Through a Glass, Darkly

Who is worn out? I am.

So I mentioned that I was a wee bit concerned about the party. I have never thrown a party like that before, complete with invitations and china and crystal candlesticks and borrowed tablecloths. Heck, my wedding reception wasn’t that fancy. So it was a bit nerve-racking beforehand, especially when a church meeting came up that a lot of our friends had to go to after we had already checked the date and sent out the invitations. At one point it seemed like we were down to two other couples, which was disappointing (but would have meant more turkey, I suppose).

For a lot of years now, I have struggled with feeling that I am not important to God. Last fall I was pretty depressed, and one of the big reasons was my job search and how badly it was going. I got to the point where I quit praying about the job, because I figured God knew I needed one. I started praying that he would just send me some good news, some sign that he was still listening. It was very Rilla of Ingleside of me. “Please send better news tomorrow.” I never really felt like that happened, that he broke through in any encouraging way. And that was hard.

Add to that that I have struggled for a while with feeling valued by my friends. I mean, if God doesn’t value me, my friends certainly won’t. There are a whole lot of issues wrapped up in that, which I have mentioned here before many times. I think parties aren’t really a risk for most people, but they kind of are for me. But Mike really wanted to do this, so I told God that I’d take the risk (because I think he likes us to take risks) but that I would hold him personally responsible if the party was a flop. I bargained. I whined. I told him it wasn’t fair to ask me to take risks in my relationships if he wasn’t going to be there to catch me in some way. Basically, “Please let people come.”

Last week was kind of about all of this - party stress, feeling like God wanted me to take risks but was kind of leaving me hanging, and being worried about friendships. I cried. I stressed. I bought a turkey. We made stuffing using Mike’s childhood recipe. I baked some pies. We bought a can of cranberry sauce (ew).

I gave up on the stressing at some point, trying to just focus on enjoying whoever came. Kelly and Scott were staying with us, and that helped, both emotionally and with the preparations. We set up the tables and unpacked my mother’s Christmas china and Scott opened the wine (something Mike and I still fail to do successfully) and put the bread out to rise. We got dressed in cute brown clothes and kept checking the turkey. (The turkey, by the way, did not progress quite as quickly as we had hoped. Stupid turkey.)

And then, suddenly it was party time. And everyone came, and we drank wine and ate Kelly’s delicious spinach dip. And since the turkey serendipitously took longer than we expected, we could wait for everyone who had to go to that church meeting after all. And we had plenty of food and I loved the way the tables looked with the candles and the china and everything just seemed to go so well. I hope everyone had a good time, because we had a great time. Last night after everyone left and we swept up the last Cheerio, I said, “Were you worried about the carpet at all?” Our friends certainly had been, because they brought their kids and, as we are childless, they kept making sure stuff was okay with us. Mike said, “No, I didn’t really think about it.” “I didn’t either.” I like that about us.

After the last goodbye, I loaded up the china that could go in the dishwasher (some of mine, but even though my mom said hers could go, I was not going to be the one responsible for somehow ruining her china in my dishwasher) and started doing the dishes while Mike took down tables and started moving furniture back to its original places. Everyone offered to help before they left, but we refused. For one thing, we didn’t really have cooking stuff to clean up. And for another, I finally understood why my mother always eschewed help when she had people over. Sometimes it’s just easier to do it yourself. Besides, it’s not as if the dishes were unexpected. We were throwing a party.

After I finished the dishes, I stood there at the sink, admiring the clean china and sparkling crystal spread across the counter to my right, and I felt like it was a sign. Everyone knew it was important to me, and they worked it out so they could come. God had been listening after all. Not because people came - I’m self-centered, but not self-centered enough to feel that way. But because I wasn’t stressed at all on Sunday (except for a few minutes when I thought the turkey wasn’t going to be done until sometime in December) and because that means he had nudged me to the point where he had helped me separate my worth from the party. And because he knew I needed a little encouragement, he tossed in a great party on top of that. The whole point of the party, before I got caught up in whether people would come, was to celebrate the holiday with our friends, because we are so thankful for them. And, in the end, I feel like we got to do that. After I got out of the way and stopped worrying.

Everything we borrowed is in a huge pile by our door - two tables, ten chairs, two boxes of china, a box of wineglasses, a gravyboat, a coffeepot, assorted tablecloths, and probably some things I am forgetting. I put all our stuff away and made sure the kitchen was spotless before I went to bed last night. Before I turned off the light, I looked around one last time, making sure everything was in its place, feeling like the queen of my domain.

It was a good day.

