Guns are fun

Ben and I were house sitting for his mom this past weekend and it was pretty awesome. I have been thinking about guns for the past few years; in my first week of class at WKU, we had a conversation in fieldwork about how guns can be useful and knowing how to yield a weapon is a good skill to have. I know, strange conversation. I had never really thought about guns before, just that my parents have a .22 that they keep hidden and without ammunition. It hasn't left the box since we moved into the house twelve years ago. I started to think, hey, maybe that is something I want to do one day. Maybe I want to shoot a gun. I don't want to shoot at anything living, but I want to shoot a gun one day. Ben and I were talking a few weeks ago and this desire came up in our conversation. Ben was properly surprised (apparently, in the almost nine years we've been together, he never got the sense from me that gun play was something in which I could be interested) but mentioned that he could make it happen for me. So that's what we did this weekend. We shot guns. And my god. It was fun. I shot a .22 and a .357 special. The revolver was my favorite. I absolutely decimated a milk jug filled with water. It exploded.

Ok, enough about guns. In obligatory wedding news, the invitations have started arriving to their destinations and my dress arrived on Saturday! I tried on what I could yesterday (it's just me and my dad in the house until my mom and Nick get back from apartment hunting for Nick's move at the end of this month. The bodice is lace up and so I can't do it alone and had no one to help me yesterday) But the skirt fits like a glove, it's perfect and wonderful and everything I could have hoped for. So happy.

That is all I can think of right now. Back to cleaning!

-B

Life's Little Joys

I went to the post office today to get postage for the wedding invitations. I went into it expecting it to be ridiculously expensive (from what I have read on the internet about such things). My turn came up, I gave the woman the individual pieces of the invitation (namely, the response card and then the full invite with the response card in it). Much to my surprise, they cost the same, so I needed two .44 stamps for each invitation (one for the response card, one for the invite itself). The lady looked at me and said, "we have these lovely wedding ring .44 stamps. Would you like those?" I looked at her and said, "No, thank you. I will take the Simpsons."

I think it is supremely us and, though probably no one will notice, but it brings me much joy that my wedding invitations are stamped with the Simpsons.

-B

Some thoughts

Wow, it's been a long time since my last update. As is pretty obvious from my blogging history, there are definite ebbs and flows in my posting. Sometimes, I feel very inspired to chronicle everything for the world to see. Other times, I take a step back and think rather than post. I find myself thinking sometimes, "this thought that I am having would make a great blog post!" but most of the time, I do something else, talk to someone in real life, write about it in my private journal (yes, with pen and paper), rather than post it on the blog. I am going to try to do this more regularly now that things have settled a bit. I have a little less than two months until the wedding and things are really starting to come together.

Since my 25th birthday, a lot has happened. I graduated with my Master's degree, maintaining my 4.0 grade point average through the very end. I made a decision about where I am going next. Without putting too much out there, I tend to make my school decisions based on feelings; my rationale is that I can pretty well judge the way a school is going to treat me when I am committed to them by the way they treat me when they are trying to convince me that I am a good fit for them and them for me. This approach has worked for me so far and I hope it works for me now. I decided to come back to UW-Madison for my library degree because honestly, they treated me better than UIUC. From the moment I was originally accepted, I have received no less than two emails a week from them, letting me know about things that are going on at the University, funding opportunities, volunteer opportunities and social activities affiliated with the program. I hope that it works for me and I am a little anxious to get started. This degree will be completely different than the one I just finished.

I have also basically moved out of my place in BG. I am going back with my mom in a few weeks to clear out the rest of my furniture (I am hoping the process is smooth; I have never done this kind of move before). Ben and I got a great place in Madison, a two bedroom about which we are very excited. Well, I am excited. After so long, we will finally be living together and being a real family. I can't wait.

As I've been in Wisconsin, I have been focusing on getting things in order, basically cleaning and organizing and figuring out what I have and what I need for this next stage of life. I have also been watching tons of HGTV, Style network, and TLC. None of these practices have been good for me. I know that I have some pack rat tendencies. I think I have been getting better about it, but as I watch some of the clutter reducing shows, it makes me think about the kind of things that I hold on to. I have an original American Girl doll, for instance, back from when it was only the Pleasant Company and there were three doll options. I loved my Molly doll, given to me by my mother's mother for my fifth birthday. Nana chose Molly because Molly in her stories was born in the same year as my grandmother. I read all of the books associated with the doll and obsessively collected her outfits and accessories. Now that I am old and no longer play with dolls, I can't bring myself to consider parting with her. I don't think I should have to, but as I look at the kind of things that I save, I don't think I want to be the kind of person who keeps dolls on display. I want to give her to a cousin or a niece, someone who can love her as much as I did. She's not so much a collector's item because I played with her and nothing is in originally packaging or condition, but I am decidedly sentimental about her in terms of my history and my memories of my grandmother. Other things I save? Books. Ben and I have talked a lot about how we are going to combine our libraries and it gets more and more overwhelming the more I think about it. I have hundreds, if not thousands, of books covering almost every subject out there. I want to live in a house some day with build in bookshelves and a separate library room. However, according to clutter shows, saving books isn't a great thing to do. I'm going to do it anyway, of course, but sometimes it worries me that, for as much as I am able to go through and purge things that are not meaningful, I have a bunch of things that are that aren't particularly functional. I don't hang on to every doll, every stuffed animal, every toy from childhood, but the ones that I want to hang on to are so close to my heart that I would be a little crushed if anything ever happened to them.

Anyway, those are some of my scattered thoughts for the time being. I should get back to work on straightening things up so I can feel that I have done something productive today. I will try not to have as much time between this post and my next as I had between my last and this one.

