This lady makes it look sort of fun...Image via the Google LIFE photo archive.
I’m married to a pediatrician. This means he really likes kids. This means he spends a lot of time around kids. This means that he spends a lot of time giving people advice ABOUT kids. This means at some point he needs to have a kid so he can test out for himself all the stuff he spends his days telling people about kids. This means at some point I need to have a kid.
And for a long time, this has pretty much been my line on the subject: “Yeah, I guess at some point I need to have a kid so Jon will know what he’s talking about!” (This is mostly a joke– he’s a great doctor, and most doctors spend their days treating things with which they have no experience. We don’t require oncologists to have had cancer, and most women are ok with male gynecologists, even if those men don’t really know what it’s like to possess a uterus, ovaries, or vagina.)
My other line on the subject has been that I won’t have a kid while my husband is a resident, working 80 hours per week, because “I didn’t get married just so I could be a single mom.” But we’re into our final year of residency, so that line won’t work for much longer.
Add to this that my husband is about to have a milestone birthday and is currently working in the nursery, surrounded by adorable babies and happy families, and you’ve got a clock ticking. I’m not even sure it’s a biological clock, but rather, some sort of societal clock that expects certain things to happen at certain times, particularly in the South and in the Christian culture in which we operate. Continue reading “maybe baby”
Some people manage to avoid it, but I fear I have to admit this fact: somewhere along the way, Jon and I became old fogeys.
Last night we had dinner with some friends, and then met up with a larger group because it was a friend’s birthday and they were going out for dessert and drinks. At this point it was after nine, which on any normal Tuesday is around the time I start thinking about putting on my pjs. I yawned through the 30 minutes we spent chatting with our friends, before I looked over at a yawning Jon and asked if it was time for us to go home yet.
On the way home we both marveled at how crowded the streets were. WHAT THE HECK ARE ALL THESE PEOPLE DOING OUT THIS LATE ON A TUESDAY? Clearly, we have spent so many weeknights snuggled in at home we had no idea the world continues to go on, even on Tuesdays.
It’s only a matter of time til I can’t find where I put my teeth, I’m helping Jon find his bifocals, and we’re yelling at the damn kids to get off our lawn.
"Don't you just love...fall? It makes me want to shop for back to school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address."
As July draws to a close, and August rolls in on a heat wave, the college campus where I work is beginning, after a dormant summer, to bustle with activity. Students are moving back to town– I saw a station wagon with a mattress strapped on top driving nearby while out on my lunch break. Professors are starting to ask me, “How do you work the new copier again?” as they anticipate running off reams of syllabi to hand out to classes in a few short weeks. It’s the time my dad used to call “the most wonderful time of the year,” a catchphrase he picked up from an old office supply store commercial, which featured parents singing and dancing in eager anticipation as their kids shopped for school supplies and prepared to be someone else’s problem for the majority of daylight hours. My dad had something for a flare for the dramatic, and would re-enact the commercial, dancing down the aisles of the office supply store, riding his cart like a chariot, singing the usually-Christmas song, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year!” Of course, my sister and I, sad to see our summer vacation come to an end, would roll our eyes and trudge through the store dejectedly.
Now I’m wondering what the hell was wrong with us.
Now, I don’t need a Facebook quiz to tell me I’m Hermione Granger. I’m a hand-raising, answer giving, note taking, supernerd who thrived in school, loved making good grades, and just generally liked learning things. I was good at school. Still, I didn’t realize until oh, about a year as a post-college working stiff just how wonderful school is compared to “real life.” The difference is all in the feedback loop.
In school, you regularly receive grades, so you know if you’re on track, if you’re doing well, if there are areas you need to improve on. Moreover, if you’re a good student like me, most of the feedback you’re getting is very positive. This is in no way true of most of my experience in the working world (until my current position, where I have the world’s best boss, which really makes all the difference). Generally, in the working world, no one is going to say anything to you about how you’re doing until you screw something up. The only time you’re going to get feedback is when someone has something negative to say about you and the way you do things. You can show up on time, perform all your assigned tasks, and you’re not going to hear from anyone until the day some jerk gives you zero notice to pull something together and you miss a deadline for the first time in six months, and then, boy are you gonna HEAR ABOUT IT. If you’re someone generally used to being the best, to being praised for your efforts, this is REALLY hard to take. I’m beginning to see why some folks become the much-maligned “professional student.”
