How do you know when its time to move forward?

I like to tease my friend C that she actually a closet speed freak and no one else is on to it yet. She usually tells me that as a former addictions counselor, she realizes that her drugs of choice would be opiates. I’m only half kidding with her though – C fits more things into a day than most people do in a week. Somehow she rarely seems to burn out. She’s the type of girl who can change jobs, plan a wedding/get married and buy and decorate a new home in the span of 6 weeks. And still have time to hang out with friends while still looking fabulous.

Sometimes I hate her for that. Just Kidding, I hope.

C’s wedding was about 6 weeks ago and I think for about the first time in a year she has time to sit down and relax. So of course, she’s looking for some thing new to do. Which is also known as going back to school for a Ph.D. Even though, they don’t really have the money (a mortgage, student loans from her masters degree and 2 car payments can suck you dry pretty quick), she still wants to make it happen. But she’s also concerned about kids and what that timeline looks like. She’s pretty much made up her mind on where she wants to go but I can’t help but think she’s missing a few steps before she could make that decision.

Clearly, C needs feedback so I sent her the following email (details changed for privacy purposes):

C,

OOH OOH OOH! I have PLENTY of feedback! (This is me in "swift kick" mode fueled by love.)

What other schools have you been looking into? Why do you not feel as tempted by those institutions?

Regarding kids:
If you think you want to have kids in the next 1 to 3 years, I would strongly suggest that you wait on a doctoral program.
If you think you want to have kids in the next 3 to 6 years, go for the Ph.D. You won't regret it.
If you aren't sure when you want to have kids, go for the degree. Otherwise, you could be stuck in limbo forever.

The cost issue works like this:
1. Do you and hubby both have life insurance policies out on each other (so that you would not lose the house should one of you die)? If the answer is no, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars.
2. Do you and hubby have six months worth of living expenses (including: tithe, food, clothes, mortgage, utilities, phone, health insurance, car payments, car maintenance, gasoline, taxes, car insurance, co-pays, home maintenance, student loans, etc.) set aside should one of you lose your job? If the answer is no, further education is on hold until this need is met?
3. Are you currently making contributions towards your retirement? If the answer is no, who do you think is going to pay for your old age? And will they pay for mine as well? Don't tell me the government will or I won't be able to contain my laughter at work.

What does graduate school look like for hubby? Where is the priority here? Do you need a Ph.D. to continue advancing in your field immediately? Does hubby require a master's degree to continue advancing in his field immediately? Who will benefit more from having their education needs met first?

I'm a big fan of taking continuing education credits before you are financially ready for a degree. And you can always take classes at a community college on Fridays to continue to increase your job skills.

Finally, how do you feel about the rest of your life? Is this antsy-ness coming from a stillness in your life that you are not used to? Are there projects/passions/ideas you want to explore both you move on to the next step in your life? You won't have the freedom to explore those things right after you have kids. (Don't get me wrong, you probably will later on but not in the same ways you do now). And C, I know you a very used to a crazy schedule but maybe this is a good time for you to be still and quiet and nurture your marriage with hubby. I hope you take time to enjoy the newness of marriage and explore each other and yourselves as married people. If it was me, I would wait until the one year mark before I began to address further education.

So I think I threw a lot at you. I hope I made it clear and I hope you see the motivation behind these questions/points. I'm not necessarily advocating one way or the other for right now (but I probably will later on).

Love ya,
Dorie

My questions are these: Do I have it all covered or did I miss some key question along the way? What steps should you have in place in your life before you make a big decision? At what age does it stop being okay to pile on debt in the name of one’s education?

Ten things I learned during Easter

Brian and I babysat for his nieces and nephew from Thursday night to Monday morning. We had a great weekend but now I'm still too tired to think. I should have pictures up sometime this week, but for now, a brief list on what I learned during the weekend.

1. Baking cookies is an amazing response to the “I’m bored” statement.

2. Broccoli is mean and horrible and will be the downfall of children everywhere.

3. If one discovers that a certain little Monkey is having a meltdown, bath time can very quickly rescue the meltdown participants.

4. “The Lord of the Beans” is a cute movie the first time you see it. The twelfth time, not so much.

