From the depths... an update. Warning: ridiculously long.
Apparently it’s been six weeks since I last updated. Thanks to a Dragons for the nudge. I feel like I should say something about why I haven’t been updating… I guess the simple reason is that I’ve been really busy, and I tend to assume the stuff I’ve been busy with isn’t going to be all that interesting to people who aren’t me. Not that I ever claimed this space would be filled exclusively with exciting reading. Anyway, while some of it is stuff I personally find exciting, it’s all very mundane and specific to my exact life.
But apparently some folk out there are, in fact, interested in hearing about it. And if you aren’t, please just skip and continue with your more interesting flisties. No offense taken.
Let’s see, where to start. Well. Let’s just divide it up into the major areas into which my attentions get focused.
Guess I’ll start with easy one. Work is all right. I go there eight hours a day and try to get my stuff done. I spend more time than I should doing wedding planning stuff there, because most of the places I need to get in touch with are open during working hours, but I'm trying not to take advantage of Acronym.org or let my projects slip because of it.
There's some ongoing drama simmering, and occasionally it flares up into unpleasantness, but any time I get upset about it, I think back to EvilCorps and thank my lucky stars to be elsewhere. I also keep in mind that between finishing my MLS and the subsequent (I hope) move into a job in a library, and various other plans to be discussed later, I probably won't be here for more than another three years, if that. It makes it easier to deal with the lack of room for promotion and development within the organization when I know that I'm not trying to continue in the publishing profession, but move somewhere else.
School is supremely annoying to me this term. I'm taking Young Adult Literature, which is a subject I love. My teacher is fine-new to teaching this course, but not a new teacher. She works in a middle school library and knows her stuff, but the class definitely has a school library slant (I'm aiming at public libraries), but that's not a huge issue either. I have two main problems with the class.
The first is the reading list, which is 82 books long. YA is generally known to be the course with the heaviest reading load, but even compared to the other instructors' syllabi, this one is out of control. The only other teacher who has a list this long works on a "here are five books for the week, pick three to read" basis. In this class, we are expected to read every book every week-five or six a week for 15 weeks. It's ridiculous and impossible, especially if you have a job or a family or another class, and of course all of us have some combination of these distractions from our reading.
Gennie (two kids and a part-time job) and I (full-time job, wedding to plan) have devised a way to split the reading and summarize the books for each other so that we each have least one positive and negative talking point for each book; we then arrive to class early so we get the pick of the discussion groups so we can make sure to get into groups for books we've actually read. But still, even with the book split I pretty much spend all my time reading, when I'm not working, doing wedding planning stuff, doing life-maintenance stuff, or trying to get some time with Marc.
The second problem is the population of the class, which has a higher percentage of morons, bigots, and people who have views generally accepted as contrary to library values that it makes me wonder what they're doing in a library program. In a YA class, it's shocking to me to have people speculate aloud about how best to keep a book like Forever away from the kids in her high school. Not to mention the one who says things like "I get really sick of these so-called 'ethnic minorities' complaining about how Americans [and by "Americans," contextually, she meant "white people"] misrepresent their cultures in books. They should be happy about how many more books there are about their cultures these days." Not to mention her pervasive homophobia, and that of several other women in the class. *shakes fist*
And it's not just the politics. It's that so many of them are just not smart. I think I've been spoiled, hanging out as I do with so many really smart people, both in real life and online. And most of the people in my other classes have been very sharp. But here, there's just a large proportion of this class who could probably not outsmart a doorknob.
Whatever. Six more weeks.
Marc is wonderful. I think the last time I updated was to freak out about how I was moving that weekend and had very little help. So, yeah. Moving sucked, but in the end it worked out. And I love living with Marc, which is the most important part.
I'm not crazy about the part where there's not enough room in our place for my stuff, and so the living/dining room currently is filled with 20 (no, seriously, I counted and am not exaggerating) boxes of my stuff that we can't unpack because there's no place to put it. But we're working on that. All my essential stuff is unpacked, and our kitchen is all set up. The stuff that's still boxed is mostly books and bedding. Nonessentials that I would still really like to have out of the living room. This weekend we're ordering a bunch of bookshelves that should help with the problem.
Of course, at some point I'm going to either sell or rent my condo, and then there will be a bunch more furniture needing a place to go, but we have a rental storage space where some of the extras can go, and we plan to give a lot away.
