I never had much of an opinion about immigrants until I married one.
When Peter and I decided to get married, we knew there would be several positive outcomes mostly involving my ability to feed him and his ability to wash dishes, but we also knew that making our relationship legally binding meant the government had to take Peter’s green card application more seriously. I mean, sure, there’s the whole thing about loving each other and this act of matrimony being an expression of that love, but let’s get real. Why get the law involved if we’re not going to get a few legally mandated benefits out of it?
What I didn’t realize is that when it comes to immigration, all the carrots are for Peter and the stick is for me. Let me explain.
Before Peter and I met, he was a responsible immigrant with a work visa that allowed him to teach at our university. The university served as his sponsor and advised him to hire a legal team to oversee his green card application. Peter arduously studied the application, providing the lawyers with financial information, a birth certificate, and medical records translated in English (did you know diphtheria is spelled pretty much the same across the board?).
After we married, Peter submitted paperwork to make me his official sponsor. Suddenly the green card application wasn’t about him, it was about me. To put together a convincing dossier, the lawyers demanded bank reconciliations, tax records, a driver’s license, and my birth certificate. They wanted to know when and where my parents were born and the various places I’ve lived in the U.S. I’ve had rectal exams that were less intrusive.
Meanwhile, Peter continued to fill out questionnaires that asked about his criminal past as well as his desire, in the past, present, and/or future, to overthrow the United States government. He made a firm mark in the “no” oval on that one. The questions seemed ludicrous to me. Would anyone really ‘fess up to a desire to overthrow the government if he/she wanted a green card?
As he continued to work through the form, Peter read me more questions. Then, just as I thought I should bust out a chorus of Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” to ward off the smoky outline of Joe McCarthy forming above Peter’s head, the question I’d been dreading came: Peter, are you now or have you ever been a member of the communist party?
Seriously?!? Riiiiinnnggggg……Hello? Department of Homeland Security? It’s the 1950s calling, and we’d like our ignorant, back-ass-ward prejudices back.
Peter, of course, blackened in the “no” oval, but I couldn’t help arguing with him. What does it matter what your political affiliations are? Isn’t political pluralism one of the founding principles of this country’s government? Don’t answer that question! It’s none of their damn business!
And this was only the beginning. Next, as Arlo Guthrie so poetically stated, Peter was to undergo “injections, inspections, detections, and all kinds of mean and nasty things.” We drove several hundred miles over the span of a month for physicals, vaccinations, booster shots, and an official reading of Peter’s biometrics (retinal scan, fingerprints).
And then we waited. The next step was a formal interview by immigration officials. Like a desperate teenager a week before the prom, I checked our voice mail messages hourly and ran to the mailbox seconds after the postal carrier descended our steps.
After a few months of waiting, it finally arrived. Our invitation to the prom, or in this case, the Department of Homeland Security in Helena, Montana. We arranged for colleagues to take our classes (the Department of Homeland Security didn’t care about our teaching schedules) and headed north to Helena.
At the immigration office, we stepped into Officer X’s office, and before we sat, we were told to raise our right hands and swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Determined not to speak unless spoken to (yeah, that was pretty tough for me), I looked around X’s office. Among U.S. flags and bald eagle paperweights, I found myself flanked by two large posters. On my left, Ronald Reagan eyed me warily, and on my right, George H.W. Bush looked on disapprovingly. It was as though the last twenty years hadn’t happened. No wonder the questionnaire was so outdated. The Department of Homeland Security was too busy redecorating its offices circa 1992 to bother updating its immigration questions.
Officer X interrupted my reverie by asking if I had met Peter’s parents. I answered yes, and she nodded commenting that Peter had just recently celebrated a birthday. Yes, I responded. Peter’s birthday is the day before my mother’s birthday, and we’d had a nice time celebrating both days together. Without missing a beat, Officer X asked, “When is Peter’s birthday?” I started to laugh, thinking she was joking. What idiot would forget the date she was just talking about? Officer X’s eyes betrayed no humor, so I swallowed my laughter and told her Peter’s birthday.
Then, Officer X explained my responsibilities as Peter’s sponsor. Peter would be given a green card, conditional on our staying married for the next two years and on my legal obligation to keep us on financially stable ground.
That’s right, folks. If Peter loses his job during this conditional period, I am financially responsible for keeping him off welfare.
This isn’t a difficult role for me to fill. I have tenure at a thriving university, and I have little reason to believe I’ll lose my job in the next two years. I should be able to keep us afloat if something happens to Peter’s job at the university. What shocks me is that I now have legal obligation to both Peter and the government.
In my mind, because of the green card, Peter and I have entered into an uncomfortable threesome with the U.S. government. It’s an odd balancing act, with the government always perched on the edge of our bed, the third guest at our dining room table who also reclines in the backseat of our car. We must always consider its reaction to our travels, purchases, and financial choices. And if it doesn’t like what we’re doing, it can always use its stick to shove the carrot it dangles down our throats.
But two years from now when Peter and I are still happily married, I look forward to kicking the government’s ass out of our lives. It’s a blanket stealer.
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Why I Should Live in the Country
As a kid, I assumed that everyone’s neighbors hated them. To the left of us, our neighbors’ sons played endless rounds of basketball, resting between games on the railroad ties that cordoned off my mother’s flowers. In an attempt to keep them out of the flowers, my folks slicked the ties with oil, warning the boys not to sit there anymore. Several ruined pairs of pants later, the boys finally got the message, but their mother regularly ignored us on her daily walk to her car.
Across from us lived a mom, teenage girl, and a boy a year younger than I. The girl, Sissy, kicked me in the nose (I was eight at the time) when I tried to line up for the bus (our stop was at her house). The boy, Michael, regularly challenged my brother (two years my senior) to fights. When my brother finally consented to a round of fisticuffs, he pushed Michael to the ground after which Michael proceeded to cry and run home. Michael’s mother called my mother to complain about his ruined pants (apparently we were experts at it), and my Mom recommended bleach.
To our right lived a family whose father fancied himself a farmer. He built a barn in the backyard (about ¼ of an acre) and plowed much of the yard to grow organic produce. From inside, we enjoyed watching him endlessly roto-till his ¼ acre plot until we stepped outside and suffered the ill effects of his “natural” fertilizer that encouraged flies the size of our Chihuahua.
As neighbors, we were no picnic either. I practiced piano in the early morning (about 7am) and my brother practiced his drums daily. Our aforementioned Chihuahua, Tuffy, was a champion yipper/bayer/biter of strangers. He often refused to come in when called, so I’m sure the neighbors were less than thrilled at our nightly shouts at Tuffy to get inside.
Since then, I’ve tried to be cognizant of my own noise pollution as a neighbor and apartment dweller. As I’ve grown more conscious of the effects of my living space on others, I’ve become less tolerant of people who are clueless about living in shared space.
For instance, if I were President, my first act would be to make it illegal to cook liver and onions in an apartment building. The same law would apply for people who leave alarm clocks on over a holiday weekend when they’re gone. There would be a special jail for those who leave their howling dogs in the backyard all day while their owners are at work.
With a miniscule amount of tolerance left, I entered this holiday season with trepidation. Our new neighbors (whose yard our living room overlooks) had installed a particularly obnoxious Halloween display. In their postage stamp-sized yard, they had erected not one but two large inflatables (one in the shape of a haunted house, the other a Grim Reaper, hovering over the fence). Both featured lights that stayed on all night. Despite their already over-packed yard, the neighbors added several tombstones that glowed fiendishly and several carved pumpkins, one of which was vomiting his own guts.
For a solid month, Peter and I looked on this tableau and feared for Christmas. And we were right to be afraid. A few weeks before Christmas, the neighbors erected another large inflatable, this one featuring Santa, his sled, a few reindeer, and some elves. This, in and of itself, wasn’t too bad, but a few days later came the light display. Our neighbor draped lights over the fences and trees as well as the balcony and awning of his house. But these weren’t ordinary lights. These were, what my friend Jill called, “seizure-inducing merriment.” The lights flashed and blinked furiously in time to….wait for it….. electronic holiday music blasted for everyone within a ten mile radius to hear. And this went on well after 10pm.
