Wishing for other people's lives

These days, with things like Facebook and blogging, I have found it has become so easy to be envious of other people's lives- their stuff, their marriages, their everything. It has become so easy to focus on what other people have that we think we don't.

For instance, I look at Facebook at some of my old friends who are married now, and I am envious because their husbands are home. Everyday. Around 5pm. They are done with work and can spend time with their wife and family, should they have one. I am envious because my husband and I do not get that privilege. Currently, I do not get that privilege because CB is back in DC, working on internal medicine. I haven't seen him in 4 weeks, and he won't be back home until April. When he is here, I do not get that privilege because CB works long hours, and sometimes is on-call for 24 hours or more, and sometimes only gets one day off a week and that may not be the weekend. And then when he is here? Sure, we spend time together, but then, he has to study. When CB gets "home" from DC, he will then only be home on the weekends, as he will drive up to another military base in our state and spend the weeks there working on Family Medicine. I often wonder what it would be like to have him come home every day, around 5pm, and be home on the weekends. So easy, to look around and be jealous.

But I have to remind myself: You knew. You said, "Yes. I will stay with you even though we will be long distance for 2 years. Yes. I will marry you knowing fully that you are in medical school and have a long road of long hours in front of you. Yes. I will marry you knowing that you are in the military and that may take you away for weeks and months at a time. Yes. I will marry you." I knew that he would be away for parts of his 3rd and 4th years of medical school. I definitely knew that learning and training to be a doctor is not an easy path and that he would have some weeks of good hours and some weeks of hell. I knew, and so it is not fair that I am jealous.

I also know that one day he will come home at 5pm, and not have to travel all over the US to different military hospitals for clerkships for weeks at a time. I know that he has chosen a specialty (99.9% sure of what he wants to do) that will allow him to have a regular family life. It will not take him away suddenly for a medical emergency (mostly). I know that he will be around one day, home at 5pm, ready to eat dinner and spend time with our family. In the meantime, I must try to be happy for my friends, and patient with CB and I's situation, knowing that it will all come out even in the end.

Post-Wedding, Post-honeymoon, disgruntled blues

Annnd, I'm back.

The wedding was wonderful, and one of these days I will find the motivation to post some pictures here soon. Aside from my step-grandmother violently grabbing my arm and telling me that my stepfather was a more of a father to me than my biological father right before the first dance, the whole thing went off without a hitch (still pissed about the comment though- who says that to a bride ON HER WEDDING DAY?!!?!).

The honeymoon was fan-freaking-tastic as well. We had a world of trouble, literally, getting to Rome, but once there it was heavenly. I frequently wish we were still on our honeymoon on a day to day basis. Being back in the "real" world has been a little rough. CB started his internal medicine rotation and oh my, has that been my worst nightmare. These are the worst hours he has had to work thus far and I miss him all the time. This could also be my hormones speaking dramatically as my period is just days away... either way, he's gone a lot and I haven't been coping as well as I used to. Our dining room table is covered in wedding gifts that have been opened but need to be sorted and put away (glasses, glasses, more glasses, dishes, crystal, etc.) and quite frankly, I don't have a place for it all yet. So there it has remained on the dining room table. And, there are hundreds of thank-yous to write. Starting with the showers that were thrown for me in the very late fall. I'm a little overwhelmed.

Add to this the fact that I teach 3rd-5th graders, and you have one disgruntled LB. Don't get me wrong, I am grateful for my job and I love the kids I teach. I love the people I work with. But, I do not like teaching basic Latin day after day. I want to teach the gooood stuff. The Latin 2 and 3 stuff. The fun stuff. The can't help but get excited because OMG I am reading REAL LATIN.

And then again, maybe I am just all out of whack because everything in my world has been out of whack for the last month.

Possibly exacerbating the problem and my loneliness with CB working long hours is the fact that all my dear friends live elsewhere. I have friends here, sure, but they are work friends that I don't really hang out with regularly outside of school. I have one good friend from high school down here, but she is also married and spends the vast majority of her time hanging out with her husband who doesn't so much work the long hours on a regular basis. It is hard to find friends who will spontaneously go to the movies with you, or dinner, or lunch, or hunt through the racks at Ann Taylor Loft to find you cute clothes for a good deal. People you can call on a moment's notice who will say, "Yea, sure. I'll go with you." I had that in my last city, when CB and I were long distance. I had that in college. I don't have it anymore.

So, here I am. Married to a wonderful man who has a job that requires much of his time and energy, a job for which I respect him greatly, but am jealous of the time it takes. Living in a city I like (on most days, if I'm not driving). Working a job that isn't so much fulfilling like I want it to be. Overwhelmed by the generosity of friends and family and befuddled by where to store it and the amount of thanks I have yet to express. And lonely.

It's been a rough go of it since I've been back in the States.