5. “Did you put the lid down? Did you wash your hands? Did you turn off the light?” is a perfectly acceptable to chant at small children coming out of the bathroom. It is not acceptable to chant at husbands however.

6. “Can I do that?” is a surprisingly unnerving question.

7. I yawn more during a bed time story than the kids do.

8. I have an amazing/terrifying ability to channel my mother as needed. (Example: You can have cereal or you can have toast but you must have breakfast or I am going to count to five and you are not going to like it when I reach five.)

9. Adults are really the ones who over complicate things. As my niece Julie told me, “It is simple, really…”

10. Yes, blowing out eggs to dye for Easter really is difficult. Yes, it does taste really bad. And no, you cannot do it.

Why you are actually reading about my husband

I blog about a lot of things.

I blog about work. I blog about my health. I blog about current events. I blog about my relationship with God. I blog about everything.

But really, this blog is about my marriage.

Even when I don’t write about it, it all comes back to my marriage.

Why?

My relationship with my husband is the single most important relationship in my life. It influences every decision I make. When I make a decision about what career path to follow, I am thinking about my husband. When I am seeking medical treatment, I think about how my treatment will affect my husband. When I look at CNN in the morning before work, I am thinking about, that’s right, my husband.

Brian is my priority.

And I don’t anticipate this changing. Even when we have kids, my husband will continue to be my highest priority. Why? Because we can always make more kids. I cannot recreate my husband.

Brian is the family I picked. I looked at him and decided that not only did I want to be in his tribe but I wanted to make our own little tribe with him. I wanted to create a life together.

Jobs will come and go. Friends will move on. Parents will (hopefully) die before I do. Politics will change. Current events will become history. Fads will fade and pop culture will be forgotten.

Brian will be the man I grow old next to. My wrinkly old hand will someday be patting my husband’s wrinkly old butt. And that’s the way I want it.

My commitment to Brian and Brian’s commitment to me is the most influencing factor in our lives. Everything will always come back to my marriage.

Why Penelope is the swift kick in the ass you need

Penelope Trunk's Steps to figuring out your next career move should be giving your career the swift kick in the ass your twenty-something career needs. How do I know this is what you need? With the opening paragraph closing with the line "The ones who are complaining the most right now, after reading just this far, are the people who are most in denial of what adult life is about", you can't help but realize that what you'll read next is everything you didn't want to hear but you had to anyway.

Penelope also gives you the kick your life needs. Afterall, your job or your career is merely a symptom of what the rest of your life looks like. If your home life is in shambles, it is merely a matter of time until your work life is too. If work is falling apart, your marriage or family life will feel the strain. The exercise Penelope provides can really be applied to any aspect of your life. Its really all about making choices and cutting the excess.

I've taken the list Penelope provided and I tried to apply it to my personal life. Below you'll see her list in bold and my comments in italics.

1. Eliminate stuff. I hate to admit but Brian and I have a stuff problem. Both in the activities we take on and the things we possess. This is great advice where ever you are in life. When I was looking at my own list of my life, I noticed that I have this tendency to stay involved in organizations that I don't believe in just because I don't want to quit. By giving up volunteer work for organizations I no longer believe and cutting back on Township meetings I don't really need to be at, I made more time for the things I actually need or want to do. Next step: clearing out the spare bedroom that only makes Brian and I feel swamped and overwhelmed.

2. Look at what’s left. What's left is still a pretty expansive list. It is so easy to forget about the many rolls we have in our own lives. Wife. Daughter. Clerical Assistant. Member of the Well. Aunt. Granddaughter. Writer. Painter. Reader. Volunteer. Family Organizer. Cook. The list really could go on for days. This is then your cue to go back to item one and see what other stuff you can eliminate.

3. Check in with yourself. I try to convince myself that I love doing things to make my husband's life easier. But sometimes I don't and I don't want to admit. You have to check in with yourself to see what you still value. If you don't know what you value personally, how will you know what you value professionally? If you need help with this task, try taking the Franklin Covey FOCUS seminar. I assure you, it will be money well spent.

4. Be honest about what you love. Penelope suggests using sex as a litmus test. Which may or may not work depending on the type of person you are. For me, it works. For my friend Kim, that litmus test would not work at all. A better test for her would be daytime TIVOed TV. Whatever it is you love, its okay. Just make sure you know what it is.