Over the weekend, Mike and I stayed with our friends Kelly and Scott at the beach. Good times were had by all. My friend Kelly has recently developed an affection for Diet Dr Pepper (which, she would like me to point out, does in fact taste more like regular Dr Pepper). Seeing her switch over to diet soda made me realize that we are getting older. Gone are the days in which we could eat as much as we wanted (although you wouldn’t know that from the amount of ice cream we consumed over the weekend). Now we are all being extra careful and eating and drinking things we would have shunned in college.

Summer is almost officially over. Mike starts school next week, and our small group resumed last night. We hadn’t all been together since our beach trip, so it was a good catching up time for us. All the babies were bigger, the adults were tanner, and everyone seemed kind of tired. Definitely the end of the summer. It seemed like some of us were going through some similar situations, which made me excited to start meeting again regularly. It’s kind of amazing how much community can both encourage you and make you stop thinking so much about your own problems. I highly recommend it.

I’ve been enjoying having Mike home all the time. I haven’t really convinced him to do much cleaning, but he’s cooking dinner every night. He’s going to make stuffed peppers tonight! I can cook, but I never think to make interesting things like stuffed peppers! Today he went to get immunized for school (he had to get two shots so I told him I’d bring him home a sticker) and check the prices on his books. He has to get 13 different books. If someone wants to donate to the “Mike and Kari really don’t have the money for 13 books fund,” please let me know. Oh, and he went to get his student ID today. It was kind of fun to tell him where all the buildings were and where he’d need to go to get his errands done. It doesn’t seem that long ago when I was a freshman, but it’s been seven years. Seven years since my roommate and I bought matching comforters. Seven years since that whole gang of us used to travel around campus doing the Monkees walk. Seven years since I started going to InterVarsity. Those were good times.

Well, it’s dinnertime. This was your Kari update for today, August 10, 2004.

Looking back, yesterday was one of those days where I was so tired that I grew increasingly upset about the liturgy debacle as the day went on. It kept eating at my mind all day. By the time Mike got home (a little after 7:00), I was a wreck. I spent about 30 minutes crying into his shirt before he convinced me that we really had to cook dinner or he would starve to death. He was grilling hamburgers, and I was in charge of fixing (heh, little southern-ism for you) the squash. “Do you want it roasted or fried?” I asked him. “Fried,” he said. “Fried food is more comforting.” Ladies and gentlemen, I present you with the Best. Husband. Ever.

He even let me watch Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Two episodes of it! Even though it always makes me cry! He has a high crying tolerance, apparently. To be completely accurate, I really watched one-and-a-half episodes, because I fell asleep on the floor sometime during the second episode. This morning I woke up in bed when my alarm went off at 6:30 and said, “How did I get here?” (Which, if you think about it, is never a good question to have to ask when you wake up in the morning.) Mike said that he tried to get me up, but that I was dead to the world, so he had to carry me. It sounds as if he had some difficulty maneuvering, though, because he said that while he was trying to get me through the door, my feet hit the light switch and left him standing in complete darkness. (Ladies and gentlemen, I present you with Mike and Kari: the sitcom!) He had to put me down, and he finally was able to get me to walk to bed. Or so he says. I don’t remember any of that.

I am still struggling with feeling mortified. I suppose I will either be completely over it or mortified for life after Wednesday, because that’s when we’re hanging out with some people from church. If I get a bad vibe from them about it, I may go into hiding. In Siberia. (Or, you know, under my bed. I’m always looking for the mature way to deal with my problems.)

Except for all the extra flies (some people were apparently raised in barns), our house has pretty much recovered from Sunday’s party. The furniture is mostly back in its original places, and the floor has been mopped. Mike vacuumed and treated the ketchup stains with Oxy Clean. In other words, you can barely tell we had a party.

The backyard, however, is a completely different story. My dad brought this water balloon launcher thing he has, so the backyard is littered with the remains of a thousand (or so) water balloons. We’re going to have to do something about that before we mow. Which, of course, gives us an excuse to postpone mowing!

The birthday weekend really started on Friday, when some of our friends (the ones who got married a few weeks ago) came to stay. The boys played Halo on Friday night while the girls caught up. Saturday I had to work, so everyone else went to Wal-Mart for food and decorations. Mike made potato mush instead of potato salad, while my friend Kelly made devilled eggs and her husband Scott made 54 hamburger patties. I honestly don’t think Mike could have gotten everything done without their help. We didn’t just make them work, though - we fed and watered (or “wined”) them quite well and played Scattegories and watched Two Weeks’ Notice (what baby?!). It has been great to watch our friendship with them grow over the past year, and I am thankful for them.

