Another slow week, waiting for the arrival of July

Jess on June 27, 2008

I am in the worst mood for some unknown reason.  I even have reasons to be glad like Kyle is in town tonight and I have a clean room to go home to because I spent all afternoon working on it.  For some reason, there is not enough time in the day and there is too much time until the summer is over and I get to move into an apartment with Kyle who will then become my husband.  Maybe I’ll cheer up soon.

My mom and I are still getting along really well so I hope that keeps happening.  It’s nice.  Every evening when she gets home we sit outside and chat until it’s time for me to go to work.  It’s this sort of getting along that I’m really going to miss when I move away, but I’m sure we’ll keep in touch on the phone and things.

On the brightside, I no longer think that staying at home would bring on bouts of depression which is a big plus because I’ve mostly felt that way for my entire life.  There is a chance that three days without a whole lot of structured things to do is like my critical point where I feel like I have a lot to do without feeling like I have too much time to do it.  We will see, I suppose.

Kyle and I officially move on August 15.  We even have an apartment number already! Yay! 203B!  For some reason, I’ve gotten impossibly excited after figuring out what apartment will be ours.  Maybe it’s related to being able to finish the wedding programs, hah.  I still need to discuss it with him, but I think the plan is for his parents to go with us when we first head down and help us move in the furniture and basic things and then for my mom to accompany us, Logan and the wedding gifts when we head back on Labor Day after the wedding.  It should be a good time.  And I’m excited to get there.

Also, this past week I have been very good with money which is good because I am on a budget.  Go me.

Becoming the crane wife.

Jess on June 21, 2008

Welcome to my new blog at cranewife.org.  I finally bought a new domain last week and I’m excited to finally have it at a launched and bloggable state.  I also made this wordpress theme by myself so that’s pretty cool.  Turns out I’ve missed fiddling with code like html and css a lot.  And I’ve added rudimentary php understanding to my knowledge which is kind of swell.

So I figure I should update this before I get too distracted by my indiebride forums.  Anyway, my mom and I had been fighting earlier this week about the wedding.  Basically, she was upset that it was so soon and she feels like she isn’t getting to do all of the fun planning stuff.  I realized that I hadn’t actually be excluding her from planning like she thinks but actually just not doing too much planning… so the last couple of days we’ve had chats and trips to the store to get some wedding stuff taken care of.  Yesterday we thumbed through the Real Simple Weddings magazine… the only wedding magazine I purchased, btw, so that I could show her some of the things I had thought about and she could get some ideas of what I was picturing in the wedding.  Well, every chapter there are 12 or 15 pictures from an actual wedding that happened that uses some of the design elements the Real Simple people are talking about.  She enjoyed looking at those, and I liked combing through them again and we also came up with a great idea because of them.

Essentially, we both feel like we’re skipping something integral by not really feeding people at the wedding.  That’s all you need to know at the start of this story.  Anyway, so we were perusing through the magazine and came across a picture of a bunch of little folded brown bags which had little menu’s taped on them and were all set up for people to take at a picnic lunch that this couple did.  Mom was talking about how cute it was that they did that and i mentioned that it woudl be really cheap to do sandwiches for everyone and then people could eat if they wanted to and it wouldn’t be so big of a deal.  So we talked about how that would be a good idea and eventually decided that we should do pitas since those are the best vegetarian sandwiches stuffed with mediterranean goods.  The official sandwich menu is hummus/tomato/sprout pitas and falafel/yogurt sauce/lettuce pitas.  And then I want to do a grilled eggplant salad I found a recipe for and some saffron rice.  I’m really excited about this though because I was really regretting not having dinner at the wedding but we can’t really seat everyone so this way people can eat if they want to and not eat if they don’t want to and we don’t have to all do it at once.  Plus.  Falafel.  Oh em gosh.  Yum.  It’s also neat cos Kyle and my first non-date where we realized we probably both wanted to date each other was at the Jerusalem Cafe and we had most of the things we’ll be serving on a sampler platter there.  And some hookah.  There will probably not be hookah at the wedding though, despite how happy that would make people.

Today we went shopping for things we need for the wedding.  We got champagne flutes for the toasts.  They’re being engraved as we speak.  One will say “Jess/& Kyle/August 30, 2008” and one will say “Kyle/& Jess/August 30, 2008.”  That way whoevers name is on top can claim the glass throughout the toasts.  While I think it’s silly to spend that kind of money on what is essentially a cup, I agree that it will be nice to have a momento from our wedding… and we can always toss back a bottle of champagne in those glasses when we celebrate anniversaries for years to come.

