Houston, we have a problem...

There is this thing called 'nesting' to which I have been recently introduced.  Nesting is usually defined as something a pregnant lady does ("Baby is coming. Must clean!!!"), but it is not uncommon for newlywed wives to also have this urge to build a home.

Feminists would absolutely balk at this.  That would mean that women are instinctually mothers.  I wonder how they explain their sudden needs to clean and decorate.  I believe that women are generally hardwired to lean toward certain tendencies that define what is feminine.  Nesting is certainly one of those things.

Nesting is a LOT of fun if you can do it.  You clean and de-clutter and rearrange and decorate.  You make the space that is yours much more your own.  You get this sudden urge to make it better.  Make it perfect.  Scrubbing, painting, moving, selling, giving away, buying.  Revamping!

Just this past weekend, my hubby and I made the move from his grandmother's basement to his parents' house.  We are switching places with them.  I use the term 'switching' in the present participle because we are still in the process.  To give you an indication, my man and I agreed at lunch that moving into an empty house is much easier.  That's why I'm calling Houston about a problem.  My nester is jammed!

Part of my problem is that I've had a long time to imagine (fantasize?) about what I could do with the space once we decided we had made the trade.  I think I have arrived at many unrealistic visions for not only our current monetary situation but also the shape of the space.  Not to mention, my vision is not like my husbands.  We had a funny moment the other day about his posters.  Michael has quite a collection of posters.  We moved the TV into place and looked at the blank wall space above it.  Michael wanted something there, and he said he had something in mind but I wouldn't like it.  He was right!  It was a Simpsons poster that looked like the Soprano's logo.  I'm ok with that in the computer room, I said, but not the living room.

Yet, my husband is the best thing for me during this.  My jammed nester is both frustrating and overwhelming to me.  There is so much left to do!  Michael calmly tells me to take it one room at a time, assures me we will get it done, and instructs me not to take on the whole house at once or I will breakdown (like I did today at lunch!).  His logic is good for my emotions.  :)

Tonight, we go home to unpack some more and make room for our wedding gifts which have been sitting unopened in my parents' basement since the wedding.  At some point, we'll un-bury our boxes of kitchen stuff and we'll buy groceries so I can start cooking and baking.  SO EXCITED for that.

Until next time, I'll be nesting and packing and unpacking and trying my best to keep my nester unjammed.

Life as I know it

There are so many events that make up life.  It's just overwhelming to think about.  Do you ever listen to the stories from your grandparents?  Or even your parents?  They have really experienced so much in life.  All those events that happen seemingly 'stand alone' make up life.  They also make for an entertaining afternoon talking in the living room.

Right now, I'm just starting to really collect those experiences.  I hope I will have some entertaining ones.  I want my grandkids to tell my stories to all of their awesome friends.

This is not what I really wanted to post, but I don't have the pictures downloaded yet that I want to share, so this is what I'm posting!

May 11th, against our better judgment and original plans, we bought a dog.  Our original plan was to buy a dog when one of us could be home all day so the dog could be trained properly.  One day while I was waiting for something at work before I could do my job, I wandered onto craigslist.com to fill the time and went to the pets section.  At the top I found this ad with 3 pictures of adorable puppies.  Husky/Lab/Mastiff mixes. Four months old. $50.  I sent the link to my husband and minutes later got a call with, 'How could you send that to me?  I want to go get one.' We talked a little bit and arranged to go see them and well...we came home with Kuma.

Kuma means bear in Japanese. He was the mellowest of the puppies, but he'd also already gotten into a lot of trouble before we bought him!  He had surgery for intestinal blockage after he chewed off and swallowed carpet foam padding.  Also, a short time before we got him he had chewed on a TV cable and burnt his lip.  We think maybe that's why he's so mellow...Maybe.  Maybe he's just sneaky that way.

He really is a pretty well behaved dog.  He's caught on to potty training pretty well.  Sometimes if we're not paying attention, he decides he can't hold it anymore and we find a puddle but that is becoming less and less frequent.  He is also a scaredy dog.  We've found that he might be terrified of open spaces.  When I take him out in all of the green grass by the ballfield, he puts his ears back, tucks his tail, and bolts (as far as the leash will let him).  Poor thing.  If I can figure out how to mobile post, I'll try to post a picture from my phone of our adorable puppy. 

My husband and I are still living in his grandmother's basement, waiting to move.  We will be approaching 2 months of marriage soon.  We have lived all except one week (our honeymoon) in the basement.  This is the reason why it was against our better judgment to go ahead and buy a dog.  This long process is getting quite stressful on all of the parties involved.  Communication skills are being tested to the max.  Personally, eating out has worn off it's appeal.  I long to have a kitchen!  Yet, despite our impatience and frustration, we are provided for where we are at even if it's not what we'd like. 

