Aging

A couple of weeks ago I entered a new age bracket. I now have to check off "35-44 years old" when I fill out surveys in an attempt to win $1500 for praising the clearance section when filling out the the survey from the bottom of a Target receipt.

I remember coming up with interesting things to post about with regards to another year under my belt. I am getting older, though, and I forget what those interesting things were. Just kidding. Well, not really. I do think I have forgotten, but it has been nearly a month since I posted, so I am sure I can come up with something you all care to read about....

So the big 3-5.

...I got some presents...

...and used them...

 ...(Not pictured: chocolate, sneakers, wine cork decorative container, handheld vacuum.) Yes, I took a picture of a fried egg.

OH. Speaking of eggs. Here is a good conversation a BFF and I had. (This was totally a stream of consciousness-like post. My brain makes connections that are just this clever.)

Friend: Hey, Jenski, how's life?
Jenski: Great. Here's what's new, etc., etc. What's new with you?
Friend: Oh, not much. The boyfriend still hasn't finished grad school. I also called with a weird question. Have you ever thought about freezing your eggs?
Jenski: No. As in, right now I can't imagine feeling like I would ever want to freeze my eggs.
{Insert conversation about aging and fertility.}

Actually, I guess relationships and family are the biggest thing I think about when I think about aging. At 35 years old, I do not actually FEEL old, but when I think about life, I think that I am slowly running out of time for certain things. Now that I am on the topic, why don't I turn this post into that?

After a somewhat lengthy discussion on the topic, it comes down to this: She assumes she will have fertility problems, and given certain situations and family, I do not assume I will. I would love to have children, but given my last relationship, prioritizing my current career given relationship failures, and my age, I have also come to terms with the fact that it may not happen. I used to worry about boogers and puke; now I wonder how I would be able to teach a 3-hour lab starting at 8:30 a.m. if my child is up with the flu all night. I am also completely open to falling in love with a child who was not my biological child if that is what is in the cards. While it was a bit tongue-in-cheek, if my child is already potty trained and sleeps through the night when they become my child, who am I to complain? (Right now) I do not need to mess with my body, inject myself with hormones, and have a bunch of my eggs harvested and frozen to be happy with my life. This is what feels right to me right now, but you never know what life will bring, right?

It is also frustrating to know I am getting older and have people tell me that I am "so" young (because I am the youngest in my department). While I do not feel OLD, I know I am not YOUNG.

Now that I have that off my chest, I will try to post again soon with more interesting things....

FYI, my birthday also entailed going out to a great dinner with Bill (and a future weekend away somewhere TBD), some flowers from a coworker's garden, and lots of "Happy birthdays!" in the form of FB posts and texts from friends and family. It is not so bad getting older. :-)

Relationships

This is not about the romantic type of relationships, but the friend type.

I have struggled to get stuff done so I could get my research set up this year and head back to my post-doc lab to retrieve some reagents. Plan A was to go back Thanksgiving. Plan B was winter break. Plan C was spring break. I had reached various states of anxiety over this time, thinking I would never get my research going. Each time I would chill out because this is my first year and my teaching is going fine and I will have a summer student and I have been engaged on campus. I am at a small liberal arts college. These are the real expectations. (As a matter of fact, my department chair gave me a heads up that he's supposed to write a progress letter for my file but it wasn't at the top of his list because the department has no concerns about me, but that he would get to it eventually.)

At the beginning of mid-March, I FINALLY finalized dates for a technician come to set up the system I inherited from my post-doc lab that required some plumbing and electric work in my future lab that I had waited a couple of months for facilities to get done. My Plan D trip back to my post-doc lab is now Easter Weekend.

Even though I had touched base with friends over the past 6 months and held my imminent visit (see Plans A through C above) out like a carrot in front of a rabbit, I could actually tell them I was definitely coming! They all got excited and so am I. There have been some snags in getting my lab ready to make it possible to bring stuff back, but even if I can't do it for my research, I have decided that I will still go to see everyone.

I miss my friends there. I was sadder to leave than I would have thought, given the reason for my moving there and the outcome of that relationship. I am so excited to see them (plus a baby that has arrived since I left!) in a couple of weeks. On a related note, I finally unfriended CF on the face book. I was working up to it and frankly wanted to do it before my impending birthday so that he would notice. I am awful. :-)

This has also made me think about various friendships I have made over the years. Friendships that are stronger than others. Once stronger friendships that have faded. Friendships that make for fun times when schedules and travel plans match up. Friendships that make me happy about my life choices, despite any difficult times that coincided. Old friends to whom I am geographically closer now and as a result made new friendships, thanks to my friends having significant others. New friendships where I live now that I would miss if I left my new home (absolutely no plans to do so, though), and surprise that as much as I like to sit at home and drink beer and watch TV, that those friendships developed in 6 months.

