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!

The Kid is Alright

Things are moving along. They tend to do that.

First semester of graduate school is moving along. Group work is frustrating or fantastic, depending on who I'm working with. Mostly okay, thankfully. I miss the friends I made in storytelling class last summer but I'm making a few new ones. I'm working in the preservation department of a large (the largest?) library on campus, assessing the damage of books. They range from "everything is together and the pages are in good condition, but the cover is completely detached" to "it's really better to just say 'fuck it,'" but the latter is not acceptable commentary. I've seen some neat stuff. I'm learning that it's best to just let myself be THAT picky --which I have conditioned myself to resist, or at least fret over-- when filling out the prep slip for each book. Itty bitty marginal spot that doesn't impact the text at all? Note that sucker anyway.

Finally weaned myself away from soul-sucking office job I was loving so much this time last year. I helped train the new accounting assistant a little bit over the last two weeks. The running around has been hell and I've had little to no time outside of late evening to study, which has not made for a stressless school existence. Got sick last week and was miserable and prone to vomiting. I left without going to my Thursday classes (not cool with me at all, and it threw a wrench in the not-so-fantastic group project I'm not sure the group has recovered from) and it's been kind of hazy since then. Fog is clearing.

LittleOldLadyMobile decided to lose it the morning of the wedding, specifically when I was on the way home with my matron of honor after decorating the venue, which was... less than ideal. We picked her up from the shop Tuesday night. All has seemed well since. Thank goodness for credible repair. We benefit from our proximity to Verona, where word of mouth is easy to come by. Josh's office mate even knew about the place we decided to take the car and said it was legit. 

It's getting cold. Well, it's gotten cold. Averaged around 40-something midday this week. Colder in the mornings and at night. Fall is definitely here as well, because if something is attached to a deciduous tree all signs would seem to point to it not staying attached for very much longer.

Even though I will be paid-in-peanuts poor when Christmas rolls around, I'm pretty excited about the holidays this year. We're very likely staying home for Thanksgiving, and trying to make a longer stay in Florida for Christmas. Will depend on funds in the very near future and what's happening with our niece (! wedding = family expansion zomg!!! I am not Almost Aunt Alex but Actual Aunt Alex, please excuse me while I go flip my wig!) at Christmas.

Rosemary plants got make-me-happy levels of larger while they were in the garden over the summer. I dug them up last weekend and have had them on our porch since then, letting them get a little bit of rain before they have to come in for the winter. 

Have I mentioned my husband is refuckingdiculously handsome?

Desertion and Just Deserts

Life has really been good lately, it's just that I turn to my blog when I need to reason through unhappy things.

When I put the kibosh on an until-then close friendship I thought was unhealthy and harmful, I just... stopped. It was such an investment of time and at that point heartache that I couldn't think of how to deal with it, I just knew that I needed to stop it. People I loved-- everyone I loved except the other half of the friendship-- had been telling me for years that it wasn't a good relationship to be in, and looking back a couple years later I don't know if that feedback poisoned things or if my experience feeling like I could be a valued friend as new relationships were founded made me not want to be with a person who I felt didn't value me. I distinctly remember thinking the latter over and over and over. That was absolutely how I felt. With time between then and now, I don't know that it was objectively true.

It's done at this point. I have these little flutters of conversation with my old best friend, my former best friend, now, via Facebook. And I still love those little shimmery bits; they're fun. I wish I'd proceeded differently before so none of this was tinged with regret, so we could just laugh at what's funny because fucked up parts of the relationship aside, girl and I were a riot a minute.

I can think of what I would do differently now: I would say something. We will never be so close again, even if I were able to get out a perfect articulation. I am still not very good at saying something, but I understand at this point that what I did (by not doing anything) was damaging in a way I didn't desire or intend. So I hope that I would say something. Sometimes I dream about what to say.

Sad that I find myself wanting to say something to another close friend-- not a replacement, because the friendship I was talking about before wasn't really replaceable in any sense, good or bad-- and find myself just as frozen; not sure of what to say. I don't know if the problem is me or her. I can't tell if my standards are messed up, if her behavior really is as objectively irritating and inconsiderate as I think it is. But I know that I know this feeling of recoil and frustration because it is exactly what I felt before.

I share my heart with my husband now, and a fantastic part of that is the marrow-deep peace I get knowing that I can tell him what scares me most, what I hate most, things about me that are not nice;  all of these and he will keep loving me not because he is an idiot but because his love for me is that big, and isn't shaken by flaws. I think I am worthy of that but know it isn't the stuff every relationship is made of.

I don't want to be a person whose love is shaken by flaws. I'm judgmental and much slower to love than I was. I don't want to cling to this troubled friendship for the sake of having a friend, but I do not want to desert again. I'm so turned off by behavior patterns of the last few months that I'm unconvinced continuing the friendship is a good idea and I feel alienated to the point of not wanting to have a "Hey, I've noticed..." discussion, but I feel like it would be wrong to sever ties the way I'm inclined.

It boils down in part to not feeling like I can be honest, like I don't want to enumerate all the flaws I'm perceiving. And in the end, that's my feeling. I resent being treated badly (or feeling like I'm being treated badly), but my feelings are more under my control than what other people do.

Wavering, wavering. Trying to be cautious. Why does speaking up scare me so much?