I lasted three days before I anonymously submitted the following note to our neighbors’ mailbox:
The Great Assumption of 2011
And lo, it came to pass that in the town of Dillon, there was a house swaddled in lights, enveloped by music, and the neighbors, they were sore afraid…
- Assumption 1: Everyone within listening and viewing distance of your display celebrates Christmas.
- Assumption 2: Everyone within listening and viewing distance of your display who celebrates Christmas enjoys flashing lights and accompanying music.
- Assumption 3: Everyone within listening distance of your display is hearing impaired, hence, the extreme volume of the display’s audio component.
- Assumption 4: Everyone within listening distance of your display does not work in the evenings and should therefore not be disturbed by the volume of your display’s audio component.
- Assumption 5: Everyone within listening distance of your display enjoys electronic mash-ups of the same handful of songs repetitively for at least five hours each evening.
My assumption: You will read these assumptions and crumple them up.
My hope: You will turn the volume down on your display so that only residents at your home can hear it.
Now, I know the note is snarky and not at all in keeping with the “holiday spirit,” and I should have just put on my big-girl panties and knocked on their door to ask them to turn down the music, but as I round the corner of 40, I’ve become less and less concerned about letting my bitch flag fly.
So it was with great satisfaction when, that evening, the music was noticeably less loud and the display discontinued at around 9pm.
I felt pretty good about myself. For about a day. Then, the following afternoon, the doorbell rang, and there stood my neighbor, handing out holiday cards.
“Hi!” he exclaimed. “I’m Phil, from next door. My family and I just moved to town, and I’m giving out Christmas cards to the neighbors as a way to apologize for my yard decorations. We got a note about them and we felt bad for disturbing the neighbors. You see, I served in the military for several years, and I’m deaf in one ear.”
Yup. I had that one coming.
Not only was this guy classy enough to come to our door with a card and a heartfelt apology but also he actually was hearing impaired. After serving our country.
He continued, “Yeah, so since I can’t hear out of this ear and my kids weren’t going to tell me how loud the music was, I didn’t know how loud it had gotten. We just moved here from California and we want to fit in with the neighbors. We love living here, away from the bustle of the big city. We decided to move here after I retired as an ultimate fighting champion.”
Gulp.
I smiled, nodded, and absolutely, positively did NOT own up to the fact that I was the one who had written the note. I admit, it was hard to speak with my foot so firmly lodged in my mouth, but even more difficult was digesting the notion that this guy could rearrange my face without trying too hard.
I said goodbye to Phil and crawled under the bed like the snake that I am.
And this is why I should live in the country. Not because I deserve to be free of annoying neighbors but because they deserve to be free of me.
Happy Holidays, everyone! Be as loud as you like. I’m not leaving the house until school starts.
Like Everyone Else
I’m
not ashamed to admit that I’ve done things because they made me
different. Instead of buying a four-wheel drive vehicle when I moved to
snowy Montana, I bought a MINI Cooper with a clearance so low ants could
barely limbo under it.
Instead of buying a house when I moved here (thereby establishing some equity and discontinuing my practice of, as my friend Terri puts, ‘flushing money down the toilet’), I rented an apartment and bragged, probably too much, about how I didn’t have to do yard work or plumbing. (In fact, as I write this, I’ve my feet propped up on the coffee table while I can hear someone else shoveling the front walk. This makes me happy.)
Instead of keeping a low profile during the probationary years of my tenure bid, I published this column during my first year at UMW, and, seven years later, am still recognized as ‘the girl who wrote that column.’ I could have saved myself several hundred calories in stress-eaten pizzas had I passed on the opportunity to write about my single life in Montana (and avoided, as my provost has put it, ‘earthy language’).
Instead of staying single or getting married at my home church in Virginia with my friends and family watching as I floated down the aisle in white ball gown, I got married in the drive-thru at the Little White Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas.
Here’s the story.
Peter and I decided in January that we wanted to get married. The actual scenario went something like this:
Me: Do you think we should get married?
Him: Okay.
We mulled over our options for a few weeks. We could go to a Justice of the Peace in Dillon, but word was bound to get out, and we didn’t want anyone to know before our parents. We could get married by a JP in my hometown over the summer, but that would leave out his parents. We could get married by a JP in his hometown over the summer, but that would leave out my parents.
In the end, we chose to leave everyone out and elope. We already had a spring break trip planned with our friends who live in Vegas, and really, what city does quickie marriages better?
Once we opted to elope in Las Vegas, we decided to make the ceremony as cheesy as possible. We could get married by Elvis or any number of Star Trek Star Fleet Commanders, but these ceremonies didn’t resonate with our (read: my) impatient personalities. Quick and easy; that was the name of the game.
The Little White Wedding Chapel offered several ceremonies, several of which didn’t required the interested parties to leave their vehicle. This sounded perfect to us, but in reality, the ceremony took a little more work than we thought.
First, we had to pre-apply for our marriage license on-line. Doing so afforded us placement in the “express line” at the Las Vegas county court house where we both had to show up with driver’s licenses and cash to pick up the legal marriage certificate. We also had to book our ceremony well in advance of our March 5 wedding date as well as secure the reservation with a credit card.
I’ve seen dozens of films and TV shows where people get hammered then hitched in Vegas, and now I can say with certainty that I don’t know how they do it. We couldn’t just show up to a wedding chapel and get married. We had to go to the court house (which boasted almost 24 hour a day service) to pick up the license (good for only seven days) and only then we could go to a wedding chapel. You’d have to be a better drunk than I to navigate that kind of system.
With the marriage license applied for and the wedding chapel booked, we turned our thoughts to more serious matters, namely, what we would wear. I’d say we spent a good 15 minutes looking on Amazon before we settled on a tuxedo t-shirt for him and a t-shirt with the words “The Bride” for me. We took another ten minutes to decide we wanted to treat our friends to The Cheesecake Factory after the ceremony, which necessitated another call to The Little White Wedding Chapel to book a limo to pick us up and drop us off at Caesar’s Palace (location of the aforementioned Cheesecake Factory).
And that was it. We didn’t think about the wedding again until we drove down to Vegas at the beginning of March for spring break.
When we arrived in Vegas, we picked up the marriage license and asked our friends to meet us at Caesar’s Palace. We enjoyed a short limo ride to the chapel, signed more paperwork and received a complimentary bouquet and garter. From there, Peter and I popped out of the sunroof of the limo and were married in the drive-thru Tunnel of Love.
My friends took a few photos and we all climbed back into the limo to go to dinner. In all, it took about an hour.
When we got back to Dillon, we didn’t tell anyone but our Human Resources rep at the college (we had to change our tax forms). Afterward, we just went about our business of teaching and research. We told our families during the summer, and when the fall semester started, we told everyone in Dillon.
The question we kept getting was, “How did you manage to keep it a secret for so long?” The first time someone asked me this, I looked blankly and cocked my head to the side, like a dog, thinking. Finally, I said, “It wasn’t a hard secret to keep because nothing changed for us. We lived together and loved each other before we got married. We live together and love each other now. Neither the ceremony nor the license changed us.”
So why get married at all, you may ask. After all, a woman with a penchant for doing things differently shouldn’t be so quick to conform. There were any number of reasons for getting married: (1) Peter needs a green card to stay in the country and our being married helps (though not nearly as much as you would think); (2) We bought property together and being married makes contract language and mortgages much easier to negotiate; (3) As I round the corner of 40, it’s less awkward to introduce Peter as my husband rather than my boyfriend/fella/gentleman caller.
But none of these things came to mind the night we first started talking about marriage. Before I met Peter, I longed for companionship and someone to care for (who wasn’t me). I wanted my partner and me to be each others' priorities, sacrifices, and inconveniences.
