Early February, Early Mornings

Whooooooooowwww

Its now, what, 4 weeks into this full time working/ part time teaching thing and I am... Tired.

Here's the routine for a week: up at 6:15am every day, shower, to the office by 7:45am. Work through the day till 4:45pm, when I dash out the door to the gym. Exercise for an hour, then home for dinner. After dinner is devoted to working on class lectures and slides.

I've found that I can't lecture without a slide show. Talking about history, especially historic built landscapes is such a visual thing. So lecture preps bounce back and forth between searching for the image I want and fact checking what I want to talk about.

I've probably spent an average of 6-8 hours on every lecture. This is the first time the course is being taught, so I'm totally building it from scratch. And because I wasn't sure what I'd want to change after a few weeks, I didn't plan lectures or slideshows very far in advance. So its a lot of work.

I knew it would be a lot of work. Its work I enjoy, really, but it's been a bit of a relentless grind building this thing. Even something like a lovely surprise weekend from my sister can throw my whole "things to get done and when to do them" schedule off.

And every week I seem to fall into a pattern of totally nailing the Tuesday lecture, walking out feeling on top of the world, and then falling flat on my face for the Thursday lecture. Or vice-versa. Its unnerving and confidence-killing. Nothing to do but get back on the horse though. Especially since I'm getting paid to do this.

DJ has been awesome, absolutely awesome about giving me time to work on class stuff. I've neglected housekeeping, demanded he turn off the light by 9:45pm so I could go to sleep (oh the irony!) and generally demanded that all things fit my schedule. He's made dinners, hung out with the dog and kept the house stocked with toilet paper.

And I have a wonderful sister and friends, did I mention that? I turned 29 on Tuesday. And Harlow turned 2. In advance of the birthday, Gretch drove over from Pullman and Ali drove down from Helena for a Chico Hot Springs afternoon and Livingston Saturday night. We stayed at the Murray Hotel (awesome historic hotel across the street from the train station), had dinner at the rib and Chop house and then did a Livingston bars lap. The most entertaining portion of the evening was walking into the Mint Bar and finding it FULL of hipsters. HIPSTERS. In LIVINGSTON. That.... Was unexpected. With their serious black oversize glasses and serious conversations.

Dusty made a delicious dinner of salmon, mashed potatoes, garlic bread and broccoli for my birthday. I received flowers, cards and phone calls. It was a nice, low key day. Which is my style for birthdays. 


This weekend is packed with getting my poop in a group. Writing the handout for the paper my students have due at the end of the month, prepping this week's lectures, prepping some AOII stuff for the annual Corporation meeting at the end of the month. Budgets, agendas, membership, etc. I'm good at that end of the organizational spectrum, I hope. 


And with that, I think I heard the coffee ding that it's ready. Time to get to work!

A growing appreciation

I have 12 friends and acquaintances having a baby between September and May; 10 of which are boys. A number of them are sorority sisters of mine, and we all joke about the AOII curse: you will have a boy first. Then maybe a girl. But most likely another boy.

Sunday I helped host a baby shower for my "little sister" in the sorority. I got really lucky with my "littles"; both are women that I admire, wish I could be a little like, and grow more fond of every year. I'm grateful to have them in my life.

Sunday evening I was telling an older woman on my Board,  who was also in a sorority in the 1940's, that I'm realizing more and more the value of being an AOII. Jane is in her 80's, but that woman is a firecracker who drives a number of initiatives in Bozeman. I want to be her when I grow up.

I told Jane that during the baby shower I recognized the incredible, diverse group of friends I can call on at any time for advice. Women who are professionals with terminal degrees, women who are successful business owners, girls who are already mothers or becoming mothers, and alumni who are older than I am, yet treat me as an equal to call when I have a question about grown up issues.

We're not planning on having a kid for a while yet. But after the death of a sorority sister in September from a baby-related item (postpartum psychosis), I recognized how important it is and will be for me to have a crew of local friends to call on for help, commiseration and advice. I'm grateful for them.

