worky schooly sucky

Look at meeee, I’m posting from work!

All three of the attorneys I support are out of the office, and I’m rather out of work to do, so here I am.

I had a difficult day yesterday and whined and moaned to BF all the way home about my situation. I’m having a hard time at my job, because I’m feeling more or less like a complete imposter. I don’t feel that I’m doing much work at all, and I feel that the work I’m doing is being done pretty poorly, and I don’t know why anyone would keep me on with what I’m doing.

I think I’m accustomed to the job I did for six months prior to this, where I was working literally all day long, with a 20-minute break for lunch and five or six minutes total throughout the day to check my email or call BF. At my old job in Annapolis I used to take an hour to write my blog posts every morning, and I goofed off for a whole lot of the rest of the day, and no one batted an eye, least of all me. But I’m used to people checking me and my work all the time now, and I don’t know how to go back to the white-collar attitude. Especially now that I’m billing my time, which is a whole other set of headache and heartache and inadequacy that I won’t go into here.

At this point, I am feeling like within the next couple of weeks or so someone is going to swoop down on me at my desk and reveal that I never really went to college at all, that I have no paralegal education or skills or experience, and that I’m a total fraud at trying to hold down this job. None of this is true, but I feel so insecure and inadequate that I am completely stressed out about it. The only feedback I’ve gotten from two of the attorneys has been good, and the third one is a total perfectionist (which I respect, and she’s not at all a bitch about it), and I’m not exactly complaining about that but it leads to me feeling like the worst employee who ever dragged her sorry ass to work.

BF reminded me that I tend to be my own worst critic. Decidedly true. I am trying to feel better about it, but I feel anxious and unhappy every day waiting for the axe to fall.

And my community college class is making me so unhappy, y’all. I’m not flunking it, not so far, but I don’t think I’ll ever cram enough information into my head to pass the class without frantic and lengthy studying. I’m halfway through it, and if I drop it now I’ll lose the $400 I spent on it and get a “W” on my AACC transcript (oh, God, no, not that, please, no) [/sarcasm], but I won’t have to do it for another two months. I’ll also have to start all over if I decide to do it again in the future for whatever reason. I’m trying to make up my mind. I’m not really a quitter – not anymore – but I’m not sure it’s worth it to stick it out on something that’s making me so sincerely miserable, just because I said I would. This class is harder than the entire paralegal program put together.

The good news? I ordered that dress from China.

Yep, that’s it.

a 100% guaranteed wedding-free post

Starting from now and going backwards:

1. I slept all afternoon, from about 2:00 to about 5:45. I really needed a nap like that and I feel great. Well, I feel sort of great. I’m achy and painy because…

2. …I taught a double header this morning, my class at 8:30 and a class I subbed for at 10. The subbing class was a real challenge, because the class was full of stiff baby boomers and the normal class is incredibly slow and gradual and gentle and I am not particularly good at teaching either of those things. But I did my best. I was still told that I moved too fast with the transitions. This one lady came up to me after class and said I would not understand until it happened what it was like to be so stiff, because I was so limber! I showed her what my body was like before I started yoga, and secretly remembered the unending humiliation of the President’s Fitness Challenge back when I was in middle school and couldn’t reach beyond my own shins to save my goddamn life.  I mentioned this to BF when I got home and he said “Yeah, and good thing that wasn’t a formative moment or anything.” I got lots of other feedback, because I’ve learned that if there’s one thing middle-aged people like to do, it’s give advice. Most of the feedback was something along the lines of “You’re good, but you’re not our regular teacher.”

3. Class at 8:30 was pretty good. I had four people, including one older lady who had settled in to doing down dog the easy way and had to be reminded at every turn to puuuuuush back through her hips. I got feedback from one of those students that seemed a little upsetting, and I was trying not to be attached to it but BF read it a different way than me and I felt better about it. She said that I don’t always fully instruct on poses and she has to look at me sometimes to figure out what to do. This part is fine; I’m not sure that you can teach such that you’re fully instructing on every pose, or you’d be talking at the speed of light through the whole class. I will try to do better at it, though. Then she said “It certainly isn’t consistent,” and I thought she meant that my teaching wasn’t consistent, and the tone of that comment seemed much more frustrated than she seems in class, but BF said she probably meant that my error wasn’t a consistent one. That is nicer and seems likely.

