My Mascot

Small things in life make me really happy. I keep an Easy Button on my dashboard, to pretend that it will turn red lights green. Similarly,  this happy fellow – left over and unwanted (!) after last year’s office white-elephant exchange – keeps me chipper (most days) at work:

And then there are the days that you show up, the phones aren’t working because it’s daylight savings time, the instructions to fix them are on the server, but the server has crashed for god-knows why, and you could fix the server, if only you had a USB keyboard because the motherboard isn’t reading P2 connections, everyone FREAKS OUT when you open the case to fix it, one of your 2 man crew called in and you have 4 customers waiting with sofas to be picked up, and your replacement has decided he doesn’t want to come in today, and, oh, the light over your desk has FALLEN OUT OF THE CEILING over the weekend.

Then the happy cat isn’t as effective. But that was yesterday. Today? The cat is amazing.

Internal Stress Explosion

Okay, let’s talk about the issues here. (which, i guess is in my head.)

First, whenever something starts stressing me out, what I need to do to deal with it is to talk about it. Blocking this are the facts that very few of my problems are “real” problems. I’m able-bodied, only facing systemic discrimination on the factor of my gender, I live in the developed world, I have a college education, etc, etc. etc

I feel like if i talk about my shit with my friends, they’re simply going to return with all the more significant problems they’re facing, or they’re going to be placed in a position where they cannot help, or are bored or… whatever.

So i feel the need to preface this post with the disclaimer that i realize that i have a lot of “well, at least you’re not dealing with…..” responses that could come forth.  Since all of those myriad things that i’m infinitely thankful to NOT be dealing with are already whirling through my brain, and almost precluding me from writing this post in the first place, please do me the favor of not listing them out in the comments, if anyone is even reading this.

i swear i’m not so irritatingly self-depricating. I just write here when I’m feeling emo, i guess. Y’all are getting a very strange selection of my personality.

ANYWAY.

So, boyfriend and i are moving in together. We thought we’d be saving money. we thought we’d save about 80 bucks a month on rent, and about 150 on utilities, and then a little on groceries.

but to get the rent we were getting, and the apartment unit we wanted, we’d made the decision to break our leases. Having read them, it appeared that we would each have to pay 85% of one month’s rent as a reletting fee penalty thing.

fine, we’d recoup that in about 8 months of our new, shiny 15 month lease.

well

yeah

so you also have to pay ALL the rent you would’ve paid for the remainder of your lease, up front. And if someone leases your apartment, you get some of it back. (so, i have 4 months left on my lease. if someone rents my apartment 2 months from now, i get those 2 months back, after i paid the 4 up front.)

ladies and gentlemen, in my case, that is 4.85 x 1 month’s rent.  after being unemployed for 9 months, and working now for 3 months, i don’t have that kind of cash lying around.

boyfriend does though.

and he’s willing to pay it for me

this is the part where you say “how is this a problem?”

and the part where i respond that if you don’t see how being broke,and having your very generous boyfriend offer to pay 2 grand for the privilege of moving in with you ON TOP OF the moving-in costs…. we’re probably not going to see eye-to-eye.

I’ve never had a relationship with someone so genuinely devoid of motive. It’s disarming. I’ve had boyfriends in the past who would offer to do things for me, so that i would owe them something. this isn’t like that. and, for some reason, the complete lack of manipulative motivation is what’s making my stomach tie up in knots.

he loves me? enough to pay thousands of dollars for no reason but to move in with me?

how do i deal with this graciously? i’m usually so fucking cautious, but we were there, at the office, and moving the date up a few months was impetuous, and… well, we made a decision without fully understanding the ramifications. which is unlike either of us.

/sigh

i feel sick. i feel like we made a stupid decision, and he’s paying for it. and i feel guilty about that, compounded by his kindness, and …….. i also still feel excited about the adventure, but of course, i feel bad for that, too.  and i feel bad for even stressing about my problems in light of the much greater struggles faced by billions the world over.

Moving in

So Boyfriend and I have been together for about 11 months now, and please trust me when I say we are ridiculously compatible.  At this point, he’s been sleeping at my place every single night for the last 9 months or so. (I don’t ever sleep at his place because he still has a twin bed, and that is just insane. We tried on an air mattress a few times, but why sleep on an air mattress when 10 minutes away you have access to a tempurpedic? Exactly. So he sleeps here.)

As you can imagine, sleeping here every night makes this.. pretty well home. We started talking about my place AS home. But, the cozy 500 ft^2 apartment that I leased just for me doesn’t really provide enough space for two, especially as we’re both large people. I’m over 5’8”, he’s 6’2”, and we’re both large framed and a little chubby.  Also, he works from home, so he ends up having to get up and drive back to his place, where his computers are set up, just to work from home.

Basically, his apartment has become an office,  and mine has become a very crowded home.

There’s an obvious solution to all of this.

Why not just get a place together?

And so we are. We spent some time poking around the internet, and found a very nice place well within our combined budget. Our leases weren’t up until July and September, respectively, but his month-to-month is only about $25 more than his actual rent. no problem.

But when we went, the apartment was $1,550 /month if we waited until our date (!), since they’d have to hold it for us. If we moved in on March 27th, it would be $1,125/month. Which is $200 under our budget.

So we’re both breaking our leases – we’ll make the money back in about 3 months at the new place, and get to live the dream sooner.

This is all MAGNIFICIENT!

Except.

While my parents have (with one notable exception) always trusted my judgement, and even deferred to me when they didn’t think I was quite right….because it’s my life…. his? Are…. VERY conservative, and quite a bit over protective.  He’s 24, and his drivers’ license still shows their address as home. This made sense, i guess, while he was still in grad school, even, but… really, at this point, it’s just silly.

So, the thing is that family is reaaaally important to me. And while he’s not going to change his mind because he knows his folks’ are going to object… I want them to like me. And so far they do. But when we stayed at their house over Christmas for one night, we slept in separate rooms. This is probably going to blow their mind, and may just paint me into an uncomfortable position for years to come. We made the 4 hour drive to his home town for his mom’s 60th birthday party, and she introduced me to everyone as his “good friend.”

Not because she doesn’t like me.

because she’s somehow embarassed to say girlfriend.

he’s 24. I’m 26.

Anyway, so my INCANDESCENT JOY over the new apartment is tempered by some trepidation.