Limbo

So, I'm currently waiting for two fairly significant phone calls/emails and the longer I wait the less gracious I become.

The first thing I'm waiting on is some, any, a little contact from my thesis advisor. I gave him a rough draft of my thesis at the end of September. He took about a week and a half to read it and then returned it to me with only minor corrections and additions to make. He said that it was in "excellent shape" and that he was confident that I would only need to make one more edit to him. Grateful, and feeling optimistic about a December graduation, I took it home and worked and worked and worked on it, ultimately adding about 15 pages to it. I gave him the new and improved version around the end of October. And then the waiting began. I have not seen or heard from him since. I've emailed. I've attempted to stalk (the office door is always closed. His appointment book is always full) but nothing. I am 99% sure that this delay means that I won't meet the deadline for December graduation and there is nothing I can do about it.

The second thing that I'm waiting on is a call from the Human Resources department at the local community college. I'm a finalist there for a position that really interests me and, yay, would pay more than my current gig. I know I have a good shot, but I'm beginning to suspect that I'll be eligible for retirement at my current job before I hear from them. I submitted my resume in July. I've been an applicant for this job longer than I've been married.

I think the thing that really bugs me is that I can't do a damn thing to improve my chances for a good outcome or to make the decision come any faster. I've already written the thesis. I've already done my 3 (!) interviews. This whole patience thing is getting on my nerves.

Baby

I want to have a baby.

I think.

Maybe.

But not yet.

But maybe soon.

But maybe not.

I just don't know.

I think I am entering a new phase in life--the baby years. The last five years or so (college graduation to now) have been the marriage years. I've been invited to at least 25 weddings in the last 5 years and have spent, roughly, $6000 on wedding gifts, bridesmaid dresses, shower presents, travel to weddings, etc. The weddings were fun (mostly) and it was great to see so many friends happy and starting the next chapter of their lives.

Now, for the first time in a long time, I don't have any engaged friends and I don't have any weddings on the calendar. I have, instead, baby showers and first birthday parties and baptisms and dedications to look forward to. I have at least one pregnant friend and several friends trying to conceive. It is a bit odd watching so many friends turning into parents and I wonder how they knew it was the right time. Did they feel certain? How did they know for sure that they were ready?

Some days, I feel flooded by the urge to have a baby. It overwhelms me. I start thinking about tiny toes and first steps and the miracle of seeing a little person beginning to explore the world and I want to throw my pills away and start picking out nursery bedding. But, the next day I feel ambivalent. I wonder, some days, what a child of Michael and I's would look like (curly hair for sure, probably brown eyes) and the next day I think about a life, after Michael's boys are in college, of just Michael and I. I think about time. Time to write, to sleep, to travel, to just be alone with each other. I believe that we could have a complete and satisfying marriage without children. I believe that we could have a complete and satisfying marriage with children. I think and worry about money, about our ages, about what is best for Brennan and Malcolm.

I want to be practical. I want to be impulsive. I just want to be certain.

Thankful

So, Thanksgiving is a mere two days away and I am *so* looking forward to it. I really love Thanksgiving, perhaps even more than Christmas. Thanksgiving is the easier of the two holidays. No presents to buy, just pie and stuffing (yay stuffing!) to eat and elastic waistband pants to wear. Thanksgiving, in addition to being a festival of carbs and fat and sugar, is also a nice antidote to the normal snarkiness and sarcasm of daily life. Don't get me wrong--I love me some snarkiness, but I also know that a little reflection about what is really good and safe in my life is a nice counterpoint to the pessimism I sometimes feel. Thus, in no particular order, here are some of the things that I most thankful for this year:

1. My job: yes, I'm bored a lot and yes, I'm applying else where but I am grateful to have co-workers who make me laugh and a steady, dependable paycheck. Also, I get to watch my stories everyday at lunch and I am not ashamed of my love for All My children.

2. The children who belong to my friends: Michael and I have not totally settled the kids issue yet (when to have them? if we should have them, etc) but sometimes I just really want to hold a baby or hear a toddler laugh their little belly laughs, so I am grateful for Joshua, Jacob, Mckenna, Annika, Iain and their nice parents who let me sniff their heads and hold their hands.

