Happy 19th Anniversary, Mr. President (and Ms. First Lady)

I really, really hope that President Barak and First Lady Michelle Obama are as in-love and awesome as they appear in these pictures. 

But...what is happening in No. 7? 

Sourcing note: The article doesn't include sources but I'm guessing they're all from White House Photographers (except the last one, of course). 

Returning

Things are on the up and up around here, with only a few detours sideways or backwards.

The night before I left for Vegas we had another big fight, but this one ended better (hint: with both of us in the same bed). In the morning we were fragile but friendly again.

Since I got back we've been different. Better. D$ brought me a sandwich when he picked me up from the airport from Vegas. (This is a tradition between us and I really should expect it but it makes me gloriously happy every time. You can get flowers if you want, but goddamn if I don't like getting a sandwich from a handsome man when I step off an airplane). On the way home I could tell that he had missed me - like really missed me - despite the fact that he'd been boozing it up with his best friend while I'd been gone. This was a relief, because my biggest fear this whole time was that I'd drive him away. I'd missed him too, despite any evidence to the contrary.

Since then we've been talking (quietly, for the most part).  We've been considering. Considering each other, considering our actions, considering how we affect each other (and also considering what we will eat next but that last one is par for the course for us). D$ has been crazy affectionate and I have crazy-loved it. We've had one biggish fight but it ended in talking things out that same night (a new thing for us). I have been working really hard to be pleasant and present when I'm home* and so far it seems to be working.

We still have a lot of work to do of course. I can't seem to find a damn psychologist who works on Fridays and have gotten tired of using all of my breaks from work walking around outside trying to avoid a coworker hearing me make phone calls about seeing a therapist, so I still haven't seen anyone. I'll take another totally-subjective look at the list provided by my insurance later this week and try again.


So. Up and Up. Shedding dead needles and moving towards the sun.**



Oh! I also pick up my Nightguard on Thursday (only 6 months later). Fie on you, jaw pain!




*Sadly, this is one reason that I haven't been around here much - it is hard to be pleasant and present in the two hours I have between work and bed and get any writing done. This balance still needs to be struck because I don't want to abandon the blog and I just lost another follower! Grrr. **As in: sun, if you don't come out I am going to lose my goddamn mind. Spring! I need you!

The Boulevard Cypress

Image: Greens of Summer 2 by Diana Murphy via her blog Beautimuse (also check out Swoond)

Years ago my mother bought four 12-inch Boulevard Cypress trees and planted them in the side garden. Now they stretch 15 feet high, reaching out towards the grapes and blueberry bushes and shading the arbor where the hammock swings in summertime. The trees are tall and spindly and their rich green needles are shockingly soft on top where they meet the sun. Underneath, though, the branches are skeletal - rickety and clumped with dead,wet, brown needles.

The Saturday after D$ and I's biggest fight I spent three hours pruning the Cypress. I delicately separated the dead needles from bright green new growth. I lopped off entire branches at the trunk. As I pruned,* I thought. These needles and  branches I was clearing away had once been helpful to the Cypress. They were a part of its history; had formed and fed the Cypress as it made its way up to the sun. Now they are unneeded, hangers-on that marred its beauty and, most importantly, used up energy that could be used to move up, on, out towards the light. When I was done the Cypress stood proudly, slightly more naked but much more beautiful.

What D$ and I have been dealing with -  the old emotions and defenses - are like these brown needles. They are a part of our history and in the past perhaps they were useful. Perhaps they helped us protect our fledgling identities or shielded us from old dangers. Now, however, they are not needed. They are holding us down and using up energy that could be used to bring us closer to light.

The last several weeks have shown me just what my dead branches consist of: anger. Vehement, nonsensical anger.  I get frighteningly angry at the drop of a hat and viciously take that anger out on those I love most.

It has to stop. I don't know if I can do it all by myself but I do know that I cannot make it D$'s responsibility to help me. He has been on the wrong side of the broom** one too many times and, rightly, needs me to figure this out on my own. So for basically the first time in my life, I am going to start counseling.***

*My mom called it "poodling" and I sang a nonsense song about tree-poodling almost the whole time I worked. No one said serious thoughts couldn't be accompanied by made-up songs. 
**No I never hit anyone with a broom. If you can name the song you win. 
***I haven't started yet, but I will. I am trying to find a counselor but sort of don't know how to do that. Am I just supposed to pick from my insurance companies list and hope are good? Terrifying. If anyone in the Portland area has a referral I am all ears. 

Update from the Field

Hi.

I am so sorry to write such a dramatic post and then leave you  hanging.

D$ and I are doing okay. Last week was really hard. There were more fights and tears but at least SOME of it was productive. I have posts brewing in my head about it. I wasn't able to write because we were busy figuring shit out...

...and then I went to Los Angeles and Las Vegas for 5 days for my sister's 30th birthday. My sister is now here to visit me for her Spring Break, which also means no-can-blog for another few days but I have so much to tell you and will be be back soon.

Love love love (and roulette),

MWK

Intimate Marital Sharing Post

So...things are a little shitty between D$ and I right now.

