for gay marriage! We don't want Congress getting misleading information, do we?

2003-12-18T10:10:00.000-08:00

Torn Chiffon

This morning at 7am (!) I took my gorgeous vintage new-to-me wedding dress back to the cleaners, from whom I collected the dress last night.

I was a little dissapointed when I picked up the dress, because, as suspected, the age spots along the hemline weren't removable. But that was okay, because I anticipated the problem, and they didn't really show unless you were inspecting the hem pretty closely, and, honestly, who does that at a wedding?

However, when I got home and removed the dress from the plastic bag, I discovered a large, multi-directional tear in the chiffon overskirt in the front-left hem area. A large tear-- several inches. A new tear, that had not been there when I dropped the dress off at the well-respected, locally-owned, in business for over 50 years, we-specialize-in-wedding-dresses cleaners.

The (not-super-nice) lady at the cleaners started out with "Well, you take this risk when you have a vintage item cleaned" and "We specialize in wedding dresses, so if you'd taken this anywhere else it would be worse" which was not, in my opinion, the best way to start off.

She suggested shortening the dress, which I don't want to do, because it would alter the whole silhouette. The tailor is going to look at it and see if there is a way to fix it-- reweaving or something. They also may be able to replace the chiffon overskirt (if I bring in material) but the lady said she didn't think I wouldn't be able to match the color. I'm going to talk to the tailor when she calls and go from there. I'm inclined to have the chiffon overskirt replaced over shortening the dress-- I know it would add a seam at the waist, but that would be covered by a sash, so that's not a big deal. Also, if the colors were close, the break created by the sash would detract from the difference.

So now I am waiting to hear from the tailor. I suspect my choices will be limited, and possibly expensive as well, since, if I do have to shorten the skirt to remove the damage, I will want to have the shape of the skirt altered as well, because I'd just look silly in a calf-length full skirt. Or I can find a new wedding dress, after almost-miraculously finding a beautiful vintage one that I love, that fits me, because the cleaners ruined it.

I swear, the stressful stuff was getting resolved (Christmas shopping, wedding stuff, etc) and the gods said "Hey, wait, she's going to start sleeping well again! That's not okay!" and arranged things accordingly.
Faugh.

2003-12-16T09:28:00.000-08:00

Superhero

As of last night, I am done Christmas shopping and done wrapping presents, with the exception of the gifts for T.H., which, obviously, are hidden away for now. T.H. is not done shopping for me (in fact, I don't think he's started yet), but I don't have to worry about that.

I'm a little dazed-- this is easily the most organized I've been about Christmas & gift-shopping ever in my life-- but I'm sure that this will make next week much, much less stressful.

Plus. T.H.'s going to put a deposit on the wedding/reception space today-- it's like all the stress-inducers are evaporating at once!

2003-12-15T10:50:00.000-08:00

Christmas is coming...

We've done most of the Christmas shopping, but not all, and I put a crimp in the weekend by drinking rather too much at the party we went to on Saturday. The featured drink, available for self-service in an attractive glass pitcher, was comprised of vodka, cranberry, vodka, lemon juice, and vodka. You would think that this concoction would be a bit hard going down, but, unfortunately, it's extremely easy to drink. This led directly to me swilling down 3 glassfuls in under 2 hours, which is significantly above my normal level of alcohol-consumption.

I staggered around the party happily for a while, doing what my husband called "a perfect reproduction of a French mime's interpretation of a sexy drunk American woman in high heels and a tight skirt". (I was wearing my lovely new mauve dress, which got lots of compliments. I adore my new dress. I knew it was a gift from the gods when I emerged from the dressing room at Avalon and the salesguy said "Va-voom!". He is an excellent salesguy. Va-vooms sell dresses.)

After a few hours of staggering (and an unwisely bummed cigarette), I began to feel-- uhm-- less happily drunk, and more "why is the room still bobbing and weaving? Shouldn't this problem be lessening rather than intensifying?" and also a little unsettled in the stomach. I sat and hoped it would diminish, but the swimmy-room phenomena kept up, and eventually I cornered T.H. and informed him that I needed to go home now. He, who had intelligently ceased drinking after 2 slowly-consumed alcoholic beverages, was perfectly fine to drive home, which was a very good thing.

We went about and said goodbye to our friends, and I got some hugs by some people who I'm pretty sure I know well enough for hugging, and we went home.

I staggered, less French-mime and more shitfaced, into the bathroom and then to bed, and 20 minutes later, was even more glad we were at home, because it's rude to vomit drunkenly in other people's bathrooms.

The next morning, I got out of bed for an hour and drank some water. Then I went back to bed and informed T.H. that the day's goals had been revised-- that my new goal-for-the-day was to get up and eat something. He laughed and made alternative plans for himself, but was very kind about bringing me 7-up and not making fun of me too much.

Happily, the hangover was not quite as bad as I feared in the morning-- by afternoon I was able to eat some mashed potatoes and wrap Christmas gifts in the living room, so I wasn't completely non-functional all day.

It was a lovely party, and I'm glad we went. We put in some more work on a bunch of casual friendships that I'd like to develop, and I got to feel like a total babe in my snazzy dress. However, for the party next week, I will be following my New Drinking Rules-- no more than 2 drinks, ever, and a minimum of 1 non-alcoholic drink in between each intoxicating substance.

2003-12-09T15:50:00.000-08:00

Insert Cliche Here

I have this horrible, sneaking suspicion that I'm getting a smidge unreasonable about the wedding/reception. I would really really like to have the event on March 6th, because, conveniently, March 6th is a Saturday, and it's also our (legal) anniversary, and, when we did the courthouse-wedding last year, we told all of our friends and family that we'd have the "big wedding" in about a year, so there's all kinds of pleasing symmetry.

T.H. would prefer to push it out a month or so (really, he'd prefer to wait until September, but I said no). I can probably live pushing out a month if there is a good, firm reason to do so, but I really would prefer not to. Herein lies the difficulty. T.H.'s best man, a childhood friend who lives in Germany with his wife, can come whenever we would like him to come. However, his wife cannot come in March. She may be able to come in late April. Maybe--we're not sure.

We've met the wife--she's a dear, and we stayed with them when we were in Germany, and we like her a lot. T.H. was the best man in their wedding--which, incidentally, fell on a weekend which I was unavailable. (Whiny tit-for-tat bit--if they didn't reschedule their wedding for me, why should I reschedule for them?! Realistic answer--because they had a big-deal, major-event Catholic wedding and we're having a small, eclectic, pretty casual event that's supposed to be a fun celebration.)

I'm torn. If I knew for certain that the wife would be come in April, then I'd reschedule. But I'm feeling put out about rescheduling for a maybe.

I'm afraid that this is the first major indicator of a terrible onset of I-Want-It-The-Way-I-Want-It Disease.

2003-12-08T10:43:00.000-08:00

Minus

We had to replace the hard drive in our computer Sunday, after several days of fruitless attempts to salvage the drive without destroying all the data.

Plus

We got a pretty good deal on a new hard drive, which is twice the size of the one that crapped out.

Minus

We're kind of broke-- well, actually, really broke-- until my next paycheck (in two weeks).

Plus

Part of the reason we're broke is the money we spent Saturday. We went vintage shopping, and I found four glorious dresses that fit me for $24-45 each, including a 50s-60s wedding dress, and a gorgeous coat for $24! Then we went to Borders and did some Christmas shopping, and went to dinner and a movie. It was a wonderful afternoon, and it was totally worth being pretty darn broke for two weeks.

I think, overall, though we are broke, we're coming out ahead.

2003-11-28T09:41:00.000-08:00

Leftovers/Aftermath

So yesterday we had 8 people at out house, and provided:

A loaf of Pumpkin bread (brought by my friend C)
24 Scratch-baked rolls (which were okay, but a huge, huge pain to make, and not, in my opinion, worth the effort. I’d never made scratch rolls before, and I don’t think I’ll do so again—too much work for rolls that are just pretty good.)
A bowl of Bean salad (brought by my friend C)
A big bowl of Marinated vegetable salad
Quorn Roast
A platter full of Turkey (brought by my friend C)
A big pan of Sweet potatoes (a new recipe, cooked with olive oil and lots of garlic—pretty darn good!)
A casserole dish of Stuffing
Broccoli and cauliflower
2 cans of Cranberry sauce
About 12 lbs of Mashed potatoes
A big pot of Gravy
2 Pumpkin pies with freshly-whipped cream
2 Peanut butter pies

plus lots and lots of beverages—Chai, tea, coffee, sparking juice, wine, soda…

The fridge is stuffed with leftovers. We have 2 whole pies that are completely untouched, over a dozen rolls, a bunch of salad and sweet potatoes, and at least 5 lbs of mashed potatoes left. I have no idea what to do with it all.

At least I won’t have to worry about making lunch for work for a while…

2003-11-25T17:11:00.000-08:00

On the plus side

I'm sure it's a little dippy, but I'm absolutely jittery with excitement because it looks like we're going to be able to get custom tiki mugs to give guests as keepsakes!

And, as an added bonus, there's a local photographer who's trying to build their portfolio who'll do the pictures at cost—and the photos on the portfolio web site are quite nice! And, when warned that this was not your standard big-white-dress wedding, the photographer said “Your post wedding party sounds like a lot of fun. The whole 50s-60s-exotica-tiki-cocktail-party sounds really cool. That creates opportunities for unique images,” which is exactly the kind of photographer you want at your wedding.

If this all comes together (and it’s sure looking like it will) then I am totally the Queen of Last-Second (Post) Wedding Cool.

2003-11-25T15:28:00.000-08:00

This week

Augh wedding in 3 months what do you mean you need 4 months lead time for that dress how much for the catering how many people how much does that cost you want dancing where can we fit a dance floor how much will it be to get that arrangement how much is the photographer when can I get that done could you please call me back right away and let me know if this is possible?

Ohmigod Thanksgiving seven people what am I making what kind of rolls do I have enough potatoes what about the gravy what kind of salad how many pies what did forget oh I forgot to get extra coffee how much for all those groceries oh my god I need to go to the store again are you going to clean the bathroom because I have to make some pies?

Blah what’s wrong with that and you need it when but I thought that problem was taken care of you mean we have to get that air freighted I can’t believe this client isn’t making more of a fuss what am I supposed to tell the client and what do you mean you’re pushing the timeline on this again it has to be working by this date no I can’t push it they’re paying for this date okay well we’re just going to have to eat that expense maybe you should have built the thing so that it worked in the first place?

2003-11-21T14:56:00.000-08:00

Also

I need to stop buying beverages for Thanksgiving dinner next week.

Right now, in addition to the standard “Water-Coffee-Chocolate Silk-and chose from any one of the three million kinds of tea we have available for brewing” we have:

1 bottle of wine that someone gave us at some point, but it hasn’t been opened so it should be okay

2 bottles of non-alcoholic cider leftover from last Thanksgiving (or possibly Christmas), also never opened and should be okay

1 2-liter of Coke (came with the pizza last night, and will probably be saved for next week, but we’ll have to see. We so rarely have soda at home that it’s kind of hypnotizing to contemplate drinking the whole 2-liter with dinner tonight, just to see what happens.)

1 container of Chai Nog concentrate

1 container of Chai Cider concentrate

1 container of Cocoa Chai concentrate

At least 6 containers of Ultra Soy Plain, to mix with the various Chai concoctions

2 more bottles of carbonated juice (in Wild Oats the other night, I saw that they were on sale, and thought “Oh! Lemonade! and Raspberry! I should buy those, so we have extra beverages, because what if no one likes the stuff we already have ?”)

And last night I had to restrain myself from running out to buy regular Chai, because what if no one likes all the weird specialty Chais I bought?! Or maybe Green Tea Chai. Except I hate green tea. And we have at least four varieties of regular green tea.

There is no one I can blame for this kind of hostess mania. My mother does not do this, yet, here I am, contemplating buying more and more beverages, just in case, and thinking that perhaps the 12 pounds of potatoes I have to mash might not be sufficient.

Perhaps I should be restrained.

2003-11-21T14:13:00.000-08:00

Is it still a “wedding” if it’s our anniversary?

Good news! A friend of ours has my dress, having (thoughtfully) taken it home from the haunt but (absentmindedly) forgotten to tell us! Whew.

Now that we are pretty officially dual-income (true, T.H. has not yet received any actual pay from his employer, but I’m sure that’s coming along here soon), I’ve seized the opportunity to start over-planning (and slightly freaking out over) the Wedding/Reception that we promised everyone we’d have “later”.

Last March, we just ran down to the courthouse and got hitched. No family, just witnesses, boom, married, done. Our wedding ceremony was approximately 2 minutes long. Easy. However, we promised everyone that we’d have a “real” wedding later on—although it’s not a church wedding or anything like that, it’s just a ceremony/reception that’s roomy enough that all the family members who want to be there can be there.

