An Ode to Fall...

...of course, written right as it is ending.

I have been such a blogging slacker.  To anyone out there that actually reads this thing, I am sorry for failing at updates.

Lately, I have been waking up to frost and cold and a world slightly more white than it was when I went to sleep.  This whiteness generally fades by the time I am out of work, but it is still heralding the imminent end of my favorite season.  So I thought I would take this opportunity to celebrate the many, many things I love about the best season there is:  fall.  Or, you know, autumn if you're fancy.

 Whatever you want to call it, it's awesome.

I freaking love fall.  Always have.  Always.  Even when I was a little kid and everyone talked about how summer was just the best ever, I liked fall.  Yeah, I know it is back-to-school season, but I liked school.  I'm a nerd.  Sue me.  Every other season seemed more popular to the people around me.  It was unfair.  The minority of kids that didn't list summer as the favorite were either ski bums who loved winter and its frigidness with a strange intensity or girls who loved spring because it had flowers.  And the beginning of skirt-wearing season.

You know, I'm just switching to list-form.  You knew it was coming.

Reasons why fall is amazing:

The weather turns colder.  I know that lots of people don't like this about fall, but I love it.  I'm not a fan of hot weather.  Aside from my alarming propensity towards dehydration and heatstroke, I don't like stepping outside and instantly sweating.  I hate the swarms of bugs.  Even when I am perfectly content and secure with my body, I maintain that swimsuits kind of suck, as does the rest of the scant and skimpy summer wardrobe.  I am a blindingly pale Montana girl, used to cold weather and jeans and I don't like changing that.  Most of the things I like about summer are also present in fall.  I can still hike in the fall.  I can still hang out outside in the fall.  Bonfires are even better in the fall.  It gets cold.  And I love it.

This is way better when you are freezing.

School starts again.  I love school.  Love it.  I get periodically depressed that I am not still in school.  I freaked out about starting new classes, getting to write papers and do research projects, buying new notebooks and filling them with notes and doodles, and actually seeing people again.  I am not socially gifted (shocking, I know) and school was the easiest social time ever for me.  I was guaranteed to see people I liked and got along with.  I saw jerks too, but I was very good at hiding so I was just fine.

I was neither seen nor heard.

A veritable myriad of pumpkin, squash, and apple-related foods.  I freak out a bit about these flavors.  And by a bit, I mean a lot.  I would eat them all the time if possible, but they are magical in fall.

These things are delicious.

Cold weather clothing.  My entire wardrobe pretty much consists of jeans, t-shirts, sweatshirts, and scarves.  Fall is the best season ever for this.  When you layer up in fall, people think you are stylish instead of crazy.  It is wonderful.

Fall is beautiful.  There is no season with better colors than fall.  None.  Summer, while pretty, is overwhelmingly green.  Spring is the color of mud and depression where I come from.  Winter is white.  And grey.  Fall is like an explosion of oranges, reds, yellows and greens, so intense they almost make your eyes hurt.  Everything is beautiful and crisp and perfect.

Proof.

 

 Proof part 2.

You know, I really don't have any sort of a good wrap up.  I like fall.  I wish it would last a bit longer.  But Pullman is fickle and says "hell no" to any of my requests.

To all of you, I wish you an eternal autumn.  In your hearts, if nowhere else.

Accio...

...happiness.

It is that time of year for me again, dear readers.  Though it may not be "that time of year" for anyone else.  Actually, maybe no one else deals with this time of the year or...

I should explain.  This will be about Harry Potter.

The one in the glasses, for you non-Potter heads.

Since my junior year of college, every time fall comes around is "re-read Harry Potter" time for me.  I swear, there is a reason.  I did not begin reading the Harry Potter books until the summer right before my junior year of college.  I had nothing against them, personally.  Just never got around to it.  Well, actually, when I was a kid I was discouraged from reading them because my mother had been incorrectly informed about their content by some well-meaning (if mildly paranoid) church moms.  They seemed to believe that the Harry Potter books contained some secret portal to hell that would render me some sort of Satan-influenced deviant.  Because no other children's books deal with fantasy worlds and I would obviously be confused and start actively pursuing witchcraft after reading them due to my inability to distinguish a story from reality.

