Saying Yes to the Dress

It's been a few days, but I wanted to document the dress-buying process, in part so that I don't forget it myself.  I would have started this sooner, but the day I got home after buying The Dress, I sneezed.  Immediately after, I felt my throat start to tighten and burn in that "you're about to get sick, better stock up on the sinus medicine" kind of way.  So I spent the rest of that day and the next under blankets, binging on Netflix with the fiancé.  Being sick isn't fun, but under the circumstances, I've had worse days...

So the dress story.  My mom's friend from high school owns this dress shop in Augusta.  It's two hours away, but we really wanted to go there first, hopefully even buy it there.  Jane was my mom's maid of honor, and my mom was hers.  I went with my mom and my maid of honor, Heather, and surveyed the shop, trying to force it to sink in.

It didn't, not right away.  It was hard to make myself believe that I was at a dress shop, that I would try on wedding dresses, and that I might, maybe, if I was really lucky, try on and buy the one I'd be getting married in.  Ended a sentence with a preposition.  Deal with it.

I pulled a few dresses that I thought I might like, then I let Jane take over.  Soon we had about six hanging up in the dressing room.  I changed into my dress-trying undergarments that the store provides (kind of cool, I think) and selected the first one I would try on.  I justified this choice by saying that I wanted to knock out one that I was pretty sure wouldn't be The One, so I could save the best for last.  I just really didn't want to end before I'd began by trying on my favorite right away.  Jane didn't like this logic.  She asked me why I was trying one on at all, if I knew I wouldn't like it.  She explained that she likes to have brides try on their favorites first, and then they try to knock it out of first place.  This made sense too, so we decided a favorite would be next, and I debuted dress number one. 

It wasn't a huge hit.  It was pretty, and I loved the bottom of it, but it wasn't my dress, and we all knew it.  So we went back to the drawing room and put on number two.  And, for the rest of the appointment, I was pretty sure that would be the one.

It was a champagne, slim A-line gown with a lace overlay and a champagne bow.  I'd never wanted a champagne dress, but this one really was beautiful, and if I do say so myself, I looked good in it. The bow... the bow kind of nagged at me, but we tried a variety of bows, ribbons, belts, and sashes, and I didn't find anything I liked more, so I resigned that the bow was just a part of the dress.  We forged on, with the champagne dress firmly in the number one spot.

I won't narrate every dress, because I don't remember them all separately, and I'm really okay with that.  There were a few fit-and-flares that made me a little more curvy than I was comfortable with. There was a really oddly-shaped one that was a beautiful dress in its own right, but it was just not my dress.  There was a cousin to the champagne lacey number, with a larger lace pattern and a prettier sash right under the bust line.  There was a dress fit for a princess, the kind that I would have wanted a few years ago when I wanted a tiara and lots of sparkles, but not now.  It was getting tedious.  I was worrying that my dress might not be there.  Then we put on The Almost.

It wasn't The Almost at first.  At first, I could just about see it. The longer I spent in it, the closer and closer I came to saying it was the one.  I considered putting the champagne one back on, maybe two or three more times. We started accessorizing.  Veil, necklace, earring (just one earring.  Not sure why).  The more we added to it, the more it started to look like it belonged in a wedding.  Just not my wedding.  I couldn't really describe it.  The dress was so fun, and so me, and so unique.  I started to panic.  I had my top two, but there was just something... off about both of them.  If these were the best ones, what if I couldn't find anything better here?  Don't get me wrong -- they were both stunning.  They just didn't feel like mine.  I didn't feel like I was getting married.  It still didn't feel real.  I announced that I was tired of standing.  I needed to sit down.  Heather started telling me stories from work to distract me, while my mom jumped into the dressing room and tried on Mother of the Bride dresses.  People were swarming me, asking if this was The Dress, telling me to trust my gut and just say yes.  I tried to explain that I am not someone who can trust her gut, thanks to a life of overthinking and decision anxiety.  I just sat there, too scared to admit the truth: this had stopped being fun. 

As I was sitting, Jane poked around the racks some more and emerged with another dress.  It was very much like the dress I was wearing, but it had one major difference (for fear of giving away too much before the big day, I won't talk about that difference, so whether this post is completely pointless or not is your decision to make).  I agreed to try it on. Like the dress before it, I covered my eyes while I was being laced and clipped into the dress.  I turned the corner and walked up to the pedestal, still not looking.

When I finally opened my eyes, I was completely speechless.  I wasn't sure if there would be a Moment, like they show on TV, but here it was.  I actually even started crying, which caused everyone else to cry as well.  We immediately started snapping pictures -- pictures of me in the dress, pictures of Heather and me hugging through our happy tears, pictures of my mom and me, pictures with Jane proudly pointing to herself because she had picked the dress that was responsible for so much emotion.  This time it was easy.  I could see Michael seeing me in this.  I could see our wedding, and this dress was everything I'd wanted.  Jane had somehow managed to take in all the semi-formed thoughts I'd supplied her and pull a dress that was all the things.  I said, without hesitation, "I'm going to get married in this dress!"  At that moment, I was okay with the appointment being over.  I didn't need to see anything else in the store.  I knew that any other dress I saw, on a mannequin or anywhere else, might be beautiful but it wouldn't be my dress -- because THIS was My Dress.  I spent the rest of the day floating, imagining the moment that I will walk down the aisle toward my groom in my dress.

Now, I have a little less than nine months until he (and everyone else) sees it.  How am I going to wait that long??

Things I Should Be Doing Right Now

So I just watched about an hour of youtube videos after telling myself "I'll just watch two or three" and I realized that maybe nobody reads blogs anymore.  Maybe we want to have everything just said to us and maybe it's more interesting when we don't have to read.  Yeah?  Well TOO BAD!

Okay.  I guess I will quickly provide an update for those of you who somehow know enough about me to read this but do not know enough about me to read my facebook updates.  So that's pretty much nobody, but whatever.

