Thoughts on “Back-to-School” July 22, 2009

Having completed 12 years of schooling and 4 years of college, the past couple years I’ve enjoyed the right to breathe a huge sigh of relief and smile nostalgically at the piles of backpacks, pencils, and colorful ephemera that appears in stores mid-July.

But with my husband’s sudden decision to start college and the whirlwind of FAFSA, financial aid, applications, phone calls, and paperwork that involves, I find myself suddenly thrust back into the school mindset, at least peripherally. So here’s a few of my random thoughts as we gear up for his first “back-to-school” in quite a few years:

• School, like many other things in life, increases exponentially in cost every year. Josh is attending classes exclusively online, so he doesn’t need pencils or a lunchbox ($25 total?). He does, however, need a new laptop ($700?).
• I never appreciated my mother enough for providing all the tools I needed for school – including filling out the endless forms. It’s one thing to fill them out for myself, which I did all through college. It’s another thing entirely to fill them out for Josh, because he believes himself incapable of both finding our tax returns AND then typing the numbers in the right little box on the FAFSA. And it would never occur to him that he might need a notebook and maybe a pen or two, even for online classes.
• Whoever controls the FAFSA/financial aid determination has WAY too much power. At least over my mental and emotional state.
• It’s a good thing Josh married his IT department. And I have no idea how he’s going to manage online classes, since he couldn’t figure out how to turn off the pop-up blocker.
• Who made the ridiculous marketing decision to advertise “Back to School” in the middle of JULY?!?!? It’s barely warming up in Michigan. It’s depressing. I hate you.
• Seeing all the cute back-to-school clothes makes me want new clothes.
• I’m really proud of Josh (and all the other adults in the same boat) for making the decision to go back to school. In addition to balancing a full-time job, he’ll be juggling the roles of hubby and daddy too. I certainly don’t envy him, and I’ll do everything I can to make sure he succeeds.

Good luck, my dear Josh, and every other student out there groaning at the pen-and-calculator-laden shelves! Can’t say I miss being in your shoes!

I Can’t Escape It! July 13, 2009

When I went on vacation with my parents into the middle of the Black Hills, I never expected the wedding fever to follow me. Not that I’m complaining. On the other hand, maybe it’s just that I’m overly perceptive of matrimonial obsession that my life seems to revolve around. I’m not sure.

For example, the first day we were traveling around Deadwood, South Dakota, getting a feel for where we were staying, I noticed a sign for “Deadwood Weddings.” That I chalked up to the fact that I tend to notice a lot of advertisement for wedding-related services and didn’t think twice about it until a few days later.

That’s when my dad and I decided to take a hike up Crow’s Peak. Who would have thought that I’d run across a group of girls climbing this 6.5-mile, 1,500-foot-elevation-change hike for one of the girls’ bachelorette party!? How crazy is that? I mean, I go hiking in the middle of nowhere, and I am still followed by the brides. (It actually sounded like a pretty fun bachelorette party to me, considering bringing along alcohol would just be stupid and a minimal number of people could embarrass the tiara-bearing hiker.)

And to top it off, the night before that, while I was about to take a photo for a girl and her mom at Mount Rushmore, my phone starts to ring in my pocket. It was my friend Lissa. I felt awful when I answered and said, “I’ll call you right back!” and then forgot as the lighting of the carvings ceremony began. I remembered on the way back to our lodge, so I sent her a text to see if she was awake. Unfortunately, reception is so spotty in national parks/forests that I didn’t hear her call back. To the other people in the car, I said something to the effect, “It’s got to be wedding related! I just know it. Who wants to take a bet?” No one took me up on it.

I called her back the next day after the hike, apologizing profusely for not getting to talk to her the night before. I could tell by the way I could hear her smiling over the phone what she was going to ask me when she said, “Erin, I have a question.”

“Oh?” I couldn’t help but smiling myself.

“Will you be my bridesmaid?”

Even though I was standing in the middle of a grocery store, I immediately turned and pointed to my dad, who had been in the car the night before, and yelled, “I knew it!” And then I turned back into the phone and said an enthusiastic “Yes!”

