So it's been awhile. It's sort of been awhile since the fall, really. I am not complaining, but grad school is a different animal for both the student and his wife! It's not for sissys, and your typically helpful, contributory husband literally cannot help because he is slammed with studying, group work, and excel assignments so complex they could likely crack the code for time travel. I do not exaggerate their complexity... One assignment took him 30 hours. All this is OK; we are here for school. (well the 30 hours on one assignment isn't really OK. It's ridiculous) It's just that I occasionally feel like a chicken without its head. I expressed this to my sister last week and she inquired "What in your life is actually out of order?" and when I went into more details she explained that sort of thing is normal for most people. So... I'm a perfectionist? News flash there. I am a teensy bit crazy? Probably, yes. So perhaps even though I am not a student, I am still learning things during our year* in Ithaca. Namely: old bathrooms and carpets can be cleaned daily and still look awful. Sinks with scratches will always be sinks with scratches. You cannot erase them. I should relax and adopt the mantra "Que sera, sera." Et cetera.
This chicken without its head feeling has actually risen to a new level in 2011 because.... I once again have a Full! Time! Job! Woooooooo. For those of you keeping track, I have not had full-time employment since I voluntarily left my DC job in May 2008 and we moved to Florida. If you know anything about finance or wall street or just read the paper at any point in the 2nd half of 2008 you know why I did not find a full-time gig afterwards. Anyhoo, I have a job now. Who'd have thunk we'd move to Ithaca for a year and I would find a job?! Not me. It's a good job with a base salary and commission. The commission bit is a first for me, but I am enjoying it because when you work a lot and work hard, you make more money. I am usually a fast worker, so I suppose I can work 'more' in a typical day, and I like to think I am a hard worker, too. In other words, I think this commission thing might be kind of fun. This job is a little different than most in that I:
a) Work 44 hours in a week
b) Work 10 hours Monday - Thursday, and 4 Friday morning
c) Feel like I am barely home M-Th
d) Really enjoy Friday afternoons
It's taking some getting used to. For example, I get home from work at 5:45 and work out. This means we never eat dinner before 7. We might take our first bite at 6:55, but dinner is a 7:00 event. Again, this has not happened since we were in DC in 2008, when we both worked and got home around 6 and then went to the gym and then had dinner.
But Jules, you might say, why don't you work out in the morning? Well, because I start work at 7:30. I am a morning person and always have been, but for me to make it to work at 7:30 and get in a workout I would probably have to wake up at 5 AM in order to not only shower, but dry my hair. I would also have to go to bed obscenely early.
I enjoy this schedule because I have Friday afternoon completely free and it almost feels like a 3 days weekend. But there are many things I feel I cannot do in the evenings. Clean the house. Laundry (because it's far away... if it were in my house I'd be fine) Grocery store. Read more than 15 pages of a book. Return email. Talk to loved ones on the phone. BLOG. The list continues. So at this juncture, and probably until we move in June, I will figure out how to juggle my slightly odd schedule while also keeping the apartment quasi-functional for my smarty pants husband to finish grad school. My prediction: I will figure it all out and then we'll move and I'll have to readjust all over again. But that's ok. You know I enjoy a challenge.
*We had a year in May 2010. We have less than 100 days left, which is crazy! So much to get rid of! (a story for another time)
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