So, despite having graduated college 2-ish years ago, eager to throw off the shackles of academia and set foot into the world a free, adult woman, I find myself really missing school. I miss racing to read through assigned texts and then sitting around tables discussing them in seminars. I miss picking out paper topics, poring over journal articles, and churning out research papers, 4-5 pages per hour. Yes– I wrote so many papers in college that I know exactly how long it takes me to write them, provided I’ve done my typically extensive prewriting process. I miss school. I was good at school. With school I know who I am and where I stand and what I’m supposed to do.
Now, I’m sure some are saying, well, if you like school so much, why not just go back? The problem is, I don’t know what I would go back to school to study. Some days I dream of studying English, other days political science, others law school, and still others, social work. Unlike my husband, who has always been relatively sure what he wanted to be when he grows up, I have reached the age of 24.5 and still have no idea.
So I’ve decided to dip my toe in the water. As a college employee, I get to take one class free each semester, and so I’ve been admitted to the Graduate School as a nondegree student and will be taking a 500 level English course on 18th Century Women’s Writers this fall. I’m eagerly sharpening my pencils and comparing prices on the texts. Who knows, maybe if I like it, I’ll make that a DEGREE student. Anyway, I just ordered myself a Moleskine academic planner, and if you listen very closely you can hear me singing, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year!”
Image via Flickr user Merelymel13 who just so happened to quote one of my favorite movies in the caption, prompting me to use that caption as well.
Three years ago today, a crazy 21-year-old still in college walked down an aisle and said “I do.” She was crazy not because she was unsure of herself but because she was so. darn. sure. She took a leap without an ounce of fear or hesitation, which is perhaps the craziest thing of all.
That 21-year-old is obviously me, but the third person sounds so much more writerly, doesn’t it? I had every reason in the world to be scared out of my mind– as the child of divorce, I know all too well the reality of a broken marriage, the odds that things won’t work out, the possibility that something that began in eye-gazing wonder could end in screaming and the crashing of a box of wedding dishes into a driveway. But after three years of dating, in which we saw each other at our best and our worst, and after a seriously in-depth book I highly recommend called 101 Questions to Ask before you get Engaged, we knew we were ready, that we could face whatever came our way as long as we were facing it together.
In some ways, when we were getting ready for the wedding, I realized that we had already been becoming married. I know that sounds strange, but if marriage is the merging of two into one, we had slowly been knitted together, heart-string by heart-string, over the three years before. Married wasn’t something we suddenly became with the incantation of vows in a ceremony on a wedding day, but something we had been and are still becoming, day by day, intimacy upon intimacy. As someone who grew up in the Presbyterian Church, the wedding itself reminded me of what I had always been told about sacraments. They are outward signs of inward graces. They’re our way of acknowledging things that had already been at work within us, just like baptism isn’t a magical act that confers salvation, but a ritual that recognizes salvation which has been freely poured out like water.
About 9 months after we got married, I graduated from college and went on a two-week trip to England with my English class. It was an absolutely wonderful trip, full of hiking across the Brontes’ moors and up peaks that inspired Wordsworth and around lakes that spoke to Ruskin. We kept journals throughout the experience, as a way of receiving our grades, and in many ways I used my journal to pour out my heart as I was missing my husband terribly during the longest time we’d spent apart since our wedding. I remember wondering what my professor would think about these ramblings, because I wrote about this strange feeling of not being able to enjoy the trip to the fullest because the one person I wanted to be sitting next to on double-decker buses, strolling hand in hand through Kensington Gardens, and just talking to about everything was not there with me. It was on that trip, I wrote, that I started to begin to realize “just how married” I really was. It was like I was having a wonderful experience while simultaneously feeling like half my heart was across an ocean. Thankfully, my professor did NOT think me a sad sap, and wrote that she had really enjoyed my journal.
