Adulthood

The following is the conversation that a 26 year-old woman (who has been living away from home for over 8 years and has traveled much of the globe alone) had with her mother this week.

Mom: "Are you getting excited for your honeymoon? Have you started packing yet?!"

Me: "Yes! I'm so excited, and I can't wait! I actually bought two new dresses for the trip, but I can wear them to work too, so it's a total win!"

Normal so far...

Mom: "Oh, honey. Just don't forget to pack a sweater or something to keep you warm!"

Me: "um... okay. Thanks, Mom...."

Because our mamas, they are always our mamas.

And yes, Mom. I will be sure to pack a sweater or SOMETHING. Today, tomorrow, always.

Happy almost Mother's day. I love mine so much!

Photo: Summer Jean Photography

On The Shattering of Illusions

A 1977 Princeton Alumna wrote a letter to the editor of the Princeton Daily about how the young ladies of Princeton should consider marrying young that is apparently twisting up the panties of twenty-something women everywhere.  Sadly, the letter was removed from Princeton’s website (apparently all those brilliant people can’t handle a little controversy? PUBLIC EDUCATION FTW) before I could read it, but I’ve read some mentions and some responses that are cropping up all over the web like daisies.  

I’ve got to admit – the responses are mostly so angry, petulant and self-absorbed that I can readily believe the women writing them are not mature enough for marriage – thus, the letter and its well-intentioned advice is probably not meant for them. What is frustrating, is that smart, young women are still so wrapped up in this myth of “having it all” that they don’t seem to realize that we’re still going to have to make sacrifices. The writer, Susan Patton, is using the benefit of her experience to remind them that the choices that shape our lives often take place long before we can understand their consequences. And instead of being thankful that someone is FINALLY telling driven, smart young women the truth about the choices we will have to make, we are FREAKING OUT and accusing her of pushing some mystical marriage agenda on us. As if that would somehow benefit her. As if. Ugh.

Photo: Summer Jean Photography

Here is the thing: the wage gap exists. Our biological clocks exist. Sexism exists. There are a billion good statistics out there about how women work harder than men both in the office and at home and still get paid less that I will let PenelopeTrunk tell you about because she is better at it than me. And it’s true – as time goes on, the pool of suitable men dwindles, because their priorities are different. Haven’t any of these girls seen Sex and the City? Am I just OLD and out of touch now? I can’t believe that the party line for these young women is to ignore all those inconvenient truths and get angry at anyone who reminds us of them. It’s like yelling at your doctor for telling you that exercising will improve your health.

And then there is this snarky zinger of an argument: "Girls who are still in school don't want to be defined by the person that they might end up marrying," made by Nina Bahadur in an article over at HuffPo, where she is an assistant editor. In addition to blind anger, her comments made me think of an open thread full of smart, married/engaged ladies over at A Practical Wedding earlier this week. The thread is titled “The Surprise Good” and the resonating theme is that marriage gives many of these women (myself heartily included) the support, confidence and empowerment to reach higher, accomplish more, take more risks and push themselves harder. The Grige doesn’t define me, he pushes me to be my best me. And that open thread suggests that a lot of other good marriages do that too. In my world, having a good career is directly intertwined with the support I get from my husband, even if I do his laundry and clean the bathroom.

In my life, stuff like this doesn't happen without the Grige. Because TEAMWORK, you guys. 

I don’t think Patton is suggesting that ALL women should get married in college, or that we should marry the first guy we drunkenly make out with as freshman. I think she is suggesting that if marriage is something you think you want someday, it would be dumb to miss the opportunity to meet, seriously date, and perhaps even marry one of the plethora of like-minded, smart people that are available to you in college, because it just gets harder after that. I should know, I gave out my real, actual phone number on a rush hour train full of skeezy dudes to score a first date with the Grige. If that’s not desperation, I don’t know what is.

Patton is suggesting that we not all bury our heads in the sand and pretend that the perfect person will just show up on a white horse when we’re in our early thirties and totally ready for marriage. Many of us (myself included) will meet the right guy at the wrong time, and part of growing a relationship is figuring out how to deal with that. It’s MATH, ladies. There are outliers – you might even be one of them, so do what you think is right for you. But it’s pointless to ignore the trends. Maybe you won’t meet the right person until you are 50, and that’s fine. Obviously you, personally, should not get married in college. But pretending that’s going to work for everyone? It’s like saying that climate change is a myth because it snowed in April this year.  