5. Admit if you lack a clear passion. Not to bust on Kim but she has no clear passion. That's why she is a paralegal in a Philadelphia law office. She makes steady money, her needs are met and she has a reasonable work week leaving her time to watch tv in the evenings. That's the life she wanted. My friend Jeannie, on the other hand, has always been passionate about psychology. She isn't making great money but she loves what she does. She knows where her passion is. The important thing here is that both of my friends know what they are and are not passionate about and they plan their lives accordingly.

6. Get busy. Doing anything. And on that note....

Why my husband's low point is really a marriage high point

Over the weekend, I had the pleasure of seeing my husband in the bad-drunk category. It started off cute enough – he told me how beautiful and wonderful and smart and sexy I am and how much he loves me. Then he passed out. Then he woke up. Then he leaned over and puked all over me. Then he smashed his head on the wall and knocked himself out for about five minutes. Then he woke up, puked some more and sat in bed for a while.

In hindsight, I probably should have taken him right to the hospital to have his stomach pumped but I was concerned about the cost. At this point in our careers, we don’t have the income for hospital visits in non life or death situations. But in the five minutes where Brian was knocked out, I questioned whether or not I would be able to save his life if he began to choke on his own vomit. Thankfully, I never had to find out.

The point of this is not that my husband is a drunk – he’s not and when he tells me this was the first time he got sick from alcohol, I believe him. The point of this is that in marriage, you end up in a lot of places you never thought you would be.

I never thought I would spend twenty hours cleaning up vomit. But from two in the morning on Sunday until ten o’clock that night, cleaning it up was what I did. Brian probably never thought his wife would be coaching him through a shower and forcing him to drink water. But we did it. He also probably never thought that I would be waking him up at eight on a Sunday morning because I was mad at him for being drunk, but I did. Because if I had to suffer, he did too.

It is only during the unpleasant moments of marriage that we truly realize how much we love our mates and how much we actually are capable of doing. In college, I was notorious for what I called a “death fear of vomit”. I made girls in my sorority house who were sick (whether it be from booze or a stomach bug) go to the basement bathroom to throw up because the mere knowledge that vomit was happening near me was enough to push me over the edge. Yet somehow in the early hours on Sunday, I learned that I could survive. My urge to care for my husband was stronger than my own urge to throw up everywhere, although not by much (once a sympathy puker, always a sympathy puker).

Marriage is not always pleasant, although Disney would have you believe otherwise. Prince Charming does some dumb-ass things from time to time. The true test of the strength of a marriage is not whether or not the poor decisions happen but the way you cope with those decisions the next day.

Besides, it is only a matter of time until I do something dumb too.

PS - Taco Hell, I mean Bell and cheap Canadian whiskey are always a bad idea.

My Not So Secret Affair with the Written Word

Brian has yet to learn that I should never be taken into an establishment that sells books so I frequently find myself in positions where I am trying to convince myself to only buy five books instead of five hundred while Brian looks confused that he can’t just walk in, buy what he needs and leave. Which is what happened Sunday afternoon as we were trying to finish up our Christmas shopping. Brian had finally thought of the perfect gift for his father’s girlfriend which helped us to finish our holiday shopping in a bookstore. As he hunted through Borders as a man on a mission, I browsed the beautiful aisles filled with books I have yet to read. Each unread book was a friend I had yet to meet.

I read the way some people eat or play video games. I live for a good book. I can ignore my husband for hours on end if the content is compelling and it is not unusual to find me hiding in a strange location with a book. I rarely bring books to my job because I don’t trust myself to not sneak off and hide in the building with my latest page turner in tow.

I purchased four books on Sunday afternoon. Brian had reached the “enough” point with my roaming and since we had taken separate cars, he moved on to the next errand. I still needed to ponder what “excessive” really meant in a bookstore. All of my purchases were impulse buys but that was to be expected. I was able to rationalize by telling myself that since the writers are all striking in Hollywood, there really isn’t anything good on TV except Law and Order: SVU reruns and I’m not sure Brian will be tolerating that for much longer.

Which brings me to my big question: if I didn’t really watch TV anymore, would my book purchases still be excessive? What if Brian and I read at night instead of tuning into a million different TV shows? Would our lives improve for the better? Or would we find that Saturday mornings were used to catch up on TV? What if Brian read instead of internet surfed?

