So, I realize that some of my recent posts probably sound like I can't stand my family, or I'm not enjoying my time at home getting ready for the wedding, or whatever. And I feel like I need to clarify. I don't hate my family. They are wonderful people, and a great blessing in my life. Not many people get to have as awesome of a family as I do.
It's been nice being home and being around everyone, especially since I'm normally so far away from...everything. It's been fun to help with the finishing touches of wedding planning, and try to keep both my mom and my sister reasonably sane.
It's just getting...long. And it's been so busy. Honestly, I thought I would be bored. Not at all. There is so much to do. Granted, some of it is running to places like Target, Hobby Lobby, and the grocery store - usually all three, every day. It's dress fittings and laundry and organzing closets and doing trial runs of chocolate covered strawberries and and and. Because, oh yes, someone decided that it would be a good idea to have a freaking garage sale the week before the wedding. I'm not joking. My sister signed off on it, mostly I think because she wants to get rid of a bunch of junk before she moves. Which I guess is fine. But let none of us think this will be happening at my wedding. Really, though, I'm having fun, for the most part. But let's be clear: nothing about this could in any way legitimately be termed a "vacation".
Nevertheless...
I decided yesterday that the best way to get out of the house for a day, hopefully have a little peace and quiet, and not have to go to Hobby Lobby was to spend the day with my dad. So I went to work with him - awake at 5:00 am, out the door before 6:00. Yikes. Yes, there was coffee involved.
And since he sees patients all day, there was nothing for me to really do. Score. The other PT that works with him was not in today, so I commandeered her office, layed on the exam table, and read. All. Day. Long. About 11:30 we went to lunch, walked around a little, and then went back to the office. I took a nap, read some more, and then we came home. It was glorious. Glorious, I tell you.
Tonight, Melissa and Joey and Royal Pains.
Yes, I love the summer.
Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Holy Introvert, Batman!
Yikes. I've been home just over a week now, and aside from sleeping, I've had precisely 3 hours of "alone time".
About 40 minutes of that has been actual alone time, not "in the store time" or some such thing.
I am about to lose it.
My mom has a little Kaffee Klatch group that meets at the local not-Starbucks on Tuesday mornings, and she asked last night if I wanted to go with her. Since I'm not the type of person who likes to "be somewhere" by 7:00 am, I politely declined. Then I realized that if I got up early, I could have a couple hours by myself while she was gone. So, I did. I woke up at 7:06, got dressed, and came downstairs...to find my mom sitting on the couch reading the paper. She decided that she just has too much to do to get ready for the wedding and all the people coming, etc, that she needed to be here instead of chatting it up with her friends. Which is fine.
But I wanted to be by myself.
My mom is also a giant extrovert. She has some introverted tendencies on occasion, but mostly, she's a talker. All the time. She doesn't stop talking. There is no "make my coffee and catch up on Facebook and get ready for the day" because she's talking. "Morning Joe" is on, and she's reading me snippets of everything she finds in the paper, and doing CPE on herself out loud ("As I'm planning this wedding, something I'm learning about myself and how I handle stress is blah blah blah").
And I just want two hours to lay on the couch and watch TV, or blog, or read quietly, or sit and stare at the wall. I'm going to go out of my mind.
Help!!
About 40 minutes of that has been actual alone time, not "in the store time" or some such thing.
I am about to lose it.
My mom has a little Kaffee Klatch group that meets at the local not-Starbucks on Tuesday mornings, and she asked last night if I wanted to go with her. Since I'm not the type of person who likes to "be somewhere" by 7:00 am, I politely declined. Then I realized that if I got up early, I could have a couple hours by myself while she was gone. So, I did. I woke up at 7:06, got dressed, and came downstairs...to find my mom sitting on the couch reading the paper. She decided that she just has too much to do to get ready for the wedding and all the people coming, etc, that she needed to be here instead of chatting it up with her friends. Which is fine.
But I wanted to be by myself.