So here I am, shaking my head slowly in disbelief. We plan the ever loving SHIT out of our career paths in college. We learn, and we experiment, and we scheme and dream. We have internships, we solicit letters of recommendation and then we go out into the work world and implement those ideas, sometimes before we quite feel ready. But we grow and change in our career paths and continue to learn and improve. And then someone suggests that we might give the same consideration to our personal lives, you know, what we do with the OTHER 16 hours a day, and we all go ballistic and accuse them of trying to stifle our success.

Beer brewing, and other home adventures.

No one wants to hear about the hard choices that we will all have to make. Choices between romance and career goals, between tacos or pasta, between east coast or west coast, between taking that promotion or spending more time at home with kids. But that doesn’t make them go away. At 22, I tore up about 5,000 pro/con lists between the Grige and the Peace Corps, and I finally chose the guy I had been dating for less than 6 months The last thing that I needed after that heart-wrenching decision was a bunch of self-righteous bitches telling me that I was an idiot to even consider compromising my career for a relationship. Well, life keeps right on happening whether you feel like making tough decisions or not. So let’s try to take Patton’s advice for what it is: advice. You can take it or leave it, but you are out of your damn mind if you think college isn’t statistically one of the best social opportunities you’ll have to meet someone to marry.

Exhausted

Disclaimer: I really want this post to be about my 12 mile long run yesterday. But I already know I'm going to get distracted. I want you to know that I have tried to calm down. I've tried wine, I've tried pranayama breathing, I tried talking to the Grige and my Mom, and I've reached the conclusion that if I am still this angry after 12 miles, or 2 hours and 17 minutes, of pounding pavement, I'm probably not going to relax for a while.

So let's start with the run, and see where we go. I wanted to start early, but let's be honest: I love staying in bed with the Grige for as long as he will let me. I'm building a whole life around that fact, because I am actually a morning person, but it's the only time I get to see him, so I take full advantage. So I dropped him off at studio around 8, and ran to the grocery store, and ate some peanut butter toast and a banana. I actually made it out the door by 10 a.m., which is quite a bit earlier than normal!

I really just want to let that paragraph be, but did you know that I am a horrible feminist because I let my husband's schedule dictate my plans? Do you know that that's what I was thinking about while we snuggled? That I am letting my gender down because I want to appreciate my husband. Yes, I let that stupid article in New York Magazine, which I will not link to on principle, get in my head BIG TIME.

I was actually excited to read it. I think it's so cool that we're approaching a time where women can chose to work, or stay home, or really do whatever they want without judgement. I was psyched to read about feminist housewives, who are devoting their educations and energy to raising responsible, kind, intelligent little humans and to providing care and assistance to those they love. Well, SURPRISE! Instead, I got to read a bunch of barely veiled snide commentary peppered with out of context quotes designed to make these women sound like simpering idiots and make me feel bad about pretty much every single choice I've ever made and will ever make.

And as my anger simmers, I realize that what is so wrong about this article is that it not only pits women against each other, but it pits women against their husbands, and it really makes you wonder what the hell kind of woman could actually win in the world the author paints. It made me feel like the fact that I cooked dinner for my husband last week is not because I love him and want to support him, or even because I like to cook, but actually because I'm participating in some patriarchal scheme that my husband and all the men everywhere have concocted. He wasn't working late, he was actually smoking cigars with all the other bros and laughing about it while I slaved over a hot stove.

You see, my marriage is not a microcosm for all gender roles everywhere. It's actually just a couple of fools trying to muddle through building a meaningful and enjoyable life together. As a team. And if I decided to stay home, or take a job as a CEO at a start up, it would be a team decision, and there would be pros and cons just like every other decision in life. Maybe it would work and maybe it wouldn't, our job is just to find what works for us, which is pretty damn feminist, if you ask me. I suspect we're not alone in this, and I'm tired of making a decision to do what's right for someone other than myself getting read as being a bad feminist. If I start believing that my husband is not on my team, and I'm out here alone fighting for an abstract construct or whatever just out of spite, that's a really sad life!

12 miles is a long time to think about something and not get any more clarity. Which is how I know that this is a big problem. And then last night, after inhaling a bunch of Persian food, our waiter overhead me bitching (and not for the last time) about what a horrible year for women 2013 is turning out to be. I was specifically complaining about the fact that a hotelier in Greece will only communicate with the Grige instead of me, even though we are paying him with MY CREDIT CARD. My tone was somewhere in between exhausted and "what the f*cking f*ck?!?!". And then, at the end of the meal, for the first time in my entire life (throughout most of which I have been either picking up or splitting bills), the waiter handed ME the check. So maybe there's hope. There was definitely a big-ass tip for him.

