Passings

One of my oldest and dearest friends lost her mother last week – far too soon. Today, there was a memorial service for her. I am not normally a very emotional or demonstrative person. But this has hit me particularly hard. She was the first of our parents (the parents of my generation) to die and I have had a really hard time. It was a vivid reminder to me that I have spent too much time worrying about the minutiae and not enough worrying about the larger picture.

I fob off my lack of communication with my friends on being too busy. It’s easy to make excuses. I have a stressful job, a night job, five kids, five cats, a dog and a husband. That takes up a lot of my time. But to not communicate with my friends is just wrong. And I’ve been feeling bad about lost connections.

I was thinking at the memorial service today about all of the things that Amber’s mom with miss with her grandson, Seth. They were particularly close and Amber said that this had been really hard on him. He’s about 9. I was lucky enough to have my grandparents around longer than that. My mom’s parents were around until I was 27 and 33. My grandmother got to be a great-grandmother to Patrick until he was four. I wish she could have been around longer, but I was lucky. I was in my 30s when she died. And there is not a day that goes my that I don’t miss her. (My wedding ring was her 40th anniversary ring.) I can’t imagine what a hard time Seth must be having missing his grandmother.

So, naturally, I started thinking about my parents. Patrick and my father, in particular, are very close. And I know that when that day comes, it will be hardest on him. He will miss is Papa horribly. I’m not trying to be morbid or morose, but this stuff has been weighing on me all week. Partly because I had a really, really bad week at work and my unhappiness and stress boiled over on Tuesday. I realized that as I had a migraine on Tuesday night, if I didn’t change how I thought about and/or reacted to things, I might not get to see my kids grow up.

I have been lucky. My parents saw me have a child and get married. They have been together for 43 years. They may not have always agreed with everything I have done, but I have loved them and they have supported me. I do not know what I would do if I lost my mother. Selfishly, I hope that she lives to be 100 because I don’t know if I can face having to deal with her death. I know how hard her mother’s death was on her.

I don’t want to be a total downer here. My point is simply this – none of this is a guarantee. I am going to make some efforts to be more in touch with my friends. Some of them I have known almost as long as I have memories and some of them are newer. But you are all so very important to me. I guess that’s what I really wanted you all to know.

A Regular, Non-Book Post

It’s been a long, long time since I’ve written about anything not book related. Part of the reason is that I have a crazy-ridiculous schedule right now. I work a regular full-time job. I teach two nights a week. Patrick plays ball two nights a week. Felicity plays ball two night a week. Did I mention Patrick also plays basketball on Saturday nights? Did I mention that am never home before 7:30 Monday through Thursday? Have I mentioned that I have injured my hip and haven’t slept through the night in six weeks? Not that I’m making excuses. I’m on the internet almost every night with Facebook, Goodreads and assorted other sites. I just haven’t felt inspired to write, except for the book reviews I’ve been posting on the other blog.

I’m still not all that motivated. But I have to say that I was motivated to write about the fact that despite my regular job being an emotionally draining difficult experience right now, I love my teaching job. My students rock. This quarter I am teaching Contracts. The first time I was asked to teach contracts, I thought there was no way I was going to (1) be able to fit everything in and (2) make it interesting. In law school, contracts is a year-long class. You take it your first year and it’s almost impossible to understand. Teaching has put me in a position to realize that more sunk in to my caffeine-addled brain than I thought. But it’s hard to fit a year’s worth of knowledge into 11 weeks. I realized the first time around, I can’t. So I focus on the important concepts and theories. As for making it interesting, that was so much easier than I thought.

When I teach, I always try to incorporate real-life stories. Fortunately for me, I have some really good stories. But, ultimately, I cannot make my students successful. That comes from them. I have had quite a few students who have such extreme challenges just to get to school, that I’m often amazed they are able to succeed. I am continually awed by their persistence and humor and willingness to learn. Mind you, there is always one student who doesn’t like my teaching style or doesn’t like me. But that’s okay. I look at my success stories and just feel blessed for those.

I’m grateful to have a job that gives me such satisfaction. And I will leave it at that.

