the idiots guide to running a 5k in 10 weeks

in 10 weeks, (70 days), patrick will be running his first 5k. and he enlisted ME to help! i'm certainly no professional, but i'm all he's got. hopefully, taking on the role of "teacher" will keep me focused and motivated to set a good example and keep my ass in gear. god help us both.

patrick is a fitness virgin. meaning he knows NOTHING about exercise. he probably couldn't do a proper form squat by himself if he even knows what one is, and he certainly has no equipment. it took a gift card from me at christmas to get him set up with the proper running shoes. so i knew the plan had to be idiot proof.

i drafted a 10 week jeff galloway run/walk program that relied more on increasing running time than running distance, because i knew he wouldn't want to be bothered to look up running routes. twice a week we run/walk on our own, and on saturday, we run for distance when i can "supervise". i gave him my old ironmatch watch (it's pink!) and he's all set!

i also decided that some sort of strength training was necessary and decided on the good old fashioned push-up. when looking up the 100 push-ups plan, i also found out they have a 200 sit-ups plan. lucky us! their 6 week plans align with our 10 week plan perfectly. so now we're on both. 3 times a week we have a push-up and sit-up regimen to follow.


by adding this component, i also figured that it would give him more areas in which to improve, just in case his running gains were slow coming. i mean it takes quite a while to improve your speed. and right now we're just focusing on getting him out there. and for a while it's gonna feel crappy. but in my experience, strength, as long as he's consistent, builds on itself pretty easily because you're only "punishing" yourself for a minute or so at a time. today he did 10 pushups. by next week he will most definitely be doing more, even if all he can do is 12. but that is measurable success.

in that same vein, i knew we needed a way to measure "before" and "after". i knew we needed a benchmark so we did a series of tests based on the old school fitness tests we all had to take in elementary school!


lo and behold they have one for adults! and looky here, it contains a running, push-up, and sit-up element! am i a genius or what?

here are our results:
miss petite america
1.5 mile run time: 17:30 (i ran the whole way! woot!)
half sit-ups (in one minute): 65
push-ups: 15
height: 5'3"
weight: 177 (shut up! i got an earful from my wii fit already!)
waist measurement (at the belly button): 36.5 (HOLY CRAP! pretend you didn't see that)

southern gent
1.5 mile run time: 19:39
half sit-ups (in one minute): 51
push-ups: 10
height: 5'10
weight: 189
waist measurement (at the belly button): 39

so yes, i am a fat ass. but i beat my boyfriend in every category!

anyway...you take your results and input them into the website to see where you stand among your peers:
miss petite america
1.5 mile run time: 25%ile
half sit-ups (in one minute): 95%ile (woot!)
push-ups: 30%ile
average: 50%ile (whew!)
BMI: 31.4, obese, very high risk of disease (crap!)

southern gent
1.5 mile run time: 5%ile
half sit-ups (in one minute): 65%ile
push-ups: 5%ile
average: 25%ile
BMI: 27.1, overweight, increased risk of disease

obviously, we both have lots of room for improvement. but i think we have a pretty fail-proof plan. in 70 days we'll be crossing that finish line faster, stronger, and leaner than we are today. and we'll be doing it together!

love vs. love

i thought that once i found "the one", i would want for nothing. but lately, i'm beginning to wonder.

sg and i have talked about expanding our job search to states outside of california. initially, i balked. and even cried. "i just moved back. i just moved back!" but with the way things are looking, i'm seeing more and more reasons to not limit ourselves to my home state. yes, things are pretty bad everywhere, but as desperate job seekers, it seems futile to limit ourselves too much geographically. i get it.

but what price can you put on family?

could i hump this crappy job for much longer in hopes of things turning around just so i can see my nephew whenever i want? could i postpone graduate school indefinitely until i can figure out a way to swing it without having to work 2 jobs while living at home?

is it worth sg?

could i say no to moving with the man i want to marry because i can't bear to be away from my family? could i be happy living with the man i love even if it means living across the country AGAIN from ALL of my family?

i don't know.

i just really don't know.

and it will be hard for me to be on board with any plan until i know.

but can i really know?

does this mean i'm NOT ready to get married? to commit?

he says, "together we are stronger. we will get through this."

and in my head i'm thinking, "but i don't know who i am without them."

i never in all my life conceived of a life without my family.