I think that feminism for me is a little bit like long distance running. It's a mental game, all about choice - how you let people make you feel, which way you turn, whether or not you can keep going. It always makes you hungry and tired, and sometimes, it gives you diarrhea. It's your race, but it's a lot more fun when you do it as part of a team. To win at running, it's pretty much useless to tear other people down. It's not a contact sport. And to be honest, the real win is just finishing for most of us. Maybe I'm reaching for that, but I think it rings true. I should know, I thought about it for 12 miles, or 2 hours and 17 minutes, yesterday.

Different

I've spend a lot of time in the last few months thinking about what is different, since we got married. I haven't been able to put my finger on what, but something is, for sure. And then I realized! there isn't just one thing, there are a lot of them.

One of the biggest/hardest is to figure out who we are in public. I know marriage is supposed to be this big proclamation where we declare ourselves "one" in front of God, our families and our friends. But navigating that disposition in the real world is not quite as easy as you might imagine.

Photo: Summer Jean Photography

For one, being introduced as someone's wife adds about 10 years to you. When your brand-spanking-new husband introduces you to a bunch of 23 year-olds who have never known life outside of school, you can feel kind of like you belong in a museum with other relics of the 1950's. And then, you have to figure out when it's appropriate to attend school and work events with each other.

For instance, the Grige is in grad school, for which there are a myriad of events. We hosted his studio section + professors for a dinner last semester. Naturally, I attended that. It was in my home. I cleaned for it. But it was awkward. I felt extremely out of place. I got the same impression when I brought him to a happy hour with co-workers at my new job. It's not that people were rude or mean, it's just that it felt wrong....

 So how do we navigate this? How do we figure out how to be a married couple, at this age, in a new city? We got into this new life together, and we've been leaning on each other to make friends. This problem is 100% unanticipated.

Photo: Summer Jean Photography

I'm sure that, as we get older, more and more of our peers will get married and this will get easier. I mean, my parents do things apart from one another all the time: my Dad is in the banjo club, my Mom has a ladies bridge group. But everyone kind of expects them to be together the rest of the time. Just like the Grige and I like to be. I'm fine doing things apart from the Grige. However, we need some sort of social protocol for the meantime. So really? How do you figure out how to be "one" when you are actually two? Where do we fit in each other's lives?

It's not an easy riddle to solve, but it is definitely a key component of all the differences that we're facing post-nuptials.

What If I Had Grown Up Without Sex and the City?

What if? Oh, the horror. I know we're supposed to turn to role models, like our parents, movie stars, political figures ect... to model our lives upon. My Mom went out of her way to make sure that I was never over-exposed to the corruption that HBO TV shows could provide, and that I had strong parental role-models for a loving marriage.

But she missed something. Something I think that a lot of mothers miss. It's gross to think about your parents having sex, same sign for most politicians. And often the only message available is that sex is a bad thing. Porn is bad. Sex before marriage is bad. Sex in general is bad.

So then, we have no model for sex. No model for good sex, no model for bad sex, no model for abusive sex, no model for deviant sex, and even more importantly than all that, no model for saying no to sex. No model at all. Models are important. We use models to learn math, and we use models to learn fashion. We use them to learn how to prepare a chicken, to build a house, to assess patent claims and to write papers. Models are IMPORTANT.

If, in the ideal situation, our parents are modeling an ideal for marriage and thus sex, there is a tremendous disconnect in how we view sex. No one wants to have the talk, and it's challenging, in the context of most parental relationships, to translate just how amazing/important/empowering/joyful sex can be. We get hung up on "the right person at the right time" and forget to mention that the act itself should be nice. I'm not suggesting that parents shouldn't talk to their kids about sex. They should, early and often. If they're brave, they'll even discuss how a healthy sex life (or lack thereof) impacts their marriage. However, there's just no way the fundamental and accessible model for a healthy sex life can come from our parents. This issue is especially challenging for women. Where it's expected that men be interested in porn, and sex, it's considered taboo and "dirty" for a woman to be interested in the same things. Also, the porn model problem creates all kinds of confusion about acceptable sexual behavior and etiquette for men, which young women then have to find a way to deal with when their high school boyfriends think they should be up for totally unspeakable acts in the backseat of the car. "You want to put that WHERE? You sick SHIT!".

Enter: Sex and the City. I know I'm not the first person to cheer the brilliant strides this show took - taking chick lit that would have been otherwise unavailable to those of us mired in Jane Austen and preparing it for witty consumption by women the world over. But I really can't imagine where I'd be without it. The idea that there is no "wrong" sexual relationship, so long as you feel comfortable, safe and empowered was one that had never occurred to me. Which is a good thing, because knowing it's okay to want sex is the best way to feel like you can take control of your body and the situation.

