Sorry, This One is All Wedding

Whew. Lemme just sit here and catch my breath a minute.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Hi. I just had a whirlwind of a week. My parents came to visit, so I gave myself permission to more-or-less take the week off from school and work. That's the great thing about the way I currently earn a living as a graduate student: ever since coursework ended, schoolwork is entirely optional (the dissertation has to get done eventually, but nobody is breathing down my neck about it...yet) and since all of my assistantship work is of the "as long as you get it done in a reasonable amount of time, you can do it whenever you feel like it" category I can make my own schedule every week. So last week I adjusted accordingly and crammed all of the absolutely necessary work tasks into Monday morning so that I could take the rest of the week off. I'll have to play catch up a little bit this week since I only did the bare minimum last week, but it's no big deal.

In a way last week was restful since I was doing nothing but fun-having (Penn always refers to "fun-having" for some reason), but we stayed really busy. Much of the running around was wedding-related. First of all, Kiki came down from New York and she and my mom and I went wedding dress shopping! That was so much fun. It didn't make me as emotional as I thought it might. It felt a little bit strange to put on that first white dress and reflect on the fact that, wow, I'm actually going to have the experience of having a big white wedding. For a while there a few years back I thought a wedding honestly wasn't in the cards for me, so it's always a tiny bit surprising when I remember that I'm the bride-to-be and I have an almost-husband. But for the most part this just seems like the next step in a very natural progression, so it doesn't feel strange to be trying on wedding dresses. It just feels like what I'm supposed to be doing right now.

It was so much fun to go through the racks and/or books of wedding dresses and say, "I want to try this one, and this one, and, oooh, bring me that one." If anything, I got emotional because I realized I'm only going to get to do this once (well, hopefully, God-willing, I'll only do this once!) and it was a bummer to realize that there are so many gorgeous dresses I'll never get to wear. I asked Penn if we could renew our vows in ten years so that I can pick out a second fancy white dress, and he just laughed at me, so I guess that's not going to happen.

Anyway, after two days of dress shopping at three different bridal salons and trying on about 30 dresses, I think I found the one for me. I ended up really surprising myself. All winter long while I looked at dresses online and in magazines, I thought two things: 1) I want the dress to have a lace overlay and 2) I absolutely, positively DO NOT want a strapless dress. Well, lo and behold, I tried on a bunch of dresses and the two I loved most don't have a speck of lace on them and they're both strapless! I tried on dresses with halter necks and cap sleeves and shoulder straps, but I just wasn't feeling any of them. It turns out strapless dresses look better on my body. Before trying on dresses I'd been afraid that a strapless dress would give me those weird teeny little rolls where the dress meets my chest (ladies, you know what I'm talking about, and unfortunately they happen no matter how skinny you are) or, worse, that I'd have to be hiking the dress up all night to keep it on. Well, it turns out I was wrong about both of those things. Wedding dresses with built-in corsets are ahhhhhhmaaazing. I'm relatively thin in the first place, but the first time a salesperson laced me into a corseted dress I was like, "Whoa, hello there, waist!! And boobs!? Where did you come from?!" I was suddenly super skinny and yet I simultaneously got curves in all the right places. I've never loved my body so much. Right now I'm seriously wondering why on earth corsets ever went out of fashion (Note: I may feel differently about this after being laced up for eight hours on the wedding day!). Also, it turns out that once you're laced into your dress it's absolutely not going anywhere. Even not custom-fitted for me yet, those dresses all fit like a second skin. And I can adjust it just perfectly so that I won't accidentally flash anyone but so that it won't make my skin pinch awkwardly where dress meets flesh. In short, I am a convert and will very likely be wearing a strapless wedding dress after all.

The life lesson in this, I guess, is try things even when you think they are not for you. You may be very pleasantly surprised!
I narrowed it down to two dresses, but I can't stop thinking about one of them, which I think means I need to go put it on again and see if it's The Dress. They're both beautiful and I'd be happy wearing either of them (I'd be happy wearing almost any of the dresses I tried on, actually) but one of them just seems more special. It has a bit more drama, and that suits me, as it turns out that the only thing I DIDN'T change my mind about when wedding dress shopping is that I want a dress that screams "Wedding!" and that is not something I would ever be able to wear again. Why not go all out on the one day in your life that you're encouraged to be the center of attention?

Well, I was going to tell you about other things that happened last week, but my almost-husband just went to bed and that seems like a wise idea so I'm going to join him. I'll try to be back soon with more stories. I have tales about trips in limousines and secret service agents and hockey playoffs and my own personal Meet the Fockers evening and dislocated knees (not mine or Penn's, thankfully). You'll wait with baited breath, I'm sure.

Best Wedding Ever

The other night my sister and I were texting cross-country while watching The Sound of Music on TV [Incidentally, I love text messaging. I talk to at least one of my family members pretty much every day via text message, and it's the main way we communicate. I'm the perfect combination of too lazy+too busy to pick up the phone to have a lengthy conversation, even with people I really love, so if it weren't for text messages I am pretty sure I'd only talk to my parents once every couple of weeks and my sister and brother maybe every few months.]

Anyway, as I was watching the second half of the movie I was suddenly inspired and had to text message my sister with my brilliant idea:
Me: I'm going to make Penn sing this song with me at the wedding!
My Sister: Which song? Climb Every Mountain?

Me: No, the one that the Captain and Maria sing together at the gazebo. "For here you are standing there loving me, whether or not you should..."That one.

My Sister: Oh, that one works!
Me: I'm also gonna wear a super-long tulle veil like Maria's.

My Sister: You'd better not! I'm going to sing "So long, farewell..." to everyone at the end of the reception.

Me: Yes!!
My Sister: The whole wedding party can do it! We'll be the birds and the boys will stand in front.

Me: And Penn's nieces and nephews can all wear matching uniforms and march around to a whistle!
My Sister: Perfect!

The whistle was totally Penn's suggestion, by the way. I told him that I wanted to change our wedding theme to "The Sound of Music" and he said "NO WAY" but then when I told him all of the ideas so far he said, "And I'll blow a whistle and the kids can march around." So, I'm pretty sure this means he secretly supports the plan. He just has to put up a manly front.
I'm fairly certain my sister-in-law-to-be will get on board with this plan, as Penn has assured me that she is a big fan of The Sound of Music (who ISN'T a big fan of The Sound of Music? It's amazing!). Plus it beats the other two plans my family members suggested so far, which were a) Jersey-style hair and bridesmaid dresses with revealing cutouts and b) my mother and her girlfriends wearing their old wedding dresses only "Madonna-ing them up."