But I digress.

I do that a lot.  Maybe I should wear this as a warning.

I read the first two books the summer before I left for my study-abroad trip and I liked them.  The characters were interesting and dynamic and the writing, while definitely children's-book level, was used to tell some pretty wonderful stories.  I assumed that I would finish them when I got home because, although I enjoyed them, I didn't really see a lot of opportunity for me to continue reading the books when we would be moving towns every three to four days.

Then, one day early on in the trip, we were let loose for several hours of the afternoon.  We had nowhere to be until meeting up with the group again for dinner.  It being an extremely wet and gray day in London, my friend and I, both needing a little rest, decided to find a bookstore and disappear into it for a few hours.  I began doing my traditional bookstore-browsing and discovered the third Harry Potter book in the children's section.  "Why not?" I thought.  "It will be a good way to pass some time."  I sat in the store and read through that book for the next four hours.

I was hooked.

This book will do that to you.

For the rest of the trip, any book-reading opportunity became an excuse to sneak away and read more Harry Potter.  I finished the fifth book in a bookstore/coffee shop in Oxford, quietly weeping into my sleeve and trying not to snuffle.  I didn't want the laptop-and-textbook-wielding students to know that while they pored over Proust or wrote up economic strategies, I was sobbing in the corner over the death of a fictional character.

I don't cry as pretty as this.

I finished the final two books over Christmas break back home in Montana (accompanied by long bouts of sobbing.  Seriously.  Those books).  I know that everyone who read the books as they came out already had come to terms with the end of the series and such, but I felt a palpable sense of loss as I was finishing the final book.  It was over.

Then, of course, I remembered that I could re-read them.

I think, at this point, I have read the entire series through at least seven times.  Much of it has been in the fall.  I feel the need for Harry Potter at many times, but, for some reason, fall seems to make Harry-Potter-reading necessary for me.  Maybe it reminds me of the first time I read the books and fell in love with the characters.  I just start craving Harry Potter in the fall.

I also crave pumpkin-related things, but that's another topic.

This Potter-fix has great timing this year for...well...a completely nerdy reason.  I am living in Pullman this year with Tyler and Pullman is a tiny town.  We have been incredibly lucky and we have found some great people in the grad department and beyond to hang out with but...I just can't help getting lonely sometimes.

Don't get me wrong.  These people are great.  And Tyler is wonderful.  But I am notoriously bad at getting to know new people.  It generally takes me ages to establish any kind of intimacy with anyone.  And I miss my friends.  I miss being able to talk with people who know me.  Really know me.  And know my background and my family and my personality and just...understand me.  I miss having conversations about real, personal, sometimes uncomfortable things.  I miss having a real community around me.  Maybe I am just spoiled in a way.  I am used to the small town I grew up in, where everyone knows you and your family and what you've been like in school for the past twelve years.  I got that same thing at college by joining an incredibly tight-knit dorm and a great group of friends.  Now, out on my own with my friends scattered around the world I feel...lost.

Different kind of lost, guys.

That's why Harry Potter helps a bit.  I know this is a brand of nerdy bordering on psychotic, but the characters in those books...they feel like friends.  I know they are not friends I can interact with.  I know they are not real people who actually know me.  I am not saying they are a viable substitute for real, living, breathing, talking friends.  But during a time of year where I am feeling lonely, it's nice to jump into familiar stories of familiar people growing and shifting and becoming who they are.  It's nice to feel a part of that.  It's nice to feel that, if these people existed, I would totally hang out with them.  And it's kind of nice to vicariously be a part of the type of fellowship and interactions that they have with one another.

To all my friends, scattered wherever you have been scattered:  I miss and love all of you.
To all of the people where I am now:  I will try to be brave enough to make real friendships with you.
To all the Harry Potter lovers:  Thank you for not judging me too harshly.

They are an accepting group.

Now, if you will excuse me, a book is calling.

Growing up...

...not just for characters in "Peter Pan".

