Next Steps

Today we signed the agreement with the property management company to rent out our house. I initialed thrice and put my signature at the end, alongside my husband’s. It’s really real now: we are leaving our little house and moving far, far away. Even if we were to back out of the trip itself, we would have to find somewhere else to live. How strange.

The strangest part, however, was when the agent asked me somewhat sheepishly if we were married. Not knowing whether we were legally married or just living in sin, she had drawn up two agreements, one with  my husband on it and the other with both of our names. By reflex, I almost told her to use the one with his name on it, because in my mind, he is still the owner of this house. He is kind enough to let me live here, but even after almost two years, it still hasn’t completely sunk in that, by law, I am a co-owner of a house.

Last year’s garden project and this summer’s manic bout of painting, scrubbing, building, etc, has certainly made it sink in a lot faster. I am putting all my heart and energy into this house, ironically just as we’re getting ready to leave it. But to this date, nothing has made me feel more like a homeowner than signing a rental agreement to let someone else live here for a year. Isn’t it strange how that happens? You don’t realize how much somewhere is home until you leave. Now someone else will get to spend a whole year sitting on this lovely patio that we just finished a few weeks ago:

But that is life, and we will come back to it. In the meantime, here’s some more photos from today’s door painting efforts:

Ahhh lovely.

And what do we have behind door #2???

Behind Door #1…

Bailey wants to get in on the painting action.

What kind of Independence is this???

This is how we spent our 4th of July. Woohoo! Click on each photo to see a larger version.

Gabe installing sheetrock in the bathroom.

Why use a putty knife when you’ve got yer hands? Finger-painting with spackle is FUN.

A boy and his power toys, er, tools.

We have a door! First one to go up, this one on the office.

Bailey: not a fan of all the noise.

The ever-growing pile of discards in the guest room. (Sorry to all guests visiting this summer!)

And the other side… garage sale anyone?

Scrubbing the walls prior to painting. (Sorry for the fuzziness, camera phone is all we had.)

Balancing Act

Part & parcel of entering the gray area I described in my last post is the daily balancing act between plans for what’s to come and current responsibilities (both enjoyable and mundane), not letting either one overwhelm the other. It’s hard enough to do this in everyday life, but with a big move or trip coming up, it becomes ten times harder.

Almost every day, I resent my work for keeping me from doing the things in the house that I need to do. At the same time, I resent what I need to do on the house for keeping me from working, and I resent both of them for preventing me from spending time with the friends and family I will be leaving behind. I wish I could structure my life into focusing on one thing at a time for an extended period of time — now is when I work, now is when I pack, now is when I relax and play. But instead, I have to find a balance between the three: fitting in a small moving task at the end of my work day when all I want to do is relax; scheduling breakfast with visiting friends before doing a half-day’s work, then meeting up with them again for dinner; or working on the 4th of July so that I can devote time to a dear childhood friend staying with us next weekend.

Life is always a balancing act, I know. Most of the time we do it effortlessly, not really thinking about the tradeoffs and compromises we make every day. But sometimes, there is something that tips the scales just enough to make keeping everything up in the air just a little bit more difficult, and you become conscious of the amount of effort it all takes. The key is to not let myself get overwhelmed at any point during the process, and just put one foot in front of the other, over and over again, til finally it’s all done and the big day is here.

Detachment

In a little under two months, we move to Lisbon, Portugal, via a month in England with family. The tickets are bought, temporary housing arranged, and next week we meet with the property management person to discuss renting out our house.

Every time I get in the car, go to the gym, or go on a walk, I hit “play” on my iPod and am reminded all over again what an agonizingly, moronically slow process it is to learn another language, one that requires sounding like a three-year-old for a ridiculously long time until suddenly one day it clicks, and you finally know how to ask for more than the simplest of directions.

I spent a half hour yesterday being bounced back and forth between the British consulate’s automated phone system and website in pursuit of a simple answer: where do I send our marriage certificate to prove that my husband is in fact married to me, a British citizen, and thus deserving of a residency card in Portugal without putting us through the lengthy process of getting a long-term visa?

In other words, even though it’s still almost two months til we physically leave, each day takes me one step further away from our lives here. I recognize the pattern from having traveled and lived abroad in the past — each detail I arrange, each thing I check off my list, moves move further into the no-man’s-land between one destination and the next.

In order to make the separation easier when it comes, I begin distancing myself long before the day of departure, eventually becoming a tourist in my own life. Suddenly everything seems familiar and yet somehow out of place, as if I’m a visitor from a foreign land. I try to savor every detail of my world, my house, my life, but still it slips away as soon as I grasp it, and soon it will be gone, replaced by new adventures and places, forever changed when I return.