I am playing softball this summer!  This is the first time I've taken part in an organized sport (if you don't count dance/dance team).  It's fun.  :)  I get butterflies in my stomach before the games.  Last Tuesday, I struck out but we still won handily!  If I play on the field, I play catcher which I enjoy.  Not a lot of pressure. Heehee....

These are just a few of the things going on in my life right now.  Maybe someday, I will tell my grandkids in the living room about what my life was like and they will be amazed. :D 

Deadlines and Extensions

In college, the joke about deadlines was, "I like deadlines.  I like the 'wooshing' sound they make as they go by."  While hilarious, that of course was not the way I usually operated.  I cherished those As and Bs I got.  When I couldn't make a deadline, I got an extension.  I got pretty good at understanding which professors would hear my plea and allow an extension.  I'd like to say I only used them when there was no way on earth to manage all of the assignments I had for various classes.  Truth be told, sometimes the deadline snuck up on me.  Pesky little things.

I knew in the back of my mind, however, that in 'the real world' there wouldn't normally be extensions for deadlines.  The time my boss needed stuff to be done was the time it was going to have to be done.   Deadlines always seemed like they would get exponentially more important in 'real life.'  Now that I'm here though, I'm not sure that they are.

To be sure, work deadlines are still pretty immovable.  I have to get tomorrow's show done and out the door before I leave or there will be no show and eventually no job.  It's the deadlines in other parts of life that seem to mean absolutely nothing.

For example, a couple I work with is trying to adopt a child from overseas.  They are incredibly open to where they adopt from, they just want a baby.  They started out in a few African countries before the adoption process changed and changed and changed and are now on a list for adopting a baby from Korea.  They were steadily moving up the list for a while.  They had been told they could have their baby boy within a few months.  A few months!  Wow!  They were so excited and so were all of us at work.  They were making preparations, meeting appointments, and attending classes when....

'woosh'

The deadline moved.  Korea decided to change their adoption policy, too.  Now, once you get matched to your child you must wait a year.  The couple month deadline they had been given before was thrown completely out the window.  No meaning any longer.  Korea just got an extension.

Another example is the housing situation in which my brand new husband and I find ourselves.  This past year, my husband lived in his 97 year old grandmother's basement so she had someone in the house with her.  Getting married would mean he would move out and she would be alone again.  His mother, who is his grandmother's primary caretaker, offered us a deal:  Since she is always over there anyways, my husband's parents would move into the basement and we could rent their 3 bedroom rancher for cheap so they wouldn't have to find someone they trust to rent it to.  The stipulation was that there needed to be a bathroom in the basement before his parents could move as his mother has health issues which make navigating the stairs often difficult.

Before we left on our honeymoon, the plan was that we could sleep in the 3 bedroom rancher when we got back even if the house wasn't packed up.

'woosh'

Bye-bye to the first deadline set in the process.  Since the return from the honeymoon, my husband and I have been living in the basement of his grandmother's, waiting for this whole deal to be finished.  It has now been a month since our wedding and I find myself waffling between being frustrated and impatient and being accepting and sort of oblivious.  We've since been given a few more deadlines of 'We think we can make the move this or next weekend,' all of which have 'wooshed' by, adding extension after extension. 

I struggle with the lack of respect for these deadlines and the constant extension of them.  I think I must know how the professors I got extensions from feel.  It just drags it out and drags it out.

I don't think I like the sound of extensions 'wooshing' by any more. :P

Transition

So the wedding is over.

The honeymoon is over.

Real life is back.

And it's not 'normal.'

When I was little, I was the Queen of Homesick at slumber parties.  We'd get ready for bed, lay down, and I'd listen to all of the unfamiliar sounds and just panic.  Not much later, I would be on the phone with my mom or dad begging them to come pick me up.  It was the unfamiliar that set me on edge.  The sounds.  The smells.  The routine.  It wasn't like 'at home.'

I finally grew mostly out of my homesickness by middle school.  I was able to cope a little bit better with the unfamiliar.  Then, I moved to college.  I went through a whole new kind of homesickness: the kind where there is no calling home and getting picked up and escaping the unfamiliar.  I had a few breakdowns within the first month, but then school became the new normal.  The new familiar.  It was still hard for the next 3 years whenever I left my family and home, but it got better because school was my second home.  Then later, the house I rented at school was a second home.

In each of these stages in my life, though, I knew that eventually I would be going home.  Home to the house I grew up in.  Home to the people I grew up with.  Now I am in a new stage of life.  A new state of life transition.  In this stage, I am making a new permanent home.  My new permanent home is with my Husband.  This stage is so much harder than I ever imagined.  It's hard to grasp the gravity of the event when while you're dating and engaged, the only thought you have is that you're tired of saying goodbye and you simply want to spend all of your time with your loved one.  After that thought though, you return to the familiar and you're robbed of the impact.

