School Bus Lesson

Every morning in the third grade I got on first stop that the school bus made.  They tell you in the bus drills to fill in the seats neatly, one-two one-two, from the front to the back, but you never do, you always sit in the farthest seat from the driver.

Every morning, I got on first, so I got to choose.  I chose the seat at the back.

Every morning, the boy who lived two blocks down from me would get on after me.  Every morning, he took the other back seat.

"Good morning," I said, every morning.  I had moved that October.  School buses were new to me.  Everything was new to me.

"Shut up," he said back, every morning.

  I guess that's when I learned that unfailing politeness can really annoy people who choose to be deliberately unkind for no reason.

My Breasts: Offending Everyone Since 1999

One of the regulars at Zumba pulled me aside yesterday.

"What's your name?" she asked, which was friendly, so I told her.

"You seem nice," she said.  "So don't take this the wrong way."

It never goes well when someone says this.

"I've heard other people talking about you," she continued.  "About your breasts."

Why yes, my breasts are nice.  I like them quite a lot, actually.

"They move a lot," she said.  "And I understand because I have large breasts too."

Oh my goodness.  It is like I exercise at exercise class, and my breasts obey the laws of fluid dynamics!

"So you need to wear two bras," she finished blithely.  "Not just one.  You're really all over the place."

She stopped then, waiting for a response.

"Understood," I said curtly, because I did understand.  I understood that I was not conforming, that I was being judged for having the wrong body. I understood that the "other people" believed that their right to not be confronted with my breasts, clad in only a single sports bra and a tank top, superseded my right to exercise in only one bra and a tank top.

I don't buy it.  My breasts are part of my body, and I am not ashamed of them.  They move when I exercise because I exercise for me, not for society's approval.  I'm sorry that they're offended, and I'm sorry that they can't see that mine is another body that is a good body to have.

It's not the first time someone has complained about my breasts.  Perhaps I should buy or make a witty t-shirt about it, as it appears that I am doomed to offend people with my unacceptable breasts.


And I don't even have a child to breastfeed.

Dear Government, Regarding My Upcoming Wedding

Dear Government,

I'm getting married in a little more than two months, for some definition of the word.  I'm not sure whether we're going to sign on to your institution.  It seems wrong to me that you deny benefits to some couples and not others, even though we look reasonably like a hetero couple and qualify for the institution.  I'm lucky enough that K is willing to talk through the reasons for my reluctance and that we're in a financial position where I don't depend on any of the benefits of the institution.

So I've been doing some research about how we can start a family together, how we can designate each other as beneficiaries, how assumptions of paternity will figure in to how our children will be treated. I looked up and read a sample co-parenting agreement.  I've learned that surrogacy isn't always legal and that adultery laws can override the mutual consent of the parties involved (though apparently this isn't often enforced).

And after this research, I have a question for you, government.

I am an adult, and I am trying to put together a contract with another adult so that we can form a family.  We want to take proactive measures to ensure the welfare of our future children and make sure that we have signed an agreement that will sustain our happiness and stability in the (hopefully many) years to come, and we've found that the institution you've put together doesn't always suit us.  We're willing to put in the work to find a better way, and it won't cost you anything.

Why won't you let us?

Regards,
JP

Lining Up the Ducks

When we got engaged, K's mother was full of sage advice for us. "Only fight about the things that matter," she admonished.  When we started fighting a few months ago, one of our friends had some more prosaic advice.  "Don't break up until after New Year's," he instructed me. "There's too much going on right now for you to make big decisions with a clear head."  They were both right.

It was our first really big fight, long-distance over the course of the last two months-- related to stress of his last semester and my new job and both of us feeling like the other had excluded us from their lives (and we weren't wrong, but it wasn't related to a lack of caring about each other as much as it was related to a lack of communication and generally being overwhelmed by the major life changes).

The resolution, in short form, was simple: I graduated in May, he graduated a few weeks ago in December, we've both secured jobs (that are even less than an hour apart from one another!), and we're buying a house. We've been busy, building our life together and troubleshooting the issues.

We can do this, and when we fight, we will take the opportunity to grow.

New Jobsville: Week One

I've been in New Jobsville a week now. It's been an adventure-- last weekend I was in Boston with my fraternity, so I had a healthy dose of travel to get here at ten o'clock on the night before my job started. Compounding the nature of adventure, I'm staying with my cousin while I find a permanent place to live.

I love the job so far-- it seems like I'll be doing real, meaningful things as soon as I can wrap my head around how things work. I think I'm doing well getting up to speed, but sadly no knowledge transfer is instantaneous (yet. Someone should get on inventing that).  Even though I caught a nasty cold on Thursday that carried into Friday (and who gets sick on their first week of work?), I was able to keep (mostly) up by the end of the week.

K and I went house-hunting on Tuesday. We found a possible place-- hardwood floors and just enough space!-- and now I need to get financing out of a bank. On the one hand, I've got six years of paying all my bills on time; on the other, I haven't had too many bills to pay (credit card, semesterly rent, some utilities when I was in MO). Worst of all, I just started a new job, and I hear that banks like to see you in a job for a year before they give you a mortgage.

I really don't want to rent an apartment here for a year, not after I've seen the offerings available. All the available apartments seem to have layouts that feel more cramped than the square footage suggests, with small rooms and odd, constricted doorways and hallways. Rent often includes non-refundable deposits and exceeds mortgage payments* for a fraction of the quality of life. Even the supposedly pet-friendly complexes frown when I mention Kieron's cat.

