“A graduation ceremony is an event where the commencement speaker tells thousands of students dressed in identical caps and gowns that ‘individuality’ is the key to success.”
~ Robert Orben
I’m calm. I’m collected. I’m poised.
I’m freaking out.
Today makes it officially one month until J.’s graduation. Which means that it’s only five months until we’re off to grad school on the opposite side of the country/world. Which means we’re 14 months away from being done with school entirely. Which means we have to grow up, I suppose.
That coherrent look? The product of caffeine, pain killers, and my good friend there holding me upright.
I remember being almost entirely apathetic about my own graduation. Granted, I just got home from a summer “study abroad” to the UK 24 hours previous to the ceremony and was jet-lagged out of my mind. The only reason I participated in the whole cap-and-gown circus was because my parents happened to be in the country visiting friends and family and could actually show up. They took pictures, met J. for the first time, and took us all and my godparents out to breakfast. Fin.
Thus I’m much more excited about his graduation. But just don’t let me think about what comes next…because there is too much to do and I’ll start hyperventilating. Again.
“Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it sure has earned a lot of people graduate degrees.” – Robyn Irving quotes
Yesterday was a big day, my loves. Huge. Well, maybe just for us, but still. Gargantuan.
And he's brilliant too!
We received word back from the last of the grad schools J. applied to, and he got in to all but one – which is completely fine because it’s their loss apparently. He’s into two of the top ten schools for his program in the country, including the number one, and one of the best schools in the world! I’m so ridiculously proud of him it’s a little dizzying.
Now, the fun bit. I thought the hurry-up-and-wait period after submitting the applications was bad, but now we have to make a decision. And after that we have to make a plan that includes a move, financing this adventure, maybe visas, and selling our soul (and possibly our firstborn child) to banks and governments to afford it. That’s all a bit nerve-wracking.
“Bestow thy flickering light forever.” – Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes
You haven’t heard from me much, piglets. Shall I tell you why? And shall we agree that you won’t judge me about it – at least not very much?
Well, as you may recall, J. and I canceled our cable. Our cable company, being the dirty rotten sort that they are, was going to hike our monthly fee to over a hundred dollars! Outrageous! If you haven’t noticed, you can watch most shows online these days (completely legally, even!), so paying $100 for something you can get for free is ludicrous even by cable companies’ skewed logic. We gleefully turned in our modem and bade adieu over a lunch break.
We were sheepishly astonished at how much free time we had after severing all ties. Embarrassed really. J. missed his sports channels, but he has several friends in the area to watch sports with at their houses (his own loving wife having still not quite learned to love ESPN). The real blow for me was giving up PBS (loveof my life). However, using our TV just for movies was a good choice in a lot of ways, and I still had the internet to indulge in this Masterpiece Mystery – speaking of which, have you seen Sherlock yet? No?! Find it and watch it at once.
But then. Then.
J. bought me a digital antenna for Christmas. I now have not one but five PBS channels plus several others this magical little box sitting on our TV stand plucked out of the ether. I like that guy so much.
“The secret to staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age.” – Lucille Ball
J. turned a whole quarter century old yesterday (geezer!). We celebrated with steak, cake, nieces, and nephews. And for some reasons why he’s worth celebrating:
He understands that my friends and I can and will do crazy things. Routinely. And he’s always willing to come along for the ride.
He’s wonderfully reliable and still infinitely interesting.
J.’s nickname for me, despite my legendary Small Dog Syndrome personality condition, is Kitty. Not from any simliarity to my real name, but because apparently I have a cat-like tendancy to hide things. Not consciously, but it would seem that after I use certain things they have the obnoxious habit of vanishing into the ether. I also do admit to tucking somethings away in their “designated place,” the geographic location I immediately forget. This means that our marriage is a constant smorgasbord of rediscovered treasure.
Hairpins turn up in the oddest places, especially considering I almost never use them, but we find bushels of them every time we vacuum or dust. Pens! Everywhere! They breed in my pockets, purses, and cup holders. Despite practically never carrying cash, coins (of mutiple currencies!) rain from me like I’m some fairytale maiden who got on a witch’s good side. I lose my glasses at least once a day. They have been found, variously, in my jewelry case, under the couch, in the shower, beneath my pillow, and in my purse which both of us had searched thouroughly four times previous only to finding them smugly nestled besides my wallet. The possibilities truly are endless. And without fail, whever something turns up from somewhere it doesn’t belong, J. rounds on me with a pointed finger and an accusatory voice. “Kitty!”
Just so we’re clear, and so my mother doesn’t wring her hands and ask where she went wrong, our house is not dirty. That’s the amazing part. We’re minimalistic in our decor, specifically because neither of us like clutter. We deep clean once a week. There is absolutely nothing to attract the wildlife. People comment on its cleanlines when they come over. And yet, when I go to plump the pillows – voila! That book I misplaced a week ago.
