married life

married life ...is good. But if you'd asked me a few days ago, I would've said, 'hard'. Only because once we got married, it was back to the grind all too soon. Yes, everything that was good about us before the wedding carried over, but I had really needed some adjustment time. Adjustment time meaning a huge chunk of down time, just me and the new husband. My psyche needed convincing that I could handle the upgrade.

This past weekend was the first weekend that we were able to have some R & R to ourselves since the beginning of April. Because since that month, K. got a new job, I graduated law school, we both moved, I started studying for the bar, took the bar, planned a wedding, attended a funeral, was in a wedding, got my wisdom teeth taken out, had house guests, got married, ... to mention a few things.

When we got back from the wedding, I realized how much the four months of non-stop activity and life-altering events without some refocus time + K's new double-loaded schedule + me trying to figure out what to do post-graduating, had me worked up and wound up, all by myself. It was wholly exhausting.

So this weekend, we attempted to restore. And yes, there was some sickness that caught up with us in the latter part of the weekend, and maybe we didn't get to do all that we had planned to, but it was good, really good. My physical body and my warbling psyche feels tiny bit more rested and reassured, and I am grateful.

I can already tell that this married thing is going to mean an abundance of life lessons and inward searching sagas. Perhaps some people think the point of marriage is to be happy, but I will loudly disagree. The point of marriage seems to be to become the best version of yourself, more like the person you are meant to be and created to be. Since this process of becoming yourself is almost impossible to accomplish by yourself, its good to have someone who is going legally promise to stick by you, love you, and keep you accountable. It helps if that person is also your best friend. It also helps to have perspective, close family and girlfriends you can trust, and a lot of time on your knees.

In my very newly-wedded perspective, methinks this process of two muddy rocks being constantly being rubbed against each other to become diamonds, is almost like a 4th dimension of life - new, not easy, long-term, and wholly fascinating!!!

So again, I am grateful.

wedding + 2 weeks =

now, to be PRESENT

Its true I've been really tired, but I think something is happening in my psyche that's making it think that I'm experiencing a world-altering, reality-shaking event. Yes, perhaps marriage is that, but i think its the combination of many many things. Kind of like a growing jenga tower. Each thing this past summer has been like a jenga block stacking up and I haven't been able to decompress or ground myself, like I usually like/need to. Last night, it came to a strange head. I don't really want to describe it here, but there was something very werid happening. I tried to do some of the regular things that I do to come back to earth, but none of it was working, until I found this passage and read it to myself.

The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters. He restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.


When these words are raw and medicinal, they are raw and medicinal.

good omen

both of our shoes arrived in the mail today! and its oh so exciting.

i never thought i was one to have anxiety

Good lord the amount of things that I have left to tackle is tremendous.

hotel shampoos are le terrible.

I suspect they might put hand soap or dishwasher soap in those tiny shampoo bottles. Roanoke itself wasn't bad though. Neither was the drive back, through the small towns of western virginia...almost pleasant.

The Bar Exam is done. I still feel sick to my stomach, but i'll get over it. It might help if i could sleep for 24 hours, but don't have the time just yet. I'm sitting here trying to muster up the strength to go through all my bills, start packing my entire apartment, clean, and return some emails.

What I really need is a vacation.

In other news, unrelated, but maybe not so distantly, the headlines of nytimes.com: "An Arizona Morgue Grows Crowded"



Bodies are stored in a refrigerated area of the Pima County morgue, which is running out of space as the number of immigrants found dead in deserts around Tucson has soared.

do or die

i am strangely moved by this photo. good composition, good portrait. i am also appropriately moved, and encouraged by this photo:



i framed a few cards that s. sent me for study-hup-hup and birthday cheer. wonder woman, i am not, but can pretend to be.

what type are you?

i'm not as passionate or knowledgeable about type as some folks but I do get pretty excited about it. I love words, letters, design, and I like how type gives words a personality. So along those lines: nina simone! to motion typography!





And also, check out this neat site by Pentagram to see what type you are! I'm Bifur.

edit:

speaking of fonts, check out this detail from a wedding recently featured on oncewed.com: cocktail names for a "Font Bar" i.e. Good Times New Roman, Bodoni Martini, Happy Akzidenz, Futurita, Baskerville Sour, Trade Gothic...I shiver at all the possibilities.

i will miss my apartment

Haven, launch pad, hide-away loft, cocoon: you've been good to me.

a chronicle of 10 weeks

week 1-3: hysteria, panic attacks, anxiety
week 4-5: muted pain
week 6-7: determination
week 8: utter despair
week 9: acceptance and resignation
week 10: tunnel of doom


Whether i pass or fail, this has been the hardest thing i have done. Not just the insane studying, but also the wedding planning, and balancing the rest of life and balancing sanity. This has truly been more akin to 10-week long emotional and mental marathon than I expected.