3. My friend Kelly who goes to the gym with me. I am struggling with the whole "exercise" concept right now, but I know for sure that having some to discuss reality tv shows with me while I plug away at it makes a world of difference. Kelly is a good friend for lots of reasons (funny, smart, great taste in shoes) and I'm glad to see her a couple of times a week, even if we have to be sweaty during it.

4. Stuffing. Seriously. I can not wait. I want a whole plateful.

5. Our friends Jamie and Chris who will be hosting us for Thanksgiving and will be making the stuffing that I am so eagerly anticipating. Also, they are hosting at their house so I don't even have to clean mine or cook. Score.

6. My health and general sense of well being. I think that this past year has been one of the happiest years of my life and I am grateful for that. I have not been as healthy as I could be (said the caffeinated sugar monkey who is eye balling some candy as she types) but I'm glad that I am basically in good health and still young enough to correct the bad habits I have.

7. My friends. I believe that I have more friends at this point in my life than I ever had before which is such a blessing. I still sometimes think of myself as this nerdy, odd, got along better with grown ups, lonely little kid and so having a circle of people who like me and care about me is so nice. I try not to feel surprised by it, but I still am. My family is, on its best day, complicated, so having friends who are as sane and funny and smart and caring as they are is really important.

8. Michael. I am a very, very lucky girl. Meeting, falling in love and marrying Michael has been one of the sweetest experiences of my life and something I suspect I will always feel grateful for.

Okay--this has been sappy I know. I promise I'll be back to sarcastic next time around. Happy Thanksgiving everyone (all three people who read this)!

Lessons from the mall

Well, I've survived orientation (5 hours of customer service dribble), training (5 minutes of how to avoid breaking the cash register) and my first few shifts at the fine retail establishment where I'll be working until January so I feel qualified to offer my initial impressions of the lotion and soap selling world and the whole mall at the holidays experience:

1. Christmas is not just a day...it is "a season and an experience"...that starts on October 15th. Seriously. The store where I work put up the Christmas tree in the middle of October and now, in the middle of November, we are in the second phase of the holiday shopping experience. It is slightly surreal to walk in from an 85 degree day and face fake snow and ornaments and "White Christmas" on the CD player.

2. Hanukkah does not exist. It is all about Christmas. We have a countdown to Christmas in the backroom, we have Christmas music, we have Christmas poster and I have yet to hear anyone mention Hanukkah. Weird. I am a Christmas celebrater but the assumption that so is everyone who comes in to the store is so short sighted to me. Of course, Christmas in the true sense of the word doesn't really exist here either. I could start a rant about how annoying it is that Christmas=spending money but I trust that you will all watch the Charlie Brown Christmas Special this year, so Linus can explain why this is annoying and I can move on to make fun of children.

3. Teenage girls are exactly the same as they have always been. They travel in packs. They giggle. They shriek. They dress alike. They love them some glitter lip gloss. They are also, according to the managers, our biggest shoplifters (the lure of glitter lip gloss is irresistible to some, I guess) so watch out giggly girls...I've got my eyes on you*

4. Teenage girls are exactly the same as they have always been...but sluttier. I know that this makes me sound like I am a million years old, but seriously. Attention 14 year old girls of the world: I am not interested in seeing A) your belly B) your thong C) your cameltoe or D) your cleavage. Take it across the mall to Victoria's Secret where it belongs.

5. Vanilla is, apparently, an incredibly versatile scent. We have, no kidding, 6 different vanilla scents: Fresh Vanilla, Warm Vanilla Sugar, Vanilla Wafer, Vanilla Bean Noel, Black Raspberry vanilla and lavender Vanilla. Why we need 6 scents that all basically make the wearer smell like sugar cookies I just don't understand.

6. Related to #5, we have a whole line of products with scents like chocolate decadence, amaretto, dulce de leche and tiramisu. Apparently there are some women who really, really want to smell like a dessert tray.

7. We have testers of all of our products, including lip sticks and lip glosses. The lip product testers have little plastic spreaders right next to them. A frightening number of people totally disregard these tools of hygiene in favor of putting the tester right on their lips. Ew. Why, Chappy McColdsore, would you do that?

8. I am officially old and becoming borderline curmudgeon. My knees hurt from stocking shelves, I think my 19 year old co-workers** with their endless drama and gossiping are kind of annoying and the prospect of getting to eat McDonald's at the food court several times a week kind of makes me want to retch. Sigh. I'm a week or two away from wearing sensible shoes and elastic waist jeans, I just know it.

