Marriage and the LDS Church

For those of you not versed in Utah-speak, the LDS Church = Mormons.

The other night at the Inn we had a woman come in with her younger son to set up one of the suites for a private dinner. She was totally excited because her older son was getting engaged. (I think she's jonesing for grandkids...)

So, a few hours later Older Son shows up. Older Son is 21 years old. 21!! WTF!! The fiancée-to-be is 19. 19!!! Aaaaghhh! The worst thing is, this is completely normal for LDSers. Do they not look around and see all the 26 year old divorcées with two kids and think... hmmm, maybe I shouldn't rush in to this marriage thing. But for them (speaking generally and from my own personal observations) not being married by the time they hit 25 carries some horrible stigma and psychological burden.

As they were leaving, I said to Jean-Louis (our chef, who spends so much time in the lobby I have to wonder who is really cooking...) "They can't get married, they're babies!" And he just gives me the Gaullic shrug and says, "Yes, but zey are LDS. You know how it iz."

I'm afraid I do. And color me cynical, but at least when the divorce rolls around, the little missus will get a hefty settlement because the boy is LOADED.

Morons.

If you are going to have someone wait for 45 minutes in the exam room, half naked, turn off the fucking air conditioning. And don't express surprise when I'm not in the mood to be chatty when you finally do get around to me.

I'm not going back there next year, that's for damn sure.

An Afternoon Quickie

At the gym, that is. But, sticking with the insinuation, I just went out back to pick some tomatoes and noticed one of our zucchini plants... The plant in question has two zucchinis growing. One is sticking straight up. The other has curled itself around the base of the first. Yes, we have cock and ball zucchini, ladies and gentlemen. Somehow appropriate for Jay's garden. hee hee.

Crazy Week

Yes, this is the week when all the things I have been putting off finally come due. Car registration - which I won't pass right now because my right turn signal doesn't blink and my A/C-defog-vent dial is frozen to A/C. A/C is not very helpful when your windshield is fogged over. Nope. At least I got the new windshield yesterday. Damn thing. Replaced it in March and a couple weeks ago I was driving up the interstate when a giant rock pinged off a truck's tires and onto the bottom driver's side corner... where it proceded to go for a little run... across my field of vision. Thank goodness I carry comprehensive insurance, let's just say.

I need to call in to the "subfinder" voicemail system and figure out how the heck it works so I can start subbing. Though I'm not too worried about it because, c'mon, what kind of teacher misses school in the first week?

And tomorrow I have a doctor's appointment of my favorite variety. blech.

Blech.

Blech.

Sunday already?

It's been a busy weekend. This is the first day since Wednesday that I haven't had a huge list of errands to run and calls to make.

Yesterday was fun though. We went hiking in the morning - nothing too brutal - just a five mile loop up to Dog Lake and back down. Then mad grocery shopping and dinner prep. We made dinner for our friends who just had a baby. Figured that this way they could enjoy adult company and not have to worry about cooking or clean-up. Of course, they didn't tell us that they had invited 3 other people as well... Fortunately, they arrived with a healthy slab of Salmon to add to the food we brought. Also fortunately, we cooked more than we'd need with the idea of leaving leftovers for the new parents. There were no leftovers.

We had sole and salmon, brown and black rice, fresh zucchini from the garden, grilled red peppers, homemade bread, and homemade apple pie for dessert. Yum. Quite good and very colorful on the plates.

Of course, we also got a nice peek at the little one. Just twelve days old. He's got the longest fingers and toes I've ever seen... his dad's already planning out the musical career: piano and/or violin. They call him The Burrito because they fold him snugly in his blankets for bed like a little burrito with a baby's head on top. Yum. So cute. So tiny.

Did that just happen?

I think I just had a honest-to-goodness phone conversation with my dad. I mean - both of us got to talk, and there was actual listening on his end.

I have to go absorb the impact of this miracle.

Poésie

For my reading exericise presentation last Thursday, I used Victor Hugo's poem Demain, dès l'aube.... Of course, I provided a translation, but I read the poem in French so the group could get a feel for the rhythm and flow of the verse. The images Hugo uses in the poem just strike a chord with me. The middle verse in particular:

Je marcherai les yeux fixés sur mes pensées,
Sans rien voir au dehors, sans entendre aucun bruit,
Seul, inconnu, le dos corbé, les mains croisées,
Triste, et the jour pour moi sera comme la nuit.

It's the last line especially that gets me. It just doesn't do the same in English - maybe because "Triste" has more impact than "Sad". Nonetheless, my translation:

I will walk with eyes fixed on my thoughts,
Seeing nothing outside, hearing not a single sound,
Alone, unknown, back bent, hands crossed,
Sad, and the day for me will be like the night.

Hugo wrote it on the fourth anniversary of his daughter Léopoldine's death, describing his journey to visit her grave.