Travel and moving are always like this for me — I don’t move my possessions as much as I transfer my soul. Right now, I’m entering the gray area between one place and the next, but hopefully I will reemerge in the fall to find a beautiful, sunny city full of strange, familiar things awaiting me on the other side.

Anorexia… or Bacteria?

The other day, my husband sent me an article from Elle magazine last spring about a girl who suddenly lost a large percentage of her body weight. It describes her journey as she adjusts to her new body and struggles with her own and other people’s reactions, which started with her euphoria over being considered conventionally beautiful and ended up with her feeling ugly and guilty over something that was completely out of her control. Turns out that she had a bacterial organism she’d picked up in Belize, but no one (including her doctor) knew that. Instead, everyone assumed she had an eating disorder.

As my husband knew it would, this article really resonated with me. I’ve discussed the subject of my weight loss here before, but she did so in a much more in-depth and sophisticated way. To quote:

People apparently feel it’s appropriate to comment on your weight if it falls toward the low end of the scale. It’s assumed that, as the saying goes, one can never be too thin; telling someone she’s too skinny is like telling her she’s too smart. But that’s not how it felt: It was like being constantly reminded of how sickly I looked. And of course, I hardly need to add that had I instead been gaining weight, not a soul would have dared ask about my dietary habits.

Amen, sister! Now that I have been thin for a couple of years, I get less comments as people get used to the way I look now. But I had to deal with the same questions and comments all over again at my high school reunion last month. One person that I knew all the way through junior high and high school actually drew me aside and asked with concern, “OK I’m worried about you. What did you do???” Um, it’s called exercise and diet, and combining the two to put my metabolism on overdrive. Nothing to see here, move along. I know they are well-meaning, but really — is it appropriate? I think not. And would you say that if I’d gained a lot of weight? I also think not.

I also liked the author’s perspective on men’s attitude towards her new body:

Many men, I quickly learned, really do like frighteningly lean women, whatever they may claim to the contrary. As an average, medium-size young woman, I was unremarkable, innocuous. As a skinny slip of a thing, I was something of a sensation.

It is so true. I got a lot of looks when I was a curvaceous size 14, but now that I’m a 4, it’s a whole different ballgame. Disgustingly so. Once again I was newly reminded of this change at my reunion. Boys who wouldn’t give me the time of day in high school were now ogling me from across the room. One guy, who I was actually friends with in high school, came up to me at the end of the night and said, “So you’re the hot girl standing over here! We’ve all been wondering who you were.” Hey, at least he was honest — I had to give him that much at least.

I can’t imagine how much worse this would all be if I hadn’t had any choice over why I look the way I do. I worked hard to lose the weight that I have, and continue to work hard to keep it off. But the thought of having that kind of weight loss happen completely outside of my control — and then having people judge me for it — is frightening. I’m just glad this woman was brave enough to write about her story, and to share her observations about society and its crazy standards of beauty in such a humorous and human way.

A Tiny Rant: Gender Stereotypes in Marketing

In my morning reading, I came across a link to an advertising video that has recently gone viral, i.e. been sent from one person to the other because they find it funny, or they identify with it, or whatever. This was in the context of its marketing purposes, and various blogs were dissecting it to figure out just how it became viral.

All marketing genius aside, the video quite frankly pissed me off. I’m not going to do it the dignity of linking to it here, because I’d only be contributing to the spread of the virus. And I don’t think that a piece of advertising that not only plays on gender stereotypes but expects to capitalize on them should reach one more person than it otherwise should.

So — a recap instead. The basic premise of the video is that a man has bought his wife a vacuum cleaner for their anniversary. She is dissatisfied, so she takes him and puts him in a small house where dogs live. (I’m not even going to let search engines tag this post by naming the video.)

This small house turns out to be an underground bunker, filled with men folding laundry, listening to recordings of women saying things they should be doing right instead of giving their partners horrific gifts, like a vacuum cleaner or — gasp! — a thigh master. The men can only get out when a review board of women says they can. So far, the only one to successfully win free of his punishment is someone who apparently figured out that he needed to buy his wife a diamond necklace (this is the only place in the whole video that any actual product placement appears).

I really don’t even know where to start on this one. The poor protagonist is a bewildered, well-meaning young man, who actually thought that buying a nice vacuum cleaner was a great gift for their anniverary.

His shrewish, apparently selfish and domineering wife disagrees and punishes him, along with all the other bumbling, stupid husbands who have had the misfortune of buying mistaken gifts for their loved ones. Hello? Do you know of any women who are actually like that? I have at least one friend that I can think of who would be absolutely overjoyed to have a nice vacuum as a present.

