I Know It's Not P.C., but I Still Like the Word "Gypsy"

It's moving time again around these parts, for reasons including the furious upstairs urination detailed previously. Although we're not moving until May 1st, I'm spending today, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday cleaning and packing. What's that you say? Today is only April 14th? Oh yes, but unfortunately I planned my epic Texas trip back when we were blissfully unaware of the impending rent increase that would necessitate a move. That means I'll be leaving for Texas April 21st, and I won't be back until May 10th. And that leaves Bobby to move us, by himself (again, might I add, since he moved all of our things up here a month before I left Texas to come join him last year).

That guilt for not pulling my weight is precisely why I'm deep cleaning and packing over the next four days. My goal is to have everything done so that all Bobby has to do is physically move our boxes from Point A Pee Screamer Station to Point B Glorious New Apartment Station. Then, when I get back from Texas, I'll unpack everything, organize and clean the new place, and generally try and divvy up the moving responsibilities in a fair way. Last year I was in charge of unpacking as well, so in the grand scheme of things I guess it kind of does work out pretty evenly. Packing, cleaning for move out, and unpacking is at least equal to packing and moving, right? Let's just say it is. Bobby is flying to Texas on May 6th to go to a birthday and wedding, and then drive back with me. So if he can just make it through 5 days of eating out and living amongst a collection of cardboard friends, this move should go as smoothly as possible.

The only unfortunate thing is that my friend, Arielle, is coming in on Monday, to spend 3 days here before we trek down to Texas. I do wish that she was coming to our comfy, homey apartment, and not a stripped bare, boxed up collection of rooms, but I've always loved that empty feeling of a boxed up apartment ready for a move, so maybe she will, too. Hopefully we'll be out of the house and so busy gallivanting between Denver, Boulder, and here that we won't have time to notice anyway. But right now, I have a propitious, mid April snow storm going on outside. It's the perfect background to a day that I had planned to spend inside anyway, packing and cleaning and then doing reading and classwork, so I'm going to get to it.

A Decision

National Geographic contacted Bobby's mother yesterday morning, confirming what we already suspected- the trip to Egypt/Jordan is canceled. They are now working to find a replacement trip during the same timeline. Bobby and I had just assumed we would wait until they resumed the Egypt/Jordan expedition, but a lot of factors make it more sensible to still go during the same timeline. Most importantly, his sister and brother-in-law have 3 young children, and they had already taken off of work and found someone to care for their kids. Plus we had all been planning on seeing one another now, and we were all looking forward to getting together. A tentative replacement is another National Geographic tour to Peru and the Galapagos islands, but there are a few kinks to work out and we're not sure if we can join that expedition.

Right now Bobby and I are just waiting to hear where we're going and when we're leaving, and then we'll be headed off to meet up with his family somewhere in the world :) I can't wait to see them and it's kind of fun that we might not know where we're going until a day or two before. As long as we're all together it will be a good time, wherever we may end up!

Do You Have a Light?

Even though we're almost certainly not leaving for Jordan and Egypt on February 1st as planned, we know that if the trip is canceled it will be rescheduled and we still have some things on our "to get for the trip" list. So we decided to go ahead and visit REI- our favorite store- to get the flashlights we will (eventually) need to see in the tombs in Egypt. After dithering back and forth for a bit we decided to go ultra geeky so that we could get a multi-purpose light. So, instead of flashlights, we left REI with headlamps my friends- 60 lumens, with a rechargeable battery or the option of running off of normal batteries. We figured this would keep our hands free for walking in dark, cramped tombs, plus we both needed headlamps anyway for riding our bikes at night, and they'll be useful for hiking and camping. Naturally we tried them out as soon as we got home.
Bobby is *super* excited about wearing a flashlight on a strap around his head, you would be able to tell if you could see his face...
I'm impressed, which you'd be able to tell if you could see *my* face. That ghostly red light behind me is the only light on in the whole house- the warm glow from Bobby's computer.

Now that we have headlamps I think it's time to start planning out a long distance biking/camping trip. Maybe that will tide us over until we are cleared to go on our original trip?

