It seems so long ago that I thought "blogging" was something fun and important to do. After that last post I made here, I started working with teh B at teh cleaners. Full time. I have a moment now to write this because I am no longer working there. But it's Xmas time, so not a good time to try to find something new. And no worries about anything like "are you still married" or whatever, because of course we're still married. It's just that after four months of not paying any bills and letting her own personal finance stuff get way out of control, my mother-in-law says she has "woke up" and realizes that she has to work full time at the store and that because her debt and whatnot has thrown her into a seriously panicked death spiral, she feels it's not wise to try to support all three of us on the net income of the store. I think she's right for the time being. Until she gains back a sense of confidence and control, this is really the only responsible course for her to take -- work hard and get her life in order. And I can work somewhere else, temping or something, and make a little cashy cushion for us until such time as she's not wiling to work in the store anymore. I predict that will be within 6 months.
Anyway, all that is up in the air and in some ways feels so distant from me, because even though I am part of the family and have some opinion about all of it, there are parts of the process that seem closed to me because I'm a newcomer, outsider, and *not* Korean. I don't know what that means or what I'm rambling about, I'm just getting my typing fingers on again.
Working at the cleaners.
Working at the cleaners has to have been the hardest job I've ever had. I kept trying to express this in words to my husband, to my mom, to anyone, really, who would listen. I say with all honesty, I didn't think I had it in me to work that hard. I am and always have been kind of lazy; I think it comes with being smart -- I don't think I should *have* to work hard. Of course my right-thinking mind rejects that wrongheaded thinking 100%, but I suspect I've been in the habit of being that way for a long time. So, the main lesson I can take away from my 10 weeks working in a dry cleaner is that I have it in me to work hard. Maybe not without bitching a lot of the time (I mean, my feet HURT -- EVERY DAY ALL DAY) and crying sometimes and wanting teh B to do my work for me, which, being a loving and good husband, he would do, even though he was also tired and sapped and his feet hurt every day all day -- maybe I didn't have the best attitude every day, but I feel like I achieved something. The first week I wanted to die. The second week, I thought I probably would. The third week, I wanted everyone else to die. Or something. But it got easier, I got better at everything, I started to feel some measure of confidence and ownership and enjoyment -- got to know the customers, the employees, the processes. Now it's over, for the time being, and -- more honesty -- I'm glad for the break. I'm looking forward to working relatively normal hours, being able to cook dinner for us, not crying over the chronic pain in my feet and shoulders, not needing a "big sleep" once a week (that's when we would go to bed at like 8 or 8:30 and sleep all night. We needed that by Thursday or Friday each week).
The rest of my life.
Well, the rest of my life has been kind of put on hold during this time when we were working so hard. I mean, I really didn't have the time or energy for anything. I haven't found a church or spiritual home. In fact, that whole topic is kind of up in the air (HA HA!) because, of course, B & I have different needs and interests in that area. I want to be exposed, regularly, to people who are thinking about and talking about God and things of God. I can't speak for what B wants, but I think his views on organized religion and traditional church or groups are more complicated than mine. And I think that's okay with me. We just have to sort out logisitics. I don't require him to join me, or agree with me, or anything! He has his own path and his own relationship with God. I liked it when we were going to Quaker meeting together, especially because that was at his instigation. But the meeting here isn't a formal meeting, and it meets on Sunday, which is his (our) only day off and it's time we're reluctant to give up or to schedule at all.
What are the other parts of the rest of my life? Well, my beloved cat Miller ran away again and never came back. She has been gone for more than a month, and now it's almost possible for me to write about that without weeping and abject grief. We were together for 8+ years. That's really all I have to say about that.
We're traveling to where my parents live for a couple days for Christmas. Now that there's a kid (my nephew), it's really all for him.
Speaking of which, no kids here yet.
I'm posting this in my lj and my vox because I haven't decided which one I really want to use yet. Er, rather, I haven't been using anything, but I know I made a big show of saying that the vox was my new journal, and truly, I do like the interface better. We'll see.
Dear everyone who reads this: Merry Christmas or Happy Whatever Event, if any, you celebrate in December, and Best Wishes to you in the New Year.