2 Months of being Married

Today marks 2 months of officially being married to CB.

What did I think about when I first woke up this morning?

I turn 25 exactly 2 months from today. I realized, oh, 4 hours later that it is ALSO the 2 month marker. I'm an awesome wife.

Thoughts on the first 2 months?

Well, living in a house with someone else is a lot of work. And compromise. Or you do neither and you end up with a pile of dishes in the sink and you don't do laundry for 3-ish weeks. Luckily, neither CB nor I are extreme sticklers for having everything look perfect all the time. Thank you God. Our house isn't nasty by any means. But yea, laundry takes a back seat. We forget to take out the trash to the road EVERY SINGLE WEEK. BOTH TIMES. And then, one of us finally remembers the day before and we end up with Trash City at the end of our driveway. Seriously. Trashiest neighbors on the block. In that respect. We just took the trash to the road last night for the first time in say, 2 weeks? Maybe 3? (Note: We do indeed take the trash out of our trashcans several times a week. But it goes outside in the big trashcan. And next to the trashcan. And in the big cardboard boxes that all our new china came in. You get the picture. And that trash pile? Not visible to neighbors or from inside our house.)

Mostly CB and I agree on how things should be cleaned and when things should be cleaned. If he comes home and I forgot (read: didn't feel like) doing the dishes that morning. He doesn't flip out or think I'm the worst wife ever. He just shrugs and says he doesn't judge me. Then I do the dishes because I think, gosh, what a marvelous husband.

We are currently going through the pre-marital counseling that couples normally go through actually pre-maritally. We, obviously, are already married. But no bother. Our chaplain is awesome and supports us already being married and does pre-marital/marital counseling with us anyway. Via Skype. Part of the process is these 3 tests. We have taken them already and the first one we are working with in our session is the personality test. I am an INFP. Yea. Funky letters that mean: Introvert. Intuition. Feelings. Perception. This apparently means that I recharge myself, my batteries, if you will, by being alone. I don't mind being sociable, but I definitely need a lot of me time to feel centered. Intuition is my means of gathering information. I follow my intuition more so than sensory perception (yea, I dont really know what that means either.) Feelings indicates how I make decisions. Anyone who knows me could've guessed this. And Perception is.... something that I can't remember. Yea. So, that's me. CB? Complete opposite. He is an ENTJ. The only thing we have in common is that Intuition business. Basically he recharges by being around people, he makes decisions based on thinking, and um... Judgment is his last one and again, who knows whatever that indicates.

All that to say, that in the past 2 weeks we have spent a great deal of time discussing and observing differences in our personalities and how things work with each of us. It has been interesting. Basically CB is the rational problem solver. I am the feeling, introspective, let's mull for awhile different sort. And as one could guess, we don't handle most things the same. So we spend a great deal of time figuring out how we will communicate with one another best and how we will handle conflict. CB is the one, it turns out, who is having to be the most flexible in learning to work with me. But he is great at it.

Overall? The past 2 months have been wonderful, though not perfect. We have argued. I have indeed cried because my feelings were hurt. Our house has been perfectly clean and immaculate, and then it has been very... lived in. He has had to ask me to spend a little bit less money. I have had to ask him to please, please, please remember to shut the shower curtain when he gets out of the shower and remember to pick the floor towel up off the floor. But I do love it. And I love him. And I look forward to learning more about how exactly to be married to him.

Oh... and this other thing. CB flys out this afternoon to go back to DC. Tomorrow morning he is having his appeal meeting with the promotions board at his school. Remember way back when everything fell apart and he was recommended for disenrollment, but that he would start 3rd year and he would take the Step 1 and depending on his performance there things may or may not turn out okay? Well, this is the follow meeting where they review his Step 1 score and all the other grades they didn't see thus didn't include in their assessment of him last time. Luckily, his Step 1 score is great and those other grades include several Bs in very important classes. But still. I don't exactly trust the board or the dean who is continually assuring CB that things are going to turn out fine since he did well on Step 1. After all, he was assured by that same dean last time that he would be fine. And then he wasn't.

So here I am again, asking you to pray, cross your fingers, rub your rabbit's foot that things go well for CB. He has done a phenomenal job in 3rd year so far. The doctors supervising him and working with him have loved him and given him much praise for how much he knows and what a good attitude he has and how he is skilled. If only that word could get back to board in time. Anyways. Please pray and send good vibes out into the world that things go okay for CB. I appreciate it, thanks.