maybe i'm not ready to be a "we". or maybe he really isn't the one. or maybe i need to put on my big girl pants and cut the strings. i never thought of living a life where i would have to. but that doesn't mean i can't be happy if i do, right?

life is so very strange. i left the east coast, my career, my friends, to find solace in my family. they helped build me back up again. and in my time here, i found a wonderful, wonderful man who i want to marry.

what is the next step?

wine and pancakes

we picked a race!

on saturday march 28th, sg and i will run through the beautiful napa valley and be rewarded with a wine tasting and a pancake breakfast. served to us by firemen!

sg thinks it will be fun. i guess all it takes is a free tshirt and promise of food to make him happy. little does he know there are some challenging hills on this course. but we'll no doubt conquer them because there are plenty of hills for us to practice on around here.

though training is slow going, since we are both sidelined with a bad cough. it's to bad because the weather this weekend has been glorious. let's hope it holds up for inaugural training run next weekend.

this economy is such a drag

ok so i know this "recession" is on everyone's minds and is affecting everyone, and i've resisted talking about it because who wants to be a debbie downer? but well i can't take it anymore.

sometime over the summer my current job cut my hours down to 32. at first it was cool. yay! every friday off. them my bank account started to dwindle. and i had to cut some things. then patrick started to get news of slumping sales at ws and they started laying people off.

i've been on the hunt for a new job, but haven't found anything. everything i find requires me to have more multimedia/web experience. which is fine, i'll go back to school, but in order to do that i need extra cash. but in order to get more money, i need a better job. i've even considered doing something else, but either way i need training and have no resources yet to go down any new path. i feel trapped. i feel stuck.

so all summer i've been spinning my wheels. i was offered a position somewhere else but the amount they were going to pay was a ridiculous insult. so i turned them down. but now the job market seems even more bleak. and at yesterday's staff meeting, the boss talked about cutting more costs, maybe meaning even less hours or less benefit. GAH!

i sucked it up and decided i may as well bartend or wait tables, which has always been a lucrative fallback. i interviewed for a bartending gig and they told me within 24 hours of posting the ad, they had 160 people respond. 160 people!! i can't imagine what the responses are like for REAL jobs. they whittled the pack down to 20, and will whittle those who interviewed down to 4 before they make the final selection. i have never had to hustle so hard for a restaurant job. they've always been given to me on the spot.

patrick and i are trying to make the move to co-habitate, but this economy is not helping. ws is threatening a third round of layoffs. i know in many ways we are lucky. we don't have a mortgage, and we're only supporting ourselves. but man is it ever hard to try to start a new life in this economic climate.

and what the hell does it mean when they say california is going bankrupt!? how the hell does a state go bankrupt!? where the hell am i supposed to go? what the hell am i supposed to do? how in the world are we going to employ the hundreds and thousands of people out of work?

i don't get it. i just don't get it. how in the world did we get to this place? wasn't i reassured at some point growing up that if i went to college i would get a good job and be ok?

grrrrrrr...

mpa <3 sg

** warning: this is a post where i gush lavishly about my love life. **

in one of our first conversations before meeting, patrick laid out his plans for marriage, kids etc. and he actually said to me, "well let's say you and i meet, and things go well, we could be married in a year, have 2 years to ourselves, then we'd start having kids by age 33, which i think is the perfect time."

for most people that would have been way intense and way presumptuous. especially coming from someone you hadn't even met yet in person. but for whatever reason, i found it utterly refreshing. he wasn't afraid to lay it all out there and say, yes i'm looking for a wife and yes, i want kids. he was serious. i was serious. and so it began.

i look back at our 6 months together and marvel at how our relationship evolved so quickly and in such unexpected ways. i definitely had a plan in mind on how a proper relationship should go, how THE relationship would feel like, yet this was nothing at all like how i planned. but it's been so much better.

my love and appreciation for patrick grew exponentionally on our visit home to meet his parents and his family this christmas. it's a little hard to describe. finally seeing where he came from, meeting his family and being so warmly welcomed, seeing how relaxed and content "home" felt for him, seeing just how much he loves his family. something about seeing how happy his parents are after 38 years of marriage felt like i was somehow looking into the future. our future. after a few days it was all too much for me, and while we talked before bed i told him just how happy i was, just how much i loved him and i was bawling because i just felt like my heart was bursting, i just couldn't contain my joy. (if that didn't make you hurl, i don't know what will)

but what i think is probably the best indicator of the evolution of our relationship is that i think we've learned how to fight. i made a rule a long time ago that we wouldn't go to bed angry and we've stuck to it. and i know there are time we both want to keep picking, but stop bc we just don't like being angry at each other. resolution is always more important to us. it might not always happen right away, but it does. and that's a good feeling.

