Happy Birthday to Me

I turn 25 in two days and I have a birthday present request.

If you graduated from high school the same year as me, please do not have a baby.

I am so so so not ready for my peers to be having babies. COME ON. Not only are we in the prime of our lives, ready to experience and do and meet and go out and have fun, but for Christ's sake(!) we're in the middle of a horrific financial depression! Are you not watching the news? People everywhere are losing their jobs. I have a dual bachelors degree and an advanced degree and am going to be working a less-than-minimum wage job. Hello?! Not a good time to have a kid. Those of you in military relationships are somewhat excused from this rant just because you have a fairly guaranteed job at the moment. You're only somewhat excused because I still think having a kid right now is silly. And you're freaking me out because I'm nowhere close to having a kid (I feel the need to add, "Thank God," to this comment).

I had a plan to write out some sappy, "25 things I want to learn in the next year," or, "25 things I learned over the last year," etc. But facebook baby pictures and announcements slapped me in the brain when I logged on, so I ranted instead. Maybe I'll get around to that sappy one between now and Thursday. Eh.

(Disclaimer: If you consider yourself my friend and found & are reading this somehow...I don't mean you, obviously! I think it's awesome that you two are having a baby.)

Falling Into Place (Update: Or Not)

Update: I am not nearly as positive now (at 4:55 pm) as I was when I wrote this this morning. I found out some things about the space that are less than appealing. (Take for instance that the "studio apartment" is a room with a bathroom--ugh.) Luckily I have my dad to keep me somewhat stable. Trying to picture it as a cheap hotel until I find something that will work better. General sentiment now: UGH!

Two days ago I had a job offer (with no pay - to start off) in a new town, and nowhere to live with a very tight budget to find something. Today I have a place to live, well within my budget, and all on my own! Let me explain that by saying, I have lived alone for the last 3 years so having a roommate, or being a roommate, wasn't exciting to me.

I got the place through M's dad. I told him that I truly couldn't have done this without him. He just looked at me, like always, and said, "I'll do anything I can, anything my dad can, to help you." Then he said that maybe this experience will help me understand his life a little bit better, at least the fact that I had to wait and let things fall into place. I laughed and said that this is not my typical life strategy. I'm not the best planner and I love to procrastinate, but I don't like the unknown. Especially when the unknown is something important -- like say, a roof over my head. I really had to just hope things would work out on this one. I was as proactive as I could be, and then things were in someone else's hands. Lo and Behold, it worked out. I told my dad I just needed some mini-sign that I was doing the right thing. Here it is.

So, all this to say, I have a new place to live in my soon-to-be new city. Now, if I could just get used to the idea of not seeing M whenever I want...

Today

I'm sure there are a million 9/11 remembrance blogs getting posted today. I'm also sure there are a million blogs getting posted today that have nothing to do with September 11th, 2001. I'm not one to think this is a wholly terrible thing. I think that it has been 8 years. I think that a lot of healing has gone on for those who can heal. There are those whose lives have been left with a hole that can never be filled. The rest of us have reached some stable level of insecurity. A feeling of a lack of safety. But life goes on, even if it is in some mutated form.

My mom said to me that day (or one of the following days, they all ran together--then and now), "I thought your generation would never go through something like this." We didn't either. We grew up in such a bubble. I was 16 on September 11th, 2001. My birthday was just two weeks away. I was a senior in high school. On September 10th, 2001 my Girl Scout troop had booked a end-of-the-troop trip to New York City for December. I was in the process of procrastination from working on my college application.

Life was totally normal. And then it wasn't.

All of a sudden it was scary and unsafe. In Arlington, VA, parents (including mine) and friends, and neighbors work in the Pentagon and travel out of Dulles Airport daily. Everything is federal government centric. School was closed. For days afterward, instead of the regular air traffic over head (I grew up in a flight path for Reagan National Airport), we heard nothing but fighter jets. I had no idea how comforting that sound could be.

Life wasn't normal. And then, slowly, it was.

