Archive - 31 March 1999

Wow. In only a couple of weeks, Matt and I will have been married for a whole year. It doesn't seem that long. Wasn't it just a couple of weeks ago? Well, okay, a month. No way was it a year!

I find myself doing this more and more these days. I suppose it's all part of getting older, but it really does seem like time moves much more quickly. I'll catch myself referring to things that happened in college as "a couple of years ago" when it was more like five or six years. I realized last night that my 10-year high school reunion will be this summer. (I need to call the school and see if they know who's organizing it, because I haven't heard a thing, and I really do want to go.) And aside from nearly doubling in size (well, okay - I did double in size, but I'm back down to less than that) I haven't really changed since then... Have I?

It's a little scary to think about. Don't you remember being in school and thinking it was going to be forever until your next birthday, or Christmas, or whatever? My parents would always say the same dumb thing: "It'll be here before you know it." I never understood it. The closer we got to the desired day, the slower time seemed to crawl. But this year, sometime in mid-December, I suddenly noticed the date and I thought, Wow. Before I know it, it'll be Christmas! Spooky.

Things to remember if I ever have kids of my own:

• All love lasts forever. Saying "You'll have forgotten him completely in a while" may be true, but it isn't adequate consolation.
• Yes, it does matter what their friends think - and if their best friend were to jump off a bridge, they very well might do it, too!
• Even very young children understand sex and sensuality far better than their parents would like to believe.
• After puberty, being confined to your room isn't much of a punishment.
• Make the rules just a little stricter than you really think they should be - if they get a guilty rush from something that doesn't really bother you that much, (and they don't know it doesn't bother you) then maybe they'll hesitate at doing anything more.
• Remember to smile! (This isn't actually an echo from my own childhood - this is a response to a woman with three adorable little girls that I see at the gym who never - and I mean never - smiles at them. It's sad.)

Enough. Maybe I'll work on this list again sometime, when it might actually matter.

We had dinner with Chuck and Anita Monday night, which was nice since we hadn't seen them since before Christmas. Anita is hugely pregnant, and she seems to be enjoying herself now that she's past the nausea phase. Though they're both a little stressed over the reorganizing they'll have to do to fit the baby into their house and lives, which is completely understandable. But they both seem very excited and happy.

Once again, I found myself thinking about what it would be like if Matt and I were in their shoes. As we were leaving, I almost asked Matt what he would think if I were to change my mind about not wanting children. I didn't say anything because I didn't want him to think it was just another momentary waffle on my part. But I've been thinking about it, off and on.

I grew up knowing that I would have kids of my own one day. There was no need to question - it's just what you did. You grew up, you got married, and you had kids. The questions were things like whether you worked or stayed home; how many children you would have; whether you wanted boys or girls or both. Only in the last five years or so have I questioned that certainty and thought that I might not want children. And now, I'm questioning again. Maybe it was a phase I was going through? Fear, or the certainty that I simply wasn't ready for parenthood, or maybe just the desire not to have to share my sweetheart with anyone else.

I'm not saying that I've changed my mind. I still don't think that I'm ready to be a mother. And if Matt never changes his mind, then it won't matter anyway, because I am not going to force fatherhood on him if he doesn't want it. But I am starting to think that I may one day change my mind. Maybe in a few months or years. Maybe I'll swing back to the "no kids" side when our friends start their families and I can be frightened again by how much work it is. Maybe my waffling is related to that feeling of time passing too swiftly. I don't know. This is just a journal - talking to myself out loud. I don't promise any answers.

Archive - 30 March 1999

This morning as I was combing my hair, I was mulling over something I wanted to write about in the journal today. But now that I'm ready to write, I have no idea what it was. Of course. Well, maybe it will come to me.

The Internet is a wonderful thing. Matt recently found an email address for an old friend of ours from college, and she turned up on the MeadeHall last night. Whee!

I'm feeling a little punchy this morning. Not enough sleep, I suppose. Even though the cat didn't wake me up early this morning. (No, he hasn't suddenly realized the benefits of waiting until dawn to wake me up - he was such a stink as we were trying to go to bed last night that we put him out for the whole night. Boy, was he pathetic this morning when I let him in.)

This weekend, while we were watching The Godfather (well, sortof - I'd already missed too much of it to understand all the stuff going on in the background, so I wasn't paying much attention) Jen mentioned the possibility that she might call on Matt or I to be godparents for her kids, when she has them.