People in Montana make fun of sorority girls. Yeah, sometimes it isn't all fraternity parties and charitable events. It means living with 30-40 other women your age, one of which is guaranteed to be a flat-out biatch. But here's the secret: there will always be a biatch in your life; best to figure out how to deal with them now.

The long term benefits continue to amaze me: close friends who can pick up right where they left off, a small understanding of human tendencies, an appreciation for organization and the support of over 50 women who will help the moment I ask.

Jane understood exactly what I was saying; for her being a Greek woman meant that when she moved with her young family to Wisconsin, California, Washington DC and Bozeman, she could contact their alumnae group and have an instant connection to a place and people in that place. It means, for an elderly woman, having friends to lean on as others pass away, and a connection to who she was as a young woman unfettered by disappointment or burdened by an ailing body.

I'm grateful, too, that being in a sorority gave me the ground work to have such intimate conversations with women two generations older than me. Women who treat me as a friend.

Still here

So it's been what, three weeks since my last post. Yikes. I've had a lot going on. Given the staffing changes at my job, and committments I signed up for before the staffing changes, the workweek has been a daily triage of "what must absolutely get done today".

Those weeks have been followed, respectively, by a roadtrip/ houseguests (wonderful, wonderful houseguests!)/ party at our house one weekend, then a roadtrip/ football game/ grandma day/ roadtrip then a one day trip back to Missoula for a funeral.

Yeah. That last one? The one today? That was awful.

But it put things into perspective a bit for me. I drove over and back with two dear friends and sorority sisters of mine. We spent six hours in the car gossiping, eating chocolate covered cinnamon bears, discussing everything from marriages, having babies (and the medical options to do so), mutual friends, personal tragedies and the ovewhelming tragedy before us.

And then I came hope, on a rainy evening in September, to a husband in the garage making home brew, a furry golden retriever who wants nothing more than to cuddle with me, and, well, a life that I really do love. And am grateful for.

I need to spend a little more of my emotional energy finding things to be grateful for. The last three years seem to have been bogged down in work, family, personal and other obligations. I want to work, this fall, on being grateful for those committments. For people and organizations that find my role in them so valuable that they keep asking me to keep coming back.

Today I am grateful for the people in my life.

Boom

We've been married  over a month now. Guess what? Not much is different. Come home, get the dog spayed, and face the mountains of paperwork, email, phone messages, and oh yeah, wedding crap in piles in the office. The piles o'wedding crap bug me, but I'm not quite motivated enough yet to deal with them.

In the month we've been married, I've been questioned at least 10 times with "so when are you going to have kids". To the point where my sister is telling me that I'll have a baby or be pregnant in the next year.

Gretch: seriously, I love you, but stop telling me when I will or will not push a damn cantaloupe out of my who-haa!!! It's my vagina and we'll use a goalie when I want to!

Ahem. People. Let's think about this here. We've been married a month. As in, I still haven't even designed, ordered, written, addressed or sent a damn thank you yet. I don't need to get knocked up and start another registry.

And the older I get, the more I realize what a big fucking deal having a kid is. Like, we barely have disposable income anyway... I'm not ready to add $700 a month in daycare alone. Let's face it, I'm still to selfish; with my time, with my money, and with my sleep (DJ's beer brewing dreams notwithstanding).

That said, there is an AOII baby boom happening around me this fall. It's the first wave of mass baby-makin', uterus-stretching, can't-drink-for-like-a-year, a shit ton of people are having kids. I've got friends having babies in September, November, December, January, February and March. And shit, someone else I lived in the Pizzle house with is probaby getting knocked up as I type this. BOOM! And no, I won't be drinking the Kool-Aid at the Homecoming Brunch. That shit is contaminated.

I, on the other hand, will continue to drink my way through the remainder of the wine we bought for our wedding, contemplate the wedding shit in our office, and figure out how to afford grown up bedroom furniture.