In all seriousness, the wedding doesn't really have a theme. So far it's just a hodgepodge of things we like that I'm trying to pull together into some sort of unifying concept. Right now the concept (which exists only in my head at this point) involves mostly books and trees and candles and winter. Books and trees are vaguely related, I suppose. Add candles to the mix and it gets sort of, um, dangerous, what with all that paper and wood around, but I'm sure there's a way to do it. And "winter" is mostly just apparent in my color choices and the fact that I want to have a hot chocolate bar and it isn't actually a "theme" per se. I mean, I don't think there are going to be glitter snowflakes all over the place. I have no idea how (or if) it will all come together.

But now that I'm considering throwing all my ideas out in favor of a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical-themed wedding, it may be a moot point.

Easter

Easter is here! It's a beautiful day here today. The temperature is in the 70s and it's gloriously sunny and the daffodils and tulips are blooming in everyone's yards and along the highway. It's exactly how Easter should be.
It was Penn's birthday yesterday and I surprised him with tickets to a concert at a local jazz club. There are some well-known jazz venues here that have been around since the 1920s, and Penn has been wanting to check one out for a long time but we'd just never gotten around to doing it. When he challenged me to pick something fun to do for his birthday, I decided that it was time to finally check out the jazz scene. I used to think that I didn't like jazz music much, but through Penn's instruction (documentaries from Netflix; samples from various musicians when we're driving in the car) I'm definitely starting to appreciate it and even enjoy it. Last night's show featured a jazz bassist who played with everyone: Miles Davis, Thelonius Monk, a bunch of other well-known people. He's more than 70 now and still going strong. He played the bass in a really classy suit, accompanied by a pianist and a guitar player. The club is in a dark, candlelit basement. It was very small and intimate. I really liked the atmosphere of the whole thing, and I'd definitely do it again.
Anyway, I was worried that since we'd gone out last night we'd be too tired to want to go to church this morning, but we were up at 9:00 and got to church by 10:00 in time to claim our usual pew before the place totally filled up. Church was PACKED. The church we've been going to (the church where we're going to get married in January) has a decent-sized congregation anyway. I'd say about 200-250 people attend every week. It's big enough that it feels like a bustling, active place, but not so huge that nobody knows each other. The pastor knows everyone's names and details about their lives. At least, that's how it is normally. Today there were at least 500 people there, maybe more. It was a nice service. There was an entire brass instrument quartet and a big kettledrum to fill out the music, there were Easter lilies everywhere, and it was fun seeing all the kids in their Easter outfits. Easter really isn't much of a holiday unless you go to a church service, so I'm glad we made it this morning. On the drive home Penn and I were talking about how much we like the church we've been going to. We've been going regularly since January, and I realize that's only three months so far, but in the past ten years this is by far the most consistent I've been about going to church. My whole childhood church felt kind of like a drag, like something I had to do because my parents were forcing me to get up on Sunday mornings. Then for the past ten years church was something I still thought about fairly often but I just couldn't figure out how to justify my intellectual, logical life with any sort of faith, and I was very turned off by all the right-wing Christian mumbo jumbo which seems to have been growing more and more prevalent over the past decade. I had no desire to associate myself with any of that. I realized something, though. If all of the reasonable, sane people leave the Christian church, then church becomes nothing but everything I hate about it now: a bunch of zealots pushing their views on everyone else and trying to muddle in government and law where they do not belong at all whatsoever (or, at worst, becoming psychotic extremists who believe it's okay to kill for their faith, as we saw with that news story of the religious militia in Michigan earlier this week). I listened to a radio program the other day about women's roles in various faith communities. One of the panelists was an Orthodox Jewish woman who is pushing from within her church to allow women to have more parity with men. The host asked, "Why not just stop living the Orthodox lifestyle and become part of a more liberal Jewish group that allows women more equality?" and the woman basically said (and I'm paraphrasing big time), "Because I fundamentally like the Orthodox Jewish lifestyle, there are just a few man-made elements of it that I disagree with. And the only way to create true change is from within, so if I leave then the situation will never change. If I stay, I may be frustrated, but hopefully in the long run I can make a difference." That made a lot of sense to me. I need to keep going to church, if only to prove that all Christians don't have to interpret the Bible literally and believe that homosexuality is wrong and that the Earth was created in seven days (oh, wait, six days. The seventh was for resting) and so on. I suppose when it comes right down to it I'm much more interested in the spirit of the law then the letter of the law, and the spirit of it all--loving each other, treating each other with respect, being generous, taking care of those who cannot help themselves, giving thanks for life's blessings, finding comfort in sorrow and strife--well, I definitely believe in all of that. So I'll keep going to church.

Now, I feel genuinely blessed to have found a church with a pastor that has a sense of humor and provides thought-provoking, entertaining sermons. In general, this church just seems reasonable and friendly, and I feel no guilt for being so skeptical and cynical. Instead I feel like the message for me at this point is "Of course you're skeptical. Most reasonable people are. But faith is not about reason, and you have your whole life to keep working to feel it." I've never before been excited about going to church, but now I actually look forward to Sunday mornings, and I'm bummed on weekends when we can't make it to church for some reason. I never thought I'd end up feeling like this. As Penn said this morning, "Every Sunday I'm just surprised that I don't hate having to get up to go to church." Exactly. For the first time it doesn't feel like an obligation, but instead something I honestly like doing. I just hope this pastor sticks around for a while!