Sometimes, and honestly sometimes quite often, I miss things I do not have in my life, nor ever have, that others do. But in reality, I have made choices about my life and the things that I do about which I am happy and make me happy regardless.

Health stuff

It was spring break for me this past week. I front-loaded the fun and non-work activities, and thus have a fair amount of work to do this weekend. I started lots of these over the past few days, so I just need to finish them and move on to more stuff. Bill and I did some touristy stuff last weekend and spent a day on the couch watching movies. It was a good way to get over the cold I got just. before. break. Then we had snow and I cleaned my apartment from top to bottom. I did some yoga. I was on campus. I went to a cool private museum with co-workers. It has been a somewhat productive (but not quite productive enough) and relaxing break.

I have once again randomly chosen a primary care physician after moving for similar reasons as I have chosen in the past: close to work because I go to the doctor less often for being sick than for maintenance, a woman, friendly looking, and takes my insurance. Great way to pick, right? I have only met one of the nurse practitioners so far, and she is great, so I chose wisely. This is the first time a new doctor actually did a pregnancy test before renewing my birth control. It makes perfect sense for a doctor who has never met me to do this, and it made me surprised that this is not the norm.

She also did a full battery of blood work so it will be done for my physical. The good news is that my cholesterol is great, so I can keep eating cheese. On the other hand, apparently I am slightly hypothyroid. I wonder how long this has been true because she was looking not just at the hormones, but also an enzyme that if it is super low indicated hypothyroid and I have not noticed another doctor comment on this before. For the first time since I had my thyroid out seven years ago, my medication is changing. Let's hope this helps with some of my fatigue. I am mostly incapable of rounding up enough energy to do work after 7 p.m. My Mondays and Tuesdays are LONG days, so by Wednesday I am fried even though I get plenty of sleep.

I had not run in over a week until yesterday. Every time I thought to, I decided I did not feel like bundling up to go running when it was in the high 20s in the middle of March. Yesterday it was both daylight and 50 degrees when I got home, so I had no excuse. My legs are a bit tired this morning. I need to start increasing my mileage at some point here...

I have been taking decent care of myself until I had this for breakfast this morning.

Well, I had one full one and a small piece of all of the others.

Multitasking

My friend was recently telling me that she does not want to 'bug' her boyfriend too much about future plans because he is finishing his thesis and he cannot 'multitask'. Prior to this, she felt bad for bringing it up with him because he was working on a big project and also had his thesis and could only work on one thing at a time because he cannot 'multitask'.

I think I had such a visceral reaction to this because she sounds like I did a few years ago when CF refused to respond to any of my attempts at talking about future plans as well. I told her as much and also that she should think about my suggestions in this light. She shares a lot with the boyfriend, as she should, so I pointed out that she should also tell him this about me if she told him what I said. In addition, her boyfriend's inability to discuss a plan, with the acknowledgement that plans are not set in stone but give you a goal, is affecting my friend's well-being. Thinking you may unfairly burden a partner and refraining from a conversation when you yourself then end up unfairly burdened does not make sense to me.

Multitasking has nothing to do with doing two things at once. Sure you can pat your head and rub your stomach at the same time or chew gum and walk, but I am pretty sure that if the things require cognitive input, you can only do one thing at a time. I told my friend that if she gave her boyfriend a heads up that she needed (yes, actually needs) to talk about this would mean that he could be prepared to participate instead of him being unprepared, as he has apparently been during previous attempts. (As an aside, I have done this with exes to no avail.)

I actually do this with myself. I will think about how to approach something for way. too. long. sometimes. Then when I go to actually do it, it takes very little time though. There are some things I absolutely need to get done in a timely fashion that are simmering right now.
     Taxes, for example. It is way past when I should have already made an appointment to have someone do those for me.
     A grant proposal due in July. It seems like a long way off, but it is a big proposal. This may sound crazy, but as long as my teaching is good, if I got a proposal funded through this mechanism, I might be all set for tenure in 5 years. Seriously.
     My lesson plans for next week. It is spring break for me and I took the last three days off from work-work. Bill and I hung out literally all weekend, I cleaned my apartment from top to bottom, and I did all my laundry (plus the extras like my duvet cover). There is no more procrastinating available in my apartment.
     Figuring out this Bill thing. There are several things I am trying to get used to again. As with my conversation with my friend about she and her boyfriend, it would make sense for me to share with Bill so he does not think I am ambivalent or boring. One is I getting used to being gone. Bill likes to travel, even for regular weekend things. I do too, I just have not had the resources to do it in recent years. I need to get back into the swing of things. Participating in the summer research program provides me a stipend, but the budget is continually shrinking for the program so who knows what measly amount it will be. Honestly Bill pays for almost everything, but then I feel bad about that (see above sharing idea...). See also this previous post. I have also been unfriending people on Facebook who I only know from my previous relationship life. I have done this in waves, and it was great to do some of this the other day as I was also friending new people I have met in my new life.
     Getting my research set up. I have a summer student lined up and not my research. I had plans of doing this in January. Then this week during spring break. It involves a trip back to my post-doc lab to pick stuff up. First some plumbing was not getting done. Then there are snow days that bring everything to a screeching halt at my small liberal arts college. Now there is a water shut down in my building to do outside water main work (which is surely delayed thanks to a snow storm yesterday). Not surprisingly, I JUST got an email that water will be off through Thursday (one-day delay), with no hot water until Friday. FML. Time to get dressed, head to campus, and plan my bathroom breaks so I can go to the building next door to use their bathrooms.