In this strange and mystical journey known as "becoming a grown-up", I have discovered some things that I believe to be true and good to remember.  Some of these come from "the happiness project", and some are just my own observations.  In order to share some of my hard-earned wisdom so that you, dear readers, do not have to make the same mistakes I have, I am list-forming this business and telling you how I came to these conclusions.  You may think some of these are silly, but I swear they still matter.

Super-Secret Truths for Being a Grown-Up:

It's okay to ask for help.  I absolutely swear that this is true.  I seem to be getting worse at this as I get older instead of better, so I should probably remind myself that this is important.  I keep on thinking that being out of college and married and all means that I should be able to do everything by myself.  I resent it when my parents ask if I am going to doctor's appointments or checking up on the car.  I get annoyed when Tyler reminds me to go to bed early when I am sick.  I even get snippy sometimes when he is just doing something nice for me.  Tyler will go to do the laundry and I will get all offended, because somehow his nice gesture is really saying that he doesn't trust me to do the laundry.  This is ridiculous, of course.  I just have a husband who likes being nice to me and his kindness upsets me, apparently.

Man, I'm a great wife.

I need to keep reminding myself that they don't tell me these things because they don't believe I can handle them, but because they want to help me.  I also need to be able to ask for help with things I can't do alone.  There are some things that I just don't know how to cook and Tyler has to help me.  I do not know how to do taxes.  I need help for it.  I have trouble making friends with new people.  Sometimes, I need advice.  Asking for help is not the end of the world and it does not make you weak.  It makes you human.  Don't freak out.

Do not do this.

Be nice to EVERYONE.  This includes the people that drive you nuts.  There are some people that I know who are draining and annoying and mockable and there are often times that I am impatient and rude with them.  This is not okay for a number of reasons.  The first is the basic rule that we learned in kindergarten, that we need to be nice to each other.  The second is that there are plenty of times that people around me have no desire to be nice to me, but I still expect common courtesy.  And the last reason is that being a jerk to people just shows that I am a jerk at heart and I really don't want to be a that person.  Being nice to others, even the ones that make me want to gouge my eyes out, actually makes me a nicer and more patient person.  I hope it does, anyway.

Waiting tables gave me lots of practice.

Bring a sweater.  Since junior high, I have never remembered this and I am always cold.  I always forgot jackets too, even in the winter.  Also, remember to bring appropriate shoes.  I once went on a high school band trip to Canada in the winter and brought nothing but dress shoes and sandals.  I have no explanation for this.

 Pictured: inappropriate flip-flop weather.

If you can't find something, clean.  I apologize to everyone that has witnessed or had to deal with the chaos of anywhere I live.

You can choose what you do.  You can't choose what you LIKE to do.  This seems very career-pertinent right now.  I do get some say with what jobs I accept (though this is somewhat limited by what jobs accept me) and I need to keep in mind that I may love a job that others would find mind-blowingly dull.  I like independent work.  I like research and writing big papers and reports.  I like finding little details and figuring out how things fit together.  I can't stand work that is repetitive and unchallenging.  Other people don't mind this.  Some other people even enjoy this.  I just need to remember that it is not a moral failing in me if I don't enjoy that as well.

I would run away screaming within a month.

What you do every day matters more than what you do once in a while.  If I make one grand gesture to Tyler of cleaning the kitchen once a month, that is nowhere near as meaningful as it would be if I made it a habit to keep the kitchen clean every day.  Or keep our room clean every day.  Or tell him I love him every day.

You don't have to be good at everything.  I can't tell if I am crazy competitive or a crazy perfectionist.  Maybe both.  But I can't stand to not excel at...pretty much everything I attempt.  I feel a profound sense of guilt and failure if I am not wonderful at every new thing I decide to do.  This should stop.  Eventually, I need to be realistic and admit that I am not great at everything.  Some things, I will always be bad at.  It's really ok.

This will never be me.

Over-the-counter medicines are very effective.  Decongestants, ibuprofen, cough syrup...these things have all become my dear friends recently.  It was something of a revelation  that I could be feeling better RIGHT NOW and for some reason I was putting that off.