Thanks Ladies.
Photo: HBO

Not only did the show offer models of empowered women having sex safely (both emotionally and physically) but it also showed them making (and dealing with) mistakes, something that would be hard for even the most humble and enlightened parent to model. It modeled marriage, both failed and flawed but successful, it modeled the impact of low self-esteem, lesbian experimentation, power roles - you name it. And suddenly, being a confused, young woman started to feel a lot more normal.

My hearty thanks to Candace Bushnell, Michael Patrick King, Darren Star, and the talented cast of six un-paralleled seasons, for finally giving me a model for sex that allowed me to be confused, make mistakes, find answers and take control of my body. I owe you a great deal.

Maybe my Mom, like many other moms, was worried that at the impressionable age of 14 or 15, I would start saving for Manolo Blahniks and giving blow jobs in the girls room during lunch. Maybe she was right to save the show for when I was in college, on my own. However, I think that many parents don't give their kids enough credit. I think a high school girl can watch Carrie and co. cavorting around NYC and understand that they're looking at 30+ year-old women who have a completely different life from them. Like any other model, what they learn from the slow is only useful when applied situationally. In the world of many teenage girls, I think this would mean more respect for the power of their bodies, less embarrassment at the discovery of the pleasure of masturbation, less focus on marriage as the ultimate goal of their young womanhood (hello, midwest!) and a much lower tolerance for the porn-infused sexual fantasies of boys their age.

Because, you know, knowledge is power. And given the current political climate, I think that young women everywhere really deserve a chance to know what's at stake and form their own opinions, before all of their choices are gone. 

Around the Wedding Corner

Things change after your wedding. Maybe not to you, but to other people, more specifically to the way they view you. I'm astounded by how people's perception of me, as a woman, has changed since I donned my wedding band.

Us, with our truly adorable niece, Audrey, last Christmas. Before people started telling me how natural I looked with children.

I always thought that the madonna and the whore complex was reserved for the couches of psychotherapists and Sex and the City episodes. But the moment I said "I do", in the eyes of the world, I aged 10 years and went from a person for whom pregnancy would be a career-ruining disaster to a person whose sole purpose in life should be to procreate. With my husband. Of course.

The curious thing, is that I'm not sure he's experiencing anything similar, and by Caitlin Moran's strategy for detecting sexism (is it happening to the dudes?), I'm smelling a rat.  While I get unsolicited pamphlets on conception from my OBGYN and comments on how natural I look with other people's babies - did I not look natural with babies before? Is there something awkward about an unwed woman bonding with a small child? Good heavens! What have teen-aged baby-sitters been doing all this time? And most importantly, how did they miss the terror in my eyes? - the Grige is just sort of rolling along with business as usual, as far as I can tell.

Me with my niece Emma, perhaps we look comfortable because I've been living with her for six weeks?

Now, I was somewhat prepared for the baby thing. For people of a certain generation, I believe it's even excusable to assume that I must have family on the brain. I don't need those people to know that I actually know more about the best aeration process for boxed wine than my ovaries right now, they're not prepared for that information. But it's more than just the baby thing, and it's more than just the elderly among us.

Being introduced as someone's "wife' is a lot more loaded than you would think, especially when those people are 23 years old. I know that's not that much younger than me, but if you had told me at 23 where I would be at 25, I probably would have fainted on the spot. The good news it that it still means something important, socially, to be someone's wife. However, I get the impression that everyone was expecting a harried looking woman in her mid-30's wearing mom-jeans and waxing on about her last ovulation when they met me. I'm proud to say that I did not deliver, but all the "newness" does sort of make me feel like I should buy a whole new wardrobe, cut my hair off and start speaking in a British accent.

How can I be old? I still drink too much boxed wine and play the  Crocodile Hunter  board game!

I think the most confusing and challenging part of my situation is that I actually want all the things I'm supposed to want. The idea of having a baby does not terrify me. And eating dinner that I cooked every night with the Grige at our real dining room table in our fully furnished home like "adults" makes me happy. I am following the "perfect" blueprint for a woman's life - married by 25 to a smart, handsome man, first baby most likely around the time I'm 30 - life is on track by conventional standards. But that doesn't mean that I let someone else make those choices for me, or that they're anyone's business but the Grige's and mine (and now yours, of course).