Well, that impact has hit full force now.  It is compounded by the fact that we currently do not have our new permanent home.  My nesting impulse is completely confounded.  I want to clean and decorate and rearrange and make a space ours.  But today, we're still in limbo, waiting for some sense of stability.  We are in a holding pattern for the next 2 weeks (we decided together).  I feel lost as to how to make this work.  It is so unlike anything else I've experienced.  I find it hard not to withdraw.  So, I need to reach out.

I reached out to my mother for help, and this was her advice to me:  It's all about attitude.  Pray for help with your attitude.  When I was 14, I went on a mission trip to Ukraine as a spoiled American brat.  I came back different.  I went again 2 more times, the last during college.  Right before I went on that trip, my attitude about life was awful.  I was fighting with everyone and downright depressed and miserable.  After going on the trip, my perspective was changed again.  My mom's advice continued:

At this point, tell yourself I can withstand anything for 2 weeks. Then think of all you saw in the Ukraine . . . it might help put things in perspective. It is not what you envisioned for yourself, but maybe it is right where you should be . . .

Thank you, Mom.  I guess I need to just breathe, rearrange and clean what space I have left, and pray desperately for God's help to help me see past the discomfort, the unfamiliar and the unstable.  All the while, I need to enjoy every second I have with my husband.  Find the joy in the moment.

And make new peace with the new 'normal.'

Practice

11 days left, and life is crazier than ever!

At this point, everything is in a state of transition.  The very middle of transition.  My parents' house is getting new paint and floors on the main level before the wedding (!!!), so everything is in flux.  My fiance has packed up his stuff in his grandmother's basement so that his parents can start building a bathroom down there so they can move in. Eventually, we're supposed to move into their house.  This past week, my mom was gone a lot because my 103.5-year-old great grandmother was moved into hospice, and then passed away on Saturday.  Her funeral will be this coming Saturday.  All the while, the details of the wedding are rapidly starting to need my attention.

As you can see, my blog has suffered from the craziness I described above.  I haven't written in a long time.  I didn't want this blog to be purely 'journal' entries, but lately I haven't had time to put into writing much else!  Since I have been neglecting this blog, my fiance has started a blog of his own called I Am Engineer Mike.  He updates every Monday (do you see that, Molly? R-E-G-U-L-A-R-L-Y) and yesterday, he posted a blog about whether or not he is ready for our life together.

That got me thinking about whether or not I am ready.  Like Mike wrote, to think that I am ready would only expose a flaw in my own character.  How on earth could I be ready to start living with a non-relative closer than I have ever lived with anyone else before?  As a senior in college when I thought about marriage, it hit me how totally foreign that set up appears on the outside.  You take two completely different people, with different life experiences, different background, different habits, different ideas about things, and then merge their lives together.  What a scary undertaking that could be!

You'll never be closer (or you shouldn't ever be closer) to anyone else but your spouse.  Yet, as you enter marriage, there are still a lot of things left to be learned!  You've vowed to enter a relationship that up front says, 'We are going to be closer to each other than anyone else,' and yet there is a journey to actually get there.  I thought the other day about Michael's best friend.  He has known Mike since they were 11 years old.  He has so much history with Michael, built so much trust.  I haven't known Michael anywhere near that long and yet, I'm going to be closer to him than his best friend.

I think what it will come down to is practice.  You know, 'practice makes perfect' and all that jazz.  Life is like practice, and I imagine married life together is going to need a lot of practice.  I need to practice listening as well as practice looking past the 'meta-messages' I hear that aren't there (see chapter 2 in Happily Ever After by Toben and Joanne Heim).  We'll need practice communicating and practice resolving conflict, as well as practice doing practical things: chores, shower times, and just plain living together.  Everyday will be a new day to practice again.  Then, after 20 years maybe we'll have some aspects of married life down and we'll be practicing new ones. :) 

So the answer is no, I am not ready at all either.  I can't foresee what it will be like to wake up next to him everday, to make our lunches, to deal with misunderstandings.  I can say I am confident in who Mike is and I am not afraid to tackle this unknown with him, to practice everyday with him.

So, honey, here's to the years and years of practice we have ahead of us! I love you!
(and maybe in that time, I'll get practiced at blogging regularly, too!)

