"She doesn't even go here!"

Not that I've ever been a nominee for any sort of superlative, but if I were to be, I can fairly accurately predict that my superlative would be "most likely to randomly snap and kill us all."

Let me explain: I say this because I've had at least half a dozen people suggest this about me, not because I think it's true. If I were to ever snap it would probably just involve a bunch of yelling and dramatic hand gestures--perhaps I'd finally live my dream of tossing a martini into someone's face--but I think climbing up the water tower with an AK47 is a bit of hyperbole on my peers' part. This perception of me has never really bothered me, if only because it's not necessarily inaccurate. In general I'm a pretty chill chick, and yet deep down, like, WAY deep down, I care deeply about a lot of things. I just take great pains to appear as if I don't care about much. So I understand where this impression comes from

A hostess at work recently accused me of being "like...REALLY green" after I explained my hanging onto a cell phone I hated because people die in the Congo for the minerals that make them. My gut instinct was to protest, but this lady clearly doth protested too much, because my response went something like this: "What! Nuh uh! Pffft. I mean, yeah, I care about the plight of civilians in the Democratic Republic of Congo who are impacted by the warlords and militias who control the cobalt and tantalum mines. And sure, I recycle...like my apartment doesn't have a recycling dumpster so I have to drive to Naperville's recycling center to make sure my stuff gets recycled. But I mean...you know you're supposed to take the caps off your water bottles before you throw them into a bin, right? Otherwise they can't compress and they take up more space in the landfill or explode under pressure in a recycling bin..."

I trailed off at that point because the look on the hostess' face was a combination of glazed over, smug "I told you so", and looking frantically for the nearest exit.

The thing is... I really do care about minimizing my impact on the earth, and I really do care about spreading the word about our electronics re: the situation in the Congo. It blows my mind that things like our cell phones, laptops, iPods, and tablets are almost considered disposable, especially our cell phones. Jessica, over at her blog (Faith Permeating Life), challenged readers to consider the difference between merely "raising awareness" and "taking action", and cell phone waste is my "pet" cause. While I do care about the pointless waste of water bottles, the increasing restrictions on women's rights in the US, that Haiti is still far from being rebuilt after their earthquake, that the trade embargo on Cuba is patently unfair, that homosexuality and the life and dignity of the humans who express it is even up for debate, I take the time and effort to try to educate people on their technology. Your micro devices are made from coltan. Coltan comes from the Congo. Warlords run the coltan mines in the Congo. Still. After 10 years of this issue being brought to the international stage. Warlords rape women, kill men, force children into labor, and threaten all of the above against the people who live in the villages with the mines if they don't cooperate. Every cell phone uses coltan and no manufacturer can promise their coltan doesn't originate from a warlord.

Is this our fault? Of course not. Should we feel badly about wanting and using cell phones and laptops? Surely not. But I do think we should make informed choices. Does your cell phone still work? Keep using it. I personally find it irresponsible to purchase a new device every time my inclinations change; I don't want to increase demand for products that are actively harming human life.

 And this is what I try to impart to people: use your cell phone for as long as you can. Think twice, or three times about replacing it. And for the love of God--recycle it when you're done. I usually stay very quiet about this topic until something provokes it, and then you get a passionate rendition of my nationally ranked persuasive speech from '07.

/soapbox

I could have also written this post in the vein that deep down inside I care very deeply about my upcoming wedding and marriage, but try very hard to stay quiet about it until provoked.

"It takes a family to raise a child..."

"...it takes a village to help that family raise that child." - Naperville Police detective Shaun Ferguson

In the last 18 months, seven teenagers in Naperville have died from heroin overdose. It's seemed that the "teen heroin epidemic" was all the local media could talk about all of last year, to the point where it started to sound a bit trite and over-hyped, but then in the first six weeks of 2012 eight people died from heroin in DuPage County, including a girl from my high school.

