When I am an Old Woman I will no longer worry...

I am beginning to think that this is what I will look like by the time we make it to October. I am worrying myself old! And not in the good or wise or well earned old way. I am just becoming pessimistic and cranky. Just ask my husband!

I was doing really well with all of this stuff up until about yesterday. My patience had been wearing just a tad thin. I found myself happily playing along with the Hubbs' "Ahw babe I'm so tired give me ten more minutes" routine one second and twenty minutes later seething with resentment that I was trying to wake him AGAIN. I am finding myself at shorter and shorter ropes with nebulous time lines and ambiguous deadlines. This is certainly not the Hubbs' fault. Not all of it anyway. Yes, he could decide that my sanity is a teeny bit more of a priority and just suck it up and wake up when he says he's going to. I KNOW how exhausting the half sleep of duty is. Sorry babe but I don't care. I am out there doing it too and I feel it in my bones too. The shitty part is that there is no one to take up the slack for either of us when it comes to shit getting packed, sorted, cleaned. It is either you or it is me. Every day you say you are going to get up and get something done and then decide to sleep in feels like you are saying "Meh, it's not that important after all. Someone else will do it." It's like pouring gasoline on my already, nearly constantly smouldering fire of overwhelmedness and exhaustion. I know but cannot fully comprehend the stress of being the financial 'only' right now. I am sure it puts it's own gut knotting stress on top of the oh, so relaxing act of moving and wedding planning. I KNOW....the thing is that I am drowning. I see all of the shit that needs to be done and all of the shit that is past due. I am tired of being the one who is "on top" of everything, the one who makes sure that things keep rolling. I want help. UNCLE. As sweet as the little sis is I don't want her help I want HIS help. I want to be important enough to him to inspire him to overcome his aversion to taking part of the helm when things get shitty and confusing. I don't love that we have fallen into the habit of me being the only list maker and timeline writer. I want more partnership than that. I want him to get engaged in "making it happen". If he is reading this he is upset with me by now. He is thinking that I am being demanding and overbearing and that I don't get what it is like in his head at ALL! He's right. I don't. Partly because he doesn't tell me. I think he doesn't tell me because he doesn't want to worry me and he is right. It worries me to no end when he tells me all of the things he is afraid of and I am shitty at listening to it.

I think this is my "Wife Work" right now. Just what I needed right? More homework! But this is important shit right here. This is THE stuff our lives together depends upon me mastering. I need to listen without absorbing the awfulness of worry. I have enough worry for both of us and I can learn to just hear his concerns without internalizing it all. I am not entirely sure how I will do this but I think that's what the next fifty years are for. I hope it doesn't take all fifty.

Anyway, the other side of all of this is how well I have been doing. I made it well past a month before losing my shit and then really only lost it after getting the crap news that we no longer had a solid closing date. I feel more and more committed to my life with G and here in the city. I am feeling more and more excited about joining the ranks of the midnight superheros who stand watch so everyone might sleep. I am struggling more days than not right now. I mean really struggling. I miss my folks and I miss summers on the boats and everything seemed simpler. It is hard to keep my forward momentum in the relative moments of day to day. In spite of all of that I have a more absolute sense of peace on it's way. My dear friend S pointed out to me yesterday that I only have to survive 63 more days and then it is all done. I will look around and see my lovely little house, my diploma on the wall, the wedding flowers drying in the window and my warm, wonderful, infinitely supportive husband by my side. I will work hard right up to the end and I will get to look back and feel pride in my efforts and joy, knowing all of this bullshit and indigestion was worth it. In the mean time....I need to keep my mouth shut, practice taking deep cleansing breaths, work hard at interning, eat well, run often and further and further and kiss my Hubbs. We will work out the partnership divide when the dust settles and we can talk without such high risk of hurt feelings. We will take our notes from this war and craft a better battle plan for the next such challenge....Yesterday as I sat at the table crying into a box of packed up dry goods I begged for a promise...."Promise me we will never try to do everything all at once, ever again?!"...He said "Yes honey, next time someone is trying to finish school and we are having a housing transition I am sure we will only have one or two kids and you'll just be pregnant so, yeah, that will be way easier..." He has a point. While I hope to not repeat this cycle of intensity often if ever again, life does not slow down much from here on...at least not for a while. Not until my hair is the color of that woman's and my eyes as wise as hers....like I said, that is what the next fifty years are for.

The all you can eat (way more than you want) buffett of life

Name that city.....

