House Hunting and Privilege

When we first started looking for houses one of the first pieces of advice we got was to write a letter to any potential sellers. Really ham it up - tell them that we look forward to raising our children in the house, send a photo of us and the cats, etc. Apparently a friend of ours - who sent a photo of himself and a pretend wife along with his letter - got a house in this manner, despite the fact that there was a higher offer.

I hate to admit it but at first I thought this might be a good idea. D and I are attractive, our cats are cute, who wouldn't want to sell their home to us? Anything to gain an edge and get what we want, right? Thankfully I have D$ - level-headed, fair, "just give me the numbers" D$ - whose swift and disgusted refusal helped me understand what I was really proposing.


D$ and I are a white, straight couple. We are in a monogamous relationship and want to have children. We fit exactly the mold that mainstream America considers acceptable, safe, and expected. The mold whose ubiquity in American culture and media makes life harder for anyone for whom it does not fit. That letter we could send? It would say (to what, in Portland, is highly likely to be a white seller):  "Sell your house to us because we look like you. Sell your house to us because we fit your expectations of "nice people." Sell your house to us because we are white. Sell your house to us because we are straight. Sell your house to us because we deserve it more (because our orientation and lifestyle do not make you nervous).

And this? This is a thing I will not do. My whole life I have benefited from who I am.  Yes, it was without my choosing, but that does not erase the fact that my white, straight privilege is undoubtedly key to the fact that I am even in the position of being able to buy a house at the age of 29. Knowing this, I will not chose to forcibly wield that privilege in order to knock any potential competitors off the playing field.

Get with the (marriage equality) program

Let's face it. Every single reader I have has found me through A Practical Wedding. So what I am about to talk about will come as no surprise but I'm gonna say it anyway.


Meg is, once again, doing something incredibly ballsy and doing it with a level of competence that baffles the mind. I'm talking about Yay New York! and I'm fucking impressed. She describes it better than me so go to the link if for more info but the jist is: free marriages for two lucky same sex couples and a big-ass party in NYC to raise money for an organization working towards“achieving full recognition of the civil rights of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender people and those with HIV through impact litigation, education and public policy work.” 


They are selling tickets and they are selling tote bags. 


I do not live in NYC and I have a fucking gajillion tote bags. However, (with inspiration from a friend) I bought a ticket and a bag. You should, too.


Over and out. 


*heh. Accidentally posted this first with the title Get with the (marriage quality) Program. I mean...that, too, I guess. 

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. 

One Bitter Cookie (or: Random Fault Post)

From Not So Humble Pie

The trait I hate most about myself - a trait that has reared its head once again today - is that I have a hard time not being bitter about other people's success. Wait, let me say this honestly - I am bitter about other people's success.

Let's say a nice couple about my age on House Hunters is looking for a $450,000 house and has a $80,000 down payment. I immediately pick them apart - who are they to have so much money? What the fuck kinds of jobs do they have, anyway? They don't seem smart or interesting. Maybe their fucking parents gave it to them.

Or maybe I'm reading a list of bios of people in my career field. I pick out the person with the fellowships, accolades, publications, etc. Or the one with the Ivy League pedigree. "What an asshole," my bitter self mutters, without me being able to control it.

The worst: one of my dearest, oldest* friends gets some very good news about a project she has been working on. Instead of being happy I am filled with anger. All I can think is reasons why she doesn't deserve it, or how unfair it is, or how upset it will make people who have worked harder for similar things, or how easy her life is. How hard I work and how little it is appreciated. I mean - this is one of my best friends.

Let's not even talk about wedding blogs.

What is this? What, do I think that I deserve more than everyone else in the world? Do I, in my heart of hearts, really think that I am that much better than everyone around me? Am I just insecure?

It's like I turn the successes of others into my own personal failures - like everything someone else gets or does is something I feel like I should have been doing or getting. Either I beat myself up for not being better (not going to an Ivy League, not having a PhD, not being a paid blogger or mandolin aficionado) or I create a list of reasons why my super unfair life and that persons super fucking unfairly easy life are conspiring against me. And I don't even want to go to an Ivy League or get a PhD.


I'd like to say that this only harms me - that the worst it does is makes me bitter and unhappy - but it harms the people around me, too. How would my friend feel if she heard me say those things? Why should that poor fellowship-winning person get 'tude from me? I am putting unfair negative energy out into the world, and that isn't good for anyone. Luckily I don't really do this to D,  but if we're being honest that is probably because any success he has will directly benefit me. Jesus Christ, that sounds so bad.

