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Michael's on the phone with Calvin right now, trying to figure out how to get home this weekend for his 19th birthday. The requested gift? Money. Money money money.
High: I got to get on the elliptical machine at the gym today! 'Bout time!
Low: I had *that* appointment with the girl doctor today.
Making invitations. I'm such a creative thing.
My sister's excitement when I told her Calvin and I were getting married.
Nada.
I went on a brief hiatus.
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April 23, 2002
The Narrowing World
My world has narrowed to two topics (with some sub-topics, such as school, but really, mainly just two). Wedding. And Work. Work. And Wedding. Sometimes Wedding while at Work, but hopefully not Work while at Wedding.
My apologies to those of you used to more interesting entries - I looked back on the last handful and confess to boring myself. There really is truly nothing else going on in my little world at the moment. I go to work wishing to be elsewhere, and at home I bore of any task, duty, or entertainment I engage in within ten minutes. I am the Queen of the Short Attention Span Kingdom, lately.
Somehow I simultaneously stress over, and care not a whit about, work. Suffice to say that my job has changed much like upending a desk drawer - not much is left of the former contents. I'm transitioning my "old" stuff out (glorious praise to God!) and accepting the transition of my "new" stuff. The new projects, of which there are five, are of different complexities and statuses (statii??). On top of which, I'm picking up some skills in the Industrial Engineering department, of which I know pretty much next to nothing. It constitutes hours and hours of training, during which I am guilty of daydreaming. Capacity modeling and time studies are not the pinnacle of excitement for me, I'm afraid.
In fact, I actively seek to corrupt those who might wish to do productive things with their time. Case in point, I was chatting with a colleague outside on the patio while she was eating her lunch. The day was absolutely beautiful - low 80's, puffy white shape-seeking clouds, a light breeze, chirping birds - the works. Our conversation was punctuated by long silences during which we tipped our faces up to the blue sky and mourned the fact we had to waste such a day at work. 12:30 rolled around, then 12:45. At five minutes of 1:00, I spotted the chair of my 1:00 meeting (which was a training session for some new folks in our department, that I'm assisting in) taking a short-cut through the patio. I called to him, appealed to his sensibilities, and tried to convince him to cancel his meeting on such a beautiful day, or at least hold it outside and forgo the foils for one blessed meeting.
I think I almost had him. Indeed, I *thought* he'd agreed to cancel the meeting. But when I got back to my desk at 1:10, I saw no cancellation notice in my e-mail. So I strolled into the meeting fifteen minutes late, and he grinned at me. It was at that point that I realized there were definitely some folks who were Better Corporate Citizens than I, at least during *that* particular Friday. We take the Good Corporate Citizen role in shifts, here at AcronymCo.
I've been strangely high-maintenance for Calvin, lately.
As far as personal sanity is concerned, I've put all my eggs in one basket, so to speak. Calvin is my connection to every other person that I'm close to in my life. I suddenly realized that, not only will there be none of my own family members at my wedding (Susan can't afford it and can't leave the kids), but there will be no one who I knew prior to meeting Calvin at the wedding, either. Eight years worth of acquaintances, summed up in the members of Calvin's family, and a few mutual friends that I met through him.
It made me feel very surreal, thinking about that. Like my life in Maine, my previous marriage, and anything prior to 1994 never happened. I felt adrift, with no roots or connection to my past. Which made me a veritable cling-on to Calvin - emotional, weepy, and desperate in that "I don't know what I would do if anything ever happened to you" vein. During which Calvin was very understanding, if a little bewildered. If one can understand and bewilder at the same time.
So. Vapors of the female sort just won't do, especially when one wishes to keep one's groom in a sweet frame of mind prior to the nuptials. I sat and did a bit of self-analysis, and pretty much figured out what my problem was. A morbid one, to be sure, but one that began in an effort of self-preservation. It is this:
I have no Plan B.
About five years ago, back in the beginning of my relationship with Calvin, I had a back up plan. See, I had no backup plan when my mom died. I had no backup plan when X(m) and I parted ways. I left myself very vulnerable and scared and vowed it would never be that way again. I would see things to their conclusion with Calvin, and if things didn't work out, I'd move back home. "Home", of course, being Grandma's. I would pick my life back up where I'd left it back in '93 when I moved away. I'd take care of Grandma, and go to school, and find some job that would pay the bills. I had it all figured out, "just in case".
Then my relationship with Calvin became a reality, we blossomed and grew and became a family, and I started to feel secure. I had no hesitation in throwing myself into my life in Arizona, because I knew what I'd do if I ended up being devastated again. All the while the knowledge of "Plan B" hovered in the background, in case I needed it.
Then Grandma died. And I realized that, cliché as it may sound, I can never go home again.
So. The demise of Plan B. And as of yet I haven't replaced it. Stupid and cold as it may sound, it brought me at least *some* comfort to know what I would do if my life (Plan A, as it were) didn't work out. But now, today, I'm so much more rooted here, with my job and my friends and Calvin's family, I don't think I would move away. But if anything ever happened to Calvin, could I bear to stay? The thought alone brings such emptiness to bear inside of me, I can't fathom what having to deal with *actually* losing Calvin would do to me. And yet I would never change a thing about the way I feel about him, or throw up walls to protect myself from "just in case".
The things I think about. It's no wonder I'm distracted.