9 posts tagged “love”
After a week of this.....
And this....
I am totally ready for a little bit of this.
The stress has been nonstop for a few solid weeks, but as of this evening, all of my school finals are taken, all of the Christmas presents have been mailed out to their respective recipients, and I'm off work for a few days. I'm exhausted, and rightfully so. But I'm looking forward to a little r&r over the holiday, possibly to include a little sewing time (fun stuff, not work stuff), a movie or two taken in with my favorite someone, and fondue for Christmas Eve dinner.
And maybe, if I am lucky, a little bit of this.
In cute and slightly hilarious news, I came home to find a little package in my mailbox from Ms. Diaz's old employer. I thought, Oh, That Anna, She Probably Swiped Some Letterhead Before She Left The Job, and I laughed and proceeded to open it, thinking it was from her. But alas, it appears that once again, my "winning things through radio contests" mojo has come through for me:
Like the proper senior citizens that we are, Kelly & I often listen to the local oldies radio station. A few months ago, I entered our anniversary into the "Anniversary Couple of the Week" contest, and then promptly forgot about it. (So you know what's coming, right?) And the package was not, indeed, from Ms. Diaz, but was instead from the radio station, notifying us that we had won the contest for the week! Oh my God, I'm like 85, getting so excited about this. So they announced our names on the radio (which we missed) and sent us a crapload of gift certificates for local businesses. And we were rather amused by the certificate that they sent declaring us as winners, listing us as "Mr. and Mrs. Banbury." We can't decide who is who. Hee.
December 2nd is Kelly & my third year anniversary. It feels like I blinked, and 3 years went by. It was just 3 years ago, but I feel like we were kids then. We have grown immensely while we have been together. We have learned to compromise, to curb some of our worst habits, to interact, fight, and love with a maturity and a levelheadedness that I have never known before. (She also makes me laugh so hard that I piss my pants on more days than I would like to admit.) She is my family and my heart. I feel incredibly blessed and fortunate to have her in my life.
David Sedaris has this short story called "The End of the Affair" that I fondly remember forcing Kelly to sit down and listen to while I read it aloud to her one day. I think I even told her that I was going to incorporate it into my wedding vows somehow, but I think instead I'll just mention it here. Anyway, in the story, he talks about taking his boyfriend of many years, Hugh, to see the movie The End of the Affair with Julianne Moore and Ralph Fiennes playing a couple who are crazily romantic-in-love, set in World War II. David makes fun of the movie all the way through while Hugh gets sucked into the romance of it all. After the movie, they go for coffee, and David tries to console Hugh by running through a list of good points in their own relationship: a good deal of professing love through hand puppets, wine glasses broken passionately during fights, and a shared love of bacon and country music. He asks Hugh, "What more could you possibly want?" He then answers himself with this thought:
What more could he want? It was an incredibly stupid question and when he failed to answer, I was reminded of just how lucky I truly am. Movie characters might chase each other through the fog or race down the stairs of burning buildings, but that's for beginners. Real love amounts to withholding the truth, even when you're offered the perfect opportunity to hurt someone's feelings. I wanted to say something to this effect, but my hand puppets were back home in their drawer. Instead, I pulled my chair a few inches closer, and we sat silently at our little table on the square, looking for all the world like two people in love.
I think what I'm trying to say with all of this is that the flowers that we buy each other may be carnations purchased from hospital gift shops, and our prelude to sex may be a physical recap of last night's Ultimate Fighting Championship, and our dates usually involve some variation on going to the public library, knitting in Starbucks, or pizza eaten in front of Roseanne on the tv, but dammit, do I love her. I have loved these last three years because she has been in them. And I just can't wait to spend the next 3, and the next 3, and the next 3 after that (times infinity) with her.
I love straight people. I really do. Some of them are down with the gay and just "get it." A lot more of them don't. Some of them try so, so hard to be okay and/or inclusive concerning gay folks. (I've especially seen an increase in this in the last couple years, which is amazing and beautiful.) But when it comes down to the end of the day, it's still pretty hard to be queer in a straight world. Sometimes, just when I think things are going swell, I'm reminded that there's still a lot of progress to be made in the world.
Take this week, for instance. A benefits person at my work asked me to correct a form concerning Kelly by filling out the "dependent child" section of the form. I managed to restrain myself from replying smarmily and managed to reply calmly, "Kelly is not my dependent child, she is my domestic partner, as it is clearly marked on the form. That is why I did not fill out the dependent child section of the form." [I am already taxed several thousand a year on the benefits I receive for her marked as "taxable income" on my paycheck because we can't be legally married. Don't humiliate me further my making me mark her on a form as my "dependent child," you idiot.]
