Anniversary

Four years ago, Jared and I met at work. Before he started, I’d heard all about him from a couple coworkers. As anyone who knows me knows, out of shear stubbornness, I don’t like things that are overhyped. I’ve never seen the movie A Beautiful Mind or read Harry Potter. I know my ridiculousness is only hurting myself, but I continue. With this in mind, I was prepared to dislike Jared.

He scheduled meetings with each staff person to learn what they did with the organization. During our meeting, he stared at me. With clasped hands. Like Von Trapp family singers clasped. I couldn’t figure him out. Then he saw a card from my mom on my bulletin board. It had a deli sandwich on it. He told me a story about an impromptu road trip with his German friend Joerg and how after too many hours of driving they’d formed the Sandwich gang. Part of the story he spoke in a German accent. I like stories and accents. I was warming up to him.

My office was by the kitchen and his was by the printer. Over the next couple of weeks, he drank even more coffee than normal and I killed an unnecessary amount of trees. Several times I made him eat lunch with me. We started leaving at the same time. On one trip to the cars, he asked when my last day was (I’d put in my notice a couple months early). I took this as he couldn’t wait to get rid of me. He was asking because he thought it was poor form to date coworkers. We both attended a coworkers birthday outside of work because we knew the other one was going to be there and talked for several hours across a narrow bar table. I found out he’d been married before, too. Because of this, it felt like he understood a language that few other people I knew spoke.

 
He invented a party and invited me. He worried no one would show up to his last-minute-want-to-invite-a-girl-to-do-something-outside-of-the-office party. I came “fashionably late” (which meant ten minutes late, for me) and his friends all showed up fashionably late (meaning the actual definition). Jared made Spanish tapas, his go-to impress-a-girl food. I’m the opposite of gourmet. But I ate them and complimented them and when he walked me to my car, he kissed me.

The next night we went to go see The Hangover. Later that week, he went to a movie with my parents and some other family. Weeks after that, I met his family in from out of town. Six months after our first date, a couple days before we moved in together, he asked me to marry him. I said yes because I’d already seen how hard he would work on our relationship. I think effortless relationships are like fairies or unicorns. Of course there should be more good than bad, but it takes work. This is not a secret I’ve discovered. This is what any long term couple knows. I’d met a person who’d fit more than 95% of my List of Things I Would Want I a Partner (speaks another language, likes to travel, probably not from San Diego, etc.) AND he was willing to work with me.

Three weeks after we got engaged, we found out I was pregnant with Henry. The month after that Jared got a new job. The month after that two of my closest family members died. Two months later, I got a job running a nonprofit. The next month we moved again. Two months later, Henry arrived via emergency C-section. I don’t really remember the next couple of months. When Henry was six months old, we moved again. Then Jared lost his job unexpectedly. Three months after that, my parents moved to Alaska and we moved again, into their house. For almost a year, we worked part-time jobs while our dog progressed through a nervous breakdown, culminating in him jumping through a glass window. We started looking at jobs around the country, landing two in Maine. Days after accepting the positions, we got married and celebrated with Mexican food. Then we moved across the country with our almost 2-year-old and manic dog. Then, because it looked like things were settling down waaay too much (what with healthcare for all of us and stable income), we decided Henry needs a sibling. Baby #2 (aka, Front Loader or Gilbert, both suggestions from Henry) is almost 28 weeks along and here we are at our first wedding anniversary.

Jared continues to be an excellent cook and to make me laugh. We bond over taking scenic back roads of Maine to keep up our gas mileage. We still agree the Toyota Yaris (hatchback) is the best car ever. We still appreciate the gamut of movies together (and are celebrating our anniversary tonight with a viewing of The Hangover III, even though Hangover II  made me wish I didn’t have eyes). Right now he’s cuddling with Henry on the couch while translating the Secret of Nimh into Spanish and still, seeing the two of them together feels like I just ate a still-warm, doughy chocolate chip cookie.

And with all that good stuff, the regular attraction stuff, he still works hard at us. We will yell or ignore or do the things people do when they are angry and want to be stubborn, but then we talk. Facing each other in bed with Henry snoring on the other side of the wall. While I’m not eager to repeat the family deaths, gazillion moves, variety of jobs, traumatic births and cross-country relocations – all of it showed me even more that we’d made the right choice.

Happy Anniversary, Jared.

Senioritis

For the last month or so, seniors have been working on Senior Projects. This is a tradition at MCI of each senior choosing something interesting to them to devote at least 40 hours to and be able to give a final presentation on. People have built rocket launchers, collected shoes for children in Africa, composed music, designed a clothing line and decades more. They each have advisors and “specialists” who are to assist with their project, but not do it for them. In theory, senior projects are great. Some kids are really excited about theirs and spend lots of time on it. However, because this is a big chunk of their humanities grade, they get out of their English and History classes to work on them more. Some even get out of study hall periods. During these free periods, students aren’t monitored. They can go home, they can go get Chinese food, they can make out in their garages while getting high (I haven’t heard of someone doing this, but c’mon, we know it happens).