So I’ve been looking at locations and thinking of themes that might be nice, since it’s definitely not going to be a big-white-dress wedding. I’m considering a slightly-exotic 50-60s-esque-cocktail-party-sort-of-thing—T.H. would really like something more tiki, but I have grave doubts about pulling that off in Oregon in March. Exotica-cocktail-party seems more winter-friendly to me, and would allow me to wear a much cooler dress. Something like this, perhaps? Or maybe the full skirt with this top? And perhaps a wrap? I could get it all in #75 Bordeaux-- it would be lovely…

I may have even found the perfect locale… a local catering chain-cum-restaurant recently opened up a private event space near us, and it’s incredibly cheap. Of course, the catering will be rather pricey, but as I was considering having them cater anyhow, it’s not really a problem.

I must say, I am glad not to be planning a “normal” wedding… this one is, I am sure, going to be more than enough work for me to deal with, on top of grad school prep and (hopefully) interning…

2003-11-18T16:20:00.000-08:00

Of course...

The one thing that I wanted the least to misplace at the haunt is the one thing we can't find now.

My wonderful dress, which I suppose I should have known better than to leave unsupervised, seems to be missing. I hope it's just misplaced and not lost-- while it is just a dress, it's one that I really don't want to lose.

2003-11-14T08:44:00.000-08:00

Happy Friday

So, that informational interview went very well. Very well. I didn’t get offered a job on the spot, which is about the only way it could have gone better. The very nice gentleman who I talked to was very kind and encouraging, and assured me that yes, it sounded like I would like this new career, and yes, I could make it work if I wanted to. I may not even need to go to grad school! At this point, I’m just going to buckle down and apply to schools, and start pounding on people’s doors and do internships and assistantships, and probably be really exhausted for a few months, because I can’t afford to quit my regular job, so I’ll be doing my regular job and then working for free! And then I’ll find out if I got in to any grad schools, and asses the situation, and maybe go and maybe not go, we’ll have to see in July or so! It’s going to be tiring, but someday I’ll be glad, because I’ll be doing something that I really do love. (And maybe T.H.’s job will become full-time in March and I can start working part-time! Maybe!)

Thanksgiving...

Thanksgiving is in two weeks, and this year we are having friends over to our place again, and I am making Thanksgiving (pies potatoes salad stuffing cranberry sauce gravy broccoli rolls and what else I don’t know yet) for seven people. Eek! Last year I think we had nine, but that included most of my family.

This year it’s just friends, and this year we have some genuine orphans on top of the rest of us, whose families are just too far away to drive to for one day. The genuine orphans are two kids (who I shouldn’t call kids, because if someone had called me a kid when I was sixteen, I would have spit nails) whose families are, I think, in town, but whose families really don’t give a shit. I do not understand how this can be—although I know it happens all the time.

E’s mom is, apparently, in jail for something. She lived with her dad until last year, when her dad had a heart attack and died. She has foster parents, and they kicked her out. Her boyfriend, S, must have a family somewhere, but I have no idea where or why he never talks about them. He’s very polite, and has always been a perfect gentleman, and he is very quiet. E is a bit louder, more fiery, but is still a dear girl, who is generous with her affection, and considerate, and never borrows things without asking. E is sixteen, S is eighteen. They don’t have their own place to live—they rotate among friend’s houses.

They are carefully, almost flawlessly, Marilyn Mansoned-goth kids—E actually has removed her original eyebrows and draws on these wonderful artistic black ironic brows every day. She has terrific buckled vinyl things, and very finished, styled black hair. S is also vinyl and buckled, and his black hair sticks up in choreographed spikes. They are much sweeter than they look like they might be—they are both shy, and they expect to be kicked, not smiled at, but nonetheless, they are never, ever, mean for no reason.

They both came to work on the haunt, and everyone got to like them (after some initial uncertainty among some of the more conservative members of the group). T.H., true to his nature, assumed that they were nice shy kids, because, well, he had black spiky hair when he was eighteen, too, and that didn’t make him a bad person. (I wasn’t sure, because, while I was a goth kid in high school, I was never as successful as these kids are, and I’m never sure of anyone who can accessorize well. It makes me feel inferior.)

During the second-to-last week of the haunt, someone stole S’s coat. It was an expensive leather trench coat, which I’m sure he saved for. It contained his wallet, which contained all of their money for the remainder of the month. After everyone at the haunt searched around, we found S’s coat crumpled behind a wall, minus the wallet. The wallet was discovered tossed in another direction, minus the cash. E burst into tears, S stood looking sick to his stomach. They needed the money to pay some fines, to eat, to get through the month, and the money was gone.

S &P wrote them a check on the spot. J & D handed them a wad of cash, as did G & his wife. They stood, looking amazed, as friends assured them that we’d help them out, that it would be okay. E continued to cry, astonished. S started to look misty. I almost cried myself, because these poor kids are clearly conditioned to expect a kick in the teeth rather than a little assistance.

The next day, after talking it over with T.H., I invited them to our place for Thanksgiving. E almost cried again, in fact. They didn’t have any plans, didn’t have anyplace to go. Now they’re coming here, to play with the kitty and eat mashed potatoes. I hope they like the potatoes—I think I’ll make extra.

2003-11-13T08:49:00.000-08:00

Priorities

Happily, it appears that the homestead is now dual-income! T.H.’s job is going well, and I am happy about this. It does, however, put a pretty significant kibosh on any plans for attending an out-of-state graduate school, because, while I’m sure I could live through 2-3 years of graduate school somewhere else while my husband worked busily away here, I don’t want to do that. I think, in fact, that the afore-outlined plan sounds tremendously suckable. And I don’t want an MFA anywhere near that badly. So I may get an MA here, or I may just continue pursuing alternative jobs locally. I still have an informational interview this afternoon, and I’m going to ask some of these questions then.

So, what is it that I do want?

Well, I want to be happy and healthy.

I want a dog someday soonish.

I don’t know if I want to buy a house—I do know that eventually I want a slightly bigger place (3 bedrooms, 1 ½ baths ideally), and to be able to afford to not have a roommate (in spite of the wonderful good luck we’ve had in our last couple of terrific roommates). However, T.H., as it turns out, does want a house. This surprises me somewhat, but I’m sure we can work with this—I’m not opposed to getting one, I just wasn’t sure how much I wanted one.

I want to be able to afford to have someone else come and do the heavy-duty cleaning that I hate and frequently just don’t do for ages. (This may be a lame goal, but I don’t care—I hate scrubbing the shower, enough that I do, in fact, think it’s worth the money to have someone else come and do it.)

I want to have a job in a field I am genuinely interested in—my current job is not, so I need to remedy this. Having a graduate degree might help me get a job in a field I like—theater, mainly, but sociology, history, and natural history are good too—but I don’t necessarily want a graduate degree just for the sake of having a graduate degree.

I want T.H. to be happy, but I can’t do much outside of cheer and be supportive on this one. Happily, he is doing better and better on this goal himself. (God bless the psychotherapist! And Ritalin! I’m so not kidding!)

I don’t know about a baby, either. I keep going back and forth on this one. I’ll have to put it aside for a while and re-assess in a year or so.

This is all very interesting.

I’m really glad that things seem to be arranging themselves so obligingly, after such a long period of challenges—and I’m glad that it’s looking like we’re going to stay in Portland, since, overall, I do genuinely like it here. I’m not so hip on the winter/spring rains, but if we lived in a place with forced air heating, I think I could deal with it. I must say once more, baseboard heating in a brick building with big windows and hardwood floors is not a good idea.

So I’m off to see a musical and have an informational interview! Wish me luck!

2003-11-12T10:17:00.000-08:00

Brave

Yesterday I got an email from a gal (I doubt she wants her name plastered up here, so I shall keep that information to myself) who read an old post about depression, and wanted to know how I dealt with it. I gave the best advice I could—talk to your loved ones, try to find a counselor, that sort of thing—but now I’m worried. What if my advice was too flip, or too earnest, or too complex, or too simple? This girl took the huge step of asking someone for help—did I live up to that responsibility?

Someone who’s never been clinically depressed might not think that this girl did any big thing—she emailed a total stranger, how hard can that be? Well, those-who-have-not-delt-with-this, asking anyone at all for help is hard. I mean, hell, realizing that perhaps the reason that all of life is a horrible grey mass spinning inexorably beyond your control is that you’re depressed, and that it’s not that everything really is awful takes a sustained effort of will—and a sustained effort of will is fucking hard to dredge up when you’re depressed. And actually seeking outside assistance—that’s even more effort, and a thousand times more difficult, because, of course, no one will understand what you’re talking about, or they’ll give you some horrible advice like “Just cheer up—it’s not that bad!”. And having someone look at you funny, or act like you’re being a whiner, is worse than never asking at all, because what if it really is just you?

I was lucky. The Husband (boyfriend, at the time) told me that he was worried about me, and encouraged me to see his much-trusted (former) mental health counselor. I cannot over-emphasize how much this helped me. My husband is a wonderful person, who didn’t leave me, who helped me work through all kinds of things, who assured me that neither he nor anyone else would think that I was bad or weak or foolish because I wasn’t coping, and that it was really a sign of strength to ask for help. This is a huge and wonderful gift, and it’s helped make my life what it is today. True, I’d like to change a few details, and sometimes, as I’ve blogged about, I have bad days—but overall, I am happy now. I like my life, and I can walk down the street and feel good. It doesn’t sound like much, but if you’ve ever been depressed, you know that feeling good is no small thing.

So, whoever is reading this today, if you are depressed, or if you know someone who is, don’t be afraid to ask for help. It’s okay to do, and it can make your life a better place. And, girl-who-emailed, you took a great step, you did a great thing. If you can ask someone, anyone, for advice, then you can get a handle on your life. You made a hugely brave decision, and I hope you keep on moving in that direction. Find a counselor, talk to your family—and if my advice wasn’t too horrible, keep emailing—I wish you the greatest luck in all the world, and I’ll want to know how you’re doing.

Love,
Kim

2003-11-05T15:48:00.000-08:00

Snow Days

I must say, whoever decided that it was a good idea to have a conference in St. Paul, Minnesota, in November, deserves a swift kick. Winter is the time to schedule conferences for sunny California, or Hawaii, or the Bahamas—not the time to plan a conference somewhere that’s famed for the horrible-ness of its winters.

Similarly, the only year I went to the Northwest Theater Conference, it was in Anchorage, Alaska, in January. My timing is truly awful.

My cold and I will be back home next week…

2003-11-04T13:16:00.000-08:00

wOOt!

Mimi is back from China with her adorable baby girl ! What a good idea! Maybe I do want a baby after all…

On the other hand, other bloggers are having babies too, so maybe I’ll just live vicariously for a while.

2003-11-03T12:24:00.000-08:00

Cross Your Fingers

On Wednesday, The Husband is going in for a “working interview” at a local studio! A friend from the haunt who works there recommended him for the job, and the owner likes T.H.’s online work a lot. Consequently, he’s not getting a regular interview, he’s going in to work for a while, to make sure he does okay & fits in at the studio. Our friend thinks T.H. will like it quite a lot, and fit in very well, so it’s looking truly wonderful! Plus, it’s a small studio that’s just beginning to grow, so he’ll be in on the ground floor!

True, this could royally mess with my grad school plans… but I’m pretty sure I can work with this.

Wow. Dual income. I can’t even imagine…

Send good vibes this direction!

2003-10-29T14:26:00.000-08:00

More Preparedness

I am extremely pushy lately. Today I've chased down two more contacts—one local, one in Texas—simply by battering away at the tenuous link that I have with them. Do you think if I really work the “six degrees of separation” theory and bother everyone I know, I can get a personal interview at Yale?

It’s a wonder anyone still talks to me.

2003-10-28T14:29:00.000-08:00

Dramaturgical Preparedness

You would think, would you not, that if an organization says that they offer educational job shadows, that they would return calls about said job shadows. And yet, I wait.

I must say that choosing to pursue a career not directly supported by my undergraduate college (they don’t offer the specific program I’m considering), makes this whole grad-school-prep thing much more difficult. I have to dig up all of the contacts and information without the assistance of a well-informed mentor.

I know that I really want to shift careers, and I know what I want to shift to, which I guess is good, but, my god, the research and prep is like walking through knee-deep molasses.

My mother keeps asking if there are alternatives to graduate school, which, of course, there are. And if someone comes out of the woodwork and offers me a paid dramaturgical internship or a job in theater-patron education, I will jump right on that. But graduate school will get me some more letters after my name (helpful in academic fields), and some additional experience, which I need. I think my mom was secretly hoping that we’d have a baby, and I’ve thrown this major wrench into her grandchild hopes. I’m certainly not going to have a baby while I’m trying to get an MFA. The kitty is enough for now.