My senior year of high school they installed a plaque on the wall of the cafeteria that was instantly and crudely dubbed "the Tree of Death". It was intended to be a memorial for students who died while attending our school. I believe it was prompted by the tragic deaths of two Juniors, Anthony and Diana, when their car hit a tree and burst into flames. When I left NVHS their names, and the name of a girl who had been a few classes ahead of me who died of complications from a disability, were the only ones memorialized on small, bronze leafs. When a friend and I nostalgically stalked through the halls of our school this past Christmas we visited the Tree. Thankfully, the unnervingly large and lush tree remained by and large blank, but there were several more names up there than when I had graduated. I recognized one boy who lost his fight to cancer the year after I left, and another boy who died from complications of his disability. There were three or four other names, however, of students who had died in the last year who I'm almost certain were victims of this "heroin epidemic". One wasn't supposed to graduate until 2014.

The community has been more or less in a constant state of shock and denial about this over the last year. At first it was older kids, young adults who'd graduated and attempted to leave the nest, and then it was just one or two teenagers from the same friend group. But then the hospitalizations, arrests, and deaths started spreading beyond one peer circle, one neighborhood, one school, and people started getting scared.

I don't know how much of the gradual rising of panic is due to media hype and general mass hysteria and how much of it is legitimate fear that our town's teenagers are spiraling out of control without knowing the risks they're taking. What I do know is this: when I was in high school a mere 6-10 years ago (has it really been so long??) this wasn't happening. There may have been a few students who were addicts, but no one was dying. There may have been whispers and rumors, but there wasn't a pervasive sense that you could easily score from a friend-of-a-friend if you wanted to. Something is different, something has changed, and that icy feeling of hopelessness has settled into the pit of my stomach.

On March 12, 1998 the Chicago Tribune printed an article warning of increasing herion use among Naperville teens. The article itself seemed to be more about the ~interesting and ~scary phenomenon of rich, white kids willingly going to Chicago's west side to mingle with the poor, black gangs to score heroin than the actual problem of drug addiction itself, as no student had died from an overdose yet, but it did quote community leaders being concerned about an escalation in future years. Sadly, I think we're there, and it seems that the awareness and prevention actions taken weren't effective. 

The Boy and I have ramped up our discussions about things like starting a family and raising kids (you know, to make sure we're on the same page, and if not, that we can at least openly discuss this sort of thing before we're legally and spiritually bound to one another), and my general fear of not knowing how to raise a child, let alone guide a teenager, has increased a hundred fold. I was and have always been a Good Kid, and my friends have always been of the Good Kid variety, with small variations. We cared enough about school to know it was important to graduate, if not with the highest honors possible. Most of us had after school jobs because we were taught to value money and weren't necessarily given the frivolous things we wanted to spend money on. We loved the theatre department, we loved working hard at tech, and we loved each other. We drank lots of Mountain Dew but never (as far as I know) drank alcohol. We joked about drugs but never tried them, not even cigarettes (most of us). We would tease each other about sex but almost none of us were having it. We assumed some of the kids at our school were doing any or all of these, but it was no one we knew and not really something people talked about.

I have no idea why any of us were like that. We all had fairly different family backgrounds and socioeconomic situations, and were raised by wildly different parents. I don't have the faintest idea why we were good kids and other kids were not. I don't know what it was about my high school experience that, more or less, got all 740 of us out mostly unscathed, and what's killing the kids at my high school now. The terror of not knowing why this is happening is paralyzing me when I pause to think about trying to raise a child in an environment where drugs and death are so pervasive, and I don't even have an actual child to be scared for right now.

I don't know what to do, other than hugging every teenager I see really tight and whispering "don't do drugs!" into their ears. I don't think the police, or teachers, or parents here know either, and that's what's keeping us up at night the most.

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

Come grow old with me, the best is yet to be

I'm engaged! *confetti*

A friend I've had since high school has always been unfailingly enthusiastic about his life. He's had more jobs than I can count and took far longer than normal to finish college, but he always threw himself 100% into whatever venture he was embarking upon. He would speak so convincingly about each and every new life path (each with its own 5-year plan) that despite the fact this life plan was different every 4 months, I believed him every single time that This Was It and it was going to be Awesome.

That sort of optimism is alien to me. I hold on to doubts and fears and when I look five years into the future for any given thing, I see a thousand paths of disaster lying in wait. I try to be optimistic that, well, my life's been pretty good so far, so the chance of a flash flood washing away all my belongings and ruining my newly painted apartment walls with mold is really quite slim; yet I still have that little voice going "yeah...but it could happen, so don't get too excited".