Speaking of Easter and church, I promised to update you on my Lent project. I was going to try to be still and not do anything other than just sit and think for ten minutes every day. You guys, it was SO HARD. It was even more difficult than I thought it would be. I did really well for the first month, but the past couple of weeks I have to admit that I skipped my quiet time on more days than I did it. The problem is that there was always, ALWAYS something I could have been doing in those ten minutes. I needed to be straightening up the house, or walking across campus to get to the library, or reading something, or answering an e-mail. Trying to be still for even a short amount of time every day made it really hit home for me that I'm constantly doing something, that I quite literally never give myself a break. My life moves way too fast, to the point that I realized that even my leisure activities feel rushed because I have to squeeze them in before work demands my time again.
In the end, the best thing that happened for me in terms of my Lent resolution was that I ended up doing a lot of baby-sitting the past few weeks. My usual baby-sitting client has added some additional hours every week, and I spent last week taking care of my cousin. Being with those babies (the little guy I usually watch is 15 months old, my cousin is 9 months old) was exactly what I needed to do. Watching them play and observe the world, I realized that they're not constantly rushing from one thing to the next thinking about what else they need to do. I had my cousin at the park on Thursday and she spent five whole minutes sitting in one place and staring at a screw. Just a silver screw holding together two sides of the playscape. She had no desire to go anywhere else. That single screw had her full attention, and since I wasn't rushing her to get anywhere she was able to look at it until she finally felt like doing something else. I realize that eventually life with kids gets incredibly hectic, too, but life with a baby is actually extremely simple (or at least life with these two particular babies is incredibly simple!). With my cousin, for instance, she'd wake up in the morning, I'd feed her some baby cereal, we'd play with her toys in the living room for an hour or two ("playing" at this point mostly means picking up a variety of things and handing them to her or putting them somewhere so she can crawl to them and then examine them by pushing buttons or shaking them or whatever) and then she'd take a nap. While she napped I'd read or do a bit of school work. Then she'd be up and I'd feed her again, then we'd go on some sort of short outing to the park or the infant room at the science center or the local library. Then it was time for another nap, then more food, a little bit more crawling practice, then a bath, then bedtime. There is a routine and a cycle, but every part of it is something simple and her needs are so easy to meet and it should have been really boring but I found the whole routine really soothing, actually, and every day there was a sense of accomplishment because, hey, the baby was fine and healthy! Mission accomplished!
I'm sure it would eventually get dull and I'd miss the rush of the life I have now, and the work that I'm doing. But I have to admit that I enjoyed the simple time baby-sitting time a lot. That's a relief to me, knowing that perhaps I won't go completely mad when I'm home for a while taking care of a baby one of these days. It turns out that I might actually enjoy it more than I thought I would. If nothing else, it's going to force me to take life slower and to let go of a lot of the extras that fill it up right now. I think that will be good for me.

Anyway, Penn and I are going on a long bike ride and then I'm coming home to eat deviled eggs. Hope you're having a good weekend, whatever you're doing!

Spinning Wheel

I feel like since posting has been so sparse lately I should have a lot to say, but I don't, really. How about just a few bullet points to fill in the highlights?

[I have to interrupt myself to say that we're watching All the President's Men right now and looking at that newsroom full of papers and files is making me shudder! I'm so glad I live in the age of computers so I don't have to look at that sort of clutter all over my office mates' desks all the time. There's enough clutter in the 21st century as it is! Also, I can't imagine doing all of that research without the internet. Unbelievable that that was the US less than forty years ago.]

• My dissertation committee approved my prospectus! For those not familiar with PhD program jargon, the prospectus is basically the plan for the dissertation: what I'm planning to write about, my plan to do the research, and the approximate timeline for completion. The great thing is, that's the last hurdle I had to jump. Now the only thing that can stop me from completing the PhD is my endless ability to procrastinate. It's nice that the only major block I have to overcome now is myself. The hard part is actually forcing myself to work now that there are no deadlines at all whatsoever (other than really, really distant ones, like the fact that if I'm not finished in some absurd time frame like 5 years I'll have to re-create my committee and effectively start the approval process all over again). Some friends and I have created a writing group that meets every two weeks. The sole purpose of the group is to keep the four of us on track. I'd start feeling lame if every two weeks I showed up and was like, "Still no progress to report and nothing for you guys to read. Sorry guys!" I think (I hope) that will help. Other than that, I'm trying to figure out a good routine so that I can do a bit of dissertation work every weekday.
• I've really picked up the pace with my part-time jobs to try to bring in as much extra money as possible. With the wedding and honeymoon looming (just a little more than 9 months until my wedding day!) Penn and I agreed we need to be saving up as much money as possible right now. So in addition to my regular teaching assistantship I've been taking regular tutoring jobs (I'm going to be working 3-5 hours a week every week from now until early June) and I've been baby-sitting. I have a friend at school who has a one-year-old son. His wife works full-time "normal" hours (9-5) and he's like me: a researcher with a part-time, pretty flexible job, so he's doing the bulk of the daytime baby duty. He teaches Mondays, though, so I baby-sit on Monday afternoons while he's teaching. Apparently I've been so helpful that he and his wife now want me to come for a second block of time each week so that he can have some baby-free time to work on his own dissertation project. They pay me $20/hour (!!!) and I don't feel like I'm in a position to be turning down that kind of money for what is basically a fun and (mostly) easy job. Having said that, I'm not the one who had a baby while trying to dissertate, so I'm not going to compromise my own research agenda to watch his baby. Still, most weeks I have the time to help out and I'd like the extra cash so I'm baby-sitting as much as I reasonably can. I'm also going to be my cousin's full-time nanny this week while the regular nanny is off resting following a surgical procedure. So basically between my two baby-sitting charges I get to play mom all week this week. It's good practice, I guess!
• I bought some amazingly, fantastically awesome plane tickets this week. First of all, Penn and I purchased the tickets for our honeymoon! We're going to New Zealand!!! We've been talking about wanting to go there for a while, and long before we even got engaged we had decided that we wanted to go there for our honeymoon. Last week tickets happened to drop to an amazingly low price, so we bought them on the spot. It feels like a wild, crazy thing to buy a plane ticket to freakin' New Zealand. As I told Penn, "We're really committed to doing this now!" Penn still has a lot of planning to do (he's in charge of planning the honeymoon since I'm at the wheel with wedding planning) but it's so incredibly exciting to have our plane tickets and know that in January we'll be in New Zealand for three weeks (or New Zealand for part of that time with a side trip to a South Pacific island for part of that time; that's still TBD). This is one of my dream must-do-before-I-die trips, so I can't wait to go. What a cool way to start our married life!
  Today I also bought a plane ticket to Missoula, Montana. Jen (my friend from college) is getting married there in August. I've never been to Montana before, so I'm excited to cross another state off my list. Unfortunately Penn can't come to Montana with me (he can't take too much time off work this year since he did that long Europe trip with me in November and he'll need to take three weeks off in January) but I think it will be a fun solo trip.
• I biked sixteen miles yesterday! I had to stop at an Exxon around mile 9 to buy a granola bar because I was starving (note to self: prepare better next time!), and my time was pretty dismal--it took me just over two hours, not pushing myself at all--but when I finished I felt like I could have gone further. My goal is to do a 20 mile bike ride this season, and that definitely seems feasible.
• Last weekend I saw my first presidential motorcade! I didn't actually see the president (too much window tinting) but it was absolutely, 100% him and his entourage. Pretty cool.

That's all I have to report, really. Things are very good. This is a weird position to be in, to be working on several long-term projects (my summer project, our wedding, my dissertation) that won't give me any visible payoff until several months from now at the earliest. It makes it hard to stay focused and to keep powering on when sometimes at night I get in bed and just feel like I spun my wheels in place all day. But I know logically that I am, in fact, making forward progress toward all kinds of worthwhile things, and that's a good feeling.

