It isn't until I pay my bills (almost all of them online now, by the way) that I realize how frustrated I am with this whole "job hunting every day" thing.
Don't get me wrong -- I do enjoy my downtime, and I enjoy it a lot, but downtime doesn't replenish my/our money on a day to day basis. I applied for a few more jobs today, all of them full-time positions, and (finally) created an account on Indeed, which has been helpful...but it's getting really tiring and repetitive, and it feels like I'm doing the same stuff every day for some new company or firm or university with little kickback or recognition.
Daisy knows how much I do, both in regards to being at home and in the job search, as she's been job searching as well -- she's trying to get into something better than her current situation. Money is money, but there are many other jobs out there which would be way less stressful on her than her current one and would pay comparably or more -- many of which I'm applying for as well.
Anyway.
I paid my Discover bill online tonight. In another week or so I'll have to pay the cable bill, and I'll get my newest statements for my other cards. This weekend we'll have to pay the rent with the paycheck Daisy got yesterday, and then after that the water/trash/gas/sewer bill must be paid...along with Daisy's own monthly bills for stuff like her own credit cards, cell phone, her car insurance, etc etc. It's not like we're independently wealthy, you know. We're going to be hurting and/or playing catch-up soon enough unless one or both of us has a job down the pipeline that will make us completely financially stable.
In the overnight hours of the nights Daisy works, I've found myself actually getting a remarkable number of things done. It's not just all job applications and cleaning/household upkeep. Tonight, for example, I filled out and mailed four Thank-You notes (the only four I had left and ready-to-go) to friends and family, all of them back home. I then went on Amazon and ordered a 100-pack box of new Thank-You notes, with envelopes, because we'll need them for the rest of the gifts and cards people have sent us for the wedding.
Interestingly enough, more gifts have been coming in, and more will continue to trickle in over the next several weeks, I'll imagine. For example, we apparently have two packages waiting on us at the parents' place right now, one of them being a gift from one of my friends back home (I don't know what the other one is). Several other folks, including my brother, have told me they're sending us stuff as well. At some point.
Again, I never ask anything of anyone. I've made it a point to tell everyone who has asked that it's not necessary that they do anything for us; we're lucky and blessed enough as it is, and it's really the thought and intention that counts anyhow. I don't want anyone to go out of their way for us; we didn't get married for the gifts, after all. Still, I have complied (out of courtesy and love) and have given our new address to friends and family both near and far who want to do something for us.
Monday, June 30, 2014
Saturday, June 28, 2014
The Long Way Home, Part III
Desperate times call for creative measures, I suppose.
Let me explain.
Daisy and I are currently okay financially. We're not great, but for the moment we're doing fine. She has a job that pays much more than I've ever made in any position I've ever worked before (more than double what I made, yearly, as a professor), and that's good -- but both of us have bills, of course, not just her. While there are few things in my name and my name alone here in our new place in Omaha (I think our internet account being perhaps the only thing that's completely in my name), it's not all I personally have to worry about -- I have my credit cards that I slowly have to pay down every month, and I try to cover as many other expenses as I possibly can when I can.
The fact remains, however, that it's not like this is a lifestyle that can continue indefinitely. I had a finite amount of savings, a finite amount of use-able money that didn't involve credit cards or anything else of that ilk after I moved out of my old place in Newton in May, and now that it's almost July, most of that money is gone. After I pay this next month's cable bill and the minimum payment on my Discover card bill, about half of what's left now will be gone...and it's not like it's going to get any easier until I can secure some form of stable employment and we can become a full two-income household.
I told Daisy a few nights ago when we were sitting on the porch that I have experienced the same sort of situation every time I've made a move somewhere new, especially an out-of-state move -- I don't exactly have any really marketable skills save for teaching and writing (and, I suppose, teaching writing), and every time I enter a new environment I have a really rough time finding employment someplace. My Master's degree didn't help with that, though it does look nice on a resume or CV -- I haven't done anything but write and teach for the past five years, and good luck trying to find even an adjunct teaching position here in Omaha for English, because they don't exist. It's nigh-impossible, even in a city this large with a ton of industry and employment available, to find something I can actually do or something I could be hired to do.
Well, let me clarify -- if I wanted to work in fast food or as a barista somewhere, I could do that tomorrow -- but that's not going to be something that Daisy and I can depend on for sustainable money, and it's certainly not a career. Daisy has a sustainable, stable job that may not be fun and games, but her schedule isn't too bad and it allows her to pay the bills. She didn't get it from her degree, but from her experience working similar jobs, and she's working her way up the corporate ladder in the company slowly but surely. If I'm not going to be paid to write or to teach, I need to find something similar to her job with similar pay, soon, period. Do I necessarily want to work a job like hers? No, but I can do it. And it wouldn't kill me. And it would make me more money per year than I've ever made before in my life without manual labor or fry-cooking being involved. So that's where I stand right now.
To those ends, of course, it's not like I haven't been trying. Over the course of the past month since we've been married, and basically since before I've been living here in Omaha as well, I have applied for over 100 positions. That count went up by ten more last night as well. What have I gotten out of it thus far?
One questionnaire "interview," one in-person interview, and one call for a phone interview on Tuesday morning.
That's it.
As you folks know, the former two were at Daisy's company, for doing the same job she started out doing there about eighteen months ago (roughly, anyway). I went in, I had a questionnaire session, and the next day I had what I would describe as a good in-person interview with one of their management staff. And then nothing. I waited a week before I sent an email to the recruiter -- the same one who had basically begged me to apply and come in for an interview before I moved up here, and the one who had scheduled these interviews -- and asked when I would hear back about something. He never replied. Meanwhile, two more people were hired for Daisy's shift basically sight unseen, even though Daisy is a manager, has some "pull" there (not much, but some) and all of the other managers on her shift know that her husband -- me -- has applied and interviewed there. Still nothing. Today I got another email from the same recruiter that was another "job fair" email, saying they're doing the same thing I went through with the questionnaire session again on Monday...yet he can't answer my question of when I should hear something back, and I've still never heard something back. This leads me to believe that I wasn't chosen to be hired for any position there, and that they don't care enough to tell the people who aren't hired that they haven't been selected.
I'm not going back down there and doing the same bullshit again for the same position when I've already filled out their questionnaire and have already interviewed for it. If they can't get back to me, that's on them -- not on me. I've already jumped through their hoops before.
"You should call and ask, babe," Daisy said.
"I've already emailed [recruiter] about it and he apparently ignored it, since I never got any sort of reply from him."
"Part of the job is being pushy."
While that may be the case, it's not like there's much else I can do on my end. About the most I could do would be to send him another email and say that I've already done that and would like to hear an update on the status of my application/interview; Daisy says to call him, but there's really no point in doing that unless I'm trying to piss him off by bugging him. If I get no response? Fine then -- they lose a potentially great employee, and I move on and basically give the company the finger. My patience for being jerked around and ignored only goes so far, and I have many other applications in at many other places...such as the university up here, who has scheduled a 30-minute phone interview with me on Tuesday morning.
Well, they will schedule an interview with me. It's between two times, 10:45 or 11:30; the lady who called me said to pick one, and I told her whichever one is better for her -- I'd be available regardless.
The position at the university here is recruitment counseling/campus visits or something like that. It's also a temporary position, from what I've been told -- so don't get too excited. But, even in a temporary position it may make me eligible for internal-hire-only jobs at the university, it's better than nothing, and it tells me that the university is finally processing the applications I put in and I should be getting more calls soon for said applications. Most of the jobs I've applied for at the university here are between $31k and $39k per year, and all of them are full time except for this temp job -- which may be full time while I would work it, but the position ends in December. Even that is $13.50 an hour, though. And $13.50 an hour is a hell of a lot better than I'm currently pulling in...which is nothing. If I get it, I mean.
In my job searching I not only have those applications in, but I've put in apps at our bank as well; our bank seems to be a pretty nice place, and while I don't necessarily want to work in a bank, it is really close to the house and it would probably pay comparably to the salaries I listed above. And, well, I could do the work. Our bank is one of many banks in Omaha (obviously), and I plan to apply at a lot of them. It just takes time, that's all. Banks were my go-to when I lived in Missouri and was looking for work anywhere but the grocery store where I was then currently employed. I interviewed in at least two or three banks there when I lived there. I didn't get hired, but then again, I was younger, it was the Bush-era "great recession" when banks were failing left and right, and I didn't have a Master's degree then, either.
Overall, I'm optimistic. At least I'm beginning to get calls -- which is good. When I get some positive reinforcement on my efforts -- like, ahem, people actually noticing that I've applied and that I'm qualified to do all sorts of shit, thus making them call me -- it motivates me even more to keep moving forward and applying for new things. I'm averaging about 5-10 applications a night when I take the time to sit down, look through postings, and actually fill them all out.
As for everything else going on in life? Well, it's pretty normal, I suppose. At least this new normal that comes with being married.
I take care of almost all of the household chores -- cleaning, vacuuming, the cat box, the laundry, and I even do most of the dishes. Daisy's mother bought her a bread machine for her birthday, and for two of the past three nights, I've made a loaf of bread in it, trying to test out new recipes for us. I'll even ask Daisy what she would like to eat so that I can make it and have it done for her in the middle of the night when she comes home on her lunch hour -- which has become, at least on her work nights, our "family dinner" together. I don't mind doing these things, of course. They're all the things I did when I lived alone before I was married, and none of that has changed or will change even when I get a new job. It's important to me and makes me feel like I'm contributing something to the household.
Tomorrow night is the last night Daisy works for the week, and she got paid tonight. We already have plans for her days off this time around. For one, we have to pay the rent for July, since it's due on the first (Tuesday). On Sunday, we're more than likely making our customary trip over to the parents' for family time and dinner. On Monday, we're spending the day cleaning this house -- actually going through the boxes and bags of things left over from the move, including all of the wedding gifts and bridal shower gifts, and we're re-organizing everything so that it has its place. On Tuesday? Well, in the morning I have my phone interview, which I'll have to do on Daisy's phone (since mine gets basically zero signal in Omaha), and she has dinner plans with one of her friends she hasn't seen since the wedding. Then, again, she goes back to work.
For the entire weekend we're basically under fire, however -- The Weather Channel is calling for severe storms from now until Monday night, with all of them set to start in a few hours' time. We've had some storms and rain off and on almost every day for the past week or so, which is a delightful change from the "110 degrees and no rain every day for 3.5 months" summers of south-central Kansas which I'd (sadly) gotten used to in recent years. I don't have to deal with that anymore and I can't say I'll miss those days -- we have a good air conditioner here and Daisy sets the thermostat anywhere between 68 and 70 at all times. Yes, it is hot when I go outside to smoke sometimes, but when I'm done, thankfully I can walk back inside to the comparably arctic air of our home.
The cats have adjusted really well to their new home as well; they have their favorite sleeping spots and places to lounge, and they have barely fought at all here (compared to their near-constant fighting, hissing, and growling at one another before). Pete loves to lay on the bar table in our kitchen, and if he's not there it's on the couch where we have some quilts. The girls, especially Sadie, have warmed up well to Daisy -- Sadie loves to jump up on Daisy's lap now and go to sleep, purring until she does. Sadie has also been proclaimed to be Daisy's "favorite cat," an honor which I always thought would go to Pete (since he's the most social and most active).
Almost a month on after the wedding, I suppose everything is finally reaching an even keel of what can be assumed is normality. As I've written here before, we've slowly gotten there, settling into what appears to be a normal routine of daily activities, tasks, discussions, work, and sleep. This will, of course, change as time goes on -- it'll change dramatically once I get a job, no matter what hours/days I work -- but it's primarily a comfortability thing right now. We know what it's like to be comfortable with one another, we each always know where the other is both mentally and physically, and we've worked ourselves into a nice little post-nuptials daily groove.
On that note? I'm going to get some breakfast and go to bed, as the sun has been up for nearly an hour now, and I have no other plans for the day except to get up and continue job hunting and chore-doing.
Let me explain.
Daisy and I are currently okay financially. We're not great, but for the moment we're doing fine. She has a job that pays much more than I've ever made in any position I've ever worked before (more than double what I made, yearly, as a professor), and that's good -- but both of us have bills, of course, not just her. While there are few things in my name and my name alone here in our new place in Omaha (I think our internet account being perhaps the only thing that's completely in my name), it's not all I personally have to worry about -- I have my credit cards that I slowly have to pay down every month, and I try to cover as many other expenses as I possibly can when I can.
The fact remains, however, that it's not like this is a lifestyle that can continue indefinitely. I had a finite amount of savings, a finite amount of use-able money that didn't involve credit cards or anything else of that ilk after I moved out of my old place in Newton in May, and now that it's almost July, most of that money is gone. After I pay this next month's cable bill and the minimum payment on my Discover card bill, about half of what's left now will be gone...and it's not like it's going to get any easier until I can secure some form of stable employment and we can become a full two-income household.
I told Daisy a few nights ago when we were sitting on the porch that I have experienced the same sort of situation every time I've made a move somewhere new, especially an out-of-state move -- I don't exactly have any really marketable skills save for teaching and writing (and, I suppose, teaching writing), and every time I enter a new environment I have a really rough time finding employment someplace. My Master's degree didn't help with that, though it does look nice on a resume or CV -- I haven't done anything but write and teach for the past five years, and good luck trying to find even an adjunct teaching position here in Omaha for English, because they don't exist. It's nigh-impossible, even in a city this large with a ton of industry and employment available, to find something I can actually do or something I could be hired to do.
Well, let me clarify -- if I wanted to work in fast food or as a barista somewhere, I could do that tomorrow -- but that's not going to be something that Daisy and I can depend on for sustainable money, and it's certainly not a career. Daisy has a sustainable, stable job that may not be fun and games, but her schedule isn't too bad and it allows her to pay the bills. She didn't get it from her degree, but from her experience working similar jobs, and she's working her way up the corporate ladder in the company slowly but surely. If I'm not going to be paid to write or to teach, I need to find something similar to her job with similar pay, soon, period. Do I necessarily want to work a job like hers? No, but I can do it. And it wouldn't kill me. And it would make me more money per year than I've ever made before in my life without manual labor or fry-cooking being involved. So that's where I stand right now.
To those ends, of course, it's not like I haven't been trying. Over the course of the past month since we've been married, and basically since before I've been living here in Omaha as well, I have applied for over 100 positions. That count went up by ten more last night as well. What have I gotten out of it thus far?
One questionnaire "interview," one in-person interview, and one call for a phone interview on Tuesday morning.
That's it.
As you folks know, the former two were at Daisy's company, for doing the same job she started out doing there about eighteen months ago (roughly, anyway). I went in, I had a questionnaire session, and the next day I had what I would describe as a good in-person interview with one of their management staff. And then nothing. I waited a week before I sent an email to the recruiter -- the same one who had basically begged me to apply and come in for an interview before I moved up here, and the one who had scheduled these interviews -- and asked when I would hear back about something. He never replied. Meanwhile, two more people were hired for Daisy's shift basically sight unseen, even though Daisy is a manager, has some "pull" there (not much, but some) and all of the other managers on her shift know that her husband -- me -- has applied and interviewed there. Still nothing. Today I got another email from the same recruiter that was another "job fair" email, saying they're doing the same thing I went through with the questionnaire session again on Monday...yet he can't answer my question of when I should hear something back, and I've still never heard something back. This leads me to believe that I wasn't chosen to be hired for any position there, and that they don't care enough to tell the people who aren't hired that they haven't been selected.
I'm not going back down there and doing the same bullshit again for the same position when I've already filled out their questionnaire and have already interviewed for it. If they can't get back to me, that's on them -- not on me. I've already jumped through their hoops before.
"You should call and ask, babe," Daisy said.
"I've already emailed [recruiter] about it and he apparently ignored it, since I never got any sort of reply from him."
"Part of the job is being pushy."
While that may be the case, it's not like there's much else I can do on my end. About the most I could do would be to send him another email and say that I've already done that and would like to hear an update on the status of my application/interview; Daisy says to call him, but there's really no point in doing that unless I'm trying to piss him off by bugging him. If I get no response? Fine then -- they lose a potentially great employee, and I move on and basically give the company the finger. My patience for being jerked around and ignored only goes so far, and I have many other applications in at many other places...such as the university up here, who has scheduled a 30-minute phone interview with me on Tuesday morning.
Well, they will schedule an interview with me. It's between two times, 10:45 or 11:30; the lady who called me said to pick one, and I told her whichever one is better for her -- I'd be available regardless.
The position at the university here is recruitment counseling/campus visits or something like that. It's also a temporary position, from what I've been told -- so don't get too excited. But, even in a temporary position it may make me eligible for internal-hire-only jobs at the university, it's better than nothing, and it tells me that the university is finally processing the applications I put in and I should be getting more calls soon for said applications. Most of the jobs I've applied for at the university here are between $31k and $39k per year, and all of them are full time except for this temp job -- which may be full time while I would work it, but the position ends in December. Even that is $13.50 an hour, though. And $13.50 an hour is a hell of a lot better than I'm currently pulling in...which is nothing. If I get it, I mean.