Of course, this just means I’ll have to keep up my at-least-one-wedding-a-year ratio going after she and Jeremy are wedded. So, who wants to be married in 2011?

Road Trips and Camping and Baby, Oh My! June 24, 2009

It’s official, I’m crazy. Cart-me-off-to-the-psych-ward crazy, according to my friends with children. Tomorrow we leave for an 8-hour roadtrip (not counting restroom breaks, nursing stops, and emergency i-gotta-pee-NOW stops, so more like 11 hours), and by “we” I mean me, my husband, my 13-year-old brother, and my 5-month-old son. The Motley Crew Travels to Iowa, Volume I.

What’s the destination? Not a comfy hotel in some nice metropolitan city with museums, zoos, and indoor pools. No, we’re camping. In a tent. On a lake in the middle of Nowhere, Iowa. Did I mention the tent part? Sadly, I’ve been told that tents do not come with built-in AC. Or built-in bathrooms. But I bought a 12-inch oscillating fan from Wal-mart, which I’m confident will protect the four of us from the 95-degree heat and humidity in a small nylon-enclosed space. (Stop laughing, it’s rude. Let me keep my delusions as long as possible, please.)

But before we can embark on this thrilling voyage of bonding, discovery, and excitement, I have to pack. I hope you noticed the pronoun usage in that sentence, starting with “we” and ending with “I”. Because I’m pretty sure my husband believes that a magic genie lives in the suitcase and coughs up shirts, underwear, swim trunks, and deodorant on demand. Although really, what else can I expect from a man who still swears that he has no idea which side of the closet is mine or what drawer to put whose pants in (there’s only one for each of us, and it’s been the same drawer for the entire time we’ve been married), so he can’t possibly put the clothes away. I am 100% serious. Apparently finding clothes to wear and putting them away are two entirely separate and completely unrelated skills.

Rant over. Back to the packing, which I’ve been working on for the last two days and still have not finished. I never dreamed how much stuff babies require for a 4-day trip. And I’m paranoid about forgetting something crucial, like my cell phone charger or diapers. I have a list (actually multiple lists) on my phone, which I refer to obsessively every 5 minutes because my brain is about as reliable as our older-than-me van with 200,000 miles on it. I’ve gathered almost everything into our living room, so if Josh wants to watch TV tonight he’ll have to perch on top of the pool floaty, towels, diapers, paper plates, and various clothing items. The main issue now is fitting everything into our Pontiac Sunfire (with freshly repaired AC – YAY!!), while leaving 10-inch-wide spots for our behinds. I hope Tim (my brother) is okay with holding a cooler on his lap…

Wonder why I’m attempting this? My mom’s side of the family has a big family-reunion shindig every year and this is the 5th anniversary with t-shirts and everything, so we’re the Michigan family branch ambassadors. Doesn’t really answer the question of why we couldn’t reunite at a nice Marriott hotel in Florida in, like, February instead of a blazing-hot Iowa campground in June, but that’s my family for ya.

So there’s the when, where, why, and how of our weekend excursion. Pray that we all return in one piece, don’t leave the baby or my brother, and remember everything important. I’ll try to update while we’re there, or maybe even in the car if I get bored.

I truly hope to talk to you all again, but if I disappear permanently, call the Iowa National Guard and tell them I’m lost in a cow pasture somewhere on Highway 80…

Plot Line Life June 18, 2009

Every few months for the past year or so, it’s happened. I don’t know how, but my life seems to become the premise for the big screen.

Who could forget the wonderful Katherine Heigel film 27 Dresses that premiered a year and a half ago? It was in theaters shortly before I was a bridesmaid for the fourth time. That following summer, I was bombarded with a streak of eight weekends of weddings, which I was either invited to or asked to be involved in playing numerous roles.

Let’s just say that it has not been uncommon for people to ask me if I have 27 dresses hanging in my closet. In reality, I’m working at finding one of every color of the rainbow. (I already have red, yellow, green and purple and will soon be adding blue to that bunch.)