i am grateful everyday for him.

a new chapter

so, i'm kind of over the whole running blog thing.

it doesn't mean i want to abandon running or blogging altogether. i just haven't been in "training mode" for practically a year and have no compelling desire to be that hardcore about it anymore. at least for now. when i first started running, it was all i ever thought about. it was the new, great challenge and boy was i eager!

but now my life encompasses other things. this blog started as a place to talk about training and sprinkle in other things about my life and the base of my readers, as few as they were, were runners with their own hardcore running blogs. but i've written so little about it lately, and unless there is other interesting personal news from you bloggers, i'm just not as interested in reading about training. i feel like such a bad blogger friend.

i purposely made the name of my blog have nothing to do with my running so i could keep it open to write about whatever i wanted. i contemplated letting the blog die and starting a new one. but i rather like the name. and i like having everything in one place. but for whatever reason to move on, i feel the need to officially say, this is no longer a running blog.

god, i'm so angsty.

so anyway, i don't know what kind of blog it is now. and maybe it doesn't need to be anything. though it would help me focus and not feel so emo. for now let's call it a "newly thirty reformed pseudo party-girl adapts to couplehood while figuring out what she wants to be if she ever grows up" blog.

2009 could be a really big year, kids. a really big year...more on my goals, later...

christmas tags

neese tagged me back in october. shows you what a slacker i've been. and since my blog has been reduced to lists anyway, 6 random things about me (the christmas edition):

1. i miss living in a city where it snows.
   
2. i handmade gifts this year.
3. i've never sent christmas cards.
4. i'm hoping for something sparkly this christmas and feel like such a brat for it.
5. i bought fishnets to wear to church when sg told me i had to wear a dress and pantyhose.
6. i love the idea of mistletoe!

pass on the christmas spirit, peeps, because TAG! YOU'RE IT!

n-n-nerves

so i haven't slept well all week. and i've been feeling kinda crappy. which is sort of par for the course for most people this time of year. and considering i've been eating like a frat boy, it's no wonder my body hates me and wants to sleep all the time. but still, this recent sense of ickiness is off-putting and perplexing.

then i figured it out.

it's nerves!

9 days in the deep south with my future in-laws who i've never met but must make a killer impression on. yeah, it all makes sense now. i mean i knew i was a little nervous, but enough to give me physical symptoms?

normally i would kill for that much time off, but this does not feel like a vacation to me. it's not so much that i am dreading it. that's not the right word. i just anticipate that this will NOT be a walk in the park and would rather just divert the plane and end up in jamaica instead.

so i've decided i must change my line of thinking. stop thinking about the things i DO dread and think "damnit (which i'm not allowed to say once i'm below the mason dixon line)i'm sooo gonna rock this! his parents will fall madly in love with me and i will take the south by storm! hells yeah!"

so yeah, that's all i've got. that and a flask full of vodka for my purse :)

holy crap! a post!

so, i weighed myself after thanksgiving dinner and WHOA NELLY! i mean i knew i'd be high, but that high? shiza!

the kicker was later that weekend, i was hanging with the younger cousins, drinking, listening to music and catching up. it wasn't long before we were up and groovin' and dancin'. but crap. i couldn't keep up. i was winded. and soon fell victim to exhaustion.

this coming from a girl who could at one time dance all night long into the wee hours of the morning in high heels!