Like everyone else, I wanted to be loved unconditionally, inconveniently, sideways, and upside down.
In the end, I finally got married because I am loved.
Oh, and we traded in the MINI for an all-wheel drive Subaru and are now proud owners of property in North Carolina. Married, driving a "sensible car," in debt.....I really am like everyone else.
Instead of buying a house when I moved here (thereby establishing some equity and discontinuing my practice of, as my friend Terri puts, ‘flushing money down the toilet’), I rented an apartment and bragged, probably too much, about how I didn’t have to do yard work or plumbing. (In fact, as I write this, I’ve my feet propped up on the coffee table while I can hear someone else shoveling the front walk. This makes me happy.)
Instead of keeping a low profile during the probationary years of my tenure bid, I published this column during my first year at UMW, and, seven years later, am still recognized as ‘the girl who wrote that column.’ I could have saved myself several hundred calories in stress-eaten pizzas had I passed on the opportunity to write about my single life in Montana (and avoided, as my provost has put it, ‘earthy language’).
Instead of staying single or getting married at my home church in Virginia with my friends and family watching as I floated down the aisle in white ball gown, I got married in the drive-thru at the Little White Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas.
Here’s the story.
Peter and I decided in January that we wanted to get married. The actual scenario went something like this:
Me: Do you think we should get married?
Him: Okay.
We mulled over our options for a few weeks. We could go to a Justice of the Peace in Dillon, but word was bound to get out, and we didn’t want anyone to know before our parents. We could get married by a JP in my hometown over the summer, but that would leave out his parents. We could get married by a JP in his hometown over the summer, but that would leave out my parents.
In the end, we chose to leave everyone out and elope. We already had a spring break trip planned with our friends who live in Vegas, and really, what city does quickie marriages better?
Once we opted to elope in Las Vegas, we decided to make the ceremony as cheesy as possible. We could get married by Elvis or any number of Star Trek Star Fleet Commanders, but these ceremonies didn’t resonate with our (read: my) impatient personalities. Quick and easy; that was the name of the game.
The Little White Wedding Chapel offered several ceremonies, several of which didn’t required the interested parties to leave their vehicle. This sounded perfect to us, but in reality, the ceremony took a little more work than we thought.
First, we had to pre-apply for our marriage license on-line. Doing so afforded us placement in the “express line” at the Las Vegas county court house where we both had to show up with driver’s licenses and cash to pick up the legal marriage certificate. We also had to book our ceremony well in advance of our March 5 wedding date as well as secure the reservation with a credit card.
I’ve seen dozens of films and TV shows where people get hammered then hitched in Vegas, and now I can say with certainty that I don’t know how they do it. We couldn’t just show up to a wedding chapel and get married. We had to go to the court house (which boasted almost 24 hour a day service) to pick up the license (good for only seven days) and only then we could go to a wedding chapel. You’d have to be a better drunk than I to navigate that kind of system.
With the marriage license applied for and the wedding chapel booked, we turned our thoughts to more serious matters, namely, what we would wear. I’d say we spent a good 15 minutes looking on Amazon before we settled on a tuxedo t-shirt for him and a t-shirt with the words “The Bride” for me. We took another ten minutes to decide we wanted to treat our friends to The Cheesecake Factory after the ceremony, which necessitated another call to The Little White Wedding Chapel to book a limo to pick us up and drop us off at Caesar’s Palace (location of the aforementioned Cheesecake Factory).
And that was it. We didn’t think about the wedding again until we drove down to Vegas at the beginning of March for spring break.
When we arrived in Vegas, we picked up the marriage license and asked our friends to meet us at Caesar’s Palace. We enjoyed a short limo ride to the chapel, signed more paperwork and received a complimentary bouquet and garter. From there, Peter and I popped out of the sunroof of the limo and were married in the drive-thru Tunnel of Love.
My friends took a few photos and we all climbed back into the limo to go to dinner. In all, it took about an hour.
When we got back to Dillon, we didn’t tell anyone but our Human Resources rep at the college (we had to change our tax forms). Afterward, we just went about our business of teaching and research. We told our families during the summer, and when the fall semester started, we told everyone in Dillon.
The question we kept getting was, “How did you manage to keep it a secret for so long?” The first time someone asked me this, I looked blankly and cocked my head to the side, like a dog, thinking. Finally, I said, “It wasn’t a hard secret to keep because nothing changed for us. We lived together and loved each other before we got married. We live together and love each other now. Neither the ceremony nor the license changed us.”
So why get married at all, you may ask. After all, a woman with a penchant for doing things differently shouldn’t be so quick to conform. There were any number of reasons for getting married: (1) Peter needs a green card to stay in the country and our being married helps (though not nearly as much as you would think); (2) We bought property together and being married makes contract language and mortgages much easier to negotiate; (3) As I round the corner of 40, it’s less awkward to introduce Peter as my husband rather than my boyfriend/fella/gentleman caller.
But none of these things came to mind the night we first started talking about marriage. Before I met Peter, I longed for companionship and someone to care for (who wasn’t me). I wanted my partner and me to be each others' priorities, sacrifices, and inconveniences.
Like everyone else, I wanted to be loved unconditionally, inconveniently, sideways, and upside down.
In the end, I finally got married because I am loved.
Oh, and we traded in the MINI for an all-wheel drive Subaru and are now proud owners of property in North Carolina. Married, driving a "sensible car," in debt.....I really am like everyone else.
This New Condo
Last night I dreamt I was on a swim team.
After watching me swim for a few minutes, the coach decided I shouldn’t
swim more than one length of the pool during meets. Because I don’t do
flip turns, she reasoned, there was no use in swimming more than one
lap.
I woke up frustrated and indignant. In the dream, I wanted to be a good swimmer for the team, and the coach wasn’t helping me. I knew I could be better, but I was being held back.
I’ve been having a lot of dreams like this lately. I wake up frustrated and anxious. So what’s going on in my waking life to provoke such nightly discomfort?
Peter and I are buying a house.
Those of you who are homeowners just nodded knowingly, didn’t you? Because you already know what I have just learned. . . .that buying a house is an effective way of showing just how helpless and powerless we are in the face of a crashingly huge financial system that loves to watch us squirm.
It all started last summer when Peter and I visited Topsail Island, North Carolina, a favorite childhood destination of mine. After a week’s worth of beach strolls and orangey red sunrises over the sound, we decided to buy a condo there.
As academics on ten month contracts, we reasoned that buying a summer place while renting in our college town would give us an investment opportunity while still allowing us mobility in our job location. It was a well-reasoned idea, one that I had pondered for a while before Peter came into my life.
With Peter by my side, the idea could become a reality much quicker, so a few months ago, we contacted a real estate agent in North Carolina. We told her the parameters of our search, and she began emailing links featuring beautiful beach-front condos. As the snow drifted and the winds howled in Montana, we gazed longingly at pictures of balconies with ocean views and patio furniture.
Too soon, we were jerked into reality when we began shopping for mortgages. We discovered that applying for a mortgage is as personally invasive (and significantly less comfortable) as an anal probe. They wanted bank, retirement, and tax statements. They wanted pay stubs and a credit check and just when we thought we had nothing left to give, they wanted more: landlord addresses, previous employers, etc. And this was all before we had left Montana!
As soon as graduation ended, Peter and I headed for the east coast with high hopes of finding a place early enough to get it closed before returning to school in August. Unfortunately, life had other plans for us.
Martha, our MINI Cooper, had been acting up, complaining of electrical problems since last summer. Four dealerships and a year later, she finally puttered to a stop in Rapid City, South Dakota, only one day into our trip from Montana to North Carolina.
With Martha loaded on a tow truck, Peter, Gracie the cockatiel, and I endured a seven hour truck drive to Loveland, Colorado, the closest MINI dealership to Rapid City. After four bumpy hours on the road, the wind kicked up and a storm descended bringing hail that sounded like shrapnel piercing the roof of the tow truck. Martha weathered the storm without a scratch, but as we pulled into the MINI dealership three hours later, the clouds parted and we saw the promised land: a Subaru dealership.