It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

Today I baby-sat for my cousin's nine-month-old daughter. I'm helping her and her husband out for the next couple of weeks since their usual nanny had to have surgery and needs to rest before she can go back to carrying a baby up and down stairs. Anyway, today I took care of the baby for ten hours, from early in the morning until the evening. It was a really easy day, actually. The baby still naps in the morning and the afternoon so she slept for half of the hours I was baby-sitting. Of the time she was awake, she spent half of that time eating pureed vegetables and/or drinking her bottles, so there was really a grand total of only 2-3 hours that I actually had to entertain the baby (or, more accurately, watch her and provide cheerful running commentary to build her vocabulary as she amused herself by doing fascinating things like, say, intently examining the stitching on my jeans).
Anyway, I decided that since it was sunny and 70 degrees outside we'd go for a walk, so I strapped the baby into the stroller and packed up the diaper bag and off we went to the park to see if I could convincingly blend in with all the other moms and dads and nannies (wait, "caregivers"). Turns out I do blend in just fine. There are a few more things I want to do first, but I'm more and more positive all the time that I'm about as ready as I can be to handle this mom role. The thing that really struck me on our park adventure, though, was how much my cousin's neighborhood is pretty much exactly like Sesame Street. There are rows of brownstone houses with porches, so the neighborhood sort of looks like the set, first of all. More importantly, the "characters" are all there: old couples sitting together on park benches; young couples jogging and throwing balls for their dogs; Asian kids and black kids and white kids all playing together on the swing set; guys that look like wannabe rappers walking across the crosswalk with moms with blonde ponytails and designer diaper bags to pick up their kids from the same school; conversations in Spanish and English and Korean all drifting across the park. Seriously, the only thing missing was a puppet in the trash can on the corner. The United States is supposed to be this fabulous, diverse place, but rarely do I see real diversity like I see in that neighborhood. I'm sure it's not always ideal, but today it was city living at its finest. And while I suppose eventually I wouldn't mind living in a smaller town or Stepford Wife suburb where I can actually afford a single-family home, I love that my little cousin is growing up in a place where you run into people of all shapes and sizes and colors and ages on a seven-walk block to the park, and it makes me excited that (hopefully) for at least their early years my kids will be city kids, too, and will have the same experience. When I think about the things that are important to me when it comes to trying to mold decent people (and wow, what a daunting task), I'd much rather my kids recognize and feel comfortable with all types of human beings than have a big backyard or their own bedrooms. And I'm not saying you can't raise open-minded, worldly kids in white suburbia or rural Nebraska, but it takes much more effort on your part than just opening the front door and saying hello to the neighbors.

In other news, I'm trying not to make this the all-wedding-all-the-time blog, but I just wanted to note that my sister and Penn's sister both came to visit earlier this week and we went bridesmaid dress shopping! (My sister and Penn's sister are my bridal party; since he and I each have one sister and one brother we figured we'd save ourselves the hassle of having to pick our "favorite" friends and possibly hurt people's feelings and just make our siblings the wedding party). I realize that since the wedding is still more than nine months away it's a bit early to be shopping for bridemaid dresses, but it was the only time my sister-in-law-t0-be is planning to visit between now and the wedding so we had to strike while the iron was hot. The whole process was actually really easy. They both decided they looked best in the second dress they tried on, so we tried on a few others just for fun, but really the whole thing took a grand total of twenty minutes. Now we just have to hope the dresses that we ordered now can be adjusted to fit whatever figures they'll have in January!

I'm going shopping for my wedding dress in three weeks when my mom comes to visit. I can hardly wait!

Traveling Down the Slope

Penn and I have been doing a lot of skiing this season. We bought Night Club passes that we can use on three of the mountains within a short drive from here (yes, the "mountains" are small enough here that you can light them for night skiing) so we've gotten into a routine of skiing on Sunday evenings. I really love skiing. It has always been my favorite sport-y activity. I never did it on a regular basis until this year, though. When I was a kid growing up near the Rockies we'd generally take a family ski trip once a year or so and go for 4-5 days. I actually got pretty good during that time. The nice thing about skiing is that it's like riding a bike: you don't forget how to do it no matter how much time goes by. So when I met Penn I was able to comfortably ski the intermediate slopes and I could occasionally be talked into trying an expert one. Over the past two winters we have done a lot of skiing. We took that week-long trip to Maine last year and then skied locally a couple of times. And this year we've been skiing once a week all season. I'm proud to say that I have improved noticeably over the past two seasons. I can now ski any trail on the mountains we frequent, including the double black diamonds (the advanced expert trails). True, I don't think an east coast double black is equivalent to the double blacks I've seen out west. I still don't know that I'd be brave enough to try one of those. For one thing, the runs here are much, much shorter. But here I can do any run as long as I can take my time. I've also been practicing moguls although I'm awful at them and can only do about four widely-spaced ones properly before my legs start burning (I don't know how those Olympians do it. They must have thighs of steel). Penn has even talked me into going into the terrain park a few times, and while I'm still not ready to attempt to get any real air, I've at least been riding over the jumps.