Normal took on a different meaning. Our college application deadlines were pushed back, but they still existed. I was accepted. I shopped at The Container Store with everyone else. My Girl Scout troop went to New York. We paused in silence by the gaping hole in the financial district and we saw the Rockettes. I went to college. We went to war. I dated a soldier. I graduated from college. I had friends who came home from battle, no older than 23. I got a Masters degree. We face a major recession. Life goes on. Normal is different, but it is still normal.

And so, here we are. Eight years later. Eight years of war. Eight years of mourning. Eight years of healing. Eight years of shifting normal. We can't forget. It seems so cliche. It is, really, but it would be such a disservice to the victims, to us, to forget. To forget would be to let something happen again. We also cannot dwell. This, too, is a disservice. There is a difference between remembrance and dwelling. Life. Goes. On. When we do not move with it, it moves without us.

So, normal is different. So, many blogs will not be about 9/11. It is somewhat of a comfort to me to think that thousands of people will wake up tomorrow and realize it is the 12th. In that moment they will pause and remember. It's fitting. The 12th is the day after. Eight years and one day after. Normal.

IFTIT

I am a football girl. My dad wouldn't have it any other way. I LOVE college football. I LOVE fall. I LOVE chili cookoffs & hot cider and jeering and cheering and wearing ORANGE for both of my teams!

I am pumped about the start of the season last night (although the games were not so impressive). I'm sure if you go/went to NC St. or SC you would disagree with me, but that game was just plain boring. And the BSU/Oregon game, what can I say? Nothing that went on after the game was okay. Not the taunting, not the hitting, not the freaking out. This is a prime example of why we need better mentoring. Really, these are children. At most they're 22 years old, at the least they're 18 or 19. Many of them have never had a role model hold them accountable for anything but their on-the-field actions. Mentoring mentoring mentoring. I had a long conversation last night about why it is SO important. Especially to kids who have been left behind to begin with. One consistant, positive, role model can make all the difference in the world.

Alright, just give me a minute while I climb down off this soapbox.

That being said, GO VOLS and GO HOOS. Woohoo football season!

p.s. If you're not from around here IFTIT means It's Football Time In Tennessee!

I Knew it Would Happen

I'm getting worse about posting. It's amazing. The busier I get and the more I have to write about, the less I feel like I need to be writing. I don't feel lost like I was feeling. I don't feel alone. I can tell you it all stems from a moment over the weekend (really the past five days in general). But this one moment meant the world to me. When his family asked M when he was moving down there, he replied, without skipping a beat, "In 14 months when Mel's done with this job."

The other night as I sat and listened to him get lost in music I had a Faulkner-ian stream of consciousness moment. And I wrote this:

Compromise

Can mean two very different things. You’re supposed to compromise when you’re young. It’s kind of like sharing. Being somewhere in the middle between where you want to be and where someone else wants to be. Compromise when you’re older means you’re giving something up for someone or something else. You compromise your morals, you compromise your dreams. You compromise the possibilities for your own future. Or maybe…maybe you go back and you compromise the same way you did when you were a kid. You compromise with someone or something to make something bigger or better than you had planned. But you have to have a medium. Your final wants can’t be so far apart that there’s not medium between the two. There’s a happy compromise.

I wrote it for me. It was a thought in my head and I put it into words. Not even eloquent words. Just statements to help me clear the echos of ideas from my head. M tried to peek over my shoulder while I was typing, but I stopped him. I told him I might change my mind later. When he asked me again, I reluctantly agreed. There's a big difference between sharing this with the internet where no one knows me and letting him read it. Especially when it is so explicitly about us. I didn't ask him what he thought, and he didn't offer his opinion, other than saying, "I'm glad you let me read that."

Then we talked about possibilities. Potential. The future. Our future. I'm always waiting for the other shoe to drop, and the "our future" that I toss around in my head all day to not be anywhere close to the future that he has planned for himself. I'm starting to understand (after nearly a year) I can let my guard down. Our future is a mutual vision. Our future is a compromise that will lead us to something bigger and better than I could ever imagine. I'm scared of what people will say, of how this is going to affect the happiness of others who are invested in my well being. However, I'm on the doorstep of my 25th year and facing yet another year of dependency on my parents. Maybe it is time to take a leap toward compromise. It's not so much of a scary leap anyway, when you know who is waiting there to catch you.