But anyway, this was supposed to be about Marc. He's fantastic, and I am generally very happy. I only say "generally" because my stress and anxiety levels are constantly high because of all the other stuff going on, and I tend toward biweekly meltdowns. But they're not because I'm unhappy about my life, just that I'm unhappy about a particular situation. (OMG no one has even tried to LOOK at my condo in three weeks… It's never going to sell.)
But I love seeing Marc every single day, and I'm happy that I'm enjoying that so much. I've lived alone for almost 15 years, and I was worried that I would have trouble adjusting to sharing space, or feel crowded or whatever. But I don't. I feel happy to see him and talk with him, happy to look after him, happy to have him doing the same for me. It's great.
Big surprise, planning a wedding is a nearly full-time job (and kind of a pain-in-the-ass full-time job at that), and I'm having trouble balancing it with my first full-time job and my class and all the other stuff. But I'm making progress.
We've got the space (both ceremony and reception will be there, and it's owned by a photographer who will shoot for us) and the rabbi, so even if nothing else comes together, Marc and I can still get married on the specified date. I've got a dress that I love, in which I feel like myself, rather than like me in a Bride costume. And it was a ridiculously good deal (yay samples!), won't need much alteration, and makes me look like a curvy glass of champagne, to quote the saleslady.
We're signing with a florist this weekend, and have a tasting set up with our first-pick caterer, and today I'll set one up with our second choice. I expect we'll sign with one of them by the middle of November. We have invitations picked out and just need to do a bit of work with the text of the RSVP cards (will depend on the caterer and what entrees we choose) before we can order them. Marc's interviewing bands, and we should have one picked and signed by the end of November.
So that's the logistics. Aside from organizing and researching and doing all the legwork on all that stuff, I've got some pretty significant emotional shit going on about the wedding that I think I won't go into in depth here. It's mostly related to my personal value system and hang-ups around money and associated issues, the class differences between my family and Marc's, and my general weariness of feeling like I'm compromising on every single part of this event, which has from the start, not been the kind of wedding I imagined for myself. Me, I've always figured I'd go to the courthouse with the immediate family and then have a nice dinner somewhere with no more than 50 people. It's not that I dislike or disagree with what we're doing instead, but I just feel like the volume on every aspect of it has been turned up to 11, and it's deafening and overwhelming to me. Blah blah blah. It's the tale of woe of 90% of people who have weddings.
I also… I don't know. My mother is trying to be supportive, I can tell. And she's making our chuppa, which is so beautiful, and she's loving doing it, and it makes me really happy to have her do something so well-suited to her talents that will be part of our ceremony. But she can't help but roll her eyes and groan and make other commentary about the whole event, and I know that she DOES NOT WANT and doesn't fully understand that this is just the way it's going to be. So every time I get pressure from Marc's family to do something fancier or more traditional, I get equal and opposite pressure from my mother to either do nothing, do the bare minimum, or do something that flies in the face of tradition just to be contrary.
It's all exhausting, and basically I wish I could fast forward and just be married already. But I'm trying to enjoy it where I can (Flowers and dresses are pretty! Invitations look so cool! We're going to take dance lessons! So many friends and family all together at one time!), to vent when I have to (special thanks to liptonrm, who has been on the receiving end of these outbursts far too often), have a good cry every once in a while, and remember how much I want to be married to Marc. Which is a lot. :-) And again, once I get there, I think it'll be great. I could just do with one less job, you know?
So, yeah. Geekspawn. We're going to try to have a baby pretty much ASAP. If we were ten years younger, we'd probably wait a few years, but we're not. I'm going to be 39 in two months. I am no longer a spring chicken, and these things only get more and more difficult and complicated. I'm slightly freaked out but happy. My main concern-so shallow!-is that if I miraculously get pregnant within the first couple months of trying, I probably won't be able to wear the wedding dress I bought. But that would be a pretty happy inconvenience to deal with.
I'm also kind of freaked out because, well, to be perfectly frank, I've spent the last twenty years trying really hard NOT to get pregnant, and it kind of goes against my instincts to have sex without any contraception.
Um. Yeah. Even more TMI to come.
So I went off the pill in August and spent a few months tracking my cycle to make sure everything's working normally, which it appears to be doing. So I'm in the middle of my period now, and once that's cleared up, we will officially move into the "trying to knock me up" phase of this wacky plan.
And of course I'm worried about what we'll do if I can't get pregnant, and what the plan will be if/when I do. And it's changed my plan for finishing school a bit. I had been fantasizing about taking next term off school to deal with wedding stuff, but have decided not to. I'm going to take an online course, I think, and try to work ahead and with the prof to deal with the fact that I'll be out of commission for a week or two around midterms. Then if I take two condensed courses this summer, one each shortened term, and one class next fall, I'll have my degree in December. And if I do get pregnant and am due before then, I'll take off the term in which the baby will be due and try to finish up as soon as possible afterward. And if I don't get pregnant in the next year, well, I'll have my degree and can start looking for library work.