So I'm getting better at this activity and I love the time Penn and I spent skiing together every week. Yet every week when we have finished skiing and are on our way home I feel a bit melancholy because in my mind skiing has come to represent everything that will change over time. Every week now I find myself reflecting on the finiteness of our current lifestyle. First of all, skiing is something that I will not be able to do for my entire life. Most of my hobbies aren't particularly strenuous: reading, watching lives shows or music, walking the dog, and so on. Assuming I am lucky enough to live to 90 years old in good health, I'll still be able to do most of the things I like to do now. Skiing, though, is something that I will have to give up one of these days. I'll either get injured or my body will just get too old and weak to handle the physical stress. I realize that the day I will have to give up skiing is hopefully far, far in the future. My dad is in his mid-fifties and still skiing, after all. Still, it makes me a bit sad to think that there is a possibility that my body will give out on me before my spirit feels ready to quit the sport. (I suppose that's a really common fear that can be generalized beyond skiing, actually: that if you live long enough you inevitably reach a point where the spirit is willing but the body just can't keep up anymore.)
In a more immediate way, though, skiing has come to represent everything we will have to give up as we start our family. As we've been preparing to get married (before we were even formally engaged, in fact) Penn and I have been talking about family planning and what our ideal plan would entail. Let me preface this by stating clearly that I know, I KNOW you never get to experience your ideal when it comes to having children. To a large extent things will be out of our control once we start trying to conceive. Actually, things aren't even entirely in our control right now. We've been lucky that birth control has worked well for us, but while most of the reason we haven't gotten pregnant is because I have been a responsible pill popper, probably a small part of the reason we haven't had a surprise pregnancy has just been sheer luck. I get that. I also understand that we can't just decide that we want to get pregnant in, say, April and actually get pregnant in April. And I understand that even once we get pregnant there is no guarantee that we'll get a living, healthy child out of the ordeal. I realize that all of it is a big "Who knows?"
Of course I find the whole thing very scary because I like the semblance of control I pretend I have over my life, and I like having a plan. So, Penn and I have made a tentative plan, knowing full well that life may not conform to it. We're trying to balance all sorts of elements, but the driving force behind all of my decisions in the process has been this thought: "We are in a very lucky position in which we can make having children a choice. So why not attempt to make the most responsible choices possible?" It wouldn't be the end of the world to get pregnant right now. In fact, I honestly do feel more-or-less ready to handle that if it happens. But as long as the birth control is working, why not hope that it keeps working and make plans assuming that we'll actually get to choose when we would like to be parents? And make that choice in a responsible way? So, for instance, we're thinking about my age. I'll be 28 when we get married, and even if we get pregnant on our honeymoon (which is highly unlikely) I'll be 29 by the time the baby is born. One of the things I love most about Penn is how eager he is to be a father. He told me the other day that if it wouldn't be so frowned-upon by our families (my family, actually) he'd like us to start trying even before the wedding so that we're not wasting any time. [Incidentally, I would veto that idea even if I thought my family wouldn't care about me being a pregnant bride. I would like to drink champagne during my own wedding toast, thank you very much!] We'd love to be able to have more than one biological child. Again, I know we can't control it, and although we know how many children we'd like to try for I think we mostly need to focus on number one first and see how that goes. The point is, though, if we want the option of having more than one biological child, the responsible choice is to start trying to conceive sooner rather than later so that we can hopefully have more than one child before I age into the high-risk category. Sure, I know that women are having babies well into their 40s now (many women don't meet their partner until later in life so they have no other choice), but overall it is still safer and easier to have children earlier in life so, again, because we kind of have a choice in the matter it makes sense to choose to try to have a baby early in our marriage rather than waiting too long. It also makes sense to consider other factors: our finances, our living space, our careers. I am opposed to living with a baby in our current condo for an extended period of time. We just don't have the space. Sure, you can put a little baby in a bassinet in your bedroom and if we got rid of our futon we could put a baby care station of sorts in our current office/guest room. But it would be cramped and messy and it's just not something I would like to do in the long term if we have a choice. And right now it sort of does feel like we have a choice. That's my point, I guess: sometimes people have babies accidentally and they don't have a choice. They have to raise their infants in much, much, MUCH more difficult circumstances than a lovely condo in a nice neighborhood. If it came down to it and we have to stay here long term for some reason, of course I wouldn't put off having a baby for years just so the baby could have its own bedroom. That's silly. But since we're trying to make a responsible choice, why not wait to try to get pregnant until we think we're close to being able to move into a bigger space? On that note, why not wait to have a baby until I've finished my degree and am at a good point in my career to change gears and take a maternity break? All of these things come into play.
So, with all of these things and more in mind, the basic plan now is for me to go off birth control shortly after our wedding. And this is where it comes back to skiing for me. Next year we'll be on our honeymoon for three weeks right in the middle of the ski season, so there won't be much skiing, if any, next winter. Ideally by the winter after that I will be pregnant. And then we'll have kids, and while I'm all about the idea of getting a baby-sitter sometimes so Penn and I can have grown-up dates, I think that skiing won't be one of those date activities because skiing is already a really expensive activity when you're not also paying $50-$100 for a baby-sitter on top of it. Eventually we'll be able to ski with our children, and that's something I love imagining, but that is something that is very, very far in the future (and also very, very expensive so not likely to happen as often as it does now). All of that to say, I'm trying to be in the moment and enjoy this winter's skiing because it is definitely something I am going to have to give up for a while.
It's scary to think of all of the things we will sacrifice to have a family. But I think maybe everyone has to work through this point before having children, this point where you think "Our life is so nice right now, what if a baby screws it up?" Logically I know that a baby will enhance our life, not ruin it. Everything I've ever read about it and everyone I've ever talked to and all of my gut instincts tell me that I'm going to like being a mother and that the rewards will outweigh the difficulties and the sacrifices. I suppose it all comes back to making responsible decisions. I wouldn't responsibly be deciding to have a child if I didn't first work through this point of saying, "I am making this choice knowing what I will have to give up (if only temporarily) to do this." I'm not going to lie, it feels like a lot to give up: my toned body, extensive one-on-one time with Penn, the ability to make impromptu plans and take impromptu trips, sleeping in (sleeping, period), seeing our friends whenever we feel like it, being completely in charge of how I want to spend my time, a ton of other little things that I do now that I will be able to do again someday but not with young children. It's mostly a lot of little things, honestly, but they add up into this lifestyle that I have put together that I love. I think I'll love life as a parent, too, but that is still a big, huge unknown. And it's hard to give up a lifestyle that you already know you love for one that will hopefully be better but might not be as good (at least not at first) and certainly not as easy.
I don't want this to come across wrong. Fundamentally I am 100% positive that I want children, for many reasons (Why I Want Children is yet another entry, though). I have in no way, shape, or form changed my mind about wanting to be a mother. In fact, I've gradually become more and more excited about starting a family since I met Penn and realized he is supposed to be the father of my children. It's just that as it becomes less of a fantasy and more of a looming reality, I have to mentally prepare myself. And it turns out part of that preparation is doing a bit of mourning for the parts of my life I'm going to have to give up.
I feel lucky that I have this time to prepare myself, though. I think if I just patiently let myself work through some of the worries, by the time we actually take the plunge and go off the pill I'll feel more than ready. I'll probably be ridiculously impatient by then!

Again with the Dreams

Every time someone blogs about his or her dreams, there is always a disclaimer along the lines of "I know it's dumb to write about my dreams and nobody cares, but..." Personally, however, I find dreams fascinating and disturbing. Many mornings Penn and I talk about the strange dreams we had as he's getting ready for work and I'm still lounging in bed, and I like knowing what he dreams about. (His dreams are usually much more interesting than mine. Once he dreamt that a mud monster pulled me off my bicycle and he had to try to save me. Recently he had a dream that he was observing someone else's life, which I thought was strange because I've never been anyone other than myself in a dream. He also recently had a dream in which he wrote a successful Broadway musical entitled "The Tits on You, The Tits on Me" and ever since then he has been talking about what a hilarious show it was. The entire plot seemed to be songs about boobs, so...yes. Don't spend too much time trying to analyze that one.)