Strangely, while I love poésie à la française, English-language poetry has almost always left me cold. Maybe it's the difference between the smooth rhythm of romance language versus the harshness of a more gutteral tongue.

Side effects

Hmmm. I seem to have developed one of the less common side effects of Wellbutrin: tinnitus. Ringing in the ears. It's not extreme. I only notice it in the morning when it's quiet or if I plug my ears. It is a wee bit annoying though. Fortunately, here at the computer I don't notice it at all because the hum of the monitor and the buzz of the upstairs A/C dominate.

In other unrelated news... Jay got home yesterday. I was so tired (and a little disappointed that he didn't wait up for me - I worked until 11) that things started off badly. So I called a do-over, left the room for a few minutes, and came back in. "Hi, hon, I'm home. How was your trip?" seemed to go over much better than my original opener.

Headspinning

Gah! I finished all the things on my "to do" list today. (I don't actually write them down, mind you. Not That Uptight.) Got fingerprinted - again, turned in all the paperwork for subbing, did laundry, changed sheets, put away clean laundry. Perhaps not very exciting, but very necessary from the clean underwear perspective.

And I still have 15 minutes before I need to leave for work.

But what makes this truly amazing is that I only got 4 crappy hours of sleep last night. I just cannot fall asleep when Jay is out of town. AAaagghh! So yes, I expect to pass out about half way through my shift tonight.

I wonder what the warning label means by "excessive caffiene"? As in, excessive caffiene intake may result in seizures... hmm.

Blogging after midnight... is this prudent?

I just realized that other than tonight at work, I haven't actually spoken to anyone since Friday. How does that happen? Oh yeah, that's right, I barely know anyone here.

Both of my friends who are my friends outside of the Jay-loop were moving this weekend. One into her boyfriend's apartment (after only 5 months of dating?!? Crazychild) and the other back up to Park City.

However, I did put the nonsocial time to good use. The apartment is shockingly clutter-free. And I've been rereading my manuscript for details - names, places, description, etc... and shuffling that all onto a spreadsheet. It's interesting the connections and twists that come to mind just looking at all the information. I finally figured out a connection that had been bothering me for a while (since I finished the first draft two years ago... two years, sigh) about how three characters knew each other from the past.

It's nice to feel my creativity start pumping again. Just think how much I could get done if I stopped reading for a couple weeks. (But that's too silly to think about - hah!)

Organization

I didn't start out to clean and organize all the junk in the apartment. I was looking for the manuscript of the first book I wrote so I can maybe start working on it again.

Naturally, I found it in the last unsorted corner in the apartment - all 473 pages of it. Meanwhile, I now have three newly dejunked, cleaned, and sorted closets. Wait until Jay comes home from Ft. Collins and sees this. Hah hah!

Of course, now that I've unearthed the thing, I guess this means I actually have to start writing again. Maybe I will start organizing that stuff before diving in. That way, perhaps I can stay coherent and not babble for pages and pages about total drivel.

I mean, if I want to write drivel, I come here, right?

I'm melting, I'm melting!

Quick, someone turn off the heat! It's "only" 97ºF but the sun is relentless.

Hmm... well, at least we still have power, unlike a huge chunk of the East Coast. I can't even imagine being in a major city when BOOM everything turns off. NOT a good time to be in the elevator, for instance.

I'm sure there will be interesting stories abounding in the next few days.

Drugs

Hmmm... do American doctors over-prescribe drugs? Duh, of course they do. At least, some of them do.

My poor friend KB ended up so medication saturated our senior year of college that she barely knew which way was up. Her stupid shrink had her on not only anti-depressants, but anti-psychotics. Hello? WTF? And do you know how bad and chemically anti-psychotics make you smell? FUN-KY. Funkyass bad, that's how. Not that I would have wanted her totally off drugs either. As it was we were having to hide all the knives and we never let her drink out of a breakable glass after the incident with the bottle. Oy.

But for most people, drugs are not the end all solution. Just a stepping stone out of the dungeon, to be used until they get back in the sunlight, so to speak. I know Wellbutrin usually takes 3-4 weeks to fully kick in, but I'm already starting to feel like I have my brain back. Kind of like walking outside after working indoors all morning and realizing how dim your building really is...

Anyway - I have homework that I've procrastinated. Shocking, I know.

Family History

Everytime I think my life is sucking, I just have to talk to my younger brother to see how it's really not as bad as it could be. Ggaaaahhh.

Let me just say as a brief, thoroughly incomplete overview, that the years 1990-1996 were really quite ugly chez nous. Dad drinking and smoking, Mom sleeping on the couch, brother getting arrested, me just wanting OUT but worried about the munchkins. Happily, this is no longer remotely the case. A few wakeup calls (ie: heartattacks) caused reevaluation of what was truly important and what was just fluff. All are much happier, but the damage of the Ugly Years can't be totally erased.