Being with The Boy is my greatest example of that. To be fair to my psyche, my tendency to doubt our future had concrete evidence (see: him breaking up with me for a month in 2010), but ever since we got back together things were wonderful. Amazing. Completely different than the previous five years. I could tell he was just as invested in our relationship as I was and I would tell myself that is was real, this was It, finally. I was 99% sure of us, and our 5-year (10-year, 80-year) plan. 99% is easy to round up to 100%, and it was easy to tell myself that the part of me that was holding on to the 1% possibility that something could go awry was just being silly and pragmatic, that I was only doubting because it'd be illogical not to. Because honestly, who's 100% sure of anything? Fools, that's who. Right?

But then it snowed.

The first snowfall of the season finally came, and The Boy was uncharacteristically eager about going downtown Naperville to walk around and look at the snow. It snowed, and with just the soft rustling of snowflakes filling my ears, he asked me if I wanted to marry him.

I unromantically asked him if he was sure, and his eager/terrified nodding persuaded me that he had, in fact, thought this through and he was, indeed, sure. We put a simple and beautiful ring on the fourth finger of my left hand, hugged really tight, and smiled like goons. While the world around us was freezing over and turning a beautiful and brilliant shade of white, the 1% left inside me melted away. And let me tell you, 100% is absolutely nothing like 99%.

Don't get me wrong, I know things could still go wrong. People change, life happens, and the possibility of Forever is not a guarantee. But right now, in this moment of time and this stage of our life, I'm 100% sure that this is what we both want, that we're 100% in this together, and 100% going to promise to try our best to make it happen.

Can Finally Rename The Bookmarks Folder From "Unmentionables" to "Marriage Stuff",
Cathi

Two Thousand Twelve, Common Era

My brain is a wild jungle full of scary gibberish. I'm writing a letter, I can't write a letter, why can't I write a letter? I'm wearing a green dress, I wish I was wearing my blue dress, my blue dress is at the cleaners. The Germans wore gray, you wore blue, 'Casablanca' is such a good movie. Casablanca, the White House, Bush. Why don't I drive a hybrid car? I should really drive a hybrid car. I should really take my bicycle to work. Bicycle, unicycle, unitard. Hockey puck, rattlesnake, monkey, monkey, underpants! 


This new year snuck up on me. I kept marked track of time starting with Thanksgiving, counting down the days until Linda came home, counting down the days until my birthday, panicking over the days left until Christmas in which I had to do gift shopping, delighting over Christmas, and frowning grumpily at my schedule which had me working every single day from the 26th until New Years Day. You would think I would have been prepared, yet I somehow managed to awake in a panic at 6am on the 2nd remembering that I hadn't paid my rent yet. And now, my year in review:

Things I Hope Come to Pass in '11

-Move back to the suburbs

Success! A happy one, in which I see my friends, see The Boy, and hermit it up in my apartment of my very own.
-Go to New York and meet the long lost fams

Success! My Great Uncle looks, talks, and acts exactly like my Grandma, my...great cousins? are quiet and exactly in-between my and my mother's ages. They gave us squash.
-Not lose The Boy again

Success! I dare say this has been our best year together, thus far, largely due to the fact that we're (well, I'm) not afraid to talk to each other anymore. 
-Get on the management track

Success, by a hair! I officially started Shift Supervisor training last week, which is but a stepping stone to Real Management (also shaves off an entire month of management training, which doesn't sound too shabby).
-Chop off my long(er), sexy-like hair

Failure of epic proportions! Not only did I not chop it all off, but I neglected to get a single haircut the entire year, barring trimming my own bangs every so often.
-Help plan a wedding

Success! Poncho Wedding Extravaganza is well underway. I'm not sure how much help I've actually had with the planning aspect, but I think I'm providing an acceptable level of moral support.
-Seester goes to grad school!

Success! She refused to comment upon her scholastic future so I commented for her. Of course she got into grad school. Duh.

Overall 2011 was happier for me than 2010, and I think I can credit it to two things: surrounding myself with the people I love most, and making actual, conscious effort to progress in life. I'd been floating semi-aimlessly for the last three years, and actually sitting down, making a plan, and putting in some effort toward that plan has done more for my disposition than most other things.

