working woman, working man

andrew's been trying, for several months now, to get a job here in raleigh, and while the one he has now is (as of now anyway) temporary, it is still nice to feel like we have two incomes again. however, i guess i'm somewhat of an idealist and hoped that my husband and i could both be people who worked somewhat 9-5 jobs. i mean, mine is technically 7:30-4, and i sometimes have 7-6ish when i'm working at the vet, but at least that gets me home by around 6:30 most nights and off on the weekends (or when i'm at the vet, only working saturdays 7:30-12ish.

andrew, on the other hand, has always chosen professions that are in the off hours, working shows that take place in the evenings with load-ins and strikes on weekends, or now in this case, working retail where the best sales hours are nights and weekends. it's certainly nothing compared to those people who have significant others in the armed services or who go on business trips 3 out of 4 weeks a month, but it is already taking a toll on me.

i guess i'm just used to having him around when i come home and available to "play" on weekends, so i'm being selfish in wanting to have him here when i'm not at work, and i know i will just have to get over it, but it is lonely. and that is how i've felt today, lonely. so hopefully i'll be joining a gym, and that should help some, and i guess it'll give me more time to do things with friends, but right now i'm feeling down about it. i guess the gloomy, gray weather we're having isn't really helping my mood either. so sorry for the whiney post, but that's where i am right now.

blogger's block

this picture is for jackie.

the past few days i keep thinking about all the things i'm going to blog about, and this time i even took pictures, but then when i sit down to do it, i'm just uninspired to write anything. blahhhhh. i had a pretty good friday and a good saturday, but i don't feel like writing anything else.

here's a picture of my adorable husband at the grape:

water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink!

...or not.

as i was brushing my teeth tonight, i was reminded once again that i needed to conserve water. i've been trying to do my part, regularly wearing dirty clothes, only showering every once in a while ::wink:: not turning the water on full blast, not waiting on it to get hot before doing things, and (while i never let it run while i brush) making sure to turn water off asap when brushing my teeth. it is a tad scary to think of how little water we have left in raleigh. i pretty much ignored the idea of a drought before because we've been in one every year for as long as i can remember, or so it seems. but now i really feel the need to take it seriously. i guess i try to rationalize by saying i don't use much water anyway -- i mean i drink coffee, not water! -- but seriously, i am pretty conservation-minded in general, so i feel like compared to people who take LONG showers or huge baths everyday, or to people who have the means to really waste, i do a pretty good job, but now i'm quite concerned over the idea of not having water!

i am glad that raising the water prices by 50% did not end up getting passed because we would seriously feel that, and i am definitely trying to stay within my 25 gallon a day limit (though i have no idea if i actually am), and we brought in our high efficiency washer from the shed and put the old one that the landlords own out there instead, so that should help. the one thing, however, that i feel quite strongly against (and wonder how it would really help anyway) is installing two $90, 80 gallon "rain barrel" aka "glorified trashcans". i mean really, how will this help? we do not have plants, and if we did, i would forget to water them anyway, and you can't drink the water, and it's not routed to my toilet or washing machine or dishwasher, so how would collecting rain in an expensive garbage recepticle really help the city of raleigh? show me the benefits, and i'll consider it, but until then, i laugh at everyone who wastes their money! muhahaha!

in other news, i keep staying up too late and feeling like crap all day. then, i get home and am exhausted from working on no sleep, so i make dinner and lay around watching mindless tv for hours, leading me once again, to not only feel like a blob but to stay up too late and begin the cycle over! ugh! i need an intervention. maybe now that andrew is working some, we'll have enough money that i can join a gym and do yoga or something. we shall see. and now that it is past midnight and i must be up in less than 6 hours (further illustrating my point), i'm going to sleep.

