A poet is a light and winged thing...

Not that I don't have anything else interesting happening in my life lately. I do. I'm ~2 weeks out from flying out to California to visit Kat (because we can afford it this year and because we've both had really shitty years so far, so Disneyland is kind of a necessity), living in Massachusetts again is glorious (especially with fall creeping in; I'd forgotten how much I miss those cold mornings and bright blue skies), Kyle and I are doing great and looking to move out in the next six months, and things are looking up.

I think I've finally come to a decent place about the babbu thing... sort of a place of "well, if/when it happens, it happens." I blame this largely on having stepped away from the crazy baby websites, where getting pregnant is like the Olympics. No, it really is. They have huge forums about it, where you post pictures of your pregnancy test so that people can digitally enhance it and say "Yeah, what you thought was a pink line is actually just an indent in the test" or wish you happy baby dust (ewww...) and talk about cervical mucus and post pictures of their cervixes (cervices?) and... eurgh.

It's all far too intimate, but I know why it's there. When you're trying to get pregnant, you want someone to talk to about it, and your poor spouse is probably sick of hearing about "oh, today my cervical mucus was sticky and my basal body temperature was 96.7, so I'll probably be ovulating in about six days." It kind of takes the romance out of-- everything. And you don't want to talk about it with your friends who aren't trying to conceive because, as the good STFUParents tag says, "you used to be fun... then you had a baby." I rant occasionally about my frustrations to Kat, who's been more supportive than she should be, and to my mother, who has been very eager to hear about the goo my body produces, but I still feel weird talking about it with people who aren't-- there.

Which brought me to BabyCenter and forums like it, where getting pregnant really is an Olympic sport. It makes the entire process stressful; you see people posting month after month about getting their "BFP!" (which I first thought was "baby's first picture!" and wanted to throw things at everyone who used it, but later found out was "big fat positive!" which is only slightly better) and even though there are plenty of women there who have been trying and trying with no success, you still feel kind of like you don't measure up as month after month passes and you've got nothing.

It's pressure. It's pressure that isn't helped when I poke my head on Facebook and see that--almost literally--everyone I graduated high school and college with either has a kid already or is getting ready to have a kid in the next 2-3 months (seriously, how do people sync that?). It's pressure that I don't know that I would feel if I was younger, and it's pressure that's even further exacerbated by watching and rewatching videos on "this is how getting pregnant happens." It's pressure that's only built up when you're bombarded with articles about "the best time of day to have baby-making sex!" and "foods to avoid if you want to conceive!" and all sorts of insanity.

But that's just the thing--you can be very fertile. You can have sex on the right day at the right time in the right position. You can eat the right foods and avoid the wrong foods. You can take the right vitamins. And you might still not get pregnant. It's not because you're infertile or because you're doing something wrong. It's because no matter what you do or don't do, getting pregnant is a craps shoot. Sometimes, the stars align just right and you're knocked up the first time you try. Sometimes, you have to keep trying and trying and trying.

It was stressing me out, but now I'm kind of at a place of-- well, I guess relaxation about it? The good thing about the chemical pregnancies I've had this year (one in February and one in July) is that I know I'm producing fertile eggs. I know Kyle and I are capable of timing things right and that our bodies are compatible in that way. It's just a question of getting it to stick, and I'm sure it will.

Oddly enough, what kind of helped was going to King Richard's Faire last weekend and getting my tarot cards read there (le scandal!). Somehow, hearing from a complete stranger (a very nice, warm, friendly complete stranger--she chose her profession well. I'd go back to her for any number of readings in a heartbeat) that she saw two kids in the cards for me and Kyle (one fire and one earth, she said) but that I needed to relax and stop sabotaging myself really helped. On an objective level, I know that it was probably a lot more reading of body posture and speculation, but... I don't know. It helped, and I've been feeling pretty relaxed since then.

Oh, I'm still charting my temperature and still examining what my body's doing depending on what day of the month it is. I'm still hoping that this month, I won't get my period and I can look forward to a late June baby, but if that doesn't happen, it doesn't happen. It means two more weeks I can enjoy a glass of wine without being glared at and more sex along the way. And hey, whatever kid comes along when s/he does come along is going to be awesome, whether they're born in June or September or whenever.

Tangentially related, I started researching adoption things because that's something Kyle and I have been planning to do pretty much since we met--both of us figure that we've enough love and resources, so why not adopt a kid who wouldn't have that otherwise? We're looking into adopting from China eventually (according to most websites I've read, both partners have to be over 35 for an adoption from China, so it won't be for another 10 years at least), and I was pleased to find that the requirements for adopting from China aren't as stringent as I'd expected. The only one that might be an adventure is that couples are required to each have a BMI of below 40, which I make easily but is a little harder for Kyle. BUT we've got 10 years to pull our lives together, have some homegrown children before finding our handpicked baby, and I'd say that overall, the future is looking pretty good from where I stand.