Important things are happening!  Well... At least they will be soon.  I've started wedding planning, which isn't as hard as people make it seem on TV, but DOES take a lot of time and there are a lot of decisions I still need to make.  Decisions like: Officiant, music for the aisle-walking-down-part, bridesmaid dresses, wedding dresses, tuxedos.... And yeah.  But I have something like 10 months left to figure it all out, so I'm not panicking.  Anyway, right at the beginning of the wedding planning, we nailed down our venue and realized there was no freaking way we were ever going to afford it.  Ever.  But we really wanted it.  So, the fiancee and I packed all of our things and put most of them in storage and took the really important things (like most of my clothes and Skylanders and all of his computers...) with us to his parents house.  They have so graciously permitted us to live with them AGAIN, because we are in fact only pseudo adults.  I am so, so, so thankful that they have let us move ourselves and our crazy cat friend into the room at the end of the hallway again, and they are awesome for that.  Ferris is adapting much better this time, if you're curious.

So you would think that, with the summer off and with my wedding 10 months away that all I have to do is sit around in my pajamas and watch TV and wait for the future-hubby to come home, right?  NOPE!  I have SO much to do, more maybe than I do when I'm working.  And so, I present to you... The list... of things I should be doing right now:

1.  I should go outside, go through all the crap in my car, locate my tax forms, and fill out the student loans sheet thingy.  And I need to find that sheet thingy, so  I can be out of forbearance and start paying them back.  But uggghhhh just thinking about all the steps involved in that...
2.  There is an exercise bike downstairs, and I am getting married in 10 months.  So... I should go ride it and stuff.
3.  I should eat breakfast I guess?
4.  Maybe I should get dressed...
5.  I need to work on my novel while I have all this time because when school starts I will say I will write in November but I really won't and I'll be so busy and this is the best time to do it but... blerg.
6.  I should maybe scoop the cat box, so another week doesn't go by like last time.
7.  I should read something.
8.  I need to catch up on Pretty Little Liars because I'm secretly still a teenager or something.
9.  I need to organize the storage areas inside and outside of the room I'm in.  Anywhere that my stuff is, and that is a lot of places, needs to be organized.
10.  I need to make a bills chart so we don't forget to pay for important things like storage and all our stuff doesn't get auctioned off to people.
11.  I should look for missing things, like my laptop and tablet charger.
12.  Make a guest list for the wedding.
13.  Discuss who we want to officiate the wedding with the fiancee (but he's not here, so I get a pass on that right now, right?)
14.  Email the people from My Cat From Hell about putting Ferris on the show because he's insane.
15.  Email that lady from that place and start making connections.

I guess I will stop there.  I have this problem with motivation where if I have too many things to do, I just get tired thinking about all of them and want to take a nap.  Or watch TV or watch youtube.  Anything that wastes time instead of spending it well.  Okay, so.  I am going to go outside in my pajamas and rifle through my car and maybe find that form thingy and take care of this loans business.  That is currently the most important thing, and I will do that.  I think.

Sorry this wasn't an interesting post.  As real wedding planning starts to happen, I will post about that.  There might even be pictures!

How I Met My Other

Uhh... Hi?  I guess I might possibly owe the one or so people who read this blog an explanation?  I've started teaching full time.  'Nuff said?  Seriously though, it has kept me so busy, and when I'm not busy, I'm busy doing nothing to balance out the always doing something that I am most of the other times.  Seriously.  I can't even enjoy my once-in-a-lifetime two hour planning without being pulled to go cover a class.  But I'm not complaining; I love my job, and I'm so happy and lucky to have it.

But, I supposed I ALSO owe the one or so person reading this an explanation of the OTHER thing that has me so busy.  That other thing currently resides on my left ring finger, where it spends most of its time being sparkly and beautiful.

I got engaged in December.  Whoa.

And so, I thought that I would tell the story.  Our story.  The story of how we met, and all of the times that we could have met but didn't, because that story is almost as interesting as the real story.

I met Michael in 2008, when I was at the tail end of the first semester of my junior year in college.  He added me on facebook, and I looked at our friends in common and thought "sure, why not.  I remember those girls.  They were cool."  I then minimized facebook and proceeded to fill my head with absolutely anything else, and the event that would change my life and write my most important chapter was forgotten immediately.

A few months (or weeks?) later, I noticed an update from somebody whose name I did NOT recognize.  Michael has one of those names that you'd KNOW if you knew it, and I definitely did not.  So I checked out this mysterious stranger with the apparently hurting leg.  And I liked what I saw.  He was close to my age.  He'd gone to my high school (what?!).  He was in a band.  He was CUTE.  And he also worked... pretty much down the street from where I grew up.  I sent him a message.

...And he did not think it was weird, creepy, or desperate.  He wrote back, and we spent the rest of my semester messaging each other on facebook and AIM (this was, after all, back in the dark ages, when people still used AIM).  It was great to have that feeling again, something to look forward to as I pretended to be surfing the internet while really waiting for the guy on the other end to see that I'd signed on and send me a message.  Come to find out, he was waiting for the same thing.  We decided to meet.  Don't sound your alarm bells yet, I was safe about it.  I brought a friend, we met in a public place, and it was a concert for his band, not exactly some dark alley somewhere.

I remember the conversation I had with my friend Heather on the way to the bar to see him play.  I had recently (I say recently; it was really like 2 months ago) experienced a terrible breakup.  The kind that leaves you paralyzed for a few days, the kind you're legitimately not sure you'll get through, the kind you write terrible poetry about and wonder if there really IS anyone to catch you when you fall.  I had made up my mind that I was done.  Not in the "I'm done with guys, I just wanna dance" way, but in the "I'm just done with that situation.  I'm going to live now, for me, and see what happens."  I have to say, sitting in the car urging Heather to please drive faster or we'll miss it he said they were on at nine -- I definitely did not suspect that four years later he would ask me to marry him on bended knee.  I was just going to "see what happened."  I was just going to see a guy play some music at a bar in Norcross with my long-time buddy Heather, who had almost talked me out of going because she thought I might look desperate and that it was "kinda shady" that Michael had listed two high schools on his facebook.