Oh, yeah, and we're totally going to have to find somewhere bigger to live if we have a kid because there's no room for any more stuff in our place! We could probably pull it off as long as Jim-Jim isn't mobile, but will need to be in a larger space before year one for sure. So we're idly looking at single family homes around our neighborhood and cringing about how expensive they are, and I'm cringing about how badly I need to sell my condo in order to make any money on it that could be used toward a down payment.
And blah, blah, blah. I kinda love the idea of Marc and me and little Jim-Jim, our geekspawn.
Marc's sister got married in Philadelphia on October 15. Courthouse ceremony followed by intimate family dinner, then larger dinner for about 40 on Saturday. I was envious because see above re: my ideal wedding. But, simplicity envy aside, it was a fantastic time. I'm really lucky with my in-laws. His sister can be overly blunt, and his parents a bit traditional, but they are so welcoming and smart and generous and just good, good people, so I can't complain much. Marc's mother went dress shopping with me, which was ridiculously nice and fun and bondy.
This past Sunday was Carolyn and Rich's (the s-i-l and b-i-l)'s Chicago reception, hosted by Marc's parents. It was a pretty good preview of what ours will be like. Much fancier and more traditional than the Philly party. Cake, band, toasts, first dances, etc. There were about90 people there, and I got some previews of our guests, as well as some practice making small talk with near strangers who are very excited to meet me. So that was good. Also overwhelming, but good. From Rich, I picked up several very good all-purpose lines to use: "Thank you for celebrating with us" and "You'll have to ask my husband about that" (except he defers to his wife). I also learned that I will absolutely have to wear my hair up because my nape and neck were all sweaty within about ten minutes and that did not make me feel confident and lovely.
So. Geeezz. That was really long. But there's the my-life update.
In other news, Marc and I have no TV, except as a vehicle for playing DVDs. So I haven't been able to watch Supernatural live all season, which makes me sad. I've been enjoying it quite a lot but haven't had much to say about it, either in terms of commentary or fic. I suspect this is because of my very limited time resources and my general feeling of having said what I have to say about the universe, fictionally speaking. I'm enjoying reading what you all are saying about Show, though, and occasionally even sneak in a bit of fic, but rarely.
Anyway. That's me. Much love to you all.
But apparently some folk out there are, in fact, interested in hearing about it. And if you aren’t, please just skip and continue with your more interesting flisties. No offense taken.
Let’s see, where to start. Well. Let’s just divide it up into the major areas into which my attentions get focused.
Guess I’ll start with easy one. Work is all right. I go there eight hours a day and try to get my stuff done. I spend more time than I should doing wedding planning stuff there, because most of the places I need to get in touch with are open during working hours, but I'm trying not to take advantage of Acronym.org or let my projects slip because of it.
There's some ongoing drama simmering, and occasionally it flares up into unpleasantness, but any time I get upset about it, I think back to EvilCorps and thank my lucky stars to be elsewhere. I also keep in mind that between finishing my MLS and the subsequent (I hope) move into a job in a library, and various other plans to be discussed later, I probably won't be here for more than another three years, if that. It makes it easier to deal with the lack of room for promotion and development within the organization when I know that I'm not trying to continue in the publishing profession, but move somewhere else.
School is supremely annoying to me this term. I'm taking Young Adult Literature, which is a subject I love. My teacher is fine-new to teaching this course, but not a new teacher. She works in a middle school library and knows her stuff, but the class definitely has a school library slant (I'm aiming at public libraries), but that's not a huge issue either. I have two main problems with the class.
The first is the reading list, which is 82 books long. YA is generally known to be the course with the heaviest reading load, but even compared to the other instructors' syllabi, this one is out of control. The only other teacher who has a list this long works on a "here are five books for the week, pick three to read" basis. In this class, we are expected to read every book every week-five or six a week for 15 weeks. It's ridiculous and impossible, especially if you have a job or a family or another class, and of course all of us have some combination of these distractions from our reading.
Gennie (two kids and a part-time job) and I (full-time job, wedding to plan) have devised a way to split the reading and summarize the books for each other so that we each have least one positive and negative talking point for each book; we then arrive to class early so we get the pick of the discussion groups so we can make sure to get into groups for books we've actually read. But still, even with the book split I pretty much spend all my time reading, when I'm not working, doing wedding planning stuff, doing life-maintenance stuff, or trying to get some time with Marc.
