A jumble of goings on
There are all kinds of things that have been going on lately. Let's start with the most recent and move backwards.
I got home from work yesterday only to see a card sitting on the counter. Even before I was close enough to read it, I knew who it was from and I smiled, thinking, "Yay, my first Christmas card." Um, I mean our first joint Christmas card! From Bethany! Well, half right. Yay Bethany, no for Christmas (or Pagan Winter Festival for that matter). I opened the pink polka dotted envelope flap (not Christmas-y) and inside lay a card gleaming with little glittery rattles. Rattles??? WHAT??? Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Bethany's pregnant! It was like Laura telling me she was pregnant, all over again. Disbelief, incredulity, and the remembrance that we were all going to wait to have kids until we were older...then the crashing of reality telling me we are older. I just don't feel that old! I don't feel like 25 is quite old enough to have kids. :) I mean, I know it is, and I know that's not even a particularly "young" mom age, either. Or rather 26, as both my ladies were/will be 26 when they have their babies. (And by the way, Bethany, sorry if I outed you!) Apart from me not being ready remotely for babies, I get really cranky when I think about how boys don't have to have the baby. If boys could carry the babies for nine months and then go through the ridiculously frightening birthing process, I might rethink the whole baby thing. But as it turns out, I'm Tina the non-realistic feminist who gets angry that girls are the ones that have to worry about birth control and all of the psychological and physical annoyances that accompany any form of hormonal birth control. Seriously, why don't the doctors stop focusing all their efforts on the woman and start looking at how to stop men from impregnating the ladies? Marcus agrees that this would be a much better deal for all of us and it would help men to feel more control when it comes to this issue. The control issue isn't exactly my view, but come on, spread the love! Moving on from birth control, we have the actual pregnancy and birthing process that men just can never have a real understanding of which make things even more difficult. So the woman's body has to undergo stress in the attempt to not get pregnant, and then when it finally does it has another being feeding off of it for nine months, making it get sick, gain weight, get moody. Getting poked and prodded by doctors. I won't even go into the birthing process which is the freakiest process of all (and the tearing percentages and the pooing on the table percentages...:( ). And then it's the mother the baby feeds off for the next however long. Evolution has made procreation awfully one-sided and you know what? I'd like to slap evolution, because it dealt an awfully unfair hand to half of the population on this earth. Maybe once I'd actually gone through the whole process I'd feel differently about it, and "special" that I got to "go through" the experience of being so close to another human being. At the moment, though, I'm too angry to be open-minded. Not a good place to be. Poor Marcus gets the brunt of my tirades, even though he is the most amazing (straight) man I have ever met. :) He told me that if it were physically possible, he would have a baby for us some day in the far future. It's moments like those when I am fully reminded of how perfect he is for me. :)
Anyway, it's probably time for me to get off the subject. But for my lovely lady mothers out there, I want to apologize a bit because I'm definitely not trying to negate your experiences. I'm just angry at evolution. :) And at most men for not understanding. (Ugh, did I mention one of Marcus's friends that had a baby and then while she was still in the hospital with the baby, he went out to the pub and had a big Friday night out with all of his friends? I would also slap the man who came up with that tradition...boys out drinking while mom's in the hospital...it steams me!) Maybe one day I'll be the happiest mom ever and everyone will laugh at me saying, "remember when?" But regardless, I think there needs to be a world-wide campaign to educate men on just what a woman goes through in the name of continuing our species. There needs to be a bit more appreciation for all of the females in our lives.
Whew! Okay, that takes care of that Tina rant. I'm done, no worries.
Other goings on? Well, if someone asked me what the most adventurous thing I've done in Australia is at this point, I would have an answer--yard work! Yes, my friends, yard work. Absolutely frightening. If I'm afraid of spiders and cockroaches crawling into my room at night, then let's try working in the overgrown, dead brush-filled yards to be found--even in the non-outback. Marcus and I set out on Saturday to help his mom and step dad with getting their house ready for renters. I was thinking painting, scrubbing floors, dusting, and that kind of stuff, but what did they have in store? Yard work. I was wearing thongs, people, thongs! They do NOT make for good yard working shoes (especially as I'm scared to death of the poisonous spiders crawling on me, biting me, and causing my early death). Fortunately the spiders didn't crawl onto me (that I saw) and I made it out alive, but I was raking up dead grass on a three-feet wide pathway enclosed by the side of the house and a solid six-foot fence. The spiders were crawling up the fence, I saw cockroach carcasses scattered amidst the brush, and throw in a beating down Australian sun and slight dehydration and you have a good idea of what Saturday was like.
Then we went to cut down some overgrown bushes that were getting a little too close to the powerlines, and as Marcus's stepdad handed the branches to us to haul off, he told me to be careful of the spitfire caterpillars. Poisonous spitting caterpillars? :( This is a scary world they live in here. I looked at Marcus with a "what the hell/how do you live here?" face. Seriously, who would decide to come to a land where it's poisonous everything? Oh, AND did you know there are flying cockroaches? It just gets better and better all the time.