Li$tprice played one of my favorite songs.  I remember being ten years old, listening to my brother Eric's Offspring CD on one of those old personal CD players that you have to hold reeeeaaaally still or it'll skip, and screaming along to "The Kids Aren't Alright."  I don't know why.  I had a great childhood, full of opportunities which I utilized to get where I am, and I lived in a nice house with nice people who cared about me.  But man, it was fun to scream to that song!

We went on our first date two days after the concert, and life since then has been a series of milestones.  Meeting families.  Going on the kind of trips that require plane travel together.  One year.  Moving in together.  Graduating (twice).  Our first rental house, in a town that I'm pretty sure is a xerox of a storybook town.  Somewhere inside me, I know it's been four years.  I know that I wasn't even 21 when we met and that I'm now almost 25 and we're both legitimately adults now.  But what is four years?  Not to quote Rent, but how do you measure that?  What does four years feel like?  I just wish I could visit that girl I was four Octobers ago, in the days of sad poetry-writing and late night ceiling staring, and assure her that he was coming.  That, in fact, he was already there.  I just never saw him.

Michael and I went to the same high school.  We had some of the same friends.  The aforementioned source of my October sadness was actually friends with him, in the kind of way that I might have actually seen them together once or twice.  But the teenage brain doesn't know how to notice things it isn't fixated on already.  He didn't see me, and I didn't see him, but we were both there.  We were both there one night in February, the day my nephew Cody was born, when I went to see a different friend's band play a concert in Loganville.  Heather (again with the Heather!) went with me, and we took a picture of us at that show.  I stare at that picture and imagine that life is like a touch screen computer and that I can slide my finger across the screen, drag, pinch-to-zoom, and find him there in the crowd, just outside the bounds of the photo. That photo, it seems, was taken of the wrong thing.  Or maybe it wasn't.  Maybe it's just a reminder to me (And to anyone else who needs the reminder) that what we're looking for is always there.  We find it, ironically, after we've stopped looking.

Why I Don't Like Apple Products

The new iPhone is coming out, and already people are in a frenzy to get their hands on it.  I will not be partaking in the madness.  Why?  for one, I am extremely satisfied with my Pantech Burst, which cost all of a dollar and has survived many drops already.  But also, I hate Apple.

Don't get me wrong; there was a time that I was a trendy Mac user.  I loved my macbook.  I loved the way it looked, the way that you had to re-learn how to use a computer, and the way that people who saw me using it automatically thought I was interesting and had a lot of money.  As a kid who occasionally wore sweatpants to school for days at a time (my choice, not necessity; I just didn't know how to appropriately dress to appear in public), looking like I had a lot of money was something I was not used to.  Now I have an hp, and, though it is cool-looking and has a snazzy fingerprint scanner, I automatically look like I am in a lower tax bracket than I did before (when I was living on Pell Grant and making exactly no money of my own, as opposed to now, when I have a full-time job).  But I'm okay with that.  Because, right about the same time I gave up my Mac, I realized that I actually didn't want anything to do with Apple anymore.

Why?  Is it because I hate anything trendy and want to be the cool rebel without a cause?  Is it because you see Macs more often on the liberal side of the spectrum?  Nah, for one I don't care what political label you have.  And I'm not against being trendy; otherwise I'd still be wearing the aforementioned sweatpants.  No, my reasons are (I feel) much more valid than that.  I feel like Apple perpetuates the idea that it doesn't matter what you can do, as long as you're skinny and pretty.  I feel like Apple adds all this extra stuff to their product.  It can't just be a computer. It has to make you a part of a community.  If you don't have this, you're not part of the club and you should feel bad about yourself until you do.  Apple products don't play well with others.  The products aren't even actually better than their microsoft/droid counterparts, and I feel like Apple is this glowing beacon that is the source of a worldwide mind control conspiracy, like the brain up on the dias in A Wrinkle in Time.  

Allow me to elaborate.  First, the image.  I remember when the iPad came out.  The commercial that aired went like this: "What is the iPad?  iPad is thin.   iPad is beautiful."  Right there.  That's a problem.  Before telling us anything about its capabilities, you've told us that it's pretty.  We take ideas like this from the media and apply it to people.  Who cares what you can do, sweetheart, just be thin and pretty.  What if someone doesn't meet this societal definition of perfect?  What then?  Are Apple products the source of eating disorders and depression in young people? No.  But perpetuating ideas like that does not help, either.  Every new product that they come out with seems to be on a mission to get so thin it disappears altogether when turned sideways.  The Simpsons knocked at this a bit with a laptop that actually does disappear when looked at from the side, and Homer had to buy it.  Nevermind that being that skinny is actually not good for the computer; surely it would be more breakable than a thicker model. Nevermind that being that skinny and continuing to hold onto that ideal is unhealthy for people in general.  It makes money, and because it goes along with the cultural definition of beauty, we want one.  Now.  Skinnier.

The community.  For some people this is a good thing, the idea that you are a part of something greater when you own an Apple product.  But we have to remember that it is primarily a computer.  Or a phone.  It is not your in-card to sit at the popular table.  When you buy a windows computer or a droid phone, you know that you are buying a computer or a phone.  The product can do the following things, which are clearly laid out to you.  But when you buy an Apple product, you are buying THE COOL THING OMG OMGOMG, and they don't really have to tell you what it can do.  Oh, they do, in small letters, somewhere at the bottom. In a Best Buy ad, the specs are listed clearly next to all "PC"s (PC is in quotes because it stands for personal computer, which an Apple technically still is.  Can we stop with this false dichotomy, please?).  But when advertising Apple products, all they need to say is IT'S THE NEWEST GREATEST APPLE PRODUCT OHWOWZERS!  and people line up at the door.  They want to be a part of something, a part of this other thing that the company adds, because it can't just produce a phone or a computer.  It has to produce a social movement, an in-crowd, someone to rule the social world.  Why?  According to philosopher Slavoj Zizek, a true product is one which delivers on exactly the promise it makes, no more, no less.  By this definition, Apple does not make true products.  Apple relies on this extra layer of social revolution and cool factor to sell their computers and phones.  People will buy ANYTHING, as long as it's the newest Apple, even if it is NOT the newest Apple.  Watch this video, taken from the Jimmy Kimmel show: HERE !! It doesn't even have to be new, you just have to be told it's new, and people will worship it.  Clearly, this has nothing to do with what kind of product it is or what it can do.  It's that extra layer of stuff that people are after.  And it feels disingenuous to me.

