Standardized Anxiety

Watching me preparing to take any standardized test must be like watching someone the morning of their execution. Because, of course, this test is not merely a measure of my test-taking skills, it is an accurate and unquestionable measure of my worth as a human being. If I do not do well, the world will not end. I will die, of course, but the world will not end.

Deep down I know none of this is true, but for about twenty four hours this sort of lunacy bubbles just under the surface of my frail, silent, terrified sanity. I try chasing it away with self affirmation, but I'm so much better at sarcasm. Occasionally I can drown it in copious amounts of orange soda. Why orange soda, you ask? I honestly have no idea. But thanks for asking. This time I cried on my husband's shoulder while he affectionately told me that I am, in fact, totally insane. It worked pretty well, actually.

But anyway, I passed the GRE. Or, more accurately, I laid that sucker over my knee and spanked it.

Pity Anthro programs care so little about GRE scores.

This picture looks much cooler on my phone than it does on this blog.

There is a pond on the Mall, a memorial of some kind--something about Daughters of the American Revolution I think--which I walk by most days at lunch. Also there are trees a changin' round here. Not all of them though, just some. And lampposts, which is a funny little word with a double P for no good reason.

Today was warmer than yesterday, but colder than I'd like. Only it's not so humid now, which means my hair looks nice.

What if I took a picture with my phone everyday, and then posted it here? Who would get bored first, you or me?

I'm betting on you, since I have a pretty good attention span. I'm not like those people who apologize for having short attention spans. Mostly because I think those people are just trying to find a more polite way to say "Your existence bores me to tears", and I'm just not that polite.

Where were we? Oh yeah, the picture-per-day idea. Well, I think it's pretty obvious that neither one of us cares whether that materializes or not.

Annnnnnnnnd....done.

The Lady Amalthea

Uuuuuuu-nicorn! Uuuuuu-nicorn!

Tell me you've seen that movie, please. Tell me I am not the only one who gets the sheer awesomeness of that freaky animation mixed with a soundtrack from America. I mean, come on people, "When the last moon is cast over the last crumbling mountain, and the last lion roars over the last dusty fountain..."

Honestly, why haven't more people seen and memorized this movie? How can a movie with a transvestite song ("Now that I'm a woman, everything has changed!") not be more widely loved? Ok, so it's not really a transvestite song so much as a ballad about a Unicorn being turned into a human girl by an inexperience magician trying to save her from the Redbull (no, not the drinkable kind, the giant bovine made of fire kind) who drove all the other Unicorn's into the sea so that King Haggard can watch them in the tide only now she is falling in love with a human man and forgetting what it's like to be a Unicorn and that's bad because only she can save the other unicorns!!!! This is EPIC people! SAVE THE UNICORNS!

Fact: My mother hid that movie from me for ten years because listening to me belt the lyrics to every song ("Look and see her, how she sparkles, it's the LAST UNICORN!!!!!") everyday for a year eventually began to wear away at her sanity and it was either separate me from that movie or kill me. Friends, there were days during the first few months when I wished she had gone with the latter rather than divide me from that magical VHS. Eventually I stopped looking for it, but I never forgot the words (not just to the songs, but to the entire movie). Then when I was 20 years old, perhaps thinking it would be safe now that I had finished more than a year in college and was living on my own, my mother brought it out of hiding. Actually, I think she had forgotten about it altogether and only accidentally stumbled upon it while packing up the house to move. And suddenly, there it was. The magical VHS that had for so long evaded my searching. The movie that had shaped the child I was and defined the woman I would become.  

The Last Unicorn.

And behold, the heavens did open and the walls did shake as, once again, at the top of my now considerably more powerful lungs I belted the words to that beloved song "In the distance hear the laughter of the LAST UNICORN! I'M ALIVE! I'M ALIIIIIIIIIIVE!!!" And behold, my mother did weep bitterly.

Anywho, I obviously now own that movie on DVD, (Special edition, Suckas!) and the day my now-husband agreed to watch it with me one Sunday afternoon was a defining point in our relationship. If you've ever wondered when it was that I knew he was the one for me, well folks, I'm pretty sure it was the moment he held me as we watched King Haggard's castle fall tumbling into the sea while hundreds of glittering unicorns came out of the water and rushed forth into the world again! (What can I say? My husband has the patience of a saint.)

But seriously, I know you've only read this far because you are waiting for that moral lesson to come out where I somehow tie this into something I learned in India and make it a microcosm for some big, philosophic idea in life. And don't worry, friends, I'm almost there.