Matt and I were a little surprised. As far as I know, the responsibility of godparents is to instruct the child in religious matters, and provide an example. Jen isn't especially devout, but she is a Catholic. Matt and I are not only not Catholic, we're not even Christians. Jen, however, thought of godparents not so much as religious teachers as spiritual guides and a moral example, and if you leave explicit religious matters out of it, Matt and I were willing to consider it. By coincidence, just about this time the christening scene played on the movie, and the priest started asking whats-his-name (I told you I wasn't paying attention) who was going to be the baby's godfather whether he had accepted Jesus as his savior and whatnot, and we pointed this out to Jen. "You talk to your priest," I told her, "and find out if we have to do anything like that, because I'm not lying to a priest!" Jen thought it was a little strange that I would care more about lying to a priest than to anyone else if I'm not a Catholic.

It was a little strange, because I'd never really thought about it much myself, and I had to suddenly figure out my reasons and explain them. I'm afraid the explanation Jen heard was more than a little garbled.

It boils down to respect. Just because I don't believe the same thing the priest does, doesn't mean that I don't respect his beliefs. In fact, I respect priests a very great deal, because their beliefs are so strong that they've dedicated their lives to them. Right or wrong, that sort of dedication deserves respect. I don't really care to lie to people in general - I'll stretch the truth, or bend it a little, but I try not to tell out-and-out lies. Now I believe in God - but it's not the Christian God or even necessarily the Only God. And I believe that Jesus existed, and that he was a deeply spiritual person - but not that he was the Son of the Only God, and I don't believe that leaning on his memory is the best way for me to face my life. And if I lie to a priest - who is terribly dedicated to these beliefs - then I am, in essence, mocking those beliefs, whether he ever finds out about it or not.

I have, in the past, kept quiet about my beliefs, rather than begin arguments or engender hard feelings. But when asked directly, about something that important... I won't - I can't lie.

Archive - 29 March 1999

Gods, my head hurts. It started as soon as I got in the shower this morning, and has been coming and going in waves all morning. If it doesn't go away by lunchtime, I'll go home and take a nap, and come back at 4:30 to pick up Matt. I hope it's just lack or sleep or something like that, and not that I'm getting sick.

At least it looks like it's going to be a nice day. Sunny and bright and temperatures in the 70s. The kind of day that makes me wish I didn't have to work. ::sigh:: Speaking of having to work, Jeremy read Friday's journal entry where I accused him of being a workaholic, and he wrote this reply.

I had a great weekend. Matt and I made good time on our drive up to Christiansburg, and we got to the Kenney's around 9 on Friday. Friday night we talked and watched TV and petted the animals. Saturday, we had pancakes and bacon for breakfast (gosh, I love visiting friends who like to cook!) and while I was cooking pancakes, my brother's fianceé called, and we made arrangements for them to come over. Jen and I had agreed that it would be fun to dye Easter eggs, and I had promised to bring a dye kit if she would get the eggs. Jen had bought three dozen eggs, which, after pulling out the eggs she left uncooked and the eggs that cracked in boiling, left us with about two dozen eggs to dye. Sam's mom had sent her three different dye kits, so she promised to bring those - and she showed up with another three dozen eggs! It took the five of us (Brian didn't want to play) three or four hours to do them all (we weren't just dying the eggs, we were decorating them, and John was an art major...) and when we were done, we had five dozen hard-boiled, decorated eggs. I brought one dozen home with me, but since Matt doesn't like eggs, I don't know how they're all going to get eaten before they go bad...

Saturday night we went out to dinner with John and Sam and two friends of theirs. That was fun, though once we sat down we pretty much divided up into two groups of four. Anyway, I enjoyed seeing John and Sam - I haven't seen them since Christmas, and I don't know how much of them I'll get to see this summer. We took our leave of them after dinner, and Saturday night we sat around talking and watching movies again. I had sworn up, down, and sideways that I wouldn't see Austin Powers, but they inflicted it on me and it was actually sortof funny. At least, I enjoyed the spoofing of James Bond style spy movies. Some of it was unbelieveably slow, stupid, and/or unnecessary, and I'm glad I didn't pay to see it in the theater, but it wasn't too bad.

Sunday morning, unfortunately, Jen was sick, so Matt and I didn't linger too long. We got on the road a little after 10, and made it home right around 3. Matt, the darling, insisted that since I had been driving for over four hours, that he would do the laundry. I put up a token resistance, but was so tired that I didn't bother protesting much. If I haven't said it recently enough, I adore my husband.