Ages ago, I always used to record my dreams in here and analyze them, but I haven't done that in a while. BUT since I had a particularly involved and complex dream last night, I figured I might as well, just to keep things organized.

( The dream... )

---

( The analysis... )

Hooah.

A couple of months ago, my boss M--- talked about resigning in May. She wanted to take all of us with her, wherever she went. I don't know if this was a political move, but I don't think it was. She's not really the type to play political games. If she has a problem with someone, she tells them outright, and she values her employees highly.

About a month ago, after the company board meeting, H--- (M---'s boss) apparently told M--- that there might be lay-offs, so M--- told us to brush up our resumes.

And rumors had been flying for a while, but today, it was finally official: my entire department was laid off. I don't think it's the smartest business move (trying to grow your business? LAY OFF THE ENTIRE MARKETING DEPARTMENT :D) but what's done is done. And it was handled with a lot of grace, and I feel honestly pretty good about it, despite not having a job anymore.

H--- was the one to break the news to me, since M--- wasn't even supposed to know yet (but considering that it's a small company and we've all seen that no work was coming in, it's not a hard thing to guess at). I was honestly pretty amazed at the way he spoke to me. I was expecting-- I don't know. Something less personal? Gruffer? Angrier? But H--- basically said that I'm amazing at what I do, that he really appreciates my work ethic, that he will write me a letter of recommendation anywhere I want to go, and that if they have any proposals that they need help with in the future he'd be more than willing to rehire me. He also gave me a pretty nice severance package (I think. I've never had a severance package before, but since it's a month and a half's wages, I'm okay with it), and was just very gracious about the whole thing, so that's softened the blow a lot.

M--- is pretty upset about the whole deal, since she's always treated us like family and been very protective of us and our interests. I dressed up extra-nice for her today, since we all had an inkling it was coming, and I wanted her to be happy. And she took me and my fellow marketing coordinator Cindee out for lunch (ostensibly for her birthday, but it was a good-bye lunch, just the same). She also told me that she'd recommend me anywhere I wanted to go, and it feels really good to have that, especially after the mess with Sabre this summer and how devastated my self-esteem was after the close-out meeting with my department at school.

Related to that, the way this position ended has really uplifted my own feelings of self-worth and made me feel like hey, I'm not a defective human being after all. I still don't completely believe that I'm cut out for corporate jobs and that sort of thing, but that aside, I feel okay, like if I need to work in a corporate environment again, I won't necessarily fail at it just because there's something inherently wrong with me, as Dr. Sims and Dr. Boettger suggested. So that's a good thing.

Of course, it's not all good. Without this job, Kyle and I have no real income and bills to pay. We talked about it and basically decided that we're going to pack everything up and move back to Massachusetts. It's not a decision either of us have taken lightly, and it's... mmgh. Fifty-fifty on the good. My parents have informed us that we are welcome to live in the in-law apartment as long as we need to, which is very gracious of them (and necessary, because even if we move up to Massachusetts with jobs all lined up, we'll need a place to crash while we sign lease paperwork for an apartment), and my dad even said that he'd pay to have a new cable box put in down there. So we have a lot of support up there.

We have a lot of support down here, too, but we also have nowhere to live. As long as we're both unemployed, we're trying to keep costs down as much as possible. We can't get certain payments to go away (car payments, insurance payments, credit card payments, phone payments), but if we move in with my folks, that gets rid of a LOT of bills in one fell swoop. No more rent, no more cable/internet, no more electricity. For us, that'd be a good $1000 off our monthly expenses, and that will help a LOT, since until one or both of us are employed, we'll be living off of Kyle's old savings account.

Kyle is pretty stressed out over it. He's been having a hard time finding work (because the market is horrible), and that's making him feel frustrated. The good news is that one of my contacts up north may have a position for Kyle about half an hour from where my parents live. We're keeping our fingers crossed about pay, but at this point, anything is acceptable. And this contact is a good man; he got my brother a really good job right out of college, so Kyle should be okay.

I don't know. I'm kind of feeling very much zen and at peace about the whole situation. It might be that it hasn't hit me yet and I'll be bawling all day tomorrow or it might be that I really am okay with what's happened, but I feel just like we're on the cusp of something really good happening, that this was less of a "omg bad things happened D:" and more of a "where God closes a door, somewhere He opens a window" thing. So.