Come to the dark side.....

Apple used to have these commercials with Justin Long and Some Old Guy that were intended to make macs look like the thing cool, hipster kids had and "PCs" were the things stupid old uncool corporate douches had.  The "Mac" would say something, the "PC" would rebuttal, then crash dramatically, and Justin Long would finish with "I'm a Mac, and [something smarmy]."  I remember thinking they should have a commercial with Justin Long and Old Guy out on a playground where a lot of people are asking them to play (Maybe not kids, because that could get into creepytown).  Justin Long is being a snobby prick, while the "PC" shares his toys, runs around playing chase, or whatever it is people do.  Then at the end "Mac" would say, "i'm a mac and... GET AWAY FROM ME!!!" and "PC" would say "I'm a PC and I play well with others."  I have never had more compatibility issues than when I was a Mac-user.  My printer HATED the mac, with the red-hot passion of a thousand firey suns.  The Mac must have said something extremely insulting to the printer once when I was out of the room making a pita-pizza, because any time I hit ctrl+p, IT WAS A FIREFIGHT!  Nothing would happen.  Ever.  Printer would just there, being stubborn and wait for Mac to apologize. Mac wouldn't apologize because Mac was an unapologetic jerk, and whatever Printer said back must have really pissed him off.  Meanwhile I would be late for class.  Cool.  I'm a Mac user, and I took out a  loan to buy this thing that doesn't communicate with any external technology.  Oh, but Mac can be compatible, as long as you have an extra small fortune on you to purchase all the necessary connector cables.  Isn't that kind of a pyramid scheme or something?  In order to have this expensive project, you also have to purchase these expensive products or it won't be able to do the things that cheaper products do naturally.  Yet people buy them! 

Now let me get into quality.  The day I bought my computer, it was as good as or better than every Mac in the store, and it cost about 1/2 to 1/3 the price of the Macs.  In college, I took out a loan so I could be a Mac Person, and I bought a shiny new Macbook that was white (so yellow a few years later, sounds great to me...) and didn't have a right-click function.  What?!  Over a thousand dollars and didn't right-click?!  Oh, sure, it did right-click, as long as you had a mouse (another $60) or were willing to press TWO keys to accomplish the same task as pressing one.  Sounds reasonable, and not at all unnecessary.  I swear, that seems to me like a big joke at the Mac plant.  I can picture a guy going, "Hey Charlie.  Get in here.  Check this out.  So I'm about to ship this, right?  It's about as good as most PCs out there, but costs three times more, and -- *snicker* -- are you ready for this?  It has no right click button!!"  Then his coworker would throw his hat on the ground and say, "Are you crazy, Mac?!  Nobody's gonna buy that!"  But then Mac would say, "Oh yes they will.  Because we're going to get inside their heads and manipulate them into thinking they need it."  And therein lies the problem.  Macbooks have no right click.  If a part breaks on your Macbook (and you didn't pay the extra $200 in insurance --WHAT?!), you're SOL unless you want to buy a new Macbook (which they will try to bully you into doing).  Mine still doesn't have a disc drive, because it would have been something in the ballpark of $100 to replace it, whereas if my hp laptop's drive breaks it'll be around $30 or so on amazon/ebay.  iMacs are essentially just a big screen with all the processing stuff in the back, which is hugely impractical when it comes to fixing a computer.  The Macbook Air feels like the slightest wind would break it into pieces and it doesn't eve have a CD drive.  The iPad makes me sweaty just looking at it and imagining holding a $700 thing over the floor with one hand so as not to smudge its perfect screen.  If you really think about it, these are not good qualities.  And they cost more than twice as much as other products, but people still buy them.  It feels like mind control, and I'll come back to that idea.

Apple also has this smarmy air about them where they like to claim (read: lie) that they were the first company to ever do anything.  Guess what, Apple?  Watching a movie in bed on a small screen is not revolutionary.  A handheld electronic book was done before your bigger, more awkward version came out.  And iPhone was not the first touch screen smart phone.  But they act like they are, sometimes going as far as to say "The thinnest smartphone yet" (Michael's Sony was thinner that the iPhones we compared it to) or "The biggest display on a laptop/computer yet" (nope, no it's not).  But people want to hear this.  They want to feel special, they want to feel like they're better than everyone else.  This desire lies at the core of all of us, and Apple exploits the mess out of it.

This brings me to the mind control piece.  When I bought my laptop, the Best Buy guy kept saying, "Well, Apple will always be superior."  confused, we asked why.  My computer had better specs, a faster, newer processor... "Apple is just always better," he kept repeating.  So often, in fact, that I wanted to ask him if Apple had his family somewhere.  "Are they...watching you?"  Then he said what everyone says when they talk about Apple products, say it with me: "YOU'LL NEVER GET A VIRUS."  I've got news for you, pal.  Apples can get viruses.  They aren't just magical ant-virus boxes.  But viruses aren't that scary anymore anyway.  As long as you have a good antivirus (that isn't Norton or McAfee), and you run a scan regularly, you should be fine on any computer.  Yet this no virus promise is still spouted like a politician saying "We'll totally bring the troops home..."  It doesn't really mean anything.  It feels like at the heart of the Apple corporation is a wizard who has everyone under the Imperious Curse.  Why do people keep buying these things?  Products that aren't any better, that in some ways are worse, that are several times more expensive, just to be cool?

And why do I care?  Why can't I just let people buy what they want to buy and stay out of it?  Because, I guess, the marketing is so good that sometimes, dammit, in spite of everything I've just said, I still want to sit at the cool kids' table.  I want to have the thinnest phone on the market, and I want everyone to know that I have a lot of money and to think I'm cool.  I hate this about myself, and I guess I hate seeing Apple products because it speaks to that sleeping girl who just figured out you can't wear sweatpants to school every day.  The girl who realized that you do need to brush your hair and appearances do matter.  The girl who, sometimes, wanted to be a cheerleader because it was cool, and who fell for every trend every year in school.