I've got a job

at least for now.
Jackie hired me to work at the Dormia store at Crabtree. I will be fulling a gap that needs to be filled. I'm hoping it will work out and becomes a good job. I know I'll like working there. The atmosphere is great and I'll be selling a great product. I'll be going in for the first time on friday so more to come after that.

back to school

well the time has come that my long, three-week vacation must end. i was so bummed out about this last night while spending time with my hubby that i actually cried! i know, it's silly, but it's been great to get to enjoy spending time just being with andrew. it's one thing i think all the wedding hubub and moving and getting new jobs and stress has prevented us from doing, and it was just so great to have that time that i didn't want to give it up and go back to the stress of the "daily grind". i even stayed up really late to try and somehow prevent the day from coming (again, i know i'm silly), but somewhere around 1am, sleepiness and sense took over, and we went to bed.

i got up on time, but i'm out of the habit of moving at work-pace, so everything just seemed to take longer than necessary and instead of getting there at 7:15-7:30 like i'd planned, i didn't get in until 8:15 - eek! i was really worried that we'd have some 8am meeting that i'd miss, but luckily that was not the case. when i got in, i realized i hadn't graded the quizzes the students took right before track-out, so that took up some time i hadn't planned for, then i had to reorganize my room, and that took a little while, and then of course there's the distraction that you always have on teacher workdays where everyone comes by and chats for 5 mins or so but that all adds up to a LOT of wasted time. before i knew it, we had to rush off to lunch. after lunch, there were meetings straight through until 3:45, so instead of getting ANYTHING done, i pretty much started anew at 4pm... when most other people went home. however, i did get my syllabus done for the whole quarter for both classes and tomorrow's lesson plans done, so although i did not plan the rest of the week, i think i did enough. i went to make copies and realized that i was one of 2 people left in the middle/high school area - a tad scary out in the middle of nowheresville (aka zebulon) well after dark. i didn't actually leave the school until 6:15.

fortunately however, i got to rush home for dinner out with marc and lora, now mr. and mrs. edwards! we went to 518 West and enjoyed their 1/2 off wine bottle monday and some good food, and though our waitress was TERRIBLE, we had a really nice time. we got to hear about their wedding experience, and just catch up on life. it was a great end to a good day that i thought was going to be horrible. yay!

(sorry though, no pics :-/)

"stewardship"

as most of my diligent blog-followers may have noticed, the trends in recent entries have alluded to and bluntly stated my monetary stresses and frustrations. knowing this, i'm sure you can understand how when we walked into church this morning and picked up the bulletin entitled "stewardship part 1" that i was less than thrilled. i think the one thing that turns me off from church more than politics becoming the topic of the sermon would have to be money.

i settled into my seat rather bummed that i'd gotten out of bed in order to be guilt-tripped and leave feeling bad about myself and my spending habits. fortunately, the pastor decided to approach money from a more biblical perspective. he talked about how christians have been "giving" out of guilt and duty for years. how the church has become the master of manipulation, and how perverted the giving has become (perverted in the truest sense of the word, meaning 'to turn away from'). he addressed how the nature of money is neutral, neither inherintly good nor evil and how the important thing is the condition of our hearts. how giving should be joyous, and how we're not supposed to be giving out of guilt, duty, or even desire for profit but instead out of an attitude of submission and joy for the One who has given us everything. he ended with, what i think is one of the coolest things God has done, by reminding us that in malachi, God says, "test me in this" and that if we are giving, we will be truly blessed. (the pastor was also sure to remind us that that does not mean you'll get back 100x what you give, as some people have said, because God does not tell us HOW we'll be blessed, but that giving will lead to us being at peace with our finances. there were a lot of other things in there, but i don't have time to recompose the sermon - i'm sure that if you are really interested, i could probably find a recording or transcript for you.

anyway, i was thinking about how, to give 10% of my paycheck would not be all that much money each month... and how our car-payment is practically double that... which means it's like 20% of my paycheck, which made me very sad! but also i thought about how prior to marriage, i really didn't think about money too much because i always knew i had more than i was spending, but once you're two people sharing money, living for a while off one salary for a while, i have sort of let the money-stress become a part of my life, way too big a part, and what i'd love would be to wake up and not worry about money. so andrew and i are going to think and talk about giving, and i know that with thoughtful consideration, discussion, and prayer, we'll end up making the right choices for ourselves and with our money.