In my job searching I not only have those applications in, but I've put in apps at our bank as well; our bank seems to be a pretty nice place, and while I don't necessarily want to work in a bank, it is really close to the house and it would probably pay comparably to the salaries I listed above. And, well, I could do the work. Our bank is one of many banks in Omaha (obviously), and I plan to apply at a lot of them. It just takes time, that's all. Banks were my go-to when I lived in Missouri and was looking for work anywhere but the grocery store where I was then currently employed. I interviewed in at least two or three banks there when I lived there. I didn't get hired, but then again, I was younger, it was the Bush-era "great recession" when banks were failing left and right, and I didn't have a Master's degree then, either.
Overall, I'm optimistic. At least I'm beginning to get calls -- which is good. When I get some positive reinforcement on my efforts -- like, ahem, people actually noticing that I've applied and that I'm qualified to do all sorts of shit, thus making them call me -- it motivates me even more to keep moving forward and applying for new things. I'm averaging about 5-10 applications a night when I take the time to sit down, look through postings, and actually fill them all out.
As for everything else going on in life? Well, it's pretty normal, I suppose. At least this new normal that comes with being married.
I take care of almost all of the household chores -- cleaning, vacuuming, the cat box, the laundry, and I even do most of the dishes. Daisy's mother bought her a bread machine for her birthday, and for two of the past three nights, I've made a loaf of bread in it, trying to test out new recipes for us. I'll even ask Daisy what she would like to eat so that I can make it and have it done for her in the middle of the night when she comes home on her lunch hour -- which has become, at least on her work nights, our "family dinner" together. I don't mind doing these things, of course. They're all the things I did when I lived alone before I was married, and none of that has changed or will change even when I get a new job. It's important to me and makes me feel like I'm contributing something to the household.
Tomorrow night is the last night Daisy works for the week, and she got paid tonight. We already have plans for her days off this time around. For one, we have to pay the rent for July, since it's due on the first (Tuesday). On Sunday, we're more than likely making our customary trip over to the parents' for family time and dinner. On Monday, we're spending the day cleaning this house -- actually going through the boxes and bags of things left over from the move, including all of the wedding gifts and bridal shower gifts, and we're re-organizing everything so that it has its place. On Tuesday? Well, in the morning I have my phone interview, which I'll have to do on Daisy's phone (since mine gets basically zero signal in Omaha), and she has dinner plans with one of her friends she hasn't seen since the wedding. Then, again, she goes back to work.
For the entire weekend we're basically under fire, however -- The Weather Channel is calling for severe storms from now until Monday night, with all of them set to start in a few hours' time. We've had some storms and rain off and on almost every day for the past week or so, which is a delightful change from the "110 degrees and no rain every day for 3.5 months" summers of south-central Kansas which I'd (sadly) gotten used to in recent years. I don't have to deal with that anymore and I can't say I'll miss those days -- we have a good air conditioner here and Daisy sets the thermostat anywhere between 68 and 70 at all times. Yes, it is hot when I go outside to smoke sometimes, but when I'm done, thankfully I can walk back inside to the comparably arctic air of our home.
The cats have adjusted really well to their new home as well; they have their favorite sleeping spots and places to lounge, and they have barely fought at all here (compared to their near-constant fighting, hissing, and growling at one another before). Pete loves to lay on the bar table in our kitchen, and if he's not there it's on the couch where we have some quilts. The girls, especially Sadie, have warmed up well to Daisy -- Sadie loves to jump up on Daisy's lap now and go to sleep, purring until she does. Sadie has also been proclaimed to be Daisy's "favorite cat," an honor which I always thought would go to Pete (since he's the most social and most active).
Almost a month on after the wedding, I suppose everything is finally reaching an even keel of what can be assumed is normality. As I've written here before, we've slowly gotten there, settling into what appears to be a normal routine of daily activities, tasks, discussions, work, and sleep. This will, of course, change as time goes on -- it'll change dramatically once I get a job, no matter what hours/days I work -- but it's primarily a comfortability thing right now. We know what it's like to be comfortable with one another, we each always know where the other is both mentally and physically, and we've worked ourselves into a nice little post-nuptials daily groove.
On that note? I'm going to get some breakfast and go to bed, as the sun has been up for nearly an hour now, and I have no other plans for the day except to get up and continue job hunting and chore-doing.
The Long Way Home, Part II: The Sedentary Soul
Anyone who says being in a relationship, especially a marriage, is easy and/or without work -- they're lying. Seriously lying. Or they're delusional and see things through rose-colored glasses only. Daisy and I are happily married, yes, but a happy marriage, or a happy relationship in general, doesn't magically happen without work, patience, love, and compromise.
Compromise is especially key, and it's something I've been learning more and more since I've been married. Those of you who know me well already know that I am a pretty stubborn person set in my ways. I am very much like an old crotchety man, and always have been. I know that there are things I am inflexible on, things that I need to work on, things I do that really irritate Daisy. She has things she does that irritate me as well, of course, but not nearly as many as I have and do. If that makes sense.
I also have made no secret of the fact that I am very much a homebody -- I don't leave the house except when absolutely necessary, because I have no desire to do so. This was true even when I lived in Kansas, of course -- I went out to get groceries about once a week, and I went to and from campus (or both campuses, on some days) when I had to, in order to teach and/or otherwise perform my job....and that's it. I'd return home and I would stay there until I was forced to leave the house again. The only time I ever did anything else was when Daisy came down to visit and we went to see a movie. I am very much a social hermit. I don't really like people or social situations, even with people I love and adore, such as friends and family. When in those situations, I tend to drift off and start thinking things like if only I hadn't gone out tonight, I could have sat on the couch and watched Netflix, or I could've taken a nap, or I could be dicking around on the computer. This is, more than likely, the exact opposite of what most people would think in a situation like that. Most people would think wow, I'm glad I came out tonight instead of just lounging about on the couch, and I'm so not like that. In fact, a life of lounging about on the couch, watching Netflix, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes, and near-constantly dicking around on the computer during all other free hours is my absolute ideal. I mean, shit, that's all I want out of life. If I could find some way to get paid for doing that, I'd never have to leave the house again.
While Daisy shares some of those traits with me (namely needing some at-home time and not really liking social situations and people that much) she shares them to a much lesser degree, and at some times she is nearly my exact opposite on some of these things. For example, she goes out about once a week, dancing or to a bar, with one friend or another -- and I don't mind this. I support it. I know she needs some downtime, I know she needs to spend some time with friends (all of whom I like, and most of whom read this blog), and I have never had -- nor will I ever have -- a problem with that. Go out, babe. Live a little. You're still in your twenties; you deserve some fun nights out. I want her to be able to do as she pleases, because I trust her and love her. Also, at this point (together for two years, and now married) she knows my barometer on a lot of social situations, though not on all of them. Translation: if she thinks I'd be interested in doing something together with her and our friends, she'll invite me along so that I feel included. I will almost always say no, and she understands that, because (again) most of the time I'm not social.
However, and here's where the word compromise comes in, lately I've been saying no to everything. It's not exactly a conscious thing, but it's not exactly an unconscious thing either -- I told her yesterday that it has always been, and most of the time will always be, my default answer when she asks me if I want to go out and do something. To a certain extent, that's just how I'm wired. And really, that's a bad thing when it comes to, y'know, creating a successful marriage. It's something that I don't necessarily think is normal or natural. Yes, men, you do have to give in sometimes and say yes to your wife when it comes to an activity or event that she wants to do, even if you don't want to do it. My problem is that is something that is incredibly hard for me to do.
Look, as I said, I realize this is a problem. And Daisy and I have discussed it at length. It's incredibly hard for me because I'm not used to it. At all. I'm not used to being pulled in different directions for activities and events, some of which are just sprung on me with little or no notice. I'm not used to having someone around who constantly wants me to go out and do things on their terms and on their schedule -- I'm just not. I'm used to being the one in control, the one who says what I'm doing, when, and how. And, as you know, not only do I not do much, but I don't like to do much. I mentioned in a previous post about how my dream, once I was married, was to be able to spend time at home with my wife, doing nothing but spending time with her -- nothing but the two of us and whatever we wanted to do. A constant staycation, so to speak. There are few things I'd rather do with Daisy than curl up together under a quilt on the couch with the cats, eat junk food, and watch Netflix. Like, every night. I am a sedentary soul. I am a homebody. I am a hermit, both physically and socially.
And it's gotten worse, really, over the course of the past month. Some of it, of course, is depression-based. I love Daisy and I am incredibly happy with her (I wouldn't have married her otherwise, obviously), but I am incredibly frustrated and depressed with the rest of my life and the rest of the outside world. I have a little more than $230 to my name until I get a job, and most of that will be gone within the next few weeks as several of my bills come due. Of the jobs I've applied for since moving to Omaha -- about 100 of them in the past month, no lie or exaggeration there -- I have gotten two interviews and one callback (more on that later). And that's it. The job boards for things I can actually do are really sparse and/or there's nothing open. None of the many jobs I've applied for and can do will get back to me, and many of them are probably dummy postings for positions at companies which have already been filled internally. I'm not saying these are excuses for why I seem so inflexible on things with Daisy, but it certainly doesn't make we want to get up and dance or go out on adventures or errands/activities with her (as all of those things cost money). When I'm unhappy I apparently create this vortex of depression, and anyone caught within its grasp gets slowly dragged down with me. Daisy is my wife. I don't want that to happen to her. I don't want to bring her down just because I'm not exactly having the best time in my life right now. And yet, at times, that seems to be what I'm doing.
So, I have to learn to compromise more. I have to learn to say yes sometimes, say yes to my wife even if I don't want to, because in doing so I will make her happy. I have to learn to not let my own feelings, my own thoughts, depressions, and former "living alone as a hermit in control of everything" lifestyle and habits control everything I think and do. And like I said, it's difficult for me. It's difficult for me to no longer be in charge, to now have to do things with and for someone else. As I told Daisy, it's something that we both have to get used to. We didn't live together before we were married (well, we did, but for about a week and a half). We don't fully know each others' behaviors and quirks -- those little things that happen behind-the-scenes of normal life. Yes, there's shit we both do that irritates the hell out of the other, shit neither of us knew about before we were married. It's not bad things or big things, but everything takes getting used to. There is a learning curve about living in the same space and cohabiting with another person, and that learning curve is larger when that person is your spouse. When that person's your spouse, you have to accept what they do and how they feel, and how what you do makes them feel. You must compromise on some things, if not a lot of things.
I'm just now learning this, obviously. I've never been married before. And while I did live with my ex for five years of our almost seven-year relationship -- so I do have a little experience with this sort of thing -- we were more like roommates than anything else. Daisy has never lived with anyone but her parents, so it's an even larger learning curve for her to not have, say, her own bedroom anymore -- or even really any truly private space. It's as much of a change for her as it was for me to move here after living completely alone with the cats for three years, which shook up my own foundations and routines.
Like I said, it just takes time, patience, and compromise -- and a willingness to work on things and see issues or requests from the other person's perspective. We're still new at this whole marriage thing, after all. I think we're doing pretty well, despite some setbacks here and there. As always, communication is also key. Good communication is the backbone of any healthy relationship, and Daisy and I both try to foster good, effective communication between each other. It's not like we got married after a blind date or anything like that, you know -- it's just the new dynamic we have to work with. We're doing pretty well with it so far. If one of us has a problem or something is bugging us, we bring it up with the other and we discuss it calmly and rationally until we have a resolution. Daisy and I have always done that in our relationship, but those discussions tend to carry a little more weight now that we're husband and wife.
So, in summation -- no, being married is not easy, but that does not mean it's bad or not worth it. It's wonderful. I've never felt safer or more secure, more loved and cared about, than I do with Daisy, and I'm sure she feels the same way about me. But make no mistake, a marriage is constant work, constant maintenance...and that's a good thing. Without that work, maintenance, communication, and compromise, most marriages would fail. It's probably why many marriages do fail. There's nothing I keep from Daisy, nor is there anything I feel that would be taboo to bring up with her in conversation -- even if it's something that irritates me. Likewise, she is the same way with me. It's that communication that works really well, even if (at the time) the person being...ahem...told off doesn't really respond well to it (okay, the person being told off most of the time is me). I have to work on that, and my reactions to that, as well, but overall? I think we communicate a hell of a lot better than other couples do, or at least from what I've seen, anyway.
Compromise is especially key, and it's something I've been learning more and more since I've been married. Those of you who know me well already know that I am a pretty stubborn person set in my ways. I am very much like an old crotchety man, and always have been. I know that there are things I am inflexible on, things that I need to work on, things I do that really irritate Daisy. She has things she does that irritate me as well, of course, but not nearly as many as I have and do. If that makes sense.
I also have made no secret of the fact that I am very much a homebody -- I don't leave the house except when absolutely necessary, because I have no desire to do so. This was true even when I lived in Kansas, of course -- I went out to get groceries about once a week, and I went to and from campus (or both campuses, on some days) when I had to, in order to teach and/or otherwise perform my job....and that's it. I'd return home and I would stay there until I was forced to leave the house again. The only time I ever did anything else was when Daisy came down to visit and we went to see a movie. I am very much a social hermit. I don't really like people or social situations, even with people I love and adore, such as friends and family. When in those situations, I tend to drift off and start thinking things like if only I hadn't gone out tonight, I could have sat on the couch and watched Netflix, or I could've taken a nap, or I could be dicking around on the computer. This is, more than likely, the exact opposite of what most people would think in a situation like that. Most people would think wow, I'm glad I came out tonight instead of just lounging about on the couch, and I'm so not like that. In fact, a life of lounging about on the couch, watching Netflix, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes, and near-constantly dicking around on the computer during all other free hours is my absolute ideal. I mean, shit, that's all I want out of life. If I could find some way to get paid for doing that, I'd never have to leave the house again.
While Daisy shares some of those traits with me (namely needing some at-home time and not really liking social situations and people that much) she shares them to a much lesser degree, and at some times she is nearly my exact opposite on some of these things. For example, she goes out about once a week, dancing or to a bar, with one friend or another -- and I don't mind this. I support it. I know she needs some downtime, I know she needs to spend some time with friends (all of whom I like, and most of whom read this blog), and I have never had -- nor will I ever have -- a problem with that. Go out, babe. Live a little. You're still in your twenties; you deserve some fun nights out. I want her to be able to do as she pleases, because I trust her and love her. Also, at this point (together for two years, and now married) she knows my barometer on a lot of social situations, though not on all of them. Translation: if she thinks I'd be interested in doing something together with her and our friends, she'll invite me along so that I feel included. I will almost always say no, and she understands that, because (again) most of the time I'm not social.
However, and here's where the word compromise comes in, lately I've been saying no to everything. It's not exactly a conscious thing, but it's not exactly an unconscious thing either -- I told her yesterday that it has always been, and most of the time will always be, my default answer when she asks me if I want to go out and do something. To a certain extent, that's just how I'm wired. And really, that's a bad thing when it comes to, y'know, creating a successful marriage. It's something that I don't necessarily think is normal or natural. Yes, men, you do have to give in sometimes and say yes to your wife when it comes to an activity or event that she wants to do, even if you don't want to do it. My problem is that is something that is incredibly hard for me to do.
Look, as I said, I realize this is a problem. And Daisy and I have discussed it at length. It's incredibly hard for me because I'm not used to it. At all. I'm not used to being pulled in different directions for activities and events, some of which are just sprung on me with little or no notice. I'm not used to having someone around who constantly wants me to go out and do things on their terms and on their schedule -- I'm just not. I'm used to being the one in control, the one who says what I'm doing, when, and how. And, as you know, not only do I not do much, but I don't like to do much. I mentioned in a previous post about how my dream, once I was married, was to be able to spend time at home with my wife, doing nothing but spending time with her -- nothing but the two of us and whatever we wanted to do. A constant staycation, so to speak. There are few things I'd rather do with Daisy than curl up together under a quilt on the couch with the cats, eat junk food, and watch Netflix. Like, every night. I am a sedentary soul. I am a homebody. I am a hermit, both physically and socially.
And it's gotten worse, really, over the course of the past month. Some of it, of course, is depression-based. I love Daisy and I am incredibly happy with her (I wouldn't have married her otherwise, obviously), but I am incredibly frustrated and depressed with the rest of my life and the rest of the outside world. I have a little more than $230 to my name until I get a job, and most of that will be gone within the next few weeks as several of my bills come due. Of the jobs I've applied for since moving to Omaha -- about 100 of them in the past month, no lie or exaggeration there -- I have gotten two interviews and one callback (more on that later). And that's it. The job boards for things I can actually do are really sparse and/or there's nothing open. None of the many jobs I've applied for and can do will get back to me, and many of them are probably dummy postings for positions at companies which have already been filled internally. I'm not saying these are excuses for why I seem so inflexible on things with Daisy, but it certainly doesn't make we want to get up and dance or go out on adventures or errands/activities with her (as all of those things cost money). When I'm unhappy I apparently create this vortex of depression, and anyone caught within its grasp gets slowly dragged down with me. Daisy is my wife. I don't want that to happen to her. I don't want to bring her down just because I'm not exactly having the best time in my life right now. And yet, at times, that seems to be what I'm doing.