I don't think Apple-users are bad people, and I don't hate them.  I have a lot of friends and family who are Apple people, and I love them dearly.  I know I'm coming across as incredibly judgmental with this, but my intention is more to examine this trend than to make people feel bad for liking something trendy.  We all like trendy things.  I bought this robotic dog in Nebraska and I loved it to pieces for about two days.  Then I realized it was freaking annoying and locked it in the bathroom cupboard for roughly six years.  I had Furbies, beanie babies, and (as you know already) even a Macbook.  so I really have no room to talk I guess.  Inside all of us there is a loser longing to be cool, and somewhere out there is a company ready to exploit that and provide us with the fleeting popularity we crave, if only for a minute.

Religion in the Me Generation

I suppose there are better things I could be doing with my time right now, but I’ve got all day for productivity.  The chance for a controversial blog post only comes about once every… okay they’re equally as plentiful as the responsibility I’m ignoring. 

I read a thing once that said that facebook is a big cause of depression and anxiety in young people. Or just in people.  Facebook may not have been invented to make people jealous (actually, it kinda was.  It started out as a “Rate these people” site, and that inherently has competition which breeds jealousy – Zuckerberg, you devil!), but it has definitely gotten that way.  Vacation photos, irritating sappy relationship statuses, pictures of happy families… It’s like peeking through your neighbors’ windows all the time, except they know you’re watching so they deliberately try to make you envious of them.  But what gets to me the most isn’t the vacations I wish I could go on or the babies or the relationships (Side note: I’m a big believer that if you constantly advertise your relationship, you’re compensating for something lacking in the relationship itself.  Nobody who is genuinely content with what they have feels the need to talk about it all the time).  What grinds my gears the most is the religious posts – which is weird, since I’m not anti-religious myself.

Bear with me if the last sentence has upset you.  I don’t come out the hero in this post, don’t worry.  I’m friends with lots of different types of people on facebook, thanks to growing up in a conservative town and attending a liberal arts college.  So my facebook is liable to have posts on both sides of most issues, which is something I really like.  But lately, I find my blood boiling more and more with every religious post I see – and as a peace-loving, trying-to-be-mellow person, this reaction is really getting to me.  Things like “don’t worry who others say you are, worry who God says you are” (so you don’t get to be your own person?) and “The Word of God is your most powerful weapon” (should we really weaponize the Bible??) are topping my list of irritants, and I keep finding myself saying, “Shut up shut up shut upppppp keep this to yoursellllfffff!!!” (Keep reading, I swear self-reflection is coming)

Then there are those who are blessed, and they know it.  I’m starting to really despise that word, because I feel that there is an undertone of bragging when someone says they’re “blessed.”   “I’m so blessed because I get to do this/be here/see this/whatever –“ do you not care about the people who have to see these pictures of all your blessings?  What are they supposed to think?  That you’re God’s favorite?  That you’re more blessed and they’re less blessed?  Or maybe they don’t appreciate their blessings as much?  That’s a hard pill to swallow if the blessings you are posting about are things like having a job, something so many people go without these days.  Yeah it’s great to be thankful, but you know what’s even better?  Being quietly thankful.  Seeing things like “I’m so glad God is there to take care of me and answer my every prayer” makes lots of people feel un-taken care of.  Are they not praying hard enough for the things they want?  Or maybe they need to let God take care of it?  That’s not so easy if what’s on the line is something important, like someone’s life or a house.  It’s nice to talk about how great we are and how happy we are with our relationship with God, but I refer back to my statement about public relationship bragging: Are we really happy if we have to keep talking about it?  Now, I know some of the people who are posting these things might be reading this, and I don’t want them to feel attacked.  And I’m getting to the reflection and the other side of the coin, but there are times I wish people could be more private with their beliefs.

This sounds incredibly hypocritical for a number of reasons, coming from me.  For one, I am anything but quiet about some of my beliefs – marriage equality, for one.  I’m not getting into that here, but I know that my outspokenness annoys people in the same way that theirs annoys me, so we’re even I guess.  Then I think about exactly why I want them to shut up about their happy religious funtimes.  And I ask myself if I think religion should be private because it’s for the betterment of society or because I’m insecure about my beliefs and seeing so many people who are so satisfied make me jealous.  These statuses are the equivalent of vacation photos – I wish you’d take them down because somewhere a small part of me wishes I could be there.  Sometimes.

I’m still not sure where I stand on matters of religion.  I think I’m a lot different from the Youth Group Kid I was in high school, and I struggle a lot more with things I used to accept unquestioningly.  But I’m not sure if that’s a bad thing.  I’d like to think that we should strive for a personal, private relationship with God.  Something we can be satisfied about, knowing it is uniquely ours and not the same as anyone else’s relationship.  This is where the public displays begin to annoy me.  We’re perfectly content with what we have until we see what everyone else has.  There are even times I feel people try to make others feel inferior to their sparkling faith – and maybe that’s me being paranoid or maybe that’s their unconscious selfish side taking over.  The idea of this personal definition of religion, personalized, monogram brand of faith that doesn’t subscribe exactly to any kind of organized idea is something that I thought was pretty enlightened of me to come up with.  Being in a liberal arts college showed me more than anything that everybody is different, and that maybe religion isn’t a one-size-fits-all kind of thing.  Lots of my closest friends were doing it; we formed our own little enlightened circle of religious free thinkers.  We were practically walking oxy-morons, without the morons.  Morons aren’t enlightened, like we are.  What if the solution isn’t in a contradictory 2,000 year old book? What if the answer lies in a combination of meditation, research, thinking, prayer, art, literature, conversation, love… What if the Answer, the Purpose, is simply to Seek?  How beautiful that such a solution fits everyone while at the same time providing room for customizing!

