Yeah, I got nothing

Just now I overheard Mike talking on the phone with his mom, and he uttered the following statement.

“No, I mean, it doesn’t matter to me. But, uh, why does he want his head to be bald?”

I’m pretty sure that it’s his brother who’s contemplating shaving his head, but I’m not entirely sure why his haircut choice was left up to Mike. Perhaps a bet.

And now, meme. I’ll have more to say once I start back to work, I promise.

1. Do you still talk with the first person you kissed? No, I spoke with him a few times after that night, but since he lived in a different state we lost touch.

2. Have you ever seen your best friend naked? If Mike counts as my best friend, then yeah. Otherwise, I don’t think so.

3. Are you obsessed with someone? Nope.

4. What is the best thing about your job? Helping people, and remembering the funny things my students say

5. Do you like more than one person right now? You mean like, like-like, or just like?

6. What was the last thing you ate? Cookies. Damn their deliciousness!

7. Did you get any compliments today? Yeah, Mike said I was pretty.

8. Where are you going on your next vacation? Dunno. Maybe camping, maybe to Minneapolis or Chicago.

9. When was the last time you kissed someone? About forty minutes ago.

10. Are most of your friends guys or girls? Girls, but I have guy friends too.

11. Do you own any furniture from Ikea? No, not since I put my end table on the curb.

12. What kind of a car do you drive? Chevy Prizm

13. If you could have one superpower what would it be? Invisibility

14. Where have you lived most of your life? Rural Wisconsin. Hopefully in a few years I’ll be able to say, “urban Milwaukee.”

15. Why is the sky blue? Because of light or particles or something.

16. When was the last time you took a long drive? About a week ago I drove to my parents’ house an hour away.

17. What's your favorite smell? I’m not sure. I like the smell of grilling, of water, of Mike, of cooking.

18. What is your least favorite sound? “Can you do me a favor?”

19. Are you moody? Yeah, most girls are I think.

20. What is your most favorite movie of all time? Either “The Royal Tenenbaums,” “The Big Lebowski,” or “A Christmas Story”

21. Have you ever done anything hurtful to a classmate / workmate? Yeah, but I try not to do that.

22. Have you ever played Spin the Bottle? No, although now I wish I did.

23. Have you ever toilet-papered someone's house? No. Sigh, more regrets!

24. Have you ever liked someone but never told them? Of course.

25. Have you ever had a crush on your sister's friend? No, they were younger than me and girls. I never had crushes on my brother’s friends either.

26. Have you ever gone to a nude beach? Nope

27. Have you ever gone streaking? Not that either.

28. Have you ever had a stalker? No, they’d probably get very bored very fast since I spend so much time sitting at home.

29. Have you ever gone skinny dipping? No, although that would be fun if I was by myself.

30. How many hours a day do you watch TV? Oh, that’s a number that I’m ashamed to own up to.

31. Have you ever gone to a party? Who hasn’t?

32. Have you ever been in love? Of course.

33. Have you ever been betrayed by your best friend? I don’t think so. If I did it couldn’t be too traumatic since I can’t remember.

34. Have you ever lied to your parents? Oh gosh. Tons. Although now it’s mostly omitting facts rather than really lying.

35. Have you ever been out of the U.S.? Yes, I went to beautiful Canada.

36. Have you ever thrown up from working out? No, apparently I’m lazy that way.

37. Have you ever gotten a haircut so bad that you wore a hat? No, but I once colored my hair so badly that I wore it in a bun with a scrunchie and two barrettes to cover as much as possible.

38. Have you ever eaten 3 meals from 3 different fast food places in one day? No, but that would be a triumph.

39. What was the last song you listened to? Fatboy Slim – Rockefeller Skank

40. Have you ever slept with one of your coworkers? Yes, but we were dating. And we did it in the most literal sense, not in the sexual sense.

41. What one item do you never leave home without? My keys.

42. Who was the last person who called you? My mom.

43. Who was the last person who texted you? Marc.

44. When was the last time you slept for 12 hours straight? When I was in grad school and passed out after taking a dose of Benadryl. That stuff leaves me comatose.

45. Have you ever been cheated on? Yeah, I think most people have.

46. Have you ever stolen anything? I can’t remember. I took chalk from work, but it was reject chalk.

47. Have you ever had eggnog? No, it kind of freaks me out.

48. What did you do yesterday? I can’t remember. Not a lot, apparently.

49. What are your plans for tonight? Same thing.

50. Who will repost this survey? It’s a race!

refoccusing (ha!)