If you said Denver Colorado you'd be right! Now why, you may ask, have I posted a picture of Denver? Well its a math problem. I sat down yesterday to figure out when I would be done with my internship hours and thus, when I could take my national registry exam and to my horror I will be taking it to the last few weeks before the wedding. If I manage to get all of my calls in I could be done before September 5th. This means that sometime before Sept 5th I will be able to take my director's oral where I sit down with my medical director and he tests me on drugs and patient care and likely a few critical scenarios. Once that is done I get to go to the testing center and take my computer based written exam. As soon as THAT is done I can take my practical. This is the exam where you suspend common sense and logic and show the NREMT that you know how to read and memorize their often ass backwards way of doing something. It has very little correlation to how things are done on scene, in the back of the car or at the hospital but whatever, they write the test and I have to pass it to become a medic so I will learn to walk on water if they want me to.

You're still wondering what the hell this all has to do with Denver. Well, here it is. There are only so many practical exams offered every year. They are offered all over the nation. Oregon is in the fall. The late fall. I don't have time to wait until the late fall to try to get a job or to let the information atrophy in my mind. California is a favorite. Folks find a car pool buddy and a cheep hotel and hop on down to Cali to test all the time. Maine even has one in Bangor. I could shuck out the 5oo.00 to fly home and then there is no rental car, no hotel, just hanging out with my mom. The problem is the date of the test. California is all at the end of August and likely, before I will be done with everything. Maine is on graduation weekend and I can't really miss my own graduation. So, Colorado is testing in the beginning of September. They are testing 5 days before the wedding. FUUUUUUUHHHHHHCK! It appears to be my best and really only option. The flight is pretty cheep, I found a cheep hotel and a decent rental car. All together with the testing fee it would be somewhere in the 800.00 range. That beats the pants off of the 1200.00 range for California.

The Hubbs and I have done a lot of talking about the wisdom of testing 5 days before the wedding and it is what it is. In the grand scheme, I need a job. The wedding will be wonderful and I will learn to let go. I have worked too hard and too long to not take 100% crystal clear focus to my exam. I will just have to deal with the rest when I get home. I think my mother is going to want to kill me but it is what it is. It is time to test and time to apply for a job.

G was helping me talk through the logic and look critically at the options last night and he said, "I just want to make sure its not too much all at once." I laughed out loud. "Of course its too much!" I said. "This whole thing is too much. Trying to plan a wedding while in school is too much. Doing it while trying to buy a house is too much. Trying to move, pull off a wedding, intern and prep for the exam is ALL too much. THIS WHOLE COURT IS OUT OF ORDER!". We had a good laugh and he said "You're right this is insane. I just want you to have your head wrapped around it the best you can so that you have the best shot possible". Ladies and gentlemen, my husband. The very best guy you could ever hope to have at your side in a shit storm. I think I'll keep him.

Update from beyond the boxes...

So...It is HOT here! Like really damn hot. I was out running errands yesterday and as I was standing talking to the frame shop guy I realized that the backs of my legs were sweating. Not the knee crooks but the actual backs of my legs were generating their own rivulets of sweat. Yuck! I am not a girl who digs the heat. Frankly, I am too well padded. That said, I hate hate hate air conditioning. I would rather be sweating it out then trapped in the "oh my god don't open the door or pull up the blind for fear of letting out the manufactured odd smelling air!" I just feel claustrophobic with the air on. Anyway, I am rambling.

The house: The sellers agreed to our inspection addendum and will be shelling out about 7k to fix the radon problem and the sewer line issue. In fact, they should be starting and finishing next week. I was quite pleased to hear that they got a better bid on the sewer and it will only be 5k instead of the 7k quoted earlier. The radon problem will still be spendy at 2k. Anyway, as I had always said, I didn't want them to suffer hardship on our behalf but as my realtor reminded me...that's the way it goes sometimes. That's the biz. Now all we are waiting for is the appraisal from the bank and the final approval from the loan underwriters and then closing 11 days! Cross your fingers for us! There are a zillion little ways that this could all go to shit but I am doing my damnedest not to focus on those things. If all goes well, by this time next week I will be totally done with the packing and onto cleaning projects. It will be hard with the dogs but I think I can start chasing cobwebs in corners and wiping down window sills and what not. We hired the carpet cleaners for the 28th and for all the carpet it was only $198. I was pleasantly surprised.