Because you see, near the end when King Haggard has discovered the Lady Amalthea's true identity and the Redbull knows ("Molly, he knows! He knows!") that she is The Last Unicorn meant to be driven into captivity in the sea, there is this short scene with really bad dialogue (which matches the dialogue in the rest of the movie), in which Amalthea begs to stay human. "Don't let him change me!...Everything dies. I want to die when you die! I'm no unicorn, no magical creature! I'm human, and I love you....Lir, I will not love you when I'm a unicorn."And it sounds so familiar sometimes, doesn't it? "Please don't expect more of me! Don't ask me to do hard things, to be something greater than I am right now! Everybody gives up sometime; I want to give up too! I am happy as I am, and I'm afraid of wanting more."

No, this isn't about choosing career over love or never making compromises or the inevitability of death. It's about being afraid to accept your true potential because if you do, then it means you are capable of more than you are doing right now. It means you have no excuse for not doing great things. It means you'll have to make sacrifices and be brave and face up to your biggest fear. It means you'll have to turn around, look the Redbull in the eye, and fight back.

It means you have to apply to grad school again.

"She will remember your heart when men are fairy tales in books written by rabbits. Of all unicorns, she is the only one who knows what regret it - and love."

Between Sleep

I wake up before the dawn, and roll over into lumpy warmth and comfort. It smells like a boy, but I mind less and less. It grumbles and chuckles when I poke it awake. And then it opens bright blue eyes, and the day begins again.

How odd to hear his shaver as I run my morning shower. How strange to step over his cast-off pajamas on my way to plug in my curling iron. He leaves before I do, and though I should be in the bedroom getting ready for the day, I can't help standing with him in the hall as he chooses his shoes, closes his jacket, and heaves his bag over his shoulders. I'll see him again in a few hours, but still. I don't want to waste any of the precious morning minutes together.

I'm always a bit crankier in the evenings when I get home. Tired and cold and still so unused to sharing my space with another. This was always the time I most needed solitude. But he's home already, in his socks and wrinkled slacks and untucked shirt. He's been on the computer, and the kitchen needs cleaning. But he comes out to hold me, to ask about my day, and somehow that makes it all so much better. Together we'll make dinner, and eat sitting on the floor by our cardboard-box table.

And at night we'll laugh together, snuggled in our bed which is our only furniture so far. Until the lights go out, and we lay talking and confiding. When sleep comes, she finds us together.

That's "Mrs." Awesome to you, kid.

Soooo.... I got married. Hot dang.

The tricky thing about planning a wedding in two months is that afterwords it all seems like such a blur, and like so many difficult but rewarding times in life, the stress and pain all kind of fade away pretty quickly in the glow of happier things. One thing I will tell you, wedding planning is not for wimps.

So many little things that had seemed sure to go wrong ended up going so well. In fact, the accidents that came out of minor catastrophes ended up being some of my favorite parts.

The invitations, for example, so very nearly sent me to an early grave. Getting the addresses was not bad, actually, but getting cards and photos printed on such short notice was grueling. I found myself two days away from my mailing deadline with nothing to put in the envelopes. In fact, I didn't even have envelopes. That night I discovered Fedex online. Two days later I was standing in my living room, holding a box of full color invitations with envelopes and inserts. And I loved them. I still do. No really, I absolutely adore my invitations. And somehow our photo ended up matching them perfectly. Minor miracle? I think yes.

The dress was more than a minor miracle. With my specifications (6'1" and LDS) getting a wedding dress that would be long enough and fit the modesty bill would be difficult enough. Getting that dress in less than three months? Tee-hee, good luck. Most dress shops can't even order in a dress in that time, let alone get it fitted and altered to specifications. So it should come as a huge surprise that I found the perfect dress in the first and only shop I visited. It was even long enough as-is, so long as I didn't wear heels (I hadn't planned to anyway. At my altitude, I don't need any extra vertical help). The only set back was the lack of sleeves. Like nearly all wedding dresses, it came totally strapless. Enter Russian-designer-and-shop-owner-of-Awesomeness.  "My dear, ve put like dis, same material, it goes in a V, you see? And buttons!" I'm pretty sure she must have been whispering Bippity-Boppity-Boo in Russian under her breath because the transformation was pretty magical. The whole thing took less than three weeks from the day my mother first teared up watching me in the dress shop to the day I tried on the finished gown. Well done, White Swan Bridal. Your arsenal of Russian women with attitudes is impressive, to say the least.