A few days later in our new Subaru, we arrived in North Carolina, ready to condo shop. At this point in the column, I need to thank my parents, not only for tagging along but also for exposing me to HGTV’s show, House Hunters. After watching a few episodes, I learned that house hunting is all about compromise. No place is perfect, I discovered, but a few condos we saw weren’t even close.
There was the one with the bouncy floor (some kind of laminate problem, I guess), the one with the porch screens ripped out, and my favorite, the one with four couches in the living room. I know removing the couches was an easy fix, but such a bizarre furnishing style really made me wonder about the owners.
Finally, we agreed on our first condo, a small, two bed, two bath place on the sixth floor of a large, well- maintained building. Though the furnishings looked like cast offs from the Golden Girls set, I loved the ocean view from the balcony.
But before we could make an offer, we ran into two significant snags: first, the building was pet free; second, the building was designated as a condo-tel (that is, the building would rent condos by the night). The first problem could be solved with a letter to the Homeowner’s Association but the second problem proved to be insurmountable.
It turns out that most mortgages are underwritten by Fannie Mae and/or Freddie Mac. Neither of these companies will underwrite a mortgage for a condo housed in a condo-tel.
Really? Companies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the reason our economy is in the toilet, but I have to live up to their *ah-hem* discerning standards? C'mon, coach! Let me do more than one lap! I swear I can do it!
This setback proved significant as Topsail has only a few condo buildings, and purchasing a house was out of the question. Why? Because neither Peter nor I are interested in taking care of a lawn, garden, roof, etc. We’re not “fix ‘er up” types. The only non “fix ‘er up” homes on Topsail Island are well beyond our meager professorial salaries.
Back at the starting block, we asked our realtor to show us a few condos in a resort building not deemed a condo-tel and were lucky to find a terrific, affordable place.
At this point, I thought the hard part was over. We’d found a place and a mortgage, and it would be all downhill from there. (I just re-read that line and can’t believe how dumb I was).
All of the hurdles that followed (negotiating with the sellers, finding a home inspector, finding the best mortgage rate) would have led to fewer night terrors had I one important character trait: patience.
As I have mentioned in previous columns, I am a champion worrier, and I think most of this worry stems from my lack of patience. If I were a more patient person, I’m sure I’d worry less, but as it is, anyone who’s seen my left ear (my favorite worry spot) knows I’m one job/home/family loss short of pulling a Van Gogh.
So for now, we wait. The mortgage company appears to be on board, the contract has been signed, and a close date has been set.
So what do I have left to worry about?
The owner wants to keep renting out the condo until we close. The thought of random people’s naked butts on what my furniture is keeping me up at night.
I woke up frustrated and indignant. In the dream, I wanted to be a good swimmer for the team, and the coach wasn’t helping me. I knew I could be better, but I was being held back.
I’ve been having a lot of dreams like this lately. I wake up frustrated and anxious. So what’s going on in my waking life to provoke such nightly discomfort?
Peter and I are buying a house.
Those of you who are homeowners just nodded knowingly, didn’t you? Because you already know what I have just learned. . . .that buying a house is an effective way of showing just how helpless and powerless we are in the face of a crashingly huge financial system that loves to watch us squirm.
It all started last summer when Peter and I visited Topsail Island, North Carolina, a favorite childhood destination of mine. After a week’s worth of beach strolls and orangey red sunrises over the sound, we decided to buy a condo there.
As academics on ten month contracts, we reasoned that buying a summer place while renting in our college town would give us an investment opportunity while still allowing us mobility in our job location. It was a well-reasoned idea, one that I had pondered for a while before Peter came into my life.
With Peter by my side, the idea could become a reality much quicker, so a few months ago, we contacted a real estate agent in North Carolina. We told her the parameters of our search, and she began emailing links featuring beautiful beach-front condos. As the snow drifted and the winds howled in Montana, we gazed longingly at pictures of balconies with ocean views and patio furniture.
Too soon, we were jerked into reality when we began shopping for mortgages. We discovered that applying for a mortgage is as personally invasive (and significantly less comfortable) as an anal probe. They wanted bank, retirement, and tax statements. They wanted pay stubs and a credit check and just when we thought we had nothing left to give, they wanted more: landlord addresses, previous employers, etc. And this was all before we had left Montana!
As soon as graduation ended, Peter and I headed for the east coast with high hopes of finding a place early enough to get it closed before returning to school in August. Unfortunately, life had other plans for us.
Martha, our MINI Cooper, had been acting up, complaining of electrical problems since last summer. Four dealerships and a year later, she finally puttered to a stop in Rapid City, South Dakota, only one day into our trip from Montana to North Carolina.
With Martha loaded on a tow truck, Peter, Gracie the cockatiel, and I endured a seven hour truck drive to Loveland, Colorado, the closest MINI dealership to Rapid City. After four bumpy hours on the road, the wind kicked up and a storm descended bringing hail that sounded like shrapnel piercing the roof of the tow truck. Martha weathered the storm without a scratch, but as we pulled into the MINI dealership three hours later, the clouds parted and we saw the promised land: a Subaru dealership.
A few days later in our new Subaru, we arrived in North Carolina, ready to condo shop. At this point in the column, I need to thank my parents, not only for tagging along but also for exposing me to HGTV’s show, House Hunters. After watching a few episodes, I learned that house hunting is all about compromise. No place is perfect, I discovered, but a few condos we saw weren’t even close.
There was the one with the bouncy floor (some kind of laminate problem, I guess), the one with the porch screens ripped out, and my favorite, the one with four couches in the living room. I know removing the couches was an easy fix, but such a bizarre furnishing style really made me wonder about the owners.
Finally, we agreed on our first condo, a small, two bed, two bath place on the sixth floor of a large, well- maintained building. Though the furnishings looked like cast offs from the Golden Girls set, I loved the ocean view from the balcony.
But before we could make an offer, we ran into two significant snags: first, the building was pet free; second, the building was designated as a condo-tel (that is, the building would rent condos by the night). The first problem could be solved with a letter to the Homeowner’s Association but the second problem proved to be insurmountable.
It turns out that most mortgages are underwritten by Fannie Mae and/or Freddie Mac. Neither of these companies will underwrite a mortgage for a condo housed in a condo-tel.
Really? Companies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the reason our economy is in the toilet, but I have to live up to their *ah-hem* discerning standards? C'mon, coach! Let me do more than one lap! I swear I can do it!
This setback proved significant as Topsail has only a few condo buildings, and purchasing a house was out of the question. Why? Because neither Peter nor I are interested in taking care of a lawn, garden, roof, etc. We’re not “fix ‘er up” types. The only non “fix ‘er up” homes on Topsail Island are well beyond our meager professorial salaries.
Back at the starting block, we asked our realtor to show us a few condos in a resort building not deemed a condo-tel and were lucky to find a terrific, affordable place.
At this point, I thought the hard part was over. We’d found a place and a mortgage, and it would be all downhill from there. (I just re-read that line and can’t believe how dumb I was).
All of the hurdles that followed (negotiating with the sellers, finding a home inspector, finding the best mortgage rate) would have led to fewer night terrors had I one important character trait: patience.
As I have mentioned in previous columns, I am a champion worrier, and I think most of this worry stems from my lack of patience. If I were a more patient person, I’m sure I’d worry less, but as it is, anyone who’s seen my left ear (my favorite worry spot) knows I’m one job/home/family loss short of pulling a Van Gogh.
So for now, we wait. The mortgage company appears to be on board, the contract has been signed, and a close date has been set.
So what do I have left to worry about?
The owner wants to keep renting out the condo until we close. The thought of random people’s naked butts on what my furniture is keeping me up at night.