The day did take a nice turn as soon as we left, though. We went to IKEA and...we bought a bed!!! Yay, I love having a bed! I haven't had a bed since I lived back in Spokane. Memories of a king-sized waterbed in a tiny room pervade. My door didn't even open all the way, and my laundry basket was the right side of the bed. This bed? So wonderful, it's one of the cheapie $200 beds and we spent a few hours on Saturday and Sunday putting it together. It was so much fun! There's nothing better than putting together IKEA furniture, it's like a very big and functional puzzle. When you're done, you've got a big ol' piece of furniture and you can be so proud because you put it together! Now we have a bed of love...(we even put the sheets and blankets and everything on together--my idea, so corny and I love it!). Now I'm close to the bed lamp so I don't have to go-go-gadget arms to turn it off at night and I'm close to my chapstick. And I'm further away from the cockroaches. Mission accomplished.
Hmm, what else. Oh yeah! Marcus got admitted to the bar on Friday and now he's a full-fledged lawyer. Ha ha, I'm really dating a lawyer now. :) It was one of the better graduation-type ceremonies I've been to. It was still reminiscent of high school graduation, with parents, grandparents and partners in attendance. The graduates were better-dressed in their business suits (though in different states of looking a bit rumpled) and most looking a bit nervous. There were a few key wig-wearing judges that were there to "move" some of the graduates (each grad had to have another lawyer who's already been admitted to the bar attend and give a three-line canned speech asking the judges to admit their grad to the bar--our roommate Bec moved Marcus, which was fun!). The judges would call the grad's name, the grad and their mover would stand, the "mover" would recommend that their grad be admitted, the judge would admit them, the grad bows, and grad and mover sit down. This goes on for each grad (I think there were around 80 there) and then in groups, each grad swears to serve justice, basically. It was pretty fun. The best part, though? The judges...they were wearing the long white wigs in curled rows and dressed...like...Santa Claus. Their costume (cloak?) is red with white fur trimming and they seriously looked like the bygone British era Santa Claus. It was so funny, as soon as they walked into the room my face lit into a smile and it was all I could do to not burst out laughing. They probably thought I was going to make a mockery of their court. Oh, I would have. :)
I got home from work yesterday only to see a card sitting on the counter. Even before I was close enough to read it, I knew who it was from and I smiled, thinking, "Yay, my first Christmas card." Um, I mean our first joint Christmas card! From Bethany! Well, half right. Yay Bethany, no for Christmas (or Pagan Winter Festival for that matter). I opened the pink polka dotted envelope flap (not Christmas-y) and inside lay a card gleaming with little glittery rattles. Rattles??? WHAT??? Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Bethany's pregnant! It was like Laura telling me she was pregnant, all over again. Disbelief, incredulity, and the remembrance that we were all going to wait to have kids until we were older...then the crashing of reality telling me we are older. I just don't feel that old! I don't feel like 25 is quite old enough to have kids. :) I mean, I know it is, and I know that's not even a particularly "young" mom age, either. Or rather 26, as both my ladies were/will be 26 when they have their babies. (And by the way, Bethany, sorry if I outed you!) Apart from me not being ready remotely for babies, I get really cranky when I think about how boys don't have to have the baby. If boys could carry the babies for nine months and then go through the ridiculously frightening birthing process, I might rethink the whole baby thing. But as it turns out, I'm Tina the non-realistic feminist who gets angry that girls are the ones that have to worry about birth control and all of the psychological and physical annoyances that accompany any form of hormonal birth control. Seriously, why don't the doctors stop focusing all their efforts on the woman and start looking at how to stop men from impregnating the ladies? Marcus agrees that this would be a much better deal for all of us and it would help men to feel more control when it comes to this issue. The control issue isn't exactly my view, but come on, spread the love! Moving on from birth control, we have the actual pregnancy and birthing process that men just can never have a real understanding of which make things even more difficult. So the woman's body has to undergo stress in the attempt to not get pregnant, and then when it finally does it has another being feeding off of it for nine months, making it get sick, gain weight, get moody. Getting poked and prodded by doctors. I won't even go into the birthing process which is the freakiest process of all (and the tearing percentages and the pooing on the table percentages...:( ). And then it's the mother the baby feeds off for the next however long. Evolution has made procreation awfully one-sided and you know what? I'd like to slap evolution, because it dealt an awfully unfair hand to half of the population on this earth. Maybe once I'd actually gone through the whole process I'd feel differently about it, and "special" that I got to "go through" the experience of being so close to another human being. At the moment, though, I'm too angry to be open-minded. Not a good place to be. Poor Marcus gets the brunt of my tirades, even though he is the most amazing (straight) man I have ever met. :) He told me that if it were physically possible, he would have a baby for us some day in the far future. It's moments like those when I am fully reminded of how perfect he is for me. :)
Anyway, it's probably time for me to get off the subject. But for my lovely lady mothers out there, I want to apologize a bit because I'm definitely not trying to negate your experiences. I'm just angry at evolution. :) And at most men for not understanding. (Ugh, did I mention one of Marcus's friends that had a baby and then while she was still in the hospital with the baby, he went out to the pub and had a big Friday night out with all of his friends? I would also slap the man who came up with that tradition...boys out drinking while mom's in the hospital...it steams me!) Maybe one day I'll be the happiest mom ever and everyone will laugh at me saying, "remember when?" But regardless, I think there needs to be a world-wide campaign to educate men on just what a woman goes through in the name of continuing our species. There needs to be a bit more appreciation for all of the females in our lives.