Anyway, all this to say, the other night I had one of the most bizarre dreams I've ever had. I've written here before about how I have pregnancy dreams all the time. Usually I'm in labor (and it HURTS, even in the dream) but nobody believes I'm actually in labor because it's too early or I'm "too small" and I'm terrified because I'm about to have the baby somewhere inappropriate like my kitchen or a performance hall or the parking lot of an amusement park. I never used to actually give birth in these dreams, but since meeting Penn two years ago I do actually give birth in these dreams about half the time. No idea what that's about (incidentally, I also used to almost never know who the father was supposed to be in these dreams. Now it is always Penn; sometimes he's in the dream, sometimes he's not).

In the dream I had the other night, I was very, very pregnant and I was at my parents' house with my parents, my sister, Penn, and maybe a few other people. I kept telling everyone how glad I was that I had made it to 40 weeks. I didn't have a normal pregnant belly, though, I had a kind of freaky alien-type belly that was very thin. Every time the baby pressed a hand or foot against the inside of my uterus you could see it through my stomach. Not just a little bulge, but all five fingers on a hand or the perfect outline of a foot. I kept trying to show this to Penn, saying, "You can see the hand, isn't that cool!?" but he kept saying, "No, that's kind of gross and freaky, honestly." (I agreed, when I thought about it after waking up. It WAS gross and freaky and decidedly not cool.) Anyway, I never actually felt labor pains in the dream, but I was standing in my parents' closet looking for something when I decided "Hey, it's my due date, I'm going to have the baby today. Might as well!" So I announced to my family that I was ready to have the baby. Penn pointed out that there was a blizzard outside and no way to safely drive to the hospital. He asked if I could just wait until later since I wasn't in labor at all yet, and I said, "No, I really want to see the baby right now. It has been 40 weeks, it's fine." And so we decided that I would just have the baby right then and there in my parents' kitchen, but since I wasn't actually in labor I declared that someone was just going to have to cut me open and get the baby out. And my dad said, "Okay, are you sure that's what you want?" and I said, "Yes!" and he grabbed a kitchen knife (a kitchen knife!) and I hopped up on the counter and stretched out on my back and my dad sliced me open and Penn pulled the baby out. There was no pain at all, and I was instantly back up on my feet and walking around. I was so happy to see the baby. It was a girl--a giant baby girl, much bigger than a normal newborn--and we passed her around and everyone held her and oohed and ahhed. And then I started freaking out because we'd pulled the baby out and I thought my doctor would be mad. It was as if I'd opened a Christmas present early and didn't want my parents to know that I'd cheated and peeked. So I started telling everyone "We made a mistake. We shouldn't have done this, the doctor is going to be mad. What is going to happen when we go to the hospital and tell them we already delivered the baby?!" Everyone tried to convince me that it was fine, that they would understand because of the blizzard, but I kept saying, "No, we need to put her back. We have to put her back." Dad and Penn and my sister started talking about it, and my dad said "Well, we can't put the baby back into *A*. She has already lost so much blood today, if we open her up again it might kill her." So then I said, "Well, it doesn't matter who carries her, we just have to put her back into someone so the hospital won't know we brought her out already." (Dream logic, gotta love it.) So Penn agreed that we could put the baby back inside him. And that's what we did. Penn was sitting on the couch and was just about to cut into his abdomen when I woke up.

It was so bizarre. I sort of wish that's how it actually was, though: "I'm tired of being pregnant, YOU take it for awhile!" The lack of pain would be a nice plus, too. I think the dream is probably because I've had babies on the brain lately, but the whole baby thing is another post entirely (and no, I'm definitely not pregnant in real life!).

Good Things

1) The all-you-can-eat Indian buffet at the restaurant in the town center. They offer it at lunch time and it's only eight bucks and it is AWESOME. Indian restaurants are common but Indian buffets are pretty rare around here, so to find one at all is exciting. To find one that is also cheap and at a really good restaurant? Amazing!

2) The public library. The one in my county is so good. It has a great selection of books (including things that have just been published) and I can just log on to their website, select something from the catalog, put it on hold, and then I get an e-mail when it's waiting for me at the library. To think you used to have to go to the library and search for books and hope that they were available. Now I just walk in, pick up my books from the hold shelf, use the self-checkout, and I'm back on the subway five minutes later. I love it! I still browse the shelves sometimes just for fun, but I love the time-saving aspect of the hold system.

3) It feels like spring is coming. I've really enjoyed this snowy winter. It was exciting. However, there's something so nice about being able to feel the heat from the sun through the biting cold wind and knowing that spring is on its way. I never understood the appeal of spring until I moved here. Spring in the desert is kind of awful. It's already starting to get too hot and it's windy and there are dust storms that turn the sky red and make it feel like you're living on Mars. Here, though, spring means daffodils and then tulips popping up randomly in the middle of highway medians, and all sorts of blossoms on the trees and lots of days that are perfect for bike riding. I'll still always prefer the autumn, but I'm starting to understand why people appreciate spring.

4) The training class I took on Friday. It's my university's training for people who want to formally serve as advocates for the LGBT community. I've always considered myself a friend to the gay community and an advocate for gay rights, but even so, I'm learning so much I didn't know. I didn't know how much I didn't know, if that makes sense. While I'm a friend and supporter, I'm not actually a part of the community in a very active way, so there is just a lot I didn't realize. For example, I feel like an idiot for not knowing that "homosexual" is not at all a neutral term, but a term used these days mostly by the religious right who are fighting against gay rights. Here I've been using "homosexual" occasionally in conversation thinking I was being politically correct, when in fact I'm being offensive. I take the second half of the workshop on Monday, but already I feel so informed and so inspired to make sure that I really am a true advocate for what I believe in, which is that being gay is no different than being left-handed or blonde. It's just the way you are, and why you are that way doesn't matter AT ALL. Nobody is going around lobbying to keep left-handed people from adopting children, or spending millions to figure out why left-handed people are left-handed. It's just considered a natural variation. And that's how society needs to think of people with sexual orientations other than straight. Some people are big-boned, some people have green eyes, some people have freckles, some people are gay. That's just the way it is. There's absolutely no reason to be against gay rights or to treat gay or bisexual or transgendered people any differently than any other people in the world, and no one will ever be able to convince me otherwise. I feel strongly about this (obviously) and I'm feeling ashamed for not being more of a vocal, visible advocate.
That's the whole issue: the straight people who are against gays are so loud and ridiculous (and wrong) about it, while us straight people who understand that gay people are just people like the rest of us who deserve equal rights don't speak out nearly enough. We just mind our own business. Which, incidentally, is what makes us capable of supporting gay rights in the first place. My opinion is and always has been: how does anyone else's sexual preference have anything to do with me? My feeling on the topic of sex in general is that as long as it's consentual, anything goes. That rules out rape, and it rules out sex with children (since children don't know enough about sex to be able to rationally give their consent). And rape and sex with children are the only sexual acts that I think of as "wrong". Anything else goes, as far as I'm concerned. As long as sex is between two parties who both agree that they want to do it, they can do whatever they want and it makes absolutely no difference to me or to anyone else.
But anyway, my point is, we straight people who support gay rights are far too complacent and willing to just mind our own business. We need to be better advocates, though. Here's a story: I have received information before (on the internet or in real life) about gay rights rallies or other forms of gay support, and I've always been reticent about posting it because I was afraid people might mistake me for a gay person. Sitting in my training on Friday I realized SO WHAT? So what if people think I'm gay? There are way, WAY worse things to be mistaken for than a lesbian. And if for some reason someone gets confused and thinks I'm a lesbian or a transgendered person, I can quickly clarify that no, I'm not actually gay, but a supporter of equal rights. Because I am a human being and believe that all human beings deserve equal rights. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that viewpoint. What on earth am I nervous about? So I'm going to finish my training and get my rainbow badge and post it proudly above my desk in my office so that everyone knows I am an advocate and a friend and a supporter. So I'm excited about my new resolve, but slightly ashamed that it took me so long to get to this active point when I have so many gay friends whom I love.