I called my sister on Sunday to wish her a happy birthday. We spoke about many things, one of which was her possibly having children with her new husband. (Oh my God, don't even get me started on that one.) During the conversation, she mentioned something about my mom saying that she was hesitant to move out of the state where they live now because she knew that luck would have it that one of my two straight, legally married siblings that live in said state would start having children as soon as she moved, and then she'd never have grandchildren in her daily life. Um, HELLO, what about the fact that if they move, they will most likely be moving closer to K & I, and we've stated multiple times that we're planning on having children and we're excited for them to have grandparents close by. It's like my parents (and K's, too) just don't understand that we're going to have children, and when we do, they're going to be the cutest f-ing kids ever. Seriously.
So anyway, these were only a couple of the incidents that occurred this week that caused me to question the progress of the queer rights movement in the world. *Le Sigh*. They say it takes 7 generations from the start of a civil rights movement for a population to see full equality. I guess by the time our great, great grandkids are born, they may have a fair shot in the world, barring any circus freak physical features or any other Bushes residing in the White House.
I thought for sure that I was headed for the looney bin during the last couple of weeks. Things were going along really nicely for the last several months, then all of a sudden it was like BAM, and life really knocked me flat on my tuchus. I was lagging in school, crying all the time, calling out of work, and fighting with K constantly over nothing (I think we actually had a fight last week about whether or not K should be allowed to leave glasses of soda out on the counter. It's a long story, but regardless, it was a ridiculous thing to have a fight over.).
So I'm trying to make amends. I firmly believe that there are just times when the universe blasts your expectations to bits and the best thing to do is just do what you can to pick up the pieces that are salvageable and move on. So that's what I'm working on now.
1. I dropped my statistics class. I just wasn't getting it, and I had a teacher that was so new that she had no concept of pace or workload. She would seriously assign 20 hours of homework every week, and it was sucking up all the study time I had for other classes. I feel good about this, even though my mother continues to try shame me into thinking that I will never graduate from college.
2. I started reading a book for nursing students about surviving nursing school. It has study tips and advice from other nursing students and I'm trying to let it coerce me into having a positive outlook and getting pepped up. This kind of seems silly, but it's helping me a lot. Because I was so ready to just quit school in general and become a baby-makin' housewife for the rest of my life. Not. Kidding.
3. K and I took some time (actually, she forced me into it, but it worked out for the best) to clean up the house, get rid of some stuff, and put things in generally better order than they were. It definetly feels better to have a clean house than a clutter-filled one (although it still needs a lot of work).
4. We are going shopping for new clothes, shoes, etc. this weekend. Besides the actual act of retail therapy, it also always makes me feel better to have shiny new clothes to wear.
5. We are going on a date this weekend to drive/bike around and see the fall leaves. This makes me happy. And it makes me happy to be spending quality time with K instead of just spending the few precious hours we per week that we have together vegging on the couch and staring at the tv.
So that is what is happening in my life since things fell apart. I am trying to take things one day at a time and enjoy the little positive things that make my heart happy. When I clear out the junk and really take a look at life, I realize that there is a lot to be thankful for.
Dear Maggie & Jake,
Next time you go for a walk arm-in-arm, please put me in the middle. Thanks.
Sometimes we grab Granny's burritos, go to the beach (East End in this case), and take funny pictures of ourselves. Yes, friends, this is why I never call you back--I am busy doing stuff like this. (Okay, and I'm doing my 20+ hours of previously mentioned homework every week, but that's beside the point.)
And there you have it.
Oatmeal and iced tea. Sunday morning. Becky's Diner.
So. Damn. Cute.
So now that it's been established that my family is quite crazy, and somewhat depressing, I'd like to make an addendum to my post about the negative side of my family. Somehow, most of us have managed to marry up, to bring a person into our lives that improves how we live our lives and who we are as people. Many of us have found that elusive person to love and who loves us back that is willing to take on a crazy family as their own. I don't know how we have continually found these wonderful people, but I do know that I am so grateful for them.
My Great Aunt Shirley has changed my Great Uncle Art from a stoic, seemlingly characterless man into a lovely old guy full of charm and humor. My Uncle Paul's second try at marriage turned up a sweet and patient Frenchwoman, Mary-Vaughn. My sister-in-law Lisa is a sensitive and entertaining person who genuinely laughs at all of our jokes, even the ones that aren't that funny. And the list goes on and on from there of people who we are lucky to have picked up along the way.
And then there is Kelly. Everyone in my family loves her right down to her bones. Sometimes I think they would trade me in for her if they could. Even my mom, who once disowned me for being gay, has a deep, deep attachment to her. And here is the best part: she loves me too. She has hung in there with me long enough to polish me up, to change some of my values for the better, to make me into a better version of myself. I have also managed to marry up.
Amongst all the thoughts of how crazy we are, of all the negative things that we have in our history, it gives me hope for our family. It balances the negative with some positive, and it makes me feel like things aren't that bad. Maybe they're even pretty darn good.
