Monthly Archives: March 2012

What We Never See At Home

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It’s become a joke between my husband and I how funny it is we’ve never seen any of our country’s big landmarks.  We’re planning this trip to D.C. in April, knowing we’ll have some time away from the conference, and there are a few must hits on our list, but we really had never put too much thought into it. We live in a city with some awesome things to see where we are… and yet I’ve never been to most of the museums here.  But I adore exploring them in other places.

What is it  about traveling to a new place that makes these things stand out so much more?   I would think my life a little less complete if I hadn’t climbed the Eiffel Tower, stood in the Sistine Chapel, checked the time on Big Ben, or stood with my toes in the water on Bondi Beach.  But I’ve never had a real desire to see much of my own country.

Maybe it’s simply that foreign places are, just that, foreign to us.  There’s something to learn from seeing their culture.  You just want to take it all in.  And you just never know when you’re going to get back there.

Last night we were talking with a friend who is doing the program this summer that we did two summers back, studying international arbitration in London.  I went having no idea what international arbitration even was before I went. I just wanted a summer in London with my fiancé.  And then we traveled… all over Europe, just like this friend is planning.

And as we talked about how to navigate London, and where to visit, and what to see, I got jealous.  I will be in a classroom, studying things I should had just learned for three years, and then going home and studying some more… She’ll be wandering around London looking up at

Westminster Abbey

and taking silly pictures of these

and obviously trying to catch the train here

I always want to see a little bit more.  It’s a constant pull towards irresponsibility.  I don’t really understand how anyone can not want to go out and see the world.  I’ve always loved going places, even places that weren’t foreign but were just special to a kid growing up in Wisconsin.  But the day I came home in high school and announced to my parents that I, their sixteen year old daughter who had gone almost nowhere, wanted to go to Australia with a big group of kids… that changed everything.  It gave me a taste of what was out there.  It hooked me.  It gave me a different idea of what I wanted my life to look like.

But since I can’t enjoy exploring far off lands this summer, I’m proposing a different adventure to my husband.  That we see all the things we never see right here.  The museums and the shows and the parks and the sights.  Because if I left this city tomorrow, I could honestly say I barely knew it at all.  Not half as well as I know cities I’ve only spent a few weeks in.  It won’t be nearly as glamorous, but it will have to sustain me. For now.

Thanks Marilyn

Posted in Inspiration, Life Ramblings, Marriage, Quotes by

Marilyn Monroe via Pinterest

Don’t tempt the fates.  I learned that this week.  Just when you think things can’t get any worse… Oh, they can.  Totally can.  Because on top of everything else, you can get sick.

I spent most of yesterday in bed with a pile of medicine and a pile of books.  I was cranky, and a little high on mixing medicines, watching old episodes of One Tree Hill from who knows when just because I found them on Netflix and I knew they wouldn’t require any mental energy as I tried to keep writing about long tax provisions.

When my husband got home, he had brought me more medicine and treats.  And I felt like the crappiest wife ever.  The apartment wasn’t clean.  The laundry wasn’t done.  I had made no progress on the things I had wanted to do around the house.

And then it started to storm.  Thunder, lightning, pouring rain… Enough to make the lights flicker and the satellite go out a few times.  And I just sat there, staring at the window.  I wanted to go play outside, but my husband didn’t agree that it would be good medicine.  But the smile he gave me was.  I’m nuts.  Absolutely ridiculous sometimes.  Sometimes I’m not the perfect wife and I’m not the perfect homemaker… and my perfectionist self doesn’t appreciate those times.  But my husband appreciates me anyway.  Sometimes, when I’m sure he’s going to send me off in a straight jacket, he just smiles at me in this adoring way, and everything’s a little bit better.

I’m going to spend most of the day sitting through classes where I have no idea what’s going on,  because the only combination of medicines that makes me able to function physically makes me unable to function mentally.  At the end of the day, the apartment still won’t be clean and my work still won’t be done.  And I will, undoubtedly, be ridiculous again.  But we’ll get through it. Laughter and chocolate will help.  And knowing that someday we’ll be stronger for getting through this together.

Life is a lot of things right now, but it’s never boring.

I Think I’m Ready To Grow Back Down

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I think I’m ready to grow back down.  No, really.  I think it’s time.  It’s clear I missed something when I grew up the first time.  I probably wouldn’t have appreciated it then.  But now… Now I think it’s exactly what I need.

Remember when you were little, and you wanted do something, and your parents said no.  At those moments, I always thought to myself, I can’t WAIT until I’m a grown up and I can do whatever I want.  I can make all of my own decisions and my own rules, and no one is going to tell me I can’t.

But that never really happened. I missed that stage.  I want to go back.

It’s like pink highlights in my hair.  The other day I saw this picture of a girl with really amazing pink highlights in her  hair, and I said to my husband, “I want pink highlights.”  He laughed and moved on.  I was only a little bit serious when I said it the first time, but his reaction made me more serious. “No, really.  I want pink highlights.”  He looked at me as if I had just announced I wanted to be abducted by aliens.

This is exactly the type of thing that you say you want to do as a kid, and someone tells you that you can’t.  So you think, if I was a grown up, I could do that.  I could have pink highlights.  No one could tell me no.  Except by the time you’re old enough that you feasibly could make that decision for yourself, the rest of the world tells you that you’re too old, and you still can’t do it!

Where is the age where you get to do all the ridiculous and wonderful things you dreamed of as a little kid?

I’ve pondered over this.  College.  That’s the best answer I can come up with. That’s when you do ridiculous things.  And I did.  But the average college student still doesn’t have absolute freedom.  If you’re lucky enough to have someone funding your higher education for you, there are strings.  If you aren’t in a major where ridiculousness is accepted and cherished, there are strings.  If you have a job, there are strings.  And the lack of income? Major string. And college itself?  Most schools don’t let you just take off and then welcome you back whenever you wander in again.  You have commitments.  You have to be IN college.

I suppose this is where the backpacking around Europe after college idea comes in.  A few moments of freedom after the restraints of college and before the restraints of the real world.  But my year off wasn’t quite that full of adventure, because I was too set on figuring out what to do next.  I missed it.

I want to go on an adventure.  I want to pack up a convertible (that I don’t have, because it’s obviously not sensible in the Midwest) and hit the road.  I only want to pack things I like.  I’ll pack my husband, but he has to throw sensibility to the wind with me.  I want to be reckless and ridiculous and absolutely not grown up.

(I also want to find this car…)

But speaking of this car… I couldn’t buy it.  Because the voices in my head of the ones who raised me, who taught me to make sensible choices, would talk me out of it.  I need to put them on hiatus too.

I want to hop on a plane to some place I’ve always wanted to go, regardless of how it will drain my bank account. I want to leave my grown up worries behind and just do something crazy.  No worrying about jobs, and savings accounts, and down payments, and plans and paperwork, and what people will think…

No consequences. Just pink highlights.