I should add here that I'm not trying to be judgemental. My reluctance to have a kid, and my personal uncomfortableness with my friends having kids is only that, well, aren't we still young ourselves? Aren't we still trying to figure out who and what we want to be when we grow up? Isn't the signifier of grown-up-ness having more than $16.94 in our checking accounts at the end of the month, because I'm still never above $50 by the 25th of the month.

That's just me? So you're saying that I'm no longer 19 and we're not going to the Lambda Chi graffiti party next month?

Shit. Pour me another glass of wine.

Edited to add, apparently Beyonce agrees with me.

Holy busy Batman!

Hey! I haven't posted in a week; sorry for being MIA! Actually, I was in Utah hiking last week (faked you out with the auto-posts, huh?). It was a great trip, and I'll post more about it shortly. In the meantime, I've got a staff report due today on a project that got increasingly complicated as I went through the staff report. Add that to 8 pissed off neighbors, and I've got myself a shitstorm here folks! Here's what's going on in my world:

• Farming: EFF. We're under a winter storm warning tonight. It snowed yesterday. And the day before that. My crocus blooms are dissapearing (gophers?), the tulips look warped, the hyacinths struggling, and the daffodils trying to pop. Kinda. The sugar snap peas I transplanted are holding up (but not growing), and none of the sweet peas I planted outside have sprouted. The onion sets are holding up too. We'll see. My inside starts are doing okay.
• Wedding: DOUBLE EFF!!! Holy shitballs EFF. I've got to get my arse in gear on that. It's like 8 weeks away! Specifically, we need to figure out flowers, food, and wedding bands this week.
• AOII: Graduation is on Sunday, so they chapter I advise for is going through the end of the year crazies and getting ready to move out of the house. This ='s more work for me!
• Puppy: Survived a week at Ava's while we hiked it out in Utah. She's still getting used to being at home, and with the weird weather yesterday ended up peeing inside three times. Damn. But I wouldn't really want to sink my little butt down in the frozen snow either...

In the meantime-- here's a Bob and Joyce wedding photo, of her boquet. My friend Joslyn, who is also our flower arranger, tells me that stephanosis (the little bell flowers shooting out of the boquet) are super expensive to include, as they have to be broken from the stem and then staked and wired into a boquet. And is that a tulip? Where did they get tulips in October? I think my grandmother still has that watch, and I've never seen Gramps wear his wedding band. My mom told me it broke into two pieces sometime in the 60's. I'll have to ask her what color her nail polish was!

Moonlight Weekend

We spent Friday night in Moonlight Basin with three other couples. I know all of the girls through AOII, and all of them have married great guys.

We scored this awesome rental house, that sleeps 12. It'd be an awesome place to spend extended time in both the winter and the fall.

I'm not a fan of "rustic" decor, but this place did have a nice warm, stury feel to it. Couches and chairs to sink into. Fireplaces to light. Amazing views to watch.

All of those things, combined with great friends and random word association games, make for a really fun time.

Especially at 2 am, after a long round of beverages.

It's awesome to have friends with whom you can so easily fall right back into the groove with, even if you don't see each other often (yet live in the same town).

And Kelly and Ryan brought the entertainment. A gets cuter, funnier, and cooler to be around every time I see him.

Especially if there is a hot tub, rubber duckies and Mark to hang out around.

Kel thanks for setting the Moonlight weekend up! Sorry we had to bail early; I hope you had a great time snowshoeing!

Monday Malaise

It was a kind of weird weekend. After Friday night’s dinner and retail therapy, Saturday dawned promising. I worked on wedding stuff (mainly the budget) all morning, DJ had coffee with friends. DJ came home, we chatted in the office, I went to the gym, showered and we went to Costco to price out wine and beer for the cocktail hour portion of our wedding.

Saturday night I had dinner with Kelly, Marisa and Joslyn (all AOII’s) at the Rib and Chop House in Livingston, before heading down the Paradise Valley to Chico Hot Springs. The four of us soaked for three hours, drinking margaritas, catching up, discussing everything from weddings to finances. My, how our conversations have evolved since the AOII Multi days! It was great to have girlfriend time though. I seriously needed it!