So, I have to learn to compromise more. I have to learn to say yes sometimes, say yes to my wife even if I don't want to, because in doing so I will make her happy. I have to learn to not let my own feelings, my own thoughts, depressions, and former "living alone as a hermit in control of everything" lifestyle and habits control everything I think and do. And like I said, it's difficult for me. It's difficult for me to no longer be in charge, to now have to do things with and for someone else. As I told Daisy, it's something that we both have to get used to. We didn't live together before we were married (well, we did, but for about a week and a half). We don't fully know each others' behaviors and quirks -- those little things that happen behind-the-scenes of normal life. Yes, there's shit we both do that irritates the hell out of the other, shit neither of us knew about before we were married. It's not bad things or big things, but everything takes getting used to. There is a learning curve about living in the same space and cohabiting with another person, and that learning curve is larger when that person is your spouse. When that person's your spouse, you have to accept what they do and how they feel, and how what you do makes them feel. You must compromise on some things, if not a lot of things.
I'm just now learning this, obviously. I've never been married before. And while I did live with my ex for five years of our almost seven-year relationship -- so I do have a little experience with this sort of thing -- we were more like roommates than anything else. Daisy has never lived with anyone but her parents, so it's an even larger learning curve for her to not have, say, her own bedroom anymore -- or even really any truly private space. It's as much of a change for her as it was for me to move here after living completely alone with the cats for three years, which shook up my own foundations and routines.
Like I said, it just takes time, patience, and compromise -- and a willingness to work on things and see issues or requests from the other person's perspective. We're still new at this whole marriage thing, after all. I think we're doing pretty well, despite some setbacks here and there. As always, communication is also key. Good communication is the backbone of any healthy relationship, and Daisy and I both try to foster good, effective communication between each other. It's not like we got married after a blind date or anything like that, you know -- it's just the new dynamic we have to work with. We're doing pretty well with it so far. If one of us has a problem or something is bugging us, we bring it up with the other and we discuss it calmly and rationally until we have a resolution. Daisy and I have always done that in our relationship, but those discussions tend to carry a little more weight now that we're husband and wife.
So, in summation -- no, being married is not easy, but that does not mean it's bad or not worth it. It's wonderful. I've never felt safer or more secure, more loved and cared about, than I do with Daisy, and I'm sure she feels the same way about me. But make no mistake, a marriage is constant work, constant maintenance...and that's a good thing. Without that work, maintenance, communication, and compromise, most marriages would fail. It's probably why many marriages do fail. There's nothing I keep from Daisy, nor is there anything I feel that would be taboo to bring up with her in conversation -- even if it's something that irritates me. Likewise, she is the same way with me. It's that communication that works really well, even if (at the time) the person being...ahem...told off doesn't really respond well to it (okay, the person being told off most of the time is me). I have to work on that, and my reactions to that, as well, but overall? I think we communicate a hell of a lot better than other couples do, or at least from what I've seen, anyway.
Wednesday, June 25, 2014
The Long Way Home
I haven't written much as of late because...well, I don't really have anything to write. I mean, honestly. Nothing's really going on.
I mentioned in my last post that it's hard to keep my concentration here long enough to write when I'm out of my groove, my routine, and that it's something I'm going to have to get used to. There's that as well, but still, it's not like there's been anything interesting to report. I worked on that last post off and on for the better part of a week, and it still says virtually nothing.
As I type this, Daisy is out with her best friend (and maid of honor in the wedding) for a night on the town; today is the latter's birthday, and tomorrow is Daisy's birthday. I have a somewhat vague idea of where they are, and yes, I am slightly worried about them, but they're both adults and can take care of themselves. I told Daisy that I hope any man who may hit on her notices the wedding rings, and told her to remember she's married. Mostly in jest, of course -- as Mama says, Daisy is the most loyal person around, and that's true. I know that.
Daisy needs a night out; she barely gets to go out with friends anymore because she works nights and, well, because she's married now. Yeah, it's a totally different dynamic for her now than her college days were. Not that she was exactly a partier in college, or anything like that. Daisy is about as straitlaced as they come (well, most of the time, anyway). She's not a partier or a drinker. I've seen her tipsy -- not even drunk, but tipsy -- only once in the entire time we've been together, over two years now. It's not like any of that magically changes now that she's married. But she did take tonight off specifically so that she could go out, and specifically so that she could have a little fun, and I'm fine with that. I mean, shit, the woman's married to me of all people, one of the most sedentary, sit-at-home, buzzkill people on the planet. She deserves some fun. It is because of this that even though she's still not home at 3:30 AM (a full 90 minutes after she said she'd be getting back, and 90 minutes after the bars close) that I'm not messaging her or texting her asking if she's alive. I'm pretty sure if she were dead, she'd call.
That's a joke, people.
Ahem. Anyway.
We have no real plans for the day once she comes home, we go to bed, and then get up -- the only thing on the docket is for us to start unpacking and putting away stuff in earnest, stuff that we've needed to go through, sort, and organize for weeks now. That includes most of the wedding and bridal shower gifts, as well as setting up Daisy's bookcase and putting away the massive piles of clothes she has strewn about our master bedroom. I can't wait for this, actually -- messiness drives me crazy, and getting all of that stuff sorted out and put away will really ease my nerves a bit. I've always been a very organized person, and it may shock you to read that. It's true, though -- I have everything organized in its place so that I never have to worry about losing anything or misplacing anything vitally important. I put my keys, phone, wallet, and watch in the same place every day. My coffee mugs always go on the same shelves, my food in the same cabinets and drawers. My bills, paid and unpaid, are in inbox-and-outbox-like stacks where I can keep track of all of them, and I do. Daisy's organizational style is much different, as she (generally) is a much messier person. I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, but let's just say I hear the phrase "have you seen my phone?" or "where are my keys?" at least three to five times a week, and a house-wide hunt ensues until those things are found.
Me? Again, same place for all of that stuff. Always.
Tomorrow (Monday) for her birthday, we plan to go over to the parents' for dinner. Mama has made homemade pasta and sauce for Daisy's birthday dinner, and it'll be nice to see them and spend some time with them. We go to her parents' house frequently; they're but a five-minute drive away (ten if there's traffic) and it's nice to be able to see family, to have family that close. As you folks know, all of my family is 1,000 miles away from me in West Virginia, and I'm in contact with most of them -- including my parents -- sporadically at best most of the time. So yes, it's good to be able to go spend time with Daisy's parents, as for the past two years (and even more so now) they have functionally and practically been my parents as well.
[EDIT: she got home safely around 4AM.]
I mentioned in my last post that it's hard to keep my concentration here long enough to write when I'm out of my groove, my routine, and that it's something I'm going to have to get used to. There's that as well, but still, it's not like there's been anything interesting to report. I worked on that last post off and on for the better part of a week, and it still says virtually nothing.
As I type this, Daisy is out with her best friend (and maid of honor in the wedding) for a night on the town; today is the latter's birthday, and tomorrow is Daisy's birthday. I have a somewhat vague idea of where they are, and yes, I am slightly worried about them, but they're both adults and can take care of themselves. I told Daisy that I hope any man who may hit on her notices the wedding rings, and told her to remember she's married. Mostly in jest, of course -- as Mama says, Daisy is the most loyal person around, and that's true. I know that.
Daisy needs a night out; she barely gets to go out with friends anymore because she works nights and, well, because she's married now. Yeah, it's a totally different dynamic for her now than her college days were. Not that she was exactly a partier in college, or anything like that. Daisy is about as straitlaced as they come (well, most of the time, anyway). She's not a partier or a drinker. I've seen her tipsy -- not even drunk, but tipsy -- only once in the entire time we've been together, over two years now. It's not like any of that magically changes now that she's married. But she did take tonight off specifically so that she could go out, and specifically so that she could have a little fun, and I'm fine with that. I mean, shit, the woman's married to me of all people, one of the most sedentary, sit-at-home, buzzkill people on the planet. She deserves some fun. It is because of this that even though she's still not home at 3:30 AM (a full 90 minutes after she said she'd be getting back, and 90 minutes after the bars close) that I'm not messaging her or texting her asking if she's alive. I'm pretty sure if she were dead, she'd call.
That's a joke, people.
Ahem. Anyway.
We have no real plans for the day once she comes home, we go to bed, and then get up -- the only thing on the docket is for us to start unpacking and putting away stuff in earnest, stuff that we've needed to go through, sort, and organize for weeks now. That includes most of the wedding and bridal shower gifts, as well as setting up Daisy's bookcase and putting away the massive piles of clothes she has strewn about our master bedroom. I can't wait for this, actually -- messiness drives me crazy, and getting all of that stuff sorted out and put away will really ease my nerves a bit. I've always been a very organized person, and it may shock you to read that. It's true, though -- I have everything organized in its place so that I never have to worry about losing anything or misplacing anything vitally important. I put my keys, phone, wallet, and watch in the same place every day. My coffee mugs always go on the same shelves, my food in the same cabinets and drawers. My bills, paid and unpaid, are in inbox-and-outbox-like stacks where I can keep track of all of them, and I do. Daisy's organizational style is much different, as she (generally) is a much messier person. I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, but let's just say I hear the phrase "have you seen my phone?" or "where are my keys?" at least three to five times a week, and a house-wide hunt ensues until those things are found.
Me? Again, same place for all of that stuff. Always.
Tomorrow (Monday) for her birthday, we plan to go over to the parents' for dinner. Mama has made homemade pasta and sauce for Daisy's birthday dinner, and it'll be nice to see them and spend some time with them. We go to her parents' house frequently; they're but a five-minute drive away (ten if there's traffic) and it's nice to be able to see family, to have family that close. As you folks know, all of my family is 1,000 miles away from me in West Virginia, and I'm in contact with most of them -- including my parents -- sporadically at best most of the time. So yes, it's good to be able to go spend time with Daisy's parents, as for the past two years (and even more so now) they have functionally and practically been my parents as well.
[EDIT: she got home safely around 4AM.]
Sunday, June 22, 2014
The Wedding Aftermath, Part II
You know, they call getting married "settling down," and for me, that's really true. I am not an adventurous person. I am very settled down, so to speak -- not ramping up for new adventures. I'm old now, I'm tired; all I ever wanted to do was literally settle down at home with my wife and spend time together, at home, not going anywhere or doing anything unless we had to. Sure, we'd leave the house to go grocery shopping, visit the parents, or go to dinner and a movie on our "date nights," but I am so uninterested in most other "adventures." This whole "being married" thing is a massive adjustment to my life, as was the move up here a month ago, and it's an adjustment and life change that I am still getting used to. Mentally, I'm mostly there. Physically, I am not. I have never felt so tired or otherwise lethargic in my entire life. As mentioned before, since the wedding we've barely had any time to just relax. Almost every day there's a new task to take care of, an errand to run, things to go out and spend money on, or something to clean/wash/tidy/move/cook/etc. All of it thus far has just completely exhausted me. Those days of being alone in my home with my cats and very little, if anything, to do -- they're long gone. And on some level that's incredibly depressing to me. On another level, it's because I need that breathing space, that rest and relaxation, that I don't do anything I don't have to anymore. For example, Daisy and her mother went on a day trip to Kansas City earlier this week, and asked if I wanted to go with them. I declined.
I had reasons, of course; I don't like to travel, I don't like long drives when it's hot and sunny outside, and I don't want to return to Kansas or Missouri ever again if I can possibly avoid it. I also don't want to spend money, as I have relatively little of my own to spend -- and most of that has to go towards my monthly bills. So, Daisy and Mama turned it into a "girls' day out," so to speak -- they originally wanted to do an overnight trip, but seeing as hotel rooms were so expensive that they'd spend more on the hotel than on anything else, they opted for the day trip. In the meantime I Netflixed most of a season of That '70s Show and did all of the chores around the house before they returned home.
As mentioned previously, things are starting to wind down a bit and return to normal, though I've found that when you're married, "normal" is even more of a relative term than usual. As you know, Daisy works night shifts, and right now -- since the end of the semester about a month ago -- I'm not working. Well, not working per se, as I do take care of almost all of the around-the-house stuff. Yes, that's right, I've become the fabled house husband. For real. And for the moment, anyhow. I do all the laundry, I wash all the dishes, I take out the trash and clean the cat box. I clean the kitchen. I organize the bills and alert Daisy to them. I get the mail. I feed the cats and brush them to keep their shedding coats clean and light. I water the plants if they need it. I vacuum (sometimes). My point is that I try to keep the house in order as much as I can, because right now -- aside from applying for jobs -- that is my job. It's not like any of that stuff is going to change when I do get a job, because those are all things I do and want to do anyway, but while I can, I tend to spend a lot of time working on them because it keeps me busy and occupied.
However, there's so much more to do. Basically everything involving the wedding stuff has been pushed aside and put away for the moment, including the gifts for both the wedding and for Daisy's bridal shower. Almost three weeks later, I still have no clue what she got for her bridal shower, as most of it is in a pile of boxes and bags to be sorted through in the dining room. I have seen most, if not all, of the wedding gifts -- though they're in a similar pile next to me in here in the computer room. Daisy's wedding dress is still in here as well, in the same spot she put it on our wedding night when she took it off.
Make no mistake, it's a fairly large amount of gifts, boxes, and bags to go through. We pulled out the cards, gift cards, and checks/cash, made a note of who gave us what and how much, and either put them to use (most of them, anyway, in the case of the gift cards to places) or deposited them (the checks). Most of the cash has gone towards getting us groceries and other necessities for the past three weeks because hey, we have to eat, and Daisy's vegan food isn't cheap. We do have a well-stocked freezer, fridge, and cabinet, though.
I've been waiting over a week now to hear back from the people at Daisy's company, where I interviewed twice last week. I was told that they were still conducting interviews through yesterday, more than likely, and that sometime this week I'd hear from them. The position is supposed to start on July 6 (I think), so regardless of what happens, I won't be waiting too much longer. More than anything else, I'm just sick of being poor; my new license, my car's inspection/registration and new plates took 1/4 of what was in my bank account, and the rest is being sucked away one bill at a time. I don't dare use my money for anything else, as soon there won't be any left. Before she left for work tonight, Daisy gave me a further update on the situation -- the interviews are apparently done and the chosen candidates' resumes/profiles are being sent to their respective departments for hiring calls...and I should hear something one way or another by Monday or so. Something like that, anyway.
It's fine, of course; it's just that I'd like to know something before I possibly waste my time sending out another volley of a dozen or so applications to different places/companies or universities. For those of you who have been lucky enough to not need to apply for a new job anywhere for a while, let me tell you -- the processes to do so are fucking maddening at most places now. Yes, it's easy to do it all online, make no mistake, but what most places won't tell you is that filling out an application for one job will sometimes take an hour or more. Very few places will just let you upload a resume and cover letter and hit "submit." No, most of them will have you not only do that, but spend another hour filling out forms that say the exact same shit your resume says. Oh, and forms that tell them that (if you're me, of course), you're a white male in your 30s, with no criminal record, and you're not a disabled veteran. I swear, it's getting to the point where I want to say that I'm an albino eskimo midget with no legs just to see if I can get an interview somewhere.
Of course, it doesn't help that my latest job email was one of the local colleges letting me know that the position I'd applied for (an academic advisor position) was basically swept away, as the email they'd sent me said "a decision has been made to cancel the recruitment process." WTF does that mean? Does that translate to "oh, we're just not filling the position anymore"? I would've been more satisfied to hear that someone else had been selected for it, because the other unsaid option sounds like all of the people who applied, people like me -- with two degrees and years of experience working in academia -- aren't good enough, and they didn't know how to say it. That vague shit pisses me off, but I'm guessing they're not allowed to say "we have standards that are too high for a dreadfully simple, low-paying community college position, and none of our applicants met those standards, including you."
I don't know. It all just disgusts me, really. All that job-searching does for me these days is make me feel completely worthless and without a place in the world. And I already feel like that often enough as it is. Just because I'm married now doesn't mean I don't get frustrated and depressed, and I've really been fighting that a lot over the past few weeks. It's part of why I haven't written here more often. I can't generally gather my thoughts enough to write anything coherent or long-form anymore, and nothing is really happening. I go to bed late at night, Daisy gets home from work a few hours later and joins me, I get up around 11 and make coffee, go out on the deck to smoke, and make some food while I watch through whatever's in my instant queue on Netflix (right now it's been the first several seasons of That '70s Show, as mentioned above). Daisy wakes up around 4, one or both of us eat and get a little time together, and she then goes to work for eleven and a half hours straight, usually coming home for lunch. Repeat.