THAT was the straw that broke the camel's back. i REFUSE to be the old lady on the sidelines missing all the fun. boooooo!

so since monday i've been eating like a champ and finally finally got a good run in today. and i have felt more like myself than i have in weeks.

p.s. sg and i are celebrating our 5 month anniversary today!!! wheeeee! seriously, 5 months already?! and i meet the parents in 14 days!

more things that make me happy (31-115)

a continuation of my last post:

1. working on a hard crossword puzzle
2. finishing a knitting project in one day
3. the first snowfall of the season
4. waking up to a fun song when the clock radio goes off
5. showering by candlelight
6. big mugs of hot beverages
7. hershey's chocolate with almonds
   
8. that minty tingly shampoo they use at the salon
9. getting carded
10. holding hands with sg everywhere we go
    
11. NAPS!
12. hammocks
13. room service
    
14. lighting up the occasional cigar
15. a book that makes me laugh and cry
16. camping
17. not having to commute more than 3 miles to work
18. my powerbook
19. ice cold corona lites on a hot summer day
    
20. when someone else washes my car
21. watching football at a bar with animated fans
    
22. eating breakfast for dinner
23. the smell of fresh laundry
24. wearing anything with my alma mater's name on it
25. hearing "i love you"
26. coming up with a brilliant idea to solve a problem
27. a good clicky ball point pen in blue or black (they're really hard to find!)
28. penguins
29. boston terriers
30. learning from smart people
31. running into someone you haven't seen in awhile when you look FABULOUS
32. crossing timezones
    
33. eating with my hands
34. kissing
35. connecting instantly with new people
36. people watching
37. estate sales (i love pawing through people's old stuff)
38. seeing my name in print
39. the rear windshield wiper on my vw
40. new sharpie markers
41. hoodie sweatshirts
42. not having to shave my underarms because i am hairless!
43. finishing a race / run / workout
    
44. casinos - watching other people play, the sound of slot machines
45. compliments from strangers
46. white gummi bears
47. writing something i think is well written
48. filling up an entire journal
49. finding the answers i need on the internet
50. text messages
51. temporary tattoos
52. flickr.com and facebook.com (sad, i know)
53. enjoying the house after i've cleaned it
54. 3-legged races
55. the sound of church bells
56. fitting into my skinny jeans
57. all you can eat crab feasts
58. praying
59. my nose ring
60. good hair and boobs days
61. the rare times my purse and/or car is free of clutter
62. good warm crusty bread and cold hard pats of butter
    
63. halloween
64. board games (especially at bars)
    
65. outlet malls
    
66. nicknames
67. making homemade gifts
68. babies falling asleep on me
69. comments on my blog
70. dollar stores
71. making ramen without breaking up the noodles then having to slurp them all up unbroken.
72. oooh and adding an egg to it.
73. movie or tv show marathons
74. pop-up video on vh1. whatever happened to that!?
75. winning at scrabble and mini-golf
76. hitting balls at the batting cages
77. eating ice cream out of the container in bed
78. when my brothers or cousins confide in me
79. IMing at work
80. figuring out how to say what i mean
81. the smell of a target store when you walk in. it's so distinct and always mixed with popcorn from the cafe.
    
82. hula hoops!
83. floating around in an inner tube
    
84. the smell of post-it notes
    
85. happy endings

so i guess finding 100 wasn't too hard after all...i'm sure there are even more. which is a good sign! :)

happy friday everyone!

100 things that make me happy (part one)

i've been in a funk lately and my blog shows it. so i thought i'd cheer myself up and try to steer myself into a better direction by taking cues from this site i stumbled on looking for inspiration.

100 things that make me happy (1-30)

1. my nephew
2. buy-one-get-one free sales
3. babies
4. down comforters
5. driving fast
6. used book sales
7. the beach
8. guessing the puzzle before the contestants do on wheel of fortune
9. sunrises
10. lists
11. beautiful typography
12. taking pictures
13. iced yerba matte with soy milk and 2 splendas
14. foreign accents
15. caramel apples
16. cotton candy
17. getting non-spam email
18. perfectly organized stacks of anything colorful (towels, shirts, paper)
19. having my hair played with
    
20. spending time with my brothers
21. grocery shopping
22. airports
23. playing with makeup
24. piano music
    
25. finding unexpected presents for people
26. happy hour (duh!)
27. learning new things
28. red toe nail polish
29. old couples holding hands
30. cooking for sg

it's harder than it looks! more to come...

one day further from slackerville

holy crap my friends. i went running.

no really, i did. after weeks months of sloth, i actually went running. without dying! or wheezing even! turns out i still have some fight left in me! granted i did a 5 min run/1 min walk interval for about an hour. but still it's something people!

though with sights like this and the sounds of celia cruz pumping into my ears, it's hard not to coast along happily.

and have i mentioned that sg agreed to do a 5k with me before the end of the year? i don't know if he really knows what he's gotten himself into, but i hope he's serious.