Have we come so far as a society that now it’s OK for us to turn gender stereotypes around and ridicule men in this way? Or denigrate women, for that matter? Are we really that materalistic and shallow that we expect diamond necklaces for every gift?

Imagine an ad where the roles were reversed… where the woman was trying to please the man, and was “punished” for it by being locked in an underground room with all the other unsatisfactory women. Do you think that kind of video would go viral? No it certainly would not. I can guarantee that no women would send it to each other saying, “Oh you know how this feels!” Or men would post it on their Facebook pages saying, “If only we could really do this!” It would be called outrageous, a throwback to the bad old days before feminism, and would probably be pulled from the internet within hours.

This ad made me ashamed to be a woman, that anyone would actually think we could be so shallow and demanding. It made me ashamed to work in marketing, that anyone can think that playing on such blatant stereotypes would be appealing enough to sell their products. And most of all, it makes me ashamed to be a member of the internet community, one where enough people did find this video amusing to make it “go viral” — an almost impossible feat that every marketer is desperately trying to achieve for their message.

Seriously people. You should be ashamed.

Silence and Happiness

I know they say never to apologize for not posting. But I’m going to break that rule, because there are a couple of people who read my blog regularly — or used to! — and they have mentioned the lack of new material. So to you three people (you know who you are), I’m sorry.

My apology is also somewhat relevant to the post itself. See, I haven’t been writing because for the past month or so, I’ve been processing in private. And yes, there is still such a thing in this world of constant internet access, status updates, blogs, and Tweets. There are still some things that just can’t be put into words, some matters so personal that the world does not have the right to view them on display.

Somehow, in the midst of all this processing, I have stumbled upon happiness. I didn’t realize that I had achieved this exalted state until I went to my high school reunion a couple weeks ago. I felt miserably uncomfortable there, and seeing the popular girls in the bathroom made me feel like I was sixteen all over again. And yet afterward I heard from several people who all commented on how happy I looked. This struck me as extremely odd — this is one of the hardest times of my life. Why would relative strangers describe me as happy? I’m really not a good enough liar to fake it, so the only other explanation must be the simple, shocking truth: could it be that I am actually happy?

I thought about it, and I realized… yes, I am happy. What a strange thing to discover. And I don’t mean happiness in the way I did when I was younger, and I don’t mean happiness the way that Hollywood and many of my friends conceive of the beast. I mean true contentedness, a willingness to accept that life is neither perfect nor terrible, but it is a little bit of both.

The irony of it, of course, is that my life needed to be truly terrible for an extended period of time for me to realize this kind of happiness. At this point, anything that doesn’t crush me is a good thing, and can be overcome with time.

With this recognition has come peace, and yes, happiness. For the first time in as long as I can remember, perhaps since my childhood, I am on a more or less even keel. My days are pretty much the same from one to the next, and they are filled entirely with the people I love and the things I love to do. Every day is full of deep tragedy and deep joy, and in between, I find balance.

My life is simple, small, and utterly beautiful. And yes, I am — curiously enough — happy.

Marriage, Year One.

Yesterday officially marked our first year of marriage. Some random, mostly unrelated thoughts on the topic are as follows. Enjoy.

• I enjoy being married far more than I did getting married. Similarly, it turns out I’m a much bigger fan of anniversaries than weddings. I very much enjoyed skipping straight to the vacation and relaxing without all the hullaballoo beforehand.
• Love, and marriage with it, are not easy. But they are massively rewarding. Duh, I know, but I have talked to a lot of people who actually don’t get this concept.
• Being married does not mean you are exempt from loneliness. There are some paths your spouse just can’t walk with you. Dammit.
• I enjoy marriage. I love being married. And at the risk of politicizing a very personal post (isn’t the personal always political?), I don’t think that anyone should be denied that joy, for any reason. Ever.
• I’m still not used to the fact that I of all people am married. In fact, I’m still amazed that I did not turn out to be the last unmarried person I know. I’m not sure if I’ll ever get used to it, really.

That’s it, for now. This year has flown by… seems like only yesterday we were huddled in our B&B in Half Moon Bay, stunned and recovering. Here’s to year two!

Of Love, and Other Teenage Pursuits

With my first wedding anniversary approaching next week (hard to believe!), I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the nature of love, both filial and spousal. Love in all forms is so much more complicated than I ever thought it would be… and so much harder.

Into the midst of all this came Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series. I’d been holding out, adamantly not wanting to join the club, but when my mom gave me the first book last week, I couldn’t say no. Just like the main character and her paranormal paramour, I knew it was trouble, I knew it could cost me my life (or at least a few days’ productivity), and yet try as I might, I just couldn’t put it down. I literally had to stop myself from picking it up during the daytime, because I knew that I’d blink and hours would have gone by with no work done.