The second problem is the population of the class, which has a higher percentage of morons, bigots, and people who have views generally accepted as contrary to library values that it makes me wonder what they're doing in a library program. In a YA class, it's shocking to me to have people speculate aloud about how best to keep a book like Forever away from the kids in her high school. Not to mention the one who says things like "I get really sick of these so-called 'ethnic minorities' complaining about how Americans [and by "Americans," contextually, she meant "white people"] misrepresent their cultures in books. They should be happy about how many more books there are about their cultures these days." Not to mention her pervasive homophobia, and that of several other women in the class. *shakes fist*
And it's not just the politics. It's that so many of them are just not smart. I think I've been spoiled, hanging out as I do with so many really smart people, both in real life and online. And most of the people in my other classes have been very sharp. But here, there's just a large proportion of this class who could probably not outsmart a doorknob.
Whatever. Six more weeks.
Marc is wonderful. I think the last time I updated was to freak out about how I was moving that weekend and had very little help. So, yeah. Moving sucked, but in the end it worked out. And I love living with Marc, which is the most important part.
I'm not crazy about the part where there's not enough room in our place for my stuff, and so the living/dining room currently is filled with 20 (no, seriously, I counted and am not exaggerating) boxes of my stuff that we can't unpack because there's no place to put it. But we're working on that. All my essential stuff is unpacked, and our kitchen is all set up. The stuff that's still boxed is mostly books and bedding. Nonessentials that I would still really like to have out of the living room. This weekend we're ordering a bunch of bookshelves that should help with the problem.
Of course, at some point I'm going to either sell or rent my condo, and then there will be a bunch more furniture needing a place to go, but we have a rental storage space where some of the extras can go, and we plan to give a lot away.
But anyway, this was supposed to be about Marc. He's fantastic, and I am generally very happy. I only say "generally" because my stress and anxiety levels are constantly high because of all the other stuff going on, and I tend toward biweekly meltdowns. But they're not because I'm unhappy about my life, just that I'm unhappy about a particular situation. (OMG no one has even tried to LOOK at my condo in three weeks… It's never going to sell.)
But I love seeing Marc every single day, and I'm happy that I'm enjoying that so much. I've lived alone for almost 15 years, and I was worried that I would have trouble adjusting to sharing space, or feel crowded or whatever. But I don't. I feel happy to see him and talk with him, happy to look after him, happy to have him doing the same for me. It's great.
Big surprise, planning a wedding is a nearly full-time job (and kind of a pain-in-the-ass full-time job at that), and I'm having trouble balancing it with my first full-time job and my class and all the other stuff. But I'm making progress.
We've got the space (both ceremony and reception will be there, and it's owned by a photographer who will shoot for us) and the rabbi, so even if nothing else comes together, Marc and I can still get married on the specified date. I've got a dress that I love, in which I feel like myself, rather than like me in a Bride costume. And it was a ridiculously good deal (yay samples!), won't need much alteration, and makes me look like a curvy glass of champagne, to quote the saleslady.
We're signing with a florist this weekend, and have a tasting set up with our first-pick caterer, and today I'll set one up with our second choice. I expect we'll sign with one of them by the middle of November. We have invitations picked out and just need to do a bit of work with the text of the RSVP cards (will depend on the caterer and what entrees we choose) before we can order them. Marc's interviewing bands, and we should have one picked and signed by the end of November.
So that's the logistics. Aside from organizing and researching and doing all the legwork on all that stuff, I've got some pretty significant emotional shit going on about the wedding that I think I won't go into in depth here. It's mostly related to my personal value system and hang-ups around money and associated issues, the class differences between my family and Marc's, and my general weariness of feeling like I'm compromising on every single part of this event, which has from the start, not been the kind of wedding I imagined for myself. Me, I've always figured I'd go to the courthouse with the immediate family and then have a nice dinner somewhere with no more than 50 people. It's not that I dislike or disagree with what we're doing instead, but I just feel like the volume on every aspect of it has been turned up to 11, and it's deafening and overwhelming to me. Blah blah blah. It's the tale of woe of 90% of people who have weddings.
I also… I don't know. My mother is trying to be supportive, I can tell. And she's making our chuppa, which is so beautiful, and she's loving doing it, and it makes me really happy to have her do something so well-suited to her talents that will be part of our ceremony. But she can't help but roll her eyes and groan and make other commentary about the whole event, and I know that she DOES NOT WANT and doesn't fully understand that this is just the way it's going to be. So every time I get pressure from Marc's family to do something fancier or more traditional, I get equal and opposite pressure from my mother to either do nothing, do the bare minimum, or do something that flies in the face of tradition just to be contrary.