40 Days

So, Penn has decided to give up cussing for Lent. This has led to all sorts of hilarious conversations over the past few days as we've tried to determine what exactly counts as a curse word and how he is going to handle not being able to curse (for example, I'm pretty sure he'll be much more successful at this task if he also temporarily gives up XBox Live and driving). We were talking about it after church on Sunday and I said, "Does 'damn' count as a bad word? I don't think it needs to count," and he replied, "Would you say it to the pastor?" and I thought about it for a moment and decided that, no, I probably wouldn't use the word "damn" in conversation with the pastor unless it accidentally slipped out. Using that criteria, then, "damn" counts as a curse word. A few hours later Penn popped his head out of our office and called to me, "Does 'douche bag' count?" and I was like, "Would you say THAT to the pastor?!" So "douche bag" is on the banned list, too.

To be honest, I'm not sure how I feel about the whole "giving up things for Lent" deal. Take giving up vices, for example. A lot of people opt to give up a particular vice for Lent. Penn is giving up cussing, one year my dad gave up drinking shots, etc. It's a good idea in that it makes you stop a particular habit, but if it's something bad enough for me that I feel like I should give it up for six weeks, shouldn't I just stick it out and give it up for good? "They" (I forget who they are...experts of some kind, I suppose) say if you can stick to something for three weeks it becomes a habit, so if I can give up cussing or gossiping or any other vice I decide to give up for six weeks, shouldn't I just be glad that I've broken the habit and not go back to it at all?

The other option is to not give up a vice, but rather give up something you enjoy in the spirit of fasting and sacrifice. This makes more sense to me in theory, but in practice it's hard to think of what I would give up. It needs to be something that I do/eat/use often enough for it to be a true sacrifice. Sex? The internet? My after-dinner dessert? Reading novels? With most things I do on a regular basis, it seems like giving them up would be detrimental to my work or my personal relationships. And even if I did give up something I enjoy, what would that really accomplish? It might prove that I'm capable of self-sacrifice, but is that really what I'm supposed to be practicing right now? While giving up my after-dinner dessert might help with my goal to be nice and toned in time for wedding dress shopping, giving up something I enjoy would mostly just be an exercise in frustration and would allow me to prove to myself that I have willpower. Whoop-de-do.

I have a better idea: Why not use that willpower to do something positive in my life during Lent? Rather than giving something up, why not add something? Challenge myself, yes, but challenge myself to do something rather than ground myself from some arbitrary thing. So I've been thinking, since Penn is going to give something up for Lent (and that's cool; just because I don't really believe in giving things up myself doesn't mean I think it's a bad idea for him) I should probably try to do something to acknowledge this period, too.
I was hit with sudden inspiration last night as I was brushing my teeth before bed. I was thinking about the novel I just finished reading, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami. I absolutely loved the book. It was mesmerizing and strange and all about the mysterious borders between the conscious and unconscious, the real world and the dream world (if the two are in fact separate things, which this book makes me question). I can see how some might find the thick description tedious and boring and the non-linear story confusing, but those are elements I personally enjoy in my novels, so this one was right up my ally. Anyway, in the book, for various reasons that don't really need to be explained here, the protagonist ends up spending a lot of time sitting in the bottom of an empty well just thinking. He sometimes goes down there for hours, even days at a time, and sits in the dark and just thinks about his life. It made me think: when was the last time I sat completely still with nothing to distract me and just listened to my own thoughts?

I have no idea. I am always doing something during my waking hours. I'm reading or writing or texting or watching TV or eating or exercising or talking or some combination of all of those things. The closest I come to just being alone with my thoughts is when I'm waiting for the bus, but even then I'm usually reading something on my phone. Even when I'm lying in bed at night I'm not alone with my thoughts, mostly because I fall asleep pretty much as soon as my head hits the pillow (seriously, Penn has timed me and he said that sometimes I'm fast asleep within two minutes after we turn off the light. I'm a champion sleeper, provided I'm in a bed. I think I've had trouble falling asleep maybe twice in all the time I've lived with Penn). My point is, I never just sit still and be quiet and relax. Maybe it is time to start doing that once in a while.
So that's what I'm going to do during Lent. I'm going to spend ten minutes a day just sitting and doing nothing at all. I'll sit on my bed or at the dining room table or maybe outside on my balcony if winter ever ends here, and I'll just be still and do nothing. At first I thought that maybe I'd read passages from the Bible, but no. That's still feeding my constant urge to do something productive. That's not what I'm feeling inspired to do right now. The thought that hit me as I was brushing my teeth was "You need to be still." So I'm going to sit and breath and talk to myself in my mind, or maybe pray or meditate if that's what it turns into, but I'm not even going to deliberately try to pray. I'm just going to do nothing for ten minutes every day. That's a little over an hour a week, a little over seven hours total. That's not a lot of time at all in the grand scheme of things, but to be honest, even ten minutes a day of doing nothing sounds hard. I think that's why this will be good for me.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Good Valentimes (Har Har)