A couple of people thought the FOCCUS process was weird.

It is.

But one question that came up was whether the couple was qualified to be doing this or whether they were just people off the street. Well, the answer is in the middle. They aren't counselors or pastors or anything like that, but they did attend a workshop and watch a video. So while they have some background, they aren't experts by any means.

I think that, like so many things, the quality of the experience depends on the people involved in it. My grandparents have done the FOCCUS thing zillions of times and they're good. They aren't professionals but they get the couples talking about the issues they disagree on. There's a lot of, "Don't talk to me, talk to her." They've even been toasted at receptions and gotten letters from happy couples. With these people, I dunno.

The quality of the experience depends on every participant, including myself. Which means that to get anything out of it I need to stop acting defensive and start taking it for what it's worth.

Even if it involves unicorn-riding yuppies.

Okay, okay, I'll stop.

Grr!

Today I got more text messages from Liz. Their result was profound and shook me to my very core.

You see, these messages were different in that they came at the worst possible time and the worst possible place to have a devastating effect.

That's right. They made my phone beep and it woke me up from a nap.

Bitch, now it's personal.

FOCCUS

Last night Mike and I underwent the first step of the FOCCUS process. It’s required for marriage in our church. Basically we meet with a married couple two times. The first time we each go in different rooms and fill out a survey, and the second time we meet and have to discuss every question that we answered differently. There were about 150 questions on the survey that we had to answer (we were able to skip over the sections that dealt with children from previous marriages and remarriage issues) by marking that we agree, disagree, or are uncertain.

Now, I had a pretty negative attitude going into this because the couple we were working with had pushed back our visit twice and were kind of delaying our whole process. Also, I had to call them to make our appointments instead of having them get to me, and I hate making phone calls. So all in all there was some irritation brewing.

Before we left last night I looked at the address. “North Lake Drive? Isn’t that, you know, a rich neighborhood?”

Mike nodded. “Yeah, any houses along that street are going to cost some money.”

I snorted. “That’s probably why they haven’t been able to meet with us,” I grumbled. “They’re too busy playing polo with their horses or something.”

Mike sighed. “Christine,” he said, “the rich don’t have horses. They have unicorns. And they don’t play polo with their unicorns, they play flizzlefazzle, which is a much more enjoyable game that we’ve never heard of.”

I laughed. “Really,” I said.

“Yes,” Mike said seriously.

When we got there and took the survey it seemed to go okay, although there were some questions that should have raised obvious red flags if they were occurring in your relationship.

Does your significant other’s drug or alcohol use interfere with your relationship?

Are you afraid of your significant other?

Does your significant other’s gambling interfere with your relationship?

Do you think that homosexual tendencies will disrupt your marriage?

It was tempting to mess around with some of the questions. Mike said that he almost marked “uncertain” instead of “disagree” for the question, Is the woman in this relationship pregnant?

This whole process is also more difficult than I thought it would be. It’s really embarrassing to go up to total strangers and pretty much say, “Yeah, here’s everything that’s wrong with our relationship.” We go back next Monday to discuss the results, and I’m really dreading it.

Ah well, soon it’ll be over.

Weekend Summary

As I said yesterday, it was a busy couple of days, so here are some brief highlights:

1. I visited Meghan and Ross on Friday and brought them banana bread. That’s one hazard of baking when it’s just me and Mike…we can never finish the things I bake before they go stale. It’s gotten to the point where I bring a half-dozen cookies or a partial batch of brownies whenever I visit someone. I suppose some people would think that it was rude to keep forcing my baked goods on people, but I like it when others give me food, so maybe it’s okay.

2. I had to pick out a birthday card for my dad. Picking out cards always takes me a very long time because I feel the need to read each one before I make my decision. Sometimes I can disqualify the cards based on the outside – for example, if someone hates dogs I won’t get them a card with a puppy on the front. Most of the time, though, I read most of the cards. That’s why I avoid places like the Hallmark store or Carlton Cards. There are too many card sto read, and when I go in there I’m literally there for 30 minutes or more.

3. I saw a TV show recently where a mother had just had a baby and was talking about it. However, she referred to the baby as “baby” constantly, and to herself as “mommy.” For instance, “Baby was crying all last night and that makes mommy so tired.” This is why God invented pronouns, people. Also, if I went through the trouble of naming a baby I’d want to refer to it by that name, not by something as generic as “baby.”