On Sunday, we finished with the preparations in plenty of time for people to start arriving. I hadn’t known that my dad was bringing the aforementioned water balloon setup, so that was a fun surprise for me. Everyone seemed to have a good time with that, and the grilling was quite tasty. I had a good time, but my overall feelings about the party are kind of a blur, since there were so many people and so much was going on. I had a really awesome time, and I hope all the party attendees did, too. Mike is an overboard kind of person, so of course there was way too much food, and we sent Kelly and Scott away yesterday with a cooler full of stuff.

I got some fun presents, but a couple really stick out. My parents gave me their old rocking chair. They got it just before I was born, so it was kind of beat-up, but they refinished it and put some cushions on it. It was a fabulous present, and I was thrilled. Mike got me a camera bag and tickets to see Patty Griffin, Gillian Welch, and Emmylou Harris next month!

After most everyone else had left, Scott, Kelly, Brian, Sarah, Mike, and I played with sparklers and bottle rockets in the backyard. The sparklers were pretty smoky. We were soon enveloped in a cloud of smoke that made it look as if our entire cul-de-sac was on fire.

Now I have to go finish icing cupcakes to take to work. At the library, when it’s your birthday, you bring the dessert. My friends all think this is horrible, but I say that at least I get what I want on my birthday. Chocolate cupcakes with cream cheese icing (and red, white, and blue sprinkles).

Really, it’s been a stellar weekend. What more could a girl ask for?

Since I mentioned before that I was having visions of falling down during the wedding, it’s only appropriate to mention that I did not in fact fall down. I did have a bit of an ordeal, though, which I would like to share.

Friday night after the rehearsal and the rehearsal dinner, I went to Shelby’s house. When we finally went to bed around 1:00 or so, I quickly fell asleep. I then woke up sometime during the 5:00 hour with incredibly horribly crippling stomach pain. I get myself to the bathroom, expecting to get sick in some way, but all that happens is that I lie on the nice cool bathroom floor for a while. I think about what I had for dinner. There was a roast. It was kind of red. I remember someone saying, “Is it okay to eat it if it looks this red?” That innocent question cycles through my brain for the next hour. I finally fall back to sleep with visions of the entire wedding party being incapacitated by food poisoning.

I woke up at a much more normal hour feeling perfectly fine. I guess it wasn’t food poisoning after all. I don’t think I was overreacting, though - what else is one supposed to do during the 5:00 hour?

The only problem was that I had been so sick that I wasn’t really hungry the rest of the day. And during the wedding, I completely zoned out during the homily, since the heat and my fatigue and my just general not-quite-feeling-with-it-ness made me a little dizzy. I put all my energy into not passing out. I succeeded, but just barely. Everyone said it was a very nice homily, and I’m sure they were right. I just didn’t hear it. And, for the rest of the day, I had a vicious headache. It didn’t prevent me from having fun, but I couldn’t get it to go away.

However, this makes it sound as if I didn’t have a good time, which is completely untrue. I had a marvelous time. Except for that hour on the floor of Shelby’s bathroom. hehe.

One of the worst things about coming back from vacation is the fact that there is absolutely no food in the house. Last night we ate pizza rolls and chicken nuggets for dinner. Healthy, no? And of course we were too lazy to go to the grocery store.

Quick sum up of the past week: The wedding was a huge success, and the beach trip was a nice relaxing time. As we (read: Mike) drove home last night, I thought about some of the things I have learned over the past week.

I can handle a change of plans better than I used to, but I still might need a good cry first. There were a lot of ways (best not aired publicly, methinks) my expectations weren’t met over the past week, but I tried to be flexible and adjust. I just seem to be one of those people who cries when things are stressful, and changing plans can (at times) be a stressful thing. Usually, though, after a cry and a good night’s sleep, I can roll with the punches as much as anyone else.

Eight adults and four children under the age of one can live successfully in a house without killing one another. We went to the beach with three other couples who all have children. We honestly weren’t sure what it would be like, since we aren’t used to living with kids. We had a good time, but it was nice to get back to our regular (child-free) life last night.

Dumb card games can inspire a lot of soul-searching. On Wednesday night, we played a game called Nerts, and I sucked at it. Big time. I got pretty frustrated about that, which led to a big discussion. Mike says that when most people play games in a group setting, their goals are something normal, like having fun or winning. He says that my goal is usually just to not look stupid, but that no one is looking at my poor Nerts skills and thinking that I am stupid. I realize that it’s very egocentric of me to think that everyone is looking at me all the time. I think I can be pretty paranoid about not knowing how to do things, or not having information that other people have. I know why I feel that way (I suppose everyone feels that way to some extent), but it was definitely causing me to overreact. It’s funny – I am a competitive person, but, for once, I wasn’t upset about losing. I didn’t expect to win this game the first time I played it. I just felt a lot of unreasonable shame about being the only person with a negative score. As a side note, I learned that I like different games than a lot of my friends. Nerts is very fast-paced, and I get overwhelmed with that kind of game. But a lot of my friends were not down with the idea of playing Trivial Pursuit, which is my favorite game.