Instead I sacrificed sleep, staying up way past my bed time to read just that one extra chapter, OK maybe two… or three…! When I allowed myself to open it back up last night and read the final hundred pages, I actually got a physical thrill of excitement. In other words, I was acting just like the teenage girls at whom these books are aimed. I haven’t had a book affect me like that, well, since I was a teenager.

All I can say is — thank GOD this series was not around ten years ago! This book was everything an awkward, quiet, bookish girl longs for in life: the most gorgeous guy in school suddenly falls in love with her, seeing a beauty in her that she had never been aware of, etc. I was addicted to sci fi and fantasy as a teen, so the vampire bit would have been an added bonus. If you’d thrown in a horse or a dragon or two, I would’ve never wanted to leave home. (Yes, I was that geeky. Deal with it.)

But as much as I shamefacedly loved this book, at the same time I also resented it. Out of curiosity, after finishing it I went onto Facebook and searched for the name of the main character’s vampiric love interest. The first group I found basically stated that his ravishing good looks and romance had forever ruined their potential for love with all normal, human men. I thought it was funny, until I realized that the group had almost 40,000 members. Holy crap. That is a lot of people! And among those people are probably a very high number of young girls, teenagers, who truly think that what they read about in that book is love.

Being the sheltered and late-blooming teen that I was, I undoubtedly would have thought the same thing. I too had crazy, romantic ideas about love, ideals that one mortal man could never hope to fulfill. As a result, I looked for (and unfortunately found) love in all the wrong places, until one day I got lucky and stumbled upon the real thing.

Don’t get me wrong — I think it’s great that teens are reading in a time of high-speed media interactions. I also think the main character is a very appealing one, and I admire Meyer’s ability to portray a heart-racing love story while keeping it completely PG.

That said, I worry about what stories like these are telling our girls about love. It makes me think of the moment in the Sex and the City movie where Carrie tries to tell the little girl that Cinderella isn’t real. There is no prince in shining armor, there is no hottie vampire who considers you to be his soul mate. There are just men, sometimes boys, who can be flawed and arrogant and sweet and stupid and very very human.

Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe part of what made me like this book so much was that it reminded me of what it was like to dream about Prince Charming Vampire Man, of a day when that kind of impossibly perfect love was still possible, before eight years of painful, stupid, senseless experience showed me otherwise.

Or maybe I’m reading way too much into all this (just for a change!) and I should just be glad that I read a fantastically entertaining book… and that there are still three more to go.

Thoughts on Glass Ceilings

I just read part of an article in Newsweek about a “leadership lid” for women. Sarah Palin notwithstanding, women are still not making it into the upper echelon of business, law, banking, you name it. Every time I read about these inequalities, it just makes me wonder: what if they’re not there because they don’t want to be? Isn’t it unfair to hold women up to a measure of success as created and defined by men — and then find them lacking?

I am a smart, capable woman. I probably could have gone far in business, academia, perhaps even law. Instead, I chose to go far within myself, putting my family first and my career second. I’m pretty sure my mom made the same choice around my age, and it has taken her to heights of success that she could not have imagined at that time in her life. But it’s true, she’s not the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Nor do I think she would want to be. Instead, she has built a great career and raised two children to adulthood, who are now mostly sane and well-balanced individuals in their own right. And, unlike certain high-powered women currently in the political spotlight, neither of us had teenage pregnancies (or foisted them on others, in the case of my brother).

My mother is and has always been a wife and mother first, career woman second. Yes, that does mean she doesn’t have a private yacht, a closet full of Armani, or her face on the cover of magazines. But I’m pretty sure that’s OK with her. I have made and will continue to make similar choices, choices that allow me to put the intangibles before tangible career success. This does not mean that I am lacking in ambition, talent, or intelligence. It simply means that my intelligence lies elsewhere, and you can’t measure in the same concrete way as say a successful politician or the partner of a prestigious law firm.

I realize that I’m coming off as extremely sexist. Don’t get me wrong — of course I think women should have equal opportunities, and it’s a shame that institutionalized sexism can still keep women from attaining all that they are capable of doing. But when examining the evidence for claims like these, I think it often goes overlooked that women are different, biologically and emotionally. They have different goals and priorities than men do, and they make vastly different choices. Measuring them by the Fortune 500 rubric and then saying they don’t add up only devalues the choices and contributions that they do make on a daily basis.

Trust me — I’m pretty sure that women can do just about anything they put their minds to. So if they still aren’t as prevalent in the upper ranks of leadership, even in this day and age, then that makes me pretty damn sure that their minds might be elsewhere.