We're house people, K and I. We like making our space our own, and we'd rather fix something ourselves than call a landlord. We want the space to entertain. So, I'm working on it-- trying to find time to get to a bank or meet with a mortgage broker.

People who have bought houses-- how do you get to places with limited hours (banks, the post office) when you're working a full-time job? What are your stories of buying your first house-- and what advice would you give to someone buying their first house?
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*Based on a 30-year mortgage and the houses K and I have viewed. If (when, hopefully) K and I buy a house, we hope to have a shorter mortgage. Yes, the payments are higher in the short term, but they are still within my budget, still comparable to rent, and they produce a better financial picture in almost any scenario I have projected.

A Completely Natural Reaction to Good Things Happening

Getting a job froze me. Figuratively, of course, but I got the offer and promptly shut down.  (Well, not quite promptly. First, I negotiated salary, which was even more bogglingly terrifying, even though I succeeded from my point of view.) Instead of doing the nice, productive things I'd been doing all summer, like exercising and eating healthy food and generally doing the sorts of things that human beings do, I buried myself under a blanket and read the equivalent of 20 books in miscellaneous fiction.

I'm moving a couple hours away from my parents' house and starting a new job. This shouldn't be a big deal. I mean, I've moved twenty hours away for internships when I'd never had a "real" job before, right? It never bothered me like this.

But I went to visit apartments, and I hated all of them. Hated-- as in, I could not wait to leave. Plus, they seemed like a lot of money for not a lot of living space, and a lot of them had tons of fees and distressingly pushy landlords. (Non-refundable security deposit? I need to fill out this rental application right now, or else I'll need to get it notarized or make the hours-long drive back to the rental office and pay a $50 application fee for an apartment that may not even be available? No, thanks.)

So, I spent some quality time with rent-vs.-buy calculators like this one and discovered that renting makes absolutely no sense for us whatsoever. We can get more living space in for less money if we buy. Plus, we love the idea of owning.  Owning a house has been my dream since I was six or so.  When other girls were dreaming about their wedding, I was drawing floor plans and designing gardens. More happy for less money doesn't come up often, so we're going for it.

K and I spent last night browsing house listings online. Today, I ignored the butterflies in my stomach and called a real estate agent and a bank. Phrases like "well, this will be good when we have children" have entered my discussion on a regular basis. 

I feel like this is the stuff of fantasies.  My fantasies, even, where I have a kid and a partner and a space of my own where I can cook dinner, paint the walls, and plant day lilies. I want this: this is the reason I went to the bank on my eighteenth birthday for a credit card to begin building my credit history, this is the reason I saved ruthlessly during my internships and paid off my college debt. I should feel happy, right?

Instead, Big Life Changes mode has gone into overdrive.  Not only am I starting a new job, I'm also going to sign a mortgage, buy a house, and (eventually) get married to someone who will have to live in that house with me. It terrifies me. I'm dragging myself through every step, giving myself pep talks before every phone call.  I'm starting to bundle my belongings into suitcases, but a lot of them, I'm leaving where they are-- I'll have to stay with family while I'm house-hunting, because I had hoped to have an apartment and I don't. I can live out of a suitcase for a month-- I've done it before, when I studied abroad-- but it's still scary.

No one warned me that getting everything I've dreamed about and worked for would come with a side of nerves. Now, the best I can do is to power through it, knowing that I'll be glad I did once the massive changes are over.

Wish me luck.

Starting a Career as "We" (not "I")

If you had asked me three years ago what I considered the most important part of my life, I would have unhesitatingly told you that I cared more about establishing a career than any other life goals.  I had just graduated from community college, where few of my local friends had goals similar to mine.

K and I are getting married largely because he wants to, and I don't not want to get married enough to argue. I love him and want him to be happy, and getting married makes him happy.  That said, the institution of marriage makes me uncomfortable: it involves the community in what I consider a private relationship and opens healthy relations to public scrutiny.  Plus, it traditionally involves the commingling of assets, and I haven't successfully established myself as an individual with individual assets.*

This terrifies me.  Another smart person from the internet writes: "I often think that as a feminist, I should be self-driven, self-motivated, and self-inspired when it comes to my career." This sums up my feelings precisely: I want to establish myself individually before I commit to establishing myself as part of a marriage.  K keeps offering to give me money if I need it, but this makes me really uncomfortable. I'm supposed to have my own money: we're not technically married yet.

The problem? I want to marry K, and I want to marry him now. Yesterday, even.  Every time we see each other, we're tempted to call up our friend, who's an officiant, and just get the paperwork done.

See, we're already half-married for most practical purposes: we've already effectively made a life-long commitment to each other. Breaking our engagement now might not be as legally tricky as a divorce, but it would have a huge impact on our community. We've already integrated into each other's family. We have more friends as a couple than we have as individuals.** We'd have to figure out how to divvy up the kitchen stuff and the bedding and even a little bit of furniture.

So, I can't look for a job without considering him. I can't take just any offer that sounds like a good fit for me: I need to wonder if he'll be able to find a job, too. I need to consider if the job will force me to relocate often.  I need to figure out how far we can each commute and how long we're willing to live apart (not long: we've already done it quite a bit, and we don't like it very much).  On the flip side of this, though, he's looking for a job, too, and only one of us needs to find work before both of us can move and begin establishing our family. I need to remember that I'm not in this alone, even if it feels that way while he's finishing his last semester. It's only a few months until he graduates.

Starting a career as a "we" makes the job search harder.  Having K is worth it.

________________
*To be fair, K hasn't established himself, either.
**We do each have our own friends, and we're not isolating each other or anything creepy like that. It's just a side effect of our relationship: we meet and grow to like each other's friends.