on a totally unrelated note, i guess i should recap what we've been up to since new years'. not a whole lot, really. i was sick and spent most of the week lying on the couch. i went to the doctor, where they deduced i had a sinus infection and medicated me heavily. i missed a couple days of work at the vet, but i worked again friday and had a pretty good time. yesterday, we hung out with my mom for a while and then went to my parents' house for a few hours. it's always good to see them, and especially good when mom decides to make rice krispy treats! after that, we went to meghan's birthday celebration and mostly hung out with kim. meghan lives in a really cool apartment complex in cary, one of the ones that looks like it belongs in a big city where rich executives have "flats" or something. we had the run of the clubhouse complete with movie theater, video game room (with guitar hero!), a gym, card room, pool room, and a business office. obviously, we didn't use the gym or business office, but i was still amazed with the place! we had a good time and ended the night watching a movie in bed. so far, despite the sickness, 2008 is off to a pretty good start, and i'm excited to see how it will continue to unfold!

2007 comes to a close

and with it, an extremely exciting year of my and our lives. there's been a rush of activity... pretty much all year, but especially right at the end here, and i feel like maybe i'm saying goodbye to 2007 but that i haven't really said hello to 2008. in daily catching up news, we attended marc and lora's wedding on new year's eve. we were able to get a ride there and back with mark doliner and emily caldwell which made the trip possible for us (since a hotel wasn't an option financially). the picture below is us at dinner before hand. with a 7:30pm wedding, one must plan ahead and eat before in order not to have grumbling of stomachs overtake the saying of vows. andrew and i, being late additions to the party, did not get to sit with rachel, mike, mark, emily, gabe, tommy, penny, and whoever else was at the large table, but we did get two of the last bar seats in the restaurant and enjoyed a private, date-like dinner there. the food was great, though very expensive, and it was good that we split everything, otherwise it would have been WAY too much. as it was, i wasn't very hungry for reception food until about 11:30pm.

though we discussed it in the car, i will mention how interesting it is that, along with my delineation of the color red, and how though it was used for 5 of the 7 weddings this year, each was individualized, tailored to its party, and beautiful, wedding ceremonies and receptions are the same way. each one takes on its own identity that represents that of its celebrants and what they stand for individually and as a couple. suffice it to say that though opposite in many ways of thomas and cindi's wedding a week ago, marc and lora's wedding was beautiful in its own. i think my favorite thing they said during the vows was something to the extent of choosing to love one another each day. that's really true, we do choose who we wish to love when we arise each morning, and i'm so thankful that andrew chooses me and that i have the privilege of choosing him for the rest of my life. also, though i have no actual photos of the wedding or reception, there were so many cameras going off during both that i have no fear of finding a picture to post sometime soon.

but back to the summation of the year...
i feel like this really has been a year of changes, and excitement, and i've had a difficult time trying to put it all into words or some kind of shortened version, but here goes.

in january, andrew and i got engaged in the lovely town of boone. i had just quit my first real job as a teacher, and i was working as a veterinary technician at oberlin animal hospital in raleigh. we were living in chapel hill in our glen lennox apartment. i'd made my first emergency trip to the hospital (for something other than a riding injury), and we were really excited about andrew's graduation from state and his impending job opportunities. at this point, we thought we might end up in atlanta or somewhere else for him to work in a theatre, and i was trying to wrap my head around those possibilities.

in february, i continued working at the vet while andrew worked at thompson theatre with dave and brittany. andrew began looking seriously into working for a theatre down in georgia, and we made a visit to see the theatre, the area, and even spent a few days looking at houses. we decided on this trip that the roswell area was not the place for us, and that andrew was very hesitant to leave the university theatre world for one that was inconsistent and offered no real full-time possibilities. we weren't sure what we wanted to do, but we didn't want that.

march brought more working at the vet on my part and more job-hunting on andrew's. the wedding planning began, we toyed with locations and dates, and melissa and i searched for dresses. jessi's planning for her wedding was well underway, and we helped her make decisions about that. we went out to dinner and had friends over at our place in chapel hill. it was an enjoyable time, with not too many stressors weighing us down.