YES! WE CAN!

we are witnessing history, my friends.

i am weeping with joy. i am overcome with pride.

i finally believe there are good things to come.

i have hope.

dawn of a new beginning

i'm sure i speak for a lot of americans when i say, i can't wait 'til election day.

i'm sick of all this waiting. the fear, the apprehension, the tension on everyone's minds and hearts. i feel like everyone is in a holding pattern waiting to see what will happen. and finally on tuesday, when our new president is elected we can finally move forward again. but regardless of who gets elected, i'll be glad that at the very least we will no longer just be idling.

because the stress of everything, the state of our economy especially, is killing me. it's killing all of us. i hope that no matter what happens after nov. 4 that we'll be able to rally toward some positive change.

totally worth it

all week i've been a saint when it comes to my diet. and i've been feeling fabulous. heaps of fruits and vegetables. helps that we just visited apple hill and have bushels of my favorite fuji apples to eat. and that persimmons are finally in season again. i haven't yet started running, but i've been walking and walking to my hearts content. i've even been logging in all my meals and snacks in my google calendar (such a handy thing) i was on a roll.

then, came saturday. namely brunch.

sg wanted to return to ella's where we went to a few weeks ago where we had the most magnificent chicken benedict, made with homemade applewood chicken sausage and dill hollandaise. but alas, they weren't serving it this week. so i suggested we try somewhere new: brenda's.

where in one fell swoop erased all my good work from the past week:

1. watermelon sweet tea (!)
2. beignets (seriously, you're effed up in the head to skip these)
3. creole gumbo
   
4. fried catfish eggs benedict on a buttery biscuit
   
5. creamy cheesy grits

this was all the real deal authentic stuff. stuff i haven't had since visitn nawlins! i was in heaven. and honestly really, didn't regret it. how often do you have an authentic french creole cook making you breakfast?

although, it definitely means running is on the docket tomorrow. especially since i forgot to mention i had crabcake eggs benedict last weekend with my brothers.

life is no "sex and the city"

i'm feeling restless...

i'm in the mood to shop. or drink. or oddly, smoke cigars. i'm in the mood to galavant around town in high heel boots and stop traffic.

what is up?



(instead i'm sitting on my floor in boxers and a tank top watching juno for the 100th time while i swap out my summer clothes for winter clothes. )

in the home stretch

is anyone else in disbelief that it is the END OF OCTOBER!??!??! i can't believe we are in the last quarter of the year. the second half of this year has gone so unexpectedly that my 2008 new years resolutions sound utterly ridiculous! it's crazy to me how much my priorities have shifted. so even though my resolutions have been a bust, i still have some things to take care before the end of the year:

1. the only thing i want out of 2008 is a new job. please, oh please. i sent out a few more resumes last week and am hoping for some good news when i follow up this week. there's one in particular that i would give all the beautiful luscious hairs on my head for. so seriously, people, send me some good vibes. i'd love to be doing work i'm proud of again. i'd love to get out of my childhood home. i am so sick of being in limbo.
   
   
   
2. sg and i leave for our alabama christmas in a little less than 9 weeks. yeah, it's meet the parents time. pretty scary, huh? and while i've visited houston and new orleans, i don't think those have adequately prepared me for the deep south. all i know is that i have to start saying sir and ma'am and and a whole bunch of other ladylike things i'm not used to saying. restraint and proper decorum aren't usually in my bag of tricks, so i think i might drive myself crazy having to censor everything i would normally say and dial it down. and while he says that me being filipina won't be a problem, i can't help but expect some reaction.
   
   
   
3. i'd rather not meet his parents at my current frat boy weight. this should probably be the least of my concerns, but for whatever reason, it matters to me. so i've devised a running schedule training me for a faux 5 mile race on the day we fly out. nothing too ambitious, but it's something. besides sg has decided it's probably best that he lose some poundage too. and well, i can't let him lose all the weight. so even though he doesn't know it, we're competing ;)

comfort zone

i think anne hit the nail on the head:

Maybe you're sensing a new stage in the relationship where the momentum has either stopped or accelerated and the pace puts you out of your comfort zone.

my sense of self has definitely been challenged.