What's fun for other people may not be fun for you (and vice versa).  I will never enjoy watching baseball, but I love watching soccer games.  I will never enjoy weeding or gardening.  I hate going to parties or mixers full of strangers.  Running for a workout is the most joyless and painful thing in the world for me.  At some point, I realized that I am much happier if I stop pretending to enjoy things that feel like a chore to me.  Sometimes, I wish I was the kind of person that loved meeting strangers or shopping or listening to country, but I am not.  I like going to ballets and listening to choral music.  I can spend an entire day wandering around a bookstore.  I read Shakespeare for fun when I was 10.  I probably understood maybe half of it but that was fun for me.  I know that many things I do for fun are not even remotely fun for others and that is fine with me.  I know that many people love baseball games and shopping, but I can't stand them.  Part of growing up is knowing what you do and do not like and being comfortable with admitting it.  Another part is beginning to spend your free time doing the things that you actually enjoy doing, not things that you feel like you should enjoy.

This is my kryptonite.

Doing what you know is good instead of what makes you feel good, often makes you feel good anyway.  This applies both physically and morally.  Working out when it's the last thing I want to do usually makes me feel better.  Keeping the lid on some gossip I've heard always makes me feel better than the rush of sharing it.  Sometimes it pays to be a little bit goody-two-shoes.

Hair dye is cheaper than a tattoo.  I get antsy every so often and I want some sort of change to make myself feel daring and badass.  Usually this is when I circle back to deciding I want a tattoo.  However, getting a tattoo just because you want to feel cool is really not a great reason.  Last time this happened, I went and bought some hair dye instead.  Going brunette was infinitely cheaper than getting inked and it still made me feel different.

Ok, not quite this different.

Only follow trends you actually like.  I will never wear animal print.  I don't care how fashionable it is.

Don't ever approach me with jeggings either.

Sometimes indulgence trumps denial, and that should be okay.  I should not have to feel overwhelming guilt if I decide that I want some ice cream for dessert today.  Diets are all well and good, but sometimes a person just needs ice cream.

You know you want me.

Not every day requires makeup.  No one will be appalled or offended if I do not put on makeup every time I see other people.  There is something to be said for being comfortable in your own skin.  Am I anti-makeup?  Not at all.  Makeup can give me a confidence kick when I need it.  It can make me feel dressed-up and beautiful sometimes.  I just find it freeing to realize that I still like the way I look when I don't have makeup on.

Chick flicks are a lie.  Real life relationships should not think stalking is flattering.  Obsession is not a mark of true love.  Being erratic and childlike and strange is not an automatic pathway to being adorable.  Guys do not often burst into impassioned speeches about true love and soul mates and destiny and THE ONE.  "Independent woman" should not equal "bitch".  Intelligence does not make a woman unappealing.  Relationships in real life happen between people who work normal jobs to pay the bills, who have friends that do not fall into convenient stereotypes, who are not thrown together by unrealistically wacky circumstances.

And the lead girl in "Elizabethtown" and the lead girl in "Garden State" are annoying tropes that exist to make the guy a better person.

Girls and boys:  be yourself, have fun, and get to know other people.  Do not search for your Edward or Bella.  You would not like them if they existed in real life.

This is a face you alert authorities about.

Explosions are bad...

...unless they are in action movies or something.  And even then people get taken out by shrapnel and such.

Yippee-ki- O GOD, IT'S HITTING THE CHILDREN!!!

So I'm reading this book recommended to me by a friend.  It's called "The Happiness Project" (no, I am totally not kidding).  Anyhow, I came across this section on how to fight well with spouses and friends and family and...really everyone, and it occurred to me that this might be an area of my life where I kind of suck.

I was a really passive kid.  I seriously think that some doormats were better at fighting back than I was.  I was terrified of conflict, terrified of new people, terrified of social situations...  My poor mother nearly lost her mind trying to make me stand up for myself (my mother is absolutely NOT a pushover).  If kids were mean to me I wouldn't say a word.  I would stand there silently, awkwardly smiling, and then burst into tears the second I got home.  If not for some incredibly patient friends, I might have resorted to becoming a school-library hermit just so I never had to deal with that stuff.