Another part of why it's hard to write is that I'm generally out of my comfort zone in this relatively sterile, white computer room. For over ten years I became used to writing with a pot of coffee in front of me, an ashtray next to my coffee cup, and a cigarette constantly burning. That was my routine, that was my groove, and it was a good groove. I was very productive and thoroughly thoughtful in that groove. I can't do that anymore. For one, I can't smoke in this place. Well, I could if I wanted to, as there's nothing in the lease that says I can't (I checked), but out of respect for Daisy, I don't. I still have the coffee pot on my desk, yes, but in the month I've lived here I have made precisely one pot of coffee in it -- a few weeks ago before I'd set up the Keurig. The Keurig has made the coffee pot on my desk obsolete, and it's in the kitchen. The cats usually lay on my feet or across my shoulders when I write -- they can't do that now, as the mess of gifts and Daisy's dress is in here in the computer room, and until all of that stuff gets taken away/sorted/put away, they can't get in here or they'd get into it and tear it up...so they're constantly locked out.
I'm really out of my element. And it's really hard to get into any sort of writing groove when I have my habits and my routines that I am no longer able to follow at all. If I wanted to, I could take my laptop out onto the deck with me, where I could smoke and drink coffee while writing, but...it's really just not the same. And the laptop is not only dreadfully slow, but I hate its keyboard. If it didn't make me sick, cough like crazy, or make me feel like I'm drowning when I'm using it, I could take my electronic vaping cigarette out and puff on that while I'm writing inside, but, well, it does do those things to me whether I want it to or not. I'm getting used to this new way of life, I suppose -- it's all about training the body and mind with new habits and new routines. It's just hard to shake off over ten years' worth of routine in the span of a month.
Financially, we're stable. For the moment, anyway. Daisy makes a comfortable living, and right now, it's supporting both of us with no real issues -- despite the fact that I am always neurotic about money. We have enough to pay for the bills, rent, groceries, and to put gas in the car(s) -- that's really all we need for the moment. Again, obviously, I'm basically treading water for the time being, hoping that I can land a job soon from one of my numerous, varied applications I have in right now. Over the weekend, I will be applying for even more things (if there's more out there, of course). I wanted to take Daisy out for her birthday, which is Monday, but we're going over to her parents' for dinner and to spend time with them, and that's fine. She told me not to worry about getting anything for her, which...well, for most other women, would be a trap. For her it's not. She knows I want to do something for her, but have no money to do it. And despite the fact that we have a joint bank account now, I haven't put a single cent into it yet -- if I were to get something for her from that account, she'd essentially be paying for it herself. That would be, as they say, a dick move. I haven't put any money into it yet because A) I don't have any money to put in it, and B) because we just opened it -- all that's been deposited are wedding checks and her paychecks. I haven't even activated my new debit card for that account yet, though we do have our shiny new checks for it.
"We'll make sure the bills are paid," Daisy said. "And we'll make sure your bills are paid."
"That's really all that matters," I replied.
And really, right now, it is.
As for everything else going on?
I've received numerous messages and emails from people back home -- mostly family -- asking if we're alive. This is because a few nights ago, a lot of tornadoes ripped through part of Nebraska about, oh, an hour or so north of us. I can't remember the name of the town it destroyed, but it wasn't near enough to us to do anything. It didn't even rain here that night. I sat on the porch and watched the lightning in the distance, but it's not like anything happened here. Last night we got some pretty bad storms as well, and about five inches of rain with them, but still nothing major. I've learned that in Nebraska, at least, this sort of thing isn't apparently out of the ordinary.
In the five years I lived in Kansas -- not to mention the three years I lived in Missouri before that -- I never had to take shelter for one single, solitary tornado warning. Ever. None of them ever got close enough to me in Newton, or in Wichita, to set off the sirens. The week after I moved to Omaha, Daisy and I were herded into the shelter in Target not once, but twice in the span of a half hour for tornado warnings. Yeah. Not kidding. And to think, all we wanted to do was shop. Silly rabbits.
Still, it's not been bad. Not really, anyway.
Saturday, June 14, 2014
The Wedding Aftermath, Part I
As you probably noticed, it took me twelve days to type up the entire story of the wedding, the reception, and the day after. Twelve. There's a reason for that, of course -- multiple reasons, actually.
The fact is, since the wedding we've been extremely busy almost every day. So many things have happened and we've had so many tasks to take care of and just get done that we've barely had time to sit down, relax, and breathe -- let alone get any real quality sleep. Every day there has been something else to do, something important, or someplace else to be. Even on days where Daisy was working (she went back to work a few days after the wedding, and is now halfway through her second week of work after going back) we still have tasks to take care of. Married life, at least at the start, is a lot of work in order to get everything situated (so to speak).
Here's a brief list of things that we've done since the wedding (believe me, this isn't everything, just the highlights), some of which I will expand upon below said list:
Mind you, all of this has happened in less than two weeks. Again, every day there has been something new to do or someplace else to be. Tomorrow will be the first day since the wedding where I personally will have nothing to do but sleep, relax, get some breathing space, and attempt to finish watching the last few episodes of Breaking Bad since we now have Netflix. Finally, a day with no pressing tasks.
As an aside, I have no clue how I survived without Netflix and wireless streaming to the TV before. I spent so much money over the years on DVD sets of series I wanted to watch when 95% of them are all on Netflix. I set up the account to where both of us can stream something different at the same time if necessary, but I doubt we'll use that feature that often (if at all); we haven't used it yet. Netflix also guarantees that we'll never have to worry about finding something to watch -- whether that be a movie or a TV series -- basically ever again. Currently, as most other people in the nation are, we're working on the new season of Orange is the New Black together, though when she sleeps during the day or when she's at work in the evenings, I'm watching the rest of Breaking Bad (as mentioned above) so that I can finally finish it.
Anyway. Moving on.
We got the marriage license in the mail fairly quickly; within a week or so after the actual wedding. Until we got it, we couldn't go about changing Daisy's name (you need that official license copy to do that, apparently) or go about depositing almost any of the checks we got as wedding gifts from friends and family into our bank account -- the vast majority of the checks were not only made out to both of us, but they were made out to both of us with Daisy's new last name -- my last name. Daisy opened the account at a good, reliable bank here for us well before the wedding, so that meant that not only did she have to change her name on that account and get an all-new debit card issued, I had to be put on it as well, get my own card, order checks, etc. We did all of that on the same day, and as mentioned above, we opened a savings account there too -- we need to be able to save up some money for our "honeymoon" of sorts, as we plan to visit Canada next summer, and we want to be able to have some emergency money in case something happens (like when my car finally goddamned dies).
Speaking of the car, that was a pain in the ass. In Nebraska, transferring a license isn't that hard -- you just fill out the form at the DMV, show them two proofs of residency (I used my cable bill and a credit card bill, both with my new address on them) and they give you the eye test. Apparently I barely passed it, and the lady told me I should definitely plan a trip to the eye doctor sometime in the future. I know this, of course; as I get older, my eyesight is getting gradually worse -- and I've noticed it more in the past year than I did before. I desperately need to go back and have an eye exam, update my prescription, etc.
Anyway. That was fine, they took my picture (in which I look stoned and/or drunk because of the camera flash) and I paid them $26.50, the cost of a license. In Nebraska, they print you a temporary license on card stock -- like index card paper -- and it looks like a black-and-white Xerox copy. The real license gets mailed to you "in about twenty days." Until then, that paper license is your license. Kansas did the same thing, except they gave you a temporary license printed on heat-transfer cash-register paper. Daisy went through the same process I did, though all she was doing was renewing her license and updating it with her new last name and our new address here. She got a paper license as well, so both of us are waiting for our real ones to arrive.
The plates and registration/title transfer of the Monte Carlo was an entirely other matter. To bring an out-of-state car into Nebraska, it is quite similar to the way Kansas did it -- the car has to be inspected. As my Monte Carlo was originally a Missouri car and had a Missouri title, it had to be inspected in 2011 when I bought it before I was allowed to register it. In Kansas this consisted of them writing down the VIN, checking to make sure everything worked and was in functioning order, lifting the hood, looking under and around the vehicle, etc. In Nebraska, the inspections are apparently a joke and inspections in name only -- I drove the car over to a garage about three miles or so from the house, parked it, handed a guy the title, and he took the title over to a window where they printed up a reciept. He handed it back to me and said "that'll be $10."
No, seriously. That's all that they did. We sat in the car the whole time -- about five minutes, max. And then once I paid and got the certificate of inspection and the title back, we drove to the DMV.
That's not a vehicle inspection -- that's basically a $10 tax for bringing a new car into the state.
Anyway.
When I had my license redone, I did the title transfer and new registration with plates at the same time. The car is eighteen years old (well, probably nineteen now, as I assume the new 2015 models of vehicles are beginning to roll out) and has 233,000 miles, so they waived the mileage requirement and marked me exempt for it. Registration, plates, and title transfer was $92.10. Unlike when I was in Kansas, I actually have the title in my hand this time instead of a "certificate of title" -- Kansas is a digital title state, while apparently Nebraska is not. Whatever they do with the Kansas title is out of my hands; it's a Nebraska car now with pretty plates to match.
Yes, I said plates, plural. In Kansas you're not required to have a front license plate, and they only issue you one plate. In Nebraska it's law that you have both. So I paid all my fees and monies, brought everything home, and put the new plates on the car last night. My old Kansas plate I scrubbed all the road grime off of and hung it on the wall in the living room as wall art.
"I want to put a little banner that says 'know your roots' under it," I told Daisy.
She rolled her eyes.
"What? That plate means a lot to me," I said. "It's the first license plate off of the first car I've ever owned outright, paid off, with my name on the title -- and nobody can take that from me no matter what. That plate has a lot of sentimental value to me. It signifies my independence. It is a reminder of how much I love my babycar."
I could tell she wanted to say something about me hanging it on the wall, and I could tell she was internally twitching about it, but since she knew it meant so much to me, I assume that's why she chose to remain silent.
By the way? $92.10 is a huge amount of money to me right now when I don't have a job yet -- especially when that doesn't count the other $36.50 combined for the license and inspection -- and it's a lot more than it cost for me to register and renew my registration in Kansas every year. In Kansas it was $66, the same amount every year. I know this because when I put my new insurance card and registration in the car tonight, I took out the old stuff. And Kansas is terrible when it comes to taxes and when it comes to squeezing every nickel and dime they can out of their residents.
But. That's done. The car has pretty new Nebraska plates on it now.
As for my insurance, I couldn't renew it until I changed my address, as the registration info and address had changed. So, I had to do that last night. That entailed me basically redoing my entire policy with Geico, as Nebraska requires some things that Kansas didn't and vice-versa. In the process, I was able to update my mileage and use estimate for the car. Previously, I was making 50 mile round trips at least 3-4 days a week, and I had to document that as they base some of the rates on it. Now, unless I end up working outside of the city of Omaha, I'll never drive more than five miles to or from work, so I was able to update that. In doing so, and by updating everything else, my premium dropped by seventy dollars. But, because I pretty much redid my account, it was due then instead at the end of this month as it was before. So I paid it, and I'm insured/covered through basically the end of the year...though my Citi Card balance ballooned by a few hundred dollars. I paid $50 of that card's bill tonight in order to alleviate some of it.
Anyway.
As mentioned above, both of us also got haircuts shortly after the wedding, and I also shaved off the long, thick beard for the summer. As you folks know, I cut my hair about once a year and shave off the beard about twice a year, as both take forever to grow back. Doing it in the first week of June means that by the time the fall rolls around and it begins to get cold again, my hair may be long enough to actually keep my head warm again. The beard will grow back to its former glory by the end of August or so, which will give me enough time to shave it off again and have it thick and bushy for the winter. I shaved it now because, well, it's not comfortable to have a long, thick beard in the summer. Duh. Daisy did almost weep when I shaved it and when I cut my hair, as she loves both the beard and my long hair, but those aren't exactly conducive to not sweating a gallon a day when I'm outside in the summer, even the Nebraska summer.
"It'll grow back," I said. "It's just hair." And it will, and it is. But I did notice something now that I'm mostly hairless -- I no longer look younger when I have short hair and no beard...instead, I now look much older. Defeated. Hopeless. Balding. It used to be just the opposite -- without my long hair and beard, I used to look like I was fifteen despite being in my thirties; I would get carded when I picked up my cigarettes at Walmart if the cashier didn't know me. Now? I look like I'm forty or older. And that scares me. I found several gray hairs in my temples this morning. Not rogue or errant hairs, but seriously gray hairs, and they're quickly multiplying.
Look, I know this is part of getting older, as are the aches and pains and my inability to eat the foods I used to love without serious gastrointestinal distress -- but hell, it's the fact that all of it hit me less than two weeks after I got married (it'll be two weeks tomorrow) seems like it's almost my body's way of saying "fuck it, he's married, he's old now; it's time for us to just give up."
I did compromise with Daisy on the beard -- she wants it back sooner rather than later, so I just used my beard trimmers without a guard on them to take it down as far as I could go with them. This proved pointless, though, as I had to shave with an actual razor down to the skin everywhere (except my van dyke, which I kept) for my two interviews I had this week.
What?
Yes, I had two interviews this week. Well, one real interview, and another a questionnaire session. Let me explain.
I mentioned a few months ago that I had been applying for positions within Daisy's company -- a big corporation, and a rapidly expanding one at that -- because I knew that I would need work after the end of the semester and after the wedding. Duh. Because of that, I applied for a lot of jobs within the company that I could do, and set my start date for the second week of June (read: now) in those applications. Mind you, many of those applications were filed during March and early May, but for some of them they're still screening applicants.
Anyway, after applying for several positions way back then, I got an email from the company's recruiter, telling me that he wanted to interview me. I explained to him that I was working and living in Kansas from then until the end of May, but I would be relocating to Omaha then. He told me to get in contact with him when I was settled in and we'd set something up, and that was the end of communications for awhile.
Well, once we were settled in and we took care of all of the stuff mentioned above, last week I emailed him back, reminded him who I was, and requested that we set up that interview. I was in luck; they were doing a hiring fair on Wednesday this week, and he gave me the address to go to and the job number to apply to beforehand. The job fair was basically a "cattle call" interview thing, as they're known in some industries. Set up from 11:30-2:30, everyone who's applied as of late for a job there gets sent an email and are told that they're doing on-the-spot interviews and to bring a current resume.
Okay. So, I got dressed up nicely, printed an updated copy of my resume, and Daisy took me over to their corporate HQ here in town (a place I didn't know where/how to get to) so that I could do their interview process. Their "interview process" turned out to be "here, fill out this set of paperwork and answer this questionnaire, then give it back to us." So I did that. And I sat there for close to an hour afterwards, surrounded by probably fifty other people doing the exact same thing. After they've looked at the paperwork, they called us up one by one and said "you have a second interview on [day] at [time] in [building]." As the position I'd applied for was specifically for Daisy's department and in her building, they set up my second interview over there for Thursday morning at the same time.
So, Thursday morning I went through the entire getting dressed-up process again, and a sleep-deprived Daisy took me over to her building -- even though I probably could've made it there on my own just from memory (and I certainly can now, as I made sure to memorize the route). This one was an actual sit-down interview with an actual person.
I want to step back here for a moment and state that I haven't had an actual sit-down interview, with anyone, in well over five years. The last one I had was with the people at the newspaper in Newton when they hired me on there as a reporter in 2009. And after I left the newspaper, I was teaching at the university, with nothing else, up until around this time last month. The job I was interviewing for is, essentially, Daisy's old job before she got promoted -- the job she had when she started there a year and a half ago, roughly. Because of that, I had a rough knowledge of what the job entails, and it's nothing I couldn't do once I received the requisite training for it that everyone gets.
"It's not a hard job," my interviewer said, "but it is a detail-oriented job."
This doesn't mean that I'm not generally terrible overall in interviews.
Look, I think I did okay. But just okay. Not exemplary, not extraordinarily well, but good enough to get the job, in my opinion. These people know my wife works for them, they know my wife is the one who referred me, and they know that my wife knows her shit and got a promotion recently. They also know I was a professor and they know that not many former professors -- or even people with anything past a bachelor's degree -- apply for their positions. That being said, I tried to answer the questions asked of me in the most truthful way possible, the most detailed way possible, and tried to give off the best impression I could. I even asked some questions that I'm sure the interviewer wasn't prepared for ("where do you see this company in five years?" and stuff like that), because I could tell by the surprised look on his face that he'd either never been asked that question before, or he was impressed by it.
However, I did forget to ask the one big question that I should've asked: "So, when should I expect to hear back from you?" Yeah, I forgot that one. Daisy said they're still interviewing people and that I shouldn't expect anything until next week sometime, which is fine with me.
"So I have to ask," my interviewer said, "because if I don't it will be the dancing elephant in the room...but why did you stop teaching?"
Oof. That question was like a punch to the gut.
"I moved up here and got married," I said, shrugging.
"But do you like teaching? Do you still want to teach?"
"I'd love to," I said, "and I sincerely enjoy it and take pride in it, but the job market for English professors is terrible. It's something like ten jobs for every 1,000 job-seekers. And that's nationwide. I've tried to get into the colleges and universities up here -- I've tried them all. None of them are hiring English professors right now. You can have all the degrees and experience you want, but if a place isn't hiring for a position you can fill, well, you're out of luck. I made $12,000 as a professor last year -- that's it. Before taxes. I worked that job because I had to if I wanted to pay the bills and continue using my teaching skills/experience at all."