It's challenging to feel like a feminist when my well-reasoned life choices are so in line with conventional standards. I could just let it all go and let people tell me how good I look with a baby in my arms and ask when the Grige and I are planning to start a family... But I don't think that I can. Because what if we were trying for a baby and it wasn't going so well? Or what if we decided that kids aren't the right choice for us because we'd rather travel? Of what if, god forbid, we have a baby and decide to do a bunch of traveling anyway? I don't want to spend every minute between now and menopause talking about my body with people who don't know me well enough to get the answers to those questions unsolicited.

Photo: Summer Jean Photography
As it turns out, I really, really like being a wife.

So I'm asking, since when did the window into our private family decisions become open for viewing and since when did marriage make me old? I'm thinking that having a giant wedding where we did a bunch of conventional stuff is probably buried in the answer, but I'm going to unpack that another time. 

Marriage and the Six Week Pause

The Grige and I lived apart for the first 6 weeks of our marriage, and tomorrow I am finally going to St. Louis, to him, to the life that we’re going to have. For us, living apart absolutely sucked. It was like taking the huge plunge of our wedding, which was filled with joy, and then being forced to hold our collective breath for 6 weeks while we tried to figure out what the marriage would be. Well, it is impossible to figure out what your marriage is going to be while one of you is living on a sleeper sofa with a newborn and a renegade pooping cat while working 15 hour days and the other one is diving into his first semester of graduate school 1000 miles away. And so, we held our breath.

I have learned something, from living with my tiny, brand-new niece for the last few weeks. Breathing for the first time is really scary, and upsetting and best dealt with by being swaddled up in a burrito wrap so you can’t flail around too much. And that is how I feel about moving into our new, married life. I’m terrified.

Ms. Emma, my housemate

Of course, I’m frustrated by all the normal challenges of moving – I have to find a new job, get used to a new city where I have to (gulp) drive a car sometimes, decorate and organize a new house, make new friends, find new running routes, introduce myself to the animals at the new zoo… But that’s not scary; it could potentially even be exciting. What I am afraid of is what our relationship is going to look like after all these changes. It’s not clear how much time the Grige will have for me, and six weeks of video chatting when we are both too exhausted to form full sentences has not made things any clearer.

So I get to sit here and listen to everyone tell me how excited I must be to finally see my husband again and get settled in our married life while I hold my breath and worry. the Grige is already so busy with school that he’s not even sure he can spend the whole evening with me when I arrive on Saturday, and that makes me feel so rejected and alone that I just want to scream, which does not make me feel like the good, supportive wife that I want to be. There aren’t many ways to express those feelings to a busy man over the phone, and I know he’s scared about what it will be like too, and how we’re going to manage our time. He’s also terrified that I’m never going to forgive him for picking up our east coast lives and moving them to the mid-west and then leaving my poor, introverted self alone all the time to figure out our lives – like getting food on the table - while he works his butt off at school.

This is what a perfect DC morning run looks like

Meg Keene has written beautifully about how no one asked us to be martyrs, over at A Practical Wedding and that will be my mantra in our new life. I’m giving up a lot, but think of what I’m gaining! I chose to marry him and I am so very proud of him. But I am sad to leave my job, and my friends, and my city that I love. I’ve spent the last six weeks in this terrible limbo where the end is looming and the vibrant color seems to have drained out of everything, even on perfect DC morning runs and at delicious dinners with best friends. So while I’m scared, I also feel like anything is better than the half-way place where I’m living without the piece that makes it all worth it – the Grige. Perhaps that is the greatest affirmation of our marriage I’ll ever get, and all before it’s even really started.

Photo: Summer Jean Photography

Now we are two, even if we had to wait six weeks after our wedding to get all the way here. I’m packing up my bags, my old name, and I’ll land in about 24 hours as EFF: Wife. And maybe we’ll only have an hour or two together before he has to go back to studio, and maybe I’ll cry and yell about that, but I’m hopeful that I can swaddle myself up in our love to keep from breaking anything while I flail around and learn to deal with it.

We Got Married!

And it was wonderful. I don't know quite what to say about it yet, except that I'm tired. I want to crawl into a tunnel where there are no people for a very long, long time and then my poor, introverted soul can emerge a beautiful, married butterfly.

This is what it looked like.
Photo: Summer Jean Photography

Unfortunately, I'm currently 1,000 miles from the Husband Grige living in a basement with a delighfully well-behaved new-born baby and a cat whose whole life has been turned upside down. I know how he feels.

Photo: Summer Jean Photography

I'll be back soon with some good wedding re-cap stuff and some fantastically interesting information about navigating name changing, finance combining and bill handling as newlyweds living across the country from one another (surprise! there's a lot of fighting!). But for now, a few teaser photos from our excessively talented photographer, Summer Osborn.