I really love teaching. I don’t want to stop doing it, ever. The problem is that my home practice has totally left my life, and when I try to do it just to work on classes I need to write, I don’t get any enjoyment out of it. I need to try to get back to taking classes, which is the first step to enjoying practice again, but things have been so stressful for so long that I’ve let yoga slip away from me. I also have been (and am) so excited about teaching that my perspective on how I practice and how I ought to practice has changed. I don’t know how to get the old perspective back so I can enjoy the solitude of being inside myself as I practice again.

I’m also enjoying teaching a lot more now that I’m getting a few more students coming in. This week I had four. I’m actually worried about getting a bunch more next week from my moderate success at subbing, because the folks in the 10:00 class probably would not enjoy my class at all. I talked to BF about this when I got home, because the studio I work at has an audience of mostly baby boomers, and the yoga I teach is simply less appropriate for the majority of them. I wondered whether I should try to alter or slow down my class to accommodate them if and when they show up in my class. My feeling is no, that I should teach the class that I’m best at and that I enjoy the most, and the people who want to stay with it will stay.

I’m finally able to gather feedback forms again. I’ve taught a couple dozen classes at this point, but I haven’t been able to get the required feedback forms to submit to White Lotus to get my damned certificate, so I can actually be certified to teach yoga by the Yoga Alliance. I need twenty, and they need to come from group classes of more than 3 people, which so far I have barely taught compared to the number of classes where I had one or two people. I now have nine of these forms, two of them from today’s classes, and I am so relieved to have accelerated that, because I want my certificate! That whole aspect of my training feels unfinished, and I’m starting to feel tetchy about that, and want closure.

4. Yesterday I spent at the Thai massage workshop. I don’t know if it was my mood, or if I’m really not meant to do this program, but by the middle of the afternoon I badly wanted to go home and see BF. None of the people in the class were terribly friendly and I felt lonely. I enjoyed the information, and I sort of enjoyed the bodywork, but my partner was a massage therapist who did mostly deep tissue work so her touch was somewhat painful most of the time. The work we did on each other’s necks has made mine feel quite frail.

The subject matter was interesting, and I really liked the course leader. Like the one-credit massage course, though, it didn’t really help me decide whether I want to do the full-on workshop. I think the answer is yes, although I don’t know if I want to spend the money and the time on it in 2010. It might wait until next year, or it might wait indefinitely. I’m pretty sure that if I do get the training, I want to go back to White Lotus and take their weeklong Thai yoga therapy training. The two will go nicely together, I think, and I’ll get to go back to White Lotus.

The problem is, if I take the day option of the Thai massage training, I miss a week of work and have to commute to Arlington for a week, which SUCKS. If I take the weekend option, I miss two weeks of yoga classes, which also sucks. It’s a little thing, but that’s part of what’s keeping me from deciding, because neither option is particularly good.

5. On Friday I took the Degas to the UPS store and spent $150 to send it to my father. I put $5000 worth of insurance on it and asked the poor guy three times to be careful with it. I do not know what will happen when Dad receives it. Possibly nothing; he hasn’t written me back.

I have an empty space on my wall now. I think I’m going to have my college degree framed (finally) and hang it there. BF has his framed already and I offered him the space, but he said that it was not the lack of space that had kept him from hanging his degree up in the four years we’ve lived here together. (He didn’t have a bad time in college, but he has little pride associated with the school he went to.)

That’s all that’s happened since last we spoke. I’m going to go stick a pizza in the oven. I hope you’ve all had a wonderful weekend. I pretty much have, what with the sleep.

in which I have a hard choice to make, and there is mention of a camel

Picking up right where we left off – I talked to my mother again after I wrote the last post, and she was comforting and helpful and, well, wonderful. She didn’t give me any advice I could use, but she wasn’t talking crazy and saying exactly what I didn’t want to hear, like the first conversation.

The public interest in this whole affair seems to have dropped off the map, so I won’t post Dad’s email. But it said, among other things:

-that it was my fault he’d never met BF’s family,
-that I viewed him as an ATM and never said thank you for his monetary support,
-that just because my wedding is important to me doesn’t mean it’s important to him,
-that he would pay for my wedding if he can control where, when, the guest list, and every other aspect of it,
-that he’s “beyond caring” – either about me or about how he behaves around me, I’m not sure which,
-that neither I nor my mother has ever really seen his “cruel side” (this felt like a threat to me),
-that NW is “on my side” about this and wants him to change his mind.