"Wow, that's awful," he said, or something to that effect.
I'm breaking down the myth of "the overpaid, over-privileged college professor" one person at a time, I suppose.
I would also like to add that those teaching position applications aren't the only applications I've filled out as of late, which should be pretty obvious as I was interviewing with Daisy's company. I've put in apps for anything administrative at all of those colleges as well (as long as it would pay a living wage), and I've applied at several other companies and corporations also, as some pretty big-name corporations have big-time headquarters here in Omaha. Yahoo! and LinkedIn are amongst those corporations. So, yeah, I've been searching for work in more than just academia and in Daisy's company -- Daisy's company is just the only one who, so far, wanted to interview me.
The entire interview lasted maybe twenty-five minutes. We went back home, where Daisy promptly passed out once more and I watched a few more episodes of Breaking Bad before she got up in the evening, we had dinner, and she went back to work. I did housework for the rest of the night until I was too tired to stay awake any longer, and then went to bed -- sleeping on our new memory-foam mattress pad. I will say it was the best sleep I've had in weeks, and sleep that I plan to emulate again tonight in an hour or so when I go to bed.
Things are slowly starting to wind down now and get back to normal. About the only big thing we have left to do at some point is to get me on Daisy's Sprint cell phone plan, and get me a new phone. While I've had T-Mobile since 2006, I get zero service or reception in 90% of the city of Omaha. As I need a phone for day-to-day stuff like, oh, getting phone calls about jobs, well, that's sort of important.
Stay tuned, however, over the next several days -- I'm sure there will be more to write about, and there's plenty I haven't covered yet anyhow...but this post is extremely long and I'm exhausted. It's time for me to sleep.
The fact is, since the wedding we've been extremely busy almost every day. So many things have happened and we've had so many tasks to take care of and just get done that we've barely had time to sit down, relax, and breathe -- let alone get any real quality sleep. Every day there has been something else to do, something important, or someplace else to be. Even on days where Daisy was working (she went back to work a few days after the wedding, and is now halfway through her second week of work after going back) we still have tasks to take care of. Married life, at least at the start, is a lot of work in order to get everything situated (so to speak).
Here's a brief list of things that we've done since the wedding (believe me, this isn't everything, just the highlights), some of which I will expand upon below said list:
- Used our gift cards for most places we had them for already, in order to get a lot of stuff we needed but didn't have the money for and/or didn't get off the registry
- Once we got our official copy of the marriage license in the mail from the courthouse, Daisy changed her last name on almost all documents/forms/accounts, and will be finishing that process soon (if she hasn't already done so)
- Opened up our joint checking account at the bank, and opened a savings account/ordered checks and debit cards/set up online banking for both of us at the same time
- Shaved off the beard and got a haircut; my hair is now really short, and I only have a stubbly goatee
- Deposited all (or almost all) of the checks into our new account
- I transferred my driver's license, car title/registration/plates to Nebraska (which was ungodly expensive for a car as old as the Monte Carlo is)
- Daisy got her new driver's license with her new name on it
- We've slowly been unpacking a bit more, me more than her for the moment since she works a lot and I'm not going to mess with her stuff
- Daisy signed us up for renters' insurance for this apartment
- I signed up for a Netflix account (finally), which we stream to my HDTV in the living room via our new wireless router and the Roku her parents gave us when they upgraded to a newer model
- I've paid all of my remaining bills for Newton either online or via check; no more expenses remain for my old place
- ...which is good because I'm officially a Nebraskan now
- I set up my car insurance here in Omaha and paid it through December -- since I moved and I'm driving a lot less, I had to redo the entire policy...and ended up having it cost $70 less than it did before
- I had two interviews with the company where Daisy works, one yesterday and one today
- Ordered and set up a memory foam mattress pad so that neither of us have back pain anymore and can sleep well
- Ordered a new bed frame to replace the wooden one that broke during the move; we'll set it up within the next few days.
Mind you, all of this has happened in less than two weeks. Again, every day there has been something new to do or someplace else to be. Tomorrow will be the first day since the wedding where I personally will have nothing to do but sleep, relax, get some breathing space, and attempt to finish watching the last few episodes of Breaking Bad since we now have Netflix. Finally, a day with no pressing tasks.
As an aside, I have no clue how I survived without Netflix and wireless streaming to the TV before. I spent so much money over the years on DVD sets of series I wanted to watch when 95% of them are all on Netflix. I set up the account to where both of us can stream something different at the same time if necessary, but I doubt we'll use that feature that often (if at all); we haven't used it yet. Netflix also guarantees that we'll never have to worry about finding something to watch -- whether that be a movie or a TV series -- basically ever again. Currently, as most other people in the nation are, we're working on the new season of Orange is the New Black together, though when she sleeps during the day or when she's at work in the evenings, I'm watching the rest of Breaking Bad (as mentioned above) so that I can finally finish it.
Anyway. Moving on.
We got the marriage license in the mail fairly quickly; within a week or so after the actual wedding. Until we got it, we couldn't go about changing Daisy's name (you need that official license copy to do that, apparently) or go about depositing almost any of the checks we got as wedding gifts from friends and family into our bank account -- the vast majority of the checks were not only made out to both of us, but they were made out to both of us with Daisy's new last name -- my last name. Daisy opened the account at a good, reliable bank here for us well before the wedding, so that meant that not only did she have to change her name on that account and get an all-new debit card issued, I had to be put on it as well, get my own card, order checks, etc. We did all of that on the same day, and as mentioned above, we opened a savings account there too -- we need to be able to save up some money for our "honeymoon" of sorts, as we plan to visit Canada next summer, and we want to be able to have some emergency money in case something happens (like when my car finally goddamned dies).
Speaking of the car, that was a pain in the ass. In Nebraska, transferring a license isn't that hard -- you just fill out the form at the DMV, show them two proofs of residency (I used my cable bill and a credit card bill, both with my new address on them) and they give you the eye test. Apparently I barely passed it, and the lady told me I should definitely plan a trip to the eye doctor sometime in the future. I know this, of course; as I get older, my eyesight is getting gradually worse -- and I've noticed it more in the past year than I did before. I desperately need to go back and have an eye exam, update my prescription, etc.
Anyway. That was fine, they took my picture (in which I look stoned and/or drunk because of the camera flash) and I paid them $26.50, the cost of a license. In Nebraska, they print you a temporary license on card stock -- like index card paper -- and it looks like a black-and-white Xerox copy. The real license gets mailed to you "in about twenty days." Until then, that paper license is your license. Kansas did the same thing, except they gave you a temporary license printed on heat-transfer cash-register paper. Daisy went through the same process I did, though all she was doing was renewing her license and updating it with her new last name and our new address here. She got a paper license as well, so both of us are waiting for our real ones to arrive.
The plates and registration/title transfer of the Monte Carlo was an entirely other matter. To bring an out-of-state car into Nebraska, it is quite similar to the way Kansas did it -- the car has to be inspected. As my Monte Carlo was originally a Missouri car and had a Missouri title, it had to be inspected in 2011 when I bought it before I was allowed to register it. In Kansas this consisted of them writing down the VIN, checking to make sure everything worked and was in functioning order, lifting the hood, looking under and around the vehicle, etc. In Nebraska, the inspections are apparently a joke and inspections in name only -- I drove the car over to a garage about three miles or so from the house, parked it, handed a guy the title, and he took the title over to a window where they printed up a reciept. He handed it back to me and said "that'll be $10."
No, seriously. That's all that they did. We sat in the car the whole time -- about five minutes, max. And then once I paid and got the certificate of inspection and the title back, we drove to the DMV.
That's not a vehicle inspection -- that's basically a $10 tax for bringing a new car into the state.
Anyway.
When I had my license redone, I did the title transfer and new registration with plates at the same time. The car is eighteen years old (well, probably nineteen now, as I assume the new 2015 models of vehicles are beginning to roll out) and has 233,000 miles, so they waived the mileage requirement and marked me exempt for it. Registration, plates, and title transfer was $92.10. Unlike when I was in Kansas, I actually have the title in my hand this time instead of a "certificate of title" -- Kansas is a digital title state, while apparently Nebraska is not. Whatever they do with the Kansas title is out of my hands; it's a Nebraska car now with pretty plates to match.
Yes, I said plates, plural. In Kansas you're not required to have a front license plate, and they only issue you one plate. In Nebraska it's law that you have both. So I paid all my fees and monies, brought everything home, and put the new plates on the car last night. My old Kansas plate I scrubbed all the road grime off of and hung it on the wall in the living room as wall art.
"I want to put a little banner that says 'know your roots' under it," I told Daisy.
She rolled her eyes.
"What? That plate means a lot to me," I said. "It's the first license plate off of the first car I've ever owned outright, paid off, with my name on the title -- and nobody can take that from me no matter what. That plate has a lot of sentimental value to me. It signifies my independence. It is a reminder of how much I love my babycar."
I could tell she wanted to say something about me hanging it on the wall, and I could tell she was internally twitching about it, but since she knew it meant so much to me, I assume that's why she chose to remain silent.
By the way? $92.10 is a huge amount of money to me right now when I don't have a job yet -- especially when that doesn't count the other $36.50 combined for the license and inspection -- and it's a lot more than it cost for me to register and renew my registration in Kansas every year. In Kansas it was $66, the same amount every year. I know this because when I put my new insurance card and registration in the car tonight, I took out the old stuff. And Kansas is terrible when it comes to taxes and when it comes to squeezing every nickel and dime they can out of their residents.
But. That's done. The car has pretty new Nebraska plates on it now.
As for my insurance, I couldn't renew it until I changed my address, as the registration info and address had changed. So, I had to do that last night. That entailed me basically redoing my entire policy with Geico, as Nebraska requires some things that Kansas didn't and vice-versa. In the process, I was able to update my mileage and use estimate for the car. Previously, I was making 50 mile round trips at least 3-4 days a week, and I had to document that as they base some of the rates on it. Now, unless I end up working outside of the city of Omaha, I'll never drive more than five miles to or from work, so I was able to update that. In doing so, and by updating everything else, my premium dropped by seventy dollars. But, because I pretty much redid my account, it was due then instead at the end of this month as it was before. So I paid it, and I'm insured/covered through basically the end of the year...though my Citi Card balance ballooned by a few hundred dollars. I paid $50 of that card's bill tonight in order to alleviate some of it.
Anyway.
As mentioned above, both of us also got haircuts shortly after the wedding, and I also shaved off the long, thick beard for the summer. As you folks know, I cut my hair about once a year and shave off the beard about twice a year, as both take forever to grow back. Doing it in the first week of June means that by the time the fall rolls around and it begins to get cold again, my hair may be long enough to actually keep my head warm again. The beard will grow back to its former glory by the end of August or so, which will give me enough time to shave it off again and have it thick and bushy for the winter. I shaved it now because, well, it's not comfortable to have a long, thick beard in the summer. Duh. Daisy did almost weep when I shaved it and when I cut my hair, as she loves both the beard and my long hair, but those aren't exactly conducive to not sweating a gallon a day when I'm outside in the summer, even the Nebraska summer.
"It'll grow back," I said. "It's just hair." And it will, and it is. But I did notice something now that I'm mostly hairless -- I no longer look younger when I have short hair and no beard...instead, I now look much older. Defeated. Hopeless. Balding. It used to be just the opposite -- without my long hair and beard, I used to look like I was fifteen despite being in my thirties; I would get carded when I picked up my cigarettes at Walmart if the cashier didn't know me. Now? I look like I'm forty or older. And that scares me. I found several gray hairs in my temples this morning. Not rogue or errant hairs, but seriously gray hairs, and they're quickly multiplying.
Look, I know this is part of getting older, as are the aches and pains and my inability to eat the foods I used to love without serious gastrointestinal distress -- but hell, it's the fact that all of it hit me less than two weeks after I got married (it'll be two weeks tomorrow) seems like it's almost my body's way of saying "fuck it, he's married, he's old now; it's time for us to just give up."
I did compromise with Daisy on the beard -- she wants it back sooner rather than later, so I just used my beard trimmers without a guard on them to take it down as far as I could go with them. This proved pointless, though, as I had to shave with an actual razor down to the skin everywhere (except my van dyke, which I kept) for my two interviews I had this week.
What?
Yes, I had two interviews this week. Well, one real interview, and another a questionnaire session. Let me explain.
I mentioned a few months ago that I had been applying for positions within Daisy's company -- a big corporation, and a rapidly expanding one at that -- because I knew that I would need work after the end of the semester and after the wedding. Duh. Because of that, I applied for a lot of jobs within the company that I could do, and set my start date for the second week of June (read: now) in those applications. Mind you, many of those applications were filed during March and early May, but for some of them they're still screening applicants.
Anyway, after applying for several positions way back then, I got an email from the company's recruiter, telling me that he wanted to interview me. I explained to him that I was working and living in Kansas from then until the end of May, but I would be relocating to Omaha then. He told me to get in contact with him when I was settled in and we'd set something up, and that was the end of communications for awhile.
Well, once we were settled in and we took care of all of the stuff mentioned above, last week I emailed him back, reminded him who I was, and requested that we set up that interview. I was in luck; they were doing a hiring fair on Wednesday this week, and he gave me the address to go to and the job number to apply to beforehand. The job fair was basically a "cattle call" interview thing, as they're known in some industries. Set up from 11:30-2:30, everyone who's applied as of late for a job there gets sent an email and are told that they're doing on-the-spot interviews and to bring a current resume.
Okay. So, I got dressed up nicely, printed an updated copy of my resume, and Daisy took me over to their corporate HQ here in town (a place I didn't know where/how to get to) so that I could do their interview process. Their "interview process" turned out to be "here, fill out this set of paperwork and answer this questionnaire, then give it back to us." So I did that. And I sat there for close to an hour afterwards, surrounded by probably fifty other people doing the exact same thing. After they've looked at the paperwork, they called us up one by one and said "you have a second interview on [day] at [time] in [building]." As the position I'd applied for was specifically for Daisy's department and in her building, they set up my second interview over there for Thursday morning at the same time.
So, Thursday morning I went through the entire getting dressed-up process again, and a sleep-deprived Daisy took me over to her building -- even though I probably could've made it there on my own just from memory (and I certainly can now, as I made sure to memorize the route). This one was an actual sit-down interview with an actual person.
I want to step back here for a moment and state that I haven't had an actual sit-down interview, with anyone, in well over five years. The last one I had was with the people at the newspaper in Newton when they hired me on there as a reporter in 2009. And after I left the newspaper, I was teaching at the university, with nothing else, up until around this time last month. The job I was interviewing for is, essentially, Daisy's old job before she got promoted -- the job she had when she started there a year and a half ago, roughly. Because of that, I had a rough knowledge of what the job entails, and it's nothing I couldn't do once I received the requisite training for it that everyone gets.
"It's not a hard job," my interviewer said, "but it is a detail-oriented job."
This doesn't mean that I'm not generally terrible overall in interviews.
Look, I think I did okay. But just okay. Not exemplary, not extraordinarily well, but good enough to get the job, in my opinion. These people know my wife works for them, they know my wife is the one who referred me, and they know that my wife knows her shit and got a promotion recently. They also know I was a professor and they know that not many former professors -- or even people with anything past a bachelor's degree -- apply for their positions. That being said, I tried to answer the questions asked of me in the most truthful way possible, the most detailed way possible, and tried to give off the best impression I could. I even asked some questions that I'm sure the interviewer wasn't prepared for ("where do you see this company in five years?" and stuff like that), because I could tell by the surprised look on his face that he'd either never been asked that question before, or he was impressed by it.
However, I did forget to ask the one big question that I should've asked: "So, when should I expect to hear back from you?" Yeah, I forgot that one. Daisy said they're still interviewing people and that I shouldn't expect anything until next week sometime, which is fine with me.
"So I have to ask," my interviewer said, "because if I don't it will be the dancing elephant in the room...but why did you stop teaching?"
Oof. That question was like a punch to the gut.
"I moved up here and got married," I said, shrugging.
"But do you like teaching? Do you still want to teach?"
"I'd love to," I said, "and I sincerely enjoy it and take pride in it, but the job market for English professors is terrible. It's something like ten jobs for every 1,000 job-seekers. And that's nationwide. I've tried to get into the colleges and universities up here -- I've tried them all. None of them are hiring English professors right now. You can have all the degrees and experience you want, but if a place isn't hiring for a position you can fill, well, you're out of luck. I made $12,000 as a professor last year -- that's it. Before taxes. I worked that job because I had to if I wanted to pay the bills and continue using my teaching skills/experience at all."
"Wow, that's awful," he said, or something to that effect.
I'm breaking down the myth of "the overpaid, over-privileged college professor" one person at a time, I suppose.
I would also like to add that those teaching position applications aren't the only applications I've filled out as of late, which should be pretty obvious as I was interviewing with Daisy's company. I've put in apps for anything administrative at all of those colleges as well (as long as it would pay a living wage), and I've applied at several other companies and corporations also, as some pretty big-name corporations have big-time headquarters here in Omaha. Yahoo! and LinkedIn are amongst those corporations. So, yeah, I've been searching for work in more than just academia and in Daisy's company -- Daisy's company is just the only one who, so far, wanted to interview me.