Oh yeah, it rained the entire day. And no, no one cared.
Photo: Summer Jean Photography

Today, Goodbye.

Today is kind of a big, sad day. Our last day in our Adams Morgan apartment together, our last day in D.C. together. I said a long (hot) goodbye to our neighborhood this morning on a 6 mile run. I'm going to miss our location so much! I know all the mileage around there, I love running through the National Zoo and the Rock Creek Park, I love the park and the 7-11 across from our apartment. I love our big, south facing windows that fill the whole apartment with light in the morning while I stretch out. ugh. Sad.

The funny thing is, I never would have guessed all the things that made our apartment so great when we first signed the lease. I knew we liked it the best of all we'd seen, but I didn't know how much I would fall in love with it, or how D.C. would finally feel like My City once we moved in there. Sure, living with only one closet was hard (to say the least), and the cockroach problem was miserable, and our lone tomato really wouldn't grow and the condo board was a B*TCH. But I loved it there.

Our neighborhood.
Photo: Jeanine Finch

It's also the first place the Grige and I ever lived together. Which means it has the memories of lots of fights, lots of firsts, and lots of friends, all of which I am avoiding thinking about because I'm already falling apart just thinking about leaving 600 sq. ft. of wood flooring and bright paint jobs.

I should be getting excited over our new, big apartment, with central air and craftsman fixtures and a yard and MULTIPLE CLOSETS and FREE LAUNDRY. But I can't. I'm completely hung up on the fact that I'll never run home through the Zoo again. Or spend all day laying around in Kalorama park. Or drunkenly order wings at the 7-11 at 3:00 am after karaoke. Sure, I'll be back in a few weeks, but it just won't ever be the same.

Remember When I Said We Could Handle Moving and Marrying in the same Month?

Actually, I don't think I ever wrote that. I knew this would be stressful, but then stuff like the last 48 hours comes flying out of nowhere and knocks us both on our asses.

I talk a lot about how different the Grige and I are. Different personalities, different coping styles, different talents, strengths, communication styles and backgrounds. It makes for a lot of good variety in our life, and generally, I love it. But sometimes I worried that we didn't have enough in common to make for a strong marriage. Because everyone has fears like that, and it's hard to be in love with someone who is oh, so very different from you.

There is one major way that we are exactly the same, and I didn't even realize it until earlier this very summer. We are both kind-hearted, generous people who generally (and somewhat naively) assume that everyone else is nice and sharing and gives people the benefit of the doubt too. You may be surprised to hear that this is not always the case, and sometimes we get yelled at, scolded, bullied - whatever you want to call it - by people who are not quite so nice and innocent as we are. But that's not even the thing we have in common!

Packing... and Cooking Creatively.

The thing we really have in common is the fact that these interactions with people who treat us rudely and accuse us of generally being "up to no good" really de-rail both of us in very physical and personal ways. We are genuinely hurt, to the point of feeling ill, having trouble eating and sleeping, and even breaking out in a rash (that's just me, not the Grige), when people assume we're looking for a fight or trying to undermine their authority and treat us disrespectfully as a result. I know people who can just let things like that roll right off their backs, but the Grige and I are just not those people. Instead, we lie in bed next to each other all night, staring at the ceiling with our minds racing over what we could have done wrong/what we can do to fix it.

To sum up, we don't have a problem with authority or rules, and when we find ourselves in the wrong, we're willing to accept responsibility and correct our actions. We desperately want to follow the rules and we actually, physically need to be validated for doing so. How do we want to be validated? you might ask... Well, we want to be given the benefit of the doubt that we don't go around trying to make life hard for people and that any wrong-doing on our part is an honest mistake that we want to fix.

Photo: Jeanine Finch

So right now, we're not sleeping much and are generally very distressed about a problem with the condo board in our building (which, by the way, refuses to speak with us directly, even though we are NEIGHBORS, making it very hard for concerns to be addressed for either party) and our moving plans. The passive-aggressive nasty-ness and dictatorial manner have beaten both of us into sniveling, sleepless little heaps of pity while we try to deal with an ever-growing pile of wedding stuff.

Montello Condo Board! If you guys are reading this - we really want to follow your (stupid and kind of crazy) rules! Just stop yelling at us already! We are only asking questions!

Some people might say that we should just hunker down, get through the move, pay whatever psycho fines we're assessed and NEVER EVER RENT IN A CONDO BUILDING EVER EVER EVER. Generally, I agree with them. Don't do it. I know the unit is beautiful, and competitively priced, but just don't, okay? No one likes being a second class citizen, especially in their own home. And, you can live there when you are ready to buy.