I've been noticing for weeks that something was off. We got in a huge fight about a  month and a half ago that was never really resolved, mostly because we feel fundamentally different about the event that started and the underlying behavioral pattern. Basically: we went to an engagement party where I apparently swore a lot in front of people we'd just met. These people thought I was funny and charming and were not in the least annoyed (I don't just swear if I think it will offend people). Apparently D was mortified and basically gave me an ultimatum a few days later about swearing in front of his friends. He has mentioned before that he thinks I swear too much and he feels like those mentions were akin to requests to stop swearing that I ignored. I really never thought he could possibly be serious because I fundamentally disagree that a) my swearing is a problem, b) that I am a reflection of him that he gets to order around. I have also always, always had a filthy mouth. When we got in the fight I felt like there was this aspect of me that he used to find charming that he now finds abhorrent, which felt (excuse my language) shitty as hell. I felt nauseous that I would embarrass him but also annoyed that he would all of the sudden find fault with something that has always been a part of my personality. The fight basically ended with me saying yelling, "I'll stop swearing in front of your friends, but I think you are being an asshole." Real mature, I know.

So, like I said: never resolved. We moved on but D has been short-tempered and snappy. I have been over-sensitive to this and tried to avoid being snapped at...which means I have basically ignored him when we were home together, except to nag about something I wished he'd done. We got in a lot of stupid fights when we made an effort to carve out time to see each other.

A few nights ago as yet another evening ended in an argument (that we thankfully nipped in the bud before it became full blown), I made D come sit with me as I went to bed. I said that something was off and I thought we needed to talk. He was noncommittal - now wasn't the time to talk, no real acknowledgement that he felt anything was wrong. I asked to try and think if there was something I was doing that was bothering him, and he said no.

Then, last night, it all came down again. I'm not sure how it happened, but I made a comment that sent him off. We brought up the swearing fight again (bad idea) and the real issues were brought to light. I've been nursing this wound that my husband is embarrassed by me but D doesn't want to hear it because he thinks that he can't make any criticism of me without me becoming vehemently defensive and turning my behavior back onto him. This, apparently, is a long-standing problem of D's (and mine, I suppose). We fought until we left the house to go on a walk (which makes my head want to explode with anger) and then went to sleep. We did cuddle, at least, but nothing was resolved and we both feel like shit today.

We are stuck. I don't want to be defensive as a knee-jerk reaction but I also don't want to take all the blame for issues in our relationship. I want to show that I can listen to him, take criticism, and make changes but I also don't want to sit down and be read a laundry list of my faults without the chance to speak up for myself. That is just really not how I roll. (He is not wrong that I am very defensive).

I also want to be able to talk about this and honestly agree that I need and will work on listening and changing faults, and then *poof!* have me be great again in his eyes. Unfortunately I know that he will need a lot of time to feel that he can bring things up to me and have me listen. My gut reaction to this is: a) fuck, I want this to be solved and b) crap, does this mean that things will be bad for even longer and c) what? does this mean that every time we have a fight I can't defend my position or feelings without it causing him to solidify his opinion that I refuse to admit fault? How do I get out of this without totally losing all power to speak up for myself in disagreements or to defend my feelings over whatever he thinks is fact? I know there are times when he has legitimate complaints, but what about if the complaints aren't legitimate? I don't want to be backed into a corner by his (angry and therefore maybe exaggerated) conception of my response to criticism.

Blech. This sucks. I want a lot of things right now. In the short term: not to have to go volunteer in a few hours. Not to have to meet some girlfriends for happy hour. I want D to come home and I want to work some of this out before we go work in my parents' yard all day tomorrow.

Living the Dream

So you may have guessed that D$'s return to Portland and my total defection from the blog world are at least marginally related. You would be right. Here's a brief update.

Having him home is both awesome and infuriating. I'm not gonna lie - at first I was all snuggle-demandy and lovey-dovey-goo-goo and up in D$'s business. There was a lot of face-touching, people. It was serious love time in our apartment.

But then the work week started and I kept coming home from work and the house wasn't exactly the way I left it.  The man left piles of his stuff everywhere and kept forgetting to eat the cake I made him. Turns out I had gotten really used to having total control over my environment (this will not be at all surprising to anyone who knows me in real life). I had to work very hard not to nag.

Now we are pretty much back to normal. I've gained back all the weight I lost working out all the time and eating the same food every day. The bedcovers are infuriatingly messed up but I come home to a decent meal most nights. The cats have almost forgiven us and demonstrated their total preference for D$ over me. We are finally caught up on episodes of Psych.

Also, Dr. D$ is living the post-PhD dream. This means that that he grew a beard and is brewing beer.

I like the beard but do you have any idea how messy beer-making is??

Slowly learning

The day before the housewarming party D and I had a huge fight. What started the fight was of course not really what the fight was about. At all. A small stupid incident set us both off and turned into a day-long battle - interspersed with us getting along for a few hours - that ended up with D storming out of the house and me furiously cleaning the bathroom while muttering to myself.