9. Ultimately, making a piddling hourly wage is better than nothing at all.


*Yes, I know that I am making sweeping generalizations and that everyone is unique and blah, blah, blah but this is my blog so I can be snarky if I want to. Also, the really cool 14 year old girls are probably not shrieking around my store.

* Yes, the caffeinated sugar monkey is quite the ageist today

Financial Redemption

I was a freshman in college when I got my first credit card. The fine folks at Citibank offered it to me with a $600 limit ( a limit that seemed like a kingly sum at the time) and I got a little shiver when I signed the paperwork. I used the card the day that it came in the mail. I went to the mall specifically to use my new card. I can not, for the life of me, remember what I bought, but I can remember the feeling of using the card. I remember feeling powerful and adult and absolutely certain that I would never, ever carry a balance on it... feel free to begin laughing at me now.

The thing is, I didn't carry a balance on it for months and months, maybe even a year, but then one month I did. I never stopped having a balance after that. Like many college students, I financed my textbooks and groceries and other essentials of undergraduate life (shoes, road trips. pants to go with the shoes, etc) and, like most college students, I graduated with several thousand dollars in credit card debt.

After college, I used credit (because I graduated broke and then went into an education field, where the money isn't big so much) to set up my first apartment, to buy grown up clothes, to try to become a version of what I thought an adult was. Before too long I stopped paying attention to how much debt I had. I had multiple cards and they all had balances but I paid the bills on time and tried to never, ever do the math on how much I really owed. I knew it was high but I didn't want to know for sure.

My early 20's are, financially and otherwise, a little blurry. I had assumed that I would get married right after college and then maybe have some kids right away. Instead, I was very single and I was struggling to figure out who I was, what I valued, how to create a grown up life. I felt, in many ways, seriously out of control and my finances reflected it. By the time I was 25 I finally started doing the math on my debt and was shocked. Shocked and scared. I was seriously in the red. I owed slightly less than my annual salary to the fine folks at Citibank. I had no idea how I got that deep in the hole and no idea how to get myself out.

I was thinking about money and fiscal self control tonight as I logged in 5 hours at my second job. I am, thankfully, in no where near as much debt now as I was two years ago. I still have debt and, according to my best predications, will still have credit card debt for another 18 months or so (I will have student loan debt until I am very, very old) but I feel like every day I get closer to being debt free. I find that the sore feet and the aching knees I get from working at the mall feel sort of virtuous to me right now. I've begun to realize that there is no room for grace in matters of the wallet. I must earn my financial salvation.

I wish that I could attack some other areas of my life with as much vigor as I do my financial health. I believe that I have truly changed in terms of how I view and use money, so I know I have the capability to create change for myself, so I wish that I didn't feel so helpless in the face of changing other aspects of my life. Money has often been a barometer for the rest of my life, so maybe the other changes will follow as I continue to fix/readjust/improve that area. I hope they do.

Tired

I am so tired today. I haven't been sleeping well lately and I feel like it is really starting to catch up with me. I feel weary and listless and flat. I'm not sure why I'm having difficulty sleeping these days. I feel exhausted when I go to bed but then I can't fall asleep or can't sleep deeply. Grr.

I'm going to work out tonight, though I would much rather go home and curl up on the couch and read a magazine while Michael watches Monday Night Football (such wild and crazy nights we newlyweds have). Sometimes I feel like going to the gym is so pointless, but I know I have to do it. Its just that it hasn't felt fun in a long, long time.

Habit

I've developed a little mini-obsession with reading random blogs. I find the next blog button in the upper corner of most blogger pages kind of addicting. There are so many blogs out there- funny ones, crazy porn filled ones, pretentious ones (if the words "musing" or "discourse" or "stream of consciousness" are in the title it is likely to be written by someone who is a little too proud of his or her vocabulary) and, of course, plenty of blogs written by people with only a passing familiarity with the basic rules of grammar and spelling (its hard 2 belive that peple h8t to spell check. ROTFLMAO)

I think I may like topic blogs the best. There is, I am certain, a blog on every topic imaginable. I spent a good deal of time this morning on an Icelandic knitting site. No joke. October was "Socktober" and she had some very nice finished projects to display. My current favorite topic blog is one called "Angry Gonads" that appears to be written by two high school boys whose sole interest in blogging is to explain, in detail, why various members of their high school class "totally suck" and are "dickwads". Hee.