Living in the city was a fun experiment that ultimately showed I'm a suburban chick at heart. I love love loved living in a place where I didn't have to drive anywhere, where if I decided I wanted a pizza RIGHT NOW I could just slip on some shoes, shuffle downstairs in my sweatpants to the 7/11 100 feet away and grab a frozen pie for $4, where I would walk to and from work along the Magnificent Mile and where I would have the street and the storefronts all to myself when I would work closing shifts and I could gawk at my leisure, where I had my Poncho Twin more at my disposal than usual, and where I felt like I was Living Life and being Part Of It even if I did spend most of my time sitting on the same couch I'm sitting on now, watching the same seasons of Gilmore Girls on the same TV. I was very lonely (despite living with my sister, which was lovely), and felt very poor (things cost more money in the Chi, not to mention the 10% sales tax), and spent most of my time HATING my job and wanting out, but I was entirely charmed with the concept of "city life". I felt adult, I felt adventurous, I felt young and alive. Rube alert.

I have high expectations for this year, some things I'll be verbal about and others which are too precious to be spoken aloud lest I jinx it.

Things I Hope Come To Pass In '12

-Become a manager, fo realsies

-Get out to Boston twice (once is for sissies)

-Plan the best bachelorette party in the world

-Not ruin my makeup at the Poncho Wedding Extravaganza

-Not die in an earthquake/flood/cyclone/deluge of frogs on 12/21

-My vote for Obama in November will be one for the winning side

-Buy a Jetta

Unmentionables,

Catherine

"Some of them were so busy worrying about cracking glass ceilings that they never asked what the air was like up there."

I'm starting to feel older. Already when people ask me how old I am I tell them "26", even though that milestone is still two months away. Perhaps it's living alone, perhaps it's the serious conversations with my bosses about how to turn my job into my career, perhaps it's all the research about retirement funds I've been doing, perhaps it's having an immediate family member not immediately available to me, and perhaps it's the seriousness and marvelousness of my relationship with The Boy beginning to make sense in my brain.

I feel like I've matured rather significantly over the last six months or so, and I think it's because for the first time I'm actually taking my future seriously. When I graduated from NCC I had all the hope in the world (and none of the ambition) that things would fall into place. I was young, I had time. I've since seen that success takes work, and that I'm finally not-as-content enough to begin to put in that work. There have been a lot of late nights spent pondering what my values are, what I want for myself, and readjusting the image I've had for my life that has always been in the back of my mind.

It was, perhaps, growing up with my primary caretaker being my mom that led me to believe that I, too, would be an independent lady who had my own house and my own car(s) and my own life. My mom owns a toolbox and she knows how to wield the objects therein. She would go to work in the mornings, cook us dinner at night, drive us to gymnastics and piano lessons, and read stories to us before bed. She would go line dancing with friends sometimes. Whenever something broke in the house she'd either fix it herself or knew exactly who to call. My mom always had a plan and an answer for everything; at least it seemed to be so when I was a kid. My mom did whatever was best for herself and for us. This is the model of grownup life that I have fashioned in my mind.

It was also, perhaps, being exposed to the "Girl Power!" movement and the slow scraping away of the veneer of social expectations that made me feel obligated to be a strong, independent lady. The glass ceiling still exists, wage disparities are still significant, social expectations are still wildly privileged toward men and detrimental to women and as a socially conscious young woman I feel this overwhelming burden to contribute to the de-stigmatization of women in the public eye. On the one hand, I've largely succeeded. I went to college and I graduated from college with a degree and without a husband. I pay my own bills, people respect me for my intelligence and wit, I am the sole leaseholder on my apartment, and I can't cook worth a damn.

I never assumed I would get married, but I also never assumed I wouldn't. I mostly just figured that if it happened, I wouldn't let it interfere with my life. Obviously, I never spent much time thinking about it at all. The Boy and I are tiptoeing our way toward that goal, and now that it's more of a real possibility than ever before I'm finding myself reaching with one hand for a paper bag to breathe deeply into and with the other for something solid to keep me mentally upright. I love him more than I thought I was capable of and I couldn't be prouder of him, his accomplishments, and to have him by my side. He has become family and I can easily glimpse snippets of Future Us (most notably 90 year-old Us sitting at the kitchen table in the lake house he built as he asks me to help with the Sunday crossword and I snap at him that, for the zillionth time, I'm awful at those things. Pass the World Politics section, please), but I'm very suddenly unsure of what this means for myself and my bright, shiny, independent lady life.