And this was somehow supposed to be a point-by-point response to my letter. Except I mentioned my mother exactly once, in a peripheral way, and she was everywhere in his reply, an email so bitter I could taste lemon.

So I’ve had enough. I don’t deserve to be treated this way, by my father or anyone else. I wrote him back this morning, in as neutral a tone as I could manage, and told him I was sorry that he felt the way he did. I asked him to remember 1) that I always say what I mean, unlike whoever he might have been thinking of when he read my letter*, and 2) reiteratively, that it is his choice to not attend my wedding and no one but him is responsible for it. I wanted this second point to be absolutely clear, so there can be no unfair blaming in the future. I also apologized for not writing him more letters when he was on deployments when I was a kid, which is something I have regretted painfully for many years.

*He was thinking of my mother, who never ever says what she means. Part of the reason I feel resigned about this situation is that I think, because of this email and various other evidence, that he associates me almost totally with her, having lost the thread somewhere that I am not her and never have been. I will never have a relationship with any kind of normality with him as long as he sees her in me, because he will continue to resent me and treat me like a greyhound who’s lost one too many races.

I have decided to slap a ton of insurance on the Degas sketch and take it to the UPS store to ship to him. Seeing it on my wall is too tempting, and too painful, and I hope he gets at least some kind of message when he sees that I’ve sent him back something so valuable. I consider our relationship on indefinite hiatus, and I don’t intend to resume it until I get an apology. I am owed an apology. At least.

Mom said that Dad’s acting this way because he feels left out, and there’s nothing that makes him act more like a wounded animal. It’s possible that he’s been feeling left out of my life for a lot of years now, but relationships work both ways, and it’s at least as much his fault as mine. And I’m not sure how to include him better in my wedding; it’s…my wedding, and if he doesn’t like the details of it, he can suck it, which is an invitation that I’ll issue (in more polite ways than that) to anybody who’s telling me what I should do and not do for this day.

Also, I’m not making any excuses for him. This email was raving, angry, and in a number of places disconnected from me altogether. He needs to figure out how to parent an adult, or possibly how to be an adult himself, and I’m not going to sit around and take abuse until he does.

I know I sound angry and a little immature about all this, but that’s how I feel. Maybe one day I’ll look back and understand a little better why he acted this way, and how I could have greased and accommodated and wheedled so as not to drive the wedge further between us, and so on, but for the moment he’s just…gone too far. He’s put too many straws on the back of this particular camel at this particular moment in history.

Your opinions are welcome.

–

In other wedding news (because, truly, there isn’t much in my mental space right now that isn’t run over by the train of WEDDING), it turns out that what I’d thought was going to be waaaaaaay too expensive to do in my favorite place in the world is literally a tenth of the cost I thought it was going to be. BF’s parents came over for dinner the other night, and while the purpose of this dinner was to ask them if they’d help with paying for the wedding (they will, although they won’t know how much for another month or so, but this is a giant relief for me and BF), I also found out that renting the Hall of Philosophy in Chautauqua for a ceremony only costs $800. I thought it’d be thousands. The reception and everything would still eat up our budget nicely, but…I think this option might be better than Las Vegas.

It’s on the east coast, for one thing, which will make the lion’s share of our guests have to do a lot less traveling. I don’t think the travel costs or hotel costs would end up being much cheaper, but things would generally be a bit easier. There isn’t anything else to do in Chautauqua, unlike Vegas, but it’s a beautiful, pastoral place, with the best energy of anywhere I’ve ever been. I think our guests would enjoy it (except MB, who can’t stand it there, but he is so happy we’re getting married that I think he’ll be OK), and it would be less of a burden on them to ask them to travel to upstate New York than Nevada.

Also? I love this place. More than pretty much anything except BF I love this place. Being married there would be a dream. I’d just ruled it out (mostly) because I thought it would be too expensive, and that getting everything in the gates (…long story) would be too much of a pain in the ass. Vegas sounded exciting, and I loved the thought of telling people I was getting married there, or that I got married there, but that it was an elegant and wonderful wedding. Now that I know Chautauqua is not at all unreasonable to imagine, because I was dead wrong about certain aspects of it, I don’t really know what to do.

Because I’d have to plan it myself, is the problem. I wouldn’t use a wedding planner; on this coast it would be too expensive. And in my heart of hearts I do not want to plan a wedding from scratch. I want to have someone else do the legwork of the caterers and the photographer and the florist and the aaaaaaaghh no. I’m willing to make decisions about what I want, and to show up for tastings, but I do not want to haggle and I do not want to make 900 phone calls.

