Saturday, April 30, 2011

please note.

grapefruit juice
does not go well with

baklava

in case you were thinking of enjoying those two together.

happy weekend!

Friday, April 29, 2011

musings on a long distance relationship

It was fine (but not really) when we were young and didn't live together and didn't fall asleep talking every night.

Now, when J leaves for 4-8 days, I don't remember how we made it work when we only saw each other every three weeks.

Now, it just makes me jumpy at any little noise outside, and I stay up way too late because no-one reminds me to go to bed, and I eat weirdly (half a loaf of fresh sandwich bread is delicious, but hardly nutritious), and I watch strange movies that at once make me happy I'm not in a weird dysfunctional relationship but also make me sad that J's not around. (Also, he would hate those movies so I probably wouldn't be watching them to begin with... or he'd watch it with me and ask questions at all the wrong times, and I would huff at him to be quiet.)

Long distance is different when you're the one doing the exploring. I definitely missed J when I was in Texas, but it was very different from when he was in Madison. (Also, the fact that J didn't have a cell-phone when he was a freshman definitely made things way harder.)

The only way long distance would work now is if we were both in new cities. And it wouldn't work much longer than 3-4 months.

As both of us are looking to the future and future careers, it doesn't seem implausible that we may need to spend some time living in different places. Of course, this would be a last resort, but I'm sure we could make it work if we absolutely had to. On the other hand, it's hard to know what those circumstances would be... how much money would it take to convince us to live in different cities?  And if we did live in different cities, how often would be see each other? Would we have to fly, or drive?

We would have to consider each salary divided by the number of hours required by either job, plus any time required for commuting, to compute each true hourly compensation.  Then consider the costs of maintaining two apartments, probably two cars, and the cost of visits between the two cities.

When computing it in this way, it goes without saying that both of us would have to make big chunks of money in order for it to be feasible economically. And this does nothing to include the emotional costs.

I'm guessing this scenario is not very likely, after all.

Besides, I'd rather be poor with J than rich without him.
(Yes, that's corny, but very true.)

Thursday, April 28, 2011

interview.

So I interviewed this morning.

And I have no idea how it went. See, whenever I talk to people and I say anything stupid (or stupid-sounding), I leave the conversation remembering only the parts that were stupid. They play in my head for the rest of the day, over and over... 


Therefore, I have no idea if I said anything useful or good, but I can tell you for sure that I said quite a few stupid things.


I don't think I'll get the internship. And while that makes me sad, I'm really glad I applied, and I hope this means that there's something even more awesome in my future. 


In related (ish) news, I've been looking online for jobs in Phoenix, and just need to draft up some sort of starter e-mail to send with my resume. However, this has thus far proven to be more difficult than writing a paper for school (why? I have no idea), and it's going poorly.


Any advice? I feel like my brain has turned to mush, and this is a bad time for all that to be going on.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

money.


What would I even do with millions?

I would travel.
And have kids as soon as I've seen as much of the world as I'd like.
And pay off school debt and save for retirement and buy a new car so I don't have to sit on the bus with crackheads (this really happened today... call me elitist, but I'd prefer not starting my day that way) and let my dear husband explore any field he wants to go into and probably visit Cassie in Alaska even though I said I would never go anywhere that's colder than Wisconsin and not buy a house.
Oh, and I would buy J an iPad.

Simple dreams really.

I wouldn't change where we live. (Minus not having access to our driveway at the moment.) And I wouldn't change my plans for the summer-- I would still work with the kids and hopefully PP and read a lot.
I wouldn't buy a fancier car than I'm already planning on... although I may decide to get a RAV4 rather than the Outlander Sport. Mostly so that our cars would "match".

More money wouldn't really change how we live right now... it would likely just allow us to worry less about the future.

Oh, and I would donate thousands of dollars to the Vilas zoo.
I certainly owe them.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

i want a baby.

Not all the time, mind you. I just want to hold a baby for a while, get to marvel at the 'little-ness', maybe even rock the baby to sleep.

And then give the baby back to his/her parents.

As much as I love babies, and little kid related things, I don't think I'm quite at the point in my life where I could be a mom... full-time. As far as I am concerned, this part-time gig is really where it's at. You get to be a (major) part of a kid's life, but still have a life of your own.

Yet.

Yet, when I see pregnant women I sometimes feel jealous. Not of them soon becoming moms, but that they get to experience that new-ness. The thought that this little tiny creature in your arms will someday (God willing) be a full-grown human being with his/her own opinions, thoughts and fears... but for now, he/she is just so darn tiny and new and perfect.