Not pictured: a social life.

By the time I got to high-school-ish and college age, I was pretty sick of being taken advantage of and feeling like I could never express it when I was upset.  I ended up swinging back the opposite direction...and maybe swinging a bit too far.  My reflex of letting things go when they upset me would kick in until it built up into a rage and I exploded like a coke bottle full of mentos.  I would unleash my anger and frustration and sarcasm on whoever had pushed me past the tipping point.  Instead of doormat, I became a land mine.  I'm sure that was really pleasant for all of you that got to deal with me in college.

 O, you're going to go off right now?  That's cool, I guess.

Anyhow, I developed this idea that expressing your emotions is healthy, so expressing them instantly and all the time must be super-healthy, right?  That way they are not getting suppressed and building up into a rage, right?  And don't therapists always talk about the dangers of suppressed feelings?

Turns out, that's totally wrong.  Research shows that giving your anger free range without pausing to think about the real causes of the anger just trains you to erupt more often.  Instead of dealing with it in a healthy way, it just makes you a more consistently angry person.  The whole "don't sleep on your anger" thing is actually wrong.  A lot of times, a little time and perspective can make the anger disappear and then you don't have to pick up the pieces from the explosion that you let loose.

Note: emotional devastation is more difficult to clean than this.

Because here's the thing.  While it might make me feel better or vindicated or strong or whatever to unload on anyone who makes me angry, it usually has the opposite effect.  Seconds later, I feel terrible and guilty about ripping into a fellow human being and they feel awful because, well, they just got caught in my out-of-balance cross hairs.

We are so used to watching tv shows and movies where the person we cheer for is the one who instantly comes up with withering one-liners and biting sarcasm to every offense.  In real life, those people don't have a lot of friends.  At least, not a lot of friends who aren't secretly terrified of ever offending them.  And how can that kind of friendship last?

 But Tyrion and I can still be buddies, right?

Maybe my real lesson here is that there is a balance between doormat and land mine.  Somewhere in the middle is a healthy response.  Now, I guess I am just off to find some middle ground.

And practice some one-liners.  Just in case I ever meet Tyrion.

Must be prepared.

I was going to say something about wedding bells...

...but no one really uses them any more.  I never really got that whole thing anyway.

I have been jokingly referring to this summer as "summer of the wedding".  This is largely due to the four weddings we have gone to and the many others that we were invited to but unable to go to.  Matrimony is catching, apparently.

Always be prepared.

However, attending these weddings made me even more sentimental at my own anniversary (ONE YEAR!  I totally qualify as an old married person now).  I guess seeing how these marriages are beginning, so filled with love and friends and family (and, in the best cases, some serious revelry) makes me happy.  Everyone is so excited and full of the incredible hope and optimism that comes with the beginning of anything new and I remember standing in that same place.

I remember a day filled with color and laughing and the people I love most.  I remember standing next to this boy who had been a stranger, a friend, a crush, a boyfriend, and a fiance (not to mention a whole plethora of other titles like "a resident music-expert" and "that kid with the 'fro and piercings who lives in the basement") and being so filled with all my nervous excitement and happiness and a little niggling terror that there was just no way we were grown-up enough for this sort of thing.  And then he held my hand at the altar and the terror left.  That whole day is filled with a million little moments that combine to make the beginning of something beautiful for me.  The sun hitting us through the leaves of the tree, grass and dance-floor beneath bare feet, sunglasses under a veil, toasts and laughter and tears, my dad's face as we got ready to walk down the aisle, the color and light on every table and in every face and surrounding us the whole night, the hugs and cheers and singing and dancing and dancing and dancing...

And dancing...