Penn and I had a low-key Valentine’s Day celebration this weekend. I love Valentine’s Day because I love ALL holidays. I’m one of those people who would never dream about just ignoring a birthday, has a small collection of decorations for each holiday (and a not-so-small collection of Christmas decorations), wears green on St. Patrick’s Day and red on Valentine’s Day and black or orange on Halloween. There’s a fine line between me and the holiday sweater people, is what I’m saying. I really like any excuse to make a particular day special. For me, that’s what Valentine’s Day is: it’s an excuse to make my special once-a-year Valentine’s Day cookies and do something fun for the people I love. Which isn’t to say that I don’t love my people every other day of the year, because I do. But, honestly, Valentine’s Day Haters, what is so damn horrible about having a day in which the whole point is to think about how much you love someone and make sure that they know it? Yes, that should happen every day, but it definitely doesn’t. Just like I don’t remember to say “Thank you” to my dad every day and I don’t remember to think about Jesus’s resurrection every day and I don’t remember to be thankful for a five-day work week every day, even though I know I SHOULD think about those things and be thankful. That’s the whole point of holidays: commemoration and celebration. Nobody goes around complaining about Independence Day, saying “we appreciate America every day of the year, why should we have one dumb holiday to celebrate it?” So why the backlash against Valetine’s Day? I just don’t understand it.
I don’t even understand when single people complain about it. Sure, it reminds you that you don’t currently have a significant other, but I remember my single days very vividly (because they weren’t so long ago) and I’m pretty sure that, had I hated being single, I could have found a “Poor Me, I’m Single” reminder every single day, not just on Valentine’s Day. Also, who said Valentine’s Day is just for couples, anyway? I loved Valentine’s Day when I was single, too, just because it was a day that was slightly different. I always got candy and cards from someone, even during the years I was single (even if that someone was my mom) and there were always decorations and goofy school events like candy-grams. I just like festivals and rituals, I guess. I like things that help to mark the year, that keep it from being just one mundane day after another, that force you to pause for a minute and think about where you were at this time last year. And, yes, you can force yourself to do that, but having holidays built right into the calendar certainly helps with that self-reflection. Holidays give you a few days each year that you can grab onto to temporarily slow the passage of time (or at least get a real sense of how fast it is flying).
The thing is, Penn is a bit of a Scrooge about holidays. He firmly buys into the argument that it’s all commercial nonsense: Valentine’s Day was invented by Hallmark to sell cards and Christmas is just an excuse to bleed everyone’s wallet dry buying pointless gifts that no one really cares about, etc. I disagree completely, but I understand where he’s coming from. In the two years we’ve been together I’ve realized our families have very different attitudes about holidays. In his family in general, there is just a lot of…well, “keeping track of points” is how I’m starting to think about it. Not everyone is like this, but he feels like with some of his relatives you get certain “points” for showing up on holidays or sending birthday gifts. Alternately, you lose points by not showing up or by buying a gift from Wal-Mart when the other person bought a clearly more expensive gift from Pier One or whatever. There is definitely always a sense of obligation involved and many of the holidays seem to come with their own built-in guilt trips so, yeah, I understand why he came to dread most holidays rather than love them. The commercial aspect and the “fairness” aspect gets played up above everything else, and I can see how that would get exhausting over time (It doesn’t help, also, that his parents are divorced so even if there wasn’t the weird points-keeping thing going on there would still be the “Whose party am I going to choose” dilemma.) I hope this isn’t coming across in the wrong way, and I feel like I should point out here that I realize that when you marry a man you’re marrying his family as well and I DO fundamentally like his family. This isn’t a complaint. They are what they are, and they have certainly embraced me as a new family member and I’m embracing them, quirks and all. That doesn't mean I always get those quirks, but I'm trying. I’m lucky so far that my future in-laws have been very accepting and welcoming of me. I have fun with them, and overall they’ve made feeling like a part of the family very easily. So I hope this isn’t coming across as bashing, because that’s not how I intend it at all. I feel like I’ve probably been dealt a pretty easy hand, as far as in-laws go. But anyway, my point is, I fundamentally disagree with how many of his family members have handled holidays and the baggage that has gotten attached to them and…well, is it wrong to want to do the holiday thing MY way? I mean, it's unfair to say that my family did holidays "right" and his family did holidays "wrong" because I don't think that's true and every family is just different, but the fact remains that I love holidays and Penn is "eh" about them so I think in this case it makes more sense to celebrate the way I like to celebrate and hope that Penn eventually starts to focus more on the fun part of holidays. He doesn't have to be a borderline holiday sweater person like I am, but I'm hoping that over time he'll learn to appreciate the holidays, even the commercial parts of them. I'm hoping that I can take the stress out of holidays for him, and just make them good times to look forward to.
Case in point: Valentine’s Day at my house when I was a kid was great fun. We’d wake up in the morning and my mom would have Valentine’s Day gifts for us sitting at the breakfast table. The gifts were never anything fancy, just heart-shaped erasers and little bags of candy or maybe a stuffed animal. (For a few years my brother was confused and thought that there was some sort of mythical Valentine’s heart that delivered presents in the night like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny.) It was always exciting waking up on Valentine’s Day, and even if I didn’t have a boyfriend that year it didn’t matter because I’d gotten something special from my family. In fact, my mom still sends me a care package every Valentine’s Day. This year I got some new underwear from Victoria’s Secret, some candy, a package of homemade cookies, and a Valentine from my parents that says “No parents could ask for a better daughter than you.” And yes, I guess that’s not the norm and I’m very lucky (or spoiled, if you want to be cynical) but I just want to make sure that my family—the one Penn and I are going to create together—has the same fun holiday experiences I had and comes to enjoy holidays rather than feeling a sense of obligation and dread. I’m totally going to be that mom making heart-shaped pancakes and putting a box of conversation hearts in the lunch boxes. That’s just the kind of person I am.
And even though Penn thinks Valentine’s Day is a waste of money, he knows that I’m a holiday-lover and I appreciate it very, very much when he plays along and makes holidays special with me, so he took me ice skating on Friday night and on Sunday I made us a special Valentine’s Day lunch. I made meat sauce with pasta (not pasta with meat sauce, meat sauce with pasta. Emphasis on the meat. I’ve got this the-way-to-the-heart-is-through-the-stomach thing down!) and chocolate sundaes with raspberry sauce and homemade whipped cream. And then we used our ski passes to go skiing. See? Low-key, very inexpensive (the meal plus the ice skating was less than fifteen bucks total and the skiing was “free” since we paid for our pass months ago), we skipped the clichéd roses and jewelry but managed to have a day that felt like a holiday anyway. And we both had a good time.
There is more than enough cynicism in the world. Why buy into it all the time? Especially on holidays.