So a big decision is before me. I told the Vegas planner to put her work on hold for now, because I need to take a couple of weeks and decide what I want to do. The Chautauqua wedding would be in September, probably, rather than the spring, and BF would be 30. I had kind of hoped to tie the knot while both of us were in our twenties, for some reason I do not consciously know or understand, but if Chautauqua is our better option I guess I don’t really care about that. Vegas is a much more selfish option, because it’ll be a lot more fun for me and a lot more of a hassle for our guests. But Chautauqua is where I’ve secretly wanted to get married since June of 2008, when I saw a wedding party walking to the Athenaeum behind a horse-drawn carriage with the bride and groom in it.

(I don’t want the carriage, myself, but apparently it’s thrown in with the whole package.)

Your opinions are welcome on that, too.

You know, I think I’ll write a post explaining Chautauqua at some point soon. It’s hard to figure out what the heck it is without someone telling you in a couple thousand words, or without going there yourself. I’m not a fan of talking about it too much here, because there are a limited number of people who spend time there and I’m that much closer to getting dooced, but if I’m going to have my wedding there I want my blog-friends to know why it’s just as good as, if not better than, Vegas.

There really isn’t much else going on. I’m sleeping well about half the nights, trying to run my life around a new job and all this wedding and family stress. BF is a rock, but he’s also in the middle of finishing the game, which ships in the fall, so he’s stressed out too. It’s just a hard time. Lousy Smarch.

yikes, yikes, yikes

I have a few things to tell you about, but first: my father has written me back.

He emailed me, and this email was, if possible, worse than the first one. More than anything else, I found it bizarre, almost disordered. It was full of anger and resentment, and in theory it addressed what I wrote in my letter, but it was so thoroughly distorted that I am fast losing hope that I can (or have the will to) save this relationship.

Thus far I’ve felt like it’s a bad idea to put others’ words on this blog, because I do not have their permission, anonymity be damned. But you all have been following this saga so supportively that I’m tempted…in part because I have so much to say to refute and respond to this email, and I can’t say those things to him. The adult thing would probably be to write the never-to-be-sent responses on paper that I later burn or tear up or something, rather than tattling to the internet, but I am not feeling particularly adult about this whole episode.

I stupidly called my mother about this, because I really wanted to ask her if, when they decided to have a child, he wanted me at all, or if they’d talked about how they were going to pay for me. I got that answer (yes, he did, delightedly so; yes, they did), but she prodded until I revealed details of the email he’d written back most recently, and the stuff she said…oh, readers, TB was right: it’s a fucking miracle that I even have the semblance of being a normal person. A neighbor called her right in the middle of this discussion and she asked if she could put me on hold (no, there is no relationship or conversation too important that she can’t be distracted in the middle of it by whatever happens by), so I took that opportunity to end the call. God, do I wish I hadn’t called her. I’ll never hear the end of it.

More on this exciting story as it develops. Back to you, Jim.

—

This weekend I went to Sephora at my local mall to get a bridal makeup consultation. I don’t wear makeup at all, usually, and when I do I don’t wear it very well. No one ever really taught me to put it on (and apparently no one ever taught my mother, judging by how her makeup generally looks, so I never asked her). I’ve tried to teach myself or get makeovers, but I always seem to screw it up, and/or it’s completely worn off by lunchtime. The wedding planner estimated $375 for just my hair and makeup on the day of, and if I can smallen that number at all by learning to do my own makeup, you better believe I will.

I took a friend with me who is INSANE about Sephora and about makeup in general, and we had sort of a fun girly day. I do girl stuff so rarely, and I had a nice time. The problem is, the makeup lady was really, really wonderful, and I spent $350 on the stuff she put on me. Yeah, you read that right. Eeeeeek.  If I’d had any of this gear at home that was of good quality, I wouldn’t have had to spend nearly so much, but I’ve probably spent about $50 on makeup in my whole life, entirely from CVS et al., and Sephora is incredibly high-end stuff. Also, the items she sold me included a) concealer that made my dark circles vanish magically before my very eyes – I would have paid pretty much any amount of money for the stuff after she showed me that, b) blush that brightened without making me look weirdly like a doll, which I’d never seen before, c) lipstick that I actually liked on myself for the first time in my entire life. Pinks look weird on me because I’m so pale, reds are just awful, and the only thing I’ve found that works are dark dark colors, plum and burgundy, but those are super-dramatic and not for daily wear. This was a slightly pink-red concoction that I adored.