Now, three years after my wedding day, I can see how these passing years have made us even more married, ever more tightly bound together. These past three years have been some of the hardest of our lives, living far away from all of our family and friends, suffering the stresses and indignities of residency, and the emotions and frustrations that come with sleep deprivation and schedules that don’t always line up and the difficulties of loneliness. And yet, more than anything, these three difficult years have shown us that we can face anything that comes our way so long as we face it hand in hand. In a few months we’ll get an email or an envelope informing us where we’ll be spending the next three years of our lives as Jon does a fellowship in pediatric emergency medicine, and it may be here, it may be one of our homes (Little Rock or Denver), it may be a completely new city altogether where we have to start fresh all over again (Nashville, Birmingham, Salt Lake City). But instead of being afraid of that challenge, as I was at the beginning of residency, I’m excited for it. I even welcome it. It’s completely out of our control, but I know that we will thrive and be closer and better for whatever the next chapter holds. Because we’re doing that now, and we’re going to keep on keepin’ on. I’m excited to see how much more married I feel after the next 3 years, and the next 30…
This actually looks surprisingly like my Craigslist-found bike, except mine has gears, a bell, and a fancy new basket.
I just said to Jon, “We’re having a very ‘No Impact Man‘ kind of Saturday.” And it’s true! This morning Jon mowed the lawn with his fancy non-fossil-fueled Neuton mower, then we walked to our favorite local natural/slow food/soul food restaurant for brunch and also bought a dozen local eggs and chatted with the owner about the difference between commercial and local food. I had biscuits and gravy, Jon had some gumbo, and we shared fries with bearnaise and a green bean salad. MMMMM! Then we came home, grabbed our shopping bags, and hopped on our bikes to go to the grocery store, and I got to test out my new bike basket which Jon so sweetly installed on my bike this morning. Verdict: slightly wobbly and harder to steer, but it worked! Not a bad way to spend a Saturday morning. What are you up to this weekend?
I'd rather be napping in this hammock than working today. Boo to being a grownup.
Apparently, as a wee tot I was quite the early riser and would stand next to my parents’ bed yelling HAPPPPEEEEEE MORNINGGGGG over and over until someone woke up to give me some attention. I guess this is better than shrieking or something, but let me just tell you right now, at this point? I’d probably lock my toddler self in her room and tell her not to come out until the sun comes up. I’m big on sleeping. I could sleep 12 hours and STILL take a nap the next day. If there were an Olympics of sleeping, I’d be a contestant.
All that to say, I’m saying “happy morning” today not because it IS one– it’s Friday and I wish it were Saturday– but because I’m trying to convince myself. It’s gonna be a busy day at work today, kids, and this is probably all the blog you’re gonna get. Feel lucky if you get a brief “bufflo tips” is what I’m sayin’. Hope your day is less busy than mine. Catch ya on the flip side.
I’m about to write something that may seem a little radical to many I know. So consider yourself warned.
On the one hand, the whole world has Jon & Kate + 8 fever, and it seems that their big announcement tonight is that they’re getting divorced, as People Magazine reports that papers have already been filed in Pennsylvania. I firmly believe that being on TV is not a good thing for families, but I don’t think it’s just the quest for the spotlight that doomed this family. Even from early episodes, it was apparent from the way they spoke to each other that Jon and Kate did not respect each other. And though Kate often goes on church speaking tours, I did not see a lot of Christian love and grace between them. Of course I’m just an armchair quarterback, but I calls ’em like I sees ’em.
And so, I’m faced with a sort of bipolar response to this, as a committed, happily married woman, and also as a child of divorce. You see, I believe that divorce is sad and tragic and to be avoided whenever possible. MY Jon and I both agree that it is simply not on the table for us. Based on the experiences of family and friends, I do believe that any marriage can be healed with love and grace by the power of God.