The fight was about money. Well, about how we treat each other about money. How my deep financial fears and penchant for projecting my insecurities onto him combine with his impatience and severe rationality to make us (mostly me) unable to make financial decisions without a lot of angst. Of course we didn't come to that nice conclusion right away. We had to endure lots of stupidity (on both our parts) before we got there.

The problems are many: First: numbers, to D$, are like the alphabet. Numbers, to me, are scary and make my brain turn off. Second: If I am going to make a decision I have to talk about it for a long time first.  I talk about is how the decision is making me feel - am I mad that I have to make the decision, what are my fears, etc. None of this is usually very logical but I have to get it out before I can make a rational decision. Example: when I needed to take out more student loans in order to pay off older and more expensive student loans, I spent several days saying, "I made pact to myself that I wouldn't take out any student loans for graduate school and so I don't want to take out any loans." I knew in the back of my head that it was stupid not to take out more loans - in fact I knew that I probably would take out more loans -  but the idea made me sick and upset and I had to talk about that before I could move on to the smart decision.

When D is faced with a decision he looks at the facts and decides. Done deal. So he thinks that all the talking I am doing is how I will make a choice -  that I will make a decision based purely on my emotions. During the student loan debacle he ran up some numbers for me (without walking me through it) and acted offended and contemptuous when I wouldn't readily admit that the loans were the best idea and go ahead with it. He thought I was going to refuse to take out loans, and end up spending more money in the long run, because I was upset at the ultimately meaningless act of taking out more loans.

Here is what happened (what happens): D$ feels like I don't trust him to look at the financial information and make the right choice even though crunching numbers is what he does all day long. I feel that D is treating me like I am stupid and is treating me as if I can't be trusted to make financial decisions. Massive hurt feelings ensue. It looks something like this:

MWK: This is how I feel

D$: These are the facts.

MWK: But this is how I feel.

D$: But there are the facts.

MWK: FEELINGS FEELINGS FEELINGS!

D$: FACTS FACTS FACTS!

Both: *#$@!*#@%!

After the last fight we were finally able to get to the bottom of some of this. I made D understand that my emotions are just as legitimate and necessary to me as his numbers. I think D understands that he needs to let me express my emotions and give me the time to emote without being impatient or treating me like a child. D$ told me how frustrated he gets when I won't listen to him on the numbers stuff and I understand now how hard it would be to have your wife doubt you on what is, to be sure, your greatest skill (that's math, folks. The man loves math).

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Last weekend, about a week after the party, we sat down to talk about money again and to make a budget. There were a few tense moments but mostly we were able to have a calm and civil conversation. We came to an understanding about our finances and how we want to handle them. It was by no means fun, but I am proud of us for getting through it.

Blotto (or: post wedding sleep deprivation)

Photo from my very NOT smart phone

Holy Shit I am so tired. Got back to my apartment a while ago. Immediately took off all my clothes and laid down on the foot of my bed in front of the air conditioner and conked out for two hours. Now I am sort of awake and wondering how I will fill the time until I am allowed to go to bed again. (D$ is at a different wedding and won't get home until tomorrow.)

The wedding was amazing. I'm pretty sure I've never worn a prettier garment in my life than that sari*, and I'm including my wedding dress. The days leading up to the actual wedding were filled with other ceremonies, 12 trips to Walgreens, and approximately five hundred aunties and uncles hurrying to accomplish a largely incomprehensible number of tasks that were seemingly wedding related. I calculate that G spent about 30% of her time over the last few days changing outfits. To be clear, by "changing outfits" I mean that G stood in a room packed with aunties and cousins and was adorned (and unadorned, then re-adorned again) with layer upon layer of gorgeous fabric and jewelry. She endured haggling over every detail of her appearance. I was mostly in the way during outfit changes - I did dry G's hair once while the aunties got her dressed but I was pushed out of the way by an auntie who thought my diffuser was an inadequate drying tool (and wanted G's hair to be straight, anyway). Oh - I also re-painted her toe nails at the last minute because the tumeric that we rubbed on her feet to give her good luck totally ruined her pedicure.

The wedding night officially ended (for me)when I was woken up by a phone call at 4:30 a.m. telling me that the friend who crashed on the floor of my hotel room had slept-walked himself all over the hotel and awoken in a stairwell. Today began with my alarm failing and me waking up when I was supposed to be leaving the hotel for the airport. After throwing all my stuff in my suitcase (including that gorgeous sari that I will never be able to wear again) I checked out of my hotel room, although I declined to tell them that my sleep-walking friend was still asleep on the floor in the room. Here's hoping they didn't clean it early.

Now I am home - smelling terrible and looking worse. Which I guess is how you know that the wedding was a success.

* Pronounced Sare-ee, not Sah-ree. At least among the people I was with.

Be Jealous

So I spent most of Friday biting my nails and furiously refreshing APW's site while going back and forth between elation and anxiety. Turns out that putting things on the internet where people actually read them will distract a girl from her regularly scheduled duties.

Saturday we had several large pieces of furniture delivered and I tried to tell the deliverymen about my newfound fame as a person who had their wedding put up on APW, but I don't think they heard me through the grunting and swearing and wall-damaging. We then ate dinner at my grandparents house (please note that it was NOT Friday). There is no way in hell that I want my grandparents reading this blog (because then they would find out that I had talked about their sex life on the internet) so I had to shut up about how I am totally famous.