Shelby and I know entirely too much about 90210. I stayed with Shelby last Friday night, and we stayed up late talking and watching What Not to Wear and While You Were Out. Then on Saturday, Shelby did my hair and we watched 90210. We remember an embarrassing amount of information about Dylan and Brenda and Brandon and Kelly.

I am a sap at weddings. I kept crying at random times during the wedding festivities. One of my friends says that her “trademark” is that she always cries at the very end when the bride and groom leave. I think my trademark might be that I always cry when the bride and groom enter the reception and everyone cheers for them. It makes me think back to my own wedding – I remember coming into the fellowship hall and seeing everyone standing and cheering for us. That was my favorite moment from my wedding, and I get excited for my friends to be able to cheer for them, but I also get a little emotional. I also usually cry when the groom sees the bride for the first time, because the look on his face is always a beautiful sight to behold. My other crying moment was a little more shameful. I was speaking to the mother of the groom, telling her that I had a lot of fun watching her enjoy the wedding, and I started bawling. Mike looked at me like I had just grown another head or a third eye or something, because I had been fine and then turned into a puddle of emotion on the floor. Mike’s parents didn’t come to our wedding, which was a big part of why I started crying, but it was also the end of a long, hot day. I am a little embarrassed, though, about my freak-out. I am sure the mother of the groom now thinks that her new daughter-in-law has very odd friends. hehe.

That’s most of what stands out to me about the past week. I still have a lot to process, but I am glad to be back to normal life.

This morning on NPR I heard a segment about Sandra Cisneros, an author, discussing her use of language and what influenced her style. What I found so interesting was how she remembered visiting the Chicago Public Library as a child and looking in the card catalog. She saw that some of the cards were more dirty and dog-eared than others, and she wanted to read those books, because they must be great, important ones. From there it was only a quick jump to wanting to write her own books, books that would have their own dirty, dog-eared cards.

That made me kind of sad, because we just don’t live in that world anymore. I’m not bemoaning technology, because as a librarian I am incredibly thankful for computers and boolean searches and OCLC. But, when the catalog is on a computer, we can miss out on the human aspect of accessing information, or the serendipity of flipping through the card catalog and running across exactly what you need. We might be more exact, and it is certainly easier, but it is also more impersonal.

There’s a journal on my desk entitled “Books to Check Out.” I keep a list of stuff I would like to read in there, jotting down titles or authors as I come across them. The cover looks like the inside of an old library book, with all the due date stamps. We don’t do that anymore, either. It’s not really good for the books. My university did it, though, and I remember the fun of checking out a book that hadn’t been checked out since the 60s. I guess that’s another human aspect that has faded away.

Enough reminiscing about the past. Since I’m already talking about the library, this seems like a good time to give a job update. I have now been at my job six months(!!!), and I had my review at the end of last week. It was a good review, and very encouraging (and now I can use vacation time! yay!). Not only that, but I was discussing some of the changes I’ve made on the website with one of my coworkers, and she said, “I’m so glad you’re here.” It is nice to work in an encouraging, affirming environment. I am glad I like my job. It was a long, hard road to get here, but I am thankful to see how it has all worked out.

This week I have been thinking about how I hate having my time overly scheduled. We hang out with some friends to watch Survivor every week, and it kind of stresses me out to have to do something every Thursday night. Mike pointed out today that my problem is not so much with things being scheduled on Thursday nights as it is with his current schedule. Here’s a quick rundown of our week - small group in Greensboro on Monday nights, we both work late on Tuesday nights, we have Wednesday nights together to cook dinner (except when I am being taken out for a special treat), Thursday nights we have Survivor and Friday nights Mike works late. So my real problem is that we only get Wednesday night at home together.

However, this seems as good a time as any to announce - that will be changing soon, because Mike has turned in his notice and will be going back to school full-time in the fall. He has not yet earned a bachelor’s degree, and he has decided that he would like to be a math teacher, so I will be supporting him while he goes to school and works part-time. We are both very excited about this.

Anyway, back to the original topic. Mike and I are just not the spontaneous sort. When we get home from work, we tend to veg out immediately and not go out again (unless it’s a planned trip to the grocery store). Is this bad? I think it’s okay to be a homebody, but I am a homebody to the extreme. I love just sitting on the couch or on the deck and reading and listening to music and being close to Mike. I am afraid that my desires to stay at home are detrimental to my friendships, because I just don’t think about calling my girl friends to hang out (especially during the week). (And there is an element of, “I am sure they are all busy with other people,” but I doubt that’s surprising to my long-time readers.)