2003-10-27T13:54:00.000-08:00

Blah blah blah

The alarm went off at 7am this morning, and, in spite of the fact that I went to bed at 12:30, and therefore got less than the preferred 8-10 hours of sleep, I was not tired, and, consequently, got up and started my day. Now, however, the tiredness left over from this morning has crept up, and is nestled thuggishly on my shoulder, I am too tired to do anything useful, and instead keep thinking “I should do (insert work task here)”, and consider it briefly before clicking dully on another link to another website. Not good, considering that I seem to be developing a habit. This may hinder my career if I continue. Or maybe not, considering what some of the other people who work in this organization get away with.

There’s other, whiney stuff that I keep wanting to get all boo-hoo about, but I think I shall refrain. I can’t think of a way to disguise it sufficiently-well, so it sounds suave and intelligent—it just sounds like whining.

2003-10-24T09:57:00.000-07:00

Friday at last!

I am extremely glad that today is Friday, because I fully intend to sleep until 2pm tomorrow. I need it. Because we’ve been busy at the haunt , I’ve been getting not-quite-enough-sleep for most of the month, and that never helps things around here—amply-evidenced by scrolling down and reading the excess drama.

It’s true that legitimate life-drama and horrible coincidences do seem to be going around—my friend’s husband is probably have to go on strike soon, another friend is trying to find a new job, another friend was just laid off, etc. etc. Work is being quite, quite crummy, which is causing some fairly major attitude-deterioration as well. But I still have problems comprehending how these problems can cause such complete breakdowns in my mental state. I realize, intellectually, in my rational brain, that I snap and wig out about these things for reasons not-entirely within my control—depression is something that just gets ahold of the wheel sometimes, and I just have to hang on until it’s over. I do better now than I have in the past—things get less out of hand, and the severely-bad times are much shorter—but I invariably feel like a horse’s ass when I come out the other side & realize that, yes, I did have a total meltdown about to no one doing the dishes (or something equally vital). I guess this really is as much as you can hope for—becoming slowly more able to cope with the stress of daily, pseudo-adult life with a decreasing number of “episodes”.

I guess at least, once more, no one was injured by my attack of melodrama.

2003-10-22T12:32:00.000-07:00

A Bit Better

And another reason why T.H. is wonderful—I spilled all of this stuff on him, and he said (via email):

“Realistically - you're totally right.
I think the key to our situation is for us to keep talking, and if I'm being too passive, for you to keep pushing me. It isn't that I'm not willing to do these things, it’s that I get off track and avoid the stuff that scares the shit out of me (ed—that would be the networking stuff). And if you know what’s going on, while its happening, things won’t fester until we blow out.

I'm going to have to get something crappy, and that’s fine. I'm going to have to put in some gross hours to keep that and the idealistic stuff going too, and that’s going to have to be fine too. We'll push through and make it ok.”

Lucky for me that T.H. is terrific, or I’d totally be up a creek.

2003-10-22T09:17:00.000-07:00

On one hand

The good news is, I’m pretty sure that I’m too much of a chicken about physical pain to actually become suicidal. The bad news is, that’s the good news.

It sounds like it might be a joke, and I wish it was. Really. I also wish that I had some sick time left so that I could just stay home in bed and cry, which is what I’d really like to do. But I don’t, so instead I’m at work, trying to drum up the gumption to do something vaguely work-related, because I doubt that my boss would feel that I was using my time well if I just sat on the floor and cried until five o’clock.

I’ve talked about the current struggle in my house, in my life, here before, and since I’m too apathetic to go find those posts and link to them (hello depression!), I’m going to summarize for you. What it boils down to is this: The Husband is not pulling his half of this wagon. There is a good reason for this, so don’t get all freaked out and email me about getting help to escape from this exploitive relationship, because that’s not what’s going on here. T.H. is a graphic and web designer, like approximately four million other unemployed people. He has been doing bottom-of-the-barrel freelance work for nearly three years, ever since we finished college, because legit studio jobs are nearly non-existent, and competition for the ones that do come up is vicious. T.H. is a nice person—non-confrontational, not aggressive, and very shy. This means that he doesn’t network, which means he’s basically screwed. This also means that every 2-4 weeks, I get upset and say something like “What you’re doing is obviously not working—you need to be more pushy to get in the door, because right now you’re not even getting interviews!” and he says “I can’t do that!”, and we go around and around for a while, until we’re both angry and frustrated and more often than not I’m in tears.

This situation certainly sucks, but it might not be enough to make me hope for a fatal car crash by itself. I’m currently pulling for a terminal disease because it occurred to me that, if this situation continues indefinitely, I will eventually be placed in a position where I have to chose between my own happiness and my marriage, and that freaks me out.

See, I recently decided that I want to significantly change my career path. This change requires one of two things—graduate school, or 1-3 years of internships. On my own I could probably manage either of these options. With the additional financial burden of a second adult, I can’t. If the second adult in question was paying his half (or, even better, paying a little more than his half), there would be no problem. But he’s not—at least he’s not right now.

So eventually we may have a quandary. If, at some point in the future, I decide that he's really not going to change the situation on his own, do I:
· Give up on my alternative career plan and accept that I’ll never really like what I do for a living (which is eating up 40 hours or more of my life every week)?
· Continue to harass my spouse about becoming more aggressive and getting a good job until he hates the sight of me and asks for a divorce himself?
· Change tactics and harass him into getting a joe job, which is better than nothing? (this option will probably require some of the above aggression-harassment as well, since joe jobs are not wildly-available either)
· Bail on a second marriage and go off and pursue my new career as an under 30 double-divorcee?

Did you notice that last option? Yeah, I’ve been placed in a position where I had to make this choice once before. It’s true that my first marriage was unhealthy on a lot of levels, and I was far too young in the first place, but the fact remains that the divorce-motivating factor in that relationship was my ex’s total unwillingness to allow me to pursue the career and life that I wanted. (Yes, you’re right, I should have found that out before the wedding. I said I was too young.)

T.H. is not like my ex…he’s totally supportive, and utterly wonderful about cheering me on and being wide open to whatever I think will make me happy. So that’s not the problem. The problem is that, at this point, all T.H.’s support is just talk. He’s not in a position to help with the groceries, let alone pay all of the rent. His emotional support is appreciated, yes—don’t think that I’m not hugely grateful for that. The problem is that I need some practical assistance from him in order to make this work for us as a couple.

I don’t know what to do about this. I don’t know what else to say. I don’t think I can give up entirely on what I want—there’s a limit to the amount of sacrifice that’s healthy, and I think resigning oneself to a mind-numbing career when one has professional goals is going too far. But I really don’t want to be forced into another “Me or Us?” decision, especially when I love this man.

I don’t know what to do—I’m not having any luck contracting a fatal illness, and I’m too whimpy to step in front of a moving vehicle. Does anyone have another suggestion?

2003-10-21T13:15:00.000-07:00

Blergh

Initially, I was wondering how in the world the soup could have changed between one can and another. I had Mushroom Barley Soup for lunch yesterday, and it was yummy and full of succulent mushrooms and love. Today, it tastes like warm water. Why is this? How can this be? It’s the same brand, same soup!

But then I looked at the can again. Last night at the store I bought the No Salt Added soup.

Do not, under any circumstances, buy the No Salt Added soup. It tastes like warm pond water, and it will totally ruin your lunch if you are expecting mushroom-filled goodness.

2003-10-20T15:14:00.000-07:00

New Ambition

I had a professional massage for the first time ever on Sunday.

It was wonderful.

I developed a huge crush on the very nice massage therapist, because, clearly, she is a gift from the gods, with her firm pressure and kneading away of the gazillion knots. She told me that I have a lot of tension in my neck and shoulders (seriously—it felt like there were marbles under the skin, and although the woman did wonders, a bunch of them are still there), in my lower back (knew that), and in my calves (my calves? Doesn’t that seem a little weird?). She said I should be getting massages monthly, to help get the knots and tension out. I would really, really like to follow this advice—the mere idea of a monthly massage makes me happy. It was so relaxing, no-pressure, and simply wonderful. But it would also be very expensive to pay for massages monthly—$50-80 per hour, depending on where you go. The wonderful therapist that I saw was at a pricey place, too, which I patronized because I had a gift certificate.

On one hand, $50-60 a month (if I go to an average-cost place) isn’t a lot of money to be happy and relaxed, and apparently massages can reduce depression, which would be okay with me, and probably T.H. too. On the other hand, paying $50-60 a month won’t much help the financial situation, and it seems a little dumb to spend money to reduce stress when spending that same money is going to cause stress. What to do, what to do?

I told T.H.:
a) He needed to get a job immediately, to support my new habit
b) When we’re rich (should be around the same time we’re grown ups, which I think will be around the same time that souls in torment learn to ice-skate) I’m getting weekly massages, because what else would you do with all that money?

We’ll see how that works.

In the meantime, I wonder if thinking about massages will curb my desire to eat out. Next time I get a massive Thai craving, I’m going to try thinking about how take-out is half the cost of an hour-long massage. Maybe it will snap me to my senses, and I’ll make spaghetti, and put the money in a jar labeled “Bliss Fund”.

2003-10-17T10:10:00.000-07:00

Rant

People who are devoid of humor, easily offended, or so god-damned tense about maintaining a flawless appearance that they’re going to freak out about getting daubed with easily-removable makeup should stay home, and not come to a haunted attraction, pay money to come through, and then put a bunch of effort into being an asshole about a harmless joke and ruin everyone’s night. It’s absurd.

And further, anyone who finds me threatening in any way (me!, wearing a plastic chicken nose, even!), is so completely a pansy that they should not be allowed to leave their home without a heavy dose of Valium and professional supervision.

I know that this is the world we live in, that Americans especially have the sacred envelope of personal space which cannot be crossed, and Americans love to wantonly sue one another for real or imagined emotional anguish brought on by harmless jokes, but oh my god! Why, WHY would someone pay money to enter a haunted attraction that is specifically billed as being different, and having twisted and adult-oriented humor, if they cannot take a fuc#ing joke?!

And, again, I know that this is just part of reality, that there are millions and millions of stupid, humorless people who unthinkingly plunk down their money and then bitch about what they get, but I’m afraid that once again, though for the most part I find the haunt a ton of fun and amusing to do, the experience is making me much more cynical about the quality and usefulness of the majority of the population.

Please, if you’re a humorless @sshole, just stay home and ruin your own life. Don’t feel compelled to venture out and mess up a bunch of other ones too.

2003-10-15T16:23:00.000-07:00

Ponytails

My hair is long enough that today I did two short, little-girl looking ponytails in order to avoid drying my hair, since I was running late. I’m a little surprised that I like it as much as I do, given than I am often not very nice about 30-50-year-old (women, mostly) trying to pretend they are 18. I guess that I mostly object to women wearing Forever 21-type clothes, which look to me to be aimed at very thin 13-16-year olds. (who’s a fuddy-duddy?! I am, I am!)

[aside]
Huh. Apparently Forever 21 is also a major sweatshop-abuser . Another reason to have an attitude.
[/ aside]

small hand’s friend at work is leaving. I know how badly she must feel… one of the “policy” decisions that was handed down recently is driving my friend C out. I feel horrible—she got me my job, and she doesn’t really want to leave, but the powers that be just can’t bring themselves to accommodate her perfectly reasonable request. It’s so frustrating. My employer is losing a great worker (better than me, to be honest) because they can’t be a little flexible. Augh. I keep repeating the graduate school mantra in my head…c’mon career change!

2003-10-13T11:48:00.000-07:00

Traction schmaction

Once again, my lower back is knotted, making it painful to sit at my desk. However, because I have pretty well no sick time, I’m here anyway.

I have work that I ought to be doing, and I am putting it off, because how can I concentrate when I keep having to get up & stretch to avoid crippling stiffness?

There have been a rash of blog-abandonments lately. From what I’ve seen in the last year or so, it appears that there is a small flood of “I’m leaving” posts every few months. I doubt that I would bother with that, were I to stop posting. Of course, that may simply be because I am not fully committed to blogdom, and indicative of my shallowness or lack of attachment. It just seems that if I became too busy with real-life stuff, I’d just vanish and never post again. T.H. would be the only person who would notice, anyhow.

I’m thinking about grad school again, considering getting that GRE book. Work has recently made a number of “policy over people” decisions, which is fairly motivating. I don’t particularly want to continue to feel under-valued, under-challenged, and under-paid. If I can go to grad school and start working in professional theater, I may be under-valued and under-paid, but at least I’ll be challenged.

The haunt is going well—again, this is one of the things about Portland I hate to even consider leaving. But hey—maybe we’ll be able to come back after grad school.

2003-10-06T12:29:00.000-07:00

Choices

What would you rather see in a clever haunted house liberally laced with delightfully twisted humor?