Cleaving – A Review

Julie Powell’s long-anticipated sequel to Julie & Julia came out last year. It was not until a week ago that I received the book. I wasn’t originally going to read it because I had read reviews and the subject matter wasn’t necessarily appealing to me. But it was a bargain book and I really loved Julie & Julia. So I dove in. 

A Little Background

Julie Powell was stuck at a secretarial-type job that she hated and felt she wasn’t doing anything with her life. So she decided to cook all 500 plus recipes in Julia Child’s cookbooks. She, at the suggestion of her husband, started a blog about it. The blog became an enormous hit and she wrote a book that was turned into a movie. 

Cleaving

Cleaving picks up after the runaway success of Julie & Julia. Ms. Powell embarks on becoming a butcher. She tries to get an apprenticeship at a butcher shop in New York City where she lives, but ends up finding one in upstate New York. She learns the art of taking apart an animal to its component parts. This, in a nutshell, is the story. It’s also part travelogue a she travels to Argentina and Africa in the latter third of the book. 

Were this just a story of butchery and meat, I may have enjoyed it more. But it’s not just a story of butchery and meat. Julie has, during this time, begun an affair with a man she first met in college. Her husband finds out and embarks on an affair of his own. Julie’s lover eventually breaks it off and she seeks out a few encounters with strangers. She also has trouble letting go of the man she calls D. 

It’s not the affair itself that necessarily bothers me. I know that people are not immune to human behaviors. And people have affairs for all sorts of reasons ranging from anger, to boredum to revenge. I guess what I had a problem with is the narcissistic way in which she lays her activities bare for all her readers. There’s something voyueristic about the way she talks about her affair. I guess the fact that she’s not entirely apologetic about it bothers me as well. 

I suppose to some extent, you have to be a bit narcissistic to put your deepest secrets on paper for the world to read. I was just bothered by the tone of her book. Another problem with memoir, though I do love the genre, is that you get a one-sided picture. 

A final reason I had a hard time with the tenor and subject matter of the book is that I’m newly married. And I would hate to think that ten years down the line, our marriage would devolve into something that neither of us could leave, but neither of us wants to stay in. I guess that happens a lot. It must because the divorce rate is so high. But I prefer to think that if our marriage came down to that, one of us would spare the other the hurt of an affair and would leave first. 

Am I being judgmental? Probably. But when we read, we all bring our own opinions and values to the page. My judgment is that while i can understand not wanting to leave, it’s not always about you. Ms. Powell says several times that she and her husband share a soul and are like two trees that have grown together over time so that you can no longer tell there were two trees. If you truly feel that way about your spouse, why would you stray? I realize that I haven’t been married that long. And I realize that maybe I’m stuck in the fog of new romance. But. Mike and I have been together long enough and I’m old enough to know that how Ms. Powell conducted herself is not how I would conduct myself. 

So if I disliked this book (which I’m really on the fence about it), why write all this? Because it’s not that often that a book strikes such a strong chord and leaves me feeling so confused. Or so passionate about a subject. 

I don’t mean to be black and white in my analysis or feelings. Because if any area in the spectrum of human emotion is grey, it is certainly this one. But I was struck with how someone could claim to be so attached and love their husband that much and embark in a torrid affair that she was not at all careful about hiding. I realize that I’m being judgmental and that some who read this (if any one does) will disagree. But I am opinionated and this book hit a nerve with me. Read it and see what you think. 

Endings

This year marked the end of some things for me. As the year ends, I do not want to make resolutions. Mostly because I never keep them. So instead, I’m going to mark the endings.

• My single life. I had been single for a long time. But this year, I got married to a wonderful man. I’m not mourning the end of my single life. I’m embracing the beginning of a lifetime partnership. I couldn’t be happier to start my married life. 
• The end of my 30s. I don’t turn 40 until June. But this year marks the last full year I’ll be in my 30s. What a decade it was. I fell like it’s gone by in the blink of an eye. And I’m a little nostalgic for them to continue. But life goes on. And I hope to make my 40s even better. 

Well, the list is short, but important. I am looking forward to the new year. And I’m looking forward to writing more – here and elsewhere. Tomorrow I’ll be discussing my favorite reads. For now, I’m going to go because the police helicopter circling my neighborhood is frustrating my writing mojo.

