I had planned to participate in Quick Takes this week, but then I remembered that I’ll be out of town for Thanksgiving. Oops. I am a blonde in spirit if not in fact.
Things are still pretty much status quo here at Castle Henry & Cunegonda. They’ve been status quo for some time, and you know what? That’s boring. And God thumped me on the head with a 2×4* this week and gave me a sign that it’s time I did something about it, at least career-wise.
I’m not changing professions – He’s made it clear that I’m called to do what I’m doing – but I think I should change jobs in 2013. Whether that’s a new position at my current company or a bigger change remains to be seen. Anyway, I’m going to spend Advent doing some discerning.
Anyway, it’s not Friday yet, but we still need a song! This week’s song is “Thank U” by Alanis Morissette. (This is a fan-made lyric video, not the original where she’s walking around nekkid. This is a family blog. )
*God knows that that the only way to get my attention is to hit me on the head with a 2×4.
No, I don’t have children. Barring a miracle, I never will.
Yes, that is one of the biggest disappointments of my life.
But you know what? I still have a great life. I have a long and loving marriage1, a fulfilling career, a wonderful family, and amazing friends. I’m able to contribute generously to charities and help other people’s kids get an education. I’m also able to stay out late on Friday and sleep in on Saturday. :)
The only time I ever feel like my life isn’t good enough is when some smug parent asks me a rude question about when I’m having kids. So cut it out already!
1. We’re in double digits now, so I think that counts as long. Yes, I did marry young; why do you ask?
It’s the feast of St. Henry II, the patron saint of childless people, kings, people rejected by religious orders, handicapped people, Benedictine Oblates, the Diocese of Bamberg, and this blog! Thank you, St. Henry II for your life, and thank you Lord for putting him in the Saint’s Name Generator just when I needed him!
1. Over the last few months, a coworker has been repeatedly asking me when DH and I are having kids. All the other young married couples just had a baby, and he’s wondering when we, the last domino, will fall. I’ve been brushing him off, but here’s what I’d really like to say to him:
“You know, [name] we’ve been spending so much time discussing the biggest disappointment of my life. It’s really not fair for me to keep hogging the spotlight! For a change, how about I ask you a nosy question about the biggest disappointment in your life?”
2. No, I’m not actually going to say that. I’m not sure what the boss would do if I went off on a coworker like that, but it probably wouldn’t be pretty.
3. Anyway, on to some good news: ripe tomatoes are just around the corner! My plants have had fruit for what seems like months (it’s probably more like one month) and now, finally, some of it is starting to turn red. There has to be something good about these long hot summers…
4. And you would think I’d be used to long, hot summers by now, having lived with them for…. oh yeah, my entire life. You’d be wrong. Every day I’m off work in the summer, I tell myself that I’ll be spending a lot of time outside, work in the garden, go swimming, finally get a tan… and I always retreat to the air conditioning by noon. I am a wuss.
5. I may have gone overboard in planting Swiss Chard. And by that, I mean we have all of 4 plants. (Hey, there are only two of us!) Turns out, DH doesn’t care for the stems. Ooops. Maybe I should plant more spinach next year.
6. I learned something new about growing tomatoes this week: the definition of catfacing. Several of my Cherokee Purple tomatoes have big scars at the blossom end, but so far as I could tell, it wasn’t insect damage. At first I thought it was something peculiar to the Cherokee Purple variety (never grown it before, and none of my other tomatoes have this) but after some consultation with Master Gardener Google, I figured out it was catfacing. Is there anything Google doesn’t know?
7. It wouldn’t be Friday without a song! This Friday’s song is “Moves Like Jagger” by Maroon 5. I liked this video so much I had to embed it. :)
Sometimes I catch myself walking past the baby stuff at Target and instead of scuttling by as fast as possible, I stop for a minute and look at all the cute stuff, and wonder what my kids would look like in it. Ha. God slammed the door on that one years ago.
Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to adopt Larisa and/or another kid from Reese’s Rainbow. Bah. Those kids need experienced parents, not a couple of childless nerds who could barely relate to kids when they were kids, and definitely not one enthusiastic parent and one who had to be badgered into adopting them.
Sometimes I wonder if I’ll spend the rest of my life just watching everybody else get the jobs and the families that I wanted.