I spent Sunday at AOII from pretty much 10am until 4pm. Holy moly. Corporation Board meeting (uncomfortable news), ritual (secret squirrel stuff), Founder’s Day brunch (I was starving- apparently I didn' tget the memo that food wasn't until 1pm), and Alumnae Advisory Committee meeting. Yowzer. Good to give back, but I think was either hung over (from two margaritas and a glass of wine? Weak sauce Kramer!), or just plain exhausted. I came home and took a nap.

Which prevented me from falling asleep early, when we got in bed at 8:40 pm to read and sleep. And I about lost my shit at 11:10pm when our neighbor’s “friend”* came rolling in with a diesel pickup, which he idled in the driveway for two hours! I have a weird sound sensitivity. Seriously, I can’t handle needless noise. I like quiet. And I was irate last night; tossing and turning and watching them through the bedroom window and just generally being pissed. Yeah, 6:41 am seemed early today.

DJ spent Saturday night eating Papa Murphy’s, finishing off the whiskey and playing Play Station Baseball. Total dude time! Sunday was more hanging out. Suffice to say, we’re both pretty unimpressed and a little grumpy about our weekend, especially DJ. We’re too cheap right now to spend money for something to do on the weekends. We’re not broke, just waiting for a tax return to come in and generally hesitant to spend lumps of money we can put to better uses, like wedding stuff.

Speaking of, should I be worried that I still can’t get a hold of anyone at the restaurant where we are having our wedding reception? They’re closed for the winter for a major remodel… and I’m getting nervous. I just keep telling myself it’ll work out.

I met with the lady doing the design for our wedding invites this morning. Surprisingly “cheap”! (Meaning, I’m over it. I’m out of creative juice for them).

I guess the only upbeat thing I have to say (geeze! Pick it up Court!) is that Sunday always means new puppy pictures!

I've always teased my sister about being a golden retriever. Gretchen is big (tall), blonde, sheds a lot and falls asleep easily. I told Gretchen that while Harlow would be my puppy, she would always be my first golden retriever. Gretch laughed when I sent her this picture; when Gretch was a kid her observational face was to stare at something with her mouth slighly ajar and her tounge hanging out.

Look at all the wrinkles on her face!

Facial expressions from Zoolander? Model pose?

*We think our neighbors to the west are drug dealers are involved in illicit activities. This is after a friend of theirs tried to credit card his way into our house before Thanksgiving. They have cars coming and going at all times of the day, and people will park a block away and walk over to their house. It’s suspicious. Well, at least they have a source of income and their house won’t go into foreclosure, right?

Two Steps Forward... and One Step Back

It was an interesting weekend around these parts. Good in a lot of ways, and disappointing in a lot of ways.

Since this blog is a sort of open diary, I’m going to write about issues that some people might prefer I keep to myself. Writing is becoming cathartic for me, and the words I’m going to put down here today are of tough to elucidate, but necessary. So feel free to skip this one if necessary. Like I said, there are high points and low points.

Saturday morning I attended initiation of 16 new members into the MSU chapter of AOII. I initiated nearly eight years ago as a freshman in college, and the MSU chapter means so much to me; maybe more in the last two years than the first six.

I’m so proud of the current members. Participation in sororities has been declining in Montana, despite a strong national trend elsewhere. We always struggled to keep numbers decent during my time as a collegiate, and it often felt like a giant uphill battle. Of the twelve girls I pledged with, only seven remained as seniors; although we picked up some awesome new people along the way to fill our class back out to twelve. At points in the last eight years, they’ve had initiations of only six people.

So an initiate class of 16 is a big, big deal for them/ us. More than anything, it was gratifying to stand in a room and count the number of active members- nearly 46 people!!! That’s close to campus total, and they’ll keep recruiting in the spring. I’m proud, and appreciative of the girls' hard work.