Despite that total disaster, I have good money news: I’ve fallen in smit with a dress that only costs $200. It is here. It’s over-the-top romantic, but I kinda can’t help loving it, even if I want to change that sash to ivory and not have it tie in front and also remove the train altogether. Problem is, check out the site’s other pages. Engrish all the way. I’m worried about whether it will get here at all, and what it will look like when it does. (I am not belittling Asians in any way, shape, or form. I’m just dubious about ordering a wedding dress from another country, from a website that was created mostly by using Babelfish.) I’m still planning to try on the Claire Pettibone dress, but the bridal salon arranging that for me has been remarkably unhelpful so far. That plus its terrible reviews all over the internet have convinced me that I will not be ordering my dress from them. If I try it on and it’s completely absolutely 100% perfect, I might consider trying to find it elsewhere, but the more I think about it the more I realize it’s just. too. much. money. And I don’t want to spend that much on the dress. I’d rather spend $200 for an absurdly romantic chiffon dress that laces up the back.

My job is still a struggle. It’s hard and frustrating to get it wrong 80% of the time. I’m being told that I’m doing great, but I don’t feel like I’m doing great at all. I feel like I’m doing shitty. It’s hard to get up the oomph to go in every day, at this point, but hopefully that will improve in the next few weeks.

I had FIVE people in my yoga class on Sunday. That’s more than I’ve had in any class so far (aside from classes at the ‘lemon), and more than the last few classes put together. Most of the people I’ve taught and who liked my class all decided to come on the same day, is basically what happened, but I hope it continues.

This weekend I’m going to the Thai massage workshop on Saturday, and then teaching at 8:30 and 10:00 on Sunday, and then coming home to collapse and nag BF to do my chores. It’ll be the best weekend ever. For now, though, it’s “spring break” (i.e. I don’t have to go to my community college class), and I’m trying hard to relax and enjoy it. New Moon will help. Yes, I preordered it. I’m not so bad: my friend who loves Sephora went to Wal-Mart at midnight and stood in a line of 200 people to get her copy. Even Edward can’t inspire me to do that.

several thoughts for Friday

–Today is one of those that should be declared National Everybody Gets a Convertible for Just a Few Hours Day.

–I think the midlife dude (in his CONVERTIBLE) next to me at the stoplight while I was driving home today was digging on my Zeppelin. I had on “When the Levee Breaks”, so, you know. Hard not to dig on that.

–My job is hard. Supplementally: I get discouraged easily. Also supplementally: I don’t let discouragement talk me into giving up.

–Is it normal to refrain from using Nair while you have a healing cut on your hand? I just didn’t want anything depilatory to happen to broken skin. Whatever that might be.

–IT IS THE WEEKEND.

metal and Rapture

BF was given the movie Anvil! The Story of Anvil as a late Christmas present, and on Monday we watched it. TB, I’m sure you already know what I’m talking about, and be prepared to receive this DVD as a Christmas present for your very own at some point. Anvil is a band from the early 80′s that more or less invented 80′s metal – no Motley Crue or Metallica or Twisted Sister or Anthrax without them. Unfortunately, the rest of those bands sold gazillions of records and had major careers; as of the time this film was made, the two remaining original members of Anvil work as 1) a delivery driver for school cafeterias and 2) a construction laborer. They still play together, after 30 years, but they have pretty much no prospects. The documentary is about their attempt at touring and working on a new album over the course of about three years in the late 2000′s. It’s a very moving tale, and a darned sad one, but also one filled with Teh Rawk, and one which is eventually happy. Especially because of the epilogue, which is what I looked up on Wikipedia to find out what had happened since the movie came out.

The thing that’s hilarious about this movie is how closely it parallels This Is Spinal Tap. Not only does the band actually visit Stonehenge, but there’s a scene where Lips sings for us the very first song he wrote while they’re sitting at a sort of hot dog stand. It wasn’t “All the Way Home”, but…seriously. Very weirdly similar, in a bunch of ways. Except Anvil is, you know, not a pretend band.

We also played Bioshock 2 together, finishing it up this past weekend. I didn’t manage to write a full explanation of why I adored Bioshock when BF played that with me, but I wish I had, so I could look back and cite it for why Bioshock 2 was somewhat disappointing.

