YOLO

Well, it's 1:30 and I'm still awake. Blog post time!

The "YOLO!" phrase has pissed me off for a while now, as there are lots of examples where people say it after doing something like an asshole, not a risk taker. Sadly, I am seeing more and more of people being assholes and completely charmed with themselves for it, so I don't think this is going away anytime soon. But the guys of The Lonely Island were kind enough to write a YOLO song, which I've been listening to for the last ten minutes. Two words about furniture: KILLING MACHINES. It is helping me remember to relax and let people be ridiculous because if no one is ridiculous, who the hell am I going to judge and then what, what I ask you, would I have to open blog entries with?

Hmm, what's going on aside from jerks and music? Question for the ages.

It feels like school is slowly killing me. The semester is nearly over and that is probably why, but there's just so much going on, work is busy... It's good to be busy, but I feel overwhelmed and that means all I want to do is hide in bed or on the couch, read something, anything that isn't a scholarly article or textbook, watch HGTV, and daydream. None of the pressure makes me feel like the tasks left in this term are insurmountable obstacles, but I'm having trouble keeping myself on the obstacle course at all.

This semester's challenge has mostly been that two of my three classes are on Tuesday and Thursday nights. It sucks the big one. Hubs has Pathfinder Wednesday night and game night Friday, so Monday is our one night together and I work until 5:15 that day and usually have homework. Which I usually ignore, which usually makes me tense in some way. Augh. No more night classes if I can avoid them! None in the summer and none in the fall, thankfully. I'm trying to set up my practicum for the summer at a public library I focused on for a paper last year. I like the library and especially its director a lot; it'd be a dream to get to work there and the experience they make available to students is ideal. There are some gaps in my Alex Has Done This And She Is A Pro At It list, so filling in those blanks would be really satisfactory.

Work continues. I've started training with a young woman who really knows her stuff in the academic library job, and that's making things there much less headachey. I'm learning a lot. I respect this woman and she's very kind, doesn't seem to mind questions about the why of what we're doing. The cataloging is much less confusing since I got ushered under her wing. I am very happy to be there! Have been doing a few new things at the public library, too: shelving magazines and YA materials (it doesn't require special training or anything but it seems like there are always two carts of children's materials to be organized and shelved, so I give those priority), processing holds (cool) and returns (a mule could do it). Tonight Josh and I watched the mid 2000s Casshern movie. It wasn't what I was expecting based on the cover, but I'm glad we watched it because now I feel like a cool kid with a "foreign film watched recently" badge to display. 

I miss having garden plans this year. My fingers and toes are getting itchy to plant, so I may bite the bullet and get a big planter for our porch, but it would have to be carefully selected; we don't get much sun. It would be better to save the money towards house downpayment but just typing that I'm wrinkling my nose so you, dear reader, and I know exactly what's going to happen here. 

Speaking of foregone conclusions, I got a super serious craving for a doughnut or six Friday night. Dunkin' Donuts didn't disappoint. What I wanted was a chocolate frosted doughnut and not only did they have those, they had brownie batter doughnuts.

WELL, OKAY.

It was some kinda special. There was actually too much filling (I love yummy middle-of-doughnut surprises that are supposed to be there, but I had to move my neck pretty quick to not spill brownie batter [?!] on myself), but it was good. As Josh and I are MyFitnessPal-ing it around, I entered the doughnuts like a good little guilty-over-food-er.

WELL, NOT OKAY.

Jeeeeeeeeeeesus, doughnuts are terrible for you! Who knew?! Why did you ever let nutritionists know?! Why are there Big Oil, Big Used Car, and Big No Abortions but no Big Doughnut to look out for my interests?! You'd think if there was going to be a doughnut lobby, it would be here in the US but no. No. This is why other countries don't respect us, I am quite certain. But since they don't have doughnut lobbies either (?), whatevs. Deuces, other countries. You Only Live Once.

Growing a Little Older...

For the last year I've been thinking I was a certain age and that my husband is a year younger. As expressed that's true. I don't feel like I've lost a year, but I was very embarrassed to learn that I'd been thinking one number when it was really that number +1. My birthday is in a few days and there's no plan to do anything big, I don't think we did anything big birthday-wise last year. Josh is magnificent and my favorite but not one for part planning and I don't have time to put anything together, so it will probably be a quiet celebration. I just hope there is a smooshy, chocolate-frosted doughnut.


Or sixteen. I've never tried, but I get the feeling I could eat a shameful number of doughnuts if given the opportunity. And solitude. Let's not forget the solitude.