Clearly, my head is getting bigger and bigger, but luckily enough an event is coming along that should shake me out of my egotistical delirium. Want a hint?

That's right folks, G's* wedding weekend is upon us. There will be days of parties. I will get henna'd on my hands and feet and wear a sari in front of hundreds of people. I will eat Indian street food and southern comfort food in the same meal. I am hoping that I will figure how to dance in a Sari without exposing the entire bottom half of my body.**

I leave tomorrow morning, arriving in time to hang out with G and perhaps get some tables set up. Thursday the is ceremony to "make the bride and groom,"*** and then the Mehendi party where the ladies get decorated with henna and the men "drink beer and play pool." Friday is the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner (plus some some one-on-one time with G to get our nails did). Saturday is the wedding.

So I'll be away for a bit, despite my urge to blog constantly in hopes of convincing some of you new visitors to stick around (don't leave me!).

Wish me luck? And, while you're at it, let's all wish G luck, too - she has had a hard few weeks and it is going to get crazier before it gets awesome.

P.S. Don't worry, when I get back I will totally get all "White Liberal American Who had an Ethnic Experience" on your asses. Get ready for black and white photos of babies with huge eyes.

*Hi, G! Um...hope it's cool that I had a super-secret blog that you found out about through APW...

**Poll: should I bring a slip to wear under my sari, or is that just totally lame?

***Actual description I got of this event: "It involves hanging out, lunch, and some other traditional Indian stuff."

images by the always amazing Punam Bean

Heart of Darkness

So I was going to write about what happened over the last two months.

"Oh, you mean how you and D were blessed with incredible luck and achieved everything you had been hoping for for years, and then the minute you got it you turned into a miserable fire-breathing wench?"

Yea, that.

I don't really know how to start. We drove across the country in separate cars (me with the kitties and D with the moving truck). I contemplated killing the cats. As I implied before, moving really took my mind and heart away from me in a completely unexpected way. I thought that once we got to Portland that things would be better. And they should have gotten better, but I got worse and worse. I got worse and worse despite the fact that I was working at a job I really wanted, living in my hometown that I loved, and starting a new life with my completely rad husband. I mean, WTF, self?

I know I know, bla bla bla I was going through huge transitions. Moving across the country, starting a new job, living with my parents. But so was D. Except it was maybe worse for him because it was he was living with his in-laws (although they are amazing as in-laws go ifIdosaysomyself). D was going through all of the same transitions and he was being how he always is: pleasant and helpful and patient and never a burden to anyone. He was getting up an hour early to walk my parents' dog, for chrissakes.

It sounds weak and spoiled to say the main issue was not having time to myself, or living with my parents, but I do think that was a large part of things. I was working ten-hour days with an hour commute on both ends of the day and when I came home there was always something: grandparents in town, friends in town, apartments to look at, I had to buy a car.* I dog-sat for a severely traumatized dog that took a half-hour of coaxing to go outside and went to the bathroom inside several times. I went to a friend's beachhouse for the 4th of July holiday even though I knew that I should stay home and rest - we ended up having to sleep on the floor in a hallway and I came home tired, grumpy and out-of-it enough to get a flat tire in my new car while pulling out of a Dairy Queen parking lot. Not once in over a month did I come home and just hang out with D, or read a book or, as you may have noticed, browse on the Internet or write.

Instead of realizing that I needed to find a way to spend some time alone I just kept going, until I completely stopped being able to handle things. Really really stupid things. I yelled at D when I was stuck in traffic and he tried to give me directions over the phone. If fact I yelled at D for everything. I freaked out at my step-mom because she said the downstairs of the house smelled like cat litter. I pouted around the house like a teenager, only worse than when I was a teenager. My step-mom took me aside to ask if something was wrong or if she and my dad had offended me. D finally told me, after weeks of giving me hugs and hoping I would improve, to "stop being a jerk to me all the time."

At the end of it all, we had a huge blowout over my anniversary present, of all things.** We fought for two days and we both were less than mature. To give you an idea: on the second night of the fight I thought it was very mature of me to call D an "arrogant mother-effer" under my breath instead of screaming it at him.

And then...and then I snapped back to senses. I bought Daniel a card and a porcupine finger puppet and propped them up on the sink to say "I'm Sorry." I talked to him about how I craved time to myself. We moved into our new apartment. Things haven't slowed down since then - we are only half unpacked because we went out of town the weekend after moving in, actually - but I am getting better at knowing what I need and then making sure I get it. On our weekend trip I built in time for D and I to do our own thing and stay somewhere comfortable. This most recent weekend we didn't make any plans and spent the whole two days furniture shopping and apartment arranging. One night last week we actually cooked dinner together and then ate it while catching up on episodes of The Closer*** and we both agreed it was the best night we had had in weeks. Lucky for me, it turns out he still wants to be married. To me.

