Committed, Part 1

A couple take-aways from reading the first part of the book Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert...

1. Choice of a partner - The way our culture frames our choice of a romantic partner in life has really affected both the health of relationships and expectations, and also our divorce rate. We are told that our choice of a partner says a lot about who we are and how we view ourselves. Also, we get the message that our partner should be our source of happiness for the rest of our lives. This is quite skewed, and again can contribute to the high divorce rate. Yes, your mate can be a source of happiness for you, but they're also going to be a source of frustration, challenges, and opportunities to grow.

2. Divorce - She talks a bit about her experience going through a divorce and now contemplating marriage again. Two things in particular struck me. One, she talks about the interaction not only between the husband and wife, but between the husband and the government and the wife of divorce proceedings. Marriage is not just between two people. It involves two people, their families, their friends, perhaps their faith, and also the US Government. This draws out the pain of divorce for a lot longer after you've decided the relationship is over. Secondly, you come to have such incredibly conflicting emotions towards a person. You, at one point, thought this was the person you'd love forever and always share life, and now you perhaps hate them or are disappointed in them or are very sad for them or some combination of all of those. It's confusing for your poor emotional system. Then, later, if you find someone else that you're very serious about later in life, what does a wedding look like? How do you approach those vows again?

3. Women's education and its effect on marriages: In the grand scheme of marriage in the US, it's been a very short time that an average woman has the chance of both a job and a marriage. Not only are they more independent, but there is this new "two body problem" - how do you have a marriage and employ two different people? How are you going to deal with the household things, the things that life requires?

I wondered (along the same line but not directly from the book) if this was why it seems so surprising to people in my generation how expensive and time-consuming owning a house is. Is it because we used to have the women stay home all day to do the laundry, cooking, cleaning, and errand running, so the guy could focus on the house tasks on the weekends. Now, both genders are trying to fit all of this into their weekend, in addition to spending time with each other.

Random thought

I am excessively capable and educated for the job that I'm doing right now, but I DON'T CARE! In fact, I'm happy about it for a little while at least. Tonight my dad was asking me questions about a test for normality of the distribution of sample data. He wanted help interpreting a biostat paper from the 60s and one from the 80s, which involved a whole lot of probability theory which 1) I didn't know, 2) I didn't care about, and 3) it made me angry to try to think about it. I just had this feeling of "Please let me get far away." I know I could understand it if I tried hard enough, but I had absolutely no desire to. I was happy to go and retrieve the articles using my still available Cornell resources, email to them, and never think about it again!

Today, I was reconciling accounts on Quicken. The frustrating part was that the reconciliation didn't have to make sense, and I had to CREATE a paper trail. Yep. I had to take things that were digital and just print off screens so that someone would have a paper record of doing it. Except that I did it. Oh well. It's going to have to take some time for them to let me make my own system of doing things. I keep trying to create things for myself to do. It's only day 4. It will get more fun. I do enjoy the people I work with though, which is very good.

Weekend!

This weekend I have:
- caught up on life stuff
- ran a ton of errands
- played with friends
- had great spiritual conversation with a new friend
- got my hair cut (see FB for a pic)
- watched a fun and simple movie (Flipped)
- restarted my gym routine

Today involves homework and tutoring. I also want/need to journal about my experience reading Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert. It was harder to get into than Eat, Pray, Love, but a thoughtful read nonetheless I have 5 or 6 different sections tagged that I want to write about, but for some reason I keep putting it off.

Week 1 of working!

This has been a crazy week. I started my job at Core Advisors in Chapin this week. I'm super excited about working, but the first week is never too exciting. Lots of getting accustomed to the phone system, the computer, getting things set up, etc. Yesterday's big step - uninstalling Office 2010. Yep, that was the most eventful thing. Today was better. Then, B and I drove to Greenville/Easley for Trader Joe's, chiropractor, PF Changs, and Whole Foods. We hung out at Le Boucher's, playing cards and eating gluten-free brownies before the musical Grey's Anatomy. I have to say I'm glad I stopped watching Grey's a while ago - there is just too much drama. Too much. Life has enough tension - I don't need to voluntarily introduce more.
I'm really looking forward to relaxing some this weekend. And I'm cutting my hair!!!! My hair is longer now than it's been since I was about 8 or 9 I think, and I'm sick of it. There's just too much. So, I'm cutting it off and I'm thrilled. It'll be short and easy to deal with for the summer, but I'll have enough time for it to grow out a bit before pilgrimage if it's a bad cut.
Now, it's way past time for bed.