I’m going to switch my focus for a minute here.  A friend recommended to me the book Generation Me, by Jean. M. Twenge, Ph.D.  It’s about the generation of 20-somethings, teens, and kids who were raised with participation trophies, “I am special” episodes of their favorite TV shows, and a constant focus on the self.  Self expression.  Self esteem.  Self image.  Self.  Self.  Self.  Regardless of how you were raised individually, the idea that we should love ourselves and that we can do anything has completely shaped our culture and media.  How many TV shows and movies have we seen that tell us, “You can do anything you set your mind to” or “Just be yourself – find what’s right for you!”  This, according to the book, is an idea that is relatively unique to our generation.  Previous generations did what they were told and had few choices.  They went to church because it was what you did, they took jobs similar to their parents’ and did not often leave the towns they grew up in.  They were not taught to find their true selves (this is a movement that was started in the 60s and 70s and led way to self-help books, self-discovery seminars, and Oprah).  Kids were not included in important decisions, like which house the family moved to (or whether they moved at all), and they were rarely allowed to wear mismatched clothes because “it was their way of expressing themselves.”  Children weren’t a choice, they were a duty, and those who remained unmarried and/or childless were talked about behind hands in public places.   

The idea that what we think and feel matters is fairly new, and we delight in challenging social orders at every turn.  Even the concept of religion has changed drastically as this new movement has spread.  The book states, “Many young people abandon organized religion because of… the restrictive rules it often imposes” (Twenge, 34).  Church membership has fallen, and free-thinking has risen.  But just because people don’t don their Sunday best and cram themselves into pews does not mean that they do not strive to live decent, moral lives or subscribe to any kind of faith.  A recent poll (that I saw in a movie theater) said that young people are twice as likely to volunteer as their elders, who were forced to attend services.  Isn’t that what we’re all trying to accomplish with these teachings and preachings?  To get people to do the right thing, to help others, and to be contributing members of our community?  The book goes on to talk about how more and more people are opting to have a “personal” relationship with God and to accept Jesus as their “personal savior.”  Says the book, "77% [in 2006] were agnostic, atheist, or liberal believers (who believe in a religion but question some aspects of it).  Many don’t adhere to a specific belief system because, As Melissa [someone she quoted in the book] says, ‘I believe that whatever you feel, it’s personal… Everybody has their own idea of God and what God is…’” (Twenge, 34).

This is a new thing, guys.  It used to be that what the Bible says is what it was, and what it was is what it was.  There was no room for questioning.  Free-thinking wasn’t asked for or really welcome (I guess it’s necessary to say that I am a part of Gen Me, and my knowledge of previous generations is limited to what I’ve heard from parents and read in books.  Take that for what you will).  Only in recent decades have we started questioning and exploring en masse.  Sure, there have always been philosophers, free-thinkers, and questioners.  And there were scientists who made discoveries that got them excommunicated.  But we as a generation are rising up and really, loudly, overtly saying, “I don’t have to believe all of that.  I can believe some of it, or none of it.  It’s my choice.”  And our elders are saying, “You disobedient little heathens are going straight to Hell!”

I go back and forth on the idea of introducing my children to religion.  It’s one of those things that I might immediately decide once I see the little bundle of crying every two hours – I mean joy, but for now I’m really not sure how I feel about the idea.  It feels like brainwashing to start so early and leave no room for choice.  But is that me talking or is it Generation Me?  Is it true enlightenment or is it a generation brought up on choices, feeling special (and entitled), and the idea that everything we have should be a reflection of who we are?  Is this just a movement, or is it heading in a permanent direction?  Is it doing a disservice to expose young children to religion against their will, or is it a disservice not to?  Is it possible to have a family that is spiritual but not necessarily religious – without raising them to sound like vapid California models? 

I thought that my views on religion were a product of my own unquestionable brilliance, a result of years of thinking, pondering, writing, exploring, and exposure to different people and ideas.  But is it that, or am simply a product of my generation?  Is this what our participation trophies and everybody is special shirts are getting us?  It was incredibly humbling to read that my perceived enlightened thinking may actually be just self-centered thinking, but I don't really know where to go from here.  

For more unconventional ideas on religion, check out http://theoatmeal.com/comics/religion  (beware some S-bombs)

That song from The Lion King

I have always (read: for the past year or so) said that teaching is one of those things that goes largely unnoticed for several years.  Meaning that students don't really know the impact you had or the importance of what they learned for many years after school ends.  The same, I think, can be said for the reverse.  This is the story of an occasion in which a student caused my life to come full circle -- and in this example, in only took a few months.

There was this one high school Math class that I subbed in quite a few times last year.  The teacher was also a firsty, like me (only she had a real job for herself), and her kids were mostly fun.  At the very least nothing caught on fire, nobody beat anybody's face in, and the kids usually did (or pretended to do) their work.  Most of the time.  Most of the kids.

There was this one kid that I really enjoyed having.  He always did his work, didn't cheat with the other guys (Even though he was friends with them - somehow he seemed to be able to rise above them without seeming "above" them.  It was cool).  He was in band, and he seemed the kind of guy I would have been friends with in school.  Us artsy fartsy types tend to flock to each other, as if we had some kind of radar.  I was reading a Percy Jackson book one of the days I was in his class, and when he asked why, I told him I liked to read what my students were reading.  This applied more to middle school, as Percy is not quite as popular among high schoolers, but the point is that I read a lot of young adult literature.

"You should read Will Grayson, Will Grayson," he said.  "It's amazing."

"Sure, maybe sometime I'll check it out."  I wrote the name down, but didn't ask him how to spell it or who the author was.  I figured I could get the rest when it was needed, or that the clerk at Borders could help me (Borders was still a thing the day I was in his class).

At about that same time, I got really ridiculously in to Pinterest.  My friend Sarah and I would have frequent Pinterest binges, which involved pasting long URLs into Skype, so many links that mine blended with hers and I forgot which ones I'd been to already.  It was a mix of recipes, wedding dresses, quotes, and cute kittens and puppies.  Somewhere in the mix of Sarah-posts was this:

"YES!" I probably said out loud, or if not out loud then definitely really, really loudly in my head.  "This is so perfect!  Whoever that John Green guy is, he's got it goin' on!"  I probably didn't say "He's got it goin' on."  I'm fairly certain nobody says that anymore.  The point is that this quote was awesome (at the risk of sounding like a vapid girl listening to a song in a bar), so me, and I didn't know who the author was.  I don't think Sarah did either, although Sarah if you're reading this, feel free to correct me on that.