A) a slightly risqué sort of S&M-tinged clown cop
B) a slightly risqué devilish assistant to the Infomercial Demon (“Do you want money? Women? Power? I can give all those things to you for only the price of your sooooouuuuul!”)

I think that the assistant would give me a little more costume leeway, and potentially be much funnier, but I’m not sure.

Any thoughts?

(Not that you didn’t notice, but posting is apt to be extremely light for a bit, due to the aforementioned haunt.)

2003-09-24T15:50:00.000-07:00

Stitched

There are huge, black, horror-movie-esque stitches holding graft tissue to my gums, near the lower molars on both sides. I am the Bride of the Re-Animator. The stitches come out Friday (no anesthetic! How is this humanitarian or ethical! Everyone says it doesn’t hurt to get stitches removed, but this is clearly just a conspiracy, because how can it not hurt to have something that is holding bits of flesh together removed?!).

If I walked around with my fingers in my mouth, holding my lips wide so that passers-by could look at my gums, then ta-da! I would not need a Halloween costume! Except of course, the stitches will be long gone by then.

My husband told a group of our friends how I drooled a bunch or saliva and blood from my numbed lips on the way home from the dentist. When taxed with this, he said “But it was so Day of the Dead! How could I not tell people?!”

So now I am the Bride of the Re-Animator who drools blood.

Splendid. Just what I wanted to be known for.

2003-09-22T10:26:00.000-07:00

Monday Monday, can't trust that day...

So, I had oral surgery on Thursday, and spent the remainder of the week and pretty much the whole weekend watching Friends (the Complete Season Four on DVD) and The Simpsons (the Complete Season Three on DVD). The pain medication made me sick, so I switched to Advil after the first 2 days.

My entire mouth is still pretty uncomfortable. I had two gum grafts—one on each side of my lower jaw, and since the tissue for the graft was harvested (yes, the dentist used the word harvested, which I don’t think should be allowed) from the roof of my mouth, one strip from each side, that effectively makes my whole mouth painful. Lame.

As an added bonus, the surgical dressing (covering the stitches on the lower jaw) and the retainer (covering the harvest sites on the roof of my mouth) are making my molars sore—the kind of sore you get when you’ve just had the wires in your braces tightened, for those of you who had braces. I’m sure that there isn’t enough pressure to make any permanent changes in the week or so I’ll have this stuff filling my mouth, but the sore molars are preventing me from eating anything very solid, so I’m stuck with soup and cottage cheese, which I am darned sick of.

However, since I can’t really articulate properly, I can’t make sales calls today! Woo!

Also, lack of solid food makes one prone to becoming tired verrrry quickly. The walk upstairs to my office about did me in this morning. We’ll see if I make it until 5 o’clock today.

2003-09-17T09:17:00.000-07:00

Psychosomatic

How can you tell if you’re really coming down with something (and can therefore justifiably leave work & go mope in the comfort of your own home) vs. just psyching yourself into feeling unwell so you can go home?

I think that it’s unfair that depression causes indefinable vague yukky-feeling-ness instead of something solid and defensible, like a 102-degree fever or projectile-vomiting. No one would complain at me for going home if I spewed used toast and jam on my monitor, but if I just mope around and leave early, I look like a slacker.

Maybe I’m not depressed enough yet.

2003-09-16T09:27:00.000-07:00

The Thing

So the thing about this whole husband-looking-for-a-job-process that’s making me crazy—the thing that’s making me more crazy than usual, if you want to get all picky about it—is that there is absolutely nothing I can do about it.

I can’t call people, or make them talk to him, or look at his portfolio, or urge them to give him a chance because he’s really great. I can’t do anything. It’s driving me up the wall, because we’re on a timeline here, and because I don’t want him to get stuck working at a call center or a gas station or something.

He’s very shy, and he’s not aggressive, and he has a lot of skills and talent, but so do a whole lot of other unemployed designers, and he’s not getting past the initial screenings because all the other unemployed designers are like “Look at me! I am great!” and he’s like “Hello, here is my very nice, sleek, you-have-to-be-paying-attention-to-design-principals-to-see-how-cool-in-an-understated-way-this-is-portfolio, thank you for your consideration and please feel free to call me” and of course no one does that, because there are 400 people applying for every single position, and he does not have a big neon arrow pointing at his head, so the other 399 people who are standing in the street screaming “I AM BRILLIANT!” are getting interviewed and hired, and he is just getting discouraged.

This is incredibly frustrating, and the fact that there’s nothing nothing nothing I can do to change or influence or alter the course of the job search makes me want to smash things and then fall down onto the floor and sob helplessly. And that won’t help anything, either.

2003-09-15T17:00:00.000-07:00

Cruddola

What does one have to do to get a call back from potential-employers?!

I am clearly going to have to start beating people up here.

Someone hire my husband.

NOW.

It is making me all cringey that he has to go through the pain of job hunting, and no one is calling or interviewing or job-offering.

He is lovely and talented, and this is making him feel bad, which is ticking me off.

I’m serious now. Don’t make me come over there.

2003-09-15T11:05:00.000-07:00

Limp

I brought Asian Cole Slaw (the secret is the peanut butter in the dressing!) for a work potluck, and I am afraid it’s gone limp. I made the Asian Cole Slaw because the easiest way to get The Husband to eat vegetables it to cut ‘em up and put peanut sauce on them, so I’ve been collecting recipes.

I spend the weekend ~~working~~ ~~volunteering~~ working for free at the Museum of Horrors, painting and sawing and staple-gunning, and I am tired. It’s grey and rainy again today after being somewhat sunny over the weekend, and I am tired. The security of my debit card has been compromised (according to the letter I got from my credit union), and therefore I cannot use my debit card, and no one on the planet takes checks, so I am using my credit card, and I am tired. I am having oral surgery on Thursday and I am tired. My poor husband is now looking for Any Job (It Would Be Nice If It Was Design-or-Web-Oriented, But Anything Will Do) and I am tired.

It doesn’t matter if my Asian Cole Slaw has gone limp—I have enough limpness for both of us, and more.

2003-09-11T15:55:00.000-07:00

Today

I suppose I could say something about The Anniversary, but I’m not going to. Lots of other people have things to say about it. I think I like this one best—because, let’s be honest, finger pointing about who did what to whom when and deserved what is not going to help make this world the kind of place it should be, it is now?

And that’s all I have to say about that.

Mimi, who is very, very funny, is a new mother, and LT is a father. This makes me happy, because I have been worrying lately about how my Grad School Plans are going affect our ability to be parents. I decided a while ago that if we mess about long enough that a traditional pregnancy is hard to conjure (and, realistically, if I’m 33-37, it probably will be), then adoption is the way to go. And, really, adoption might be the way to go anyhow.

I mean, I am curious what it would be like to be pregnant, but it sounds, you know, hard. And inconvenient.

And I have to pee urgently often enough now, not pregnant at all, so the mind boggles at what it would be like if there was someone kicking me in the bladder. I’d have to wear Depends or something, I’m sure. Not sexy.

And, clearly, you’re just as much a mommy if you are the mommy to a baby that someone else cooked for you. Which makes me happy, because it’s one more reason why I should just go, just do grad school and not be afraid that I am going to ruin my life, because there are alternative options to pursue for all of my little side goals, and I can be a happy and creatively-fulfilled mid-thirties-mother, rather than a frustrated early-thirties mother.

It's good to keep these things in mind...

2003-09-09T11:23:00.000-07:00

Gray Skies Go Away

I keep forgetting, during the summer, when it’s nice and sunny and beautiful in the Pacific Northwest, that I hate the weather here.

This summer was gorgeous—hot and full of sunshine, and 80-to-90-plus degrees for most of June, July, and August. Wonderful. But on Sunday the rain started, and it’s been mostly gray and rainy ever since. Blech.

I know that nothing is really any different than it was on Saturday in the sunshine, but everything just seems worse in the rain.

It makes me want to go limp and lie huddled under a blanket with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s in my hand (and extras in the freezer, for when I run out), and watch movies on dvd, and maybe play video games, and then eat a whole bag of Doritos, and then moan about how fat I am, so that my husband has to rally ‘round with moral support and emergency backup supplies of ice cream.

I recognize, on some higher-brain level, a level that mostly keeps working even in the rain these days, that the above-mentioned plan, while attractive, is not the most appropriate choice, and will not really benefit me in any way, and may in fact cause me to further depart from my on-again-off-again goals, which include physical fitness and personal fulfillment, because even though Ben & Jerry’s makes a lot of wonderful flavors, they do not have New! Personal Fulfillment! With Caramel & Fudge Swirls & Brownie Pieces! even though, clearly, they should. And Doritos, while tasty, will not improve my GRE scores in any way, and will eventually cause a rather unpleasant chemical sensation in my mouth, which I do not like.

What I should do is buy the darn GRE book and study, and also I should go to the gym after work, because T.H., quite rationally, thinks that we should get back with the program, and get into shape, and I suppose he has a point, particularly since I was shown the costume that I may be wearing at the Museum of Horrors next month, and, my god, that skirt is short, which makes the gym a slightly more urgent issue than it would be otherwise.

What I want is to have all of these things, these goals, just materialize for me, and fall, gracefully, into my lap, which will be slimmer and more svelte, because one of those goals is me losing a bunch of pounds from the excess seat padding that I currently cart around. And, yes, you who are thinking that, boy, complaining about it, and whining about how I need to lose weight is sure helpful, and I’ll sure lose tons of blubber if I just keep bitching long enough—yes, you’re right, I will, actually, and if I can’t whine here, then where can I whine? And I certainly can whine here if I want to, and, who knows, maybe getting this all out of my head and into the whooshy binary of the Internet will make me less bitter and more willing to actually go to the gym after work, instead of just thinking about it.

So there.

2003-09-04T14:23:00.000-07:00

Oh I hate sales calls, yes I do!

And I hope that the whole grad school thing works out so that I can get a job in which I never never have to make sales calls ever again! Because it totally ruins my day to have to make sales calls!

T.H. is hoping to get a call about a part time paid internship-type position in the area, which sounds just perfect for him. The pay would be about what he’d make at a joe job, and he’d get professional, design-firm experience, and he wouldn’t annoy anyone by leaving in a year-ish, which he will be doing if I do indeed get into a grad program somewhere. Plus he could keep some of his (good) freelance clients if he’s working part time!

(please, anyone who’s taking requests at this time, I would like to humbly beg that this works out, as I am sick of being broke, and would also like to have my spouse be reasonably-employable by the time I start the very very expensive higher education program which I am contemplating, thankyouverymuch. Also, I would like to request that I get into grad school, and get an assistantship, so that we do not in fact have to sell our first-born child into slavery in order to pay off our student loans…)

Also, I am play-testing a game for an online acquaintance, and I’d rather be doing that than making sales calls, even though it will require me to wipe and reformat the drive on our old computer to play it, since T.H. won’t let me use our regular computer just because he’s working (tscha! As if he’s not doing that all the time!). We donated the old computer to T.H.’s younger brother a couple of years ago, and recently borrowed it back so that I could recover some old college papers, which I anticipate needing for grad school application packets.

T.H.’s brother apparently is very very concerned that some evil, sneaky, nasty program crept onto the computer while he was not looking, and installed something that may or may not be p0rn0gr@phic, because he was not looking at p0rn online, No! No! He was not comforted by T.H.’s insistence that, although his mother might care, we don’t care if he’s looking at p0rn online—really, given that he’s 17, he probably ought to be, anyway. In fact, I think T.H. was sworn to secrecy, and told me so I’d know not to razz the kid if I happened to find anything p0rn-like on the computer. The upshot is that we agreed to reformat the hard drive after we pulled off what we wanted, to eradicate the p0rn that he was not looking at, because he’s afraid it will take over his computer and send him to hell, or something like that.

Which is precisely why living on an isolated island with parents who both have rather unhealthy sexual attitudes is bad for budding psyches—it’s a wonder that T.H. is not more screwy than he is. Although, I guess T.H.’s father (different than The Brother’s father) is not massively screwy about s#x, and, in fact, gave T.H. a copy of Madonna’s S#x book for his 21st (I think) birthday. Not the act of an unhealthily-repressive parental figure, I would say.

pause

pause

pause

Blech.

I guess I should get back to those calls, now.

*sigh*

2003-08-28T11:48:00.000-07:00

What if...

it turns out that I really don't have the discipline that it takes to work in an unstructured, unsupervised environment, and that's why I screw around all the time? (You know, as opposed to "because my job is not intellectually engaging"?) What if I've been lying (inadvertently, but still, lying) to all the employers whom I've told "Yes, I can work in an unsupervised setting"? What if I go to grad school and get a job with an office and a door and everything, and I still waste time on the net and sneak out early to play Xbox?

I'll be an additional $50,000 in debt, and my life will be ruined. Gosh, that sounds like a good idea.