Whew! Okay, that takes care of that Tina rant. I'm done, no worries.
Other goings on? Well, if someone asked me what the most adventurous thing I've done in Australia is at this point, I would have an answer--yard work! Yes, my friends, yard work. Absolutely frightening. If I'm afraid of spiders and cockroaches crawling into my room at night, then let's try working in the overgrown, dead brush-filled yards to be found--even in the non-outback. Marcus and I set out on Saturday to help his mom and step dad with getting their house ready for renters. I was thinking painting, scrubbing floors, dusting, and that kind of stuff, but what did they have in store? Yard work. I was wearing thongs, people, thongs! They do NOT make for good yard working shoes (especially as I'm scared to death of the poisonous spiders crawling on me, biting me, and causing my early death). Fortunately the spiders didn't crawl onto me (that I saw) and I made it out alive, but I was raking up dead grass on a three-feet wide pathway enclosed by the side of the house and a solid six-foot fence. The spiders were crawling up the fence, I saw cockroach carcasses scattered amidst the brush, and throw in a beating down Australian sun and slight dehydration and you have a good idea of what Saturday was like.
Then we went to cut down some overgrown bushes that were getting a little too close to the powerlines, and as Marcus's stepdad handed the branches to us to haul off, he told me to be careful of the spitfire caterpillars. Poisonous spitting caterpillars? :( This is a scary world they live in here. I looked at Marcus with a "what the hell/how do you live here?" face. Seriously, who would decide to come to a land where it's poisonous everything? Oh, AND did you know there are flying cockroaches? It just gets better and better all the time.
The day did take a nice turn as soon as we left, though. We went to IKEA and...we bought a bed!!! Yay, I love having a bed! I haven't had a bed since I lived back in Spokane. Memories of a king-sized waterbed in a tiny room pervade. My door didn't even open all the way, and my laundry basket was the right side of the bed. This bed? So wonderful, it's one of the cheapie $200 beds and we spent a few hours on Saturday and Sunday putting it together. It was so much fun! There's nothing better than putting together IKEA furniture, it's like a very big and functional puzzle. When you're done, you've got a big ol' piece of furniture and you can be so proud because you put it together! Now we have a bed of love...(we even put the sheets and blankets and everything on together--my idea, so corny and I love it!). Now I'm close to the bed lamp so I don't have to go-go-gadget arms to turn it off at night and I'm close to my chapstick. And I'm further away from the cockroaches. Mission accomplished.
Hmm, what else. Oh yeah! Marcus got admitted to the bar on Friday and now he's a full-fledged lawyer. Ha ha, I'm really dating a lawyer now. :) It was one of the better graduation-type ceremonies I've been to. It was still reminiscent of high school graduation, with parents, grandparents and partners in attendance. The graduates were better-dressed in their business suits (though in different states of looking a bit rumpled) and most looking a bit nervous. There were a few key wig-wearing judges that were there to "move" some of the graduates (each grad had to have another lawyer who's already been admitted to the bar attend and give a three-line canned speech asking the judges to admit their grad to the bar--our roommate Bec moved Marcus, which was fun!). The judges would call the grad's name, the grad and their mover would stand, the "mover" would recommend that their grad be admitted, the judge would admit them, the grad bows, and grad and mover sit down. This goes on for each grad (I think there were around 80 there) and then in groups, each grad swears to serve justice, basically. It was pretty fun. The best part, though? The judges...they were wearing the long white wigs in curled rows and dressed...like...Santa Claus. Their costume (cloak?) is red with white fur trimming and they seriously looked like the bygone British era Santa Claus. It was so funny, as soon as they walked into the room my face lit into a smile and it was all I could do to not burst out laughing. They probably thought I was going to make a mockery of their court. Oh, I would have. :)
Comments
It snowed over the weekend here and you're doing yardwork in flip-flops there. I think it would be hard to get used to Christmas in the summer!
I so wish that our law system involved wigs.