Now, a smart person would have looked him up.  Now that I know who he is, I know that a google search would have been really successful.  But that's not what I did.  I just forgot about him and kept the quote in the front of my mind, referencing it every now and then, in that way I have of referencing inside jokes with myself and totally isolating everyone else involved in the conversation.  I should stop doing that.

If I had researched John Green, I wouldn't be able to fully appreciate the random full-circle story that was being written around me.  The next chapter in the story was written at a local coffee shop, where I met to tutor a student for the SAT and occasionally share substituting war stories with Mallory, a fellow sub and former college roommate. 

I'd just told what was no doubt a hilarious and terrible story about the middle schoolers I shared space with on a daily basis.  I say "shared space," because as a long-term sub they pretty much view anything you teach them and any work they do for you as meaningless.  So I guess I "taught" them, and I'm sure there were some who listened.  But for most, I was just that young-looking girl who shared space with them for a few weeks.  Anyway, Mallory said this: "You know what your students need?  I think they need some Brothers 2.0.  I think they'd like some of the videos."  

My first thought was of a robot.  "Hel-lo.  I am Broth-er 2.0 and this is my broth-er 2.0 as well.  We are Broth-ers from the fu-ture."  But they are not robots.  Mallory told me a little about John and Hank, how John is a writer but Hank writes songs, and she was team John but Patricia from college was team Hank, and that maybe my students would find some of their posts interesting.  She said they do videos on anything from the economy to literature to how to load a dishwasher and that I should definitely watch their videos.  I think she might have shown me a video there in the coffee house.  At any rate, it wasn't long before I'd spent hours in front of youtube, thumbing through their videos and subscribing to their channels.  

A few weeks ago I was preparing a lesson plan for an interview.  I wanted to do Catcher in the Rye, which is one of my very favorites ever, but I was afraid that some parents might object to Holden's language, drinking, and renting of a hooker for a little while -- even if it was just because he was lonely and wanted to talk for a minute.  I posted on facebook to see if any of my bookish friends had an alternative to Catcher that I could use -- not to fully plan a new lesson, just to show that I was aware of the potential issues and had prepared a backup.  The responses cam in droves -- The Bell Jar, The Graveyard Book, Look Me in the Eye, and many, many more.  Two suggestions from friends were Looking for Alaska and Will Grayson, Will Grayson.  I did an amazon check on the books that were suggested.  Most of them seemed a little too inappropriate to be an appropriate alternative to Catcher, but at the very least my already huge amazon wish list grew tenfold.  And those two books, they were so familiar.  So.  Familiar.....

And then I got it.  Looking for Alaska was by John Green.  And so were Paper Towns and An Abundance of Katherines, two books I'd heard of and had mentally added to my "Judging a book by its title and these sound cool" list.  And The Fault in our Stars, which he talked about in recent videos, and which I had also mentally added to my to-read list.  And Will Grayson, Will Grayson (Which he co-wrote with David Levithan, who also deserves credit and praise and happy thoughts, because his half was really good too).  That book that one kid had told me about that one time.

So thank you, to that kid.  Thank you for being awesome and for introducing me to what is so far a really cool book written by a really cool guy, who said something really cool that Sarah pinned on Pinterest and pasted into Skype.  And thanks, Mallory for telling me about Brothers 2.0 who aren't robots, but who help me pass a lot of time while I'm doing my sitting-around thing while Michael is at work.  And thanks to life for being not quite as random as it seems.

(That song from The Lion King is "Circle of Life."  And it moves us all.)

Edit. I forgot to mention the time in between the brilliant quote and the coffee shop visit.  Someone posted a video of this guy delivering what I felt to be really valid points on a political issue about which I get really fired up.  I reposted the video, having no idea who the guy was, and wondering who this "Hank" was that he kept addressing.

Driving with Fear

I know I’ve already written about this once before, but as I don’t really have any more job-related stories for the time being, I’m going to dive back into fear again.

Last night, I drove home from my friend Heather’s house with only a vague idea of where I was going.  This was only the second time I have ever driven in this direction from her house, since the approximately one million other times, I was driving toward my parents’ house.  This time I was equipped with a broken GPS, no paper directions, little light, and uncertain thoughts of “Have I seen this before?  Was I supposed to go the other way?  Is this another name for 138…” and so on.  Michael was on the phone, but he didn’t exactly have a satellite image of where I was, and his phone died mid-sentence anyway.

After Michael’s phone rudely cut us off, I called back a few (three) times to make sure it wasn’t just a momentary lapse of signal on one of our ends.  Three straight-to-voicemail calls later, I counted his phone as dead and assessed my situation.

I was alone.  I was very probably lost.  It was dark.  I had no GPS and no desire to stop and ask for directions.  The only sound was my iPod playing the first three seconds of songs I’ve grown tired of and immediately skipped.

As I drove, I became increasingly more aware of the reflective properties of my windows.  I tried my hardest not to look too long in either direction, because I remembered that moment in The Grudge when the woman looks out the car (train?) window and sees the reflection of the stringy-haired ghost spirit thing.  Six years later and that image is still burned into my memory, always smoldering like an unattended fire, waiting for the right moment when I fan the flames again.  It always happens unintentionally, but when it does, it is so hard to shake. 

I drove on, forcing my eyes to look ahead of me only, foot pressing harder and harder on the gas and praying there were no cops around.  “Sorry officer, I was speeding because I was afraid of that thing from The Grudge” would probably not get me a warning.  If anything, it would get me dragged out of the car and forced to walk a straight line, something I can’t do very well sober.  I decided that, if questioned, I would lie and say something was chasing me.  “I saw someone come out of the bushes and run after my car.”  Yes, that would work.  How could they prove nothing was there?  “Why didn’t I check to see if I’d lost it yet? Well, uhh… I was really concentrating more on escaping the thing that was chasing me than making sure it wasn’t still chasing me.”  Maybe that would work.  But then there was the question of why would I, a rational human being, would think someone would be capable of chasing a car traveling 60+ miles per hour?  To that I had no answer.  My foot pressed harder on the gas, and I turned up the iPod.