However, that's not the moral of the story here. The moral of the story is that even though things are very very dark and sucky and stressful right now, I'm kind of glad this is all happening. Because it is infinitely comforting to me to know that the man I'm going to marry shares my deep, ingrained, desire to do the right thing, and to treat people (and be treated) fairly and honestly. And to know that those things are so important to him that he's up all night with knots in his stomach and eyes on the ceiling right next to me? It's priceless.

May your wedding planning be filled with slightly less stressful and upsetting reminders of why you are marrying your partner.

A Bug of Uncertain Size and Intentions

I hate moving. Everybody hates moving. One of the things I hate most about moving is the fact that all the stuff shuffling sometimes awakens creatures better left undisturbed, in places like "under the bed" and "behind the couch". This morning, about 5 minutes before my alarm went off,  I heard a bang and the Grige let out a barbaric yawp the like of which I have never heard from him. I assumed he was injured and immediately leaped up to rescue him!

"Stay over there!" He shouted. "Don't even look."

Filled with terror, I asked if he was bleeding that badly, wondering how this could have happened while simply getting dressed in the morning. "No, it's a huge bug. Just stay over there and don't look."

He tackles food like he tackles bugs.
Photo: Megan Shiley

He did not have to tell me twice! I stayed curled up in the far corner of the bed and watched him thump around on the floor looking around for this "giant bug" which he apparently didn't kill with his first strike. Not. Scary. At. All. He also kept making these alarmed and frightened noises that were even scarier. I've never seen the Grige loose his cool before. Bears in Yosemite? No problem. Snake in the Water? What are you worried about? Giant, man-eating cockroach in the kitchen? Quit your whining, you silly woman. But this bug, that he would not let me even look at, was reducing him to whimpers and yells while he whacked at it with his bare hands and feet. Serious man points were awarded.

I am Mighty Grige! I fear NOTHING! Except the bug under our bed!
Photo: Me

He finally must have killed it, because he looked up at me with mixed fear and disgust and said "I got it, just don't look yet." After cleaning it up with a massive handfull of papertowels and carrying it to the kitchen (apparently, it was a matter too great for the mere bedroom waste basket), he allowed me to get out of bed and said he needed a hug and a back scratch. I obliged, and asked him how big it was.

" You don't want to know. I'll tell you after we are all moved out. I can't wait to get out of here."

Whaaaaaa? He wouldn't even confirm if it was larger or smaller than a mouse. My imagination is running WILD. This creature has probably been living under our bed for 2 years, feeding on dust mites and wrapping paper, waiting for me to disturb it's hibernation by packing up the Grige's side of the bed last week. I wonder what other horrors await us under there?

I suppose there is always the option of getting my mean face on and dealing with it, but why?
Photo: EE's personal collection

Needless to say, the Grige is now officially in charge of all "under the bed" packing. I'm not even sure if I can sleep in there tonight. I'm also instituting a very strict "no bare feet in the bedroom" policy while we're packing up. I will be armed with closed toes shoes from the moment I cross the threshold moving forward. Flip-flops need not apply.

So, how was your Monday morning?

The Grige, Grad School and the GRE

One of my favorite things about my Partner is that he really just doesn't care about what other people think of him.  After a weekend of heavy boozing at my cousin's wedding in Michigan, he earned himself a nickname that will likely follow him to the grave. He asked for another glass of "the Grige" and thus was baptized in wine by my family.

So now, the Grige is planning to go to grad school and spends all of his time studying for the GRE (read: ignoring me/ the dishes/ the laundry/ the dead cockroach that I almost stepped on). I am being as supportive as I can, because that's what you do in a healthy relationship. However, the very idea of grad school makes me want to do this:

I think that pursuing a graduate degree is a hugely un-necessary waste of money. The fact that practically everyone who graduated around the same time I did decided to hide in the library rather than face the dismal job market is probably the reason for this. Call me crazy, but staring down the rabbit hole after $100,000 that I didn't have in the first place while I search for jobs in a market that really just wants experience does not sound like a good idea to me. Penelope Trunk  talks more about this problem and other fun career topics in her excellent blog.

Penelope's points that I agree with most involve delaying adulthood, graduate education being pyramid scheme/money pit and the fact that working is not so bad. Most of my friends who went to grad school seem sort of stunted compared to my friends who worked (or worked and went to grad school). It's not that I don't love a good game of beer pong once and a while, but you have an actual table on your back deck? What would your boss say!? Oh wait... you don't have one.