We also bought our shoes for the wedding.  Mine are strappy sandals cos I decided that my patent eggplant peep-toe pumps cut my feet up too bad and hers are nice wedges that are actually peep-toe and patent but black.  They should look good with her dress and keep her from needing to hem it too drastically.  We bought  bubbles, and bubbles, and bubbles.  Mostly we got these clear wand bubbles with a “love knot” on top that we’ll use to tie blue ribbon on them…  And then we got some heart-shaped bubbles cos they were on sale and I kind of like to break things up.  We also got bells because I like ringing when the couple comes out of the church and we got these streamer poppers that I really like because they make an awesome photo of the bride and groom and they look cool and require no clean up.  So we have 14.  One for each member of the bridal party plus ushers plus two other people.  Yay.  I am so excited about them.  Also, unlike the photo I linked to, ours do not actually leave the package from which they are released so they have very little litter potential. And ours are all silver, not multi-color, which is also cool. Shiny equals awesome.

I also got Martha Stewart pom-poms because I fell in love with the ones I saw at OffbeatBride and I wanted to sort of decorate the reception site without too much trouble.  So the ballroom will now feature fourteen yellow, blue, and blue-ish green orbs.  I am so excited.

I think that’s basically all of the wedding updates I have.  Not that the updates are few, cos they are many.  I also officially feel like perhaps my mom and I are done fighting about the wedding because we mostly just chat excitedely about it.  Basically 70 days to go!  I can’t wait.  And I can’t wait to start doing everything with Kyle and getting ready for it.  He’s been in Vegas all week judging high school debate nationals and I get to pick him up tomorrow for us to spend some time together so I’m excited as ever about getting to see him.  Fantasticness.

This has been a very excited entry, lol.  I would also like to soon blog about my summer reading.  I’ve been doing well and I just finished Straight Up and Dirty by Stephanie Klein, so I’d like to reflect upon that just a smidge but that won’t happen as I’m supposed to be at work now and that’s not going to well because there isn’t a lot to do and I am unmotivated.

Here's your future

Jess on June 11, 2008

I got word on Monday evening that I am officially admitted to Texas Tech’s museum science program. Now I need to decide some things. Basically, I need to decide by December or sooner whether I want to do all of my correlative courses in history or art history or what. It’s sort of hard to say. I’d like to get into those courses quickly because I find that I tend to better mesh with historians than art historians. Although, I also really like the museum people that I’ve met so far in my internship. Of course, they’re contemporary art and not anthro/history/traditional art museum people. Also, it looks like Tech isn’t really teaching any graduate level courses in African history, or really any undergrad ones either though that doesn’t matter. Plus, they don’t have an actual art history masters program. This is fine, cos they have courses in art history at the graduate level and I don’t need enough of a course load to get a terminal degree in art history. They offer a masters in art education which requires plenty of art history courses so I can basically take whatever art history sections interest me as long as I only care about the west (this is basically true of all art history as art history is way behind regular history in realizing that something happened outside of the european tradition). So I’m thinking about taking intro to feminist thought course and then some contemporary art history. They have a graduate course on basically the art profession in its current state which I think would be super applicable for a career in museum law. It’s also possible for me to take courses through the law school on whatever strikes my fancy. I’m pretty sure that art and museum law is cross-listed in both programs which means that there isn’t necessarily a lot of courses that would be worth my while. Especially as law courses seem to be somewhat or completely impossible to transfer I think it would be better for me to just take mostly electives in art history or history or some other field rather than taking classes that I would essentially need to take twice.

I am pretty much elated to be in. It’s nice because it guarantees that I have something to do in the fall and I no longer have to say that I’m only like 95% sure I’m going. I also feel good that my official admissions decision came without any strings being pulled. Although kyle and i had offers from both Joe and the chair of the comm. department at TTU to pull strings for us, it turns out that will not be necessary because I can go to graduate school on my own merits.

I’m so excited to start school, now. I just want to get to Lubbock. We also got word that we’re good to go on the apartment down there and they are willing to pro-rate our rent for August so we don’t have to worry about paying full price to only live there half the month. Our current plan is to quit work by August 8 and then move there the following week. This should give us some wiggle room if we need to stick around for things like cable to get set up before we have to start class on the 25th and then fly back on the 27th to get married on the 30th. Oh blast.