Although I probably shouldn’t complain because I occasionally refer to the cats as, “cat” when I’m upset at one of them. As in, “Cat! Get off the table! Cat! Stop eating that other cat’s vomit! Cat! I swear if you chew another one of my sandals I’ll sell you as a sled dog to a team in the Yukon!”

4. I went to Irishfest this weekend with Mike and Nicole, a friend from work who bravely came up all the way from Illinois. I *heart* being Irish. Well, part-Irish anyway. And part German, part English, part Native American, part Dutch...

5. I enjoy watching “What Not To Wear.” I’d break down in tears if I ever went on it, but I enjoy watching it. I hope that when I’m 30 and 40 and 50 I can let go of my 20s clothes.

I’m still sleepy. I don’t know how I’m going to get up at 5:15 next Monday.

Why yes, it's another meme

Unnnnh. I should blog. I know I should blog. It's been an eventful couple of days. But one thing about introverted people that extroverts just don't understand is that time spent in the company of others is tiring. It doesn't even matter if you're having a great time or a terrible time, or if you're doing something active or calm, eventually the nonstop interaction just wears on you. And since the entire weekend was spent with others, Mike and I are exhausted. Tonight I'm sitting here and Mike's reading quietly. I'll write tomorrow.

In the meantime, meme!

1. Elaborate on your default icon.
I think this is a LiveJournal-centric question. Anyway, my LiveJournal icon is a daisy, which is my favorite flower. My user pic here is just a picture I took of myself.

2. What's your current relationship status?
Engaged

3. Ever have a near-death experience?
Nope, sadly. Or maybe, nope, luckily.

4. Name an obvious quality you have.
I’m shy. That’s obvious to everyone who meets me.

5. What's the name of the song that's stuck in your head right now?
“Games Without Frontiers” by Peter Gabriel. Someone mentioned it in an Ask Metafilter thread so I’ve been thinking about it.

6. Any celeb you would marry?
Nah.

7. Who will cut and paste this first?
I did!

8. Name someone with the same birthday as you.
The Louisiana Purchase. Really.

9. Do you have a crush on someone?
This brown-haired guy who lives in my apartment.

10. Have you ever vandalized someones private property?
Not that I can remember.

11. Have you ever been in a fight?
I fought a lot with my sister. My mom said we were worse than boys. But I’ve never been in a fight with anyone else.

12. Have you ever sung in front of a large audience?
Just in grade school when taking Chorus was mandatory.

13. What's the first thing you notice about the SAME sex?
“Does she have nicer hair than me? She does! Damn!”

14. What do you usually order from Starbucks?
Grapefruit juice in the summer, hot chocolate in the winter.

15. Have you ever hurt yourself on purpose?
Does being an absolute klutz count?

16. Say something totally random about yourself.
When I was a kid I wished I had one blue eye and one brown eye.

17. Has anyone ever said you looked like a celebrity?
Barbara Streisand, because we both have big noses.

18. Do you wear a watch?
I do for work since the clock in my room is broken.

19. Do you have anything pierced?
Only my tongue.

20. Do you have any tattoos?
No, but I keep going back and forth on wanting one.

21. Do you like pain?
Of course not.

22. Do you like to shop?
Depends on what I’m going for. I like shopping for home decoration stuff, but I hate shopping for clothes or food.

23. What was the last thing you paid for with cash?
Eggs at the grocery store.

24. What was the last thing you paid for with a credit card?
Gas

25. Who was the last person you spoke to on the phone?
I think it was Mike

26. What is on your desktop background?
A photo my dad took. It’s a bunch of clouds.

27. What is the background on your cell phone?
An odd statue by the Milwaukee River.

28. Do you like redheads?
They’ve done nothing to wrong me.

<> 29. Do you know any twins?
Two of my aunts are twins, and so are two of my cousins.

30. Do you have any weird relatives?
Absolutely. Who doesn’t?

31. What was the last movie you watched?
Um…. “Talladega Nights,” I think, although I’m seriously looking forward to seeing “Snakes on a Plane.”

32. What was the last book you read?
The last book I finished, or the last book I read at all? The last book I finished was Midwives by Chris Bohjalian, and the last book I looked at was Why Do Men Fall Asleep After Sex?