Juicy Expectations
It was such a simple plan. Go to Vienna
for Christmas and meet Peter’s parents. Tour the city, eat some
cookies, enjoy some general merriment. But like the relationship between
doughnuts and my thighs, everything kept expanding exponentially. Would
I like to go to a hot springs a few hours south of Vienna for the day?
Sure. Would I like to take a side trip to Paris for a few days? You bet.
How about five extra days in London? What?!?!
You see, Peter is completing his Ph.D. at a U.K. university, and apparently when your dissertation committee says that it’s time to defend, you hop on the next flight. Such a change added several complicated traveling dimensions to our vacation, and we left Montana a little earlier than planned so Peter could defend his dissertation.
Everything went fine for a while. We flew effortlessly from Bozeman to Minneapolis to Boston to Paris. While waiting for our flight to London, we were delayed by fairies or elves or something (we were never told what was going on), and we started to get concerned about whether Peter would make his London train to his defense.
Finally, we landed at Heathrow, caught a train to London, and waited for our friends in London to take me and our 67 lbs. of luggage to their flat while Peter caught another train to his defense. Unfortunately, we missed our friends in the busy railway station, so Peter bought an extra train ticket, and I and our 67 lbs. of luggage accompanied Peter to his defense.
Due to an electrical outage, the train was diverted, missing two stops, and though that didn’t slow us down, we ran into serious problems getting a taxi at the station where all the folks who couldn’t get to their homes via train also needed taxis. We made it to his defense with only five minutes to spare, and only when we were walking into his department’s main office did I realize that I would be meeting Peter’s dissertation committee wearing my sweatpants that say “Juicy” on the butt.
Despite that faux pas, Peter passed (he did so well, in fact, that his dissertation was accepted as written, with no corrections), and we celebrated by collapsing at a hotel. We did finally touch base with our friends in London, and we spent a few nice days enjoying museums, shopping, and tea at Fortnum & Mason’s.
From there, we went to Austria and stayed with Peter’s folks who live in a small village outside Vienna, This is when the real vacation began. Peter’s mom spoiled us with freshly baked Christmas cookies, pounds and pounds of Milka chocolate, and, just for me, several liters of diet Coke (Coke Light, in Europe). We saw Don Giovanni at the Vienna State Opera House and visited the oldest Christmas market in Europe in front of Vienna’s town hall. We enjoyed a Austrian tradition of decorating a fir tree with homemade ornaments and candles which we lit (carefully!) on the tree’s branches.
Until the day after Christmas, I mostly stayed at Peter’s house. We took a few short trips into town, but mainly I let myself be fed by Peter’s mom, and nothing, save the language barrier, felt too different from life in the states. That all changed the day after Christmas.
The day after Christmas, I learned what it really meant to be in Europe. Peter’s parents treated us to a visit to the Loipersdorf hot springs for the day. First, I learned what it means to drive in Europe. I clung tightly to Peter’s hand as his dad flew down the autobahn at about 100 miles an hour (and there were people passing us!)
When we arrived at the spa, I learned what it means to be at a hot springs in Europe: nude.
We had chosen an adult area of the hot springs that warned its visitors “Nudist Area Ahead,” but I thought that meant clothing was optional. I was wrong. It meant that nudity was required, particularly in the saunas and steam rooms. Not wanting to seem like prudish Americans, Peter and I nuded up and enjoyed a dark aromatherapy steam room.
When walking from place to place, however, we all wore bathrobes and flip flops (crocs were abundant). When Peter’s parents pointed out a place to lunch, I thought to the clothes and makeup stored in my locker. Just a quick spruce, I thought, and then I can join everyone, but there I was wrong too. Everyone ate at the restaurant in their bathrobes and flip flops. The restaurant was cafeteria style so as I meandered around looking for Coke Light, I found what it means to drink in Europe. The soda fountain offered Coke, Fanta Orange, Mountain Dew, and…..white wine.
After lunch, Peter and I wandered down to the spa where he had booked a massage for me. After all the various forms of transportation over the past week that required I sleep in an upright position, I was looking forward to a good rub down….and I found out what it means to get a massage in Europe: nudity…again.
I have often marveled at massage therapists’ abilities to preserve my modesty. Massages have always felt comfortable and safe for me, so I was very surprised when the massage therapist asked me to disrobe in front of her (usually a masseuse will leave the room for this event) and climb on to the table. I was wearing my swim suit under my bathrobe, so instead of being able to quickly disrobe, I had to peel off my clammy suit and reveal all the ripples my “slimming” suit had made in my skin, particularly in the butt and thigh area.
Looking vaguely like an albino panini, I lay on the table where I was immediately covered by a sheet. Whether this was protocol or out of sympathy for my striated thighs, I’ll never know. It was a fine massage, but instead of wind chimey, Native American flute-y music, my massage was accompanied by a Cat Stephens cd.
Ironically, this wasn’t the first odd musical moment I experienced in Austria, which is, as far as I can tell, the birthplace of classical music (Hayden, Mozart, Beethoven). I mean, I didn’t expect to be accompanied by Mozart or Strauss at all times, but I found it a little odd to be using a bathroom at an autobahn rest stop that piped-in Mahalia Jackson. It was even more disconcerting to glide along the ice at the Vienna Ice Skating Rink to Billy Squier’s subtle tune, “The Stroke.”
I think I loved Vienna all the more for these idiosyncrasies. In general, I like oxymorons, paradoxes, and all manner of juxtapositions. I like irony. So when Peter and I left Vienna for Paris, we decided to have a little fun with irony. After visiting the Christian Dior flagship store, we trotted down the Champs Elysees to a McDonald’s with a view of the Arc d’Triomphe where we enjoyed grande frites (a large fries). Later at the Galeries Lafayette, Peter went into a Louis Vuitton store and inquired if they sold any fanny packs. He received a firm “no.”
We had a marvelous time letting Paris be what it is, a magnificent city full of museums, shopping, and architectural wonders made even more wonderful when we were walking around, eating crepes stuffed with bananas and Nutella, Peter in jeans and me in my Juicy pants.
It’s funny. When I let go of my expectations, even the most complicated plan became simply delightful.
You see, Peter is completing his Ph.D. at a U.K. university, and apparently when your dissertation committee says that it’s time to defend, you hop on the next flight. Such a change added several complicated traveling dimensions to our vacation, and we left Montana a little earlier than planned so Peter could defend his dissertation.
Everything went fine for a while. We flew effortlessly from Bozeman to Minneapolis to Boston to Paris. While waiting for our flight to London, we were delayed by fairies or elves or something (we were never told what was going on), and we started to get concerned about whether Peter would make his London train to his defense.
Finally, we landed at Heathrow, caught a train to London, and waited for our friends in London to take me and our 67 lbs. of luggage to their flat while Peter caught another train to his defense. Unfortunately, we missed our friends in the busy railway station, so Peter bought an extra train ticket, and I and our 67 lbs. of luggage accompanied Peter to his defense.
Due to an electrical outage, the train was diverted, missing two stops, and though that didn’t slow us down, we ran into serious problems getting a taxi at the station where all the folks who couldn’t get to their homes via train also needed taxis. We made it to his defense with only five minutes to spare, and only when we were walking into his department’s main office did I realize that I would be meeting Peter’s dissertation committee wearing my sweatpants that say “Juicy” on the butt.
Despite that faux pas, Peter passed (he did so well, in fact, that his dissertation was accepted as written, with no corrections), and we celebrated by collapsing at a hotel. We did finally touch base with our friends in London, and we spent a few nice days enjoying museums, shopping, and tea at Fortnum & Mason’s.
From there, we went to Austria and stayed with Peter’s folks who live in a small village outside Vienna, This is when the real vacation began. Peter’s mom spoiled us with freshly baked Christmas cookies, pounds and pounds of Milka chocolate, and, just for me, several liters of diet Coke (Coke Light, in Europe). We saw Don Giovanni at the Vienna State Opera House and visited the oldest Christmas market in Europe in front of Vienna’s town hall. We enjoyed a Austrian tradition of decorating a fir tree with homemade ornaments and candles which we lit (carefully!) on the tree’s branches.
