Growing Up

I have a couple of friends who are currently in the throes of wedding fever, or at the very least a slight wedding cold.  They're going through what I went through where you try to reconcile what you always imagined/wanted/expected compared to (sometimes sucky) reality.  It wasn't horribly bad for me as I had no huge dreams about what my wedding would be before I started actually planning it.  I was upset at myself for being overweight and it wasn't at the Biltmore but those were things I knew weren't going to happen well before I actually began planning.

Last night I was thinking about their frustrations and I realized that I was in a similar situation emotionally.  Craig and I are trying to figure out what's going to happen next.  My job's in flux and my paycheck promises to be smaller in the coming year.  He's graduating and has so many applications out across the country it'd make your head spin.  We had talked about the Worst-Case Scenario if something doesn't come through by the summer - ie him continuing on with a second degree so that we can stay where we are and keep the living situation/finances the same.  Great - it worked.  It wasn't ideal but it worked.  It would also give us an easy out if something did fall into place at a place where he knew he could serve.  

It was/is a way for us to move towards our shared dream of planting roots in a community and really feeling like we belong.  It's the most fascinating thing to be in graduate school because you feel like you half belong and don't belong.  You have a community, friends, etc but nothing's permanent.  Many of your friends are busy figuring out their own lives and plans and nobody's here for good.  I think seminary only enhances this feeling of apart-ness because church, generally a place where you become well-known and belong, is another place of apart-ness.  Even when Craig was working at his field church, an awesome little church with a great number of wonderful people, we didn't really belong.  We didn't have family there.  We weren't on committees or in choir or whatever.  Internship was that times 10.  Our internship pastor did not encourage me getting involved in any committees because what if they came to rely on me and then I'd leave.  It makes sense but it also doesn't.  Of course, he was kind of *special* all the way around.  

Anyway, so I have this feeling of looking into a world most of the time.  I love it but I'm not part of it.  As a teenager, my picture of my life as I creep toward 30 was that I would be in the process of getting a house, be married, have kids, and be living in a place I loved.  Essentially, belonging.  What I'm faced with is all of these things (minus the married because I can check that off) being delayed.  Craig's talked about maybe pursuing another big degree that would serve his specialization in social ministry.  I want to support it and I will if that's what he decides but that just pushes my timeline back even further.  The economy is slowing down any hiring right now, even in churches and nonprofits that can afford it.  What would have taken him 3 or 4 months of searching might take him 6 or 7 months.  We just don't know.

I've come to realize that life isn't so much "this is what I'm going to do and this is how I'm going to do it" but a constant dance between opposing forces of what is desired, what is feasible, and what is desired in those around you.  None of us live in a vacuum.  My teenaged plans didn't take that into account (probably because of how insanely self-centered I was).  I'm having to take that into account now.

Craig and I want the same things: kids, a home, a sense of community.  We'll get there together.  I'm just not exactly sure how yet. 

Techno-joy? Techno-fear?

I like to think that while being relatively tech-saavy, I'm not wholly dependent upon our plugged in brethren.  My recent (pointless) foray into Twitter tells me otherwise.**

In the last 30 minutes I have managed to create a Twitter account, set up my cell phone so I can update from it, link Twitter to my Facebook account so I can update my FB status from Twitter, and link Twitter to my blog to make sure that aside from pointless daily drivel in blog form, anyone who's bored enough to stumble on this page and read something can also find out what I'm doing *thisminute* via either my Twitter page or my cell phone.  I should be appalled and I am on a tiny level.  Sadly, the greater emotion I'm experiencing is fascination.  hehe  I love Twitter's streamlined appearance and (relatively) intuitive approach.  I think it's kind of nifty (yes, nifty) that I can be wandering around Target and send an update to Twitter to let my whole one follower (who's probably with me in Target anyway as he's married to me) know that I'm in consumeristic heaven.  