Semester is trudging along. Nothing awful, but I was pretty sick for two weeks after getting back from the cruise, and have been feeling like I'm in catch up mode since then. Fun condiment racing video game: Katsup Mode! (with exclamation point, of course). I like my multicultural literature class a lot. All my classes this semester are much smaller than last time-- I think less than half the size, if that-- which is nice. The night classes are a drag because I want to be home and the morning class is a drag because I want to be home. So for summer and fall, I'm going to look carefully at when classes are offered and select accordingly. I've missed a lot of cool events because of my class schedule this go 'round and I'd like to be able to do more in the next semesters.

I'll be graduating next May, which is mind boggling. I was lucky to take classes as a special student and there's plenty to do between now and next May (I imagine before the semester is over it will feel like fooooooooorrrrrfuckingeverrrrrrrrrr until graduation), but the two years just doesn't seem like enough time to become super competent in areas where I want to be.

Looking forward to seeing Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing next month at the Madison Film Festival. Looking forward to the projects of this semester even as I'm a little trigger shy of group projects. The stuff we will be working on is interesting. I lead a small book group next week for the multicultural literature class and I feel like I picked neat picture books; hope everyone else thinks so.

Work's also kind of trudge-y. Working at the public library is fantastic in that it's work in a public library, a little monotonous in that it's being a page in a public library. Several times a shift I think to myself "Oh, is that how the alphabet works, now?" but most of the other pages I work around seem nice. It's definitely nice to still be in my happy library place and interact with the people I got to know a little bit when I was volunteering. Work on campus is extremely monotonous, but they gave me a small raise at the start of the semester and I feel like if I can just get more training on the cataloging system this could be a stupendous experience and résumé boost.

As next May looms, I'm continuing to slow-simmer back burner (double range pun!) panic about getting a job after graduation. We're focusing on buying a house at the end of the summer right now, and that's the biggest life thing. When we've bought a place and moved in I imagine the panic will bubble over accordingly. What can I say? The saucepan of my life overfloweth.

Yo, ho.

Who you callin' a--?!

ETA: I don't think my experience was indicative of any general trend last year. In fact I'm pretty sure all the bits I'm surly about are uncommon to the cruise and to the group. And in the end wtfever it's a vacation FREE AT LAST, FREE AT LAST--!

(Hi, Sea Monkeys!)

My head is stuck in one of those ruts where I think it's a different day of the week than it is. It feels like Thursday but it isn't. And while I'm relieved that I didn't miss class this morning because I don't have class on Wednesday, I'm a little bummed I'm not as close to the end of the week as I thought I was. Sheesh, brain, get in gear!

Weekends are usually great because, hey, WEEKEND, but I'm particularly looking forward to this weekend because it's the start of another week on the Nerdboat. J and I went last year and while I had some discomfort during (some of the nerds were too hardcore, one really hurt my feelings, I generally felt brushed off a lot-- not in a sexist way, I don't think that's an issue with this crowd, but... It was hard to speak up several times, which is more me than it is them-- and more than once I was ignored which sort of turned my stomach on the "this is the nicest group of nerds around" vibe I'd expected based on all the online lead up, despite all the smarts there were some really stupid things said I didn't think were funny at all...), we did meet some very neat (nice!) people, and I'm looking forward to repeating that experience. There were plenty of great people on the cruise last year, I am certain there are plenty of great people this year. I've tried to thicken up my skin a bit since last year and pretending like the paragraph long parenthetical digression doesn't exist, I am excited about this vacation. 

It'll be the first time we've gotten to take a break together since the wedding. Christmas was so busy and we drove to Florida and back, so it wasn't the most relaxing of vacations. This is not our honeymoon (I am not sharing my husband with a 24 hour game room on our goddamn honeymoon), but it will be very, very nice to get away from it all together and have someone else make our bed and play on the beach together and get dressed up for fancy dinners even if only one of us is excited about that and yadda yadda...

Lessons learned last year:

• Pack the micro usb cord for the Kindle (it helps a lot that we can use one of the phone chargers for the Kindle this time around). I can't get stuck two pages from the end of The Hunger Games again, but best not to take chances.
• Not everyone will respond with the pleasantness I expect in return for my own pleasantness. But it is anxiety-inducing to worry about and dickish not to be pleasant, so if my feelings get hurt I will find something else to do. It's a huge, huge boat. In addition to all the JCCC activities there's the cruise stuff.
• There are definite cliques to this thing. That's okay. 
• I can play Dominion (I think this point alone is going to make next week much better)
• Dominion is better with four players (ditto)
• Check the hair dryer in the cabin the first day.
• Bring plastic bag for swimsuit, probably will not be dry when repacking
• Air freshener. Do it.
• Apply sunscreen with lotion first thing after drying off from shower, every day. Even at sea days.
• Remember everyone is human and it is very, very doubtful anyone ever means to hurt any feelings, ever.
• Kayak (check!).
• Bring container, not bag, for make up, bobby pins, etc. Easier to snap a lid on the stuff than constantly tie, untie a bag.