april brought my birthday (though neither andrew nor i can remember what we did for it) and beginnings to rehearsals for relay-for-life with kim, jeremy, and shannon, and most importantly, andrew began looking at the mountains (blowing rock stage company and flat rock stage company) for full time employment.

in may, andrew was offered the job as the assistant technical director of the blowing rock stage company, and we had to move almost immediately. i quit my job at the vet, and found us a house to live in up in valle crucis. we moved much of our stuff during the end of may even though we were still in our glen lennox apt until the first of july. additionally, jessi and norman got married! lindsay and i threw the bachelorette party, andrew and i attended the rehearsal, rehearsal dinner, wedding, i was a bridesmaid extraordinaire, and late that night, while the couple slept at their hotel, kara, andrew, and i performed groomsman duties and decorated their car for their drive to the honeymoon!

june, for me was mostly comprised of driving back and forth from boone to chapel hill, packing, unpacking, packing, unpacking, crying some, and getting used to the idea of being in boone for life. i was unemployed and planned to take a break until after the wedding as we both thought i needed it. i unpacked most of our things into our new house, constructed a dog fence in our yard, and tried to make the best of isolation while andrew worked. and... andrew worked all the time, so i was alone a lot living at least 30 mins from any real activity, people, or domesticated life.

july brought with it a lot of stress. the wedding was fast approaching, andrew had been working all the time, and i was extremely anxious about everything. i began a job at appnet, deciding that i needed not only income, but a way to occupy my time. this was a good thing because by this point, andrew left the stage company after many attempts at making it work with non-receptive bosses and months of not spending any time with his fiancee. also, we found out my mom had breast cancer. july was not an exceptional month, but we did get to see a fawn nesting in our back yard!

august was a much better month! i continued at appnet, andrew began working for gum ridge mill making custom furniture and flooring from reclaimed wood, and most importantly, we got married! the wedding was great and the honeymoon even better. we had time to see family and friends we hadn't seen in a while and spend time together alone in romantic places. august was definitely a highlight.

september brought with it the sudden reality that boone was not going to be long-term for us, though we enjoyed the peace and quiet and the fun (free!) outdoor activities, we realized financially, socially, and locationally, we needed to be somewhere else. scraping by was not really going to be an option, nor was it going to help us achieve long-term goals. we began talking to our landlord and trying to figure out what to do to improve our situation. (to uh, moooove on up, as i'm trying to do in this picture)

october had us moving to raleigh once again, not to cary as we'd originally though, but to a nice little house in mordecai. welcome back to civilization, family! our dogs had a new back yard, we piled our stuff into our tiny new house, i found two jobs at once, and decided to start teaching again at east wake academy, and andrew began his job search. we no longer had the stars and the streams (and goats, chickens, horses, wild dogs, and other creatures) around us, but once again back to city lights and street sounds. a bittersweet but productive move, i think we'd both agree.

november had us growing accustomed to living in raleigh again. going out with friends, having people over for dinner, trying out different restaurants, seeing horse shows and cultural events, and visiting my parents became a way of life once again. my mom continued doing well with chemo, and despite our thanksgiving celebrations being somewhat delayed due to illnesses all around, i'd say it was a good month. i worked at oberlin during my time off from east wake, and andrew worked jobs around town at different theatre and production companies. though there were tons of adjustments, we were both positive that this had been the right decision for us.

during december, andrew both began and abruptly ended a job with meld, a "designer concrete" company, and he decided to do away with the idea of working for small businesses ever again. i agreed with him. i had a LONG (and much needed) break from school for our winter track-out, i worked at oberlin like i'd never left months ago, we enjoyed family and friends, weddings and dinner parties both at our house and at others. we struggle with not being able to go out and do as many "fun" things as we'd like, and andrew continues on the job search. i've been sick a few times, and i wish i'd gotten to take more of my vacation as a vacation, but we have a warm house, a cozy family, two working cars, two crazy dogs, both old and new friends, families who support and care for us when we need it, and enough money to pay the bills, and most importantly, we have each other. without a doubt, we have been incredibly blessed.

so with that said, i thank God for 2007, for its many trials and triumphs, and i say to thee, 2008 - bring it on! you have big shoes to fill.