The entire AOII chapter, spring 2004.

The chapter at MSU, has kept me tenuously tied to MSU these last two and a half years. They’ve allowed me to stay involved with a college-affiliated organization, and give back in a (hopefully) meaningful way, despite the deep anger I feel towards the administration at MSU. I want to make it clear, my, and my family, still love the people of MSU. The alumni and the staff are all wonderful people who want nothing best for the university and its associated clubs and organizations. Being at the AOII house around women whom I look up to despite the fact that they’re younger than me reminds me of how important it is to keep the organization going.

But I shouldn’t say much more about the administration since there’s a lawsuit going on.

You get my point; AOII is a big deal for me. And getting to look around that room Saturday morning and see it thriving, well, it really made me a better person on Saturday. And I needed all of the positive vibes I could get when I walked out of the chapter house with to go to the MSU vs. Sacramento State football game.

I loved going to games at MSU while dad was there. I knew most of the players, their parents, the staff and many of the fans. As a college student myself, it was a great atmosphere; raucous tailgating, exciting games and down to the wire conference championships.

Gretchen, cousins Blake and Zack, and I. Fall 2004?

Tailgating with the AOII's, 'Cat-Griz 2003.

Post 'Cat-Griz win picture, 2003.

Tailgates, 'Cat-Griz 2005.

Post 'Cat-Griz win picture, 2005.

I have to admit, I expected some deflation of the party atmosphere with a new coach and changes to the tailgating policy which basically eliminated student tailgating. But what I saw on Saturday was… wow, it felt like a funeral in there. One entire section of stands wasn’t shoveled out after Thursday’s snowstorm, so no one sat in it. An entire section. What. The. Fuck.

Kickoff, 2009.

People will say “oh, well it’s hunting season” or “oh, well, it snowed and the weather was going to be shitty” or “it’s not a very important game” or “it’s the game before ‘Cat-Griz”. People. Those are lame excuses. This is a team that’s won seven games, and could still win an eighth in the regular season. That’s better than dad’s teams ever did. I’m pretty certain the stands were full for the playoff game against Furhman in November of 2006 when it was five degrees out. And that the games against EWU the weekend before ‘Cat-Griz were ALWAYS full when dad was there.

AOII's at the game... sometime in the fall of 2004. It's a non- 'Cat-Griz game and it looks pretty packed...

Of all of the emotions I expected to have after the game, I didn’t expect to feel the extreme sense of sadness as I left the stadium. After they WON the game!!! I felt sad after they won the damn game!!!! Sad that it’d gotten so boring! So staid and square! And sad that it took dad so long to build a program that people were interested in, and it only took three years to totally erode that. Man- what a god damn shame.

Goalposts going down, 2005.

Man, what fun that was.

That said, I did experience a flare of outright anger. Like capital A, bolded, underlined anger. One of the guys who got dad fired was there on the sidelines, with the visiting team. Again What. The. Fuck. What gall. What outright absolute goading. He’s lucky I played golf and can’t throw worth a damn. I had an ice-packed snowball with his name on it. (but I’m not bitter)

That particular person raised an interesting set of emotions in me. He gave me some of the best advice I ever received; to never, ever, settle for less than everything I want. And I sat there stunned, watching him, in a swirl in emotion. I wanted to ask him why. Why do what you did to yourself, your family, and my family? We took you in. We made you our own. Your advice rings through to me still, but it’s so tainted by your actions that I can’t take the very good guidance you offered.

And why, six years later, have you never made an effort to apologize?

Walking out of the stadium DJ asked me how I thought it went. I told him I was disappointed and upset, but for different reasons than I expected. I want the games to be fun. I want them to have good attendance and to attract new fans. And that’s progress for me. Two years ago I would have told you I wanted them to never sell out a game again.

But seeing that particular person… man, it was a blow to my fragile return to Bobcat fandom.

I guess that’s life though, two steps forward, one step back.

We have ‘Cat-Griz tickets for next weekend. :::gulp:::