My mom is also a giant extrovert. She has some introverted tendencies on occasion, but mostly, she's a talker. All the time. She doesn't stop talking. There is no "make my coffee and catch up on Facebook and get ready for the day" because she's talking. "Morning Joe" is on, and she's reading me snippets of everything she finds in the paper, and doing CPE on herself out loud ("As I'm planning this wedding, something I'm learning about myself and how I handle stress is blah blah blah").
And I just want two hours to lay on the couch and watch TV, or blog, or read quietly, or sit and stare at the wall. I'm going to go out of my mind.
Help!!
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Graduation Day
A friend asked me today on the way to church how I "feel about today." I told him, "I don't know. I don't know how I'm supposed to feel." Which doesn't really matter, I suppose. I should feel what I feel, not what anybody else tells me I should feel. But still.
I feel like all my friends are just super-excited - as well they should be. Graduation is exciting. It's a good thing. It's a ritual to mark all that we've done. But I'm just not super-excited. I mostly just want it to be over with.
Part of it, I think, is my introverted hate-being-the-center-of-attention self. So, at least there will be 174 other people there. Still and all, that 5-10 seconds of me, by myself, up there. What if I trip on the steps or miss some kind of cue or walk faster or slower than I'm supposed to or any other number of things that could happen? The only thing I hate more than having everyone watch me is looking ridiculous while everyone is watching me.
Part of it, I think, is feeling really...separated...from my friends right now. Like the people I care about most, I'm most distant from, because of all sorts of reasons. Some of them are in a different class, and they're all off on internship, and I'm sad that we don't get to do this together. Some of them I've just been less connected with lately - somewhat intentionally on my part, and somewhat intentionally on their part.
Part of it is, I think, feeling like this thing is ending, but nothing else is really beginning. I'm more than a month away from the draft, before I know anything else about what is happening. Just...hanging out. Going to a couple ordinations this week, and then I'm going home for my sister's wedding.
And that's part of it too. What's next is that I'm spending three weeks at home getting ready for her wedding. Which will definitely be long enough. I'm frustrated because I'm the only person who is taking that much time off from work and - life, really - to be there for this wedding, and no one seems to really appreciate that. I don't live there anymore, and I don't have friends there, and there's really nothing for me to do except...be in my parents' dealing with wedding stuff. And every time we talk about the wedding, I feel inadequate. Like love is the one thing I haven't proven I can be successful at, and what's wrong with me that this is true? Every time my mom goes on one of her "I can't believe how wonderful Fiancee is" monologues, it leaves me feeling 4 inches tall. Like if I were only skinnier/prettier/more graceful/more ladylike/more alluring/more perfect/smarter/funnier/ontologically just...better...somehow, someone would want me. But I'm not, and no one does, and so I'll just have to a) try harder at that particular endeavor, and b) gird my loins, try my hardest, and do all these other things, so that at least I can claim I'm successful at something, even if it is entirely by myself. And I'm just not looking forward to being confronted with that every moment of every day for three weeks.
Part of it is, I think, that I'm just not sure why this is that big of a deal. There was never any doubt in my mind that I would graduate, that I would be able to complete the requirements to obtain this degree. It's not my dream, it's not my life's goal, it's just...apparently the direction God has led/is leading me, and it's where I am now, so, whatevs.
And I think because I think all of these things - that I don't feel the way I'm supposed to, that I'm disconnected from the people I care most about, that I don't have anything really to look forward to, that I don't think it's a huge deal - makes me feel even more like I just don't really fit in anywhere right now. Because I don't think anyone else feels that way...which makes it hard to be excited...let the cycle begin again....
Eh. I'm ready for it to be over, that's how I feel. Is that terrible?
I feel like all my friends are just super-excited - as well they should be. Graduation is exciting. It's a good thing. It's a ritual to mark all that we've done. But I'm just not super-excited. I mostly just want it to be over with.
Part of it, I think, is my introverted hate-being-the-center-of-attention self. So, at least there will be 174 other people there. Still and all, that 5-10 seconds of me, by myself, up there. What if I trip on the steps or miss some kind of cue or walk faster or slower than I'm supposed to or any other number of things that could happen? The only thing I hate more than having everyone watch me is looking ridiculous while everyone is watching me.