I can't say what exactly caused me to be so horrible for so long, except that it was everything and nothing. I do know that getting our own place has helped and that being protective about a) time to myself and b) time with D has really helped. Being overworked and not having my own space doesn't excuse how I acted, however, and I still have to come to terms with how relatively easy it was for me to treat the people around me so poorly. For now I am focusing on preventive medicine - making sure to get enough sleep and saying no to nights out or weekend activities that will ultimately stress me out. I am also trying to recognize the symptoms and stop them before they get bad so hat I can put myself in check before I start swinging my negative emotions around the room.

So there you have it - my feeble attempt to work through That One Time That I Was a Jerk for A Month. Potential moral: porcupine hedgehogs solve all problems. That, or: for the love of God if you are being a jerk all the time go be by yourself for a while and/or see a freaking doctor.

*Oh dear god, so terrible. Car-shopping made me want to punch people and cry and stomp my feet. I actually did two of those things, come to think of it.

**It is a long story that will not translate well to Internet. But it wasn't about jewelry or anything stupid like that. It was about something else stupid.

***D loves Deputy Chief Brenda Lee Johnson (Kyra Sedgewick). Sometimes he will sigh and say "Oh, Kyra, apple of my eye." This is okay with me because I love Fritz - that man is definitely in my top 5.

In Spite of Ourselves

Honey, we're the big door prize.

Happy anniversary, baby.

*Oh, did I forget to mention that I have a huge ass? I have a huge ass. I really, really like it.

When I'm 82 (Hopefully. Sort of.)

Being home means being back around my grandparents,* which is both good and bad. Good because I love them and am happy to get to see them regularly. Bad because this means that my grandma won't send me any more packages with cookies and holiday socks, and because I have to come to terms with the fact that my grandpa is a pain in the ass who sits in his armchair ALL DAY LONG and watches Fox News and thinks that Sarah Palin is awesome.

My grandma came over for dinner last night (my grandpa, as expected, stayed home) and we had a totally awkward but still fairly awesome conversation. Before I tell you what we said, I think you need some background, here: my grandparents are pretty open about sex. As in, my Grandma gives my Grandpa a Playboy Calender for his shop every Christmas, and the whole family passes it around and makes comments.** Consider yourself warned.

So, as my Grandma was leaving I reminded her that I have Fridays off (I work four ten-hour days) so I could come see her some Friday soon. My grandma responded strongly, "Friday morning." Confused, I said, "Oh, yea, right! Okay."

Grandma: "Friday is 'Date Night.' "

Me (smiling awkwardly but pretending that this is totally normal): "Well I won't come over Friday then!"

Grandma: "Yea, we discourage it."

Me: "What, discourage people from coming over?"

Grandma: "Yep."

Me (too loud): "Cool..."

Grandma (sensing that I am totally weirded out by this conversation): "Well, doesn't it at least give you hope that we still have..."

Me (desperately trying to figure out how to end that sentence): "...DATE NIGHT?"

Grandma: "Well, actually it is more like Date Afternoon...but yes."

Me (too boisterously, to hid my embarrassment, but also honestly): "Heck Yea!"

****************

So there you have it. My grandparents (my grandpa is in his mid-80s, people) have sexy-time "Date Afternoon" every Friday and my Grandma ain't afraid to tell you about it. And as awkward as that conversation made me feel, I think that is totally fucking awesome.

There is a lot about my grandparent's*** marriage that I find problematic and would not want to replicate. I have even found myself wondering if my Grandma was happy in her marriage. Yesterday's conversation just goes to show you that we never know what is happening in other people's relationships (and should probably keep our opinions to ourselves).

I might not want to have a marriage like my grandparent's marriage, but Date Afternoon when I'm in my mid-80s? I definitely hope that is us someday.

*Not my mom's parents. My dad's parents.

**I never said my family was classy. Hopefully you have found out through my excessive use of the F-word that we are not a classy people.

***Where the F does the apostrophe go here? Granparent's? Grandparents'? Where is my damn grammar book?

Pins and Needles

Big things are happening around here, people.

Some of these things are stupid and involve vomit in cars.

Some of these things are huge and exciting and terrifying. And involve job offers in hometowns and salary negotiations (whee!) and the potential of renting large trucks to move one's belongings across state lines.

Big things. Big things that have my gut in a teeny twisty ball and a smile of excitement/terror on my face. Neither D or I have slept for the past two days (I woke up shouting at him in the middle of the night last night and don't remember why and he wasn't even mad. Because he hadn't been asleep.)

I want to share these things with you, have been thinking about what I can say. The whole point of this blog is to help me work through the transitions of this year, I know.

But I can't isolate my feelings just yet because I have about ten thousand going at once and am too jittery to put together a coherent thought.

Suffice it to say that I'm thinking about you and I will tell all soon enough.

Stay tuned for the big reveal!

Five Years

-----------------------------------

Five years ago today, I was single and D$ was throwing a birthday party at his house. To the shock and admiration of my best guy friend (who didn't know our backstory*) I go up to D$ and the following conversation ensues.

MWK: Hey. Um...are you doing to make out with that girl?** Because I want to stay here tonight.

D$: What? Really? Okay! (Or something like that. Whatever it was, he was clearly going to forgoe making out with said girl).