Our First Christmas

This will not be our first Christmas together. But it will be our first Christmas as a married couple. I have been thinking about what’s different. The biggest difference is superficial. We don’t have the same amount of money to spend on Christmas. But, though Target and WalMart would like us to think differently, this season is not about money. 

I have been a bit down this holiday season. We did not put up the traditional decorations. They are packed away behind the moving boxes in the garage. I didn’t want to make Michael move everything – some of the boxes are really heavy – just to put up the decorations for a month. But I miss my Charlie Brown Christmas tree and my talking Homer Simpsons. We bought an artificial tree at Target and some ornaments to decorate. We put up a few that we had gotten recently and had the kids make some. I have put all the Christmas cards we have received up on the kitchen cabinets, like I do every year. There is enough decor to remind us of the time of year. But it’s still not the same.

I was feeling bad that we couldn’t get the kids everything they wanted and had to cut back on the budget on the older kids. We weren’t able to get presents for anyone else either as we have in years’ past. But I know we can only do what we can afford to do. And we had some other bills to pay.

This is a good year to remember that this time of year is not about what you can give or what you get. It’s about being thankful. It’s about being thoughtful. 

This may not be my “usual” Christmas. It will be memorable, not because of what wasn’t bought. It will be memorable because it was our first time to share the holiday as husband and wife. I hope you and yours have a happy and safe holiday.

Home Sweet Home

I write this post as a married woman. I couldn’t have been happier with how the wedding turned out. There were a few small things that I was unhappy about. Starting with people showing up who were either uninvited or who didn’t RSVP. But I guess that in this day and age, that’s to be expected. My family did a lot to keep the stress away from me. I was able to not worry and enjoy the evening. Nothing major went wrong. There were no disasters or catastrophes. In the end, Michael and I had a wonderful evening and shared our day with family and friends.

The honeymoon was a blast. We went to Orlando and spent a week just doing whatever we felt like doing. We went to Universal Studios two of the days and the Kennedy Space Center another day. We spent two days wandering around the resort. It was calming and peaceful. I actually didn’t think about work except once or twice. We did miss the kids and the animals.

Everyone says that things change with marriage. Maybe it’s only because I’ve been married for a couple of weeks, but the only difference I feel is a new sense of security and a closer bond with Michael. I just keep looking at him and wondering how I got so lucky. I’m still in the midst of changing my name, which I guess is going to take a while. But other than changing my name, things feel the same. At the time, I thought that I would be happy to change my name. But I have to say, having had the same last name my whole life, it’s going to be a little emotional for me to change it. It still sounds weird to hear my married name. I’m sure I’ll get used to it.

I thought this post would be longer, but I’m feeling like crap. So I”m going to cut this short with the promise that I will blog more regularly now that the wedding is over.

In 53 Days….

I will be a Mrs. I spent part of today filling out the application for a marriage license. And on that application there’s a box to change my name. I have had my name for 39 years. I have a signature I’m used to. That’s going to change. I am not entirely unhappy about that. Wise is ease to pronounce. It’s easy to spell and doesn’t break any grammar rules. And I will still be me. Name change doesn’t man personality change.

I will be officially married in 53 days. I know that a lot of people don’t believe in marriage any more. I used to be one of them. I never thought it was necessary.  But as I have grown closer to Michael and as we have merged our lives, I have realized that there are some good reasons to get married. First, Michael and I both have kids. And with Felicity in particular, should something happen to Mike, I need to be able to legally be responsible for her. I cannot do that unless he and I are married. I also want to be able to make decisions for him should he not be able to do it for himself. And vice versa. I love my dad, but I don’t want him being the one to decide my fate. I know it’s morbid, but these are things I think about.

Our partnership will be official. That means a lot to me. Yes, we could register as domestic partners. But it’s not the same thing. I don’t want to refer to Micheal as my fiance or partner for the rest of my life. I am looking forward to being able to introduce him to people as my husband.

Since we already live together, I don’t imagine marriage will change much of our day-to-day lives. I will still work and teach and ride my bike. He will still take care of the house and go to school. We will continue to raise our kids. One big perk of being married is we won’t be spending money on a wedding.

I’m not looking forward to wearing a dress and being the center of attention on my wedding day. But I am looking forward to celebrating with my family and friends. And being able to call Michael my husband.