And apparently the way to really unearth all the things I’ve “mislaid” is to install new windows.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful. Our old windows were nearly a half century old, leaked heat out, let cold seep in, and were generally a source of larger than necessary utility bills. The largest one in our flat faces west and made summers in the desert a misery! It got so hot during summer that our blinds would melt – or at least warp to a fantastic and almost unuseable degree. So, new windows equalled better utility costs, temperatures human beings can survive at, and less destruction of our abode. Plus someone else was installing them. Terrific!
Saturday morning at 8:30am (who does that? On a weekend!) my phone shattered the tranquility. The landlords told us the contractors wou!d be by in an hour to rip massive holes in our walls.
“J.! Get up! Clean everything! Move move move!”
Despicably undomestic as I am, I’ve got enough feminine pride/residual 1950s guilt to not want total strangers see my house a “shambles.” Poor J. was dragged from his bed and forced to dismantle window blinds while I made the bed, dusted (before a bunch of workman came to chip away my windows…yeah…) and fell to scrubbing even the bathroom with religious fervor.
It was when we invaded the office/storage space/Room of Requirement that things started turning up. Piles of papers neither of us could identify. Chords to appliances we have never owned. Boxes for things we never ordered. A couple of cups we never missed. Ribbons, Christmas gifts bought months ago, a couple of paintings… J. was laughing uproariously by the time we finished. We’d thrown out masses of stuff and I’d taken to sulking from his teasing. “Kitty!”
Then we headed back to the front room to move the couches. And found sweet, sweet justice.
Beneath the sofa I found an external hard drive, a leather business folder, two textbooks, and a pile of notes. All J.’s. The dumbfounded look on his face was priceless. I danced in a circle around him crowing, “You’re a kitty! You’re a kitty!”
Naturally ten minutes later, he found my glasses. Again. The status quo resumed.
…where J. has asked C. to quiz him on information for his business law class’ upcoming exam. For some clarification of the following snippets, it is helpful to note that his study guide seems to have been compiled by blind monkeys tap dancing on a typewriter. Let’s listen in, shall we?
“Name the conditions for unconscionability.”
“One party is Comcast?”
“Focus.”
~~~
“Talk to me about minors.”
[J. grins slowly]
“Not the ones in Chile!”
~~~
“Term meaning that the Court will leave you as it finds you.”
“…”
“Impere-” “Delecto. I was mixing that up with In flagrante delicto, but I knew that wasn’t right.”
“Um, no. No it’s not.”
~~~
“What is a ‘covenant not to complete?'”
“Uh, I think you mean ‘compete.'”
“Look. It says ‘complete,’ right there.”
“Oh, so it does. It’s wrong, though.”
“I could write a more coherent study guide than this!”
~~~
“Help, help, I’m being duressed!”
~~~
“Hold on! Are they making up legal terms?”
“Looks like it.”
“But they can’t do that! ‘Assign-ee?’ ‘Offer-or?’ ‘Oblige-or?’ These sound like video game character names! And I’ve counted six spelling mistakes on this page alone.
“Calm down, C..”
“I can’t! This is wrong!”
~~~
“That reminds me! Have I showed you that YouTube clip -”
“Focus, J..”
“The one from the Simpsons?”
“Don’t.”
“It’s funny!”
“I don’t care.”
“You need to see it -”
“Pay attention or I will papercut you to death with this thing, so help me!”
“I don’t like to eat snails. I prefer fast food.” – Roger van Oech
J. eats three or four times as much as I do. He buys junk food and, if left to his own devices, would subsist on mac and cheese (the evil boxed kind that I like to think of as the spit of Satan), frozen burritos, and ramen bowls. He chows down on hot dogs, burgers, and any form of fast food he can get his hands on. If I don’t dish out dinner, he’d never eat vegetables.
Minor annoyance 1 – he’s LOST weight since we’ve been married
Minor annoyance 2 – I twit him about his eating habits from time to time, but now I’ve lost the right. Our insurance pays for us to get our cholesterol, glucose, and other blood levels tested for free once a year. Our results just came back. He’s in perfect health. Curses.
“If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.” – Woody Allen
Oh, C., you and your plans! So droll!
Ever feel like God/the Universe/Fate/Whatever is doing that thing when you make plans and They laugh at you? Well, recently it’s felt like God/the Universe/Fate/Whatever has been having a benevolent but enthusiastic chuckle at our expense. Plans that we make, good plans, solid plans, with all necessary effort behind them to accomplish them, have just…not been happening.
Not to sound vain, but this is really the first time in my life that I’ve come up against so many game-changers (not counting my university’s Football team). I don’t know if that means I’ve been extremely clever, extremely lucky, or more than extremely pig-headed about getting what I plan on…but likely some combination of the latter two.
But I digress. Yesterday, the God/the Universe/Fate/Whatever decided that It had had enough of yanking our chains and allowed our hard work and single minded effort to pay off. Wiping the last of laughter tears from Its eyes, It gave a last little sigh of amusement and waved Its finger benevolently at us.