MWK: Cool. Don't get too drunk to fuck.***

D$ (looks down at red plastic cup filled with cheap beer): I'll start drinking water now.

MWK: (Saunters away to talk to gaping guy friend feeling very bad ass and good about herself).

-----------------------------------

3 and a half years ago, we move in together. We impulse-adopt two kittens and D$ yells "WHY DO YOU HAVE TO DEFY ME?" when I keep changing the way the toilet paper roll hangs up.

-----------------------------------

Two years ago, D$ proposes in a blizzard in Wisconsin, before a John Prine concert. I yell "WHAT? ARE YOU SERIOUS??!" and forget to say yes until he reminds me that he is kneeling in the snow waiting for an answer. We celebrate after the concert with random hippies and cheap beer.

-----------------------------------

Last year, we are still living together, planning a wedding. Life post-engagement is stressful in new ways and easier in ways that used to be hard. We snuggle the kitties a lot.

----------------------------------

This year. Today. Today we have been together for five years, married for 7 months (as of yesterday). We ditch out of work early and meet on the 2:30 bus to go home and take a walk together in the newly-discovered sunshine. D$ asks, "So when do you want to have babies?" and then almost falls down on the ice. We eat at the local pizza joint, gazing like lovestruck idiots over a mound of sausage and black olives. We face a world of uncertainty. We are in love. We are lucky. We are happy.

*This sounds interesting, but mostly it involves us getting drunk and making out over a series of months/years when we both happened to be single. It also involved D$ repeatedly trying to convince me to date him and me repeatedly saying "No, thank you" with varied levels of politesse.

**D$ had been flirting with some girl. To be fair, I had told him a few weeks ago that I didn't want to make out with him anymore. But I was not about to be beat out by some other woman. Unacceptable.

***We did not fuck that night. Please, I'm a LADY.

****Photo by me. My work had an event and was just going to let these flowers go to waste, so I brought them home to brighten our apartment. D$ asked if they were for him, for our anniversary. But they are clearly for me. And yes, that is natural sunlight, fools.

Conversations at our house, Take 3

Scene: D$ and I are at the mall and D$ is figuring out if he can afford to buy an XBox and Rock Band with his Christmas money.

D$ (after a few minutes of silence): Sorry, I'm making wiring diagrams in my head.

Me: Umm....

D$: I think I need more speaker wire.

Me: There is no possible way you need more speaker wire. You have a box of speaker wire.

D$: You don't even know what you are talking about.

Later: I'm headed to Victoria's Secret to buy new bras for the first time in practially two years.

Me: The thing is, I can't go and try on bras with a cup of coffee in my hand.

D$: You try them on?

Me: YES!

D$: Oh. I thought it was just like...measurements.

Me: Wow.

D$: What?

Ghosts of Awkward Selves Past

I was just looking through some old emails, and came across this hilarious little gem between D$ and I.

As background: this is from October 2005. I had just arrived in West Africa where I was to remain for 8-9 months. D$ and I had been dating for less than a year and had decided to be in an "open" relationship while I was gone, but he was coming to visit me for two weeks. Since arriving, I had been telling my host family and most friends that D$ was my fiance so it would be slightly less scandalous when he came to stay with me, and I sported a fake engagement band for most of the trip (until I lost it in the ocean. When I may or may not have been swimming with a person-of-sort-of-romantic-interest). I have NO idea what I am referring to here, but probably something that was said in the weekly 20-minute phone call that constituted all of our non e-mail interaction.

With no further ado, an awkward exerpt of an old email to my now-husband (I was typing on a French keyboard, so forgive the typos, please):

Hey, i'm sorry for teasing you about the ring/engagement thing. Its a weird think to joke about, or at least I think so, so i find myself not really sure what to say. But i dont want you to think that i was being negative for reals, or discouraging or whatever, or too encouraging or any of the above. its just not something I know how to joke about very well, and i dont want to send weird messages. just that i love you tons and plan on doing so for a long time, regardless of jewelry or real/fake engagements.

Heh. I can't believe we were making engagement jokes back then, even though we were fake-engaged for the purposes of seemliness. And I am completely entertained, and sort of horrified, by what a wishy-washy boob I was being. It reminds me of the years after we had moved in together but before we got engaged, when any conversation about the future was hedged in awkward disclaimers.

But let's be honest, here

Last night D$ and I went to a party with some people from his department. As we drove home and I saw the lights of downtown appear over the hill, I just felt it - that thing that has been knawing at me for several months, even as I try to figure out the best way to move forward. We hadn't been talking, just enjoying the view, but I broke the silence to finally put out what I've been feeling for a long time.

Me: I'm really scared to leave Minneapolis.

D$: Yea. I know.

(And so now you know where I live. I suck at being anonymous).

Negotiation Epilogue: Women Don't Ask

1. In a study conducted at Carnegie Mellon University, a professor found that among students graduating with Masters Degrees, 57 %of men and only 8 % of women negotiated the salary for the first job they received upon graduation.

