02.27.09
Yay!
There are few things that can thrill like an acceptance letter.
Especially an acceptance letter with a lot of money in it.
I’d like to be allowed to go bounce around in excitement now, but I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t mention it to my boss.
02.24.09
Milestones
Today’s my 26th birthday. You know how your parents and older colleagues always told you that at a certain point, birthdays don’t really matter? I thought that was ridiculous. It turns out they were right, and that certain point is 26.
There is something a bit different about this birthday though. I woke up alone. For the first time in my life I wasn’t living with my parents or a boyfriend. Or, um, a husband. I don’t know why this was surprising for me. I live alone. I like it that way, and I’ve been doing it for almost a year.
I guess I’m still having a hard time with these milestone moments. The holidays and apparently birthdays are still a bit strange solo.
02.18.09
Annoyed
I don’t think I fully realized how immersed in living I alone I truly was til boyfriend came to visit. For nine days. NINE.
Cause boyfriend brought stuff. And it’s not really everywhere (because he’s ocd like that) but it’s some places. My shower looks like an aisle of Rite Aid. He left his socks on the couch. My fridge is full to bursting because he needs different lunch meats than I do and he needs half and half while I need skim. Horror of all horrors, there is also a office chair of ex-husband proportions in my formally pretty, feminine office because boyfriend needs it for his back.
Let’s just say that if we make it through this week I’m still strongly considering taking cohabitation off the table.
02.10.09
The Waiting Game
I’m impatient. Like in general. I’m terrible at waiting. I don’t sit still well. I take bikram competitively. I’m a doer, and I hate being out of control of anything.
These are really admirable qualities, I know.
But right now I feel like I’m waiting on just about everything. I’m waiting for M to get here on Friday. I’m waiting to hear from all of my other schools. Waiting to find out where I’m going to be this summer and this fall and the three years following. Waiting to see how the rest of this crazy year turns out. And as I mentioned, I suck at this.
Thanks to online communities I’ve discovered that waiting for application decisions is not what it used to be. When I was admitted by snail mail early decision to Smith I hugged the mailman, and the envelope came on the exact day I expected it would. It turns out law schools and this age of electronic communication are a bit different. I remember that one friend received her college acceptance by email and our guidance counselor accused her of “making it up” and phoned the University directly to “report a hoax”.
My first acceptance and scholarship offer came by snail mail. I had assumed that everything would come by email, but it seems that about half my schools will send decisions by snail mail, others by email, and still others via the online status check website they provided. My applications are complete, and according to the status checkers in different stages of review.
Yes, I check these things about nine hundred times a day.
My Tulane status checker says “file is eligible for review”, which according to the forums means that in about three weeks it will say “file is being reviewed” and then a week after that I should hear by hard copy. Dear Tulane, PLEASE send me one of those big packages with the tote bag everyone is talking about– I promise I really want to go! I will not be one of those students boasting about said tote bag but adding that I’d rather go to GW online! UGA says my file is being reviewed, but I have no idea how they notify. Hastings told me my file was complete on the 23rd, but many accepted students were complete on the 23rd and received snail mail acceptances on February 2nd which doesn’t bode well for me. Loyola says I’m complete but nothing else.
This is too much information. And it just makes the waiting game that much worse… and confusing.
02.09.09
100 posts
and one acceptance letter to law school brings us to today.
Apparently I missed the memo that they still mail some of these in hard copies. Good thing I didn’t just put the whole pile into the circular file like I usually do…
ps- yay!
02.03.09
Meatballs
There are some things that really test a young relationship. The first big fight, the first night you spend together but don’t have sex, drafting sides of the bed, figuring out if you really like one another’s friends or if you’re just being nice, etc etc etc.
And then there’s the ultimate new dating test. Can you outfit an entire 1,700 square foot condo from top to bottom in one weekend? And above and beyond that, can you do it Ikea style?
Boyfriend finally moved on Friday morning and I flew in Friday night. M’s been talking about getting his own place since our first conversation 18 months ago in which he mentioned he was staying with his best friend until he got settled. Between his room at his friend’s and his trips to Louisiana his guestroom tour of 2008 far exceeded my own. On the upside he didn’t pay rent for a year and a half. On the downside? He had two items to furnish an apartment with, and one of them was his clothing collection and the other was a mattress.
After my own nightmare Ikea experience this spring (which ended up involving a u-haul, twelve hours, one rent-a-husband, and a very sweet friend) I knew we weren’t going to be able to “just run up (two hours) to Orlando to Ikea”. I packed snacks. We made lists. I tried to emotionally and mentally prepare for what would happen when we finally hit the road at noon, and I settled in for a long day. M seemed completely at ease, and kept asking why I was telling everyone I knew that we would be having our first major fight in a Swedish furniture store.
He got it when we arrived. When we navigated the mapped layout with pencils and lists and cinnamon buns. He got it when small children used their frozen yogurts as swords in the living room section and when he realized he had to pick between dark brown and black-brown and he’s color-blind. He definitely got it when I snottily replied that he needed to JUST COMMIT to a desk because WE’RE ONLY IN THE FIRST SQUARE OF THE FLOOR MAP and there’s not going to be ENOUGH DAYLIGHT HOURS IF WE DO IT LIKE THIS.
Then we had some quiet time. And a snack.
We kept going. Four flat carts worth. Thousands of dollars. More pounds of furniture than two people should ever attempt to lift. One call to American Express to notify them that yes, he was the person attempting to save the economy with these purchases. Or at least the Swedish economy.
We didn’t get back to the condo until 8pm, and made only a short appearance at that house party where I proceeded to get drunk off of a red wine and mint brownie combination. At midnight I apparently told him that if he got me a snack and brought it back to bed he could raise the kids Jewish. Which sort of explains the cliff bar wrapper I found on my pillow the next morning and that look in his eyes.
But, amazingly, we did not fight. We judged others together (having a common hobby is important), and we got a little cranky but we made it. It was, well, almost fun.
And I flew back home after only having to put together a dresser and a bed with him, leaving him alone in a sea of flat-pack boxes.