J. has an internship!
Granted it’s not the one we’d thought he’d have, but that’s not a bad thing. If he’d gotten the one we originally wanted, he’d have been shipped off somewhere for 6-8 weeks and I’d have stayed behind holding down the home front. Perfectly doable, but not at all fun (and the amount of Netflix I’d have consumed would have been perfectly shocking by any standards). But now he’s got an internship with a Fortune 500 company, local, that pays very well, and adds additional sparkle to his resume.
By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you’ll be happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.
– Socrates
Confession time. I was an excellent girlfriend when J. and I were dating. I was independent, clever, fun to be around, liked trying new things, was optimistic, and supportive (oh, and definitely humble). By anyone’s standards I really was a catch.
Alternatively, I’m starting to think that I really suck at being a wife.
To start out with, I am stressed all the time…but I think this is pretty understandable. When we got married, I assumed the rent, food, utilities, car payments, insurance, two credit cards, and the general livelihood of two people, solely by myself. Just so we are clear I am happy to do this, but I can’t lie, it’s an awfully big pressure. I live in fear of unlikely events (pregnancy, job loss, etc.) because of how it will affect my family. It’s a Great Big Worry to carry around all by myself and I confess, I probably exacerbate the stress by trying (in all my control freak, Small Dog glory) to plan and be prepared for every eventuality. Which is, of course, impossible.
It’s also very hard for me to adjust my thinking to his. His life revolves around school, I graduated two years ago and now work full time. Most of his friends still live in the area or within an hour’s driving, most of my friends (exception of Margot and Angel) are in different states/countries and my nearby family is pretty busy these days. Honestly, it can get terribly lonely working a subsistence job, having a thinned out support system, and bearing the financial weight of two people. I’ve always been pretty good at entertaining myself, keeping myself busy, but honestly it’s downright exhausting these days.
This stress builds up to the point the small things violate my sense of order. If the rubbish isn’t taken out when I ask, if the house is a mess, if I have a bad day at work, or if…you get the idea. Complete transformation into a snarling Gorgon.
Small things become massive disappointments, such as when J. applied for a job and didn’t get it (even though they wanted him) because he’s graduating in six months and they want someone for longer.
I have a sneaking suspicion that I’m not fun to be married to these days. I’m worried, shrewish, tired, easily irritated…I’m the exact opposite of what I was as a girlfriend. And even though I’m sure a good chunk of this can be tied to my birth control being out of whack, I’m feeling miserable about it.
“Nature’s all well in her place, but she mustn’t be allowed to make things untidy.”
– Cold Comfort Farm
Pictured: Summer, after a particularly impressive bender.
Of course, summer is moving towards its inevitable end. Though not quite in her death throes, she’s sensing that they’re not far off and so is looking to have a last fling with a boy a third of her age, wear skirts that are far too short, and spend all her money rather than let her grasping nephew Fall get a penny of it. In other words, generally behaving badly.
The other day J. called me up.
“Are you coming home for lunch?” he asked.
“Wasn’t planning on it. Why?”
“Because you need to go to the store.”
“Again, why?”
“Because you need to pick up ant traps and spray.”
Summer's attack German Shepherd. And although I didn't catch a glimpse of this guy, I am sure he was lurking back behind the suitcases.
Augh! Apparently ants had descended on our flat. They were crawling in from a closet runner, bent on global domination (For the record, Mum, our flat is in no way in a state to attract the wildlife, please don’t wring your hands and bemoan anything). Anyway, I dashed home armed with chemicals, J. vacuumed everything, sprayed and booby-trapped our closet to the point that those famed nuclear-resistant cockroaches of lore couldn’t survive, and we waited with baited breath to see if it had worked. So far, nary a six-legged fiend has been sighted.
However, marshalling the ants to send them indoors was only Old Lady Summer getting drunk at her granddaughter’s wedding. She finished the night by climbing up on the buffet table, shaking her bon-bon, and collapsing spectacularly into the punch.
That night we had a massive lightning storm. I read later that in a half hour period we had nearly 150 lightning strikes in the area. And unlike normal storms, where the flashes and rumbles are spaced out a bit, this was explosion after explosion for hours. Neither J. nor I slept because every few seconds our whole room would light up and it would sound like someone had cracked a whip right next to our heads. And this sort of weather has continued, with varying degrees of intensity, for the last three days now. The power was knocked out yesterday, making getting home from work a nightmare.
Small Dog gets Summered-out.
Summer and I have a middling relationship. Round about February of each year I whine and long for sunlight, but as soon as we’ve made it through July, I start glaring at bank signs along the road with their publicly displayed roasting temperatures and start mumbling things like, “October sounds good. I could do October right now.”
*Photo of cracked old biddy, from mygutinstinct.wordpress.com *Photo of the vile insect invader, still from the 1954 film Them!
*Photo of my approximate face come mi-August from: findavet.us/blog/2010/04/how-to-keep-your-dog-safe-in-the-heat/
yet? No?! Find it and watch it at once.
Small Dog Syndrome 