The entire interview lasted maybe twenty-five minutes. We went back home, where Daisy promptly passed out once more and I watched a few more episodes of Breaking Bad before she got up in the evening, we had dinner, and she went back to work. I did housework for the rest of the night until I was too tired to stay awake any longer, and then went to bed -- sleeping on our new memory-foam mattress pad. I will say it was the best sleep I've had in weeks, and sleep that I plan to emulate again tonight in an hour or so when I go to bed.
Things are slowly starting to wind down now and get back to normal. About the only big thing we have left to do at some point is to get me on Daisy's Sprint cell phone plan, and get me a new phone. While I've had T-Mobile since 2006, I get zero service or reception in 90% of the city of Omaha. As I need a phone for day-to-day stuff like, oh, getting phone calls about jobs, well, that's sort of important.
Stay tuned, however, over the next several days -- I'm sure there will be more to write about, and there's plenty I haven't covered yet anyhow...but this post is extremely long and I'm exhausted. It's time for me to sleep.
Thursday, June 12, 2014
The Wedding, Part V
Saturday night/Sunday:
May 31 and June 1.
Written well over a week later (obviously, I mean, look at today's date).
We went way overboard on the catering, we realized, after we began to see it all coming in. You don't realize exactly how much food it takes to feed 100 people until you see it laid out on tables in front of you. Daisy has the invoice somewhere for it (I believe it's out in the living room) but needless to say, salad/breadsticks/spaghetti for 100 people is a lot of goddamned food. So much that by the end of the night, we still had two entire pans of spaghetti, probably fifty (or more) breadsticks, and four or five unopened family-size tubs of salad left over.
Once the food was set up, we sat down to eat and hear speeches/toasts/etc. My mother had purchased all of the champagne the VFW hall had, out of her own pocket, and made sure everyone had champagne for the toasts. Several people spoke; our dads both spoke, most of Daisy's party spoke, all of my party spoke, and my old boss from Microbiology -- who had flown in to see me get married -- spoke at length about me as well. At the end of it, Daisy thanked everyone and spoke herself, then offered the microphone to me. I declined to speak.
If I had gone first, I would've said some words, but as I was last, I...well, everything I'd wanted to say had already been said by everyone else. I would've mentioned that our wedding day (May 31) was chosen because it's her parents' anniversary...well, dad touched on that and Daisy did as well. I would've thanked everyone for their time, help, and kindness in coming and showing us how much they cared, but Daisy and her parents did that. I would've talked about how much of an awesome person I was, but my own dad and old boss -- as well as my groom's party -- had already done that as well. I didn't want to repeat what had already been said, so I bowed out gracefully and declined to speak. This is highly amusing to some of you, I'm sure, as if you know me well, you know that I rarely, if ever, give up an opportunity to tell an entire crowd of people gathered in our honor how awesome I am and/or how awesome my wife is. I'd even had stuff I'd wanted to say as well, stuff I'd plotted out in my head days before. Beats to hit, so to speak. Since 95% of it had already been said and I basically blanked on the last 5%, I didn't say anything.
After the speeches were over...the dance party began.
I will mention now, and you will probably not be surprised by this revelation, but...I'm not much of a dancer. I am a rather sedentary person anyway, generally speaking, and the fact that I'd been wearing a very hot jacket, pants, socks, and incredibly uncomfortable patent leather dress shoes all day long didn't help matters any. Still, there's the traditional wife and groom dance, which we did, and then Daisy had her father/daughter dance with Dad. Apparently there's supposed to be some sort of mother/son dance in which I was supposed to dance with my mother, but nobody really told me about that, and because of that it's not like I had a song ready to go. I knew about the father/daughter dance, because that's a huge traditional thing.
It really didn't matter that much anyhow; I slow-danced with my mother later in the night anyway -- to some song that she really liked but I'd never heard of, some country song. It was sweet and touching, and she cried into my shoulder all the way through it (which was to be expected, as I'm her only son -- her only child, period -- and I'd just gotten married).
I tended to stay on the outskirts of most of the party and dancing; I did dance some with Daisy, and I danced some with some of the people there, mainly my friends and members of my/our wedding party(ies), but for the most part I really just wanted to sit down, wanted to get off of my aching, swollen feet -- so that's what I did. Outside, too, where I could smoke and try to get some cool breeze, since it was hot inside the VFW hall. I'm not a huge mingler anyway, and I'm even less of one at large social gatherings. While I like being the center of attention (who doesn't?), that only goes so far until I totally need to get away from loud pumping music and tons of people. This is also another reason why I don't like going out dancing with Daisy, and the one time she took me out salsa dancing I described the experience as my own personal hell.
While many others got drunk via the cash bar, I didn't; for one, the mere thought of ingesting more alcohol after my bachelor party made me internally retch, and for two, I just wasn't interested. One of our friends bought me a beer right at the start of dinner, and Rae later bought a round of Jack Daniel's shots for several of us, including me, but that's all I had the entire night except for two bottles of water. I just wasn't "feelin' it," I suppose. However, I did get to see many people I know -- including family members and really close friends in my party -- get sloshed and/or bust some serious moves on the dance floor. I desperately hope someone got pictures of some of that. I had a bunch of people come in from out of town, though -- some of them from pretty far away -- and I really just wanted to relax and talk to them, spend some time with them. It's so difficult to do that when everything is all crazy and the music is pumping and loud, and I didn't want any of them to feel neglected or like I was ignoring them at the wedding they came to for me. I did that as much as I could -- Jane and I sat outside for a good hour or so, and I did the same with April and her husband. I spent a good amount of time talking to my former boss and his wife as well. There was so many people and I was so overwhelmed, under-rested, and fried that I I couldn't have possibly spent time with all of them no matter how hard I tried; I would've fallen over and passed out on the dance floor due to exhaustion.
I wanted to mention the cake as well, for it was amazing -- Daisy's oldest sister made it for us by herself, painstakingly decorating it and making three layers in different flavors, covering it all in a beautiful (and tasty) fondant so that it would look even and beautiful. The bottom layer -- which I ate the most of -- was two layers of chocolate cake with either strawberry or raspberry (I can't remember) jam between them. I don't remember what the middle layer was, but the top tier was much smaller and it's the one we saved in the freezer to eat on our anniversary. It was all vegan, as well (obviously) and Daisy and I were eating pieces of the chocolate/jam cake up until earlier this week, even.
The kids -- our nieces and nephews, and one cousin -- had a lot of fun during the dance portion of the reception, and their boundless energy awed me. They were running back and forth almost the entire night, almost nonstop, and giggling. Even the toddlers. Daisy and I just watched them with tired eyes and secretly, internally were both glad that we had paid the cleaning fee so we didn't have to clean the place after it was all done.
Around 9PM or so -- right as it was getting dark -- people began to filter out, going back to their hotels and homes. By 10, when we were beginning to wrap things up, more than half of our guests were gone. We had the place until 10:30, and we brought up the lights at around 10:10 so we could start cleaning up. We didn't have to do anything, mind you, but we did have to put the gifts and the food in the car(s), take down the arch, lights, speakers and sound system array for the music, and gather up anything else we'd brought with us. Our wedding parties wouldn't let us help at all -- we tried, and they told us to go away, this was our wedding and everything was going to be taken care of. April had left her jacket (the spare I'd given her to wear in the wedding), and had texted Daisy to tell her that she didn't need it. I ended up giving it to one of Daisy's bridesmaids to take back home with her, as she said her mother could wear it -- which I think I mentioned before.
Our collective parents were amongst the last to leave -- Daisy's parents slipped out quietly, and my own parents left as our parties were cleaning everything up and moving stuff out to the car. It was the last time I'd see my parents before they left; in order to get back across the country and back to their jobs, they had to leave early on Sunday morning, stop at a halfway point hotel on Sunday night to sleep, and then drive the rest of the way back to West Virginia on Monday. That meant, obviously, they'd miss the gift-opening brunch the next morning at 11:30 at the parents' house.
We checked and double-checked everything once everything had been loaded into Daisy's car (now overflowing with stuff) and made sure we hadn't left anything behind. We tried to tip our security officer -- who had been guarding the door all day/night for us -- but he refused the tip. Daisy instead thanked him graciously and gave him a big hug, which I thought was sweet.
Our original plans at that point had been to go to Night Flight Pizza for a post-wedding meal. The lady who owns the place adores us, and knows Daisy well (though she's been getting to know me a lot better over the course of the past year or so too). However, both of us were exhausted and desperately just wanted to go home and go to bed. Because Daisy's dress was massive, thick, and voluminous, it was way too large for her to be able to drive with it on, so I took the wheel of the car and got us back to the apartment.
It was only then that we realized we had all of the food in the trunk of the car -- the remainder of the catering I mentioned above -- meaning all of the family-size salads, two massive pans of spaghetti, all of the leftover breadsticks, etc. And we had absolutely nowhere to put it. Our refrigerator in this place is tiny. I'm almost a foot taller than it is. And it was full of our normal food. We didn't have room for four tubs of salad, each almost as big as a car tire, and a tub of spaghetti that would take up 80% of a shelf in the fridge. We realized this as I'd pulled the car in front of our building's door for the moment to make things easier to carry in, and across the lawn from us on the bottom floor of the other side of the complex (so, maybe 30 feet away) was an older man sitting outside on his patio watching us -- in full wedding clothing, mind you -- panicking about what the hell we were going to do with basically half the food we'd had catered.
So, we did the most logical thing possible our exhausted brains could come up with -- we asked him if he wanted some of the food, explaining our situation.
"No thanks," he said, "but, congratulations."
I thought it was funny and/or sort of surreal.
We ended up taking a lot of it over to Daisy's office -- yes, her workplace, her office, on our wedding night, at 11PM, so that the night shift people could eat and so that the dayshift would have something the next day. We were, again, still fully dressed in our wedding clothing while we did this, mind you. We dropped off everything we could, leaving all of the salad there but one container of it, and we kept one of the tubs of spaghetti and most of the breadsticks as well (the latter two foods are now in the freezer in bags so that we can eat them later). Then and only then could we come home, take some of the stuff inside, and get the hell out of our formal wear.
People often make somewhat racy assumptions or ask personal questions about the wedding night, how it went, etc etc. I'll tell you exactly how our wedding night went, and will make no bones about it: we got out of the wedding clothes and piled them all on Daisy's desk in the computer room, we cleared space in the fridge to cram the leftover food in there, and Daisy laid down exhausted on the couch while I checked Facebook -- which was blowing up with pictures, messages, congratulations, etc. I listed myself as married to Daisy, and went outside to smoke on the porch. When I came back in, Daisy held up her phone to show it to me, and it was on her Facebook profile where she'd already changed her name.
"I changed my name," she said, and then dropped her arm; no more than 30 seconds later she was snoring on the couch.
I stayed up a bit longer to wind myself down and, really, burn myself out, and then I got Daisy off the couch, we stumbled into the bedroom, and...slept. Like rocks. For many hours. And that was our wedding night.
The next morning, of course, we did have to wake up -- no matter how difficult it was to do so -- and dress ourselves to go over to the parents' house for the gift-opening brunch. Most of Daisy's party was there, though none of mine came. I assume they were all still sleeping off their hangovers and/or had already begun their treks home. April and her husband, as well as my parents, had already left town by 11:30 AM. Rae was in town for a few more days afterward, but she wasn't awake. Jane had gone to the Omaha Zoo early that morning, and I have no clue what happened to Dan and Amanda, though I had told them that they were more than welcome to come get brunch and do the gift-opening stuff with us.
Mama had made muffins for everyone -- they were ready and done, and people were eating them when we arrived. Most of Daisy's party was there, and of course her sisters, their husbands, and our nieces and nephews were there as well, so it's not like it was an empty house. We went through our gifts and cards one by one, and got a lot of really nice stuff from people. Two of my friends from the university (the only ones not in my party to actually come up from Wichita) got us a beautiful owl-themed salt and pepper shaker set, for example. Mama had made us a wedding quilt, as did her own mother. We got a wireless router for the house and reusable K-cup filters for our Keurig. We got glassware and dishes, a Rubbermaid food storage set, mugs and knives, etc. We got a lot of cards containing checks and gift cards to various places (the majority of which we've either already deposited into our checking account or we've already used at the stores the cards were for). There are a lot of things we received, and most of it is still sitting here in the computer room with me in its boxes and bags for us to go through once we can actually get some breathing space and some time to sort all of it out/begin sending out thank-you cards. I'm not lying when I say that every day since the wedding, we've had something else to do or someplace else to be -- newlywed things to sort out and take care of -- and Daisy went back to work a week ago, so we're juggling all the things to be done in-between her shifts and her days off; most of said things we both have to be present for.
So. The after-wedding gift brunch was fun, relaxing, and quiet. We were finally beginning to feel like a little of the proverbial weight had been lifted from our shoulders. Understand, please, that we had been running, both literally and figuratively, for many days on end leading up to the wedding, what with my move and the setting up of this place as well as the coordinating of the wedding, its guests, the timeframes involved, etc.
However, we'd planned beforehand -- long before the wedding -- for all of us married people (with the exception of the parents) to take the kids to the zoo. We had originally planned a different day, but due to travel schedules of people leaving town, that Sunday after the brunch was decided to be the best time (and/or the only real time) where all of us would be there and available with no true plans. I mentioned in a post waaaaay over a week ago now, briefly, that we did this trip. Altogether there were all of us adults -- me and Daisy, as well as her sisters and their husbands and her cousin from Nova Scotia, and then the combined total of seven children between all of them. That put the grand total of people going to the zoo, all together and all at once, at fourteen people. Three vehicles, fourteen people, seven of them children all under ten. Logistically, this should've been a nightmare, but it actually went much more smoothly than I'd anticipated.
The Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium in Omaha is world-famous. In the midwest, especially anywhere in the immediate tri-state area, if someone says they want to go to a zoo, it's the one they're talking about. Yes, Wichita has a zoo. Yes, Kansas City has a zoo. I'm sure they're both fine zoos. But this zoo was, and is, amazing. It's definitely earned its reputation. Jane had gone there early in the morning, and had just left and had gotten back to her hotel room when we arrived with our caravan of people. Mama and Dad had decided to stay behind at home; Mama I'm sure was exhausted and more than likely wanted some peace and quiet for a bit, and Dad was "babysitting the ham," as he said, which would be our big family dinner that night.
Mind you, I've not been to a zoo since...1984. No, seriously. And that was the Pittsburgh Zoo. Yes, I remember it, but I was way, way too young to get anything out of it or truly enjoy it. I just remember that it was 1984, I saw polar bears, and that a group of us went together. And we got McDonald's afterwards. Yeah, seriously. So, naturally, upon arriving at the zoo here, I was immediately awed and took the mindset of a child (as, well, come on -- all of you know I am a big kid anyway). I got to be twenty feet from a massive giraffe. I got to have giant fruit bats swoop down and almost get in my hair. I got to see lots of penguins and sharks and jellyfish in the aquarium. It was, simply put, awesome.
However, in the afternoon the clouds began to roll in thickly. As we finished up with the giraffes, everyone with smartphones (so, everyone but me) got text alerts that the city was under a severe thunderstorm warning, and it was moving our way. The Lied Jungle, which is a massive complex where (surprise) jungle animals live -- monkeys, tapirs, the aforementioned bats, etc etc -- would be our last stop for the day, as we needed to get inside somewhere before the storms hit. The jungle building has a glass ceiling, but an opaque one. We could see the sky getting darker and darker through it, and finally -- maybe 1/3 of the way through the jungle complex itself -- we heard the storm hit.
Mind you again, it is loud in the jungle complex, what with the monkeys, birds, the waterfalls, and everything else that makes noise in there -- including the people. It was raining/storming so hard outside that the storm drowned out most other noise -- it was just a dull roaring of thunder and rain on plexiglass ceiling.
And it didn't stop. It didn't stop for hours. When we all left the zoo, we had to protect the babies as much as possible because it was some of the hardest rain I've seen in a long time, and being out in it for even thirty seconds meant that you were soaked to the bone -- so much that we were freezing and had to come back to the apartment and change our clothes/shower before going back over to the parents' house for dinner that night.
We got six more inches of rain two days later, by the way, but that's a story for the next post -- the aftermath of everything since.
May 31 and June 1.
Written well over a week later (obviously, I mean, look at today's date).
We went way overboard on the catering, we realized, after we began to see it all coming in. You don't realize exactly how much food it takes to feed 100 people until you see it laid out on tables in front of you. Daisy has the invoice somewhere for it (I believe it's out in the living room) but needless to say, salad/breadsticks/spaghetti for 100 people is a lot of goddamned food. So much that by the end of the night, we still had two entire pans of spaghetti, probably fifty (or more) breadsticks, and four or five unopened family-size tubs of salad left over.