adding another person to your life means shuffling your priorities and suddenly other people get bumped back. i don't see my nephew and my brothers as often as i used to. and i'm never home on the weekends anymore with my parents. which i guess in the grand scheme of things is good. i finally have a life outside of my family again. it just takes some getting used to. i'm used to being an aunt, a sister, a daughter who could devote all her free time to her family. it's ok that my life doesn't revolve around them so much. it's in fact, many times, welcome.

sg and i have spent a good 3 months being dizzily in love, eager and panting to spend every moment possible together. i've waited for that feeling for a long, long time. and have thoroughly enjoyed the thrill ride. but now it's time to get back down to earth and learn to keep that fire going in our normal, everyday, functioning lives. it's an adjustment. like being on vacation for the summer and having to adjust being back at work.

adding another person to your life means shuffling your priorities to accomodate new ones. his and ours. i was going full steam ahead with plans of my own, but when you want to make 2 lives into 1, things get shuffled around. at first my school and job search reached from sacramento to san francisco. when i met sg, it headed more towards san francisco. but he was open to sacramento, maybe. now things at his job are getting more unbearable and it looks like we might be headed more towards to east bay if another job lead of his pans out. it was so frustrating and disconcerting looking for jobs within a 100 mile radius, especially since mine might be the lower paying one. now that we've narrowed it down in geography somewhat, i can focus.

on a related note, i've decided to put off grad school. sg is very uncomfortable with going into more debt for it. hopefully, i can find something that pays me what i'm worth and can start making big dents in my current debt and towards our future. i'm instead going to focus on branching out into web design and freelancing. which is honestly more of what i want to do anyway. i had given up on a career in design because i thought marketing would be more lucrative, and it is. there are 10 times more jobs for marketing with far better pay. but design is what i truly love. and with sg's help i actually get the chance to pursue it.

we've brought up the topic of kids and daycare but it only stresses us out more. the race to get settled career-wise and other wise before the alarm on my biological clock goes off will be the hardest race yet. my mom was a stay at home mom til i was 12. i can't imagine any other way to raise kids. but i refuse to stay out of the workforce for too long. i must remain employable for tons of reasons besides my need for independence and identity. it's an issue we'll face when the time comes, but would welcome any comments or advice on it.

as far as my last post about us being too different. after i wrote it, i realized i was looking at it the wrong way. i've since decided to look at our differences as a way for us to learn new things. and there's nothing i love more than learning new things. the fact of the matter is our differences in personality make us a very good team. we balance each other out in so many ways. and everyday we're learning how to get along even better. and because of this, i can live with our differences in interests. plus once we get settled in a community and start making friends, a lot of my need for companionship for the things i like to do will be taken care of.

and speaking of my interests, i miss running. i miss blogging. i went for a long walk today to take a break from job hunting and it felt ridiculously good. so while i don't have the time or mental energy to train for anything big, i can still make exercise a priority. i mean, i know i should have anyway, but in case you haven't noticed i'm sort of an all-or-nothing kind of girl in this regard. plus, hello, i've been galavanting all over northern california with a boy. so it's not like my heart wasn't racing :)

it's all an adjustment. and i think finally i'm on the better side of the hurdle.

p.s. i went to the new kids on the block concert this weekend. they seriously kicked ass. jordan knight is still ridiculously hot. i squealed like a little girl again. honestly, i knew it would be fun times, but it was way better than i expected.

p.p.s. i went to my first ever williams-sonoma sample sale this weekend. oh man it kicked ass. we walked away with 4 pieces of furniture, a huge mirror bigger than me, cookware, cookbooks, picture frames and other home decor items all for about $1000. did i mention we got 4 pieces of furniture!?

p.p.p.s. i missed out on my high school reunion this weekend but have been reunited with my best friend from high school. it's so good to have a close girlfriend around again.

doubts

i know i've proclaimed my everlasting love for sg from the hilltops and on this blog, so it feels awkward to admit that i've been having doubts. it's a diffuclt thing to write about because on the one hand i do know with great certainty that i do love him. that i was born to love him. on the other hand, there are days i wonder whether we are even compatible. and while i know it's perfectly normal (and maybe healthy) to be in love one day and want to wring each others neck the next, i still wonder whether these doubts mean something more.

i do know that these doubts feel different from red flags. i've felt those before and ignored them. this feels different.