Of course, being married isn't all parties and dancing.  Sometimes it's cleaning and cooking and laundry - the boring stuff.  Sometimes it's the beautifully simple things, like enjoying a meal, watching a movie, reading our books, taking a walk, all of them somehow better because they are done together.  Sometimes it's arguing and frustrating each other and wondering why you can't seem to communicate the way you want to.  Sometimes, for me, it is standing back and wondering in total shock how I can possibly be so erratic and neurotic and combative.  And sometimes, it's just me being extremely grateful that he can still find ways to love me and make me laugh at the moments that I feel the least loveable.

He sees something adorably prickly when I am really just prickly.

In this year of marriage, I have learned some very important things.

1)  I am not a marriage expert.  If people ever ask me for relationship advice, I hope it's because I am a friend and not because they think marriage has made me some sort of expert.  Many days, all I am learning is that I really don't know what I am doing.  Tyler and I just have to suffer through trial-and-error together.

 I see where we went wrong here...

2)  Friends are important.  I don't care how much you love being with your honey-bun, or snookums, or whatever you call that person you're nuts about.  You are going to need someone else to hang out with sometimes.  Quite frankly, I hate being social.  It takes a ton of energy for me and I like saving all my energy for the relationship.  But that's not healthy.  How can I be a balanced person if all I do is hang out with one person?  Other people bring out different sides of a person's personality.  I love watching Tyler interact with other people because I get to see parts of who he is I don't always get when we are alone.  You need someone to be around when you just need a break from the other person.  On that note...

3)  You need breaks from each other.  One of the things I love about Tyler is that he doesn't treat our relationship like a skin graft.  He is perfectly aware that we are still two individuals and we need time away from each other.  He needs to go off and camp with the boys or play that madden game or do whatever else it is boys do.  I need to be able to watch a chick flick without defending it and read books and laugh about stupid celebrity gossip and top model.  I am aware of how stereotypically gendered those things sound, but the point is that somethings are fun for us to do without the other person.  Tyler wants to play his madden without my players running in circles or hopping in place on one side of the football field because I can't remember how to do anything else with the buttons.  I want to watch cheesy movies and catch up with my friends about things that just flat-out do not interest Tyler.  We enjoy lots of things together, but it's good to have things that are separate.

 Even with this design, Tyler is strangely resistant to having his toenails painted.

4)  Remind them that you are excited to be with them.  Seeing someone every day changes things from when you were dating.  I no longer panic about looking cute all the time because Tyler has seen me with bedhead.  Tyler doesn't feel like he needs to take me to the ballet for every date (yeah, he seriously did that).  But he still does a great job at making me feel like he's nuts about me.  The man cooks for me all the time.  He made me one of my favorite meals for our anniversary.  He sneakily does the laundry while I am at work because once (once!) I whined that I hated having to wait for the machines to be done.  He is a pro.

5)  Be aware that you are going to screw up.  No matter how hard I try, I am never going to be a perfect wife.  Some days, I am grouchy and whiny and lazy.  Sometimes I am completely oblivious to his moods.  Sometimes, I blow up and say mean things that I instantly wish I could take back.  Often I have no idea how to express to him that I love him or how to be more helpful, more productive, more social, more organized, more...more something.  I mess up.  I'm new at this.  He never seems to hold it against me though.  If anything, he somehow manages to see my hopelessly bumbling attempts at good wifery as kind of adorable.

I will be the BEST WIFE EVER!

6)  Be stubborn.  No, not about stupid things, like which Game of Thrones character should end up on top (it's obviously Shaggydog), but about being in your relationship.  I'm the kind of stubborn person where if I lock onto an idea, nothing is going to make me change my mind about it.  Tyler and I are staying together: locked in.  I will defend him to anyone: locked in.  I will always have his back: locked in.  I will start sneaky-doing the laundry while he is busy: ...we'll see.

I will be the ninja of laundry.

I still have a ridiculous amount to learn.  I can't even believe how good Tyler is at being a husband while I am still desperately trying to figure out how to be a wife (also, how to be a grown-up).  But I can say with absolute certainty that from the wedding to today, I have never had any second thoughts about the decision to marry my best friend.  It's been crazy and silly and wonderful and fun and chaotic and I wouldn't change a single minute of it.

I love you, Tyler.

**note to readers:  I apologize profusely for the sappiness.**