Until the day after Christmas, I mostly stayed at Peter’s house. We took a few short trips into town, but mainly I let myself be fed by Peter’s mom, and nothing, save the language barrier, felt too different from life in the states. That all changed the day after Christmas.
The day after Christmas, I learned what it really meant to be in Europe. Peter’s parents treated us to a visit to the Loipersdorf hot springs for the day. First, I learned what it means to drive in Europe. I clung tightly to Peter’s hand as his dad flew down the autobahn at about 100 miles an hour (and there were people passing us!)
When we arrived at the spa, I learned what it means to be at a hot springs in Europe: nude.
We had chosen an adult area of the hot springs that warned its visitors “Nudist Area Ahead,” but I thought that meant clothing was optional. I was wrong. It meant that nudity was required, particularly in the saunas and steam rooms. Not wanting to seem like prudish Americans, Peter and I nuded up and enjoyed a dark aromatherapy steam room.
When walking from place to place, however, we all wore bathrobes and flip flops (crocs were abundant). When Peter’s parents pointed out a place to lunch, I thought to the clothes and makeup stored in my locker. Just a quick spruce, I thought, and then I can join everyone, but there I was wrong too. Everyone ate at the restaurant in their bathrobes and flip flops. The restaurant was cafeteria style so as I meandered around looking for Coke Light, I found what it means to drink in Europe. The soda fountain offered Coke, Fanta Orange, Mountain Dew, and…..white wine.
After lunch, Peter and I wandered down to the spa where he had booked a massage for me. After all the various forms of transportation over the past week that required I sleep in an upright position, I was looking forward to a good rub down….and I found out what it means to get a massage in Europe: nudity…again.
I have often marveled at massage therapists’ abilities to preserve my modesty. Massages have always felt comfortable and safe for me, so I was very surprised when the massage therapist asked me to disrobe in front of her (usually a masseuse will leave the room for this event) and climb on to the table. I was wearing my swim suit under my bathrobe, so instead of being able to quickly disrobe, I had to peel off my clammy suit and reveal all the ripples my “slimming” suit had made in my skin, particularly in the butt and thigh area.
Looking vaguely like an albino panini, I lay on the table where I was immediately covered by a sheet. Whether this was protocol or out of sympathy for my striated thighs, I’ll never know. It was a fine massage, but instead of wind chimey, Native American flute-y music, my massage was accompanied by a Cat Stephens cd.
Ironically, this wasn’t the first odd musical moment I experienced in Austria, which is, as far as I can tell, the birthplace of classical music (Hayden, Mozart, Beethoven). I mean, I didn’t expect to be accompanied by Mozart or Strauss at all times, but I found it a little odd to be using a bathroom at an autobahn rest stop that piped-in Mahalia Jackson. It was even more disconcerting to glide along the ice at the Vienna Ice Skating Rink to Billy Squier’s subtle tune, “The Stroke.”
I think I loved Vienna all the more for these idiosyncrasies. In general, I like oxymorons, paradoxes, and all manner of juxtapositions. I like irony. So when Peter and I left Vienna for Paris, we decided to have a little fun with irony. After visiting the Christian Dior flagship store, we trotted down the Champs Elysees to a McDonald’s with a view of the Arc d’Triomphe where we enjoyed grande frites (a large fries). Later at the Galeries Lafayette, Peter went into a Louis Vuitton store and inquired if they sold any fanny packs. He received a firm “no.”
We had a marvelous time letting Paris be what it is, a magnificent city full of museums, shopping, and architectural wonders made even more wonderful when we were walking around, eating crepes stuffed with bananas and Nutella, Peter in jeans and me in my Juicy pants.
It’s funny. When I let go of my expectations, even the most complicated plan became simply delightful.
Roomies
During my first two years of college
dorm living, I managed to run through five roommates. After number three
and I parted ways, I forced myself to consider the possibility that the
problem might be with me.
I always had my own room growing up, and though I shared a bathroom with my family, we were all pretty likeminded about keeping errant hairs to a minimum and screwing the shampoo lid on tightly.
Dorm living was a different ball of wax. I couldn’t just close the door and be by myself when I wanted to: I had to share my space. I think we all know what a hang up I have when it comes to sharing .
The real problem is that I’m a neat freak who likes to have control over her space. I hated that my side of the room looked, in my opinion, fabulous, but my roommate’s side looked messy and disorganized. Once, after getting angry at roommate number three, I, in a bizarre form of “revenge,” cleaned her side of the room. It felt great and looked fantastic. The whole room had my touch.
It was pretty exhausting stressing about the state of someone else’s stuff, so after my sophomore year, I began requesting single rooms in the dorms. Since then, I’ve lived alone, and I’ve generally had no complaints about it. The bathroom is clean because I cleaned it. The milk is where I put it in the ‘fridge, and it will wait patiently in its place for me.
I’ll admit there have been some lonely weekends when, boyfriendless, I wondered if I could actually sleep the weekend away, but for the most part, I like living alone. And there’s always Gracie, my cockatiel, to keep me from being too solipsistic.
However, since the last time I wrote, my relationship with Peter has progressed. After spending much of the summer together, we decided he should rent the apartment across the hall from mine. I live on the top floor of a house with only one other apartment, so essentially, we’d have the whole floor to ourselves. When we needed alone time, we could just retreat to our separate apartments and close the doors.
Unfortunately, the apartment across the hall would not be available until December. We thought we could just continue to spend loads of time together while keeping separate residences until then, but I decided I enjoyed spending time with him so much that I didn’t want to wait, so I asked Peter to stay at my place until the apartment next door opened up.
Yes, that’s actually control freak me speaking, but notice I didn’t say that I’d move in with him (his place could barely fit Gracie’s toy collection let alone me, my wardrobe, and my extensive pear portrait collection –that’s for another column). At least at my place, my stuff and I could rest easy knowing that there was enough room for all of us.
Peter agreed to move in, but he left his furniture in his apartment. What didn’t occur to me when I extended this invitation was that he would need some place to park his stuff. My closets and drawers were currently occupied by my own wardrobe, so we purchased a few under-the-bed boxes for him to use, and I, somewhat grudgingly, crammed a few sweatshirts from my coat closet into my regular closet to make room for a few of Peter’s hanging clothes.
Since he moved in, I’ve learned from my friends that they don’t share their closet space either. One friend, in fact, uses the closet space in their bedroom for her wardrobe while her husband’s clothes are exiled to the guest bedroom. While I probably will become zen with Peter’s clothes hanging next to mine, there are a few things I’m not willing to compromise on.
For example, the bathtub must be rinsed (that’s why I have a handheld shower) after each use. Clean dishes may NOT be placed on a counter that hasn’t been wiped down. All plastic must be rinsed and deposited in the plastic recycling bag under the sink (I’ve fished from the garbage far too many pop bottles, honey).
I’ve been trying to let a lot of other stuff go, which is really hard for me. Peter likes to make the bed, and though he turns the large pillows so that the open ends face each other rather than away from each other, I’ve let that go. Peter likes to wash the dishes, and even though he doesn’t wipe down the counters before starting the washing, I’ve let that go. Okay, so maybe I’m not letting it go so much as I am not commenting on it while I silently seethe inside.
The big change for me is that I’m letting him help me clean on Saturdays, although the bathroom is still my domain (I must control the hairs and for a mostly bald guy, Peter really has a lot!). I decided that I’d let him dust. In my mind, dusting has to be done, but it’s pretty low stakes. I don’t have many breakables, so I reasoned, why not let him go to town?
Here’s the reason why. Apparently, I suck at dusting. In less than an hour, Peter went through two swiffer dusters (later, I stuffed them, black and twitching, deep into the garbage). After he was finished, he handed me something he’d discovered under the radiator. It was a Christmas ornament. And it wasn’t mine! It must have belonged to the previous tenant who lived here, wait for it, FIVE YEARS AGO.