And then there were the flowers. This seemed easy at first, all I wanted was a simple bouquet for me and a button-hole for the main man of the night. However, not only did I put off talking to a florist until the week before the wedding, I barely even talked to the florist. Turns out a simple bride's bouquet can be pretty pricey these days. So basically, I heard the price quote and said "Crackah what? Please. Take me to Costco, people. I'll do my own flowers."

And so it was that six dozen roses (two white, two pink, and two pink-tipped-white) ended up spending the night in my refrigerator the night before the wedding. And then when we opened the fridge the next day, five dozen of said roses were dead. (Let's just say I left the responsibility for changing the temperature on the fridge to the wrong person, and leave it at that.) Somehow my mother managed to make two button-holes and three bouquet options from the survivors, and the thing is, the first bouquet was absolutely perfect. One reason I had hesitated in contacting a florist was that I was still so unsure about the bouquet in the first place. I don't like those tightly wrapped balls of flowers that seem too geometrically perfect to be real. I didn't really want a sheaf of roses either, and though I had toyed with the idea of carrying a single rose instead of a bouquet, that didn't seem right either. So when my mom handed me three perfect pink buds with long stems and a graceful, droopy pink ribbon tying them together, I was thrilled. It was perfect. It was absolutely what I wanted. Simple, innocent, elegant, and unique. Wow, mom. Just...wow. And that is why I am actually grateful that my refrigerator murdered most of the flowers, and even more grateful that my mother is just as magical as my Russian dress shop owner.

You know what else was magical? The lighting at our wedding. And this, it shall be acknowledged here and now for all the world to understand, was entirely at the hands of my sister, who also speaks Russian, as it turns out. So maybe she, too, was whispering Bippity-Boppity-Boo in Russian as she wrapped strands of lights and lit candles and luminaries all over the grounds at our venue. Originally, when I had first started planning my reception, I had envisioned it all taking place just before sunset, in that gorgeous soft light of early evening. Take a note people: the sun sets earlier in late September than it does in early August. In fact, it set exactly one minute before my reception was scheduled to begin. I realized this was going to be a problem the week before the wedding, the day my sister casually mentioned "are you at all worried about lighting?" and followed that up with the perfect solution and the organizational skills to pull it off. Later she asked me if I would rather have had the reception in daylight after all. Answer: Ummm....did you see my magical, romantic, glowing garden reception? Trade that for daylight? I repeat: Crackah, please.

Oh, I also forgot to plan music for the event until the night before when I spent an hour making a playlist for my iPod. Which might seem kind of lame, but my arsenal of Russian speaking geniuses had not yet run out. You see, my Russian speaking brother just happens to play the guitar and sing. He took the time to learn a Jack Johnson song the groom and I both love, and then he played and sang while we had our first dance. Which was awesome. I cannot tell you how awesome. I get a little choked up when I think about it, actually.

And then there were friends who flew all the way across the country to be there. Some brought chubby, gurgley babies to smooch, and others came early and stayed late to set up luminaries, tie ribbons, and figure out how the fetch that last button on my dress is supposed to go because the photographers are here and my new husband just tried to fix it with a pen.

(On an aside, that conversation went something like this:

Him: I can't figure this last button out....

Me: Hmm, can you go get my mom to help me then?

Him: Actually, I can just use my pen to-

Me: TAKE YOUR HANDS OFF THE BRIDE AND BACK AWAY SLOWLY. There will be absolutely no contact between your ballpoint pen and this wedding dress. You sick, sick man!

Friend of the bride who just walked in: Let me get that, Jen. It's okay, Groom, you can go now.


Bride: Thank. Heavens.

End of aside)

We served artisanal breads and preserves with a variety of really cool cheeses, and though I had always pretty much planned that, it still kind of surprised me that it went as well as it did. It looked gorgeous, and though I didn't get to sample any of the cheese myself (I spent so much time in the softly glowing gazebo greeting guests) I hear it was all pretty darn good, particularly the brie torte with fig and cranberry preserves. Also I just like bragging that we had a brie tort at our wedding.

I did get to taste the wedding cake, or course. But when your wedding cake is actually a variety of world-famous Georgetown Cupcakes, in all your favorite flavors, you make time to try some. And the groom manfully restrained himself from smashing cake into his bride's face. I think something about the pen incident a few hours before sort of tipped him off about mixing messes with my wedding dress. Also he didn't want to waste the cupcake. When cake tastes that good, you don't mess around with it. I only got one, but it was divine as always. Two words people: Key Lime.