The Little Things

"Movies and magazines,
Filling our heads with dreams.
Love is the little things.
Love changes everything."
--by Pomplamoose, "Little Things"

Life is all about the little things.  You know, about the things that we think we barely notice but that make a big difference.  You notice when they aren't there.  For example, sunshine.  I know the Sun isn't exactly little, but it's not necessarily something you think much about as you go throughout your day.  Yet, when it's been missing a while you really start to notice.  I personally am addicted to sunshine so I notice pretty quickly.
Something someone says could make a big impact on you (for good or for ill) when it was just a passing remark.  Maybe a 15 minute work out will do wonders for someone's outlook on life at the moment.  Perhaps the opportunity to enjoy nature for a few minutes is enough to relax a whole lot.  It might come down to whether or not you got your morning hug from the one you love.  Heck, for a good amount of people I'd bet whether or not there is coffee will make a big difference on a day (though, those people would most likely argue coffee is no small thing).
The celebration of a birthday.  Green lights all the way to work.  A thank you card.  Getting 'your' parking spot.  A good outing with your dog in training.  Having your favorite cereal for breakfast.  A phone conversation with a good friend.  One word from someone.

It's weird how little things can affect you...

Dear Church Venue: NOT COOL

 

Warning:  This is a very rant-tastical post. 

If you read back a little into this blog, you'll find an entry on venue searching for my wedding.  You'll see that we had some trouble finding one to fit the budget.  Though I didn't mention it, we also had trouble finding a church venue that allowed dancing.  Eventually, we found a venue that from what we understood allowed dancing and was within our budget.  As of today, we are 58 days out from our wedding.  Yesterday, I got a call from the wedding coordinator.  It wasn't good news.  I think this ranty letter I wrote on my wedding support site should explain:


Dear A.B. Evangelical Free Church:

I would like to be able to say I appreciate your phone call yesterday.  I really would, but I don't.  Oh sure, we could say I appreciate that it was now, 2 months before the wedding, instead of 2 weeks before.  Either way, it's not ok.

Dancing was one of the first questions we asked you about.  You said that should be fine within reason seeing that this is a church.  Totally ok.   I mentioned the dollar dance/money dance and you got a little nervous since you didn't know what it was.  That's ok. That dance is not a requirement.  We had just started to gather our music yesterday.  Line dances.  Swing music.  Beautiful, sappy slow dances.  And then you call me:

"Talked to the pastor.  You can't do the money dance."
"That's ok."
"Yeah, you can do the First couple dance and the Father-daughter dance, but no other dances."
"So, is line dancing ok?"
"No. There are people at the church that are uncomfortable with it and while they won't be at your wedding, we'd still like to honor that. No group dancing."

You see, there is a reason we picked you for a venue.  Well, two reasons:  1.  You were relatively cheap.  2.  You said dancing would be ok (within reason, e.g. no stripping, bumping, grinding).  In fact, we chose you over a cheaper option, a Baptist church, because they said only the first and father-daughter dancing were acceptable.  We made it clear when checking you out initially that dancing was a priority to us.  There is nothing in the contract we signed about dancing and we've agreed to everything on there.

This is not cool.  Not cool at all.  We are going to have a serious talk, and if we have to, we're leaving.  I'm glad we haven't paid you anything yet, because I'm afraid it might come down to that.  I wish you would have told me earlier because just this week, all of our invitations went out with your address on them. 

We will do what we have to.  You'd better hope I can convince my man not to take you to small claims court for breach of contract. 
Sincerely,
Angry-jilted Bride

Late this morning, my man and I went to talk to the pastor.  We were not impressed.  We sat down, and I explained what we understood and how I was confused by the wedding coordinator's phone call. The pastor responded with what he said to my man's mom (who initially checked the place out for us and understood from him that dancing was ok).  I explained that's not what was communicated to us and that's why we were a little put out.  He answered defensively with, 'I know what I said to her. I know where I said it to her.'  Ah, I see. So you're sure you were absolutely clear and that my man's mom is making stuff up then?

We then talked about the wedding coordinator and what we understood from her.  She never said what we had in mind wasn't allowed.  Though, she never said it was either.  She said she'd check with the pastor.

Next I mentioned that the whole reason we picked them as our venue was that we understood dancing was ok. That the other cheaper baptist church had written into their contract that only these 2 dances were allowed (father/daugher & first couple's).   He said they would change their contract to reflect that for future people.  I said, 'If you're going to just stick with that, with those two dances, we're probably going to find a new venue.'  He said they were. So we said, 'Thank you for your time.'

Uuberly not impressed.  We don't like how we were treated, nor the lack of cooperation and abundance of defensiveness we encountered.  Although I profess to be a Christian, I have to say I REALLY don't understand all the churches around here and their no dancing policies. My man said, 'What do they want, a funeral march?  I thought a wedding was a celebration!'  Don't churches want that business?  That $800 we were going to pay them?  Needless to say we are not happy campers.  Back to the awful, terrible, no good venue search.

One of the comments I received on the mock-letter I posted above on my wedding support site said, "No dancing?  Is this church in the Footloose town?"  That's a good question.  Unfortunately, it seems to be a lot of the churches here! Goodness!