One of my favorite pictures from last year was taken a few minutes before the group photos, by a Sea Monkey who was really nice but I never got to thank: J and I, playing our 3DSes on the bow of the ship. If I can find this Sea Monkey again I will thank him profusely and ask him to take another this year. My favorite memories were laughing with J and the concerts, which are both going to be fantastic this year, too.

Is it Thursday yet?

Prompts for the future

I'll reference this when I feel like blogging but can't quite figure out what to talk about.

• Squirrel rescucapture: Scooter and Michael Phelps, Esquirrel
• Car stuff with my dad/the spitfire picture from our street in Orlando
• The ways my husband is a sweet man who still impresses me 
• What kind of librarian I want to be
• Nana
• Nerdboat experiences (in order to guarantee time to recharge in peace, I'm planning to make a few notes each day and post a cruise entry after we get back)
• Food cravings 

Here it Goes Again (An Update of the General Variety)

Second semester is in full swing. Because of conferences I only had one of my three classes meet and because the professor for that class was in Canada I haven't actually met any of my professors AS professors yet (one is my advisor, we talked for a bit last semester). Sort of a strange first week.

Working a few hours a week at the public library I love, and I'm still at the large library at school. Was very, very happy to land the public gig because that's the type of library I'd eventually like to work in and I know great people there. A++, three cheers, and general hip hip hooray for the library.

The big plan for this year, aside from January to December grad school, is to buy a house in late summer when our lease is up. Been doing lots of dreaming and a dash of nightmaring about that process. Exciting in a good way but sometimes it feels like we're standing at the precipice of a Major Adult Thing we are not at all prepared for. I am learning to just sign us up for things and tell spouse I have done so instead of waiting to make plans together for these things-- it doesn't sit very well, but so far it works much better than the waiting game. Which is to say that anything gets done.

We're on a cruise next month, and after we get back we'll see about going to our credit union's First Time Homebuyer class. They offer it a few times a year, I'm hoping there will be another in March so we can find out what we need sooner rather than later. Our lease ends on the last day of August and frankly I'm down with moving sooner but it seems like it's a good transition point. Neither of us is the slightest bit packed, so... Yeah. I just passive agressively hate our neighbors (to their credit, not as loud lately) to tick the time away. Tonight we got frames for and hung up three posters so we have to stay for at least another week or I'll be forced to huff or something.

The snoring is ongoing and incredibly frustrating. Went to the doctor Friday, slow-acting (gee, thanks!) steroid spray prescribed. Darlingshnookumpants didn't take the stuff the first night and snored so loudly I wanted to throw things; I got so mad I cried. I could hear him through a closed door, over music. I can't-- rightly, anyway-- be angry with him because he's not doing it on purpose, but for fuck's sake... Argh. Hopefully spray will work miraculously fast and our marriage will survive intact. I know our marriage will survive. I am more hopeful it will survive in a we can sleep in the same bed every night kind of way. Between winter break, the thoroughly sawed logs, and not having to work in the morning for a while, my sleep schedule is shot to hell. You can imagine the wonders this is doing for my outlook on all things requiring hope.

Not doing a garden this year, just moving the rosemary to the porch when it (ha) warms up and trying lettuce out there, too. I'm tempted to get one of those tower planters but that seems a bit ridiculous when I'm supposed to be saving for a house and I'm pretty sure they require connecting to an electrical outlet. I'd also probably forget to add water and then where would the damn thing be? Still on my porch, I assume. But very dry.

Let's see, what else is going on? Holidays were interesting as holidays with family tend to be. Good. But that special brand of interesting. We drove down and back. Left in a blizzard, each of us felt the other's driving left something to be desired, but we made it there and back again. I thought about the cats a lot and was very happy to get home with them and love them more than they wanted. They endured it with feline grace and recuperated by thoroughly licking themselves in the cat-jayjay region upon release. Those are my girls!

We got DVR. I hope this explains the lack of additional worthwhile activity.

A Note on Mirena, IUD Extraordinaire

Be warned: look away if ladyparts or nonpenile things going into lady parts make your skin crawl. No crawlidermis detected, these things excite you (it takes all kinds)? Read on.

At the end of October, I got an IUD. I've wanted one for a few years and never been able to cough up $500 to handle it out of pocket, so now that I have insurance, I can be baby free for no monthly dinero! This is yay.

I didn't have any problems with birth control pills, in part because my desperate need for attention and validation from others made me rejoice in my prescription because it meant someone, somewhere, was thinking about me. At least for the first two months. I've been on Ortho or some generic variant for several years (yeesh, upwards of eight though not constantly) and my favorite part about the pill is that it worked and I never got pregnant! Hooray. Props to Planned Parenthood for low-cost birth control. Considerably less expensive than a baby plus I got to graduate college and move to Wisconsin and have sex with my husband I can shower and apply booze or caffeine directly to my throat whenever I feel like it. This has all been great. I want a kid eventually, probably sooner rather than later. But not now and definitely not not 100% not in any of my history leading up to now.

