Just One Bite

My textbooks for Fall were cheap!  For four classes, I’m paying only $276.

Except…

That’s the total for five rented books.  Only one is an actual hardcopy; the others are ebooks with many restrictions, which will self-destruct at the end of the semester (or at least, that’s how I’d prefer to visualize the removal of my right to access them).

If I’d purchased the books new, the total would have been near $600.  That’s a silly amount, but I find it ludicrous that the rental charges — even for books I can never hold in my hand and which have no reproduction costs and low storage overhead — are almost 50% of that.  Here’s a specific example: One of my psych classes requires a book on research methods.  The price for a new hardcover version is $184.  To rent the etextbook for 6 months through NOOKstudy, I’ll pay $92. 95.  I’m limited to viewing “my” textbook on two computers; I can copy 15 pages of text and/or print 10 pages of text from the book every month.

Before anyone suggests it, I did sign up for a membership in Amazon Student.  The textbook prices are no better than what I can get through Barnes and Noble, which is the supplier for my university.  That was disappointing.  However, if I had purchased the books through them, I could have sold them back at 70% of the price, which would have been a bit cheaper.  Kindle rental would allow me to view my books anywhere, on any device, with annotations and a custom rental period, but my textbooks weren’t available in that format yet.  Also, Amazon Student gives me $3.99 overnight shipping as an upgrade to my existing Amazon Prime membership (non-Prime members get Prime shipping for a year).  Definitely worth enrolling and I hope they have my Winter books.

I broke up with Kevin today.

Sort of.

It’s complicated.

My frustrations have been growing and my feelings changing for the last month and a half, even before we had our great weekend away together.  Some of that is that he stopped stoking the fire; I think he was trying to stop encouraging my attachment, knowing we would be ending this relationship after summer and being fearful of hurting me.  A few weeks ago, I told him that I didn’t expect us to make plans to see each other again after our September visit, and he reacted with some surprise.  He’s withdrawn a bit since then and so have I.

There was no possible future, since I won’t leave Crush and Kevin can’t envision a life of sharing.  There’s the issue of children, too.  I think it’s a shame and I think we could have had a very happy time of it for a while.  I’m seeing him settle more and more into his moderate-paying, dead end job in a crappy, one-employer town in the middle of nowhere.  He’ll finish his divorce, find a decent girl, settle down and have babies.  I wish he could have thought bigger, but I wish him the best life no matter what.

So where do we stand?  Friends with benefits, at the moment.  We’ve been close friends for a couple of years now and neither of us wants to lose that, though it will change.  I’m visiting him for a week soon (one reason the conversation happened today was that I wanted us to be on the same page for that visit: friends, not lovers, and low drama) and we’ll see how it goes.

I’m hoping he’ll start treating me like his closest confidante again.  Ironically, when we got closer physically and romantically, Kevin shut off from me emotionally.  He stopped telling me what was in his heart.  He’s got a fear of abandonment, and he was so fearful of making me angry/hurt/sad that he’d leave big gaping holes in his stories, making anything he said to me untrustworthy.  I used to be the one who helped him face life a little more courageously and honestly, and I miss the intimacy we lost when he started putting his cock in me.  What a stupid situation.

Once he finds a girlfriend, I’m sure our friendship will fade to the background.  I expect that to happen in the next couple months.  I’ll move on too.  Crush pointed out that it was a funny thing to hear from his wife, but I told him yesterday that I’d like to see other people.  I’ve still got The European in the background — he sent me a postcard with a romantic note from his family summer vacation — and who knows who else I might meet when I’m not spending 15-25 hours a week on video chat with Kevin?

All is well.  I’m a little down, but not upset.  This relationship had a expiration date, and it turned out that it went sour a few weeks ahead of time.  That’s ok.

I’m competitive.

This came up in conversation with Kevin this week, when I was reminiscing about my time working inside a gigantic tech company.  The hectic pace, the long hours, the ridiculous executive whims, the customer challenges, the impossible deadlines… *wistful sigh*  I do miss it sometimes.  Ok,  I don’t really miss any of the things I just mentioned, but I do miss finding solutions to difficult problems and negotiating compromises between techies, designers, and execs.  Those are areas where I excelled.  I miss brainstorming and fighting with creative, skilled people and pushing them to look at things in a different way.  I miss “how about this?” and “what if?” and “wouldn’t it be possible to…?”