So how much of a neat freak am I if I hadn’t ever discovered this gem!?! This was the moment when I decided that I had to let it go. Don’t get me wrong: I still carp on clean dishes sitting on a dirty counter top, but the occasional wayward hair and the pillows and the vertical rather than horizontal filing of papers? I’m letting it all go.
In return, I’ve made room for a cuddly bed companion who washes the dishes and saves enough hot water for me to take a bath before I go to bed. Let’s hope he doesn’t run for the hills like my last five roommates. My radiators need to be dusted.
I always had my own room growing up, and though I shared a bathroom with my family, we were all pretty likeminded about keeping errant hairs to a minimum and screwing the shampoo lid on tightly.
Dorm living was a different ball of wax. I couldn’t just close the door and be by myself when I wanted to: I had to share my space. I think we all know what a hang up I have when it comes to sharing .
The real problem is that I’m a neat freak who likes to have control over her space. I hated that my side of the room looked, in my opinion, fabulous, but my roommate’s side looked messy and disorganized. Once, after getting angry at roommate number three, I, in a bizarre form of “revenge,” cleaned her side of the room. It felt great and looked fantastic. The whole room had my touch.
It was pretty exhausting stressing about the state of someone else’s stuff, so after my sophomore year, I began requesting single rooms in the dorms. Since then, I’ve lived alone, and I’ve generally had no complaints about it. The bathroom is clean because I cleaned it. The milk is where I put it in the ‘fridge, and it will wait patiently in its place for me.
I’ll admit there have been some lonely weekends when, boyfriendless, I wondered if I could actually sleep the weekend away, but for the most part, I like living alone. And there’s always Gracie, my cockatiel, to keep me from being too solipsistic.
However, since the last time I wrote, my relationship with Peter has progressed. After spending much of the summer together, we decided he should rent the apartment across the hall from mine. I live on the top floor of a house with only one other apartment, so essentially, we’d have the whole floor to ourselves. When we needed alone time, we could just retreat to our separate apartments and close the doors.
Unfortunately, the apartment across the hall would not be available until December. We thought we could just continue to spend loads of time together while keeping separate residences until then, but I decided I enjoyed spending time with him so much that I didn’t want to wait, so I asked Peter to stay at my place until the apartment next door opened up.
Yes, that’s actually control freak me speaking, but notice I didn’t say that I’d move in with him (his place could barely fit Gracie’s toy collection let alone me, my wardrobe, and my extensive pear portrait collection –that’s for another column). At least at my place, my stuff and I could rest easy knowing that there was enough room for all of us.
Peter agreed to move in, but he left his furniture in his apartment. What didn’t occur to me when I extended this invitation was that he would need some place to park his stuff. My closets and drawers were currently occupied by my own wardrobe, so we purchased a few under-the-bed boxes for him to use, and I, somewhat grudgingly, crammed a few sweatshirts from my coat closet into my regular closet to make room for a few of Peter’s hanging clothes.
Since he moved in, I’ve learned from my friends that they don’t share their closet space either. One friend, in fact, uses the closet space in their bedroom for her wardrobe while her husband’s clothes are exiled to the guest bedroom. While I probably will become zen with Peter’s clothes hanging next to mine, there are a few things I’m not willing to compromise on.
For example, the bathtub must be rinsed (that’s why I have a handheld shower) after each use. Clean dishes may NOT be placed on a counter that hasn’t been wiped down. All plastic must be rinsed and deposited in the plastic recycling bag under the sink (I’ve fished from the garbage far too many pop bottles, honey).
I’ve been trying to let a lot of other stuff go, which is really hard for me. Peter likes to make the bed, and though he turns the large pillows so that the open ends face each other rather than away from each other, I’ve let that go. Peter likes to wash the dishes, and even though he doesn’t wipe down the counters before starting the washing, I’ve let that go. Okay, so maybe I’m not letting it go so much as I am not commenting on it while I silently seethe inside.
The big change for me is that I’m letting him help me clean on Saturdays, although the bathroom is still my domain (I must control the hairs and for a mostly bald guy, Peter really has a lot!). I decided that I’d let him dust. In my mind, dusting has to be done, but it’s pretty low stakes. I don’t have many breakables, so I reasoned, why not let him go to town?
Here’s the reason why. Apparently, I suck at dusting. In less than an hour, Peter went through two swiffer dusters (later, I stuffed them, black and twitching, deep into the garbage). After he was finished, he handed me something he’d discovered under the radiator. It was a Christmas ornament. And it wasn’t mine! It must have belonged to the previous tenant who lived here, wait for it, FIVE YEARS AGO.
So how much of a neat freak am I if I hadn’t ever discovered this gem!?! This was the moment when I decided that I had to let it go. Don’t get me wrong: I still carp on clean dishes sitting on a dirty counter top, but the occasional wayward hair and the pillows and the vertical rather than horizontal filing of papers? I’m letting it all go.
In return, I’ve made room for a cuddly bed companion who washes the dishes and saves enough hot water for me to take a bath before I go to bed. Let’s hope he doesn’t run for the hills like my last five roommates. My radiators need to be dusted.
Share and Share Alike. . . . For Real This Time
Since I was little, I always thought
the coolest job in the world would be to be a Christmas tree farmer. On
the surface, I think I thought it would awesome to be a part of a
favorite holiday for many people, but now, I realize that the job
fascinated me because Christmas tree farms are almost always perfectly
groomed. The trees stand in straight rows and are generally of the same
height and circumference. I find such order very aesthetically pleasing.
This is the same reason I always like climbing on to a school bus. I
like how the bench seats are always in perfectly straight rows.
I have extended such order into my own life. Though I’ve dated for more years than Dakota Fanning has been alive, I’ve never been asked to share my life with someone. I like having guests at my apartment, but I like it even better when they leave, so I can straighten everything that’s been touched or moved. It’s a sign, I think, that I’ve lived alone for too long. I like my stuff and I like it to be where I left it.
A few years ago, I wrote a column about this very problem I have with sharing. I look back on that column and laugh at myself because I didn’t even come close to understanding what it means to share with someone.
Sharing a soda or a car ride is something you do with a friend, but true sharing can only take place when someone demands a part of something you don’t want to give up.
I’ve recently started dating a man, Peter, who wants to fold himself into my life. He is a delightful person who brings me flowers and chocolate and lets me hold the remote. In return, I cook him dinner and help him decorate his house. Peter is a very thoughtful man. He wants me to be comfortable and happy. These are all good things.
One Friday, Peter and I decided to have a weekend sleepover. In my mind, Peter would stay the night, enjoy a light breakfast, and then be off doing whatever he needed to do on Saturday. Then, he’d return in the evening, stay another night, enjoy another light breakfast, and be off by Sunday at noon at the latest.
When Peter arrived with a weekend bag, his laptop, and various toiletries, I was surprised but directed him to store his stuff in my study (I had recently decided that he could hang his coat in my coat closet rather than leaving it on the arm of the couch in the study because apparently, I’m possessive over even my coat closet). We watched a movie and when it was time to retire, I locked myself in the bathroom under the pretense of taking care of “girlie” stuff. Instead, I sat on the side of the bathtub and whispered to myself, “I can’t handle this. He’s not going to leave?!? What are we going to talk about for the whole weekend? Is he going to go with me to do my weekly marketing? Can I still get my laundry done?” I took a Tylenol PM and emerged from the bathroom smiling and so dopey that I fell right asleep.
It turns out I had nothing to worry about. Our conversations never lagged, and I really enjoyed taking him on my Saturday chores of recycling and marketing. On Sunday, we stayed in our jammies and watched the Food Network. I felt so comfortable and relaxed that I was actually reluctant to see him go. Of course I manically straightened the house when he left, but I was glad that I saw the weekend through.