Bioshock was intensely philosophical, about the nature of choice, about capitalism, and about The Fountainhead. It also set up a universe so staggeringly beautiful and rich and original that I ache for fan fiction to start getting published. Had I the time I’d write some of my own. The game told its story partially through play, but also through the voices of the doomed residents of the broken utopia of the deep: Rapture. Dozens of audio diaries were left throughout the levels, and by picking them up and listening, the player gained insight into life in Rapture, its leaders and its downfall. So many different voices told this story, one that was so compelling I wanted to hear it all over again when it was finished – all 40 hours of it.

The stage was not really set for a sequel. Bioshock was a capsule of a game – entirely self-contained, with a beginning, a middle, an end, and no loose threads. BF was certain they’d make a sequel if they could, because Bioshock was a humongous hit, but I wasn’t sure how they’d put it together without going back in time and showing Rapture before it fell apart.

But they did, largely by turning my understanding of the environment on its head, showing Rapture as a vast series of little cities, and showing that the dead and dying are not the only remaining denizens. With this new knowledge, the world opens a little, and there’s a lot more to fiddle with as a game designer. The problem is, they really didn’t move forward with the ideas of the first game, instead veering off into sentimentality and, frankly, a little floundering.

Bioshock 2 has a smattering of philosophy, about socialism, family, and fatherhood, but overall it’s simply not as detailed, not as carefully constructed, as the first game. The audiotapes are repetitive, the level design is a lot more samey (this was BF’s biggest issue), and your mind remains un-messed with. There’s a good deal of ambiguity, which is interesting, because no villain is all bad and no friend is all good. But overall there is simply not as much depth to be had, eighty fathoms below, in this sequel.

BF was actually even less impressed than I was, and he said part of the reason was that there was very little about Bioshock 2 that was particularly different from Bioshock. There were some minor alterations for the sake of improving the player’s annoyance quotient, and there were a few new bad guys, but the defining elements of the game remained the same: plasmids, combat mechanics, environment, mood, etc. I told him that I loved the universe in Bioshock so much that I couldn’t have cared less about those things being the same; I was so thrilled to hang out in Rapture for another 40 hours that even if they’d copied some of the backgrounds pixel for pixel I wouldn’t have cared.

I wish that psychologists would come up with a name for this feeling, of being addicted to a set of characteristics that make up a fictional universe. I have this same sensation in Bioshock, or LOTR, or Harry Potter, or even Pride and Prejudice: I never want to leave this place. (Legions of tweens feel the same way about Twilight, but the universe there (such as it is) I can take or leave.) What do you call that, and how do you cope with it if it becomes overwhelming?

Got a little sidetracked there. Anyway, one final note on Bioshock 2: Michael Abbott, who is smarter about games than BF and me put together, feels completely the opposite way about it. I suspect that him being a father is clouding his judgment of the game on its own merits, but I’m willing to turn that upside down and say that BF and I enjoyed the game less because we’re not parents. I disagree with him about many of the other things he says, though, especially about what happened at the end of Bioshock when you became a Big Daddy. I remember feeling sick when BF had to go through that set of steps, because he was turning himself irrevocably into a monster, and there was no other choice in gameplay but to do so.

Bioshock was an experience – harrowing, intensely thought-provoking, sad, cathartic, unforgettable. Bioshock 2, despite the same haunting beauty and thoroughly brilliant mechanics of its predecessor, feels a lot more like a game.

McGruff sez: “pay yer wife”

Being in family law all of a sudden has already turned out to be useful.

Yesterday I was looking at a case involving a husband who had been in the military, who was already receiving retirement, and the amount of the retirement money he was going to be giving to his wife. There were notes in the file that pointed to something called “the Bangs formula”, and while I don’t know if Bangs is the name of the plaintiff or defendant in case law, or if it means something else, I was prompted to do a little digging.

It turns out that military policy, as well as US law, has determined that if the marriage meets certain time requirements, the non-military ex-spouse is legally entitled to a portion of the military spouse’s retirement income. That means that all of my father’s whining and moaning about my mom stealing his retirement is totally absurd: it’s a matter of law that he’s paying her, not a matter of a raw deal on the divorce contract. She is as entitled to that money as she would be if I was a baby and she was owed child support.

Wow. He is so not a standup guy.

goddamn you, Ben Franklin.

I. HATE. Daylight Savings.

Especially when I have to teach yoga at 8:30 7:30 really fucking early.