Believe it or not, his life and his goals are important to me, and it very viscerally feels as if I'm betraying my gender by caring about someone other than myself, most especially a man. To compromise is to have a healthy relationship, but to compromise on even the smallest details of my Grand Life Design feels traitorous. I had this awful, panicky moment several months ago when he was pondering pursuing a job in Kentucky and the mere thought of going with him made me feel like a monumental failure. After everything my mom sacrificed, and how hard she worked, and how far society has come, and after all the expectations of greatness my loved ones have of me, I was going to bow down to the patriarchy and uproot myself and everything I know for a man.

I'm slowly piecing together what happiness looks like for me, but it's a much more difficult process than I originally thought. So many messages are directed toward young girls and young women these days that I'm not sure we even notice the impact they are having until the worst possible moment. I'm proud to feel so empowered, grateful to be aware enough to know I have options and choices and to know that I could, if I wanted to, shoot for the moon and write my name among the stars. I do wonder if a balance is needed when it comes to empowering girls, though. When being told I could be anything I wanted to be I'm not sure the best way to demonstrate that was with a big red X through the image of a wife wearing an apron vacuuming the living room. Someone has to vacuum. Especially when you live alone and the entire place is carpeted.

Navigating adulthood is hard, you guys. I'm enjoying my fully developed brain and stabilized body chemistry but the weight of the world has become quite the burden.

Another belief of mine; that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.

Thus sayeth the ever wise Margaret Atwood.

Stolen from luxury-idea.com

One mystery of childhood that I frequently pondered is why grownups' bedrooms were so frightfully boring. The walls were beige, or some pale blue, and other than maybe a wedding picture on a dresser top the only decorations were generic seascapes or perhaps a fake plant in the corner. The only form of entertainment I ever saw in grownup bedrooms were small TV's, so small they were hardly worth watching and always much too far away to be of any practical use. Their curtains were boring. The bed was always made. Clothes were always put away in a hamper, or else at the very least folded at the end of the bed. Why on earth adults would choose to live in such drudgery was beyond my comprehension.

For perspective, I always had wonderfully expressive bedrooms growing up. I blame the previous owners of the house I grew up in for fostering this tendency since birth. The room my loving parents placed Infant Cathi into had lime green shag carpeting and Pepto pink paint on the walls. The first time I was allowed to plan and decorate my room, I chose Aladdin as the theme. I had Princess Jasmine bedsheets and a reversible comforter (depending upon whether I was in a pink or purple kind of mood), I had a fuzzy, glow-in-the-dark Aladdin poster on the wall. I had Aladdin curtains. It was magical and I loved every inch of it. As a preteen I redecorated into a more moderate theme of "blue purple and green", but the room was alive. As a teenager I requested that all four of my walls be different colors, and I painted on the darkening shade that covered my window with cheap Jordasche nail polish and invited my visiting friends to do the same.

I now type this to you from the bedroom I share with no one, in the apartment that is mine and mine alone. The bedroom walls are a lovely and tasteful grayish-green that I adore. The only entertainment in here is my bookshelf full of fantasy novels. I currently have an 8-picture frame hanging on the wall for decoration which still has the stock photos in it. Beyond sleeping and going through the vicious cycle of "get dressed and throw clothes on the floor" and "be angry at clothes being on the floor, pick them up" I spend very little time in here.

You know why? I've unlocked the secret of grownup bedrooms. I wanted this place to be peaceful and distraction-free because I wanted my bedroom to be a place for sleeping and resting. It is no longer my refuge from the rest of the world, the only place I have to express myself and be surrounded by things I love because I have an entire apartment just for that.

Suck on that, children! Just wait until you grow up and have nine hundred square feet to do with as you please! For the record, I've personalized the rest of my space with Guitar Hero band equipment, posters of places I'd like to go, and a china cabinet full of my speech and debate awards in the place of china.