Returning to the fold

Jess on June 8, 2008

So i’m back from the mountaintop that was the Rotary Youth Leadership Academy of 2008.  It was pretty awesome!  We got rained out of the ropes course which made me sad because that’s my favorite part and I had vowed to jump off of the pole this year, but the Hunger Banquet was facilitated better than I’ve ever seen it done before and the culture walk was also really great.  I really like those two activities and I think for the most part the kids were far more open to things and their emotions than they have been in years past.

In what turned out to be good news, Kyle and I got a phone call in the middle of the week that we could not get into the CEE session that we wanted which was a weekend in July but instead had to go to the one this weekend, thus we went. It was fantastic. We both got a whole lot out of it and we both think that it was worth a whole lot.  Basically, I think anyone considering marriage should consider going to an engagement encounter, through whichever faith… or they should even have them for atheists.  i learned so much about kyle and about myself and about us and what it means to be married this weekend.  i really feel like our relationship is really wonderfully different from when we started the weekend…  it’s much better, we love each other more, and we’re  more capable of open dialogue.  I’ve never felt so close to someone.  And I like that this relationship we’re putting so much effort into.  It’s things like this weekend that confirm to me that we’re different than our past loves.  And that he is exactly who I should be with.

my last bout of summer camp fever

Jess on May 31, 2008

Like any good director, Dave had us pick up our books with our RYLA schedules about a week before school got out.  Included is a lot of great descriptions of what goes on at RYLA and what he has tediously planned over the course of the last year.  Like any good counselor, tonight I opened my book and read it cover to cover.  I say this in jest partially cos I’m probably one of about 10% of counselors who did this and also because if I were really a good counselor I would have done it when I got the book.  Instead, I was impressed when i picked up the book from the office only a day or so after it was announced that they were available there.  It should be noted this only occured because I had a meeting in the office.  I opened it, noticed he got the dates wrong on the schedule, and made fun of him for that a few nights later.  Then I put the book in a sack in Kyle’s car.  When Kyle and I got back from Lubbock, he told me to take my sack with me.  I then sat it in a chair until Wednesday when i tried to shove it in my closet and found it too full to fit into one of my cubbies.  So, logically, I went through the sack to figure out if i could rearrange it to shove it into the cubby and forget about it for a long while.  I found the notebook for RYLA and though “Oh, i’ll need that in a few days.”  And I set it on my dresser.  After reading it basically cover to cover tonight, I’m so excited for RYLA.  People seem to think I’m crazy for doing something affiliated with college now that I’ve graduated, but I just can’t explain what  fun I’ve had the past few years at RYLA and how much I feel like I missed out on something by being sick all through it last year.  RYLA is simply awesome.  And I have very high expectations for it again this year.

In addition to RYLA being exciting, summer has been pretty great though so stressful trying to plan a move and a wedding and finishing up my last summer at work and all of those things.  I have been reading more, though, which was basically my goal.  I finished Xenocide last week.  I was slightly disappointed by the ending.  Maybe it was just too fiction and not enough science for my liking, or maybe I just don’t quite get the need to start a twist in the series this late in the third book.  It’s very good though.  We also listened to about half of Choke by Chuck Palahniuk on the drive to Lubbock and back.  I’d forgotten how much I liked it when I read it, and most of the subject matter, so it was a good refresher.  Now I’m working on Naked by David Sedaris.  He is fantastic.

I'm a college graduate.

Jess on May 18, 2008

Weird, eh?  I guess it’s more significant than is registering with me, and it will be weird to not be at Washburn most of the time anymore.  I only cried when Bearman hugged me coming out of the tunnel of faculty and said “Congratulations, Jess.”  That one pretty much did it for me.  Sad times.  But mostly, I’m just super glad to be done and get moving on with the rest of my life.  I’ve got some good plans and big dreams.

Also, I started my internship the other day and it is awesome.  Completely.  I love it.  I could work in museums for my whole life, judging from the first day. However, I’m somewhat concerned that at some age you outgrow being a hipster and have to work in a classical art museum instead of a contemporary one.  No fun.

