The topic of money comes up and everybody starts feeling bad about themselves for one reason or another

I fear this post is going to come across as pure, unadulterated whining--the type of whining that I promise you I've already slapped my face in the mirror about in order to attempt to snap out of it. If that's what it sounds like, I want you, Interested Party, to know that I don't mean it to be. I'm confused, I'm conflicted, and yes, I'm a little jealous and sullen, and quite frankly, I don't like any of it.

Yes, this is going to be a post about wedding planning. Or at least, wedding contemplating. Feel free to skip merrily to the end where I will attempt to have a less-bitter sign-off.

From what I recall of my studies, the bitterness, frustration, jealousy, and subsequent guilt about the antecedent feelings are fairly typical of one from a middle class upbringing. I've been sitting here in the pants I bought on sale, eating the food I got at the grocery store using coupons, surfing the Internet on the computer my dad and I built from salvaged parts several years ago, and staring at other couples sitting pretty in their Ivory Towers of Wedding Privilege (and please, I know how ridiculous that sounds, considering my ability to even be able to legally get married is privilege enough. Remember the guilt I'm feeling?). On my left side, I have the Wedding Industrial Complex shoving champagne toasts and chair covers in my face and my WIC-influenced friends ever so excitedly chatting me up about the open bar we're obviously going to have and all the hijinks they're going to get into as we party into the night. On my right side, I have a family history of modest church hall receptions of punch and cake, and a vast blogosphere of people (yes, even on my beloved APW) who had the resources and mental fortitude to throw awesome parties on "tight" budgets (say, under $15K).

From APW, probably from elsewhere

And here we are, caught in the middle. On the one hand, I'm so, so proud of my parents for raising me to be self-reliant, thrifty, and forward-thinking so that the concept of spending even $5,000 on one day (even, especially!, if it was other peoples' money and not my own) makes me want to throw up in my Payless shoes. On the other hand, I'm beginning to wonder if I'll really regret it if we don't have some sort of reception/party that involves drinking and other people dancing. Then, on the other hand that I've grown out of sheer frustration, I wonder if I will then regret THAT decision in two years when we realize we have to postpone buying a house because we need another two years to re-save up for a decent down payment (or, hell, later this year when I look at my savings and go "hey, where'd my Jetta Money go???").

What it's all boiled down to is me windmilling my arms around in an attempt to stab anything and everything in sight out of frustration with myself and the universe when I read discussions about budgets. I'm jealous of the couples who are shy and private and were over the moon to have a 10-person wedding where they met at the courthouse and then went to dinner at their favorite restaurant afterwards. I'm jealous of the couples who are paying for everything themselves and who seemingly have no qualms about dropping so much money on one event. I'm jealous of the couples who have parents in a position to insist on paying for most things or everything.

I wish we were the type of people who could look at our collective savings and go "Yes. We can afford a baller party that people will have an awesome time at, and not regret not having this money afterwards in the slightest." I wish we were the type of people who, if my mom announced she was liquidating her 401k because it was useless to her, could go "Awesome. Thank you so much, we are forever in your gratitude, and will put you in a very nice home when you're senile." I wish we were the type of people who didn't value social ritual, and could say "Let's get church-married and go home and watch Netflix while drinking 2-buck-Chuck." To say any of these things, however, would be a betrayal of who we are. Realistically, the responses I and The "why would we stop at Burger King when we can just eat trail mix for 14 hours on this road trip" Boy would have would be "This is House Money and also parties are stupid", "omg mom, no, thank you but please no", and "but SB shrieked and danced outside of a restaurant in 40* weather when we told her we were engaged, we can't not invite her or then not feed her!" respectively.

My mom told us to just elope, and if how crazy I'm feeling already is a portent for what's to come, she might be right.

F* this,
Thrine

It's sixteen miles to the Promised Land

I've come to view writing in my blog as an act of domesticity. Perhaps it's because the blogs I've been reading lately have been "lifestyle blogs" (ie: someone much craftier and more motivated to write than I blogs about their everyday life), or perhaps it's because I approach blogging with the same mentality I do, say, cleaning the bathroom. I don't actually mind doing the work itself, I looooove the end result and always feel like I should get a gold star on an accomplishment board, but finding the motivation to just suck it up and do it already is a project.