In Which I Use Copious Amounts of Text to Explore My Quarter Life Crisis

Somewhere in New Mexico, September 2009

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what to do next. Or, I suppose, what to do *now*. In August of 09 I was laid off, having just made my last monthly payment to pay off all my debt in this world, save some student loans. I had some money in savings. I had no mortgage to hold me in one place, and no more outrageous monthly debt payments that required me to take the highest paying job I could find, regardless of whether it was anything I was even remotely interested in. I had no children, nor even any pets, so I was only responsible for taking care of myself, which allowed for much more creativity and flexibility in where I lived, and furthermore how I lived- couch surfing, for example, is much easier solo than with, say, 2 cats, a dog, and a 4 year old in tow. I was young and healthy, so despite being unemployed I was able to get fair health insurance for about $100 a month. So I spent the last semester of school writing my thesis, furiously applying for jobs, and taking advantage of my unemployed status by moving to California to live in Hollywood with my good friend Jess. I bookended my California stay with a 3 week long road trip to get there in the first place, and wrapped it up with an Amtrak ride from L.A. to Seattle, then back down to San Francisco, then back to L.A. to meet up with Bobby and road trip back home to Texas in time for Thanksgiving and a final edit of my thesis. When I graduated in December of 09 with my hard earned masters degree- until my unemployment I had worked full time and gone to school full time- I was finally closing in on a job lead. It was not my dream job, but a very good paying job that would allow me to live in my studio apartment downtown, 4 miles from work, and pay off my student loans while saving to leave the country (I’d been planning a one to two year jaunt that had been scheduled to begin May 2010, but would now be pushed back to May 2011). After several interviews over two months I landed the job in February, and started training in March. And halfway through March? Bobby got a job in Colorado…that started in two weeks. Since you all know I’m living in Colorado now it’s not hard to know that I chose to move to Colorado with Bobby. Our original plan was that we’d be here one year. I looked for jobs (and am still looking for jobs) but our college town is rather small and jobs are hard to come by. So, I took on the two internships I’m currently working through, as well as the volunteer shifts with the no-kill shelter, plus online classes towards a post-grad certificate. I assumed I’d keep myself busy this year, and come May 2011 we’d leave the country...

But now? We’re kind of re-thinking that plan. Bobby has a very good job with a tech company, doing all sorts of crazy computer science software development things that I’m pretty sure are witchcraft, and whatever magic he’s doing with programs makes him very happy. It seems foolish, in this terrible economy, to exit the job market without another job in hand. Unfortunately his job is not work from home friendly at the moment, so that isn’t an option. All of this led to us hanging out in the hot tub for about two hours a week ago, talking about potentially changing our “one year in Colorado” plan. Now, it looks like we’ll be here another year. Which leaves Bobby in the exact same position, working for the same company, good to go and happy about it. And I’m happy for him. But as for me? Interning and volunteering keep me busy, but I’m used to being VERY busy. I mean, I’m the girl that took 4 grad classes while working full time, serving as the Democratic Precinct chair in Dallas, campaigning weekends for Obama, and dating 3 or 4 boys at once while going to the gym 3 times a week and also somehow managing to do things like shower and eat and sleep sometimes. I thrive on busy. And while this year I’ve been clocking around 30 to 40 hours a week between my internships, volunteer duties, class work, and housework/cleaning/errands, I miss being breakneck, productive, I-am-a-mistress-of-productivity watch me work and bow in awe at my organizational skills kind of busy. I get so much more done the more I have to do.

So, the point of this insanely long navel gazing post is that I’m now wondering what I need to do next year. When we were just going to be here for one year before skipping off to back pack through Europe and pick fruit on organic farms in exchange for room and board, a “just for now to make money” job was fine. But bordering on two years seems to be presenting itself as an opportunity to start making some grown-up choices about future careers. I find myself perusing the course listings at the local university to see what kind of a “this is what I am, so hire me” degree I can get. Mostly, I’m trying to get licensed as a teacher. I would always say- back when my leave the country plan was May 2010, before the unemployment spell that set it back a year- that I wished I had a teaching degree before I left the country, because then I could teach at international schools, instead of just teaching English. I actually really enjoyed teaching English, but most of what I didn’t enjoy was directly related to not speaking the same language as my students, and not being able to build a rapport with them very easily as a result. If I was, say, teaching social studies in Germany at an international school like my friend did, most of my struggles with teaching would be gone. Not that teaching is ever going to be easy! I’ve had a manual labor job, driving a forklift for 6 days a week, sometimes up to 12 hours a day in Kansas summer heat, and I’ve worked long shifts as a waitress under a despotic boss who didn’t understand things like breaks and lunch time, yet teaching left me more exhausted most days than either of those jobs. But it was a good exhausted.

So right now I’m spending hours researching Colorado requirements, and tests, and costs. But I’m also second guessing spending that much time on getting certified, because while I enjoy teaching it still feels very much like a “just for now” career. I suppose that’s fine though. It’s something I enjoy, and if it allows us to live in an apartment instead of a tent while traveling all the better. Although, is it weird that a part of me prefers the tent? Really all this comes down to the fact that, ironically, the problem is precisely what I detailed waaaaaay up there in the first paragraph- I have too many options. I don’t have anything that is swaying my decision one way or the other. Bobby was enamored with the idea of my world traveling trip from our first date, so I know he’s on board, and he’s really the only other human in my direct sphere of interaction impacting what I do. He’s also so very supportive of anything I want to do- from law school to teaching to anything I happen to be talking about at the moment. He understands that he’s set, and I’m still figuring things out. The problem is that it’s truly all wide open. And sometimes all that wide open space, the endless possibilities, can be overwhelming. There isn’t a big, blatant, “This is the right way to go” sign. There is no right answer. It’s harder than you might think to deal with all that open space. With no fences or roads or blocked off areas the freedom sometimes paralyzes me with indecision, because I can’t automatically ignore this area or that possibility due to x,y,z constraints. Nope, it’s pretty much all available to me. There is no right answer. There is no right answer. I just need to say it enough until I believe it. That way I can make a decision about what to do next without immediately thinking “but is that the right thing to do?”


This long ramble was inspired by this post at a blog I love- http://catelinden.com/simplicity/the-paradox-of-choice/