Tonight we're having dinner with our friends Chuck and Anita, because we haven't seen them in far too long. Matt was a little irritated when he realized that we weren't going to have time to go to our aerobics class before dinner, but it works out for the best, because we were feeling lazy yesterday and didn't bother with the grocery shopping.

And my headache is still with me. Luckily, it seems to be just a mild throbbing as long as I'm sitting very still. It's only when I move that I get this sensation of having small gnomes mining in my sinuses. I took some Advil earlier, but it isn't helping. I'll try a couple of aspirin, and hope like hell that it's not a virus.

Archive - 26 March 1999

Hey, I think I've officially been journalling for two months now. Cool!

Yesterday at lunch, Matt and Jeremy and I were talking about whether we would work if we didn't have to. Matt and I fell solidly into the No category. Jeremy - workaholic that he is - said he probably would. I guess some people just can't stand not having something to do. Not that I'd be bored. If I didn't have to work, that would imply I had plenty of money. If I had plenty of money, I can think of a lot of things I'd want to do. Travel. Set up my own darkroom. Go back to school and take all those classes I was afraid to take the first time around because they sounded hard enough to hurt my GPA. It was sortof like the oft-held discussion: What would you do if you won the lottery?

I was thinking about it in the shower this morning, too. But you know what I'd probably really do, if I never had to worry about money? Buy lots of presents. I love giving people presents. I don't much like trying to think of what to get someone, but every so often I'll see something and think, "Oh, I bet Ralph would love this!" (Not really Ralph. I don't know anyone named Ralph. It was just an example.) Don't get me wrong, I'd buy things for myself, too. And contribute to charities. But I love to give my friends and family presents. If I never had to worry about money, I'd always be buying things for other people.

I'd hire a landscaping company to bring my parents some real dirt for their mostly-clay yard. (You laugh. My mom has said for years that if she ever won the lottery, the first thing she'd buy would be dirt.) I'd buy Matt a top of the line, fully loaded computer. And I'd get us an iMac, too, because I think they're cute. I'd make sure my brother and his fiancée have exactly the sort of wedding they've always dreamed of. I'd make sure Matt's brother and sister get through college without having to worry about the loans that Matt had. (Matt says he'd set them up through their PhDs if that's what they wanted. I don't know that I'd do that - tuition, sure, but not living expenses. I think it was good for me to learn how to live on less than $10K a year.)

Just thinking about it is exciting. I won't even try to list all of my ideas here. It's just thrilling to even consider being able to do so much.

But, alas, while I make a very comfortable living, I'm hardly wealthy.

Matt and I are going to Christiansburg this weekend to visit our friends Jen and Brian Kenney. Eat some good food, dye some Easter eggs, tell some fun stories, do a little gaming. If we manage to get ahold of them, we might try to get together with my brother and his fiancee for lunch or something. We're leaving the office early today because we have a stack of errands to run before we head out of town, and because we want to leave as early as possible to see our friends. Leaving work early is always good, too. ::grin::

So, it looks like it's going to be a good day, and a good weekend (except for all the driving and having to scramble a bit to get the weekend chores done when we get back on Sunday.) But I'm looking forward to it.

Life is good.

Archive - 25 March 1999

Okay, I'm really sorry to everyone who's been waiting impatiently all morning for the solution to the puzzle! But I actually had to (gasp) do work this morning, so I haven't been able to get to this. Go on, scroll right away to the bottom of the page and find out how the knight was able to avoid being executed, and then you can come back and read this. If it makes you feel any better, I didn't solve this puzzle the first time I read it, either. If you did, good for you!

We'll be leaving work a little early today, so we can go down to the Commissioner's office. As Matt said this morning, it'll be a good day today. I like Thursdays anyway, just because I get to go home right after work.

Today and tomorrow are medium dress-up days at the office. We call them DressCon 2 days. Dress Con 3 is the norm - as our senior V.P. explains it, anything goes that would be acceptable on a golf course. Yeah, I get to wear jeans to work most days. T-shirts are even okay, as long as they don't have any potentially offensive slogans on them. (For a while, t-shirts were not okay, but I don't really feel comfortable wearing t-shirts to work anyway. But I see plenty of other people doing it.) Dress Con 2 is what the rest of the world calls "business casual" - slacks instead of jeans, no sneakers, collared shirts. (Of course, that's the regs for the guys. No one ever states the rules for the women's clothes, because women's clothes are so nebulous, especially in the corporate world.) And very rarely, we'll have a Dress Con 1, which means the men all have to wear button-down shirts and ties. I love working in such a casual office.