Unfortunately, none of these weddings has caused me to discover that gorgeous yet cynical writer to fall in love with. On that same page, the next movie came out this February.

People who saw the previews for He’s Just Not That Into You in the fall insisted that I see it because of how much it made them think of me. Gee, thanks. The title alone can be taken as an insult. But, they’re right. Far too often I’ve heard that from my friends. Then I saw it for myself and couldn’t stop laughing. Can you guess which line?

Knowing it was based off a book, and because I have developed a rule for not seeing a movie without having read the book, I found a copy and read it in January.

The following month, I saw it the night after it came out with one of my friends and her boyfriend. (We didn’t see it the night it came out because the last two tickets were sold to the two people in front of us in line.) Aside from the lack of representation for any more reasoning behind the why someone wouldn’t have sex in a relationship, it was a fun movie. I wouldn’t say it put the best light on marriage, but there were many enlightening points made to people like me, the ones who over-dramaticize a single encounter with a person.

Now, it’s happening again.

This August, another movie is coming out that, when I saw the preview, I nearly cried. It really is as if someone were following me around to come up with different premises for their movies. It’s called Post Grad.

According to the description on IMDb, the basic plot is, “Ryden Malby graduates from college and is forced to move back into her childhood home with her eccentric family, while she attempts to find a job, the right guy, and just a hint of where her life is headed.”

Really?

Aside from the (once again) finding the right guy part, that’s my life right now. Maybe I should keep an eye on the movies to find out what I’m going to do next. Or maybe I should be writing these movies.

Birthdays Just Aren’t the Same Anymore June 16, 2009

While growing older has its benefits (driving, independence, etc), after a certain point (maybe 21?) birthdays just aren’t the same anymore. As a child, I looked forward to my birthday almost as much as Christmas – sometimes more, because it was a day all about ME. For some reason, Mom and Dad kept reminding us kids that Christmas was actually about Jesus (then why did we get the presents?!).

Often I’d get a party, always presents, cake, my favorite dinner, and bad singing. For my 24th birthday, most of the accoutrements were there, including the bad singing, but in a grown-up version. Presents weren’t of the wrapped variety (not that I’m complaining per se, because they were what I asked for!), and the hoop-la almost non-existent.

BUT, all that said, I actually did have a lovely birthday (June 9). My husband took me out to eat the weekend before with our 4 1/2 month old son Cai, always an interesting experience, and then took me shopping for a couple new dresses. After about 5 stores, we found two dresses, 2 shirts, and several outfits for Cai. Baby clothes are so irresistible!!

My little brother and my sister’s boyfriend picked out a box of chocolates and a book for me, a sci-fi novel which looks right up my alley even if it is the 11th in the series… (no, they will never live that one down!) The chocolates were several gourmet dark varieties, which more than made up for me having to go buy the first 10 books in said series before I can read the one they gave me.

The one thing I really wanted for my birthday was a haircut and pictures with my son. Due to an extraordinarily bad string of luck on my birthday and the next day (locked out of house, hubby took stroller to work, picture outfits left in locked house, stylist not working, and so on), it was Sunday before that birthday wish came true. But, the pictures turned out lovely and I doubt that 10 or 20 years from now I’ll even remember that it wasn’t on the day of my birthday. Besides, who doesn’t love celebrating for a whole week??

Yesterday my parents finally gave me their gift (they’re not really known for punctuality) – a BlueAnt bluetooth headset I’ve been drooling over for months. It talks to me!! Yes, there is officially a new voice in my head. Josh said that now my other voices will have company… It’s almost idiot-proof, although we did have a disagreement yesterday about who I wanted to call. BlueAnt thought I should call my sister (Speed Dial 8), but I wanted to Redial my husband. Since we got that straightened out, our relationship has been pretty smooth.

So although the days of themed parties, brightly wrapped gifts, and a day all my own are over, I think the trade is worth it. A husband and son who love me all year round, family that still takes time to find out what I want and choose something I’ll love, and less emphasis on the fact that every year brings me closer to wrinkles and gray hair.

Happy (late) Birthday to me!