The Hubbs and I have been purging shit like we are on the Titanic and someone told us it was a weight problem. We are in the everything must go mode and I couldn't be happier about it. I am one of the biggest recovering pack rats you will ever meet. If you asked my folks they could tell you stories about me hoarding Popsicle boxes and scraps of paper. I have a vague recollection of thinking that they had feelings and that their feelings would be hurt if I threw them out. Well, moving across the country in the back of the Ford Ranger was the first wave of change for my pack rat mentality. I realized what a phenominal pain in the ass moving was and vowed to never acquire that much crap again. Oh how soon we forget. I had way too much shit when The Hubbs and I moved in together and worse yet, I had to pack up and move all of that in the middle of a total freak Christmas snow storm. The Hubbs has a TON of crap. When we first started dating he was in the process of moving. I helped him pack up and move out of his apartment which honestly should have frightened me off. It was one of the nastiest apartments I had ever seen. You couldn't even SEE the sink let alone the counters. I still don't know what kind of surface the kitchen floor was. It was 6 months away from a trail house. To be fair, he wasn't alone in that apartment. There was one steady roommate and a rotating cast of characters who would come, stay, trash and leave. Anywhooo...it was nasty. The next house was better but still too big and nobody really cared if the toilet talked to you or if the counter was covered in the remains of the last weeks worth of meals. By the time we were moving in together I was just so happy to be in a space that would be ours that I let him pack up and bring anything. BAD plan sister! He had six boxes of random bits of half broken shit. Paper clips and push pins mixed in with a storm whistle and an old tape of something....we don't even have a way to play tapes! Needless to say I had grand aspirations for the next move. The next move happened altogether faster than anyone in their right mind would have planed. We got the letter ten days before Thanksgiving. We had 5 weeks to be out but those were the weeks between Turkey and Ham and in between there were finals and a half marathon in Seattle! FFFFFFFF! No problem! SIL and I set on it like fruit flies to fresh peaches. We had a new house picked out and in process the next day. Four days later the house was packed up and the moving truck was in the driveway. Six days from the day we got the letter we were out and settling in to the new house. We had intended to stay here a while....we were happy with the stuff we had. It was no awesome but it was totally good enough for now. Once we were done with school and ready to settle in to a house that was truly ours we would worry about having the stuff we really wanted. Hell we were so happy with our current station that we weren't even going to register for stuff for the wedding. We wanted to take a medical relief trip. Well, getting that last letter changed things.

We are now registering for stuff. We have begun flushing out the stuff that we don't love adopting the philosophy of "we would rather have a space that we intend to fill with just the right thing than have things that aren't just what we want". It is liberating. It is significantly harder for my pack rat hubbs as he is just now beginning recovery and has backslides regularly. The most recent example is the pile of old, weird, wool, army clothes in the garage. Some how he has convinced himself that in spite of having some the best outdoor gear available, in our closets, if there is "a winter earthquake or natural disaster" he will wear these moth bitten, itchy, 40lb wool pants instead of his waterproof, lightweight snow pants (he has 4 pair). I don't quite understand this and I have begun referring to this behavior as "Zombie Apocalypse Syndrome". It goes like this, the stereotypical little girl has spent a significant portion of her life thinking about her wedding day or having her own family some day. We have plans for the future in our little pink lacy minds. The stereotypical boy on the other hand, has spent a large portion of his life planning for the day when all hell, literally, breaks loose and the great zombie world war or some other unlikely event will take place. They too have plans in their little lug soled, camo print brains. My theory is that the Hubbs is manifesting some of this in his insistence upon packing these tatty old clothes that would be waaaaay better served passed out at the rescue mission down town. I don't get it....Some things are not mine to get though so I permit a great deal more of it than I might think reasonable.

Well, this has been a very long post leading up to the following....

The one thing that I have really really really been looking forward to is a new table. I want a big old farm table. One where you can expand it out to fit all of your friends at a potluck or game night. One where you can stick some benches on either side and pile the kids up next to one another. I feel like the real start of a family is the kitchen table. Here is the one G and I have picked out. We are going to get it once we get all the shit into the new house. It is my major motivator to donate the old crap. It seats 6 as shown but has 2 leaves so it can also seat 8 or 10. I can't wait. I know its silly but it is starting to feel real. I took my Nikki McClure prints to the frame shop and we have picked out the dining room table...hell, someone has already been shopping on the registry and bought us the toaster oven we sooooo wanted. I think we are going to have a lovely little house. Now I just have to get back to the packing....boo.