Archive for June, 2010
Married life
One of the most asked question I hear these days is
“How’s married life treating you.”
It’s a multiple-part answer.
- Married Life is awesome!
- it’s not any different from the life that we had before getting married, really, other than that now we are married.
- there is an elusively mysterious feeling of certainty that I have become aware of that I find is inextricably linked to being specifically married to Emma. I like it, but it’s still quite weird – like I have eaten a particularly satisfying relationship cake and now I am laying on a metaphorical couch enjoying the view of the same cake, un-eaten.
- I am now aware of the times i am wearing the ring and when i am not wearing the ring. Meaning that the ring has changed the feeling i have in my hand (finger specifically) to such an extent that I am neither comfortable with it on or off, but I am aware of it’s status almost all the time.
- when Emma does something nice (make dinner, jokes around, looks pretty) I find that it has an intrinsic goodness to it that previously wasn’t available. Conversely, negative actions don’t have this magnification effect, which is interesting and good.
- thinking about the future is less about what i want to do and more about what we will be doing; in a year; two years; ten..?
- I tend to say “my wife” as often as possible, sometimes inventing ways to add it to the conversation.
I checked with my gran to see if these things were all “normal” and, while I didn’t get a straight answer, she seemed very pleased with them all the same. We must be doing something right!
Another funny school story. Please be aware that this story is a little crude which just shows you what kind of a girl I really am.
I haven’t been feeling very well as of late. My tummy has been a little bit up and down and as a result I have had the worst farts. I am talking majorly smelly, would kill the cat if it was stuck under the blanket at night when I let one of these sneak out. The good thing is that unlike most of the students that I teach I can manage to hold my bodily gases in until a suitable moment when I am either alone or at least outside. There is nothing worse than being stuck in a room with 32 year nine students as a fart creeps around the room.
Anyway, today in English I couldn’t hold it in anymore. My tummy was hurting so bad and with one minute until the bell was due to go I decided something had to be done. I have a particularly disgusting boy, Jack, in my class who finds it highly amusing to fart during class as loudly as possible just to draw attention to himself. Today was payback. I took a casual walk around the room tidying up chairs as I went, picking up a piece of paper or two and then as I approached his desk I let the silent little fart slip and continued on my merry way.
Within three seconds the boys in that corner were all blaming Jack while covering their mouths and gasping for air. I had to try so hard not to laugh as to reveal my guilt. It was too good.
It just goes to show that any situation can be made positive. I had a sore tummy and managed to get not only payback but a laugh out of it too.
Today was reporting day at school. That means the last day before the school reports for the semester get printed. In reality though it means the last day for me to finish marking all those hundreds of essays, posters, oral presentations and reading journals that have piled up on my desk with the intention of “I’ll mark it later.”
I knew I wasn’t ready for today. I panicked on Friday and spent my two free periods, lunch and some time after school finishing off marking Year 10 exams. Then exhausted I carried an armful of year 9 essays home with me with the intention of marking them ‘sometime’ on the weekend. 9pm last night I realised I hadn’t done a damn thing about them and tried in vain to get started. By the time I started marking the fourth essay I was drifting off to sleep, exhausted from having worked a 9 hour shift at my other job.
Why do I do this to myself? I always have the best laid plans to be organised but other, more important things, always seem to get in the way. In the end I did get all the essays marked and got my marks into the computer in time, but that meant allowing one of my classes to have a ‘reading lesson’ in the library while I frantically finished off the last ten essays in the pile.
The funny thing is I feel fantastic now knowing that it is all out of the way and my next lot of marking isn’t until after the holidays. Why don’t I get organised in time so I can still have this feeling of relief and happiness, without the feelings of stress and that dreaded “Oh my God! I am never going to get this done in time!”
Someone once told me that the reason we leave things to the last minute is because we thrive on that feeling of panic. It makes us feel alive for those few frantic hours where we wonder “Will I make it?”. It is the closest most of us will come to having an emergency. It’s our Bruce Willis moment, we’re looking at the bomb ticking down to zero, not sure if we should cut the red or the blue wire. One is going to save us the other is going to blow us sky high and end the movie pretty quick.
I could have done without the drama this week. Next time be more organised….I’ll believe it when it happens!
Image by Pragmagraphr (flikr)
Well the wedding has been and gone, so has the honeymoon and it seems the next logical step in this thing we call marriage is building a home together. Ben and I have been living together for some time at Ben’s house, I own a house too but mine is currently rented to help us out with the bills. Ben has made space for me in his home, giving me shelves in the cupboard and some space in the kitchen for some of my stuff but on the whole it has still felt like I am living at Ben’s house rather than us having a home together.
One thing we have done to help rectify this situation was to buy a wardrobe big enough for us both to fit our clothes into and Ben allowing me to change the downstairs room into a sort of ‘playroom’ for me, housing my TV, DVDs and Wii. What this has actually meant though was four trips to IKEA to buy not only the wardrobe, but doors for the wardrobe (once we could afford them) and a sofa bed for downstairs. The last week has been a slow transformation of the house.
IKEA furniture is notoriously tricky to build. The instructions seem simple but for some reason we always manage to skip a step or think we know a shortcut only to find ourselves having to dismantle the whole thing and start again. Ben and I managed to survive the ordeal with only one real argument, a feat which I am quite proud of.
Ben was holding the incredibly heavy door up off the ground while I attempted to manoeuvre it into the slot on the hanging rail. It seemed like a good idea at the time but a boy under that much strain can only last for so long and the the cry of “Quick! Put the quilt under the door before I drop it on the floor!” was met by me panicking. I realised that the quilt was stuck under the other door where it wouldn’t budge, I grabbed the next thing I could find which was a cardigan. I mistook Ben saying “Yes! That will work!” for sarcasm and promptly threw the cardigans back on the bed and then freaked out when he yelled at me to put them back. I started crying at being yelled at, Ben got frustrated at me thinking he was being sarcastic and the door wasn’t even in place! Ten minutes later and after seeing the situation from both sides we talked it out and got the door on properly this time. Our marriage had survived IKEA furniture!
So the transformation is slow but I am starting to feel more at home. It is the little things that make it for me, like furniture we have purchased and built together. Next week we will have new bed sheets too, some that we both like! Even silly little things like being shown how to use Ben’s super fancy vacuum cleaner, the dishwasher or the washing machine. Being helpful around the house had made me feel more like I belong and that it is my home too.
It may seem trivial for some but it is important to me and I think Ben is starting to understand that too.
Image by Listen Missy! (Flikr)
Today was a good day because I had a good morning. It is amazing how the first few hours in the day can have such an impact on the rest of the day. Sure I still had some crappy classes, kids doing the wrong thing, and I got told off for doing something that was entirely not my fault, but still it is the end of the school day and I am smiling because it started so well!
Ben and I got up at 5:30 without hitting the snooze button once. We then went for a morning walk in the very cold morning air (the sun wasn’t even up yet). When we got home we had a delicious breakfast of hot tea, bacon, eggs, onion, tomato and sourdough bread. We even had some time left over to talk before I had to leave for school. Finally I had gotten up early enough to ride my bike to school which not only is helping with my desire to be fitter but also meant I had a whole half an hour on the train to read and practice my French exercises, instead of the usual sitting in the car listening to the idiots on breakfast radio.
It was wonderful and I intend on trying to do it again tomorrow!