Fortunately there’s always the futon, for sleeping Sunday away. And then waking up to see it’s almost 4:00 and none of my chores are done and what the hell happened? Daaaah.

stress schmess

So it’s turning into a trend that I’m posting on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Those are certainly the most convenient days for me to sit in front of the computer and ramble, but the tidiness of it is starting to get to me, so I’m mixing it up.

I was hoping to go to bed early tonight, because I dropped a lot of money at Target this evening (more than I think I’ve ever spent there in one go), and the trauma means I should have been on the couch with a cool washcloth on my forehead shortly after. (Before you remind me that I’m supposed to be saving for the wedding, YES THANK YOU, I spent most of the money on clothes for the office. My office wardrobe is largely clothes that are five years old and threadbare, and badly needed supplementing.) But instead I read V.C. Andrews, missed my sleep window, and have been lying in bed, tachycardic, for 45 minutes. I guess I’ll start taking magnesium again, but for the moment I hope chocolate soy milk does the trick.

I am stressed out, too. All in all I think I had a good first week at my job, but settling in to a new job is always challenging, and I feel a lot of that ugly old fear of failure at this one. I have a growing suspicion that I’ve been kidding myself about our wedding budget, and that we – whoever “we” ends up being – are going to end up paying right around $10,000 for my wedding, even as modest as I want it to be. That thought makes me want to breathe into a paper bag. I’ve got a looooong way to go in the planning process, so I need to calm down and realize that que sera, sera, and if we pay ten grand for a beautiful wedding, fine, we’ll pay it and we’ll have a wonderful time and all will be well. But my mother’s words – all of them, from the first time she questioned my Vegas decision in our very first conversation about the wedding – are sinking into me like acid, making me wonder if she’s right, and I’m crazy, and I’m spending too much, and all my decisions are bad, and I am a sucky excuse for a clever and nontraditional bride.

I began to really understand that Bridezilla tendency this week, because I had this urge to tell everyone to just BEHAVE the way I WANT them to, because I’M DOING THE RIGHT THINGS HERE, GODDAMMIT. Which is just a few short steps away from “all of my bridesmaids must dye their hair light golden brown.” But everyone pitching in their opinions, especially about the things I’m sure about (when I’m unsure about so many other things, and would welcome any and all opinions on those!), is already starting to make me a little batty. And, again, long way to go. And the bridal salon hasn’t called me back about the loaner gown they were supposed to have ordered, and I’m starting to wonder if my $100 is ever going to be seen again. And life in 2010 is suddenly really hard, you guys, and I’m trying to navigate with style and grace but IT’S REALLY HARD.

There’s this other thing I’m mulling over, too. At some point prior to 2006, my father purchased a small pencil sketch that by all appearances is an original Degas. I don’t know if he’s had it authenticated or not. He had it when I lived with him in Alexandria, and after I moved out of that house but before he moved to Copenhagen, I offered to hold it for him until he returned to the States. Navy movers are not known for their attention to detail, let us say, and I hated the thought that such a treasure could be lost in a move. He agreed, and it’s been hanging in my house for the past four years. When my father moved home, I reminded him about the sketch and told him I would be happy to bring it to him over Thanksgiving. He said to hang on to it for now, because he has plenty of stuff to put on his walls as it is.

The sketch is pretty, but it’s not something I would choose to own for myself. Its pedigree makes it an interesting conversation piece, but that’s all. I know nothing about art and its values, but it would be stupid to assume an original Degas is not worth much. A friend pointed out to me last weekend that in all likelihood, that sketch could pay for my wedding, Claire Pettibone dress and all. I’ve been musing on that notion ever since.

I do have some reservations about selling the sketch without my father’s permission, even after all he’s done in the recent past, but if he didn’t consider a place of honor for it when he was setting up his home decor, I’m not sure it matters enough to him that I should feel bad about selling it. He may be mad later, but I think I will find it remarkably easy to throw up my hands and say, well, you more or less told me you didn’t want it, and how exactly did you expect me to pay for my wedding? Oh freaking well. (Yeah, a little vengeful, but my largest feeling about it right now is indifference – to his feelings and to the sketch itself.) For all I know, he may forget about it entirely.

I know I need to have it appraised before I can sell it, and I also know that having it authenticated (presuming it’s authentic) would up its value. Authenticating can cost tens of thousands of dollars, though, which is certainly not within my means. Appraisal costs significantly less, but if the sketch is virtually worthless, paying a few hundred dollars to have it appraised wouldn’t help.