2003-08-26T15:09:00.000-07:00

Tuesday

Trying to carve a hole in an empty plastic bottle can result (not very surprisingly) in a lovely and painful knife-wound in your left hand (if you’re right-handed), inconveniently placed in the pad of muscle on your palm, below your thumb, and will hurt when you try to use your left hand for anything that requires functioning opposable thumbs. Which is pretty much everything. Which is why you shouldn’t do stupid things with sharp objects.

Considering graduate school because you have come to the conclusion that your current job is dissatisfying does not increase your motivation at work, especially when you need to do things that you never did like to do, like make sales calls.

Fooling around all day because you’re alone in your office (and therefore there is no one to notice that you’re just playing old Strong Bad email) doesn’t really help with either of these issues, but it’s fun, anyway.

2003-08-21T09:50:00.000-07:00

A Wedding and a Funeral
(really)

We’re leaving town for a few days this afternoon. Tonight we get to stay in The Castle, a supposedly-haunted B&B that we’ve always wanted to visit (a birthday gift from my folks)! On Friday, I have to go over some business/legal issues surrounding T.H.’s grandmother’s death with my mother-in-law, and try to see a couple of former college professors about grad school. On Saturday, T.H.’s cousin is getting married. On Sunday, we’re meeting up with the family, who are all going to be in town for the wedding, to have an informal memorial for T.H.’s grandmother.

This is, admittedly, not my first choice for weekend fun, but it could be worse.

In other news—I am in the process of pestering regional dramaturgs for advice about grad school. So far, everyone has been really nice and responsive. We’ll just all pretend that this means that I can get accepted to a program before someone catches on to the fact that I am really as dumb as a post, and can’t make convincing critical arguments to save my life, and am drubbed out of the Academics Club with wet spaghetti noodles. Then they’ll snip off my buttons, turn my umbrella inside-out, punch out my hat, put a mangled carnation in my buttonhole, and send me, dejected, into the street, and I’ll have to go work at Burger King.

And we keep getting ants in the bathroom. Why the bathroom? Why not the kitchen, were the food is? What do ants want in the bathroom? Toothpaste? Fancy-pants hair sculpting-cream?

2003-08-20T14:06:00.000-07:00

My husband’s broken

T.H. went to a Sleep Clinic about a month ago, to have himself checked out for sleep apnea, at my urging. His mom and dad both have pretty severe apnea, and I know (because, you know, I sleep with him) that he stops breathing at night, which is scary. However, he doesn’t fall asleep spontaneously during waking hours (though he used to do so all the time—you’d turn around from a 3-minute conversation with someone to ask him what he thought, and he’d be fast asleep on the floor), and he doesn’t snore (lucky for me!), which are the two most common signs of apnea, so we kind of had to be pushy about getting him tested. Well, I had to be pushy. But that’s part of my function in this relationship, so I was pushy, and he got tested. And they said he didn’t have sleep apnea, and he’d get details in a few days. And I was surprised but glad, and he was really pleased, because he’s also somewhat claustrophobic, and he didn’t like the idea of sleeping with CPAP machine and a mask.

But on Monday he went to see his doctor, and he asked, casually, when he’d get those results, and his doctor freaked out, because, apparently, someone should have contacted him 2-3 weeks ago! It turns out that the machine he was hooked up to wasn’t working properly for the first half of the night, and that’s why the techs thought he didn’t have apnea. During the second half of the night, when the machine was working, he stopped breathing an average of 39 times an hour! His doctor must have gotten things moving, because the clinic folks called him yesterday, and will be scheduling another appointment to get him onto a CPAP soon—but still! I can’t believe that the clinic dropped the ball again. This has happened several times since we switched to this insurance/medical provider, and, while I’m sure it’s just a coincidence, it’s approaching truly ridiculous proportions.

And it’s not as though this is no big deal—T.H.’s apnea is almost certainly affecting his overall health—apnea is known to increase risks for heart disease and strokes, and make it difficult to lose weight, and aggravate ADD, and makes a person more vulnerable to pretty much everything—because if you’re not sleeping properly, your body never gets a chance to recuperate, and everything just grinds down.

I’m glad they caught it, and I’m immensely relieved it’s going to be taken care of—but how can medical professionals continue to flagrantly miss or screw up things that are significant health issues!

And, on a totally personal and petty note, how is my husband supposed to be a proper cheerleader for my “what am I doing with my life” drama when he’s sleep-deprived?! He’s totally no good as a cheerleader when he’s tired—he just says things like “I already said I think you can do it—how many more times are you going to ask me?”, which is not the desired response.

2003-08-18T12:15:00.000-07:00

I Thought I Didn’t, But Apparently I Want More Than This

Annoyingly, I spent the weekend getting in touch with the inconvenient concept that I am mildly-to-seriously-dissatisfied with the direction I’m going with my life/career path, and will probably need to spend zillions of dollars and go to graduate school to rectify this issue.

I like my current job. But that’s all. I just like it. It doesn’t challenge me, there’s limited creative and intellectual scope, and, while I like museums, museums are not theaters, and theater (and movies!) are what I love. I did theater design and literary criticism in college, and I do primarily customer service and sales in my current job. And I do like it, but any reasonably intelligent person could do my job.

I thought I was okay with this. T.H. was going to get a job, we were going to get a dog, and save up some money, and buy a house, but, now that I’ve spent some time thinking about what I want to be doing with my life, this isn’t it. I’m not okay with a job that doesn’t challenge my intellect, and I need to make some changes, even if that means we’ll never be able to buy a house. I want to get a master’s and work for a theater company or a college. I want to show people how theater can be significant, how it can illustrate its own period, or current issues, or both. I want to show people that Shakespeare is spectacle—popular entertainment from Elizabethan England, and I want to write interesting papers about the significance of costuming conventions and what it says about x culture. I want to have specific information about why Annette Benning shouldn’t be wearing pierced earrings in The Open Range. (I’m pretty certain that “nice women” didn’t wear earrings back then, but I’m not positive.)

So now I’m poking through my college contacts for information on graduate programs, and hoping that I can get into one that will make me employable in the fashion that I want to be employed. Most of my instructors wanted me to go to graduate school right away, but I said no, no, I don’t think I want to. And yes, it’s good that I didn’t go right away (since I didn’t want to, really) but I’m still scared as hell, and freaked out at probably starting a new career at approximately 32-33 (assuming I can get into a 3-year MFA program by next fall).

I’m terrified out of my gourd, and I’m out of my depth, and I’m doing my best not to become convinced that I have no chance of getting into a decent grad program.

It would be so much simpler if I just didn’t want any more than this. But I guess I do. And I guess it’s better to discover that now, rather than in five years…

2003-08-14T13:32:00.000-07:00

State of Mind

Mental health counselors always have a nice soothing voice that they use to encourage you to talk about your problems, and they’re always very kind and supportive. (Perhaps I’ve just been to good ones, or I’m not screwed up enough to get a more alarmed tone out of them, which, I would say is bully for me!)

We talked about the background on the situation, which is complicated and lengthy and rooted in my family, and T.H.’s family, and all kinds of old leftover things, so we just sort of did the general overview. She was soothing. She said things like “It’s good you communicate with your husband” and “It sounds like you’re on the right track”. I think she wondered why I felt the need to seek professional assistance. But I have been doing okay, and I was having a decent day, so she didn’t see any serious stuff today, and she (unfortunately) doesn’t have the massive family background that my previous therapist (who counseled T.H.’s entire family off and on for 10 years) had, who understood without a lot of explaining how hard it is for a person who feels responsible for everything to deal with those people, and how easily I get sucked into trying to run the show for that whole side of the family. And, realistically, I guess she doesn’t need all of it now, because it’s much less awful since T.H. went on Ritalin and we moved away from his mother and brother (I’m not nearly so freaked out by the “eh, something will turn up attitude” when it’s far away—I can let her screw up her own life, and not leap in and repair things). But still, I think my therapist will get to understand soon enough, and I think she’ll be helpful.

I still have difficulty with thinking unhelpful things like “I should be able to handle this on my own!”, but I just can’t do that all the time, and that’s okay. Look at me, breathing in and out, and saying “That’s too much to expect from me”. Ahhh, progress!

2003-08-13T09:44:00.000-07:00

Written Yesterday, Posted Today

Today has, overall, not gone well. I am truly ticked at the HR folks at work, who will not allow me to take bereavement leave to attend the memorial of T.H.’s grandmother and deal with the official paperwork aftermath, because, apparently, my grandmother-in-law is not “immediate family”. So the need to support and comfort my spouse and mother-in-law is irrelevant. What’s worse, I could have lied, and, in fact did lie about it—but then I felt bad and got worried, and called back, so that I could have my request denied. And, even more ironic/horrible, I was approved for bereavement leave for my other grandmother-in-law, who died in March. The HR Director had the gall to tell me: “We never approve grandparents-in-law” (my response: “But you did. A couple of months ago.”) “I must not have known it was for an in-law” (response: “You did know. I very specifically told you.”) “Well, it must have been an oversight, and we can’t approve it now, because we just forced another employee to take vacation time, and it wouldn’t be fair”.

Arg! Teach me to try and be honest, I guess! Now I have to take sick leave and vacation to deal with this, and cram it all into a couple of days instead of having 3 extra paid days and a weekend to sort everything out.

I’m utterly furious, and miserable, and feel distinctly not valued as an employee, distinctly as though this is not a flexible, huggy-feely policy (although it is touted as this wonderful humanitarian benefit), and instead is designed to minimize the effect an employee’s family has on the company. Not immediate family?! My husband and his mother are upset! How much more immediate can you get?!

I protested, I argued, to no avail. The best I could do is say “Well, I accept your decision, but I really feel like this is an insufficiently flexible policy, and doesn’t validate employees’ family obligations”, which, of course, had no discernable effect (“Well, I’m sorry you feel that way”) and complain to my boss (who, to be fair, is being as cool & flexible as humanly possible for a boss to be), and that’s about it.

Why are companies so determined to nickel-and-dime employees on benefits? Why? Why? I realize that it costs employers money, but it’s been proven millions of times over that flexible and generous benefits create happy, productive, loyal employees, which reduces turnover and increases production, so companies actually save money in the long run. But, of course, no one cares about that. And (insult to injury) I work for a non-profit, whose compensation and benefits packages are not particularly good, and, therefore, they make a big song-and-dance about being a “nice place to work” and “flexible” when, in reality, they’re not really ~~much~~ any better than a for-profit place. And at a for-profit I’d probably make more money and have better benefits.

I’ll get over it, I’m sure—I don’t want to leave my job, and generally I really like it—but why? why?! is dealing with HR always such a nightmare?! And why are HR people always false blonde women who do such a horrible job of pretending to care?!

2003-08-11T16:53:00.000-07:00

Out of The (Nerdy) Closet

So, I am a total geek. Total, total. It’s more fun if you don’t deny your geek-ness. Hello, I am a (nearly 30-year-old! My 29th birthday is Friday!) geek, and I have spent waayy too much time lately playing Knights of the Old Republic on the X-box. But, oh! It’s so fun! And my character has all these great Force powers, and a light saber, and she’s way thinner than me, and can run across the sands of Tatooine forever, and never get out of breath, or sweaty, or smelly, and her hair always looks just right. And I love Force Wave. I wish I had that power, in real life. People would attack me, and I’d just raise my hand, and, woosh! the Force would swirl around me, and they’d fly back 30 feet, and lay on the ground, stunned. Ahhh. That would fix the people who try to cut in line, I bet.

But instead, I am only me, who needs to lose some weight, who needs to refinish the new dresser (which, by the way, will look really, really cool when I’m done with it. You just wait and see), who needs to get the wiring supplies so she can start making hanging lamps for our bedroom (these will also look really, really cool), who needs to go to the grocery store, who needs to dust the living room. No Force powers, just escapism. And while it’s true that I am completely wasting hours and hours of my life, and not doing anything except staring at the TV while a computer-generated chickadee runs around in there, it is really, really fun.

And, you know, fun has value, even if it’s stupid-fun.

2003-08-06T13:11:00.000-07:00

Long and Varied Mid-week Update

I was up for the weekend, and then back down yesterday, and today I am in the middle.