Once the food was set up, we sat down to eat and hear speeches/toasts/etc. My mother had purchased all of the champagne the VFW hall had, out of her own pocket, and made sure everyone had champagne for the toasts. Several people spoke; our dads both spoke, most of Daisy's party spoke, all of my party spoke, and my old boss from Microbiology -- who had flown in to see me get married -- spoke at length about me as well. At the end of it, Daisy thanked everyone and spoke herself, then offered the microphone to me. I declined to speak.
If I had gone first, I would've said some words, but as I was last, I...well, everything I'd wanted to say had already been said by everyone else. I would've mentioned that our wedding day (May 31) was chosen because it's her parents' anniversary...well, dad touched on that and Daisy did as well. I would've thanked everyone for their time, help, and kindness in coming and showing us how much they cared, but Daisy and her parents did that. I would've talked about how much of an awesome person I was, but my own dad and old boss -- as well as my groom's party -- had already done that as well. I didn't want to repeat what had already been said, so I bowed out gracefully and declined to speak. This is highly amusing to some of you, I'm sure, as if you know me well, you know that I rarely, if ever, give up an opportunity to tell an entire crowd of people gathered in our honor how awesome I am and/or how awesome my wife is. I'd even had stuff I'd wanted to say as well, stuff I'd plotted out in my head days before. Beats to hit, so to speak. Since 95% of it had already been said and I basically blanked on the last 5%, I didn't say anything.
After the speeches were over...the dance party began.
I will mention now, and you will probably not be surprised by this revelation, but...I'm not much of a dancer. I am a rather sedentary person anyway, generally speaking, and the fact that I'd been wearing a very hot jacket, pants, socks, and incredibly uncomfortable patent leather dress shoes all day long didn't help matters any. Still, there's the traditional wife and groom dance, which we did, and then Daisy had her father/daughter dance with Dad. Apparently there's supposed to be some sort of mother/son dance in which I was supposed to dance with my mother, but nobody really told me about that, and because of that it's not like I had a song ready to go. I knew about the father/daughter dance, because that's a huge traditional thing.
It really didn't matter that much anyhow; I slow-danced with my mother later in the night anyway -- to some song that she really liked but I'd never heard of, some country song. It was sweet and touching, and she cried into my shoulder all the way through it (which was to be expected, as I'm her only son -- her only child, period -- and I'd just gotten married).
I tended to stay on the outskirts of most of the party and dancing; I did dance some with Daisy, and I danced some with some of the people there, mainly my friends and members of my/our wedding party(ies), but for the most part I really just wanted to sit down, wanted to get off of my aching, swollen feet -- so that's what I did. Outside, too, where I could smoke and try to get some cool breeze, since it was hot inside the VFW hall. I'm not a huge mingler anyway, and I'm even less of one at large social gatherings. While I like being the center of attention (who doesn't?), that only goes so far until I totally need to get away from loud pumping music and tons of people. This is also another reason why I don't like going out dancing with Daisy, and the one time she took me out salsa dancing I described the experience as my own personal hell.
While many others got drunk via the cash bar, I didn't; for one, the mere thought of ingesting more alcohol after my bachelor party made me internally retch, and for two, I just wasn't interested. One of our friends bought me a beer right at the start of dinner, and Rae later bought a round of Jack Daniel's shots for several of us, including me, but that's all I had the entire night except for two bottles of water. I just wasn't "feelin' it," I suppose. However, I did get to see many people I know -- including family members and really close friends in my party -- get sloshed and/or bust some serious moves on the dance floor. I desperately hope someone got pictures of some of that. I had a bunch of people come in from out of town, though -- some of them from pretty far away -- and I really just wanted to relax and talk to them, spend some time with them. It's so difficult to do that when everything is all crazy and the music is pumping and loud, and I didn't want any of them to feel neglected or like I was ignoring them at the wedding they came to for me. I did that as much as I could -- Jane and I sat outside for a good hour or so, and I did the same with April and her husband. I spent a good amount of time talking to my former boss and his wife as well. There was so many people and I was so overwhelmed, under-rested, and fried that I I couldn't have possibly spent time with all of them no matter how hard I tried; I would've fallen over and passed out on the dance floor due to exhaustion.
I wanted to mention the cake as well, for it was amazing -- Daisy's oldest sister made it for us by herself, painstakingly decorating it and making three layers in different flavors, covering it all in a beautiful (and tasty) fondant so that it would look even and beautiful. The bottom layer -- which I ate the most of -- was two layers of chocolate cake with either strawberry or raspberry (I can't remember) jam between them. I don't remember what the middle layer was, but the top tier was much smaller and it's the one we saved in the freezer to eat on our anniversary. It was all vegan, as well (obviously) and Daisy and I were eating pieces of the chocolate/jam cake up until earlier this week, even.
The kids -- our nieces and nephews, and one cousin -- had a lot of fun during the dance portion of the reception, and their boundless energy awed me. They were running back and forth almost the entire night, almost nonstop, and giggling. Even the toddlers. Daisy and I just watched them with tired eyes and secretly, internally were both glad that we had paid the cleaning fee so we didn't have to clean the place after it was all done.
Around 9PM or so -- right as it was getting dark -- people began to filter out, going back to their hotels and homes. By 10, when we were beginning to wrap things up, more than half of our guests were gone. We had the place until 10:30, and we brought up the lights at around 10:10 so we could start cleaning up. We didn't have to do anything, mind you, but we did have to put the gifts and the food in the car(s), take down the arch, lights, speakers and sound system array for the music, and gather up anything else we'd brought with us. Our wedding parties wouldn't let us help at all -- we tried, and they told us to go away, this was our wedding and everything was going to be taken care of. April had left her jacket (the spare I'd given her to wear in the wedding), and had texted Daisy to tell her that she didn't need it. I ended up giving it to one of Daisy's bridesmaids to take back home with her, as she said her mother could wear it -- which I think I mentioned before.
Our collective parents were amongst the last to leave -- Daisy's parents slipped out quietly, and my own parents left as our parties were cleaning everything up and moving stuff out to the car. It was the last time I'd see my parents before they left; in order to get back across the country and back to their jobs, they had to leave early on Sunday morning, stop at a halfway point hotel on Sunday night to sleep, and then drive the rest of the way back to West Virginia on Monday. That meant, obviously, they'd miss the gift-opening brunch the next morning at 11:30 at the parents' house.
We checked and double-checked everything once everything had been loaded into Daisy's car (now overflowing with stuff) and made sure we hadn't left anything behind. We tried to tip our security officer -- who had been guarding the door all day/night for us -- but he refused the tip. Daisy instead thanked him graciously and gave him a big hug, which I thought was sweet.
Our original plans at that point had been to go to Night Flight Pizza for a post-wedding meal. The lady who owns the place adores us, and knows Daisy well (though she's been getting to know me a lot better over the course of the past year or so too). However, both of us were exhausted and desperately just wanted to go home and go to bed. Because Daisy's dress was massive, thick, and voluminous, it was way too large for her to be able to drive with it on, so I took the wheel of the car and got us back to the apartment.
It was only then that we realized we had all of the food in the trunk of the car -- the remainder of the catering I mentioned above -- meaning all of the family-size salads, two massive pans of spaghetti, all of the leftover breadsticks, etc. And we had absolutely nowhere to put it. Our refrigerator in this place is tiny. I'm almost a foot taller than it is. And it was full of our normal food. We didn't have room for four tubs of salad, each almost as big as a car tire, and a tub of spaghetti that would take up 80% of a shelf in the fridge. We realized this as I'd pulled the car in front of our building's door for the moment to make things easier to carry in, and across the lawn from us on the bottom floor of the other side of the complex (so, maybe 30 feet away) was an older man sitting outside on his patio watching us -- in full wedding clothing, mind you -- panicking about what the hell we were going to do with basically half the food we'd had catered.
So, we did the most logical thing possible our exhausted brains could come up with -- we asked him if he wanted some of the food, explaining our situation.
"No thanks," he said, "but, congratulations."
I thought it was funny and/or sort of surreal.
We ended up taking a lot of it over to Daisy's office -- yes, her workplace, her office, on our wedding night, at 11PM, so that the night shift people could eat and so that the dayshift would have something the next day. We were, again, still fully dressed in our wedding clothing while we did this, mind you. We dropped off everything we could, leaving all of the salad there but one container of it, and we kept one of the tubs of spaghetti and most of the breadsticks as well (the latter two foods are now in the freezer in bags so that we can eat them later). Then and only then could we come home, take some of the stuff inside, and get the hell out of our formal wear.
People often make somewhat racy assumptions or ask personal questions about the wedding night, how it went, etc etc. I'll tell you exactly how our wedding night went, and will make no bones about it: we got out of the wedding clothes and piled them all on Daisy's desk in the computer room, we cleared space in the fridge to cram the leftover food in there, and Daisy laid down exhausted on the couch while I checked Facebook -- which was blowing up with pictures, messages, congratulations, etc. I listed myself as married to Daisy, and went outside to smoke on the porch. When I came back in, Daisy held up her phone to show it to me, and it was on her Facebook profile where she'd already changed her name.
"I changed my name," she said, and then dropped her arm; no more than 30 seconds later she was snoring on the couch.
I stayed up a bit longer to wind myself down and, really, burn myself out, and then I got Daisy off the couch, we stumbled into the bedroom, and...slept. Like rocks. For many hours. And that was our wedding night.
The next morning, of course, we did have to wake up -- no matter how difficult it was to do so -- and dress ourselves to go over to the parents' house for the gift-opening brunch. Most of Daisy's party was there, though none of mine came. I assume they were all still sleeping off their hangovers and/or had already begun their treks home. April and her husband, as well as my parents, had already left town by 11:30 AM. Rae was in town for a few more days afterward, but she wasn't awake. Jane had gone to the Omaha Zoo early that morning, and I have no clue what happened to Dan and Amanda, though I had told them that they were more than welcome to come get brunch and do the gift-opening stuff with us.
Mama had made muffins for everyone -- they were ready and done, and people were eating them when we arrived. Most of Daisy's party was there, and of course her sisters, their husbands, and our nieces and nephews were there as well, so it's not like it was an empty house. We went through our gifts and cards one by one, and got a lot of really nice stuff from people. Two of my friends from the university (the only ones not in my party to actually come up from Wichita) got us a beautiful owl-themed salt and pepper shaker set, for example. Mama had made us a wedding quilt, as did her own mother. We got a wireless router for the house and reusable K-cup filters for our Keurig. We got glassware and dishes, a Rubbermaid food storage set, mugs and knives, etc. We got a lot of cards containing checks and gift cards to various places (the majority of which we've either already deposited into our checking account or we've already used at the stores the cards were for). There are a lot of things we received, and most of it is still sitting here in the computer room with me in its boxes and bags for us to go through once we can actually get some breathing space and some time to sort all of it out/begin sending out thank-you cards. I'm not lying when I say that every day since the wedding, we've had something else to do or someplace else to be -- newlywed things to sort out and take care of -- and Daisy went back to work a week ago, so we're juggling all the things to be done in-between her shifts and her days off; most of said things we both have to be present for.
So. The after-wedding gift brunch was fun, relaxing, and quiet. We were finally beginning to feel like a little of the proverbial weight had been lifted from our shoulders. Understand, please, that we had been running, both literally and figuratively, for many days on end leading up to the wedding, what with my move and the setting up of this place as well as the coordinating of the wedding, its guests, the timeframes involved, etc.
However, we'd planned beforehand -- long before the wedding -- for all of us married people (with the exception of the parents) to take the kids to the zoo. We had originally planned a different day, but due to travel schedules of people leaving town, that Sunday after the brunch was decided to be the best time (and/or the only real time) where all of us would be there and available with no true plans. I mentioned in a post waaaaay over a week ago now, briefly, that we did this trip. Altogether there were all of us adults -- me and Daisy, as well as her sisters and their husbands and her cousin from Nova Scotia, and then the combined total of seven children between all of them. That put the grand total of people going to the zoo, all together and all at once, at fourteen people. Three vehicles, fourteen people, seven of them children all under ten. Logistically, this should've been a nightmare, but it actually went much more smoothly than I'd anticipated.
The Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium in Omaha is world-famous. In the midwest, especially anywhere in the immediate tri-state area, if someone says they want to go to a zoo, it's the one they're talking about. Yes, Wichita has a zoo. Yes, Kansas City has a zoo. I'm sure they're both fine zoos. But this zoo was, and is, amazing. It's definitely earned its reputation. Jane had gone there early in the morning, and had just left and had gotten back to her hotel room when we arrived with our caravan of people. Mama and Dad had decided to stay behind at home; Mama I'm sure was exhausted and more than likely wanted some peace and quiet for a bit, and Dad was "babysitting the ham," as he said, which would be our big family dinner that night.
Mind you, I've not been to a zoo since...1984. No, seriously. And that was the Pittsburgh Zoo. Yes, I remember it, but I was way, way too young to get anything out of it or truly enjoy it. I just remember that it was 1984, I saw polar bears, and that a group of us went together. And we got McDonald's afterwards. Yeah, seriously. So, naturally, upon arriving at the zoo here, I was immediately awed and took the mindset of a child (as, well, come on -- all of you know I am a big kid anyway). I got to be twenty feet from a massive giraffe. I got to have giant fruit bats swoop down and almost get in my hair. I got to see lots of penguins and sharks and jellyfish in the aquarium. It was, simply put, awesome.
However, in the afternoon the clouds began to roll in thickly. As we finished up with the giraffes, everyone with smartphones (so, everyone but me) got text alerts that the city was under a severe thunderstorm warning, and it was moving our way. The Lied Jungle, which is a massive complex where (surprise) jungle animals live -- monkeys, tapirs, the aforementioned bats, etc etc -- would be our last stop for the day, as we needed to get inside somewhere before the storms hit. The jungle building has a glass ceiling, but an opaque one. We could see the sky getting darker and darker through it, and finally -- maybe 1/3 of the way through the jungle complex itself -- we heard the storm hit.
Mind you again, it is loud in the jungle complex, what with the monkeys, birds, the waterfalls, and everything else that makes noise in there -- including the people. It was raining/storming so hard outside that the storm drowned out most other noise -- it was just a dull roaring of thunder and rain on plexiglass ceiling.
And it didn't stop. It didn't stop for hours. When we all left the zoo, we had to protect the babies as much as possible because it was some of the hardest rain I've seen in a long time, and being out in it for even thirty seconds meant that you were soaked to the bone -- so much that we were freezing and had to come back to the apartment and change our clothes/shower before going back over to the parents' house for dinner that night.
We got six more inches of rain two days later, by the way, but that's a story for the next post -- the aftermath of everything since.
Sunday, June 8, 2014
The Wedding, Part IV
Saturday, the wedding day. Written a week later.
6AM Saturday morning came very quickly. Mind you, neither of us had been sleeping that well for the past several days. We'd been doing everything we could for wedding planning, coordinating the comings and goings of friends and family, spending long hours outside of the apartment doing various tasks, and really, we hadn't been able to get rest. Sleeping but four hours or so before we had to be awake for at least eighteen more was us just running on fumes -- but it's not like either of us could actually sleep through the wedding day, of course...no matter how tired we were.
So. We got up, we threw on some comfortable clothes that we could work in, and went over to the VFW hall at 8AM to set up. We were, thankfully, not the only ones setting up -- several of our friends/party members were there super-early to help out, even though it wasn't required of them, and all of the parents and Daisy's sisters/their husbands and kids arrived to do the same as well. With everyone's help, we had everything set up within an hour or so, maybe a little more. And that means everything -- music, lighting, candy dishes, tables/tablecloths, pictures, slideshows, etc. It was all done quite quickly. Of course, getting everyone there for the run-through and planning was another issue altogether.
I'd like to step back for a moment, again, and once more reiterate that I have never been married before. I did not know how any of this stuff was supposed to work. I knew I was supposed to show up, we'd walk down the aisle a certain way, we'd exchange our vows and rings, our brother-in-law performing the ceremony would pronounce us man and wife, and we'd get applause as we walked out... I mean, that's the way it's supposed to work, right?
Well, apparently there's a lot more to it than that. There's a script of sorts, for one, for the officiant (our brother-in-law), there's a set order as to who was walking whom down the aisle and when, a set order to when the kids (as the flower girls and ring bearers) would go down the aisle, the walking-down-the-aisle music (both ways, in and then out) and then the exit process -- which was like the entry process in reverse...basically, anyway.
We went through the entire walkthrough of the ceremony three times, maybe four. I can't remember as my brain was fried from getting so little sleep. We did it until all of us knew what we'd do, when, and how. At the end of it, I turned to April and said "I still guarantee you that I'll screw something up."
That's the only thing I was nervous about the whole day, actually. People asked me if I was nervous about getting married. They asked me a lot. In the two weeks leading up to the wedding, it had to be the number one question posed of me, and I heard it no less than three times per day when we were in mixed company -- from basically everyone. No, I was not nervous about getting married; it feels like Daisy and I have already been married for years, and in the week since we have been married, not much has changed in our relationship or around the house -- it's just all legal now, and we call each other "wife" and "hubby," respectively. I mean, Daisy's family accepted me long, long ago. They all love me and I love them. I've been part of the family since Daisy and I got together, so all that's changed is that it's official in the eyes of the law and the eyes of society.