Sometimes I wonder when I became so adept at smiling when I feel like crap.
Sometimes I wonder why I can’t always say, “Fiat.“
Sometimes I wonder why I thought this would be a pity-party-free blog. Sorry.
The day after Mother’s Day is an odd time to explain why I’m not a mother, isn’t it? But people have been asking and I suppose it’s about time I explained.
It was clear from relatively early in our marriage that biological kids weren’t a possibility. Fine, I thought. I was in grad school at the time and those of you who’ve done grad school know that while it’s possible to have a child in grad school, it may not be the greatest time to do so. And to be brutally honest, at the time I was away from Christ and His Church and immersed in the Culture of Death, and I didn’t really care.
Fast forward a few years, and I returned to the Church (much to DH’s consternation). The topic of adoption came up, and DH was definitely against it. Essentially, he’s happy with our lives the way they are and doesn’t want them turned upside down by a baby. (He’s got me there, folks; having a baby undoubtedly would turn things upside down.) Badgering my husband into adoption isn’t what I’d call a good time, or even a good idea. In fact, I’d call it a horrible idea.
A very nice person once said, “Well, maybe he’ll change his mind someday.”
Wayne Campbell once said, “It could happen… and monkeys might fly out of my butt.”
And that’s why I do my best to help other people adopt. It’s never going to happen for me, but maybe I’ll help somebody else get a little blessing.
1. Thank you to everyone who prayed for Father B. He’s on the mend but not completely healed yet. Any and all prayers for him are appreciated!
2. Speaking of prayer, I finally have the chance to reveal who prayed for me this Lent! It was Laura at Watts Up in the Tundra?!? Thanks for your prayers, Laura! They were a huge help to me.
3. April and May are going to be the longest monthsever. As far as work is concerned, anyway. The other day I was stuck at work with one pregnant lady and two guys whose wives are pregnant and guess what they talked about for the Entire. Freaking. Afternoon? To top it all off, someone asked me when I was going to have a kid. It was all I could do not to say “The next [expletive] that asks me when I’m having an [expletive] baby is getting pistol-whipped!” Two more coworkers have babies due in May, and then maybe everybody will shut up about the baby stuff for awhile. I think I can…
4. I saw this in my backyard and I knew I had to post it.
A little nest, which two robins lovingly built and laid their eggs in, blown down by some strong winds. I feel like this picture sums up my life… the nest is perfect but the eggs are broken.
5. I had hoped to finish The Secret Diary of Elisabeth Leseur before Easter, but didn’t. Hopefully I’ll get done with it soon and can post a review. Elisabeth was very wise and very close to God, and reading her book feels like getting advice from a big sister.
6. There are a lot of reasons why I love gardening, but one of the big ones is that it’s a lot easier to make dinner when you can just make a salad from stuff in your backyard. Man, I can’t wait for my plants to get bigger.
7. We must have a song for Friday! This Friday’s song is the theme song from Today’s Special. Anybody else like that show when they were a kid? Just me? OK.
There are a lot of reasons I don’t talk about work on my blog, but one of them is that lately almost all of the married people I work with either just had a baby or are expecting. And that means office baby showers; I figure there’ll be about one per month until the end of summer. Now, I can be genuinely happy when people announce their pregnancies, I can coo over their babies when they bring them by the office, and I can even handle their labor horror stories. But baby showers? I’m sorry. I just can’t go without getting upset. I send a present and my regrets.
This morning, I’m grateful because the person who planned the first two office baby showers scheduled them for times when I would not be at work! I’m not sure if she did that deliberately, but I’m very grateful!
I was fortunate in that we were still doing OK financially after I lost my job, but I had done major damage to my relationship with DH. While I was unemployed, my #2 priority (#1 was looking for a new job) was a world-class attitude adjustment. I knew that getting the job was only Step 1; Step 2 was making sure that I didn’t repeat the cycle and get canned from this job because no one there could stand me either.
First, I reminded myself of what my purpose in life is. As a Catholic married woman, one big part of my vocation is helping DH get to heaven. (Evidently God thinks I can handle a challenge.) But he’s not going to be very inclined to listen to me if I’m not doing a good job in other aspects of marriage. So, I made sure that every night, I take some time to have a glass of wine with DH and chat. If I have a day off and he has to work, I spend at least part of the day cleaning the house, and then make dinner. DH is a bit of a clean freak, so coming home to a clean house really helps his mood. And of course, Date Nights are a must!