It’s been a while since I regaled the Interwebz with a wacky tale from my adventures on the bus, but I’ve got a good one for you this morning! It had been a fairly normal ride, for the most part, notable only in that for the first time in over a week, I wasn’t huddling under an umbrella and trying not to get splashed by passing cars while waiting for the bus to pick me up. A young man sat down next to me, listening to something I wasn’t even sure existed any more: a discman. I flipped through my Google Reader on my Blackberry. The bus approached one of the major stops on the route. Suddenly, Mr. Discman stood up, grabbed the bar over head with one hand, and put one knee up, foot on the seat like he had a lil Captain in him. HE THEN PROCEEDED TO PELVIC THRUST THE AIR RIGHT NEXT TO ME, wiggling his hips side to side, front to back, and all around. He did not say a word. The bus stopped. The doors opened. He got off the bus.
“FATHER IN HEAVEN!” exclaimed the lady sitting across from me, fanning herself. “LORD! LORD!”
I just burst out laughing from the absurdity of it all and said, “I have no idea what just happened.” She smiled at me. We both laughed. The bus moved on.
Mr. Rogers taught me that "no one knows what you're thinking and feeling unless you tell them."
I write a lot about marriage equality and believe very strongly in marriage equality largely because I’m so happily married. Though it seems some straight people see their marriages as somehow under attack from a threat of gay marriage, experiencing marriage has only more firmly convinced me how wrong it is to deny anyone a chance at this kind of happiness– spending every day with their best friend.
And today I am especially thankful for my husband and “dearest friend” (as Abigail Adams often referred to her husband John). Yesterday I got home and was just feeling sort of mad-doggish (shout out to my English prof Dr. Robbins, who taught me this term from J.M. Barrie: “to be mad-dog is to kick out at everything, and there is some satisfaction in that” from “Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens”). It didn’t help that I had thought Jon would be home around 7:30 and didn’t arrive until about 20 minutes later than that, meaning the dinner I had made was overcooked and soggy by the time he got in the door.
So he arrived to be greeted by a wife who was seemingly annoyed at everything he said. WHY ARE YOU TALKING SO WEIRD? WHAT DO YOU MEAN WHAT KIND OF VEGGIE IS THIS, IT’S AN ENDIVE, GAH! YEAH, DINNER WOULD BE TASTIER IF YOU HAD BEEN HERE 20 MINUTES AGO! The poor guy would have been very justified to get snippy back at me, but instead, in his typically patient manner, he just asked me why I was so annoyed with him. But the truth was, I really had no idea. I was just irritated at the world and I had no idea why. And if that was frustrating for HIM, it’s also super frustrating to me. It’s totally unfair when my feelings are a mystery even to me. Continue reading “mawwiage, mad-dog, and fairness”
I’ve blogged fairly extensively about my less-than-stellar experiences on and waiting for the bus. I’ve been harassed, stared at, honked at, and whistled at, and made uncomfortable. I’ve been chatted up by mentally ill homeless people and stuck sitting next to smelly guys day after day. I’ve even been given a phone number by a man who apparently found the back of my head alluring, as he’d been sitting behind me the entire ride. But I think I may have just had my strangest experience thus far.
I was standing at my stop, sweating in the full sun and trying to keep the wind generated by cars whizzing by from blowing my skirt up, wondering if I should just get out the umbrella to give myself some shade. That’s when a car with two typical South Carolina preppy, fraternity types stopped at the light nearby. When one rolled down his window, I was expecting more bus stop lewd/rudeness.
But instead I heard:
Hey! I like your shoes!
I was so taken aback all I could say was, “Thanks!”
Some people manage to avoid it, but I fear I have to admit this fact: somewhere along the way, Jon and I became old fogeys.
Three years ago today, a crazy 21-year-old still in college walked down an aisle and said “I do.” She was crazy not because she was unsure of herself but because she was so. darn. sure. She took a leap without an ounce of fear or hesitation, which is perhaps the craziest thing of all.
erniebufflo's south & west kitchen 