Part of it, I think, is feeling really...separated...from my friends right now. Like the people I care about most, I'm most distant from, because of all sorts of reasons. Some of them are in a different class, and they're all off on internship, and I'm sad that we don't get to do this together. Some of them I've just been less connected with lately - somewhat intentionally on my part, and somewhat intentionally on their part.
Part of it is, I think, feeling like this thing is ending, but nothing else is really beginning. I'm more than a month away from the draft, before I know anything else about what is happening. Just...hanging out. Going to a couple ordinations this week, and then I'm going home for my sister's wedding.
And that's part of it too. What's next is that I'm spending three weeks at home getting ready for her wedding. Which will definitely be long enough. I'm frustrated because I'm the only person who is taking that much time off from work and - life, really - to be there for this wedding, and no one seems to really appreciate that. I don't live there anymore, and I don't have friends there, and there's really nothing for me to do except...be in my parents' dealing with wedding stuff. And every time we talk about the wedding, I feel inadequate. Like love is the one thing I haven't proven I can be successful at, and what's wrong with me that this is true? Every time my mom goes on one of her "I can't believe how wonderful Fiancee is" monologues, it leaves me feeling 4 inches tall. Like if I were only skinnier/prettier/more graceful/more ladylike/more alluring/more perfect/smarter/funnier/ontologically just...better...somehow, someone would want me. But I'm not, and no one does, and so I'll just have to a) try harder at that particular endeavor, and b) gird my loins, try my hardest, and do all these other things, so that at least I can claim I'm successful at something, even if it is entirely by myself. And I'm just not looking forward to being confronted with that every moment of every day for three weeks.
Part of it is, I think, that I'm just not sure why this is that big of a deal. There was never any doubt in my mind that I would graduate, that I would be able to complete the requirements to obtain this degree. It's not my dream, it's not my life's goal, it's just...apparently the direction God has led/is leading me, and it's where I am now, so, whatevs.
And I think because I think all of these things - that I don't feel the way I'm supposed to, that I'm disconnected from the people I care most about, that I don't have anything really to look forward to, that I don't think it's a huge deal - makes me feel even more like I just don't really fit in anywhere right now. Because I don't think anyone else feels that way...which makes it hard to be excited...let the cycle begin again....
Eh. I'm ready for it to be over, that's how I feel. Is that terrible?
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Community
"Everyone on my team [read: family] always wants something different to eat. That's why we go to the $4.99 Cici's Buffet."
Sure, it's $4.99. Yes, the commercial appears to take place right after a kids' summer ballgame, which I remember as being a crazy, exhausting time when Mom was a little more willing to punt on things like dinner.
But what happened to "community"? What happened to being "part of a family"? What happened to "you don't get exactly what you want every time you want it"?
I think the part that bugs me about the commercial is not that the mom is taking the family to a restaurant, not that it's cheap, not that it makes the family happy. The part that bugs me about it is that it makes the family happy in such a way that none of them actually has to be part of the family.
What happened to "Johnny's team won, so he gets to pick the restaurant!" ?? Or "Sarah picked last time so Dad gets to pick tonight." ?? Where is the sense of self-giving and communal life that comes with actually being a family??
Sigh...
Sure, it's $4.99. Yes, the commercial appears to take place right after a kids' summer ballgame, which I remember as being a crazy, exhausting time when Mom was a little more willing to punt on things like dinner.
But what happened to "community"? What happened to being "part of a family"? What happened to "you don't get exactly what you want every time you want it"?
I think the part that bugs me about the commercial is not that the mom is taking the family to a restaurant, not that it's cheap, not that it makes the family happy. The part that bugs me about it is that it makes the family happy in such a way that none of them actually has to be part of the family.
What happened to "Johnny's team won, so he gets to pick the restaurant!" ?? Or "Sarah picked last time so Dad gets to pick tonight." ?? Where is the sense of self-giving and communal life that comes with actually being a family??
Sigh...