-B

25

Yesterday was my birthday. A quarter century since my birth. Generally speaking, I am not a big fan of birthdays. They are kind of like New Years, where I think about the things that I wanted to accomplish, the habits I had intended to break, a time for reflection. I had too much fun yesterday to do much of that (spent the whole day with friends, eating drinking and having an impromptu dance party) so here I am today. Some days, I think I am doing alright. I have some direction, I think I know what I am going to do in the future and the people that I want to be there for me while I do it.

But.

Despite the leaps and bounds that I have come in the past few years, I still have some stuff that isn't alright. Old neuroses that sneak back into my life when I thought I had basically banished them. Feelings of inadequacy about the things that I could control better if I were stronger and could control them without it being obsessive. I am losing my health insurance at the end of the month; we found this out on Friday and I am terrified. Not because I think that I will be left in the cold, but because I haven't had my own health insurance, separate from my parents, basically ever. I don't know how to deal with these things. I had a check up a few weeks ago and my doctor said everything looks good but I am still worrying that I might get denied coverage. I thought that health reform was meant to take away some of these anxieties, but nope. Still there.

I am trying to focus on the positive aspects of yesterday, of celebrating another year past with friends. This is my last birthday before I get married. The transition from early twenties to mid-twenties (though honestly, I felt that at 24, too). From here on in, I am closer to 30 than 20 as I embark on my 26th year in this world. I should be happy that I have people that I enjoy and a career that, with any luck, will give me what I need financially and emotionally to live a good life.

I have to keep stressing to myself that I have lots of things going for me and I shouldn't let the few negative points get me down...

Sigh.

-B

Happy Easter!

Happy Sunday, everybody! I don't do anything for Easter on a regular basis and this year is no exception. Home alone, reading and trying to get a bare bones outline for one of the papers that I have due in a little over a week... the usual. I taught my second class ever last Thursday and it went better than the first one. There were no behavioral issues and the class seemed slightly more engaged with the material. I have a huge amount of respect for the people who manage to do this for a living. I mean, I respected professors anyway because I love to learn and I respect their expertise, their life experience, their knowledge, but I think I didn't truly realize everything that goes in to making a class work. With any luck, I have one more class tomorrow, maybe putting a video in on Tuesday and then I can go back to my normal not-teaching life.

I saw How to Train Your Dragon yesterday with Kara. I went in to it with fairly high expectations - it has a ridiculously high rating on Rotten Tomatoes and the commercials made it look like a lot of fun. Without spoiling too much, a boy who doesn't feel quite like he fits in to the mold that his society has set out for him befriends a dragon, his people's greatest foe. It is a story about friendship, about growing up, and about standing for what is right and not abandoning your convictions. It was beautiful and I loved it. I have seen a lot of movies recently that involve flying of some kind and I want to fly. I wish I lived in a world where I could have a pet something-or-other that could take me above the clouds. I am not a film critic by any stretch of the imagination (I am kind of a I-like-most-things person), but this movie was better than I expected and will definitely be on my list to watch again when it comes out on video.

-B

I am not meant to be a teacher

So I taught my first undergrad class today. I was filling in for a professor who's been ill, discussing foodways and other super interesting things. I prepared for hours for this class, building a power point with relevant quotes and connections to readings, practicing aloud to make sure I would fill the whole time, reading every article they had due so that if they had questions, I would be on the top of my game... all for naught. I arrived in the classroom about 10 minutes early, set up the projector, got the computer started. Then, when class started, nothing. I was speaking into a black hole. I was getting nothing back from the class except blank stares and rude communications. Rude to the point where I stopped class in the middle as one girl was turned with her back to me, showing something she had written in her notebook to another student and laughing. I said, "...and I am not blind and not stupid and you're being really rude right now. Cut it out."

I had some students approach me after class (which ended early because after that, I sped up a good bit and managed to do a lecture planned to take 80 minutes in 55...) to tell me that they thought I did a good job and that they are interested in what I was talking about. So that was nice. But I don't think I could do this on a regular basis. For all of the years that I thought, "Maybe I will get a PhD and teach undergrads about the wonderful world of folklore!", no. Just no. It's not for me. I don't think my ego could handle dealing with a bunch of kids who are meant to be adults but behave like children. I know that I had these issues when I was in undergrad, too, but somehow I had convinced myself that maybe this would be different. Maybe a 300 level class would only have people in it who wanted to be there! Guess not.

Oh well, I made it through it and learned about myself in the mean time. Teaching undergrads is not for me. Now time to study for this exam I have tomorrow!

-B

The End of March

I didn't know what to call this post. It's been a few weeks and time continues to fly like something that flies very fast. The month is almost over, I am making final decisions about future plans, and I am trying not to think about how much I have to do in the next few months. And how little money I am going to have in the next few months. I am ready to be done with the program, as much as I've enjoyed my time here. There are a few more major hurdles to jump through before I can count myself finished, so I am keeping myself on task. Except when I pause to write a blog that no one reads, heh.

I was reading an article on the AV Club about things that make the contributors feel old. Now, I am fast approaching my 25th birthday. I know that, objectively, is not old. But sometimes it makes me feel old. And sometimes other stimuli that have nothing to do with age or me make me feel old. Like when I realized that my cousin James has never lived in a world with no wikipedia. That the new generation of college freshmen never watched the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on Saturday morning cartoons. That don't remember Pepsi Crystal. These sorts of things. I know that I am not old and that every generation has that thing that made them more special, have a more authentic experience, be better than the younger generations. Just sometimes I feel old. Like when people send me text messages that I have to read aloud in order to understand the orthography.

Get off my lawn!

-B