Life is busy, all right?!! I have been temping this week at the Wynn-Las Vegas, which is not Satan's main property around these parts (that would be the Bellagio, according to Bryan) but that of his smoovest lieutenant. It's fine -- the shiniest most dazzling imitation gilt on a pile of the deadly sins one has ever seen. You got your lust, your avarice, your greed (wait, what's the difference between avarice and greed? Oh, they're the same), your gluttony, your sloth, plus, with not too much of a stretch, your wrath and your pride. But the work is easy, the pay is decent, and there's free lunch and dinner every day.
All else is good: pets, husband, apartment.
More filling in people later.
This morning (OK, it was while I was in what teh B and I refer to as "the panic room" -- our small toilet closet) I realized I am living one of those crazy stories that you see in a movie or read in a book. That at some point I made a decision that took me down a path to an alternate future -- alternate, I mean, to the one I thought was intended for me. It's hard to believe I'm not still a 37-year-old single Christian woman living with her two cats in Ypsilanti, MI, working for the university and just doing her stuff with friends, taking classes, crocheting, reading, etc.
It almost seems like a dream, how strangely different my life is from what I expected.
To me, Bryan was famous. I mean, my first exposure to him made him sort of abstract -- his "Rejection Slips" website was a Yahoo "After 5" cool website pick that was emailed to me, back in 1998. He was the funny, talented, (in truth, gifted), smart "internet" person. Not someone I knew. Famous. It was only the oddity of "running into" him in the letters section of an online magazine I liked (pre-Salon and pre-Slate, I think -- or, at least, they were all starting around the same time...it was called Ironminds and it didn't make it) that gave me the courage to write him. It just seemed like such a funny and futuristic experience to encounter a literally virtual stranger as an acquaintance in the vastness (even back then, in the 20th century) of the world wide web. I thought he might agree, so I wrote him. As I recall, his response was very nice, polite, and super perfunctory.
Whoa! This wasn't meant to be a retelling of "how I met my husband." But the crazy fact is: from that (strangers exchanging brief emails about the internet) to husband? What the?
To look back and see how the paths change & meet & diverge & some intersect & others end....and how the choices I made at points where there was a choice (or was there?) led me here: married to this funny, gifted, talented, real life person that is so much more than I knew. But in Las Vegas! It's just so weird.
Friday was a crazy day. The overview is: I lost my cat, found my stolen bikes on someone's back porch, got my broken dryer fixed finally, had the bikes returned by the cops, and got a temp assignment in a major "property" (that's how they call the casinos [or Sin Pits] here). At one point I counted all the good things that happened, and figured that they, together, cost my cat. But no! When we got home and walked around, we found her. The end.
Well, trying to tell Bryan that I am awaiting my initiation into the New Wives Club, and where is my instruction, I accidentally (freudentally) said "where's my indoctrination?"
That was yesterday, which started out as not a good day (or, rather, it started okay, went downhill [waaaay downhill {like, our first semi-fight of our marriage downhill}]) but ended with flowers and a date with my husband. He is so good and so worn thin by this experience, I'm amazed I can even see him. Yesterday was bad because his mom is so mean to him and so ungrateful for him, the audacity of which attitude ASTOUNDS me. He single-handedly saved the business, and consequently her ass, and she does nothing but peck at him like a vicious little bird....defeating him with a million little wounds that each bleed out his spirit bit by bit.
There, that's not much about me, but I'm not prepared to write about me yet, I still don't know who I am anymore. The mix of time/tense in that concept is confusing, but it's exactly right. Now, still, after a month, I don't know who I am as opposed to who I was for the past 36+ years. Odd feeling.
I guess this is my new "blog" or "journal" and that may be part of finding out who I am now.
What do you collect?
Vintage handbags and bakelite!
Dear Kraft Foods Global, Inc.:
When I want to eat Triscuits®, which is not very often, but more, now, now that you have produced these delicious alternative flavors -- alternative, I mean, to the unappealing "plain" hay/horse snack flavor of your original effort -- I do not want to have to cook something, especially something that includes six or more ingredients and requires me to count out some number of Triscuits® from the box, so please, please, do not bother to put "Enjoy These Delicious and Easy Snack Ideas!" on the back of the box with the correspondent recipes for "Tex-Mex Melts" or "White 'Pizza'." Also, is it really necessary to put "Pizza" in quotes in that last one? Are you actually worried someone might confuse this with pizza?
Sincerely yours,
Converted by Rosemary and Olive Oil flavored Triscuits®