It's all exhausting, and basically I wish I could fast forward and just be married already. But I'm trying to enjoy it where I can (Flowers and dresses are pretty! Invitations look so cool! We're going to take dance lessons! So many friends and family all together at one time!), to vent when I have to (special thanks to liptonrm, who has been on the receiving end of these outbursts far too often), have a good cry every once in a while, and remember how much I want to be married to Marc. Which is a lot. :-) And again, once I get there, I think it'll be great. I could just do with one less job, you know?
So, yeah. Geekspawn. We're going to try to have a baby pretty much ASAP. If we were ten years younger, we'd probably wait a few years, but we're not. I'm going to be 39 in two months. I am no longer a spring chicken, and these things only get more and more difficult and complicated. I'm slightly freaked out but happy. My main concern-so shallow!-is that if I miraculously get pregnant within the first couple months of trying, I probably won't be able to wear the wedding dress I bought. But that would be a pretty happy inconvenience to deal with.
I'm also kind of freaked out because, well, to be perfectly frank, I've spent the last twenty years trying really hard NOT to get pregnant, and it kind of goes against my instincts to have sex without any contraception.
Um. Yeah. Even more TMI to come.
So I went off the pill in August and spent a few months tracking my cycle to make sure everything's working normally, which it appears to be doing. So I'm in the middle of my period now, and once that's cleared up, we will officially move into the "trying to knock me up" phase of this wacky plan.
And of course I'm worried about what we'll do if I can't get pregnant, and what the plan will be if/when I do. And it's changed my plan for finishing school a bit. I had been fantasizing about taking next term off school to deal with wedding stuff, but have decided not to. I'm going to take an online course, I think, and try to work ahead and with the prof to deal with the fact that I'll be out of commission for a week or two around midterms. Then if I take two condensed courses this summer, one each shortened term, and one class next fall, I'll have my degree in December. And if I do get pregnant and am due before then, I'll take off the term in which the baby will be due and try to finish up as soon as possible afterward. And if I don't get pregnant in the next year, well, I'll have my degree and can start looking for library work.
Oh, yeah, and we're totally going to have to find somewhere bigger to live if we have a kid because there's no room for any more stuff in our place! We could probably pull it off as long as Jim-Jim isn't mobile, but will need to be in a larger space before year one for sure. So we're idly looking at single family homes around our neighborhood and cringing about how expensive they are, and I'm cringing about how badly I need to sell my condo in order to make any money on it that could be used toward a down payment.
And blah, blah, blah. I kinda love the idea of Marc and me and little Jim-Jim, our geekspawn.
Marc's sister got married in Philadelphia on October 15. Courthouse ceremony followed by intimate family dinner, then larger dinner for about 40 on Saturday. I was envious because see above re: my ideal wedding. But, simplicity envy aside, it was a fantastic time. I'm really lucky with my in-laws. His sister can be overly blunt, and his parents a bit traditional, but they are so welcoming and smart and generous and just good, good people, so I can't complain much. Marc's mother went dress shopping with me, which was ridiculously nice and fun and bondy.
This past Sunday was Carolyn and Rich's (the s-i-l and b-i-l)'s Chicago reception, hosted by Marc's parents. It was a pretty good preview of what ours will be like. Much fancier and more traditional than the Philly party. Cake, band, toasts, first dances, etc. There were about90 people there, and I got some previews of our guests, as well as some practice making small talk with near strangers who are very excited to meet me. So that was good. Also overwhelming, but good. From Rich, I picked up several very good all-purpose lines to use: "Thank you for celebrating with us" and "You'll have to ask my husband about that" (except he defers to his wife). I also learned that I will absolutely have to wear my hair up because my nape and neck were all sweaty within about ten minutes and that did not make me feel confident and lovely.
So. Geeezz. That was really long. But there's the my-life update.
In other news, Marc and I have no TV, except as a vehicle for playing DVDs. So I haven't been able to watch Supernatural live all season, which makes me sad. I've been enjoying it quite a lot but haven't had much to say about it, either in terms of commentary or fic. I suspect this is because of my very limited time resources and my general feeling of having said what I have to say about the universe, fictionally speaking. I'm enjoying reading what you all are saying about Show, though, and occasionally even sneak in a bit of fic, but rarely.
Anyway. That's me. Much love to you all.