Mental Illness - of the depressive and bipolar varieties - run, if not heavily, then consistently, on both sides of the family. Crazy Great Aunt Joy liked to walk to the store naked in her manic phases... My grandmother didn't leave the house for 4 years after my mother was born... My father = classic bipolar in denial... his father, a sloppy sad drunk who undoubtedly had the same underlying issues. I could keep going, but I'll spare you. And myself.

Unfortunately, my brother seems to have inherited my dad's issues. What's worse is that he knows he has a problem and should get help for it. But he has this aversion to medication - his ex-girlfriend got really zombified on Prozac so I suppose I would be cautious if I were him as well. But. Self-medicating with copious amounts of alcohol and pot are not going to help him either.

So there's another reason I want the whole Wellbutrin thing to work out for me. If it works for me and I can show Bubby Rubby that I am not a zombie as a result, then maybe I can talk him into getting some help also.

Slowly rolling along

Signed up to sub at SL district. Tomorrow I will pick up an application for the Academy on the way to work. Had a nice lazy morning otherwise... read a book, ate some of the blueberry muffins that Jay made yesterday, deposited money into my sad little checking account...

But I think I need some caffiene. It's too damn hot out there and I feel a headache coming on.

Decisions

I'm still waiting to hear about the teaching job. BUT. I've decided not to take it even if they do offer it to me. I can't start something that energy-intensive until I settle into some measure of emotional stability. So on Monday I will go and sign up for substitute teaching at the Salt Lake school district and also up at the Park City Academy (close to home and close to work, respectively).

Now I think I'll have some breakfast and go to the gym. Exercise can only help, eh?

Frickin Ijits

Okay - I think thursday was an all time low (at least since moving here). First the antidepressant issue -- which was met with less than total support from the boy. Then I went to the eye doctor and the assistant chick who did the preliminary exam and put the drops in my eyes was less than good. She told me that I didn't have an astigmatism (which I do, and which is the reason I get prescription reading glasses) and that I should just get a pair of weak reading glasses at Fred Meyer instead. Then she put more eye drops in my right eye than my left. I get home and notice that my right eye vision is really blurry, look in the mirror... I look like a head injury case: my left pupil it almost back to normal but the right was completely blown. Trippy.

clarification: When I got to see the real opthamologist he checked my eyes, wrote out a prescription, and said, "Normally, I'd say you didn't need prescription lenses, but you have an astigmatism and that's probably the source of your headaches." This is why I don't listen to assistants.

So yeah, between the crying and the brutal eye drops, my head felt goooood. Or not.

A prescription for Wellbutrin

That's what I came home with from my doctor's appointment this morning. I know my doctor was right - I am depressed and have been for a while - but part of me feels like I shouldn't be. Though, of course, why shouldn't I?

The clincher was pretty much when she said that the best description she had ever heard for depression was the greek word for it (which I can't remember anymore) that translates as "absence of joy" and I burst into tears. I hate crying in front of people and she was so nice that it only made me cry more. Love that.

And I have to say what a relief it was for someone to take me seriously and not just say "it's all in your head".

And the waiting commences

Just got home from the interview. Good news, bad news. Good news: I think the interview went very well. Bad news: the district office scrambled my information so that the principal didn't know that I wasn't yet certified to teach. I will be as of April, so it's not totally undoable, but if the other applicants are equally good AND they are already certified, it won't go my way.

However, regardless of whether or not I get the position, it was good experience just going to the interview. And I can always substitute teach if it doesn't work out.

Now, I am going back to bed because I barely slept at all last night.

OHMIGOD!!!

I just got off the phone with one of junior high schools - they are looking for a French teacher. I have an interview tomorrow morning.

I so can't believe this.

I'm so nervous. Aaaaggghhh!!!

And other things go BOOM

Things have been blowing up all over the place at the writing site I frequent. Forward Motion The site owner's blog, by the way, is the source for my upset over education commentary.

I'm not excited about the way things have turned out. I've been less and less active since Bryn and Jen left the site last year... mostly because I disagreed with Holly's responses to their posts and some assumptions that were made regarding off-site posts. However, I've been watching the site since Spring of 1999 when it existed as a series of articles written by Holly. It's gone through 3 incarnations of forums since then, with an ever-increasing number of members. AND, for all my discomfort with the way some situations and people have been handled, I have to admit that the site has stayed admirably true to its stated purpose: helping writers improve their writing.

So, other than this statement on my private blog, I am going to continue to keep my mouth shut and get what I can from the site and leave the rest by the wayside.

First day

So tired. Must be brief.

Last night - class until 10pm. Home by 10:15pm. College friend in from out of town who left this morning for Vegas. Talked until 11:45pm. Said goodnight to friend in guest room. Got naked with boyfriend in own room (for conversation purposes only of course). Went to sleep 12:30am. Got up at 5:40am. Showered. Got dressed. Made coffee. Drank coffee on way to work. Stayed at work until 4:15pm. Got home 5pm. Slept until 6pm. Still groggy.

Coherence to follow. Maybe.