Hobby-wise, I'm in a weird place. And, yes, I am going to ramble about MMOs now, so feel free to just skip this. It's the last thing here.

SWTOR has been-- okay. It started out great and amazing, but through no fault of its own, it's kind of gotten boring for me. This is largely because it's a new game and hasn't had the time to develop the massive amounts of stuff to do that WoW has once you hit max level. That stuff's all coming, probably with the next patch, but in the meantime, being max level in SWTOR is really boring, and I've found myself derping around in WoW more often than I really planned to, following SWTOR's launch.

Right now, I'm splitting my time pretty evenly between the two games: one night in SWTOR, one night in WoW. Kat and I have been RPing more in WoW and having a great time with that, and Mike and I have been doing the same in SWTOR. I've even been posting a little bit on WrA.net, though that's an awkward-and-a-half thing. I didn't exactly leave WoW on the best note, and understandably, it's been a chilly reception coming back at best. Being away has given me a chance to look at a lot of things more objectively, and some things were as bad as I thought and some things weren't as bad as I thought. Either way, I was a jerk in a lot of ways, and that's resulted in conversations being stilted and awkward all around, save for between a few people.

So I'm not really posting much and I'm trying to start over with new characters. And I'm trying to be less overall complainy. And generally nicer. So it's... weird. A lot of weird. Mostly, I'm just resigning myself to doing nearly all private RP and dungeon queuing a lot because, hey, I've got full days of doing nothing now~

Mm.

( In which I wonder how work works. )

A post on a pastor friend of mine's Facebook page got me thinking. In the post, the pastor talked about how it's "not a good idea to cohabitate before marriage" and that "80% of marriages where the participants cohabitated before marrying end in divorce." It made me kind of scratch my head, because by those statistics, Kyle and I should be heading for Divorceville in a couple of years.

(I honestly don't think that we are)

The thing with cohabitation (which is a MUCH more controversial issue in churches than outside; people find out you're living with a significant other and you might as well tell them all that you're sacrificing small woodland creatures to Satan) is that I don't think it's to blame for the 80% number. I think that the 80% number more accurately comes from the idea of steps.

When it comes to finding someone we want to spend for.ev.er. with, we tend to take it in steps. First you admit to liking each other, then to loving each other. Somewhere along the line, you agree to be exclusive (probably between liking and loving). Somewhere after loving, you talk about moving in with each other and eventually actually move in together. And logically, after you've been living together for a while, you realize that the next step at some point is marriage, so there you go.

It's kind of something that's ingrained in us from a societal standpoint. Life is all about stages: infancy, early childhood, elementary school, middle school, high school, college, job, marriage, family, middle age, old age, death. We've been programmed by societal norms to think "oh, logically, after I finish high school, college MUST happen" and to think "oh god, I've finished college, I don't have a job, I FAIL." And I think we get that way about relationships, too. Whether or not a relationship actually sparks us, whether or not we really understand what forever with this person means, marriage is the next step after living together, so after a certain amount of time, it happens.

This, like doing anything else solely because "you're supposed to," is a bad idea.

The thing with being married to Kyle is that for all the trite sentiments out there, he really is an essential component to my life in a different way than I could ever have understood without being married to him. It's like a new level of completion that I didn't have before. Now, that's not to say that I'd forever be distraught if someday he wasn't in my life, God-forbid, but it is to say that MUCH more than when we were just dating, and even more than when we were engaged, he's part of the making of me. My choice to marry him didn't come out of the "we're supposed to do this" line of thought, it came out of thoughts of "man, I can't wait to see him as a grandfather" and "we are going to be amazing old people together."

In short, and to be trite, I didn't marry him because we discovered after a couple of years that I could live with him. I married him because I knew from the moment we met that I couldn't live without him.

And we cohabitated.

Our cohabitation was one of necessity rather than us saying, "Let's see how it works out." UNT had screwed me over financially, so I was barely able to pay my pre-existing bills and still go to school. An apartment was completely out of the question, and Kyle's parents graciously offered to let me stay with them as long as I needed to. It was rough, it wasn't always pleasant, and I learned a lot about Kyle, but it certainly wasn't born out of the idea of "let's test out the relationship and see how it goes." It was more accurately born out of "I don't want to move back to Massachusetts; I do want to keep going to school."

So I guess the point I'm driving at here is two-fold:

1. Cohabitating doesn't always mean a couple is "living in sin" or just "trying it out" or anything like that. Sometimes, it means that one half is very graciously helping the other half out in a rough spot. And, with that in mind, cohabitating doesn't always mean that the couple is heading for the Alimony Train.