I've been sick the last few days which has given me time to reflect upon past illnesses, how I deal with being sick, what "being sick" means to me, and so on. This current plague seems to be a reoccurrence of the last time I fell ill a few months ago. Last time I mostly felt "vaguely sick-ish" but had a pronounced and horrible middle-backache. I kept asking everyone at work if I was dying of meningitis. Note that sentence implies that I kept going to work. This time I had the horrible backache again, but it was preceded by a sore throat and swollen glads and appeared simultaneously with a rapid-onset fever, chills, the weakness of a kitten with worms, and a less intense but still present all-over bodyache. The sore throat and swollen glands showed up when I woke up to go to work at 6:30am Sunday and the rest showed up in exponential increases as I went about my shift.

The restaurant industry at large is often criticized, and fairly so, for being suuuuuper shady when it comes to employee health and wellness (and therefore customer health and wellness). Shifts are scheduled to the bare minimum, so an employee really can't just "call in sick". I have to find a replacement, or else my coworkers will be overworked and the customers will be underserved. Therefore, even if I've lost a limb to a rare combination of gangrene and the bubonic plague if I can't find someone to come in for me, I HAVE TO come in and work.

Does this make business sense? For the most part, no. Customers can tell when their bartender is sick and it grosses them out to have a probably contagious person handling their food and drink. They might leave to go somewhere else where there aren't visibly dying employees. They might not stay for dessert because they just want to get away from the sniffling mess that's bringing the food out. They will very likely not recommend the establishment and will think twice about coming back. On the flip side, if you just let people call in sick, guests don't know that the reason their salad is taking twenty minutes to come out, or five minutes for the one lonely bartender to get around to greeting them is because the restaurant thought it would be better for everyone if Typhoid Mary stayed home. They just know that the service sucks, and the bad cycle is begun again.

Practicalities aside, hourly restaurant employees don't get sick days. If you don't work, you don't make money. If you call in sick anyway, you might get fired. Servers, bartenders, busses, and line cooks are a dime a dozen. We're expendable and we know it, so there are a lot of factors that go into the decision of going in for your shift anyway when you're vomiting every fifteen minutes.

That said--my manager Sunday morning handled my rapid onset debilitation in a professional, employee-minded, business centered way, and I'm almost ashamed to admit that I was shocked. It's not that I don't have faith in the humanity and compassion of my bosses, it's just that I know their decisions have to be made with "Overall Guest Satisfaction" in mind, and that's often at the expense of us. I'd asked him around 9am if it'd be possible to evaluate getting me out of there when the 3rd bartender showed up at noon, because I was just getting worse and worse. He asked if I could make it until 2pm when the 4th bartender showed up. I gave an uncertain "okay...". Around 11am, after the 2nd bartender was on the clock, and when my manager walked into the bar to me sitting on the floor by the mix cooler with my head in my hands, he pulled one of the servers off the floor to have them come help out in the bar and sent me home. All shifts were still covered, and I didn't have to be there.

I'm on my way to being recovered. I had yesterday off, I found someone to cover my shift tonight, and I just noticed I have tomorrow off also. My awful back and bodyaches have gone away, as has my fever, but I'm left with a lingering sore throat, swollen glands, and my dry cough has turned into a wet, hacking one, which I think means I'm almost done being sick.

On a completely different note, Seester accepted her acceptance to the English PhD program at Boston College for the fall. I'm simultaneously elated and sad. I think the program is her dream come true and will help her become an Allstar of Academia, but, I mean, Boston's really far away :(

Frustrated with home

Find out games you don't want to play

I need to move out. Unfortunately, my lack of income is prohibitive of this, and so I am left playing the ever popular "avoid my family" game.

It's not that I don't love my mom, or enjoy seeing Linda all the time. It's that I feel like my own person with my own life, and living as a subordinate within my family's life is beginning to make me burst at the seams. It's little things, like Linda lecturing me about clothes, or my mom presuming that she still has say over what I do outside of the house. I'm very well aware that while I live here, not paying rent or bills or even buying my own food, that I am to abide by house rules. There aren't that many and I don't have rebellious desires that conflict with said rules, so life is not terrible. It just gets frustrating when choices I make and actions I take that are completely removed from my life at home are suddenly criticized and labeled as something I am "not allowed" to do while living here. I think if I want to run around downtown Chicago naked, doing 3 story beer bongs, and stealing candy from children that it is my perogative. My mom can worry about my scandalous, drunken, and illegal behavior, yes, but I don't think she can tell me that I "can't" engage in said activities.

As long as I am here, I feel like a spoiled, petulant child. Perhaps that is all I really am, and maybe that's all I'll ever be until I get tossed out and have to face the harsh realities of "real life". We'll see.

Dirty little secret,
Cathi