*sigh*

I thought I could avoid some of the technological fluff that's out there.  I thought that my disgust with the Kindle concept and my numerous activites outside and away from the computer would distinguish me from technophiles.  But, no.  I love all of this random technological crap that allows us to know way more than we ever should about our friends and relatives at the same time allowing us to share to the same deep, slightly disturbing levels with them.  I love it all.

Somebody save me from myself.

**It should be noted that I blame my new interest in Twitter on Craig.  He's the real technophile.  I'm the lemming that follows along after.

Feeling old

Nothing makes you feel more like a dusty, cranky, boring ol' grown-up than doing taxes.

Well, nothing except for doing said taxes and having to pay the government for the first time.

Compound that with the realization that the reason you have to pay is that you did the responsible grown up thing and converted your traditional IRA to a Roth IRA and therefore had to pay taxes on it.  

*sigh*

Excuse me while I go rest a spell and watch my stories. :-/

Sweating it Out

I worked out 12 days in January.  I worked out 20 days in February.  I'm shooting for 25 days in March.  Onward and upward is my thinking.

I'm trying to build in myself a love of working out.  Mostly, I love naps, reading books, and watching television.  However, after two months of fairly consistent exercise, I can honestly say that I'm starting to love it.  I really love it when I'm done.  I feel accomplished.  I feel sore and proud to be sore.  I have started writing down my workouts in my planner and highlighting them with a green marker.  It's truly awesome to look over a month and see loads of green!

Craig has even started working out as well.  He's a self-proclaimed lazy person but a bit of Wii Fit fun (I bought it for him for Christmas) and some of my enthusiasm/heckling have worked together to get him moving.  :)

To be perfectly honest, I think we're both exceeding our expectations regarding healthy living because we're in limbo.  Craig is almost done with his Master's degree and has applications out all over the US.  We're not sure where we'll be or what we'll be doing in the months to come.  We could be here; we could be thousands of miles away.  It's really exciting and thrilling and irritating all at once!  We have so many plans - house, kids, garden, projects, etc - that we're trying to get ready for it all by focusing on ourselves and our health.

I have a secondary motive as well.  If we do end up going somewhere, it'll be like a new beginning - a fresh start.  I'd like to start that start (hee) being the best I could possibly be.  I'm already pretty awesome (hey, it's taken me years to be able to say that about myself so I'm allowed a little vanity now and then.)  I would also like bangs but that is another obsession and one that I am approaching cautiously as I've never had them before.  As my mother said the other day, "Are you sure?  You have a low forehead."  I replied with a sight, "I am not a neanderthal, Mom.  I have a small forehead, not a low one."  hee

All in all - Craig and I are getting ourselves ready for changes down the pike by eating better and exercising more.  I am also collecting pictures of bangs I think might work on my face. :)

In case you haven't gathered, I'm a little bit odd.  I like that.  It keeps people on their toes.  :)

Ch-ch-ch-changes

This is my life, in words.  

My name is McKenzie.  I am 28, married, mom to two cats and a dog, hopelessly nerdy, surprisingly loud, and a historian/historic preservationist.  My husband Craig is 31, a graduate student at a seminary, hysterically funny, a delightful grouch, and absolutely (to a surprising and intense degree) devoted to family and friends.  

We are getting ready to make the next big jump in our life together and move.  We don't know where.  I have a great job where we are now but we feel that God is pointing us in a different direction.  Craig has applications out to a variety of jobs scattered throughout the country.  We are waiting to see what happens and feeling pretty positive about the whole experience.  We're tired of feeling like transients and long for a community where we can plant roots and grow.  We want a house, a garden, kids...the whole shebang. 

Things feel tightly wound as of late.  I think something's getting ready to happen.  It's a good feeling.

This is a new story - the story of us.  If you want to catch up on the story of me told sporadically over the past two years, check out this blog to do so.  That was about me.  That was about looking back and thinking.  This is about our family: me, Craig, the dog, the cats, my insanity (it has its own place at the table, folks).  All the good stuff.  I needed a place to move forward.