Being witness to the magic of a newborn is really something everyone should get to experience (preferably before having your own kids). That little being, that tiny person... a baby literally has an entire life-time ahead of him/her.

What an amazing concept.

Friday, April 22, 2011

productive day!

WOW. 
Today has been uber-productive, and especially so considering I didn't get up until 1. (Yes, 1 pm-- No, I don't know how that happened.) Any-who...

I applied for two internships and a job!!

I hope I get at least one of them... ideally I would do the two internships during the summer and start at the job in August or September! Either way, I'm super excited that I finally have something started... I was beginning to wonder how this whole job search was going to end up if I never got started. More importantly, I now have an updated resume (with not too much pink), and I'm excited to start applying to other places. 

I'm also pretty excited for this weekend... it will include not only sushi, but a Brewers game and a chance for my to wear my new Brewers sweatshirt! :)
It looks mostly like this, but is a zip-up, and the hood is lined with yellow:
Yay for my favorite team (colors)!

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

friends and chairs

Love this image... Think I want to get a framed copy, blown up. 



It would certainly look great with our new chairs: 




(yes, we are now old people who shop for things like chairs on the weekend... sigh)
BUT, they're wonderful.

So, friends and chairs. Apparently that is all I need in life. :)

Thursday, April 7, 2011

date night

J and I had a date night last night... we tried a new restaurant (Bandung Indonesian) because we had a Groupon for it, and went to see a movie (with a 2 for 1 deal), and we went for drinks at the Great Dane between dinner and the movie. Success!
I tried the Pad Thai at Bandung, and it was great. It was slightly spicy, with peanuts, beef, and some strips of fried eggs. J had lamb skewers over mini rice cakes and some cucumbers. Both meals were delicious, but mine was quite a bit more food than J's, so I shared. :)
We saw Insidious, and it was... interesting. Haha! It was definitely less scary than I thought it would be, and some of the things were funnier than they were horrific. Eh-- I'd give it a B-. It was still good to get out!

I'm liking this new scheme for date night-- making a sport out of doing as much as possible while spending as little as possible. We still have another 2 for 1 deal for movies, some lazer tag passes, some kickboxing passes, some cooking classes, and some other restaurant deals lined up. I'm excited! :)

Friday, April 1, 2011

within you, as you

I've been struggling recently with my own beliefs about birth control. While I have always been a great supporter of a woman's right to choose not to have children at any particular moment (or at all), I'm not sure how I reconcile it with my beliefs about letting nature take its course.

I've been reading many blogs lately, and have found many that detail women's struggles with infertility. Some choose to wait a while before exploring any sort of infertility treatments, others choose to get started with medical help as soon as they realize they may have trouble conceiving. I've always told J that I do not want to go through any infertility treatments. I think I believe that if God doesn't allow your body to get pregnant naturally, you shouldn't mess with it, and adopt, or simply accept that having kids is not in the cards. (I say "I think" because I can't possibly know now, at 24, how I'll feel in a couple of years if I've been trying to get pregnant for 5 years. It's possible that I would completely disregard any beliefs I have about it now and exhaust every avenue in trying to have a baby of my own.)

On the other hand, I've been on birth control since I was 18, and will very likely remain on birth control until J and I are ready to have kids. We've always planned on having kids in our late 20s or early 30s, which will mean that I will have been on some sort of (hormonal) birth control for 10-15 years. I've always been nervous that this would harm (or completely destroy) my ability to conceive someday, but knew that I couldn't possibly be a good mother earlier.

So. Does this make me a hypocrite? I feel like it does. How can I say that I shouldn't mess with medicine if my body cannot conceive naturally, yet use hormonal birth control in an effort to prevent conception before I'm ready? How can I claim that I believe in God's plan for me for one time period in my life, but not another? On the other hand, if God wanted me to have a child now, wouldn't He be able to override any forms of birth control I was using?

I feel very confused and conflicted. I don't know how to reconcile my beliefs about God with what I want out of the rest of my life. I believe that God gave us free will, and wants us to exercise common sense in using that free will. But sometimes I worry that I spend too much time exercising that free will and not enough time listening to God.

***
As I was writing this post, I was watching Eat, Pray, Love. And right after I wrote the last sentence (above), in the movie Liz said "So the holy truth of the whole adventure here in India, is in one line: "God dwells within you...as you." God's not interested in watching a performance of how a spiritual person looks and behaves."


Touché, God.