It's official. My wife is a pot dealer.
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| In the News: The state Board of Education rejects a proposal to introduce alternative theories of origin (creationism) in public schools; lawmakers pull off the first-ever override of a governor's veto with the age-of-consent bill; Megawati Sukarnoputri replaces Abdurrahman Wahid as president of Indonesia; geeks scramble to fight Code Red and SirCam; Bush claims success with Patients' Bill of Rights; flaming Pop-Tart suit filed in New Jersey. INGs: Reading "Perfume," borrowed from Mara; hearing "Conventioneers" by the Barenaked Ladies; eating spaghetti; browsing digicam reviews; watching "The Shining" on Encore!; wondering if I could get a job as a bus driver. Four Years Ago: A pregnant Jen job hunts, clothes shops, and vomits. Three Years Ago: Futile efforts to get Katie to sleep on her own; an Obon lesson from William, a possible job offer downtown. Two Years Ago: Academic hurdles, embracing domesticity, and prepping for New Zealand. One Year Ago: A month in pictures — Bon Dances, birthdays, Bishop Museum. | |
She can already tell you anything you want to know about saucepans, mixing bowls, the "Circulon system," and the highly-anticipated expansion of their offerings, including All-Clad.
Her first regular personnel review will come soon, too, which just might bring a raise.
Good stuff. It's our second go at being an almost-self-sustaining two-income family, and I think we're on firmer ground this time. Someday this will mean being able to buy CDs and eating in nice restaurants, but I'm more than happy now with the thought that we can again start paying down our monstrous debt with gusto.
Weirdly enough, though, with Jen more firmly planted employment-wise, my ever-present but usually mild insecurity over my own job has been bubbling up lately.
Our global organization is at a major crossroads, with unprecedented challenges fast approaching. Meanwhile my sense that I love my office more than it loves me continues to grow... and deservedly so, I suspect.
And adding that new line to my resume reminds me that I have a resume, which in turn reminds me that my current job is my first "real" job, and one that got more by accident than anything. All of my friends have already held at least a handful of jobs, and... job "stuff" is almost second nature. Me? I'm a professional virgin. Twenty-six years old and I've never written a single cover letter.
(Okay, I applied for a job at UH three years ago, but I had a better chance of becoming the next Pope.)
Scared? Restless? I'm not sure. But I goofed around on Monster.Com and got a couple of responses; Lacene is always trying to lure me into government work; friends are sending me job listings in Seattle and Portland.
I don't want to lose my current job. I don't really want to leave it. Though I kicked myself for thinking something so unoriginal, if anything I think I'm just a bit shaken because I'm realizing just how big the "real world" is.
Next week is my annual personnel review. I've never done poorly, but I've never done well, either. Perhaps unfairly, I'm looking forward to it, depending on it for some direction... if not a serious kick in the pants.
Jen's watching "The Shining." Every so often I toss a pillow or one of Katie's toys at her and she just about jumps out of her skin.
She's never seen it before. But like many classics, in a way she has, as scenes in this movie have been emulated, duplicated, and parodied so many times in a million other places. "Redrum! Redrum!"
Oop. Now it's "Say Anything." Again.
"I'm incarcerated, Lloyd!"
Talk about frustration.
So lost was I following the disappearance of my digital camera, I stayed up late on Monday researching possible replacements and ordered one the next morning.
Then, religiously, I visited the FedEx package tracking website to follow its long-distance trip from Branchburg, New Jersey to Honolulu.
First, it disappeared for more than a day — apparently it spent 36 hours in the airspace between New Jersey and Oakland, California — pushing me to near panic. Then it finally resurfaced last night, and I went to sleep imagining it quietly crossing the Pacific.
At around noon today, it arrived at Honolulu International Airport. By 1 p.m., Hawai`i time, the tracker reported, "Package in FedEx location."
But it didn't go anywhere. No "En Route," no "On Van." When my finger started hurting from clicking reload, I called their 800 hotline.
"Can I pick up this shipment at the Service Center?" I asked.
"I'm sorry sir," came the answer after some typing. "It's listed for delivery on Monday."
"But it got there four hours ago," I whimpered.
"Well, even though it's second-day air, for Hawai`i we only promise the third business day," she explained. "And that package is in a locked container on the ramp, and they're not even going to open it until next week."
"D'oh!"
Yes, I really did a Homer-like "D'oh!"
That sucks. Shipping to Hawai`i in general sucks. We pay twice as much as most Americans, and we still have to wait twice as long.
If I spot Bigfoot this weekend, I'm going to be really ticked.
Please pardon this brief foray into my wife's plumbing. It has a point, I promise.
For a while now — to some extent, ever since Katie was born — Jen's periods have been irregular. First it was breastfeeding. Then a trial of Depo Provera. Finally — for the last 18 months — an IUD.
It was put in the last time Jen saw the hunky Dr. Boyens, and he gave us all the latest literature and assured the once maligned BCD was again safe.
Still, things never were quite normal. Things would range — as Firesign Theatre once said — from "little miss" to "moon maid" to "stuck pig." But she could also go three months without ... incident.
Finally she went to a new doctor for a well overdue "girl stuff" checkup, and the first recommendation was simple: take out the IUD.
IUDs, she said, were very effective, but perhaps too much so — they are usually the "last form a birth control a woman will use," after she's sure there are no more kids on the horizon. Otherwise, it does some funky stuff to some women that leads to later complications. The doctor said we could go with a hormonal method in few months, but she wanted to evaluate a few "natural" cycles to make sure something else wasn't going on. If we wanted another child in the next couple of years, in any case, she said we should definitely take it out and let things heal.
So we did. And things are healing.
Because we do want another child. More children. (Girls, please.) Someday.
Soon?
Possibly. There will already be a minimum of four years between Katie and her first sibling, and while that's an age gap I'm happy with (I used to joke that I wanted seven years), I also don't think it should get too much wider. And if we're really insane enough to go past two? Neither Jen or I are getting younger.
I mean, Jen turns 29 in two weeks, and —
Ow.
We're not shopping for onesies just yet. We're still bickering over names, after all, and it just might come down to another contract. On the other hand, the mere thought of having a baby — on purpose — makes me feel surprisingly warm and gooey.
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