I’m not sure if I’m quite at a point where I’m interested in unplugging my TV but I think I need to cut it back at this point. Brian and I regularly watch over 3 hours of television a day. Considering I watched less than one half hour of television a day at the time Brian and I were engaged, it raises flags about the change in my behavior. I think maybe the most I can commit to is trying to cut back to an hour of TV a day. It is, at least, a start.

The Hard Part of Marriage

The most difficult aspect of marriage is realized around the same time that you realize you want to shed some aspect of your life. You can’t. You are now unable to shed the skin you are in when it becomes itchy and uncomfortable. You can no longer escape your bad decisions when they no longer suite you. Your bad decisions now belong to someone else and in turn, their bad decisions now belong to you as well.

In my pre-marriage life, I used to take solace in the fact that I did not choose my family. The egg and sperm that I grew from did not choose each other, they just happened to both be lurking in the same uterus at the time of my conception. I did not pick my parents but they were still my family. And by not picking my family, it became so much easier to distance myself from them or discount them as people. I may be sharing genetic material with them but they chose me.

As a married woman, my family now is my husband. And I did choose him. I decided to marry Brian just as Brian decided to marry me. I decided to love him and build a life with him. I decided he would be my family. And for that reason, I am not able to discount him or distance myself from him for the simple reason that it was all my choice. I am married to both Brian and his decisions.

Sometimes this scares the crap out of me.

When we first completed our walk down the aisle, I suspected that the most difficult aspect to relate to the fact that I would be having the same sex every night with the same man for the rest of my life. And as the play-ette I was in my single days, this was a bit concerning. There would be no more bad day sex with an ex-boyfriend. No more mid-week booty calls. I would be having sex with Brian until we were either too old to have sex or until one of us died. Surprisingly though, thus far, it hasn’t been that bad. In fact, I find that I like it and the lack of a chase for sex means I have more time at night to moisturize, therefore maintaining my youthful appearance for as long as possible.

But along with the consistent sex comes the consistent marriage. When Brian does something dumb, I can’t just walk away. I can’t through the towel in because I’m pissed off that Brian didn’t get my car fixed in a timely manner. When he comes out with a statement involving a bad idea being “really great”, I will still have to deal with the aftermath of that idea in the morning. And when I do dumb things, which I do constantly, I can’t just walk away from it. Suddenly, I have discovered that I must deal with the consequences of my actions.

My life choices for the first time have truly become life choices.

Life as a single person is transitional. Your friends, your job, your hobbies – these all can be replaced and no one needs remember but yourself. After marriage, someone will remember all of these things and more. My life story has now become so entwined with Brian that now he is my life story and I am his.

It seems the binding of marriage has hit me in ways I did not know how to prepare for.

It's the Boob Tube for a reason

I was never much of a TV watcher as a kid. I was born in '82 but my mother did not purchase a color TV until around 1988. We didn't have a VCR until 1990. The only time I encountered cable TV was at my grandparents' house and while I would find that entertaining for a little while, I had a tendency to quickly bore and move onto other things. Starring into a box for extended periods of time had little interest for me. I didn't realize that the Brady Bunch was reruns until the third grade. It never clicked in my head that there were such a thing as reruns.

I was browsing yahoo news yesterday afternoon when I stumbled across this article. The article is italics, my commentary is not.

About 90 percent of U.S. children under age 2 and as many as 40 percent of infants under three months are regular watchers of television, DVDs and videos, researchers said on Monday. How is regular watcher of television defined? Does that include time trying to obtain the attention of their parents who happen to be watching television? Or does it mean that the children are purposely placed in front of the television? And what about the kids who are not watching TV?

They said the number of young kids watching TV is much greater than expected.
"We don't know from the study whether it is good or bad. What we know is that it is big," said Frederick Zimmerman of the University of Washington, whose research appears in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. How do they not know if this is good or bad? Of course it is bad!! How can children develop an imagination if everything is provided for them? How do they learn survival skills or common sense? How do they learn how to interact with their peers in a healthy way? And what happens to the kids that aren't watching the same volume of TV?