Cornell Spring Break

In honor of Cornell's spring break this week, I had fun with K, who came to visit! We took care of things I had to do, ate really really good food, frolicked about Charleston, saw dolphins twice, soaked up the sun at the beach while it was snowing in Ithaca, and relaxed with tv shows, a movie, games, and some Rock Band.
My stitches are out from surgery - thank goodness. Now, just being careful about how I eat and brush, etc. for about 4 more weeks and this whole thing is behind me. Apparently it looks just beautiful and the pain was worthwhile. I'm going back in two weeks for more "Atta girl"s and "it looks great" from my periodontist (his words).
I start work on Monday! I will be a team member at Core Advisors in Chapin, SC. I'm starting out at about 16 hours a week, and we'll see how I do from there. I'm super excited, both to have a schedule and also to have this opportunity to get experience.
Next week, I begin "Retirement Planning and Employee Benefits" in the CFP program, and continue studying Ethics for the CFA course of study.
In a few weeks, I'll head back to Ithaca! Yay! Then, a couple weeks after that, I head to Georgia for J's graduation, followed by pilgrimage!!!!!

Recovery

Arby's chocolate milkshakes are amazingly delicious after gum surgery. I'm working on shakes number 5 and 6, though I have had some help eating them from my family. Turns out I'll be eating "soft foods" in "lady-like bites" for longer than I thought.

"You Again" was a disappointing movie, though it had it's funny parts.

Smiling hurts because you lips are connected to your jaw and your gums. So, less smiley Corinne for a couple weeks.

I've learned a new kind of solitaire - Pyramid. It's what I play when the words on the pages of a book won't stop moving around.

Tim visited today, on his trip between Statesboro, GA and Hickory, NC. It was nice to see him again - it's been a while. Plus catching up on his life and my life, reliving math days, etc. Then I got dizzy and sorta green, so I sent him on his way.

We've had beautiful, sunny, and warm weather this weekend. It's been nice for sitting outside.

It's amazing how exhausting healing is.

Busy week

This week, my sister was home for spring break, so she and I hung out a lot. It included a whole lot of Rock Band (we sang, drummed, played guitar, and shopped for new clothes for our rockers. All fun.), giggling at various things on the internet, a rather unfortunate shopping trip (bad moods, physical pain, and frustration all around) though it ended up being successful for both M and J.

Yesterday I networked some more, talking to a woman named Nathalie, where the h is not silent :). She's going to get me in touch with the people running a new initiative in town working on tutoring and projects in science and math for local school age kids. Plus, there's even a specific project for supporting girls in math! I'm excited.

I signed up for the first exam for the Chartered Financial Analyst certification. Very exciting, a little scary.

Yesterday afternoon I had gum surgery, which went so much better than expected. The sedation drugs worked (yay for not waking up in pain in the middle) and didn't make me nauseous! Plus, I don't look like a chipmunk, though it hurts to really move my bottom lip. Soft foods and tiny tiny bites of food for the next 6 weeks. The pain medication is doing it's job though - not hurting too bad as long as I don't do something stupid, like try to smile :p.

I've also been encouraged by several people to blog about my gluten-free experience. The good brands and the bad brands, the recipes I've made into good ones, suggestions for baking, etc. Maybe I will, now that I have time and energy to be baking and cooking again. Yay!

My unrealistic wish for the week - Taste of Thai starting a mail order business, maybe even just for me. Cook food, freeze it, and ship it on dry ice. The post office is only a block from their restaurant ;).

-My cold is maybe getting better, maybe not.

-Rock Band is great fun, even when you have a cold. Just don't try to sing along as you play guitar. It sounds terrible.

-Kilts on Rock Band are really expensive with fake money. Jamie now has a kilt, thanks to The Stylish Thursday's awesome rocking skills. Claire also looks amazing.

-Today I'm tutoring a girl who has had health challenges and academic challenges and family challenges. Sound familiar? It does to me. We just want to get her to the AP exam.

-Tomorrow I'll be meeting a gal who came to my house about 20 years ago for the monthly Baha'i gatherings my family hosted for years. She came with her mom and younger sister. Now she's a mom! She, another young mom in the community, and I will be getting together for spiritual conversation and talking about what the Baha'i Writings say about the purpose of our life and soul. I'm excited!

- My last "informational interview" went well yesterday. They might have a job for me at the end of the summer. I really liked their firm the most out of any of the ones I saw. Hopefully, I'll get the internship in Chapin so I can start getting some experience before August. Otherwise, I'll just study like crazy until then so I can be a contributing member of the team at Abacus. (Yep, I like the name too!)