2. At age 22, a qualified man and women are offered the same job at $25,000/year. The man negotiates and get his offer raised to $30,000. The woman does not. Each of them receives a 3% raise per year. At age 60, the man will be making over $15,000/year more than the woman ($92,243 vs. $76,870). If you count up all the extra earnings over the 30 years, the man will have made $361, 171 more than the woman.

3. A web survey reveals that women report much more anxiety about negotiation then men, and this can be true of even extremely powerful and successful women.

4. When they do negotiate, women tend to be less successful than men, setting lower targets and giving in more quickly.

In the book Women Don't Ask: The High Cost of Avoiding Negotiation and Positive Strategies for Change, Linda Banock and Sara Laschever explore the phenomena listed above and the societal double standards that support them. They focus a lot on the gender norms that pervade our society and reward assertive behavior in men while punishing the same behavior in women. Some of the things they say I don't entirely agree with: one of the points they spend a lot of time on is that women are much more relationship-focused than men, leading them to emphasize relationships over getting what they want. While I see this as potentially possible (and totally true for me) I am loathe to generalize that much about women, or anyone.

However, they do make some incredible points about women and negotiation and the way that societal double standards create a triple whammy against women by

1. Teaching them that assertiveness and self-interest isn't ladylike;
2. Punishing women for assertive behavior (through things such as the "Bully Broads" program which was created to "soften" female executives. Gross) BUT THEN
3. Viewing them as weak when they fail to demonstrate assertive behavior or negotiate on their own behalves.

I could go on and on here. And this isn't about marriage per se, except that in a lot of marriages there is at least one woman. And that if we women aren't thinking about these things and striving to work against them we may stand to lose out in ways that will affect our professions and our personal lives. That is one of the reasons that I have been writing these posts; because I truly believe that women need be encouraged to be assertive. I, as a woman, feel the need to encourage other women to negotiate.

To help you on your way here are the books I have been referencing, with brief descriptions.

1) The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator (4th ed.), by Leigh Thompson.

• This book is a little text-booky, and dense. But I got a lot of the information from the first two posts from this book.

2) Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, by Roger Fisher, William Ury and Bruce Patton

• This book looks like a silly self-help book. And...it may be a little bit of a silly self-help book. But it is also a quick read with a lot of easy, simple, good tips. It is also around $10. The stuff I wrote about focusing on interests over positions is from this book, mostly.

3) Women Don't Ask (mentioned above)

• I only read a few chapters of this book (hey, I was only given a few chapters!) but I might read the whole thing. The website (linked above) talks about the broader topic of women and negotiation and I think features more books with specific tips

4) Beyond Reason by Roger Fisher and Dan Shapiro

• Okay, so I haven't actually read this one at all. But I will! The woman who taught my negotiations class, who I deeply respect, recommended this to the class. Again, may be a little embarrassing to read on the bus as it looks like a self-help book, but whatever. We can just practice not caring what other people think of us.

Happy Negotiating!

Negotiating your way through marriage, Part 3: Expanding the Pie

More pie? Hells yea. Although, I'd have to say I'm technically on Team Cake.

Basically, "Expanding the Pie" is negotiator jargon for coming up with creative options so that you create a win-win situation and don't leave any resources "on the table." They argue that most people get concerned with "dividing the pie" and don't see creative ways to create value for both parties. Again, this is more easily applied to a stereotypical business negotiation situation: One party wants higher wages, the other party wants to cut costs. This seems like a pie-splitting situation: more money for one equals higher costs for the other. But what if there are ways that the first party can cut costs that would also allow them to increase their wages?


An example that is dear to my heart is: I really, really hate washing the dishes. A lot. D$ loves to cook and I love it when he cooks, but hate it when he makes a lot of dishes (because I would have eaten beans from a can and only made one dish). We could fight all damn day about who has to to the dishes, basically seeing it as a fixed-sum game. Either I have to buck up and do more dishes (and D$ has to listen to me bitch about it) or D$ has to do dishes when he makes extremely complicated meals. Either way one (or both) of us is going to lose. But wait! Do we have enough money in our budget for a dishwasher? Would that help us get our needs met and create mutual gain? The answer is: yes, it would. Using some of our money to get a dishwasher would solve the problem in question and we would both "win."
(As it turns out we rent and can't afford a dishwasher, but we have agreed that next time we move there will be a dishwasher).


That is an easy issue, but negotiation solutions aren't always that clear. Here are some of the tactics I have learned in class for expanding the pie and inventing mutual gain (applied, cause I'm self-involved, to D and my lives).

1) Unbundle the Issues. Expand the set of negotiable issues.

For us, some of the issues are:

1. How much money do we want/need to make?
2. Do we both want/need to work?
3. What kind of jobs do we want to do?
4. When do we want to have kids?
5. Where do we want to have kids?

And on and on and on.

It is hard not to think about some of this as one big issue of "Where will our jobs take us?" but failing to unpack the issues will make it harder to make a decision. For example: I want to live in my home town so I can see my family more, but that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with our jobs. What if we get jobs that are far away but pay us enough to to allow for frequent travel? If we don't unpack all the issues we might miss that kind of option.