We decided not to get a dog until November, after Halloween, since we’ll be pretty busy on the weekends until after the Museum of Horrors finishes up. I feel terrible about not adopting one (or both!) of the dogs we met over the weekend—both big (70-80 lbs!) and mellow and sweet, and they totally wanted to come home with us, and not go back to the shelter. (Not that this is any reflection on the shelter—the people there are all very nice, loving people, but, still, wouldn’t you rather have a home and a family too?) But we’re going to be too busy for a new family member right away, and there will still be dogs that need homes in November…

T.H. and I are going on a date tonight. I (rather foolishly) spent some waiting-room time reading a women’s magazine (I think it was the Ladies Home Journal or something), in which I read an article about a couple in their late 20s/early 30s who’d lived together for years and then gotten married, who were having problems adjusting to the change/no change effect of marriage on their relationship. To aggravate the parallel-potential, the wife was a more linear, more aggressive woman, who wanted things her way, and the husband was a quiet, non-confrontational type, who didn’t express his feelings clearly. So the couple ended up doing a lot of things her way, because the husband wouldn’t speak up. Sound familiar? I, of course, got all worked up and worried, becoming convinced that I was steamrollering T.H. in favor of my own needs because he won’t speak up, and managed to actually be in tears by the time I got home from the doctor’s office. Not surprisingly, however, T.H. didn’t think it was anywhere near that bad, but maybe he should try to speak up more often. And we decided to implement one of the counselor’s suggestions for the couple in the article—going on “dates” that are planned by each partner in turn. That, theoretically, allows each person to choose what they’re doing together, and insures that each one gets to, for example, go to their favorite restaurant even if it’s not their partner’s first choice. I decided this was a good idea because

a) T.H. never plans anything we do (usually it’s not really planned at all, which leads to an excessive amount of “I don’t know…where do you want to go for dinner?” discussions)
b) We go do what I want to do waaayy too much (a trend seriously aggravated by the “if I’m buying, we’re getting what I want for dinner” syndrome, which is sometimes justifiable, but gets carried to extreme in our household)

So tonight is the first night, and T.H. is planning something—I don’t know what, but I’m pretty sure it involves dinner, and possibly a movie, so yay!

Why My Husband Is Super!

(Email conversation)

T.H.: Just to follow up - I had to share this with you.

First - the image of the Escape Pod C3P0 version that
I'm so stupidly exited about is here.

Second - and you're going to laugh because I'm
seriously all misty about this and uncontrollably
breaking into smiles about it - in 8-12 months there
is a very real possibility that the big H will be
making a SANDCRAWLER!!!!

Me: Boy, that *is* pretty cool! The snow-monster-guy (I forget his name) is too! And wow! Sandcrawler! (Won't it have to be like 2 feet long or something?)

T.H.: Well, if they did it right it would be at least as big
as our car, and really - more like a van. So hopefully
it will be at LEAST 2 feet. Have to see:)

The Wampa actually does look really good, and further,
the base that he comes with interlocks with a really
well done version of Luke Hoth that comes out at
around the same time so you get a little diorama!

But I made my choice - I'm a Tatooine man:)

Me: Well, clearly Tatooine is the best, because
a) the cantina! Clearly one of the coolest things ever!
b) you meet Han there! Han!!! A million cool points immediately awarded!
c) Han shoots Greedo there!
d) Jaba's palace!
e) The Rancor!
f) The Sarlac pit!
g) you can live in a neat underground courtyard!
h) always sunny! (2 suns! Or was it 3?)

I mean, obviously.

T.H.: Well - I'm not sure I'd give the Sarlac high rating -
but you left out Jawas, Tusken Raiders, Banthas,
Sandcrawlers and Dewbacks!

Me: You're right, I did!
The Sarlac has cool-factor—what a great threat! —not, you know, that I'd want to go live in it, or have one next to my house.

I totally want a Bantha. Ooh, oh, and those big long-necked guys that the Jawas ride! I want one of those too! I'd be a moisture farmer!

T.H.: The long necked things are Rontos.
And yeah—as a threat—the Sarlac is pretty cool.
I mean hell—It took down Boba Fett:)

Me: No, no—Boba Fett carved his way out later, and is still running around being his bad self.
Go Mandalorian armor!

It may be nerdy, but I must say, how can you not love a guy you can talk to seriously about these kinds of important things? And, as an added bonus, he says things like “You know, if there was a zombie plague, our apartment is pretty defensible. Plus there are those storage cages in the basement! You could trap a zombie in there!”

I am a lucky, lucky girl.

2003-08-01T09:47:00.000-07:00

Yay!

T.H. has pretty much decided that he will not be re-applying for the Maryland job. Whew!

We are just starting to work on our annual Halloween project. We volunteer at a haunted attraction that’s run by a bunch of un-and-under-employed designers and artists. Due to the artisitic caliber (and twisted humor) of the participants, this particular attraction is (in my opinion) vastly superior to most other haunted houses, where the Big Scare is a 14-year-old in a mask popping up and screaming in your face. T.H. is enjoying himself tremendously, and he doesn’t want to leave this group. In addition, he’s hoping that the experience and referrals he’ll get out of the deal will help him with the job search, which is perfectly reasonable. And he said he’s willing to run the risk of having to go work in a bookstore or a coffee shop if he spends all his free time doing haunted-tasks, so it’s all good. I really don’t care what he does, as long as he’s okay with it and our household income becomes reliable.

Plus, as an extra added bonus, we’re going to go look at some adoptable dogs tomorrow! Yay! One of the local shelters has a couple of older dogs that they think will work in our circumstances, and T.H. has agreed to check ‘em out! I suspect they’re going to be a little bigger than I’m certain we can handle right now, but I’m excited we’re going to be looking!

2003-07-30T11:11:00.000-07:00

So

The company that that T.H. interviewed at has posted a “Still Hiring” for the postition T.H. was not offered. I don't know how to feel about this. It could be that the person they hired didn't work out, it could be another position—we were told that they would be hiring 1-3 web business assistants. T.H. doesn’t know if he’s going to apply again or not, and I don’t know if I want him to. I just don’t know at all. I do wish that someone from the company would call him and encourage him to re-apply, because I think it would make him feel much better about things, whether he re-applies or not.

I am utterly conflicted about this situation. I’m having trouble refraining from bitterness already, since we did everything right once already, to no avail. I guess we’ll just see what happens…

I still want a dog. I emailed about a senior miniature pinscher, but she has needs we can’t meet right now. On the plus side, the lady did encourage me to continue looking at senior dogs, because the do need less training and active attention, and would therefore be good for our circumstances. I just want some doggy kisses, and a senior dog can give me kisses just as well as a young dog, so it’s all good for me! T.H. is apprehensive, but I am hoping that the relatively low needs of a senior dog and the love & kisses will win him over after a while.

My back has been bothering me for more than a week now. This is rotten, especially since I, after some urging from T.H., went to the doctor, and was told (essentially) “eh, it happens. It’ll probably get better in 4-6 weeks. Take some Advil.” Apparently, the medical profession (or perhaps just the practitioner that I saw) does not feel that constant discomfort for no discernable reason is any big deal. T.H. was fairly ticked at the lacksidaisical attitude of my doctor (Quote: “If you’re in pain, something’s not right! What do you mean, she said ‘Take Advil’?!”)

I wasn’t expecting much, but the total lack of concern will compel me to seek a new primary care doctor soon. And I am fairly sure that the issues are caused—or at least seriously aggravated—by stress, anxiety, and depression about the rocky life-transition we’re slogging through currently, and I can get assistance with that, which I’m doing. Back to the mental health counselor for me! I have an appointment in two weeks, and I’ll do my best not to stigmatize myself this time. I’m confident that this whole thing can be negotiated well and successfully, but I have a history of not maintaining perspective very well, and having an uninvolved third party to check in with cannot possibly hurt anything.

So I guess all this counts as progress… just the slow and usual real-life kind rather than the sudden, large, movie-variety that I was pulling for. *sigh*

2003-07-24T12:47:00.000-07:00

Everything is awful

I suppose it’s a side effect of being borderline clinically depressed (only borderline! Whoo-hoo!), but things are not feeling good today.

I feel like my entire life is outside of my control—that I can’t make independent decisions, that the circumstances controlling my (our) life are beyond my ability to change. And, what’s worse, it may even be true.

I'm in love with a house for sale on 28th Ave—a 3-bedroom restored Victorian, with hardwoods and stained glass, in an area that’s poised to become a quaint urban neighborhood (I think), and, because it’s juuust starting to head that way, this wonderful house is priced at a mere $180,000. If T.H. had a decent job I would totally want to seriously consider buying this house—with roommates it wouldn’t be too much more expensive than our apartment now, and I’m almost positive that it will be worth a lot more than $180,000 in a few years. But I can’t consider it, because there’s no way I could qualify for the loan on my salary alone, and T.H. doesn’t have a decent job.

I want a dog, and T.H. doesn’t want to get one until he gets a regular job. And I have to clear it with our landlord first. And I can’t do anything to help or speed the process with either of these issues.

I'm down because I was looking forward to moving ahead on all this stuff (we'll move to MD, and get a dog, and pay off debts, and buy a house, and have a guest room, and not have a roommate, and start gearing up to do all these grown-up things, like collect some savings, and take a vacation that’s not 100% funded by credit cards, and maybe have a baby! ) and now, because the job didn’t work out, we're right back where we were before, waiting for the process to start, and I'm tired of it.

It’s been 2 years since we moved to Portland now, and, as I’ve mentioned before, we’ve had a somewhat unequal distribution of the practical burdens and responsibilities in our household. T.H.’s freelance work has been poorly paid, dooming us to continue our college lifestyle, in spite of the fact that we were hoping to graduate and start paying off debts, think about a house, etc. etc. It’s also meant that my salary has gone towards our practical expenses—bills, groceries, things like that—to a disproportionate amount. So while I alone could probably afford a dog, I, paying the entire car payment, the entire grocery bill, and all of the entertainment expenses for 2 people, cannot afford a dog.

I know T.H. has made sacrifices too, but the whiny part of me thinks (perhaps not entirely without justification) that not being able to buy CDs, or Xbox games, or go to the movies as often as you would like because you’re choosing to work from home for no money is not the same as watching your credit card balance creep upward, and not being able to go on vacation, or reach financial and personal goals because your partner is working from home and making no visible progress towards taking on an equal share of the car payment.

The seemingly-endless cyclical nature of the current situation ("T.H. is looking for a regular job! Really!") is wearing me out, and having had a (possibly overly) bright future to get hooked on makes me all the more aware of how tired I am of having to justify the circumstances ("T.H. is doing freelance & I'm working 40 hours a week, and it's okay because he's looking for a job and the market's bad! Really! I know I've been saying that for 2 years! It's fine!").

And I know (intellectually) that we have made huge progress in the last few months, and I know that the “looking for a job” that T.H. has been doing in the last couple of months is very different from the "looking" he was doing before, but that doesn't change the fact that I'm trotting out a similar line to people who've been hearing the same thing from me for years. I'm feeling very conscious of the fact that I sound like I'm getting taken advantage of by one of those proverbial slacker-husbands. And, although I know (intellectually) that I'm not, that doesn’t make me feel good about continuing to make the same damn excuses about why my life seems to be in an eternal holding pattern.

And I don’t think there’s anything I can do about the situation. I can’t police T.H. from work, and make sure he’s really looking for a job. I can’t force someone to hire him. I can’t force him to take a job he’ll hate—and I don’t want to do that, anyway. I just have to wait, and be supportive, and try not to burst into tears when I get my credit card statement, or realize that no we can’t get a pizza, because we have $40 until my next paycheck. And I’m trying, I really am. But I’m so tired of this, and today I’m just not up to being positive about it.

I want a dog. I want a pizza. I want the house on 28th Ave. I want more than $50 in my savings account. And I can’t have any of these things.

Someone, please, give my husband a job.

2003-07-23T14:19:00.000-07:00

I had too much Pad Thai for lunch

But it’s okay because I went to the gym this morning. That’s how it works, right?

The gym we ~~frequent~~ attend somewhat sporadically (but I’m working on becoming more devoted, primarily because I would really like to lose 10 pounds before my birthday next month) is a local, established-in-the-40s gym, formerly home to old-style weightlifters in snazzy wrestling outfits, back in the days that a weightlifter was a guy with defined muscles, rather than a 300-lb-mass of bulging manliness (and steroids). It’s extraordinarily inexpensive, and not at all slick, and filled with normal people. No Bally’s™ aerobicized-to-death people, with fancy haircuts and cell phones, no spinning classes—instead there are local folks, with grey hairs and beer bellies and too much ass that they are damn-well-going to stair-step off. (That would be me, with the extra seat padding, which I’m working on…) They say hello, jauntily, even at 6 am, and most of the regulars know our names. (They also notice if you skip a few days, and harass you good-naturedly when you return, chastised by a long weekend and too much Ben & Jerry’s.)

Some of the older guys are former competitive weight lifters. The owner—who has a framed picture of former Minnesota governor and pro-wrestler Jesse Ventura visiting the gym, smiling and pointing at the sign outside (Established in 1947!)—is one, and another is the notable David Columbo (for real!). David has his grey-white hair cut in a 50’s crew cut, and wears print boxers, a spotless white v-neck men’s undershirt, and calf-high white socks to work out. He is superbly chiseled, even though he must be in his 60s. When T.H. told David he was a web designer, David said “Yeah, the Internet, right? You don’t do those pop-up ads, do you?”.