Since then, we’ve had plenty more sleepovers and I’ve slowly let Peter become part of my strange rituals. I like to make my bed as soon as I wake up, and of course, I like my bed to be made in a certain way with the pillows fluffed just so. When Peter offered to make my bed while I fixed breakfast, I balked at first, but then remembered that it was laundry day and the sheets just needed to be stripped off the bed and tossed in the washer. I instructed him to do just that, but soon, he came into the kitchen and asked, “What should I do with the safety pins in the pillows?” The safety pins!?! Holy crap! I shoved past Peter, inadvertently pushing him into the door frame, and trotted down the hall saying, “I told you NOT to take the cases off the big pillows!”
In my crazy world, I safety pin cases onto the decorative bed pillows so I don’t have to keep rearranging the cases every time I fluff the pillows. If Peter saw the safety pins, he’d know I was a fraud! Pretty soon, he’d be looking into my bureau drawers and discover that my sock drawer is a disaster area! I may be all clean and neat on the outside, but open a closet door and you’ll see I’m a pack rat of the first order.
When I took a breath and saw Peter splatted against the kitchen door frame, terrified of my reaction, I realized that I’ve become ridiculous about my stuff and my space. I mean, really, who cares about my safety-pinned pillow cases? Soon, I learned that Peter would discover things about me that I didn’t even know about myself.
I’ve mentioned in a previous column that I’m a vegetarian. Except for the occasional slab of bacon (damn, why is that so good?), I’ve been off meat for about fifteen years. This means that I need to substitute protein in other forms, and since I’m not a tofu eater, I consume a lot of beans. You see where this is leading. I have problems with, let’s say, food talking behind my back. I’ve generally kept this problem under wraps by living alone for most of those fifteen meat-free years.
But now that Peter’s on the scene both day and night, he’s been witness to some of my back-talking behavior. For the most part, I excused myself in time, but a particular active tickling session led to an accidental eruption. After that, I started letting go in front of Peter, and to my surprise and delight, he thought it was hilarious, and he made little jokes about my ability to propel small airplanes.
As we slept one night, however, I woke to hear myself tooting a little in my sleep. I was so sleepy that I just rolled over and completely forgot about it until morning. After I woke, I asked Peter if I had farted in my sleep, and he just smiled and said, “Well….maybe a little.” I apologized and said that I didn’t usually do that. “Well,” he said, “I wouldn’t necessarily say that.” What?!? How often, I asked, every night? “Every other night,” he said.
And that was it. That was the moment I realized that I am the problem. No wonder I haven’t been able to keep a relationship together. I’ve been literally propelling them out of my bed!
Yet I have found a man who hasn’t kicked me out of the bed. In fact, Peter hugs me closer instead of shipping me off to the guest room. He wants more of me, not less, and for that, I’m happy to share my orderly life with him, safety pins, sleep farting, and all. Just wait ‘til he sees how I fold my towels. That’ll teach him.
I have extended such order into my own life. Though I’ve dated for more years than Dakota Fanning has been alive, I’ve never been asked to share my life with someone. I like having guests at my apartment, but I like it even better when they leave, so I can straighten everything that’s been touched or moved. It’s a sign, I think, that I’ve lived alone for too long. I like my stuff and I like it to be where I left it.
A few years ago, I wrote a column about this very problem I have with sharing. I look back on that column and laugh at myself because I didn’t even come close to understanding what it means to share with someone.
Sharing a soda or a car ride is something you do with a friend, but true sharing can only take place when someone demands a part of something you don’t want to give up.
I’ve recently started dating a man, Peter, who wants to fold himself into my life. He is a delightful person who brings me flowers and chocolate and lets me hold the remote. In return, I cook him dinner and help him decorate his house. Peter is a very thoughtful man. He wants me to be comfortable and happy. These are all good things.
One Friday, Peter and I decided to have a weekend sleepover. In my mind, Peter would stay the night, enjoy a light breakfast, and then be off doing whatever he needed to do on Saturday. Then, he’d return in the evening, stay another night, enjoy another light breakfast, and be off by Sunday at noon at the latest.
When Peter arrived with a weekend bag, his laptop, and various toiletries, I was surprised but directed him to store his stuff in my study (I had recently decided that he could hang his coat in my coat closet rather than leaving it on the arm of the couch in the study because apparently, I’m possessive over even my coat closet). We watched a movie and when it was time to retire, I locked myself in the bathroom under the pretense of taking care of “girlie” stuff. Instead, I sat on the side of the bathtub and whispered to myself, “I can’t handle this. He’s not going to leave?!? What are we going to talk about for the whole weekend? Is he going to go with me to do my weekly marketing? Can I still get my laundry done?” I took a Tylenol PM and emerged from the bathroom smiling and so dopey that I fell right asleep.
It turns out I had nothing to worry about. Our conversations never lagged, and I really enjoyed taking him on my Saturday chores of recycling and marketing. On Sunday, we stayed in our jammies and watched the Food Network. I felt so comfortable and relaxed that I was actually reluctant to see him go. Of course I manically straightened the house when he left, but I was glad that I saw the weekend through.
Since then, we’ve had plenty more sleepovers and I’ve slowly let Peter become part of my strange rituals. I like to make my bed as soon as I wake up, and of course, I like my bed to be made in a certain way with the pillows fluffed just so. When Peter offered to make my bed while I fixed breakfast, I balked at first, but then remembered that it was laundry day and the sheets just needed to be stripped off the bed and tossed in the washer. I instructed him to do just that, but soon, he came into the kitchen and asked, “What should I do with the safety pins in the pillows?” The safety pins!?! Holy crap! I shoved past Peter, inadvertently pushing him into the door frame, and trotted down the hall saying, “I told you NOT to take the cases off the big pillows!”
In my crazy world, I safety pin cases onto the decorative bed pillows so I don’t have to keep rearranging the cases every time I fluff the pillows. If Peter saw the safety pins, he’d know I was a fraud! Pretty soon, he’d be looking into my bureau drawers and discover that my sock drawer is a disaster area! I may be all clean and neat on the outside, but open a closet door and you’ll see I’m a pack rat of the first order.
When I took a breath and saw Peter splatted against the kitchen door frame, terrified of my reaction, I realized that I’ve become ridiculous about my stuff and my space. I mean, really, who cares about my safety-pinned pillow cases? Soon, I learned that Peter would discover things about me that I didn’t even know about myself.
I’ve mentioned in a previous column that I’m a vegetarian. Except for the occasional slab of bacon (damn, why is that so good?), I’ve been off meat for about fifteen years. This means that I need to substitute protein in other forms, and since I’m not a tofu eater, I consume a lot of beans. You see where this is leading. I have problems with, let’s say, food talking behind my back. I’ve generally kept this problem under wraps by living alone for most of those fifteen meat-free years.
But now that Peter’s on the scene both day and night, he’s been witness to some of my back-talking behavior. For the most part, I excused myself in time, but a particular active tickling session led to an accidental eruption. After that, I started letting go in front of Peter, and to my surprise and delight, he thought it was hilarious, and he made little jokes about my ability to propel small airplanes.
As we slept one night, however, I woke to hear myself tooting a little in my sleep. I was so sleepy that I just rolled over and completely forgot about it until morning. After I woke, I asked Peter if I had farted in my sleep, and he just smiled and said, “Well….maybe a little.” I apologized and said that I didn’t usually do that. “Well,” he said, “I wouldn’t necessarily say that.” What?!? How often, I asked, every night? “Every other night,” he said.
And that was it. That was the moment I realized that I am the problem. No wonder I haven’t been able to keep a relationship together. I’ve been literally propelling them out of my bed!
Yet I have found a man who hasn’t kicked me out of the bed. In fact, Peter hugs me closer instead of shipping me off to the guest room. He wants more of me, not less, and for that, I’m happy to share my orderly life with him, safety pins, sleep farting, and all. Just wait ‘til he sees how I fold my towels. That’ll teach him.
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