On the first month of being legally married

Today marks 1 month of CB and I being legally married to one another. My thoughts? I love it. It's not perfect all the time. Studying medicine requires that he is gone a lot, but we work really hard to enjoy the time we have together. I am working on figuring out how to be a housewife, and constantly working on getting a teaching job. As of next week, I am going to begin the hunt for non-teaching jobs. Eeeek. What I like most about being married to CB is that we are a team. We work together constantly and make decisions together effectively without arguing or getting snappy. We both know that it isn't going to be perfect and we aren't always going to get it right but we are doing our best. He is understanding of my shortcomings as a housewife, and uber encouraging about the fact that I am not inclined to clean the house all the time. Our house, mind you, is not dirty really, it is just not where I think it should be. And yesterday? I made a complete dinner for us. A recipe out of a cookbook which I had never made before, and then I was even so bold as to make a dessert from a recipe. Both were actually very good and CB had 3 servings of the dessert. He looked at me and was like, "You're becoming a housewife. You're becoming domesticated." We both laughed a good deal at this, but I am so so so proud that I cooked. I cooked something that required cutting and sauteing and simmering. Yay me!

So being married? It does take work. But marrying a medical school student means we both get space and indepedence. I like that overall. And when we are together we enjoy it so much because we don't have unlimited time.

By the way? Still looking forward to wedding tremendously. Save the dates are going out (LATE...eeeek) hopefully this next week. Yea, that's right. I am still sending save the dates even though I'm technically married. Why? Because my wedding is still important, and I want people to save the date for it and come. Thankyouverymuch.

Another thing about being married? It requires extensive financial responsibility. CB and I looked at our monies today. We are not poor by any means. We have a roof over our heads, foods for our bellies, two very nice Mustangs, belongings which we love and are proud of, and I have a very pretty engagement ring. I really could not ask for more. The problem is the random little spending on crap. Do I really need to buy $77 worth of books every month? (Seriously, a book problem). No, probably not. Do I really need to go to Sonic before class? Not so much (my waistline agrees). It is hard when two people are sharing monies. You can't just do things like you used to. So tonight we made a budget for the month of August. We have very little extra room for spending money on anything besides food, gas, and bills. But the thing is that I am okay with that. I would rather have a home cooked meal than go out and we have discovered Red Box movies and lots of codes to get free movies. We'll be fine.

However, if I had a job, things would feel a lot better.

So being married to CB? Pretty great. I love him dearly.

On being married to a medical student, pt 1

I say pt. 1, because I am sure there are many more parts to come.

First of all, I am still insanely excited about his step 1 score. Did I mention he scored a 200? Did I mention that that equates to like, a mid-B? Did I mention that the dean of academics contacted him and commented on what an excellent score he made? Did I mention that when he asked when he was supposed to go before the review board again, the dean said in a blase tone, "Oh, yea. They'll review this." Did I mention that scoring a 200 on the step 1 basically means that they don't have a beef with him anymore? Did I mention that I am so thankful for answered prayers? YAY CB! YAY for continuing medical school!!

Second of all, everyone who told me that I would have to get used to him being gone a lot was right. He is gone a lot. 6 days a week from 4:30am-7pm, sometimes later, and sometimes gone all night at the hospital. On nights that I have class from 6-9pm, our schedule goes something like this: CB leaves at 4:30am and kisses me goodbye. I wake up at 8:30am and do whatever all day. I leave at 4:30pm. He gets home around 7 or 7:30 pm. He starts making dinner. I get home at 9:30 pm. We eat dinner. We have 45 minutes of talking to each other about everything we can cram in. We go to bed. We try not to talk while lying in bed, though we never succeed, because then he is up for another hour. All in all, on those days, we have 1 hour of time together. I tell him every night, "Don't go to work tomorrow. Stay home and play with me." But I know he can't do that. This Saturday is his one day off this week, and I awesomely have to go to class from 8am-3pm. Life is hard.

The good news: He is on his general surgery rotation right now, and this is the rotation with the worst hours. The other rotations don't go in as early or leave as late.

The other good news: I am only in class for another week and a half.

The other other good news: At least he gets one day off a week. Civilian med students/doctors have it worse. The military is really strict about how many hours a week they can work, and mandates that they all have to have one 24 hour period off every week, to remain combat ready and all.

It hit me yesterday in the middle of the day that this is what life is going to be like for awhile. Him working long hours, me not working long hours, and seeing each other whenever we can. In some ways, it is good. It keeps us missing each other so that when we do have time together, we enjoy it as much as possible. AND, like I told him last night, seeing him face to face and spending time with him for an hour a day is MUCH better than 3 hours on the phone in 2 different states. It is good we had all that long distance practice though, because I know how to be on my own and enjoy myself. I am used to him not being around all the time. But I sure would like it if he was.

I want to always remain positive about the situation and never become bitter that we only see each other a little bit every day and that he only has one day a week off. I want to never become bitter or resentful over that. He is fulfilling a huge goal for his life and that is important. If I were in school or doing something really time consuming that was fulfilling my life goals, he would be beyond supportive. I want to do the same for him.

