Author Archives: Christene

Ants

My office has ants. Sometimes we get them in the summer, but we haven’t had them in years so I had forgotten about them. Today they came in hoards. And they weren’t even in the obvious places. They wanted nothing to do with the food, and stayed clear of our kitchen room in the back. These ants seem to like paper products, which in an office can be found everywhere.

I spent most of the day cleaning down surfaces and went to the store to get some insect spray. I think I used the entire bottle, dousing every surface, including the floor, several times. It slowed them down, but then more kept coming. Basically it was an ongoing battle.

Every time I picked up a pen, went to use my keyboard, tried grading, or anything else, my hands would be covered.

Tonight I think I took the longest shower ever. I am sitting here, seemingly clear of ants, but I can still feel them wriggling around on me, running across my legs and feet, and a few of the little buggers tried going down my shirt. It is totally creeping me out. Also, these are apparently the kind of ants that bite. That was fun.

All day I could just picture their itsy bitsy teeth sinking into my flesh. *Shudder*

I am probably going to wiggle around all night fighting off imaginary ants in my sleep. Thank God Tanya is on maternity leave. She would have had a heart attack.

Lessons on Marriage

Sometimes you learn things after the lesson is over. It took me two divorces to learn about marriage.

If you marry someone who wants to control you, marriage is not going to make it stop. If anything it exacerbates the situation and the other person feels entitled to the control. You are married, and now you belong to them.

My best friend’s dad has been with his girlfriend for twenty years. They don’t live together. They communicate daily and see each other a few times a week. For years I thought there was something wrong. How could such a thing work? Surely there is a problem. Her birthday was a few weeks ago and we all went out to dinner. I don’t see them as much as I used to when we were younger and my friend lived at home with her dad. But seeing them together I realized how much they love each other. Sure they only spend a few days together per week, but when they want they can see each other as often as they please. Their communication is just fine. They share their spaces while also keeping their own, spending time together and then retreating into themselves. They have been happy together for twenty years. I finally understood.

Marriage isn’t about the amount of time you spend with the other person. You can be in the same room with someone and both of you existing in different places.

If someone wants to be with you they will. If they don’t, marriage doesn’t solve or prevent that problem.

There is compromise and then there is losing yourself. I guess this goes with the first thing I said in this post, but it reaches beyond control. This is when you try to placate the other person while slowly erasing yourself. As you give up more and more and witness the joy of your spouse, you believe it is for the best. Until you are briefly reminded of those things you once were. But you can’t have both. Marrying someone who doesn’t like you the way you are is eventually going to break the marriage.

While a big part of marriage is love, a large part of love is like. You can’t really stay in love with someone you don’t like. And you can’t stay married to someone you don’t love.

Letting your spouse talk you into giving up your dreams only leads to resentment, especially if you had those dreams before you met your spouse.

Marrying someone you are not physically attracted to creates a whole different set of problems. Yes, this sounds shallow, but if you have to be dragged into the bedroom every night on the verge of tears, one of you will eventually end up on the couch.

All of these points sound like common sense. Except, surprisingly, they are not. And sadly they are not things you can learn outside of experience.

Hopelessly Excited

I just got my first article accepted for publication! I received the email from the editor just a few minutes ago, and it hasn’t completely sunk in, and I am so excited I can barely type in coherent sentences, which is rather ironic considering the reason for this post, but I am practically bouncing off the walls! It won’t appear for several months, but that doesn’t matter, it is an article, in a reputable publication!And I need to calm down before I give myself a heart attack and end up with a posthumously published article.

There are two things wrong with it that need to be corrected before anything can go further.

The first is a very easy fix. Instead of double spacing, I spaced it 1.5. I am not sure why I did that. Also, don’t they reformat for publication anyway? Actually, what do I know? As I said, easy fix.

The second problem, however, is kind of a big deal. I didn’t know I did this, but I didn’t follow standard MLA citation. As far as I know I combed through this thing a zillion times for that very reason. I consulted the MLA handbook more times than I can remember. And I failed.

It is a little frightening because if I haven’t figured out MLA by now, I am kind of screwed. If what I have done so far isn’t good enough, then I don’t even know where to begin.

She said they really like the piece, but what if they won’t publish it because I can’t put the parentheses in the right place? Yes, I know this sounds hilarious, except right now I am not laughing. I am too excited to think straight, so trying to go over it tonight is futile.

I at least want to email her back tonight, but I haven’t the slightest clue what to say. Um… “thank you for letting me know.” No.

At work people always say my emails sound curt. I am not being curt, I just don’t know how to properly communicate. I either ramble on and on (i.e. every blog post I have ever written), or I send out one sentence responses.

I was able to email her in the first place because my email was a cover letter. I can do cover letters. But to promise proper MLA revision? I don’t know how to do that without sounding like an idiot. Not to mention, if I couldn’t do it right the first time, what makes anyone think I can do it right the second time?

I am hopeless.

And ridiculously excited.