An example from one my texts is separating the price of something from the terms of sale or lease. Let's say one person is really concerned about getting price A for a good, but the buyer doesn't want to pay that price. It turns out that for the buyer it isn't really the price that is the issue, it's that they want to pay over a series of months rather than years. If the two people can decide on a payment plan that will allow the seller to receive price A on the buyer's timetable, then they will both be happy and the sale will go through. But if they just negotiate price they might walk away from the deal, or one person might accept a price that they are unhappy with.


2) Separate Inventing from Deciding. First of all, you have to broaden your options by brainstorming. But create a space where you can come up with creative options without worrying whether or not they are something each party could live with.

For D$ and I this will be very important, since we have so many issues on the table.
Some potential scenarios:

1. I mentioned before, one possibility is for us to live separately.
2. If he gets an awesome job we could move up the baby-making schedule and I could take a few years to stay home with the kiddies while he works that job. We could then switch, or move to where I could begin work that I'm interested in.
   

I don't know that I like either one of those options, but we aren't in the decide phase. We are in the brainstorm phase, and having all the options out on the table will help us to sort through the possibilities (and will probably help us clarify what our true interests are).

3) Come up with several equally satisfactory "packages."

For example:

I'd be happy living far from my hometown if we both had awesome jobs, got to have a house with a yard, and could make X amount of money a year.

OR
I'd be happy making only Y amount a year if it meant that we were living in my hometown, working in fields that interested us, and could start planning for baby-making time.

OR
I'd be willing to live apart if we made enough money to see each other once a month and both had extremely amazing jobs putting us on career trajectories that would allow us to move to my hometown (or near it) within 3 years.

And so and and so on. The thing about the multiple packages, is you have to know your own interests, and you have to be able to prioritize what is important to you. But you would also benefit from knowing what the other party's interests are so you can create your "packages" in a way that is attractive to them, so Parts 1 and 2 are important here.

************************************************************************
I think I've gone on too long (if you've made it to the end of the post congrats)! So I'll stop for today.

I can't tell if I'm beating a dead horse with this negotiation stuff...should I stop now or continue? I think I've hit the stuff that is most essential, but I could do one more post if y'all aren't totally sick of this crap by now.

Negotiating your way through marriage, Part 1

I am currently taking a course on Negotiations that is being taught by a prominent local elected official and I really, really love it. As the semester has moved on we have done a lot of background reading and performed various negotiations ourselves and I really feel like I am gaining valuable skills. But as I have been learning how to apply negotiating skills to professional situations I have also been thinking about how the skills I am learning can and will be really useful in my marriage. I see particular possibility for this as D and I move through the various big conversations that we will need to have as we decide what to do with our lives.

The term "negotiation" sometimes gives people a strange feeling; people get flashes of Donald Trump banging his fist on the table and a room full of old white men making extreme poker-faces. And for that reason people (especially women, I'll get to this later) are really uncomfortable with the idea of negotiating in families or friendships, not to mention marriages. But this is really silly. First of all, the kind of positional power-play bargaining that is the "face" of Donald Trump-style negotiation is actually NOT effective negotiation most of the time. In fact, one of the tenets of good negotiating is the ability to come to an agreement with someone while maintaining a continued relationship with that person. Second of all, you will end up negotiating with your partner all the time anyway, so you might as well learn how to do it well.

Honestly, I think that openly negotiating in marriage is a really good idea, and I think that many of the skills I am learning will really, really help as the hubs and I work through the next several months and the rest of our lives. And I know that some of you are in similar situations, so in the interest of idea-sharing and general negotiation-promotion, in the next few posts I am going to share some of the "main" negotiation skills I have learned and apply them to our upcoming situation. I may end with some more general negotiation lessons (particularly for us women-folk),we'll see.

For today, Lesson One is:

1) Focus on interests, not positions. If you do not know what someone's interests are, ask them.

The focus on interests is key here - because D and I both have professional interests, we have personal interests for ourselves as individuals, and we have family interests (as in, what we want for our new family). It is highly likely that our professional interests will directly contradict each other and while our family interests may be shared, they may also be divergent, and we need to be able to talk about that openly and honestly. As I've mentioned before there is potential for a lot of emotional struggle here. But if we can focus on each other's interests (i.e. family is really really important to me) before moving forward into specific "positions" (i.e. I have an awesome job in Canada) then the whole process might be both more fair and less emotionally fraught.

And the asking is really important as well. If we openly ask each other: "What are your personal interests, desires, goals? What are my personal interests, desires, goals? How does this relate to profession? To family?" We not only create space for discussion but we make it okay for each one of us to have those desires. In situations like ours both people can feel guilty for wanting what they want, or for not wanting something, and there is incentive to hide one's true feelings. But having a discussion about our basic underlying interests makes it okay to want.

Asking is also important because when you live with someone it is easy to think you know what they want or what their priorities are. But this is never, never something anyone should assume. Everyone should have the chance to speak their piece and be heard, especially in a marriage, and even if you ask and they say exactly what you thought they would, it is likely that the person will still appreciate having been asked the question.

I think that is all for lesson one.

Next up: 80% of Negotiation is Preparation.