Last week, as I was puffing along on the stationary bike, David looked at me, dripping sweat and gasping, and declared cheerfully “Looks like you’re getting a good workout! That means you can eat whatever you want today!”.

I went to the gym this morning, and I dripped sweat onto the bike, and I even went upstairs and did sit-ups afterward, and I’m having a healthy-healthy dinner of Quinoa, beans, and salad, so it’s okay if I ate too many pan-fried rice noodles at lunchtime.

David Columbo said so, so it must be true.

2003-07-21T13:11:00.000-07:00

More unfair

Much, much more unfair than T.H. not getting the East Coast job.

If you have not thought good things about Julia and her sister, and her whole family, I think you should do that now.

2003-07-21T12:21:00.000-07:00

I am very tired.

I slept poorly last night.

I fended off another weekend of neck pain by taking a muscle relaxer Friday night, and consequently slept until 1:30pm on Saturday (something I haven't done since I was 17 or 18).

Our roommate purchased Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic and played it ceaselessly the entire weekend. In fact, he skipped work today so he could keep playing. I think it looks fun, but have not had the opportunity to try it out, since, at this point, the only way I can see to access the XBox would be to beat my roommate to death with a crowbar. Eventually he'll fall asleep... then I'll try it out and kick ass with a lightsaber!

2003-07-18T11:23:00.000-07:00

Reasons why it’s good we’re not moving

1) Not having to find a new job

2) Or a new apartment

3) Or a new roommate

4) Or all new friends

5) Or a new gym

6) Not having to sell all of our possessions
(but maybe we’ll have a garage sale anyway, and trim down)

7) We get to stay living close (but not too close!) to my family

8) And his family

9) And Ashland, OR and the Shakespeare Festival

10) I hate moving anyway

11) I don’t have to get a bunch of new clothes & shoes so I’m not the shabbiest woman in Washington DC

12) Baron Von Goolo’s Museum of Horrors!

13) I can get a dog pretty soon, ~~probably~~ maybe

14) Not having to find a new place to get Thai food

15) It’s not as humid here

16) I bet it’ll be much easier to plan the wedding party if we’re on the coast it’s happening on

17) T.H. won’t need to find a new doctor

18) I won’t have a 40-minute commute

19) T.H. won’t have a 30-minute commute (probably)

20) I don’t have to decide if I need to switch to a new bank (since I bank with a local credit union)

21) It’ll be easier to help with my sister’s upcoming wedding from here, too

22) I bet our car insurance would be much higher over there

23) We’d probably need a second car

24) We don’t have to buy all new furniture (after we sell the stuff we have)

25) I know where all the movie theaters are in Portland

26) I’ll probably be on this cool new project at work

27) I don’t have to leave my kitty (see below—how could I?!)

28) We’re closer to Disneyland (of course, Disneyworld is over there…)

29) We’re closer to Tokyo Disney Sea (T.H. really wants to go there soon)

30) We’re also closer to Hawaii, where I think we should go soon too

31) Did I say that I really hate moving?

Of course, I still want to beat up everyone who didn’t hire him, and throw rocks and scream “It’s not fair! He tried so hard, and you flew him out! It’s perfect for him! You HAVE TO hire him!”.

I am also having trouble not being terribly discouraged, because we did absolutely everything we possibly could, and still only got this close. It really is unfair—and I know, I know, life isn’t always fair, but that doesn’t make it less depressing when you put all the energy you have into something just to see it fall flat on its face.

2003-07-17T13:53:00.000-07:00

Test Photo & Update

and, in other news, T.H. got a fucking form rejection letter from the bastards at the No-Longer-Possibly-New-Job.

I'd like to kick the living shit out of each and every one of the people who thought "eh, maybe not this guy".

2003-07-17T12:21:00.000-07:00

(Reluctantly) Moving On

I took a look at tequila mockingbird’s blog a few months ago, via a link from SourBob (who is, alas, posting no more, but ought to be shipping a short book soon!). I liked her blog quite a lot, but lost track of it when Bob removed his links page. Fortunately, though, I stumbled across it again a few days ago. I read Julia’s random thoughts (as she calls them) and looked at her lovely photos, and discovered a couple of things—

1) She must work in D.C., and may work close to the museum I interviewed at (she posted a photo taken in Dupont Circle), which is interesting and kind of neat (is it lame to think “Hey, she sounds like an interesting & cool person! Maybe she’ll be friends with me if we move?)

2) She and her sister are both waiting to hear back from their respective medical advisors about serious (and possibly life-threatening) issues, which makes me uncomfortably cognizant of how whiny and small-minded my recent complaints sound. I mean, yes, we’re waiting endlessly to hear about something that could have a major effect on our lives, but not to hear if our long-term plans need to be shoehorned into a specific time span.

This revelation, coupled with T.H.’s eerie ability to simply decide that if they’re not going to call him back then it sucks, but it’s time to move on, and if they offer him the job later, then great! we’ll figure it out at that point, leaves me sitting poutily on the floor, saying “but I want to know now!” and sounding like a three-year-old who needs a nap. Which is fun and all, but somewhat unattractive, and frankly, crummy of a presumably-adult-ish person to be doing.

So, moving on, when I read Julia’s entry about her sister, my chest tightened and I thought about how I would feel if one of my sisters was suddenly maybe-not going to be around, being pushy or funny or just my sister (you know how she is). Siblings are odd creatures, who somehow imprint themselves so you can’t possibly imagine life without them, even if you don’t call regularly, or even see each other terribly often.

My sisters are both younger, so, growing up, I was The One We’re Counting On To Be Responsible For Your Sisters (Because You’re The Oldest). One of my earliest memories is leading my sister by the hand around a shopping mall, lost, and looking for our mother. We’d opted to sit on some stairs and wait for our mom to finish shopping, rather than accompany her into another store. Our mom agreed to this plan, emphasizing that we should Stay Right There, and she would Be Right Back. However, shortly after our mother departed, some official woman came along and told us we couldn’t sit on those stairs. I was only 5 or 6, and this was a terrible dilemma. Our Mom had told us very clearly to Stay Right There, but this Official Woman said you kids are Not Allowed to Stay Right There. There was some internal debate, but, in the end, I was not brave enough to argue with a strange woman in high heels and lipstick, so I took my sister’s 4-year-old hand and set off in search of our mother. I was terrified—I wasn’t sure where to start looking, and the mall was so huge. (Before you get all het up about my mom leaving us, I should point out that this was the late 70s, in a small town, in a mall that is, in fact, microscopic. It just looked big to me, because I didn’t realize at that point that a mall with a grocery store and a Sears as anchors is actually a Tiny Suck Mall and not the Endless Shopping Center.) But I had to Be Responsible For My Sister, so I put on a brave front, and soldiered along, looking in stores and getting more and more freaked out as we searched and didn’t see Mom. I couldn’t cry, though, because that would upset my sister, and I had to be Responsible, which includes not scaring your sister unless there’s a darn good reason (like she’s being a tremendous pain), and, in an emergency situation, scaring your sister is simply out of the question.

So we wandered and wandered, and, eventually, found our Mom. (I think she was in Sears.) Fortunately, our mother is very tall—5’11 ½ ”—so she sticks up above most other moms. This makes her easy to find—you just look over everyone else, and if there’s someone sticking up who has the right hair color, it’s probably her. Our Mom was quite surprised to see us, but I explained that an official woman came and told us that we were Not Allowed to Stay Right There. Our mom told me that I had done a good job, and that, next time, I could say “We are waiting for our Mom, and she said Stay Right Here” or I could ask a mall guard for help.

But, in the end, the thing that matters to me is that I took care of my sister. She doesn’t really remember this incident, and she certainly doesn’t remember it with the crushing sense of fear and responsibility that I do. And that’s the way it ought to be—she’s my sister, and no one should ever, ever make her unhappy. She’s had strings of cruddy boyfriends and manipulative friends, and I have wanted to throttle every single one of them when they have the inhuman audacity to make my sister cry. I support her current fiancé, because he is properly aware of the fact that my sister is a jewel, and should be catered to and adored. She drives me up the wall, and I’ve had long, terrible fights with her, but she’s still (and always) my sister.

My youngest sister can be more difficult. She’s more like me—opinionated, stubborn, talkative, loud. She doesn’t like to compromise, and we have a loooonnng history of clashes, because she & I frequently disagree about the Obviously Correct Choice in any given situation, and try patiently (and endlessly) to explain to the other one exactly why her viewpoint is Simply Flawed, whereas our own is Clearly Reasonable. This has led to everything from physical attacks (complete with scratching, biting, and hair-pulling) to hours of increasingly-short-tempered discussion. Once I dumped a box of wooden blocks onto one of her friends, when she (the cheater!) solicited outside support for her obviously-ludicrous-viewpoint on Barbie’s home décor. But still, she’s my sister, and it’s okay for me to say, huffily, “She’s impossible!”—but it’s not okay for you to say that! (Just ask T.H. how much I like it when he criticizes my sister, even if he’s repeating things I myself have said.) She’s my sister! I can’t imagine going through my life without the opportunity to fight with her about child care, or holiday plans, or whether or not my husband has to go to some lame family function! Who would annoy me by disguising extremely conservative ideas about family responsibilities as liberal free-thinking if she wasn’t around? Who would remind me about the blocks incident every time we talk about our childhood? Who would tell all my friends how mean I was when we were kids?

My sisters and I don’t live too far away from each other—only a few hours. We don’t call often, and we see each other every few months. But the rhythm is uncanny—we get together, and in two minutes we’re waving our hands and back into that same childhood pattern of conversation, but now we’re talking about gardens and mortgages and career plans. I’m never self-conscious with my sisters. I never have to worry that they’ll tell me that those new jeans look good if they don’t. My sisters fit.

I can’t imagine being faced with the possibility of losing that.

Good luck Julia. I’m thinking of you and your sister. Give her a kiss from me…

2003-07-15T12:32:00.000-07:00

I don’t know I don’t know…

And this is precisely why I should not be wasting time at work reading other, smarter, funnier, blogs than this one, because now I feel the opposite of literate and profound and funny, clearly the person at the party who’s had one too many daiquiris and is really eager to tell you this story omigod it’s the funniest thing ever, and you stand there nodding your head, trying not to be too obvious about the fact that you’re scanning the crowd over this person’s shoulder looking for your date so you can say “Gosh I really would love to hear how this all ends, but I’m sorry, I just noticed my date over there in the corner and he seems to be choking to death—I’ve got to run” and your attention drifts up and away and the person drones on and on and then collapses on the floor, overwhelmed by the hilarity of the story about the fish, and that is me, the one on the floor, with the fish.

I suppose I’m predisposed to tragic melancholy, because of the uncertainty and the waiting and the worry, and also because we’ve had four weekends now running of social/familial obligations, which has left me drained and unwilling to sweep the kitchen floor or do anything productive.

I am tired in a lot of ways, and I am poised for a sudden forward movement, and I am concerned that the momentum is simply going to cause me to crash gracelessly into the ground instead of carrying me flawlessly into the shining future I have envisioned, and although it’s just over there, so close I can see it, I am afraid, because often (so often) so close is not the same thing as here, and the nearness of the miss just makes me bitter and self-abusive, and I think up thousands and thousands of ways that if I’d just done xxx it would have worked out.

2003-07-14T14:18:00.000-07:00

Neutral News and Good News

Still (yes,still!) waiting to hear from The New Job. I am somewhat annoyed that the HR folks have not called back yet, if even to say “No news yet”—the lack of a courtesy phone call strikes me as rude. To be fair, perhaps the HR director is out sick or something—but I should hope that T.H. gets a good excuse and an apology for the delay.

But we went to see the Pirates of the Caribbean yesterday evening, and it was a hoot! I was pleasantly surprised, and may, in fact, need to see it again just for Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow. (not that Orlando Bloom’s dashing William Turner wasn’t quite fetching—he was, but Johnny Depp was awfully funny). And then we had Thai food, and I think that it’s terribly convenient that I like T.H. so much. It would be something of a burden to marry someone you didn’t like to hang around with…

2003-07-11T15:46:00.000-07:00

Well blech

T.H. called to get an update on the Potential New Job, left a message for the HR coordinator, and didn't get a call back. She is probably busy, or out today, or any number of things, but please! We can't make any plans, because we don't know what's going on, and I can't give my potential employer any information on if/when we might be moving, and this just sucks.

They will offer T.H. this job. They will offer T.H. this job. They will offer T.H. this job.

I know it's whiny—lots of folks are unemployed and have been for years, but this is important to T.H. and I’m sick sick sick of waiting to find out. It’s stressing me out, and T.H. actually had a minor panic-attack this morning, which he never does.