Last night, Matt stayed up late to watch a TV show he'd been wanting to see, and when he came to bed, I snuggled up close and fell asleep with my head on his shoulder. This is a little unusual for us, because neither of us really like to be warm when we're going to sleep, and body heat is just a bit too high. I don't know how long I was asleep when I woke up again, but what went through my mind was Oh, shit, I was just going to snuggle for a little bit and then let him go to sleep and instead I dozed off - I bet his arm is completely bloodless by now! I got out a mumbled, "I'm sorry" as I was turning over, and he asked, "Why?" I couldn't answer that, so I just re-fluffed my pillow and went back to sleep.

Then, this morning I didn't want to get out of bed. It was too warm and cozy, and entirely too early in the morning to think about anything but more sleep. (I'm not a morning person. I know several women who get up at 5 or 5:30 in order to exercise, shower, eat breakfast, and put on makeup, but I'm doing well if I can drag myself out of bed by 6:15 and perform the minimum necessary preparations: shower and get dressed. I'm lucky if I remember to comb my hair.) But I dragged myself vertical and headed for the bathroom, and turned to ask Matt if he needed to use the bathroom before I took my shower (I'll be so glad when we have more than one bathroom) and he shook his head and sortof stretched out his arms like a shy toddler asking for a hug, and how can you ignore something like that? So I went back to the bed and cuddled with him for another ten minutes or so, and almost went back to sleep. ::sigh:: Some mornings it's just so hard to get moving.

Archive - 24 March 1999

Something new today - I've decided to start a Puzzle of the Day. It's at the bottom of the entry. With luck, there will be a new puzzle every day, and I'll post the solution the next day. No, I won't tell you what the answer is in advance.

We got a postcard in the mail yesterday: "Dear Taxpayer: Please call the Commissioner of Revenue's Office within five days of receipt of this notice in regards to your Virginia State Income Tax Return." But someone had scrawled "Good News!" at the bottom of the card, so I thought perhaps I had made an arithmetic error (which I've been known to do, though I thought I had checked our return twice) and the correction was in our favor.

Not even close. The nice lady I talked to explained that she had re-worked our return with the status Married Filing Separately, and that instead of having to pay the state a couple of hundred dollars, we were actually due to get a little back! Wow!

Before you ask, I had fully intended to do the math for both joint and separate filings, to see which turned out better. But the first line of the VA Tax form asks you to fill in the adjusted income from our federal forms - and because we were taking advantage of Matt's student loans, we'd had to file our federal return jointly. Since there was only one number to fill in, I had no idea how to fill out the state form for separate filings. (The form allows you to file separately on the same piece of paper. It's weird.) So I just filed jointly, and assumed that filing separately would only have saved us a couple of bucks anyway.

Next year, I'll have to remember.

Last night while I was waiting for the Weight Watcher's meeting to start, I started making a list of things that I could talk about in this journal. It covered a wide range of topics, from the deep and thoughtful to the simple and silly. Politics, guys I've dated, religion, favorite books and movies, friendship, gaming... They all seemed like such good topics. Worth talking about.

But how does one start talking about something, without an event to spark the topic? Would it make sense to any of you if I suddenly went off into an explanation of how I got into gaming? Or if I wrote an essay on my religious beliefs? No, I didn't think so. Other journals that I read don't seem to have any problems with this. They talk about childhood experiences, and the things that are important to them, and it never seems forced to me. But I sat down to write and opened my Zaurus to pick something off the list, and I couldn't think of how to start a single topic.

Oh, well. I won't toss the list away. Maybe someday I'll figure out how to make it read like it was just something that had been on my mind.

I broke my promise and whined about aerobics this morning. I was already in a somewhat irritable mood because this rash I've had lately was especially itchy, and I thought we were skipping class because the teacher wasn't going to be there. So when Matt said, "Oh yeah, we don't have our bags for class," and went to put his together, I slipped and whined a little bit about it. So sue me. I don't think we've had this sub before, so I guess I have to give her a chance. But if she's rude to me, I'm getting out of the water immediately. I just can't stand people being rude to me. But I guess I can clench my teeth and get through this class, because we won't be going on Friday (we're going out of town) or Monday (we're having dinner with friends). But I don't have to like it.