Pop culture has been happening

Jess on April 30, 2008

So I’m saying that I have a couple goals this summer and one is to read. A lot. I want to read more than I drive, basically, more than I watch tv that I don’t even like. I want to spend just one summer with no concern for what came before or what comes after it tearing through novels like I did when I was fifteen. So, keeping with the traditions of my fifteen-year-old self, it is time to craft a summer reading list. More will be added at will.

Xenocide by Orson Scott Card
Barbie’s Queer Accessories by Erica Rand
Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by John Gottman
Why Marriages Succeed or Fail: And How You Can Make Yours Last by John Gottman
… the other book about marriage that Jenny sent me
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran
Million Little Pieces by James Frey
Never Again by Flora Nwapa
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Marquez
Love in the Time of Cholera by Marquez
, et cetera

We are made to bleed, and scab and heal and bleed again

Jess on April 22, 2008

i don’t know who you were expecting/probably some bitch who does not budge/with eyes the size of snow/i may get pissed off sometimes/but you seem like the type to hold a grudge/and in the end, i just let go.

Last night, my name was mentioned in an ad-hom attack against Kyle by someone who I’ve always given the benefit-of-the-doubt in situations despite the theories i hear to the contrary about what is said about me when i’m not around. Specifically, it was alluded to that I cannot even carry Kyle through the rest of our lives because I failed to get into grad school. Pretty much this started the melancholy, woe-is-me I’m not in grad school funk that I think everyone was expecting. But really, it’s not that bad. There are just some things I don’t really talk about because I don’t like to bring my personal world into the blogosphere quite the same as I used to. But the fact is, i don’t write things down except on the internet. And the fact is that now that my so-called failure has been broadcast to a community where I still like most of the people I’ve met through it, I feel like I should maybe go into a bit more detail about how I actually feel about it.

Not getting into grad school is sort of a sticky subject. Stickier because I really do have mixed feelings on the deal. For one, I don’t like it when I decide someone should let me do something and they disagree. For another, I think the absolute best thing for me next year is to take a year off, spend some time adjusting to the real world and considering what it is that I have a life-long passion for. I don’t think I’ve day-dreamed about what I want to do with my life since I was a very littler girl. “Well, I could do this, or this, or this” is so liberating to think about. Now that I’m doing it I feel a great sense of relief that I have the ability to do it because I never really have before. After spending a summer thinking about what I wanted to do I decided on African History so I could further pursue the apes thing and then Joe told me I was “too fickle to follow” to grad school and so that flipped my stubborn switch and even after i wasn’t dating him and didn’t have to prove anything to him, I felt like I needed to prove to myself that I could stick to something. So that’s what I stuck to.

And maybe I was right. I think my statement of purpose was purposeful. I think i have a vision and an idea of what I want to do…. but sometimes I don’t know quite where I fit in the realm of African History. Sometimes I feel like just another white girl trying to appropriate agency on Africans. It’s harder because I really like Pan-African movements. So in my utopia, I’d be out of a field of study. But then, history isn’t about studying what you are, necessarily. Bearman always says that History is a dialogue among historians which is true, it’s all a debate and a discussion about what’s been done and how we interpret those events… but I think historians are just really curious about their own identity and what it means to be human. Or at least, I think that’s one of the reasons I’m interested in it. I’m interested in African history specifically because I think Western feminism has a lot to learn from gender roles in Africa. It’s interesting to me both how societies have divided themselves and how Western women have sought out to wreck those existing systems and how now women’s standing is seen as so important to economic development in Africa. I also want to be an activist and I think the Great Apes Project lacks an historian in their approach to African history. So there is that. I have a passion for history and I have a passion for African history because I think more than any other field it allows me to voice my opinions. There are so many reasons why I want to be an Africanist historian that really it doesn’t bother me too much that sometimes I feel a little like I don’t know where I fit in. I also think I would feel the same way if I was an historian of Ancient Rome or something except the really passionately interested in it part. Cos I’m most certainly not passionately interested in Ancient Roman history.

But I don’t want to struggle with the difficulty of a modern, academic job search while not knowing if I really fit in. I don’t want to uproot Kyle and I and get somewhere and decide it’s not for me. And so I think a year off is in order. And further, I think that even if I just feel that way about maybe burning out on history or African history is a ridiculous assertion that comes out of my defensiveness and need to justify to myself, or more my feeling that i should justify to others that it’s okay that i didn’t get in. But I’ll figure that out in a year off as well.