Anyway. I am now insured-- more hooray-- and I can get an IUD. So I did. I didn't think to look up much about other people's experiences getting one placed and didn't give it a lot of thought. My doctor recommended taking some pain reliever before the appointment as a precautionary measure, so I took two ibuprofen and considered myself very worldly for remembering.


If you are getting an IUD, read your doctor's post it carefully. He or she has probably told you to take, like... as much acetaminophen as you can without passing out.

I like my physician a lot. We have a good rapport with one another and I trust her not to fiddle around unnecessarily. She warned me that insertion (somehow I lost this word and kept referring to the procedure as "installation" which is accurate but inadvertently roboticizes the whole thing) could be kind of painful and told me to take the pain reliever beforehand and LOOK AWAY, YE OF FRAGILE EYES that the appointment would need to be set for a day when I was period-ing because the cervix is softer then. Okay. Semi-check and check, just barely. I gotta be me, and me cavegirl, fly by seat of pants.

When you have an install/insert, your uterus will be sounded. First the medical person in charge will manually check to see which way your uterus tilts (I was dying to ask if mine was left/forward/something, anything, but just couldn't do it, which I figure I will regret forever). Then you get sounded, which is not ultra. It's just a wand (because your vagina is a magical place) more or less--but professionally-- shoved inside you to see how deep the insertionist should plan to place the IUD.

Sounding blows. It really, really, fucking goddamn shitcockballsohmygodwhatdidieverdotoyou hurt, and I don't have any pain memories to describe the sensation accurately. It didn't feel sharp or like I was being cut (and I wasn't), but "strong prodding" doesn't do the sensation justice. It really hurt. TAKE THE PAIN PILLS. Now that I'm thinking about it I guess it's on par with terrible cramps that lead women to kill well-meaning people around them that won't shut up. Maybe slightly worse. My doctor is a pro and sounded my uterus and placed the IUD very quickly; I think the whole thing took 5 minutes at the most. It hurt, but the hurt didn't last and I think if I'd, y'know, read the directions and taken the appropriate number of pills beforehand, I would have been in better shape.

I got some shock symptoms during the end, when it hurt the worst. Immediately after finishing I got a juicebox and some polite conversation while my very professional, indeed, medical professional made small talk and made no indication that she thought any less of me for having seen my hoohah very, very up close and personal. Like I said. A pro. I did not get a gold star and what's worse, I didn't ask for one. Another regret. I felt like I deserved one.

Cramped badly afterwards and it was probably psychosomatic but it felt like I could feel the IUD. Not any more painful but a bit weird. I'd brochured myself into hyperawareness that the thing could perforate my uterus and I could end up getting pregnant anyway, so to give myself one last hurrah before this was all for nothing I went directly to Dunkin' Donuts, got a vanilla Coolata (you're welcome for this free advertisement, DD, I'm sure it was just the context you were looking for) and a half dozen sugardoughcircles, and took us all home. I couched myself as soon as I could find and plug in the heating pad, which worked a major midsection miracle and after some dumb tv and a doze, I felt like living again.

I did not feel like having sex, on the other hand, for several days. Which was jarring and a little disappointing because hey, I'd just been through a lot to be able to have sex scot-free! Normalcy resumed after less than a week.

I sing the praises of Mirena for several reasons, but it hasn't been problemless: my periods were blessedly normal before installation, and now I spot throughout the month and get random low level cramps. The first time I couldn't find the strings (they move, some days you won't be able to feel them!) I was convinced I was pregnant, dying of septicemia, and had a perforated uterus. I was duly terrified.

If you're thinking about getting one and have any questions, feel free to post them anonymously as comments and I'll be happy to answer as best I can from my own experience. I can't imagine you found this blog before more helpful search results, but here are a couple if you need more information:

PP Page on IUDs
Mayo Clinic's Page on Mirena

Be responsible, yadda yadda. :)

It Must Go Somewhere

SWEET JESUS, HUSBAND, I LOVE YOU TO THE MOON AND BACK BUT SO HELP ME GOD IF YOU DO NOT STOP SNORING I WILL SEND ONE OF US TO THE MOON SO WE CAN BOTH SLEEP AT ONCE. He's been sick this week so it's worse than usual, but this is not an uncommon thing and it drives me crazy-- so loud it wakes me up, or too loud to go to sleep with in the first place. No consistent rhythm so I'm not able to lull myself to or back to sleep with it.

Let's see if the Internet has anything helpful to say. It makes me an unperfect librarian, but... Go go Google!