2. Whenever you make a life-changing decision, make sure you're not doing it because you're "supposed to." It's really easy to fall prey to this mindset when you've got people around you expressing their expectations frequently and at top volume, but whether it's marriage or graduate school or any of those milestones, make those decisions because you want to, not because "it's time."

Also, I really wish that pastors would examine the real reasons people do things before throwing statistics like that up there. Correlation vs. causation and all that.

First of all, I'm posting this to my new Dreamwidth account. Yay for free account creation over here! The new LJ comment system is just gross, and I'm not really terribly tied over there since leaving WoW behind. But glory be, Dreamwidth allows for cross-posting, so yay!

It's the 27th, two days after my first Christmas as a married woman, and it was a geeky and wonderful Christmas. Kyle and I spent the whole day watching Every Star Wars Movie except for The Phantom Menace, because that one seemed loathe to understand the importance of celebrating the birth of Christ by watching Anakin Skywalker's transformation from a whiny nine-year-old to James Earl Jones. Still, we got the other five under our belt (mocking Attack of the Clones mercilessly and eventually drifting off to play SWTOR with our headphones off, only to keep getting distracted from that by the movies at hand), so I consider the First Annual Star Wars Christmas to be a success.

...minus the Star Wars pancakes. My mother got us Star Wars pancake molds from Williams Sonoma for a wedding gift (the amount of "EEEEEE!!" that accompanied the receipt of these molds has not been seen before nor since), so the plan was to make Star Wars themed pancakes and eat them while watching Star Wars. Very meta. The problem was that the molds made it hard to flip the pancakes, so we ended up with many pancakes that were black and crispy on one side and barely done on the other. But that also resulted in the best pancake texture ever; i.e., crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside. So things worked out.

Gift haul this year was fantastically geeky. Kyle and I decided that instead of trying to covertly spend lots of money on each other, we'd just decide what we wanted for a big gift and then go get it. SO he has a nice new monitor for the computer my brother is building him and my iPhone will arrive in the mail in about a week. We're drowning in stuffed Yodas (Yodae?), as apparently, that was the gift to give this year, and we ended up with some really nice cookbooks and clothes from his parents. My parents sent over a portable hard drive for Kyle, and some nice geek swag for me (namely, an Alliance hoodie from Jinx, because the blue side will always have a special place in my heart). And my sister got me a Sonic Screwdriver. So that's nice.

( Game stuff hrrrgh )

SO. My new job is for a construction firm, where I'm working as a "marketing coordinator." Basically, this means that anything graphical ends up being designed by me (including the newsletter and this year's holiday cards). Of course, that's mostly just the icing on the job--the real big stuff are the proposals. Those are going to start coming with increasing frequency as we move into January, February, and March. My job is to basically make sure that everyone who's working on the proposals (I almost never write them myself) gets their stuff to me on time, edit all that stuff, make sure it's in line with the RFP, and then create a final product with a cover and such.

It's... well, it's paying work. And it's not horrible. During busy times, it's really engaging, and I enjoy it, but I'm also sitting here wishing that I could go back to writing my novel. Like, not even staying home to play video games, turn off my internet, whatever. I was blazing through Nanowrimo, got more than halfway done, and then got this job and it died. And that's frustrating. We need the money, but nngh. I was finally getting there with that dream I've had since I was a kid, and splat. Job has to come first.

This is that adulthood thing that people have been telling me I have to embrace since I went to college. And perhaps, if I was a more determined person, I'd be coming home every night and pounding out a couple thousand words or even a few hundred. Or getting up earlier. But maybe because of my own introversion or maybe because I'm just lazy, working completely drains me of anything but the creative willpower to derp out some RP and mash my hotkeys until I've achieved braindeadness. And for the first time since I got out of undergrad, it's really annoying me.

I know it can't be helped. I know I should be grateful that I have a job. I know that this is part of life and I need to just suck it up. But it is really painful to be approaching your dream and then have reality say "lolno" at you.

Bah. I complain too much, probably.

Kyle finished his undergraduate degree and is looking for work, and I'm praying he finds something soon, not because I'm like "rargh I do not want to be the only one working argh" but because it'll be good for him to have something fulltime and solid. He spoke with the guy who managed him on his internship, and the basic gist of what this guy told him was that if Kyle's willing to relocate, he's going to go really far in his field and really fast. That's good news, no question. I just hope that "relocate" ends up translating to "maybe the East Coast or California" and not "elsewhere in DFW or possibly Minnesota." No offense to any Minnesotans!

So...yeah. Life's a mixed bag right now, but I'm thankful for work, good friends, and an amazing husband. And that's about all I can ask for.