in so many ways, sg is more than i ever wanted in a man. honest. trustworthy. family oriented. funny. romantic. gentlemanly. articulate. loyal. loving. generous.

but in other ways, i just don't know. we have absolutely NO common interests. he's a quiet sci-fi, fantasy, history geeky only child from the deep south. i'm a gregarious, wanna-be athlete from the big city cracked out on pop-culture and design. i'd always hoped my spouse would be my #1 activity buddy. as it turns out, he doesn't ever want to run with me. (though he has said he hopes to be my #1 race supporter) he's into hiking, but i had to walk him through what "dri-fit" and "wicking" meant when we had to outfit him in gear.

and don't even get me started on food. culinarily, he hasn't stepped foot off american soil and is a veggie-phobe. his idea of cooking is making hamburger helper or pasta, and he doesn't even know what al dente means!

i'm an eternal optimist, he's a pessimist (or as he likes to say "realist"). often we're on the same page about an issue or subject, but it's not until we reach the end of a very tiring discussion that we realize we've come to the same place but via different routes..

he likes to think he's modern, but to me he's very traditional. when i had voiced that i wasn't changing my name when we got married and instead would add his name to mine, he said "i've never heard of anyone doing that before". WTF?

which leads to one of my greatest frustrations with him. he just seems less life-experienced than me. he only learned to do his laundry when he moved out of his parents' house to san francisco 2 years ago! he's told me he's spent a lot of time indoors, wrapped up in video games, saving his pennies for the woman of his dreams to share life's adventures with. meanwhile, i was off having those adventures. and i hate to admit that some of the things he gets excited about doing or thinks are new and exciting, are old hack for me. granted i've never done them with him, but there are a million and one other things on my life to do list that i'd like to get done. and sometimes it feels like i'm having to teach him which frustrates me. it shouldn't but it does.

which leads me to my next point. i'm not used to having to share my life. even though i was in a relationship for the majority of my 20s, dude wasn't around a lot. and my family was on the other side of the country. so i grew to be very independent. i'm resourceful. i don't need anyone to take care of me. and i've never had any other agenda than my own and have built my life around achieving my goals. this means i can be very ambitious, stubborn, and bossy, which i know grates on his southern genteel sensibilities, which i sometimes feel is pretention and undue snobbery. one of the hardest things i'm dealing with is the fact that presently, he makes more money than i do and foots the bill more often than not. i've never been in this position and i HATE not being an equal in this regard. i don't like feeling like i'm not contributing enough and i don't like feeling that he has the power because he has the money.

i think the biggest obstacle isn't our differences in food or background, but in my learning how to give up some of my independence to make me a we. giving up feeling like i'm right about how everything should be done (even though more often than not i am), giving up what i want to do all the time (which is hard!), giving up my free time to spend with him, changing my idea of the future because it now includes another person's goals and needs. for someone who yearned for a mate, i'm having a hard time adjusting to it in real life. i've just gone for so long on my own, had resolved that i would be alone, i had programmed myself to be tough and uncompromising. isn't that the single, independent woman anthem?

so how the heck can i feel like i've remained true to myself yet be in a successful, nurturing, happy relationship?

4 interviews

1. thursday: left feeling energized, renewed, and inspired. while he didn't have a job for me, i did make a great connection with a very talented freelancer. not only will he will be a very helpful resource, it was wonderful talking to another creative person. he shares studio space with a photographer and their studio is one of many in a whole building of other artists. it felt like home.
2. friday: the manager i interviewed with was very nice and i felt like she genuinely wanted to help but couldn't offer me anything that paid what i wanted. boooo.
3. friday #2: was asked to come back into the office to "try things out". sounded promising, yet sketchy.
4. friday #2 followup on tuesday: it totally WAS sketchy. the office was ridiculously disorganized. it felt more like a sweatshop than a print shop. and it was more "every man for himself" than team oriented. BIG, HUGE NO!
5. wednesday: very promising interview with a great company. interviewed with the vp and pre-press manager. then sent to interview with another manager. was offered the job later that day. but refused because again they weren't offering the money i wanted, much less deserved.

so, it's back to the drawing board. i was a little disheartened, but now that a day has passed, i feel better. there are some other positions i've found that i'd like to apply for and am going to make another go at freelancing again. the economy sucks so hard right now, but i really am trying to remain positive. that's the only thing that will get us all through.