A little dinner, a little breakfast

I have been trying to cook instead of snacking or cooking frozen food (but who doesn't love Trader Joe's frozen dumplings???). Above is hot and sour soup that I have made before. I did not have corn starch or white pepper, so flour and black pepper it was. It was still delicious, and Bill has requested I make it when he gets back from a work trip. That great fabric under my bowl is a a fabric bowl my friend's mom made and sent me. You can microwave your food sitting right in the fabric bowl and then take out without burning yourself!

Today was a snow day, so I made some pumpkin oatmeal muffins (and also snacked incessantly throughout the day - see above problem with snacking). It would not be a cooking post if I did not change the recipe, right? For these I used up coconut milk I had opened to make a chicken coconut lime mushroom peanut curry last week (that is pretty much the ingredient list from the curry - it was delicious). I also added some walnuts and mini chocolate chips to empty some stuff out. They were also delicious. As was the curry I made last week. Oh, and the pumpkin was left over from some pumpkin spice muffins I made for my early class last week. They see me early almost every day and are usually all on time, so I bribed thanked them with muffins.

Undoing relationships

**This post is brought to you by my ability to procrastinate on lecture prep and an early announcement that I have a snow day tomorrow.**

A couple of weekends ago, BIL guy, who I have now decided to just call Bill, came to my parents' house for the weekend with me. I had not invited him in order for him to "meet the parents", and he's already met my sister and her family before (obviously, being 'brother-in-law guy'). I was perfectly comfortable having him come with me, and he was perfectly happy to come. We did not hit a single minute of traffic on the NJ Turnpike, so the drive only took 6 hours in each direction. It is like it was meant to be.

Then at the new faculty happy hour that week, one of them asked how the weekend was. I think I forgot I had told her about him.

Then he came to dinner for my college friend's birthday. (She, her boyfriend, and Bill and I have had dinner together before.)

This weekend he came to a gathering on campus that was made up of new faculty and others who are friends of one of the new faculty members. Bill thanked me for introducing him to my friends, but honestly, it makes my life easier. On top of that, I want my people to know and (hopefully) like each other. Why would I try to keep different parts of my life separate? I cannot find any reference to this "idea" I had in high school. Idea is in quotes because I am probably not the only person who truly wished to just have all the people I care about live in one town, Jennytown.

Bill also had a friend come into town to see their mutual friend in a show, so there was hanging out with some of his people. We also got to go backstage after the show. It is cool to see how all the stage stuff is organized behind the scene; my favorite part was the penis basket. No, that is not a typo and if you know Book of Mormon the musical at all, you'll know when the basket is used. The fun part of hanging out with his people is hearing stories he has told them about us. I commented that the bar where we were getting a beer was where Bill first impressed me with his trivia prowess (he's seriously amazing at trivia), and apparently he had already conveyed that story to the friend. That trivia night was the first night we hung out. We rehashed, with his friend, how we hung out frequently for what I call 'non-dates'. Apparently in the fall, Bill was not really sure what was going on, but I always said yes to hanging out so he thought that was good and kept asking.

We are to the point in our dating where if we stopped dating, I would have to undo another relationship. I slowly unfriended people I knew through exes over time, and ended up asking family and friends to unfriend CF over the summer, and it is always sad. Having become happy in where I am with moving back to the East Coast, my job, being close to family and friends and seeing them so much more often, now I have to convince myself that it is worth it, again, being open to another relationship regardless of where it may lead, sharing anything I can (including my family and friends), laying it out there what I want and where (at least right now) I am not willing to compromise given previous relationships. That seems like a bad way to think about a new relationship, but right now I still feel pretty protective of my life, career, and, honestly, heart. We keep talking about plans for months away from now, so for now we are clearly good. :-)


Also. Bill punched me in the eye last weekend. Apparently he was dreaming about playing basketball, and some kid was handing him a potato chip as he was going to take a shot. He reached out in real life to grab the potato chip in his dream...and hit me in right in the eye.