This is where I come in. In order for residential seniors to be in the dorms during this time, I have to be in the dorm. All day. Every day. 7:45am to 5pm. I know, I know those are the hours most people work. And all I have to do is let them in the front door when they call? What am I complaining about?

It’s Spring time in Maine. Despite my dear Californian friends claiming the weather has changed in San Diego, it has not. You did not go from stick-figure barren trees to tulips sprouting up like jelly beans nestled in neon green Easter grass. You didn’t forget what your toes look like because they’ve been in wool socks since November. You didn’t get sun poisoning on your arms after spending an afternoon outside because your skin forgot what the sun was. It’s gorgeous. It’s lush. And I have a two and a half  year-old.

“Let’s go for a hike, Mommy.”

“Can we go to the park?”

“What about the bouncey house?”

“No, honey. Mommy has to stay inside so she can let girls in to take naps and fart around on the internet.”

Oh, and I don’t think I’ve mentioned my internet was been down during the day for two weeks. And my wireless printer down with it. This little mini-crisis certainly illuminated my unhealthy attachment to email, Facebook and Words With Friends. So, while this new time constriction hasn’t added a whole lot of extra work to my plate, it’s the confinement that’s driving me nutso. Usually, we’ll trek to the cafeteria for dinner and maybe I’ll hang out with a coworker watching Jeopardy at night. But since the start of senior projects, as soon as 5pm hits, I want nothing to do with MCI. Nothing to do with coworkers and nothing to do with the girls. This is not a good feeling. I do actually like my job. What I may have liked most about it without realizing, is the flexibility that used to exist for my position. With it almost gone, I feel a growing bitterness. And this isn’t the way I want to end the year.

I’ve tried to make the best of it. So far, I’ve sewed three aprons (not that I ever really cook). The house is generally cleaner. I’ve kept up my vacation reading. And, after fixing my internet issue late last week, this is my second blog. If only I could nap. Hey, I’m pregnant, that’s not an unreasonable request.

Adios, Blue.

About a month ago, Henry’s pacifier bit the dust. Or, I guess more accurately, he bit it. We’d been telling him since we got this one that it was his last one and when it broke, no more pacifiers. Wouldn’t you know that this one lasted through a cross-country move AND most of a school year after that! Alas, “Blue” as Henry called it, is no more. And any sort of sleep schedule/routine we had going, is also no more. Henry has decided to not go gentle into that good night. He’s even created a new cry for the occasion. It involves his whole body and the only good thing about it is it does seem to tire him out. He rejects any part of the bedtime routine that once seemed to work well. Bath. Blue. Books. Bed. With one gone, the rest of these now warrant the cry.

 “Did we take it away too soon? Too suddenly?” Jared asked me after experiencing an especially excruciating evening. The doctor and dentist have been telling us to take it away since he was six months old. Clearly, we had an attachment to the magic Blue as well.

“Whether we did or not, we can’t go back now,” I said, “or I can just picture Henry’s high school graduation photos with buck teeth and Blue.”

One of the byproducts of Blue’s departure is Henry decided without Blue there is no need to stay in his crib. So he climbed out. Several times. Back in September, after an especially scary nightmare involving an orange T-Rex, Henry jumped shipped. We worried, back then, our crib days were over. But, he made no more escape attempts. Until now. Less than a week after Blue’s demise, Jared put Henry in his crib after reading to him and came out to the living room. It had already been a long day. I think I was on duty. We sat there trying not to fall asleep and we heard Henry’s door knob squeal. My first thought was How did someone get into Henry’s room??? Then he emerged saying, “I wake up.” After two more exoduses and a requested demonstration (quite talented gymnastically actually, including the arms up finale pose) of how he did it, we converted his bed to the toddler phase. While safety has been restored, removing a wall does not help in keeping the anti-sleep kid in his bed.

 

 

Luckily (and unluckily, depending), he saves the crazy for us. The first day my mom (Nona, to Henry) was here for naptime, she read him two books in the guest bed and told him, “Show me how you get in your big boy bed.” Henry comes running through the living room, makes the tight corner to his room and hops in his bed. “Goodnight,” I hear her say. “Goodnight, Nona,” came his tiny voice. The door was closed and not a peep. Relief, but also are you kidding me?!?! came from inside me. The same for Grammie (Jared’s mom). Whereas I will spend thirty minutes rocking him while he hiccups after twenty minutes of the cry and it’s like those Neverending Story statues as I put him in his bed. Will the eyes open and zap me or not? Deep breaths. Good thing for grandmas.