Because I Don't Care About Final Papers

The semester is almost over. Two weeks from today I'll be back in my hometown for Christmas. I'm not really happy about being away from Penn for ten days, but I am getting really excited about seeing my family (last time we were all together was back in March), and Maddi is coming to visit for a couple of days (I haven't seen her in a year!) and I'm going to a baby shower for Cas while she is in town (If I have time I'm going to make her future baby a onesie that says "I only cry when ugly people hold me" because I know Cas will love it). So yeah, I'm getting excited about going home.
But in the meantime it's the same end-of-semester nonsense as usual. I have three 20-page papers due in the next two weeks, and since Thanksgiving was so late this year it has really compressed the end of the semester. I still have my regular class schedule next week, which feels weird to me. I feel like the past two semesters I always had more than a week without classes to do all of my final writing, but that's not how it worked out this time. So I made my End of Semester Gameplan with what exactly I need to accomplish each day to finish everything in time, and so far I'm right on schedule...which is why I feel completely justified in taking twenty minutes to write here.

Other than being really busy with schoolwork, there isn't much going on here. As I mentioned last time, I finally finished organizing the apartment and decorating for Christmas. It's a relief to finally have everything in one apartment and in its proper place, although I have to admit that I was surprised by how relatively low-stress the whole moving process was. I thought it would stress me out like crazy going back and forth between two apartments for a month, but, as usual, I psyched myself up so much beforehand imagining how annoying it was going to be that by the time it actually happened I was like, "Really? That was it?" I still wouldn't recommend moving mid-semester to anyone, but everything worked out okay. The move happened, I managed to get a reasonable amount of sleep throughout, and somehow even though I am definitely cutting a lot of corners this semester I feel like I have a pretty solid "A" in all of my courses right now. The one thing that went by the wayside was working out, but since I was doing so much heavy lifting and stair climbing during Moving Month (and so much walking on my two conference vacations), I think that sort of makes up for the fact that my weights and walking shoes were starting to get a bit dusty. But hey, it's December now! Back on track!

Everyone keeps asking me what it's like living with Penn, and all I ever say is, "It's going so well!", because it is. I can't really elaborate more than that because, honestly, not much has changed for me. Living with Penn is pretty much exactly like living by myself, with the following exceptions:
1) When he is home and the TV is on, it's on ESPN or the Discovery Channel. I suppose if I wanted to watch my own primetime TV shows I could use the TV in the office, but I'm generally busy working at night so I don't particularly care what is on the TV. So the background noise is now football as opposed to Jon and Kate Plus Eight, but since as far as I'm concerned TV is pretty much just background to whatever else I happen to be doing at the time, this really makes no difference to my quality of life.
2) Someone else can take out the trash!
3) I have an occasional grocery shopping partner (which makes grocery shopping more fun, although my style is to price compare on everything and his style is to just fling things into the cart, so I've been trying to teach him the benefits of looking at the specials).
4) I get to use him as a pillow every single night (this is my favorite thing).

Really, that's about all I can think of that has changed. Living with him doesn't cramp my style at all. It's exactly like when we first started dating. Back when we first started dating, I made the decision that since I was actually perfectly happy on my own, I wasn't going to get into a committed relationship unless he enhanced my already very good life. And, as it turned out, he did. He didn't complicate my life at all. I was able to keep living the life I had been living, with the added bonus of a companion to share it with. I feel like moving in together has had the same effect. Everything is pretty much just like it was before, with the added bonus of someone at home to greet me at the end of the day. I'm not saying we haven't made small changes and compromises in both of our lives in order to be together, that just comes with the territory of any relationship. But those changes should never feel like a hardship. They should be things that make your life better. And, so far, that has been very true for us.
I think his lifestyle had to change a lot more than mine did, mainly because I think when one of you is naturally a neat freak and the other one is naturally sort of a slob, it's always the neat freak that is going to win. (My reasoning behind this is that it doesn't drive the messier person completely crazy to learn how to keep messes confined to smaller spaces-desk drawers, kitchen junk drawers, etc., but it DOES drive neat freaks utterly insane to be surrounded by a mess...plus the neat freak is willing to putter around and clean up every night, while the messier person has no real incentive to go around and deliberately trash things, so...) Penn's home is now a lot neater than it used to be, but he hasn't really had to change his behavior at all AND he can kidnap me to the bedroom whenever he wants, so I think that's a fair trade.