Next, I put more focus back on God. As you might expect, during my year of workaholism I didn’t have much of a prayer life. Heck, sometimes my work schedule made it impossible to even get to Sunday Mass! I made a few rules for myself where my spiritual life is concerned:
Mass on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation. No exceptions. If I have to get to work late or leave early, too bad, I’m going.
Prayer every day. Again, no exceptions. I’m ashamed I even had to make this rule.
Daily Mass and Adoration when possible. I feel like a new woman every time I go.
Regular Confession. Regular meaning at least 3 times a year.
Then, I renewed my efforts to take care of myself. I went to the gym regularly when I was in grad school. Aside from being a workaholic, one of the reasons I stopped going after I graduated was that I’d been using the university’s gym, which of course is students only. Shortly after starting my current job, I found a gym close to work and started going at least once a week. It’s done wonders for my mood and my energy!
Finally, I made some rules for separating work and home:
No checking work e-mail at home. This is where I find out about work-related problems, and half of them are things I can’t do anything about at home.
When I have to do work-related stuff on my day off, I set a time limit on it. I regularly have to do continuing education to stay on top of my field, so I really can’t avoid doing some work at home. Setting limits is imperative or else I’ll spend my whole day “off” working. I set alarms on my phone to remind me to stop working, and when looking at journals in my field, I’ll pick the articles most relevant to my job, then read those but no others. Sometimes that’s half the issue; sometimes it’s just one article.
Vent in the car. When I’m driving home, I say all the things I wish I had told those jerks. It’s very cathartic. (Not recommended if you carpool or have children riding with you.)
Take vacations, and if you’re sick, CALL IN! Again, I’m ashamed I even had to make this rule.
So, that’s how I (mostly) defeated workaholism. What are some of your strategies for a good work/life balance?
A few years ago, I did something pretty moronic. Something selfish. It was something that, as the title says, nearly wrecked my life, but it was something that a lot of people expect childless women to do.
I put my career first. Not just once, mind you – work does need to come first sometimes if one expects to stay employed – but repeatedly, habitually, over the course of about a year.
Mothers get castigated left and right for actual and alleged incidents of “putting their career first.” But if you’re not a parent, it’s a different story. The assumption from your colleagues, your superiors and (it sometimes seems) society at large is that if you don’t have kids, you have bugger all else going on in your life and so you’re free to be a workaholic. Or, people assume that you don’t have kids because you’re a workaholic, therefore you won’t mind living at the office.
I fell for that for awhile. And heck, I’d known for a long time that motherhood was not in God’s plan for my life, so why not devote all my energy to my career? (Yes, I am gullible. Why do you ask?) For about a year after I finished grad school, I made work my life. I had just started a new job with the brand-spanking new degree I worked so hard to get and I was on fire! I was going to change the world, man! I’d spend 10-12 hour days at work and then come home and dream of grandiose plans to advance my career and be like some of the mentors I admired. I stopped going to the gym (something I did regularly during grad school) and stopped cooking regular dinners for DH. I never went to Daily Mass (something I love) and this family-oriented girl even missed her cousin’s wedding because of work. I didn’t take a vacation; at first that was because I didn’t have vacation time, later because I thought the only “vacations” I needed were work-related conferences. I only took one sick day, and that was the day after I came to work with what turned out to be bronchitis. (Bronchitis! What was I thinking?!?)
My wake-up call came in the form of both personal and professional swift kicks in rear. I got fired because I was a stressed out witch who everyone hated. DH gently pointed out that I had brought this on myself, and that it wasn’t just ruining my career, it was ruining our marriage.
I was unemployed for a few months after that, during which time I ate crow, my words, and a slice of humble pie for dessert. I knew that my priorities were all screwed up and I needed a new game plan. By the grace of God, I got a new job, and I promised myself and DH that the old, angry Mary was never coming back. That was over a year ago, and she’s still gone; I see echoes of her now and then, but by and large I’ve sent her back into the vile contagion of the night.
As for how I did that, that will have to wait for Part 2…
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