I would also like to experience making money, just once. I want to spend time with Kyle without thinking about what homework I have due the next day. I am going to read. I am developing a book list of things that I want to read and I am going to read them because that is what I enjoy doing. And I haven’t had a booklist since I graduated high school… but I used to have a long one. Take the length of your netflix que and multiply or divide depending on the season and you have my booklist. I read so many wonderful and interesting things! I discovered so many worlds I didn’t know and how cool was that? I miss it desperately. And I’m going to do it again. And maybe next time when I get into higher education I won’t stop doing it.

To be honest, I’m excited for my gap year. It’s just hard to talk about. I get a little embarassed and feel like I did something wrong or let someone (myself) down by not applying to more schools… by not applying to what would have been a surefire safety school. By not running just one more edit on my rough draft or not losing my jump drive with my better hook on it or whatever. Writing a longer statement of purpose for Iowa or Boston who didn’t specify how long it should be. Talking to professors in the department and catering my applications more. There are so many things I could have done differently but sometimes it doesn’t matter. And I’m just fine. And more than that I know I’m going to be just fine.

I don’t have to fit into a little box where I can say “i am an historian” and have that mean something. I wrote such a long entry last December about how I just wanted to be a debater, a historian, a Catholic and a poet. But I’ve found that when I lose those things, I don’t lose who I am. I’m not less of a person because I no-longer debate or am not going to grad school in history in 2008-2009. I’m still me. And I adapt and I evolve and I change. And I choose more worthwhile friendships.

squalor victoria

Jess on April 17, 2008

Rarely do I tell stories of semi-personal embarassment over the internet, I delight in them because they make me happy but I don’t often share them because I only blog in these weird moments of “oh i should update the world” that tend to overlook the little miniscule things. But it’s spring and miniscule is hip so here’s a fun story from my life of late. For those of you keeping track of my psychological development, this one tells you two things. 1) I’m still pretty bad at telling stories. 2) I’m a lot more relaxed than I was when you started paying attention.

The story begins with a clean closet and ends with a post on Bethany’s facebook wall that goes like this:

Jess wrote
at 6:12pm
Inventory of things in my closet:
1. Blue bookbag containing graduation garb and notebook with invitation list to wedding.

Should I call WUPO and let them know the case is closed?

Approximately two weeks ago on a Monday (so one and a half weeks, whatever) I went to school on a Monday to turn some things in for Prasch, ie my thesis, and do some printing in the library. I showed up early because it was a Monday which means Mondays at Mabee and I wanted some of the good discussion and free pizza. So I had a chat and then I went over to the computer and printed my things and then I went to class and I handed it in and discussed how far along we all were on our thesises and then I headed home for the day or maybe to work or somewhere else. The next Wednesday I was getting ready to go to class and went to put my laptop in my bookbag to find my backpack missing. I figured I’d probably just left it in the car because I know I didn’t take my laptop to class on Monday so there was no real reason to warrant bringing it in the house. I look around my room for it in it’s usual haunts (my chair, my couch, wherever) So I take my tote bag to campus with my laptop in tow and call it a good day.

For the next week I think about things that could be in that bag to decide if it’s worth finding. The worst thing that I’m losing is a list of invitees to the wedding. And about 40 sheets of paper that say some combination of Jessica Lynn MyLast and HisLast all mashed together like I’m somehow going to figure out which name combo fits best if I write it over and over. So I decided it’s replacable and not that big of a deal and I mention off hand that I should probably look for it but I never really do. Meanwhile I contemplate cutting the wedding guest list down to about 50 anyway so it wouldn’t really matter if we had the old list.

Flash to today. I wake up and in a montage that took place before I opened my eyes realized that all my graduation regalia is in that bookbag. so i sort of need it or else I’m going to have to pay 24 dollars again, and I don’t want to pay 24 dollars again. Thus, Bethany and I go on a mission (she was going to Morgan and I tagged along) to find it. We went by the police department, after watching some ducks on campus for probably an eery amount of time, and filed a report. The funny part was that they asked when I lost the bookbag. Answer: “I don’t know, about two weeks ago?”

I came home after no luck on campus and took a nap and then I looked for the bookbag in my room again, and there it was, hanging out in my closet. Which I cleaned a few days before it got lost. Apparently the little guy just found a niche and didn’t leave.