I swear to god, there should be a federally mandated 2-week limit from interview to notice to limit the psychological damage.

2003-07-10T09:41:00.000-07:00

This is a really crummy movie

I realize that to some degree this is my own fault, but I am completely exhausted & in a terrible mood. If someone looks at me slantwise I'll probably either burst into tears or pick a fist-fight. I hate everything. I want to go home and go back to bed. I want something good to happen today to leaven the disgusting rotten mess that my life appears to be right now.

Once more, there is no identifiable exterior reason for this mood (other than the aforementioned lack of sleep). Except, you know, that everything is horrible. And I don’t have a dog or money or prospects, and this is not how life is supposed to be when you’re a grown-up. I watched John Hughes movies, and I know what life is supposed to be like when you’re cool and you’ve got it together. You get a multi-million-dollar book/movie/record contract, and the music swells, and everything just turns out all right, and no one comes in after the thrilling climax and says “We’re out of bread again, so there’s nothing for breakfast unless we go to the store tonight.” That never once happened in a John Hughes movie.

Maybe I’m not cool enough, or maybe the soundtrack to my life is on the fritz, or maybe it’s just temporary and I won’t feel this way tomorrow, but I think that it’s about time that whoever is doing the scriptwriting gets in touch with me. I have a lot of great ideas that would really improve the cinematic value of this film—better hair, effortless weight loss, and a wardrobe update would be a good start. I mean, it’s true that there’s nothing really tragic happening around here, but, as a movie, this is just not doing it for me. No action sequences or car chases or Really Touching Moments, just grocery shopping and paying the phone bill and feeding the cat. This movie sucks. Pretty in Pink is a lot better.

2003-07-09T09:11:00.000-07:00

Disheartening

I’d forgotten (or blocked out) how demoralizing it is to just wait and wait and wait, without updates, or information, or any way of knowing if you’re getting the job you’ve tried so hard for. When I was waiting to hear about my current position, I know I became absolutely convinced at least 3 or 4 times that I was not going to get it, and that I was going to be stuck working in a bank for the rest of my life—and I had an inside contact for this job, so I actually could get updated information during the process. It’s much worse for T.H., who wants this job so fiercely that all of my relatives have commented on it at least 3 times (“He looks so excited!”), and, in fact, so fiercely that I wonder if he’s even aware of just how clearly he wants this to work out.

Plus, there are all the other “if”s hanging off this one, like my job here, and the job that I interviewed for there, and all of the practical details and side effects that are now on hold, waiting in limbo until we get some definite information and make some concrete decisions.

On the plus side, everyone has their fingers crossed and are rooting for this to work out. I’m tremendously grateful that my family and friends are so universally supportive, and that they all like Noel enough to cheer and hug and demand regular updates. Strangely (or maybe not) the fact that we have so many loving and supportive friends and family makes the prospect of moving far, far away less daunting—I supposed because I know that mere distance won’t change our relationships…

2003-07-07T14:46:00.000-07:00

I found boot-cut jeans at an outlet this weekend!

T.H. said they were “slimming”! (if you’re unsure, “Wow honey, those look really good! They’re slimming.” Is, in fact, The Correct Answer to “How do these look?”)

We hung out with lots of relatives, one of my uncles walked through a screen door and managed to biff another uncle on the head, and there was enough food for 400 people, and barbecuing, and going to the Outlet Mall, and the Wax Museum, and everyone said “congratulations” and “we’re crossing our fingers for you honey” at least 10 times each, and T.H. found three (three!) models of the Nautilus for a mere $5 apiece after specifically lamenting that he didn’t want to cannibalize the one he has for a project relating to the Potential New Job, and wishing that he had purchased two, and we all decided it was A Sign and that obviously the Career Gods want us to go live on the East Coast so that my uncles can come stay and walk through screen doors near the Atlantic Ocean rather than the Pacific.

2003-07-02T13:57:00.000-07:00

So hi

Not quite back to full-on yippy-skippy, but better, thankyouverymuchforasking.

T.H. thinks that maybe we should not get a dog (doggy doggy!!) the exact second that we land in Maryland, for some reason. He has this cockeyed theory that since some of us (and, of course, I have no idea at all who he’s thinking of) find it difficult to make new friends, and just sort of wait around for their husband to bring some home, so then they can share in the friendy-goodness, that having a dog (doggy doggy!!) would simply allow those of us who say things like “I’m just going to stay here and read a book, have fun at the concert/party/whatever” to add “play with my darling bundle of happy doggy love” to the list. Plus, we don’t have a clue what our schedule will be like.

But there are all these wonderful, darling dogs (doggy doggy!!) that need to come home with me over in Maryland. There are about 400 on Petfinder and I love all of them, and, clearly, they need to come live with me right away. Like, I should stop by the shelter and pick them up as we drive by on the way to our new apartment, right away.

Because we’re almost certainly leaving the kitty here, with our roommate, if we go to Maryland. The kitty wouldn’t like to drive across the whole country in the car (which he hates), and he wouldn’t like living in a big apartment building (which we’ll probably start out in (it’s just impossible to check out small places from across country, and I won’t agree to live anywhere unless I can see pictures first)), and he’s have to make new friends too (because he’s buddies with some of the other neighborhood kitties now), and I just can’t do that to him. And our roommate really wants us to leave him at home. So I think we probably will. Which means I will be pet-less again, which I suspect will cause massive hyperventilating panic, and the spontaneous abduction of other people’s pets, which will probably get me jugged. I think getting a dog immediately is a better solution. Plus, can’t I use my dog to make friends? I bet I can do that!

(no, we don’t actually know yet—but I’m back to being sure that it’s going to just gel)

2003-07-01T10:30:00.000-07:00

Blah de blah de blah

Just not so much right now.

I mean, better than earlier today, but not so much as yesterday morning.

I’m sure I’ll recover and be all happy again later on, just, you know, not right now.

Nothing definite happened—we don’t know about moving or jobs, my yippee attitude has simply suffered a temporarily-debilitating injury.

Perhaps I should get thai for lunch? Maybe spicy noodles will make things better.

2003-06-30T10:56:00.000-07:00

Good and good and good

So we’re back, and T.H.’s interview went well, and mine went well too. We probably won’t know for sure what’s happening for a couple of weeks, so, of course, the waiting (waiting, waiting) has started.

T.H. really liked the job and the people, and I liked the people at my interview, and we liked the area, although not as well as we like Portland. So the upshot of all this is that we still don’t know what’s going to happen in the next month or so, but if we go, it’ll be good, and if we stay, it’ll be good too.

Which is nice—I mean, I am stressed about the waiting and the changes and the uncertainty, but however this turns out will be a good thing for us—I am still quite certain that we will end up going, but if I’m wrong, then I am also quite certain that it will be a huge relief, and T.H. will get something here.

Which is all very touchy-feely of me, I’m sure. It’s all good—whatever happens is for the best, and I will go forward happily towards whatever future we have.

2003-06-25T09:37:00.000-07:00

Omigod

I hate looking for jobs—hate it hate it hate it. Over the last week and a half I’ve revised my resume, written cover letters, and made phone calls to try and make appointments with potential employers on Friday—yes, the day after tomorrow Friday!!—in a massive push to get a job starting at about the same time as T.H.’s potential-new-job. Plus I need to call the airline, and pack, and get things together like mad, and I am freaking out—freaking out!!—because planning huge cross-country trips that may result in even more huge cross-country moves is a damn good reason to freak out, plus I am having trouble sleeping, because I keep thinking about stuff I still need to do.

We leave from here at 6 am tomorrow—wish us luck!

Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!

2003-06-20T15:38:00.000-07:00

Without guile
(or tact, depending on your point of view)

T.H. told me this morning that “a little bird” told him that a friend of ours was feeling hurt and abandoned because I have been vocally positive and excited about this whole (possibly) moving thing. (Read: one of our good friends, who for some reason all, of our other friends are telling about their reservations about our possible-East-Coast-move—what are we, in second grade? Why doesn’t anyone just tell us directly?! )

Additionally, T.H. was concerned that I was making too much of a ruckus about the possible-move at work, where I am soliciting assistance from other staff in order to assist my job search, if such a thing is necessary—though I have been very careful to say that the only reason I would even consider leaving my current job is if T.H. is offered a position in Maryland.

I suppose that T.H. has a point—better safe than sorry, I guess, and I ought to be certain that I’m extremely clear about my motivations at work, since I’d hate for senior management to get the idea that I’m disloyal and cut my position. But the fact that my friend feels “abandoned” and didn’t tell me about it, but instead complained to another friend, kind of ticks me off.

I am definitely behind this move if T.H. gets the job, one hundred percent. But outside of this job opportunity, I have no desire to leave Portland. I like my job, I love our friends, I love my cat and our apartment, and all of our fun hobbies here, and I’ve said so repeatedly. But if I focus on all the reasons why it would suck to move away and then T.H. gets this job, that will only succeed in making me terribly depressed and causing T.H. to feel guilty about pursuing his career goals. That’s just not the kind of partner I want to be, and, again, I have expressed this to my friend.

Because I have said all of these things, I assumed that she would take them into consideration when I enthused about the positive aspects of the move (“We could get a dog!”), but apparently, I was mistaken. She is upset. She feels abandoned, like I just don’t care that I’d be moving away from her (and our other friends too, of course).

So today I talked about all the stuff I’ve been trying not to focus on about the potential-move—leaving our friends, leaving my job, the expense, and the possible delay between T.H.’s move and my move, and leaving…well…pretty much our entire life here and moving thousands of miles away to start all over, because, in a lot of ways, doing all that would be truly awful. Which worked, I think. She seems much more cheerful, and I guess that indicates that she feels less abandoned, which is good.

But it drives me up the wall that I have to spend so much time selectively emphasizing my feelings in order to make sure no one is upset. I keep hoping that if I’m just honest, since we’re all adults here, that will suffice, and I won’t have to dance around saying “It’s not you, it’s this other circumstance, you know that, don’t you—I really really mean it!” but I guess that’s not the case. So I suppose I need that start checking in with T.H. and making sure I’m not being too honest (or tactless, I guess, if you want to look at it that way).

And, irony of ironies, some of the jobs I’m (possibly-prematurely) pursuing on the East Coast are in D.C. The perfect place for a tactlessly-honest girl like me! Somehow, I doubt that my frustration will be lessened by the presence of politicians.

(Boy, that was certainly alliterative, wasn’t it?)

Blah.

And, of course, now I’m depressed about moving.

2003-06-18T09:27:00.000-07:00

Golfing?

T.H. asked this morning why he might have been forced to go golfing as part of the trip to Check Out Wedding Dresses. The reason is this: my dad is trying to convince my sister’s fiancé, who is German, that it’s an American tradition that the future groom and future father-in-law go golfing while the girls Check Out Wedding Dresses. So far, I understand, my dad has not succeeded in convincing my sister’s fiancé, who shrewdly suspects that my dad is just trying to get out of the trip to Check Out Wedding Dresses.

The nerve!

I’m sure my dad is just jumping up and down at the very thought…

2003-06-17T16:20:00.000-07:00

We’re going to the East Coast next week!

(It’s costing nearly $1,000—oh my god!)

T.H. is staying home from the trip to Check Out Wedding Dresses with my sisters so he can work on his pitch, because, for some reason, he was not terribly excited to go Check Out Wedding Dresses—which, by the way (my sister told me) are sized smaller than regular clothes, so that you end up in a size or two larger than you would have thought. Now I know that clothing sizes have shifted in the last few decades, and what was once an 8 is now about a 6, or even a 4, but please. No one wants to wear a bigger size than normal on their wedding day. Designers should take this into account and size wedding dresses large! I bet the first designer who makes a size 6 that’s really a size 10 will sell hundreds of dresses on that factor alone, especially if all the other size 6s are really size 4s!

Anyhow, T.H. was not thrilled to the core of his soul about Checking Out Wedding Dresses in the first place (Why?? It’ll be fun!) and now he has a really stellar excuse, one that even my dad accepts joyfully.

Otherwise, he might have been forced to go golfing (gasp!).

2003-06-16T11:56:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow

We should hear if they want to fly T.H. to Maryland, which also pretty much means that we’ll know if he has it or not, because, really, they’re not going to spend the money to fly him all the way over there unless they’re pretty sure, and he’s a nice, personable guy, and he bathes and everything, which means they’ll be smitten with him and offer him extra money and moving expenses.

I’ve been thinking about what I want to keep if we move and moving expenses are not covered (which, honestly, they will probably not be, for an entry-level job), and I don’t know. If we got rid of nearly everything, we might be able to smash the remnants into the Honda and just go, which would effectively eliminate all of our ambient useless clutter in one fell swoop—a somewhat liberating concept. But then we’d have to get new…well…everything…which sounds daunting (and expensive). We’ll just have to see how it goes…