A second study suggested excessive TV viewing can lead to attention and learning problems down the road. As someone who struggled for years with attention and learning problems despite not watching TV, I can't imagine doing something that would add to the struggle. If everything on TV wraps up in a nice, neat 30 minute package, won't these children be surprised when real life does not work out that way?

The American Academy of Pediatrics estimates that children in the United States watch about four hours of television every day. They recommend that children under age 2 should not watch any and older children should watch no more than 2 hours a day of quality programming. But 29 percent of parents surveyed by Zimmerman and colleagues believe baby-oriented TV and DVD programs offer educational benefits. I don't even watch four hours of TV a day!! I max out on about an hour of TV a day!! And nine times out of ten, I recorded it the night before so I could fast forward through the commercials when I watch it. I can't even imagine being able to watch two hours of television! Why are these kids watching four hours? And I seriously doubt as to the quality of the programing. I'm also perplexed on the educational benefits. Babies and small children learn from touch, from exploring, from interacting. They learn from experiences. Last time I checked, TV was not an experience.

"Parents are getting the message loud and clear from marketers of TV and videos that this is good for their kids. That it will help their brain development ... None of this stuff has ever been proven," Zimmerman said in a telephone interview. Well, clearly, these parents are not the swiftest horses in the race. Otherwise they may have waited until they were able to pay attention to their offspring before reproducing.

For their study, Zimmerman's team conducted random telephone surveys of more than 1,000 families with young children in Minnesota and Washington.

They found 90 percent of children under age 2 and 40 percent of infants under three months watched TV regularly. I can't even begin to wrap my mind around that statement.

At 3 months, children watched less than an hour per day, but by 24 months, they watched more than 1.5 hours per day. How is a child under three months of age watching TV? They can barely see a few feet in front of their faces! And what aren't the children at 24 months doing that they should be? Perhaps exercising? Napping? Playing? Something!

About half of the shows watched were in the educational category, with the remainder split evenly among noneducational children's content, baby DVDs/videos and adult TV. Adult TV? Is that like the Soprano's? Or is that more like the complete Girls Gone Wild DVD collection?

TV IN THE BEDROOM

In a separate survey of 1,051 parents published in the journal Pediatrics, 75 percent of children aged 0 to 6 were found to watch TV every day, often in their own bedrooms.
"We don't know that it is bad but we don't know that it is harmless," Zimmerman said. The first time I ever had a TV in my bedroom was in February. And after we got the television, we didn't have sex for a week. If a TV could have a negative impact on adults, wouldn't it also follow that the same TV would also have a negative impact on small, impressionable minds?

A second study in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine found that teens who watch three to four hours of television a day are more likely to have attention or learning problems and are less likely to get a college degree. Having gone to both an elite private liberal arts college and a local community college, I will whole heartedly agree with that statement.

"Even watching more than an hour of TV per day had some adverse consequences, but three hours was much worse than one hour, and two was worse than one," Jeffrey Johnson of Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and the New York State Psychiatric Institute said in a telephone interview.

Johnson and colleagues studied 678 families in New York state over more than 20 years.
"Kids who watched less than one hour of TV per day were twice as likely to go to college as those who watched three or more hours per day," he said. Can anyone say that they are truly surprised by this statement?

Just 12 percent of the parents whose children watched less than an hour of television a day said their child "hardly ever does homework," compared to 21 percent of those who watched one to three hours a day and 27 percent of those who watched more than three hours a day. I always did homework. I wasn't allowed anywhere near a television until I did all of my homework. TV was a treat, not a priviledge.

Parents said 22 percent of teens who watched less than an hour a day were often bored at school, compared to 35 percent of the moderate watchers and 42 percent of those who watched three hours or more. I think they could have left this part out. I think most teens would say school is boring.

The result was the same regardless of socioeconomic status. I think most of us would like to think that if we make more money, our children will be better off and that our children will not face the same challenges in life as the "poor kids". Just a reminder that at the end of the day, none of it matters if your kid watches too much of the boob tube.

Johnson said he believes TV may be shortening teens' attention spans. "Over time, it could really dumb down society," he said. While I think it is wonderful this guy did this study, statements like that completely take away from all of his work. Of course it is going to dumb down society! It already has! If you need further proof, look at Paris Hilton and all of the attention is getting from what I used to consider legitimate news sources!