I'm trying really hard to be better, but its been really difficult so far. Bitterness is a hard habit to break.

All suggestions welcome.




*oldest as in been my friend for the longest. Not as as in elderly. 

Oh, and?

My step-dad got laid off yesterday. From a company he has worked for for over 40 years. 9 months before he is eligible for full retirement.

WHAT?

Project Good Attitude is putting me through the ringer this week.

The good news is that my step-dad hated his job and it is clear that the company is becoming more and more evil and incompetent, so it is probably good for is soul to get away from them anyway. And if my parents stick to a budget they will be okay.

As my mom just said on the phone to me, "Well, as soon as we can stop feeling like we've been fucked in the ass when we weren't in the mood for it, I think we'll be okay."*

I'm off to gorge myself on homemade chocolate chip cookies and wine.**I promise not to be such a Bad News Betty Sad Sack next week. No more sympathy baiting from me, I promise. I may even write a post that is about marriage (will wonders never cease).

*Clearly, I get my tact from my mother

**Homemade by ME! I cooked twice this week y'all. Carrot-Sweet Potato Soup and cookies.

***Image from here.

A pledge to read the printed word

I am a bookworm. A binge-reading, library-loving geek. I love books, magazines, cereal boxes, you name it. If it is printed on fibrous material and in front of me, I will read it.

When I read, I am dead to the world and frequently have to be shouted at in order to snap back to reality. One of my earliest memories is looking up from The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe after "reading time" in kindergarten* and realizing that while I was lost in Narnia the rest of the class had moved on to an entirely different activity.

My first time in Senegal, re-reading One Hundred Years of Solitude kept me afloat over the occasional chasms of isolation and loneliness.

And I have never, EVER sold back a single book from college. I have lugged, shipped, and driven my books across the country more than once, and I will likely do so many times more. Because books hold a value to me that I can't even fully explain, and selling a book feels like selling a part of my brain. What if I need that later? What if a girlfriend calls with a question about her nether regions and I don't have my copy of Women's Health and Reproduction to help us figure out the difference between herpes, warts, and harmless bumps?**

So I was thrilled when I heard that esb and cevd had launched their project pledging (and encouraging others to pledge) to read the printed word. And I am happy to add their banner to this blog. You can see it right over there on the right, looking all cute and studious.

*I realize it is sort of unbelievable that I was reading this book in kindergarten, and it is fully possible that it was 1st or 2nd grade, but I distinctly remember my kindergarten classroom. Feel free to disbelieve me - I would.

**Sure, the internet could help us with this, but have YOU looked up any STDs on the internet recently? Terrifying. Plus with a textbook you know it's legit...sort of.

Fingers Crossed

Go, go, Gadget-Smart-People!

(It is perhaps a sad fact that, even though I am a policy student, I get most of my "news" from Jezebel.com. But it is a fact nonetheless).

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).

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.

I am not happy about this

I realize that a lot of this blog has been me writing strange letters to inanimate objects, and I promise that won't become my schtick, but last night after hearing about the passing of the Stupak Amendment I got an email from Barak Obama, telling me to be proud of the House for passing the Health Care Reform bill and asking for my donation.

I raved a little bit, went to bed and then lay awake and fumed. Finally, I got out of bed, hit "reply," and wrote this:

Dear whoever reads this/President Obama,


How dare you send me a triumphant email about the health insurance reform bill mere hours after the House passed an amendment to restrict insurance from covering abortions?


I am tired of revolutions selling out womens' rights; tired of being told that my rights are not as important as the common good, as whatever lofty goal needs achieving.


And as for my $5 donation: I'll be saving that so if I happen to have a life threatening pregnancy I will be able to afford the abortion that my insurance won't cover.

Today, I am still upset. I mean, I work in policy and I know that people in government have to make terrible trade-offs every day. And I do think that passing health care reform is really important, but it is just such a familiar feeling. Women (and the GLBT community) being told, once again, to wait our turn. That the time just isn't right for us. I don't have a solution, and I can't even say for sure that the Stupak Amendment will matter (D has been telling me it will die in committee and I hope he is right), but it just exhausts and disheartens me that once again I am being told that my rights and health are not as important as the greater "common good."

Oh- my silly little e-mail got returned. Apparently you just can't "reply" to the President's e-mail...