I am not sure what to do with any of this. I guess I am still processing. I am definitely the kind of person who needs time alone, but I want to be careful not to take that to extremes.

Want to hear about my brush with the law last night?

First night in a new town. Driving excitedly down the road to see my house for the first time as its actual owner. Pass a cop going the other way. Look at the spedometer and realize I’m going waaaaaaaay too fast. See the cop turn around behind me, and know I’m busted. I use profanity.

Dad always told me: Don’t speed. And if you do speed, and you get caught, don’t argue. Your integrity is not worth the price of a speeding ticket. Even if you weren’t doing it, you’ve done it before, so you probably deserve the ticket anyway. (For the record, I have only been pulled once before last night, and I have never had a ticket or been in an accident.)

Very Nice Officer: Do you know why I pulled you over?

Very Sheepish Kari: I was going too fast.

VNO: [Looks at my license.] Do you still live in Greensboro?

VSK: We bought a house here today. I was kind of excited to get home.

We chat about exactly how fast I was going and where my new house is. I make no excuses for it, because I KNOW I deserve the ticket. I just apologize. The VNO goes to his car, and I sit there thinking how amused Mike, Brian, and Sarah will be at all this. They are at my house waiting for me so we can paint.

The VNO comes back and says, since my record is clean, he doesn’t want to give me a ticket on my first night in a new town. He doesn’t even give me a warning. But he tells me I’d better slow down. He gives me a good-old-boy grin, and I grin sheepishly back.

So, I did what my Daddy told me, my record is still clean, and I have a good story about my first night in Randleman. It was probably good for me, because I have been wielding quite a lead foot lately, and I needed a reminder to keep it within reason. (But when Sarah and I went to Wal-Mart later, I made her drive.)

So, after all the excitement and six days of, “We’re closing tomorrow . . . no, no, we’re not . . . we’ll close the next day,” we finally got to sign papers.

And can I just say, it was pretty anti-climactic. At the end, it was like, “Go have fun painting!” It seemed like we should have gotten a small model of the house or some skywriting. At the very least a t-shirt that says “I’m a HOMEOWNER!” All we got was a handshake. And a house payment.

Everyone keeps telling us . . . welcome to the real world.

(I’m excited nonetheless.)

I have some pictures of the exterior (some I took in the snow!) that I will load when RMFO pics is working again. I took some pictures of the inside today, but I will probably wait to take better inside pictures when we’re all painted and moved.

Speaking of paint, I picked out some colors today. I’m going to go buy them on Sunday.

Mike has gone to buy us some nice new grown-up bookcases to be delivered next week. The refrigerator will be delivered on Monday.

And, finally, we’re supposed to close on Monday. I am having a hard time believing it’s going to work out. It didn’t help that we were supposed to close today, and it got bumped back. I am (still) fearing the worst. Which makes me extra grumpy (just ask Mike). One reason I feel stressed about it because I have to work next week. I had today off, which would have been ideal for closing. And then I would have had the weekend to start moving things. But now I won’t be as helpful, and it’ll be more stressful overall because of us having less time to be organized. Please send Positive Thoughts in the direction of us closing on Monday. The big moving date is still March 13.

That is your House Update for this Thursday, March 4.

We all have days where things just seem to go wrong. This morning I had a meeting, and I had to talk about some things that are really hard for me. Because of a Great Disappointment I had several years ago, I have some serious trust issues with God. When big things (like buying a house) come up, I assume the worst. Everything has worked out really well for us to buy a house so far, but I am expecting it to fall through at any moment. And I expect that to be for no reason whatsoever. Just because God is arbitrary, and he does things like that. These are hard things to admit to myself, let alone talk about.

Then we had to go sign some papers for our loan. I hate talking about money. My mind shuts down. I am good at math, but not things like mortgages. I get overwhelmed. So, in an already fragile emotional state, I got really frustrated while working out our mortgage. There were some questions I was asked that I wasn’t sure what the lady was looking for. I am seriously embarassed that money intimidates me so much. This is the year 2004! I am a modern woman! What is my problem?

After we left (and I cried a bit), I came to work. Where I received an email that let me know I messed up big time on something (not work-related). It wasn’t even 1:00, and I wanted to hide under my desk.

I take back what I said yesterday. It would have been great if it had snowed enough to keep us home today.

In related news, there are more house updates to come. Stay tuned.