Enough growling.

Something weird: It seems these days like half my friends and acquaintances either just had a baby, are pregnant (or their wives are, smartass), or they're trying to have a baby. Oh, I know it's not really that many - it just seems like it. And some of them aren't actively trying right now - but they talk excitedly about the possibility of children for the future. I'm a little weirded out by the whole thing, because Matt and I have decided that we're definitely not having any children for the next couple of years, and we're pretty sure we don't want any at all. I'll get into our reasons another time, but that's what we decided.

But all these pregnant people and children around me have me wondering if we really mean it when we say we don't want any. Sometimes we run into a particularly obnoxious specimen, or the kid's classes at the pool are extraordinarily loud, and I feel vindicated. But almost as often, I encounter a sweet child and wish I could take them home with me. And I haven't managed to turn off my animal instincts completely, so the look and smell and feel of a quiet, happy baby is very pleasant. And every once in a while, I really want to hold a baby in my arms and sing in my terrible singing voice... But that little bit certainly isn't enough to base the decision to become a parent on, is it? Especially when the desire can be so easily quelled. Any child under the age of about 6 is looked at with suspicion when we're in public. You never know when they're going to start making that shrieking noise that makes my brain feel like it's shriveling up and trying to escape out my ears. And I read in other journals online about all the problems those parents have with their kids, and I wonder how I could ever do that to myself while admiring those parents for their obvious deep love and devotion.

I brought it up because last night we saw our friends Chuck and Anita in person (as opposed to via e-mail) for the first time in months, and Anita is hugely pregnant. We've known she was pregnant for a good while - she's due at the beginning of June - but the last time we saw them, she wasn't showing much yet. And as I thought about it, I found myself really looking forward to seeing and playing with their baby.

Oh, I don't know. It's all too confusing. I'm going to get back to work; you go look at the Puzzle of the Day.

Archive - 23 March 1999

Little while ago I bought a book called Match Wits with Mensa. It's a quiz book. I love puzzles and games, and - hey look out, is she going to say something nice about herself for once? - I'm actually pretty smart, so I thought I'd see how I did with this. The answers section of each quiz tells how Mensa members did on the quiz as a whole and on each individual question, which was nice in the Trivia section, because I only got seven out of twenty correct - but a lot of the questions were followed by numbers below 50%, which is to say less than 50% of the polled Mensa members knew the correct answer. I got every single answer correct on the Vocabulary section. I'm pretty happy about that, because when I took my SATs and GREs, the verbal section was my least impressive.

There's a section in the back that tells you how you can join Mensa if you want to: You have to have scored in the upper 2% of test takers for a number of specific standardized tests. As far as I know, I've never had an IQ test, but they list SATs and GREs among them, and whaddya know? I qualify! They say between 1974 and 1994, a combined SAT score of 1250 qualifies, and I got a 1330. I can't remember what I got on my GREs, but I'm pretty sure I still have a copy on file somewhere. Maybe I'll join. No, seriously! But first I'll want to work through this book...

A notice in the hallway warned us to "secure our pets" because the maintenance crew is coming by today to change the air filters on the heaters. So we had to lock Diamond in the back room. I always feel like such a bad person when we do that... Especially since the cat has no idea why he's being punished. ::sigh:: I'm such a terrible mother.

I seem to have infected a number of my friends with journal-itis. Matt has his Random Scribblings section, and Jeremy has a work-only journal on his 3GI site, and KT is thinking of adding a journal to her webpage, when she gets it put together, called Me Too, Me Too! ::grin::

It made me wonder why I was doing it. What earthly reason is there to have a journal online? Probably as many reasons as there are people - or at least journallers - but why am I doing it? I'm not sure, but I'll be thinking about it. When it started, I just thought it was a neat idea and I wanted to try it. But it's been almost two months now, and there's no sign of my stopping. Why, when every other journal I've tried to keep has fizzled out after only a few entries?

Maybe because this one is online. Because I know other people are reading it, and I'd feel like I'd let them down if they didn't have something to read every day, even if it's boring or whiney. I've always worked better when there's a deadline to meet. But that can't be the sole reason.

I feel like I should really examine my reasons, even if I never post them. Suddenly, it's become important to me to explain why I feel compelled to take half an hour every morning and write something. Why it feels better that I write every day, even if what I write has no substance, than if I save my writing for when I have something worthwhile to say. Why I have this need to be known by complete strangers.

Maybe I just don't want to get to work.