Yay, no more living in sin!
Ahem.
So. Once the actual walkthroughs were over, we all dispersed around 11 -- giving our schedule orders that we'd all return to the VFW by 1:45 for the photography, which would be done before the actual ceremony (which was scheduled for 4PM). Daisy and I went to Walmart (she had to pick something up, though I can't remember what now) and we came back to our apartment, where Daisy got a shower and started on her makeup. In the meantime between then and the photographs, April and her husband and Jane all came over to our place so that they could see it and meet the cats while I got ready -- which basically involved me putting on a different shirt, pants, my jacket, and my shoes. April also had to pick up her jacket from my place, a spare jacket that I'd kept in case anyone in my party needed it for the actual ceremony, because she'd not brought one with her. No worries. The spare jacket didn't fit me anyway, and at the end of the night it ended up being taken home by one of Daisy's bridesmaids, who planned to give it to her mother.
At around 1:15 or so, after Daisy had long left the apartment to get ready at her parents' house and get into her dress, we left my place -- I rode with April and her husband -- back up to the VFW, stopping at a CVS first to get a lint roller for our wedding best, as one cannot step into this apartment without getting cat hair on them from my little loveable beasts. I didn't even try to sit down after I'd gotten dressed up for the wedding due to cat-hair-paranoia, and I still got rogue hair on me. We got it all off of us when we got up to the VFW hall, on time, but nobody else was really there yet. Rae was there, and a few members of Daisy's party were there, but noticeably absent were her parents and sisters, as well as Daisy herself. My parents were there already, of course. I texted Dan and Amanda -- the remainder of my party who had not yet arrived -- to tell them they were late for photos, and they responded that they were en route.
As soon as they walked in the door, I immediately went fuuuuuuuuuck. I'd forgotten Dan's shirt in my apartment, and I'd also forgotten the marriage license, which was on my desk in the computer room.
Let me explain.
Because Dan replaced Parker in my wedding party at the last minute, Dan didn't have a tuxedo shirt to wear in the wedding. I did order a spare, but my dad forgot to order his own shirt as well, and that spare went to him. I had an old tuxedo shirt in my closet in my regular t-shirt rotation, though it wasn't exactly the same as the rest of them. It was close enough, though, and unless you were looking to spot the differences, you wouldn't be able to. So I pulled that one out of my closet at the last minute -- smelling of boxed-up clothes, traces of cigarette smoke and the cats, I'm sure, from being in my closet in the Newton house for years -- and set it aside for Dan. I left that shirt on the desk in the computer room along with the marriage license and my dad's groomsman's gift (a bottle of Southern Comfort).
"We have to run back to my place," I said to my mother. "Have to. We'll be back." And we turned tail, jumped into Dan's car, and hightailed it back to the apartment -- which, amusingly enough, is pretty close to the VFW. It's within a five-minute drive, and it's quite literally a straight shot back and forth on one street. I ran inside, and by the time Dan had circled the car around the lot and back around to the door again, I was back outside with all of the items in tow. The entire trip down here and back took maybe ten minutes, max.
When we arrived back at the VFW hall, everyone else had arrived -- but I wasn't allowed to go inside. Daisy was inside in full dress, and the first thing I saw was our brother-in-law, who was officiating, running out to the family car, jumping in, and basically screeching out of the parking lot...quickly.
Oooookay, I thought. So apparently he forgot something else too. That something, as I would find out later, was that Daisy had left her veil at home at the parents' house. Daisy couldn't have the photos taken without it.
I told Dan and Amanda to go in and get my dad, to tell him to come out and get the bottle of Southern Comfort from me -- I couldn't bring it inside as it was not only against the rules of the VFW, but I couldn't see Daisy yet. One of the photos she so desperately wanted was the "you turn around and see me for the first time in the dress" photo, so that she could get a genuine reaction shot. So, outside in the sun, wearing more clothing than any man with long hair and a thick beard should ever wear in the beginning of summer, I lit up a cigarette and waited.
A few minutes later I was told to walk down to the bottom of the parking lot (where there was a very pretty small wooded area that we'd chosen to use for the pictures) and wait with my back turned to the building, as Daisy would be coming out in a few moments. She did, she got the reaction shot (which was indeed genuine and was because her dress was so gorgeous), and we began taking all of the photos.
The results? Well, even a week later, we haven't seen all of them -- we will pay our photographer the other half of her money and we'll get them on disc sometime this coming week, I would imagine -- but we have seen a few of them. Of those few, this one is still, and will probably be for a while, my favorite:
I told you the dress was gorgeous.
We took photos for more than an hour, with different people in different combinations -- the entirely family shot, the entirely wedding parties shot, shots with my parents, shots with her parents, shots of just the groom's party, shots of just the bride's party, etc -- and finally, at the end of all of those shots, our photographer (who was and is a very, very sweet woman that Daisy knows, one that I'd like to invite to dinner parties and the like with her husband) took the pre-wedding photos of just the two of us, like the one above, in various poses and backgrounds.
Finally, all of us began to make the trek back inside the VFW for the ceremony, and began our line-up processes as all of the guests began to arrive. We actually had far fewer guests than we were expecting; Daisy and her parents had booked catering for 100, as we figured with 70 confirmations and people getting second helpings of food, that would be enough. By the time everything had settled down and everyone had taken their seats, we maybe had...fifty? Total? Including the family and our parties? Something like that. It was far below our original expectations, with many people being total no-shows (and of those people, most of them not even telling us why afterwards). Of the people who did come who weren't family or in our parties, about fifteen or so of them I already knew -- Daisy's friends and my own -- but the rest of them I had no clue who they were, and they kept to themselves and never even introduced themselves to me all night. Daisy introduced them to me later, and I exchanged handshakes with them and the like, but none of them interacted with me or Daisy after that. Which was, needless to say, sort of odd. Apparently they were people Daisy worked with at her old job and their husbands/wives, but eh.
Anyway.
We started a bit late, as all of us got our places and we waited until all of the guests were seated, but the ceremony went off without a hitch -- and it was very nice. Our brother-in-law who married us wrote a very sweet sermon-like piece about how marriages are like knots, the kids were...well, kids, and went AWOL during their walk down the aisle, throwing the pillows and flowers and running around screaming -- which was to be expected, of course -- and the reason why I gave the rings beforehand to my dad, my best man.
Before the ceremony -- me a few days before, Daisy the night before/morning of -- we wrote our own vows. Daisy said hers first, then I said mine, then our brother-in-law pronounced us man and wife. Remarkably, neither I nor Daisy cried, but I can only imagine that our mothers were crying, as well as some members of the audience and members of our parties. By the way we were situated on the stage, all of the family not in the wedding (our mothers, her dad, and at least one or two cousins) were behind me and to my left, so there's no way I could've seen if they were.
As an aside, I was later told by no less than five people that my vows to Daisy made them cry -- including my own friends and our photographer.
So there it was. It was done. Finally, we were husband and wife. We exited the building in reverse order, as was the plan, and once we were outside, the photographer whisked us away shortly after everyone had come back out so that she could get more shots of us in a different location, which took about half an hour or so. When we had finished, the food was arriving, having been catered by Fazoli's.
We were married, yes, but the adventure hadn't ended yet. What happened next? Well, that's a story for the next post.
6AM Saturday morning came very quickly. Mind you, neither of us had been sleeping that well for the past several days. We'd been doing everything we could for wedding planning, coordinating the comings and goings of friends and family, spending long hours outside of the apartment doing various tasks, and really, we hadn't been able to get rest. Sleeping but four hours or so before we had to be awake for at least eighteen more was us just running on fumes -- but it's not like either of us could actually sleep through the wedding day, of course...no matter how tired we were.
So. We got up, we threw on some comfortable clothes that we could work in, and went over to the VFW hall at 8AM to set up. We were, thankfully, not the only ones setting up -- several of our friends/party members were there super-early to help out, even though it wasn't required of them, and all of the parents and Daisy's sisters/their husbands and kids arrived to do the same as well. With everyone's help, we had everything set up within an hour or so, maybe a little more. And that means everything -- music, lighting, candy dishes, tables/tablecloths, pictures, slideshows, etc. It was all done quite quickly. Of course, getting everyone there for the run-through and planning was another issue altogether.
I'd like to step back for a moment, again, and once more reiterate that I have never been married before. I did not know how any of this stuff was supposed to work. I knew I was supposed to show up, we'd walk down the aisle a certain way, we'd exchange our vows and rings, our brother-in-law performing the ceremony would pronounce us man and wife, and we'd get applause as we walked out... I mean, that's the way it's supposed to work, right?
Well, apparently there's a lot more to it than that. There's a script of sorts, for one, for the officiant (our brother-in-law), there's a set order as to who was walking whom down the aisle and when, a set order to when the kids (as the flower girls and ring bearers) would go down the aisle, the walking-down-the-aisle music (both ways, in and then out) and then the exit process -- which was like the entry process in reverse...basically, anyway.
We went through the entire walkthrough of the ceremony three times, maybe four. I can't remember as my brain was fried from getting so little sleep. We did it until all of us knew what we'd do, when, and how. At the end of it, I turned to April and said "I still guarantee you that I'll screw something up."
That's the only thing I was nervous about the whole day, actually. People asked me if I was nervous about getting married. They asked me a lot. In the two weeks leading up to the wedding, it had to be the number one question posed of me, and I heard it no less than three times per day when we were in mixed company -- from basically everyone. No, I was not nervous about getting married; it feels like Daisy and I have already been married for years, and in the week since we have been married, not much has changed in our relationship or around the house -- it's just all legal now, and we call each other "wife" and "hubby," respectively. I mean, Daisy's family accepted me long, long ago. They all love me and I love them. I've been part of the family since Daisy and I got together, so all that's changed is that it's official in the eyes of the law and the eyes of society.
Yay, no more living in sin!
Ahem.
So. Once the actual walkthroughs were over, we all dispersed around 11 -- giving our schedule orders that we'd all return to the VFW by 1:45 for the photography, which would be done before the actual ceremony (which was scheduled for 4PM). Daisy and I went to Walmart (she had to pick something up, though I can't remember what now) and we came back to our apartment, where Daisy got a shower and started on her makeup. In the meantime between then and the photographs, April and her husband and Jane all came over to our place so that they could see it and meet the cats while I got ready -- which basically involved me putting on a different shirt, pants, my jacket, and my shoes. April also had to pick up her jacket from my place, a spare jacket that I'd kept in case anyone in my party needed it for the actual ceremony, because she'd not brought one with her. No worries. The spare jacket didn't fit me anyway, and at the end of the night it ended up being taken home by one of Daisy's bridesmaids, who planned to give it to her mother.
At around 1:15 or so, after Daisy had long left the apartment to get ready at her parents' house and get into her dress, we left my place -- I rode with April and her husband -- back up to the VFW, stopping at a CVS first to get a lint roller for our wedding best, as one cannot step into this apartment without getting cat hair on them from my little loveable beasts. I didn't even try to sit down after I'd gotten dressed up for the wedding due to cat-hair-paranoia, and I still got rogue hair on me. We got it all off of us when we got up to the VFW hall, on time, but nobody else was really there yet. Rae was there, and a few members of Daisy's party were there, but noticeably absent were her parents and sisters, as well as Daisy herself. My parents were there already, of course. I texted Dan and Amanda -- the remainder of my party who had not yet arrived -- to tell them they were late for photos, and they responded that they were en route.
As soon as they walked in the door, I immediately went fuuuuuuuuuck. I'd forgotten Dan's shirt in my apartment, and I'd also forgotten the marriage license, which was on my desk in the computer room.
Let me explain.
Because Dan replaced Parker in my wedding party at the last minute, Dan didn't have a tuxedo shirt to wear in the wedding. I did order a spare, but my dad forgot to order his own shirt as well, and that spare went to him. I had an old tuxedo shirt in my closet in my regular t-shirt rotation, though it wasn't exactly the same as the rest of them. It was close enough, though, and unless you were looking to spot the differences, you wouldn't be able to. So I pulled that one out of my closet at the last minute -- smelling of boxed-up clothes, traces of cigarette smoke and the cats, I'm sure, from being in my closet in the Newton house for years -- and set it aside for Dan. I left that shirt on the desk in the computer room along with the marriage license and my dad's groomsman's gift (a bottle of Southern Comfort).
"We have to run back to my place," I said to my mother. "Have to. We'll be back." And we turned tail, jumped into Dan's car, and hightailed it back to the apartment -- which, amusingly enough, is pretty close to the VFW. It's within a five-minute drive, and it's quite literally a straight shot back and forth on one street. I ran inside, and by the time Dan had circled the car around the lot and back around to the door again, I was back outside with all of the items in tow. The entire trip down here and back took maybe ten minutes, max.
When we arrived back at the VFW hall, everyone else had arrived -- but I wasn't allowed to go inside. Daisy was inside in full dress, and the first thing I saw was our brother-in-law, who was officiating, running out to the family car, jumping in, and basically screeching out of the parking lot...quickly.
Oooookay, I thought. So apparently he forgot something else too. That something, as I would find out later, was that Daisy had left her veil at home at the parents' house. Daisy couldn't have the photos taken without it.
I told Dan and Amanda to go in and get my dad, to tell him to come out and get the bottle of Southern Comfort from me -- I couldn't bring it inside as it was not only against the rules of the VFW, but I couldn't see Daisy yet. One of the photos she so desperately wanted was the "you turn around and see me for the first time in the dress" photo, so that she could get a genuine reaction shot. So, outside in the sun, wearing more clothing than any man with long hair and a thick beard should ever wear in the beginning of summer, I lit up a cigarette and waited.
A few minutes later I was told to walk down to the bottom of the parking lot (where there was a very pretty small wooded area that we'd chosen to use for the pictures) and wait with my back turned to the building, as Daisy would be coming out in a few moments. She did, she got the reaction shot (which was indeed genuine and was because her dress was so gorgeous), and we began taking all of the photos.
The results? Well, even a week later, we haven't seen all of them -- we will pay our photographer the other half of her money and we'll get them on disc sometime this coming week, I would imagine -- but we have seen a few of them. Of those few, this one is still, and will probably be for a while, my favorite:
I told you the dress was gorgeous.
We took photos for more than an hour, with different people in different combinations -- the entirely family shot, the entirely wedding parties shot, shots with my parents, shots with her parents, shots of just the groom's party, shots of just the bride's party, etc -- and finally, at the end of all of those shots, our photographer (who was and is a very, very sweet woman that Daisy knows, one that I'd like to invite to dinner parties and the like with her husband) took the pre-wedding photos of just the two of us, like the one above, in various poses and backgrounds.
Finally, all of us began to make the trek back inside the VFW for the ceremony, and began our line-up processes as all of the guests began to arrive. We actually had far fewer guests than we were expecting; Daisy and her parents had booked catering for 100, as we figured with 70 confirmations and people getting second helpings of food, that would be enough. By the time everything had settled down and everyone had taken their seats, we maybe had...fifty? Total? Including the family and our parties? Something like that. It was far below our original expectations, with many people being total no-shows (and of those people, most of them not even telling us why afterwards). Of the people who did come who weren't family or in our parties, about fifteen or so of them I already knew -- Daisy's friends and my own -- but the rest of them I had no clue who they were, and they kept to themselves and never even introduced themselves to me all night. Daisy introduced them to me later, and I exchanged handshakes with them and the like, but none of them interacted with me or Daisy after that. Which was, needless to say, sort of odd. Apparently they were people Daisy worked with at her old job and their husbands/wives, but eh.
Anyway.
We started a bit late, as all of us got our places and we waited until all of the guests were seated, but the ceremony went off without a hitch -- and it was very nice. Our brother-in-law who married us wrote a very sweet sermon-like piece about how marriages are like knots, the kids were...well, kids, and went AWOL during their walk down the aisle, throwing the pillows and flowers and running around screaming -- which was to be expected, of course -- and the reason why I gave the rings beforehand to my dad, my best man.
Before the ceremony -- me a few days before, Daisy the night before/morning of -- we wrote our own vows. Daisy said hers first, then I said mine, then our brother-in-law pronounced us man and wife. Remarkably, neither I nor Daisy cried, but I can only imagine that our mothers were crying, as well as some members of the audience and members of our parties. By the way we were situated on the stage, all of the family not in the wedding (our mothers, her dad, and at least one or two cousins) were behind me and to my left, so there's no way I could've seen if they were.
As an aside, I was later told by no less than five people that my vows to Daisy made them cry -- including my own friends and our photographer.
So there it was. It was done. Finally, we were husband and wife. We exited the building in reverse order, as was the plan, and once we were outside, the photographer whisked us away shortly after everyone had come back out so that she could get more shots of us in a different location, which took about half an hour or so. When we had finished, the food was arriving, having been catered by Fazoli's.
We were married, yes, but the adventure hadn't ended yet. What happened next? Well, that's a story for the next post.
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