Hmm, this is turning into a really long and boring post about my wedding reception, so I'll refrain from describing the necklace I jerry-rigged out of an earring or the antics of our 2 yr old flower-girl whose skill with a ribbon wand is to be greatly admired.

I will tell you that our set up was pretty fantastic for greeting guests. I mentioned the gazebo before, strung with white lights and hanging candles. But to get the full effect you need to imagine it in a moonlit garden with a soft breeze and the sounds of laughter and joy coming from the terrace where the food and guests had converged. That's where Mr. Awesome and I spent almost the whole night, greeting guests as they came, but mostly just being with each other. Because it was separated from the main party area just a bit, it gave us a chance to be alone together between influxes of arriving guests. To dance a little bit without everyone watching us, and laugh at our own dumb inside jokes. We got to enjoy the romance of a perfect fall evening with each other, on our wedding day. And that was priceless.

Clean up was not priceless. But the friends who stayed to help were incredible. We sent them home with some extra food from the event, too, so I hope it wasn't too hard on them. And anyway, I happen to know most of them don't have church until 1pm the next day. Our new ward starts at 8:30 am...guess who didn't make it that Sunday ;).

And then we were exhausted and ecstatic and married!! And we ran off to Scotland together, which is a post for another day.

Misc L. Aneous, esq.

I was having a temper tantrum, though not a very big one as tantrums go. Something about my chin in a picture I think. "Jenni, remember when you were in India? What was it you said about loving your..."

"Knock if off. Only I am allowed to philosophize about my trip to India!"

But of course, he was absolutely right. And look, I don't want to get into some sappy post about my engagement but let me just say that I would greatly appreciate if he would NOT DO THAT. Okay? In the first place he is way to patient with me, which totally makes me look bad, but there is no reason to compound the insult by being right. Mmmkay?

Anyway, I did learn some junk in India and I do tend to forget it. This basically means I need to go back to India, right? Right? Whose with me?

It costs 3x more to buy a stamp than it does to buy a 4'x6' photo print. Also the mail man at my office is totally crazy. Sometimes it's cute, and sometimes it's scary. About a week ago a coworker came running out of her office thinking he was attacking me. Nope, just banging my desk for emphasis. He really hates misdirected mail.

I think I broke my toe. And when you hear that you think: Oh sure, a broken toe, big deal. But it IS a big deal, yo. Because it hurts to walk on this thing, and closed toed shoes are currently out of the question. And wearing flip-flops in the office is generally frowned upon. So pity me already, people! And yes, the fact that a certain republican spent significant time holding a bag of frozen raspberries against my foot (while repeatedly asking if I was okay and do I want some water and can he give me a back rub) should probably cover me in the pity department for several foot injuries to come. Yes, I know this. But my foot hurts!

Lessons we have learned in this post so far: Cathlin is a twit. Her fiancee is greatly to be pitied.

How It Happened

I spent the evening running. Well, jogging/walking/running. It's all just an excuse to be alone with my thoughts anyway. Easier to let my mind wander when my legs are doing the same thing. Anyway, it was also humid out, and I took the last hill home at a full run. And I walked in the door a fluffy, sweaty, flushing mess of satisfaction. Which is how all exercising should end, fluffy and sweaty and at peace with God and man. Sorry, I've just waxed poetic about humidity and sweat.

And then the rocks hit the door, and I knew. I knew in the way you always know these things, which is to say that I had no idea, knew all along, was completely surprised, and remained unfazed in anyway. Two rocks hit the door and my life flashed before my eyes, or maybe it was my reflection in the mirror. She looked confused at first, and then she shrugged her soccer-jersey clad shoulders and ran a hand over the wisps of hair escaping her pony-tail. If she could deal with it, I could. We were a team, this sweaty apparition and I. Together we opened the door.

He wasn't there of course, no one was. Just the small stones scattered on the balcony, the fireflies dancing in giddy anticipation, and a disembodied voice reading Cyrano's lines. Do you know Cyrano? Of course, we all do. We have all been Cyrano at one point, haven't we? Calling out our lines from under the balcony, where no one can see our huge noses. Only this Cyrano does not have such a large nose. In fact, he has a perfectly charming nose. I love his nose. But he stayed under the balcony anyway, reading out lines from the play I love. And because I did not have any lines of my own to read, I passed the time peaking through the slats of the balcony floor, pelting him with the pebbles he had used against my door. And then he stepped out into the glow from my door and held up a box. More stones. But this one is yellow and sparkly and magical. A sapphire, which defies reason with its color. And I take it. With all my heart.