So what do y’all think I should do? Any art-world readers out there want to toss in their tuppence?

beginning with scary and hard, going from there

I think I’ve made it plain that for the last six months, I’ve been doing monkey work. Add up column of figures, replace names with other names, file motion, ook ook. When I worked at MD’s firm I did much more sophisticated work, speaking with clients, reviewing medical records, etc., and while I wasn’t in love with many aspects of the job, the work itself was interesting.

I was hired at this firm to do work like the work I did for two years prior to the bankruptcy job: real paralegal work. I’m being paid more than I’ve ever been paid. My job is to support three family law attorneys, and the firm I work for is one of the largest firms in Annapolis, a sort of multi-practice firm that does all kinds of different work.

On my first day, I was walked around the entire firm and introduced to everyone who works there, about 40 people. Without exception, all the people I met had bright eyes, friendly smiles, and were clever and interesting. The firm itself has clean paint, new carpet, updated technology, free water bottles, and actual paintings on the walls. It’s an elegant place, well-organized, and they are not hurting for money or manpower.

Although this is exactly the kind of place I’ve been wanting to work for four years, I feel intimidated and discouraged now that I’m actually here. The amount I’m being paid is a little terrifying, because I feel that I have to justify the expense. I seem to have forgotten how to do brain-work when I’m at work, having been ooking it up for the last six months, and there’s a lot I need to learn about the firm’s procedures and also about family law in general before I will be even remotely up to speed. A temp legal secretary started on the same day as me, supporting the same attorneys, and she’s doing a lot of the work I used to do: editing and mailing letters, filing, etc. – being busy and competent while I sit at my desk and wait to be assigned other, presumably more complex tasks. The ones that I was assigned between Monday and Wednesday didn’t go too well, honestly, and I started to wonder if I’d bitten off more than I could chew when I accepted this job.

Thursday was a good day, though. I did more than was expected of me and I knew what I was about. There were still questions I didn’t get answered, about filing procedures and so on, but something important got out the door thanks to me, and I walked out of there feeling more confident.

I think this will be the best job I’ve had in years, perhaps ever, but right now I am feeling overwhelmed and demoralized. This is going to sound awful, but I’d gotten used to being the smartest person in the room at my old job. Suddenly being a wee little inexperienced fish in the great big bowl of this wonderful law firm, full of brilliant people with lots of things to teach me, is scary and hard.

—

There’s other stuff going on. My mom is driving me fucking crazy about the wedding, explaining in detail all the logical reasons why Las Vegas is a bad idea. She just thinks it’s tacky and doesn’t want to go to the trouble of traveling there, and it’s making me angry that she’s not listening to me about what I want. She also thinks our budget – which is a third of the average cost of a wedding in this country – is outrageously high. Mmph.

I finally spoke with her last weekend about my father’s lack of support, and she surprised me by kicking me when I was down. She wasn’t hurt or upset for me at all. She considered it more of the same from him. I told her nothing about the list or about my brother, but I also told her that I would no longer engage with her about my father, not now or ever. She seemed to believe me.

I was amazed at how painful it was that she didn’t seem to care about how much my father had hurt me with his actions. She has always been self-centered, but she has also held grudges on my behalf for years longer than I have, so I thought she would use the opportunity to play mother bear, or at the very least for self-drama. But I was wrong. She said something about how it actually might be easier for me if he didn’t come, and I said no, Mom, it would certainly not be easier for me. It’s my wedding, and I want my father there. She still didn’t really get it.

I went on and hired the wedding planner. She gave us an estimate that was just slightly above our budget, but hopefully we’ll be able to manage. I have an idea for emergency funding that I’m still deciding about. Poll to come about that.

My class is going a little better. BF studied mightily with me, saint that he is, and I think I will manage the bones and muscles chapters all right. The process of muscle contraction, at the molecular level, is so goddamn complicated that I couldn’t explain it if I tried. It took five pages of text and pictures in the book to explicate it, and two hours of lecture in class, and I still really, really don’t understand it at all. I’ll be really glad when this class is over, and will not rush headlong into any more school anytime soon.

I have to say, getting enough sleep night after night is definitely affecting a change in me. I feel calmer, and much more ready to face the day and its challenges. Everything just seems to be running more smoothly this way.

Ah, sleep. That’s where I’m a Viking, you know.