Rufus Wainwright’s version of “Hallelujah” (you’ll remember it from the first Shrek movie) started.  I tried to sing along, furrowed my brow like I do when I sing passionately to Journey songs.  The logic was that if I pretended to be singing passionately, maybe I could let the music and my own private concert distract me from the feeling that my windows were creeping closer and closer.  Eventually I would have to look at them; they were closing in, forcing me to face that terrifying creature, her blue-tinted skin and red eyes slightly covered by her stringy, matted hair.  I took a deep, shaky breath.  “I know this room, I’ve walked this floor…”  What room?  What floor?  What I had once imagined as an opulent, glittering marble floor with a grand staircase extending from it had now transformed into an abandoned house, creaky staircase, and dirty blood-stained floor.  Don’t look at the windows.  Just keep driving. 

“She tied you to the kitchen chair.  She broke your throne and she cut your hair.”  Then she cut off your head and it rolled across the floor, leaving a trail of blood behind it.  The expression you had right before being decapitated would stay on your face forever, frozen as if someone had hit the pause button right before she sliced you.  Just keep driving.  Don’t look, don’t look, don’t look.  Eyes on the road.  Straight ahead.

I resented that I was twisting what I have always thought to be such a beautiful song.  The more I thought about the evil ghost that was almost definitely staring in at me from outside the window, the faster my heart pounded against my ribcage.  I could hear it beating, feel it pumping my blood, feel my adrenaline rising.  Which reminded me of senior year, and made the terrifying drive into the darkness with the evil spirit outside the window even more horrible.

Senior year, I went through a pretty tremendously bad breakup.  It wouldn’t be the last time I went through almost this exact same breakup, but eighteen-year-old me didn’t know that at the time.  Eighteen-year-old me did a lot of late-night writing of bad poetry and crying pointless tears into the pages of the cutest baby blue journal adorned with cartoon animals.  This was a scene that replayed almost nightly for a really long time, this sad, heartbroken girl sitting up on the top bunk of her bed at 1:00AM, ignoring the clock blinking, flashing “GO TO BED” in neon green imaginary letters.  Eighteen-year-old me couldn’t go to sleep, because eighteen-year-old me kept herself awake until the fatigue was strong enough to drag her down on the spot and force into near-comatose slumber.  Lying awake made me think, analyze, pick apart every conversation, every glance, every movement – and look for an answer.  There was no answer, and that made me anxious.  Coupled with the exhaustion, both physical and mental, somehow that anxiety turned into what I perceived to be nausea.  Since about the age of six, I have had this ridiculous, unexplainable, nearly life-controlling fear of throwing up.  And what happens when your anxiety turns into nausea?  Your adrenaline kicks in, augmenting the feeling to a degree you really aren’t prepared to deal with.  And so it went, nearly every night the second half of senior year, eighteen-year-old me stayed up until 2:00 or 3:00, trying to find a distraction that would get rid of the terrible feeling of fear rising in her throat.  For the record, those nights always ended in me drifting off at some point, sleeping a good three or so hours, and that stupid godforsaken alarm jolting me rudely awake.  But it still happens sometimes that when I get afraid, I get nauseous.  Then I get more afraid.  And so on.

And so, with the ghost outside and the dark, reflective windows caving in on me, whispering “Look at me,” in the same way that clown from IT did in the dream I had at age eight, after seeing it for the first (and let’s hope only) time – the nagging nauseous feeling that I so often associate with fear and anxiety kicked in.  “This is stupid,” I said to myself.  “I’m not sick.  I haven’t been sick.  There is no reason to feel this way.”  And my brain searched for a distraction.  I waited for the song to be over, hoping a more jam-worthy song would take its place.  My foot pressed on, and I tried to keep my speed around 60, but with my heart pounding in my ears and the windows daring me to look at them, all I could really concentrate on was getting home.  Now.  Faster.

After what felt like hours, but was more realistically only a few minutes, I started to see familiar landscapes.  I took turns I make on a regular basis and knew that soon I’d be passing the Burma Shave signs with their cutesy sayings.  I breathed a little easier, relaxed my deathgrip on the steering wheel.  The lights from the town penetrated my windows and made them considerably less reflective.  The sick feeling that had come out of nowhere subsided.  The whole ordeal felt like a summer storm – the kind that comes quickly, last a few minutes, then blow away leaving everything a little wetter and shinier than before.  I’d survived the imagined terrors, and finally I was home.

Fear is a strange thing.  I’m afraid of a lot more things than I probably shouldn’t be: the dark, that thing from The Grudge, the clown from IT, serial killers, attics, basements, dying, loved ones dying, having kids because so much can go wrong with babies, throwing up, looking stupid, not getting a job, not getting my contract renewed after I finally do get a job, people lying to me, not knowing something everyone else knows, chairs that are facing me at night, other drivers on the road, this tick bite giving me lyme disease, cockroaches, not being liked, rejection, failure, strangers at night, and gaining a lot of weight, to name just a few. But not heights.  I freaking love heights.

I’m not sure what to do about these fears.  I know some of them are normal things that regular people are afraid of, but some of them kind of seem like I just pointed at a book of things and said, “That.  I’m going to be afraid of that.” 

Michael and I like to play this game with Ferris called “Make Ferris Uncomfortable.”  Our cat spends most of his life teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown, so when he’s lying down comfortably we like to remind him that his world could change at any minute.  We pick up random ordinary things and simply place them near him.  He immediately gets on edge, sniffs the intruding object, bristles at the tail, and sometimes leaves before we have a chance to put another thing next to him.  Okay, we’ve only actually done this twice.  And I guess it’s probably a little cruel of us.  But Ferris and I are alike in that we both spend most of our time worrying about something.  And I guess If I lived in a house with giants I would get pretty uncomfortable if they started boxing me in with their random crap too.  If I did live in a house with giants of another species, my list of fears would be amended to add things like: being stepped on, those giant jerks not feeding me, being pushed outside into the vast unknown, being put in a box and forgotten about, being eaten, and finally, those giant jerks putting their random crap next to me for no reason.