I might need to get to a place where I can shrug my shoulders and say, 'well if i fail, i'll just try again', because I'm pretty sure I am going to fail. I am the worst test-taker on the planet of this earth so I cannot be too surprised when I don't do well.

If i write anymore in this during the next two weeks it will be to vomit words of anxiety and fear. It might get ugly.

The Minimalist strikes again

See here 101 grilling ideas 'begging to be tried'. I enter into a fantasy land, where I have loads of time to try every single idea.

squint your eyes, blend

Now that I have to spend all my time preparing for the bar, I all of a sudden have emerged out from my anti-bride status into wanting to become the proactive wedding planner. NOW i want to browse wedding blogs all day long and wonder about color schemes, when I really should be learning about the Uniform Statutory Rule Against Perpetuities. I am a hazard to myself.

Certain color combinations is akin to certain food combinations. Some fit naturally, obviously, and others are more unconventional but turn out to be fabulous, unexpectedly. I've been thinking a lot about colors because: 1) wedding, 2) painting the new place, 3) its something other than memorizing law.

I love the scheme of pink and turquoise, red and turquoise, rose and slate blue, etc. with offsets of peach and green. The following are inspiring:








One of these days, I will maintain a proper blog. It will try to consistently have good ideas, true stories, and pretty pictures. Also, I will write more, in general, one of these days..

triflin

Today i wrote a song for the first time in a long time, and recorded it. When I played it back I realized that the melody of my song was pretty much the melody of Kayne's 'Gold Digger' intro.


She take my money, well I'm in need
Yeah she's a triflin' friend indeed
Oh she's a gold digger way over time
That digs on me


Back to studying.

tightly wound

My body actually feels physically unwell because of the stress. My skin is a thin sheet of glass that is stretched around my bones, and any moment now, it will shatter.

It's terrible because the smallest thing makes me feel like I am going to have a colossal meltdown and Lord knows I can't continue to function like this for the next few months. It will handicap my mind.

I am often moody and irritable with k. and i don't know if it's because a) he's being dumb and wrong, b) i'm nervous about getting married, or c) i'm stressed. probably (c) or (b) but i sometimes try to make it about (a). poor k. poor me.


My lumpy bag of bones:

Bar prep study
Wedding planning
Apt/house hunting
Job hunting
Student Loans
Wisdom tooth/infection fiasco
Budgeting and finances

i am done with law school.

Rusty the bear loves the snow. I think I would probably love the snow as much as he does if I had his fur and his hopping abilities. K. and i talked about getting water-proof gear to help us romp around with the bear. We also talked about using the bear's fur to make ourselves a coat.

Sometimes I am convinced that this life right now is exactly what I'm supposed to be doing. Other times, I'm equally convinced that I'm supposed to be doing something else. Thankfully, the positive conviction about my current life is the majority. But there is always an itch. I'm not sure if living out the possibilities of different lives in my head motivates me or depresses me. Maybe both.

Sometimes, I feel at utter peace. This means happiness, confidence, and gratitude. But these days, even the moments of peace kind of creep me out.

happy halloween?

once in a while, i supsect someone else must be living my life, because surely, it wasn't me that just lived through the entire month of october and now facing november? how was it halloween already and now we're talking about thanksgiving? what's going on?

i didn't feel like dressing up at all, so i went out and got a huge bowl and appropriate-sized candy. i told myself that i'd pass off my participation this year by staying at home and passing out candy to the miniature superheros and scaries of the neighborhood. but we got home too late that day and missed all the kids, so now there is an big orange bowl of halloween candy sitting there without proper debut.

then i saw pictures of all the people dressed up and found it kind of annoying. i'm apparently just not in the right mindset this year.

to be fair to myself, i properly did a fall activity. i dragged boyfriend and company up a mountain to pick apples. 35 dollars worth of apples, to be clear. then i thought of different things i could make and bake with the apples. i realized that this may mark the cross over from need-to-dress-up-and-party attitude to the domesticated betty who makes apple crisp from scratch at home. and i kind of liked it. (what's going on?) let's see how this plays out for the other upcoming holidays.