And also, this rotation is firmenting in his mind that he does not want to be a surgeon. He hates the hours.

Other things:

I really want my test scores back for my Latin test. I am nervous though.

I really want to teach Latin.

On Saturday, I have to present a 3 minute lesson over a procedure I want to teach my class.

I happen to know that the teacher is planting misbehaving students throughout the room to try and mess us up.

How do I know? Because I am one of them.

I am afraid I won't do a good job.

I wish summer would last forever.

Simultaneously, I need a job.

Going to Camp Eagle on Sunday and I am SOOO excited. Good times in the outdoors with old friends.

First Day Alone

CB is in the DC for a few days to start his 3rd year of medical school- then back here to begin the actual in-hospital work.

I should have a lot to say about the first few days of being married, but unfortunately, I don't. We got married and then I turned into a study machine to finish looking over stuff for my Latin Excet, which I took yesterday. Then, I got sick. Then, he had to leave to go to DC today. And that, my friends, is exactly what I've done since getting married.

Currently I am still sick. I have done exactly nothing today except lay on the couch and watch a Law and Order marathon (probably not so good since it may send me into paranoia mode when night falls), hoping that my excessive rest will help whatever virus I have to pass by.

If you were to ask me about the Excet, I would say that it was long, it was hard, and I have no idea how I did. I knew a lot of the stuff on there. But then again, there was some stuff that I had to do my best to make educated guesses. My mentor and friend, PR, tells me this: If I pass it, fantastic. Incredible, considering all I've done in the week before the test. If I don't pass? Whatever, I moved and got married and was getting sick while I was trying to take it. It's not like I'm failing out of something if I don't pass. I'll just study up and take it again.

I like her stance on the matter.

There is one teacher, whom I don't know, but I know a teacher who works with this teacher, who had to take it 3 times to pass it. In fairness to her, so you don't judge her and think she's an idiot, this is some seriously. seriously. seriously. difficult Latin. I am really hoping and praying that I passed, and there is a small part of me that feels like maybe I did, as there was a good bulk of questions that I KNOW I got right, another bulk of questions that I was confident about, but not certain, and then the minority of the three- the questions that I didn't feel confident about. Of these, there were only 30 or so out of 120. (Doesn't sound long right? And then you find out that they give you 5 hours to take it and it took me over half of that time to finish.)

If I don't pass, which I'm not ruling out yet, I know exactly what I need to do to study. I can't study anymore grammar. Grammar was not the issue. I knew all the grammar. What I need is to read Julius Caesar and Cicero (in Latin, of course). These were the two authors whose passages came up again and again on the test and on whose passages I tended to feel pretty weak.

We'll see in 3 weeks how it went.

As for being married? I am very slowly getting used to the titles "wife and husband." On the first day, CB kept calling me his wife in various circumstances, and while I am proud and happy to be such, it most definitely freaked me out to hear myself called that. I told him and he said we could slowly ease into referring to each other as that. Not that I want to be referred to as 'fiance,' or 'girlfriend' or anything else, I just need time to adjust to the thought of actually being someone's 'wife.'

And then today my mom asked me how the first time having my husband away was. Weird, mom. Weird. She laughed at me.

Another weird thing for me: NOT HAVING MY LAST NAME. I haven't had my driver's license changed yet, so when I was at the testing center yesterday everything was done under my old name. I miss my name. A lot is attached to a name. An entire identity, even. And now my old name, my old identity, isn't mine. I have a new name, and it makes me feel like I lost my identity in some weird way. My entire job centered on that old name: I was Miss C., not Mrs. B. I was LC. Not LB. Now, whatever new job I have, there will be a new name to come with me. It's surreal. Logically, I know this isn't true. I haven't lost any identity. I am still me. I am still the same person. But the name change throws me off.

Please don't mistake my ponderings and awkwardness about these marital things as doubts about whether I did the right thing, or some bad omen. I am a naturally anxious person. My chest got tight after CB proposed. I almost had a heart attack when I lived alone for the first time after college- I was a mess for 3 months. Change- BIG change- just freaks me out. And these are good changes. I don't stay up all night worrying about it. I know that in time, I will be used to being called CB's wife, and I will happily sign the name LB, and I will have little routines and traditions that are specific to where I'm at now.

I do miss my old life though. I miss my old apartment, and the crazy neighbors. I miss seeing my old last name in my mailbox. I miss students calling out, "Miss C.!!! Miss C.!!" I miss the fact that at this very moment I would be driving over to my mom's for Sunday dinner with my mom and my brother, his gf, and my stepdad. I miss calling my dad on any day of the week and asking if he wants to meet for dinner.

But I love this life too. I love this city. I love the house we live in. I love CB. I even am sort of fond of unpacking my old life and making it part of this life. I love this too, I just haven't fully settled in yet.