These people are counting on expensive degrees to assist them in a market they know nothing about. If I wrote a book containing the really important skills I learned in my first year in the workforce alone, it would be longer than War and Peace and definitely worth more than I spent on my undergraduate degree. I would also venture to guess that those skills are very important to my future employers as well. I think that my peers who went to grad school instead will have a hard time competing with that knowledge when we are both up for higher paying jobs. Even if I don't get that job because I don't have a masters degree, at least I dodged the debt bomb. I'm not a risk taker, and that kind of investment return rate is just not for me.

So here I am, trying to be supportive as my roommate and Partner plants his feet firmly on the path back to grad school. It can't have been an easy decision for him, what with me spewing vitriol about cost-benefit analyses and irresponsible debt acquisition. And it is definitely not easy for him now that I've added a good deal of yelling about house-hold chores and how I refuse to clean up after him just because he's studying.

Despite all that, he is determined to go back, and I have to admit that his reasons are good. He's an architect, and it will be impossible for him to get licensed without a masters degree. Even though it will be years before he can even think about the pay-out from his hard work, he is talented and driven and I believe in him - in spite of my own good sense. 

I can't imagine having the kind of conviction the Grige has about being an architecht in my own career, and maybe that's my problem. Perhaps someday I will say "AHAH!" and run to my neighborhood university with application fee in hand. That day is not today, and I believe graduate school is a mistake for those of us who are not planning to become doctors (I am looking at you, Ph.D in cultural anthropology). But before I cry "unfair!" as our debt and the dishes in the sink pile up, I am going to take a deep breath and try to believe in the person I love.

Wish me luck,

Double E

How the Heck are We Supposed to Find Romance in this Minefield?

My Partner and I split the bill on our first date. It was at the kind of restaurant where you pay at the counter, so there was no awkward fumbling of the wallets while sitting across from each other, but still. He made it clear that he had no intention of paying for me, and I made it clear that I had no intention of letting him.

 

That first date really set the tone for our relationship. Since that moment, I have known that every time he picks up a bill, surprises me with flowers, or even cleans the bathroom, it is because he very specifically and purposefully thought about me and wanted to do something special. I also know that I don't owe him anything* – not then, not now, not ever.

I think this is really important – it's so easy to walk away from a first date where one person  (a guy, in this scenario) picks up the tab and you feel like you owe him something. It could be anything from a second date to a kiss to a coffee after dinner, but it's still something you owe the other person. I can't tell you how many times I have ended up doing something stupid because of some unfounded sense of "fairness" to a person who bought me a meal.

The person who pays has perceived power. This is a fact, whether we call it gallantry or not. How can you possibly begin a relationship between equals when the power balance is tipped before the end of your first date? No really – I am asking! I am guessing the answer has something to do with trust and/or shameless gold-digging, but I am talking about a date that will hopefully lead to a relationship. If a free meal is your objective – go forth and prosper, this advice will not help you.

Since we don't live in communist China, it's unlikely that your income (and/or debt) will be an exact match to your date's. Factors like gender and age can widen the gap even further. I'm not suggesting that you foray into credit card debit to pay for your lobster  and filet dinner at the country club, or that you limit potential dates to people who are your financial twin. I am suggesting the following:

• For first dates, stick to more casual outings – like lunch at a place where you pay at the counter, or an afternoon picnic where you prepare the meal beforehand. This will not only keep the bill reasonable, but you will both be more comfortable in a place that isn't screaming "high expectations!!!!" at you from the moment the escargot show up. Pull out that show stopping dinner later on when you know it's worth the investment (and you know each other well enough to laugh together when you accidentally shoot a snail at someone across the room).

• Plan to pay for your portion on a first date. If you are facing a drastic income gap and your date has insisted on a place you can't exactly afford, offer to pay the tip, or for the drinks. I promise – you will absolutely feel more comfortable if you do this, and it shows your date that you are taking them seriously.

• If you do find yourself on a second, third or tenth date with someone who makes a lot more than you and wants to pay for nicer places, think about how it makes you feel. Then talk to them about it. Compromise is the key to success in any relationship, including your relationship with your bank account. Maybe you skip fancy desserts and you treat Richy Rich to froyo and a walk after nice dinners.

The bottom line is that money plays a huge role in our relationships, whether we are aware of it or not. Finding romance (read: a relationship that actually works in real life) is tricky enough, so let's get smarter about defining power and money dynamics in our relationships early and often.

You stay classy,

Double E

*Except maybe to love him – which I promised to do of my own free will without any prompting with gifts.