My real obsession though is weight loss blogs. These blogs, which tend to have punny titles like "Why the Weight" or "Weighty Thoughts", are a testament to the comparative weakness of knowledge compared to the power of habit. All of the blogs I've read (and I have read many...things are slooooowwww at work these days) are written by people who clearly understand the basic concept of fewer calories+more exercise= weight loss but, for lots of reasons, struggle to change the way they eat and the ways that they think about eating and food. It is so interesting and frustrating and at times almost heart breaking to read about people in the throes of trying to change themselves. A lot of them have really deep seated food issues and struggle daily to make better choices and to try to care for themselves well. When they are victorious it can be inspiring (though not always. These blogs are not immune from the epidemic of crappy writing that exists on the internet. When someone types: "Woo hoo!!1! I lost 100 pounds as of 2day!!! Now I can go have a donut!!1!!!!...I'm not inspired as much as annoyed) and when they fail, I feel discouraged for them, mostly because they fail in ways that feel familiar.

What is compelling about a lot of these blogs though is the story. The "how I became fat" story. These are stories of habits and desires and cravings and, often, of shame and sadness and anxiety. These are stories of frustration, of "I know I can do better, but I don't". I suspect that is a universal feeling. I suspect that most, if not all of us, have some habit or behavior that we are ambivalent or even ashamed of. Maybe that is why the story interests me. Maybe because the story is familiar. Maybe telling the story is how the habit begins to change. I don't know...but I keep reading.

Overshare

Okay, I know that marriage is all about intimacy and sharing private moments with your beloved, but there are limits right? Some things that are just to personal or embarrassing to share? Some things that are just too weird to do with your partner?

I ask because yesterday Michael and I welcomed a new addition to our home: a shiny, accurate, non-cryptic message giving scale. Well, if I am being honest, I welcomed the scale, while Michael seems to tolerate, just barely, its presence. Anyways, I bought the new scale and, after carefully unwrapping it and setting it on the floor, watched as my husband hoped on and weighed himself.
At least, I think he did. There wasn't any swearing and he didn't seem angry afterwards, so it seems somehow different than when I do it, but different strokes for different folks, right?

He stepped off and than looked at me expectantly.

"Go on, I know you want to weigh yourself"

I hesitated.

"Umm, but you're standing right there..."
" So? You watched me weigh myself"
" Could you close your eyes? Or, you know, leave?"

He declined to leave, citing my previous entry as evidence that I am maybe, just maybe, a little weird about the weighing stuff and that part of the weirdness is the need to be secretive about the process. I can see where he is coming from, but I like my privacy while weighing myself and I like to keep my numbers a secret especially as I was pretty sure that I would end up weighing more than my husband (which I did. Grr. Michael and I are basically the same height and I feel that I should be the lightweight in this relationship but I'm not by at least 20 pounds.)

Now, I know that Michael loves me and finds me attractive (he is very good about reminding me) but it really was uncomfortable for me to weigh myself in front of him. Before I stepped on the scale, I demanded that he promise to still love me, even if I weighed 319 pounds (an arbitrary and unrealistic number. Even I knew I wouldn't weigh 319 pounds). I was mostly joking, but there was a grain of truth there. Sometimes I think that I am somehow an undercover overweight person. Like, if Michael doesn't know what my three numbers are, he, the person who sees me naked everyday, somehow won't realize that I'm bigger than he is and bigger than I should be. Maybe he suspects that I'm not skinny but he just doesn't have proof. Now he has proof.

It is hard, even in a relationship that feels as safe as ours does, to let Michael in on my weirdness about this issue. On the one hand, I am much, much less obsessed with myself and my weight than I was even just a few years ago (hard to imagine, but true) but, on the other, I still have all sorts of rules and rituals and habits that aren't really healthy but are oddly comforting to me but that might be off putting or worrying to him. I suspect that we all have parts of ourselves that we want or need to hide from those closest to us but should we? Are the things we try to hide the things that most need to be exposed? Does trusting your partner mean telling them everything? Any thoughts from any long time married/committed types out there?