I exchanged emails with a former coworker a few days ago.  He started at Big Tech shortly before I did, worked for me for a few months, transferred into a different department, and worked his way up to a vice presidency after I resigned.   He was a remarkably hard worker who was persistent, diligent, and seemed to always be at work despite pursuing an MBA and having small children (the sort of company man that Big Tech appreciated most).  He was also a truly nice guy when you could get him to pause his manic pace.  He wrote to me for insight on another company where I had worked, but his first paragraph made it clear that he was a little baffled by my career changes.  It was unspoken and the voice may have come from my own head, but the message was, “You were good at this.  What happened?”

When I first began adjusting to being a stay-at-home wife/stepmom, I pursued it with the same voracious competitive spirit that I had for my job.   I clipped coupons and shopped sales like it was a sport, filling our shelves with brand-name products that were nearly (or completely) free.  Meals were planned and made from scratch six nights a week, lunches packed for Crush and the Crushling each day.  I canned delicious jellies made from things others would see as garbage: apple peels and crab apples.  I gardened.  I sewed.  I cleaned like Martha Stewart could drop in for a visit at any time.  Damn it, I was going to totally kick that housewife job’s ass!

I’m more relaxed about all that now.  The house is still pretty damn clean, but not obsessively so.  I plan meals well ahead of time and cook from scratch six nights per week, but Crush makes his own lunch and who knows what the kid eats?  I baked and made candy for Christmas gifts, but jellies are a thing of the past.  I’ve given up the competitive couponing and shopping; I spend a little more money now, but save about 10 hours per week and patronize our local market.  My gardening is limited to a lush selection of herbs and a few tomato plants.

But… I maintained an unnecessary 4.0 in my classes, doing research and writing on the graduate level for community college courses.  I usually have one or two pieces of crochet in progress and I keep challenging myself to learn new techniques and take on harder projects.  I love competing with Crush as we play along during episodes of Jeopardy.   I used to enjoy online gaming with Kevin, until we got to a level where there were no challenges remaining without spending real cash or being online 12 hours a day.  Having some measure of competition, even striving against my own expectations, keeps me motivated.

I’ll admit that my competitive spirit glows brightly when Crush is envied because of something I do, when there’s reinforcement that I’m doing this whole wife thing pretty well.  I want him to feel proud of his choice and maybe a little spoiled compared to other men he knows, sometimes.   I’m so far from perfect, but I do put in some effort now and then.

How competitive am I?  I actually feel a rush of victory about how quickly I’m healing from foot surgery.  Yes, I’m a competitive healer.  And yes, I know that’s insane.

It wasn’t the high point of my weekend with Kevin, but allow a 40 year old woman a little vanity: we went out to dinner, he ordered a drink, I ordered a drink, and the waitress only asked for my ID.  Ha!

This trip was our best time together so far.  We were off in a cabin in the middle of nowhere.  We cooked together, enjoyed the hot tub, played with his dog, watched a bunch of movies, played cards, and indulged the physical side of our relationship.  The weather didn’t cooperate for everything we had planned, but we still had a terrific visit.  I don’t know the cause — maybe that I pulled back a little, or because of a difficult talk we had a few days ago, or simply because it felt right — but Kevin was more spontaneously affectionate than ever.  He’s always sweet and loving.  This time, though, there was more.  More reaching for my hands across the restaurant table.  More wrapping his arms around me from behind while I was busy.  More soft kisses and nibbles.  I was delighted and soaked it up like a sponge.

And, while I was away, Crush had a date with a woman he’s known online for a few months.  They had dinner together and he spent the night… and I’m fine with that.  Since I’m so deeply involved with Kevin, I’m glad that Crush got a chance to explore the openness of our marriage, and I wish he had a better time at it.

I find it interesting that I don’t feel any jealousy about Crush’s interactions, but the smallest, innocent conversation that Kevin has with an eligible girl in his area can make my insides twist in agony.  My guess is that three factors are involved.  First, I’m sure that Crush is devoted to me and that if something serious was developing with someone else, I’d know about it and have time to adapt.  Second, I know that it’s Kevin’s style to hide things in order to spare my feelings, so I am never sure I have the full and honest story.  Third, I know I’ll have to give Kevin up soon.  Heartache is lurking and I want to put it off as long as I can.

In order to graduate with my BA in 2013, I have a very specific list of courses to take.  I’ve registered for Fall and Winter: 16 credits each, all required classes.  I’ll probably have to take some classes next summer to complete the liberal arts core.  In my final year, I foresee a lot of force-adding to get into the sessions I need.

Some things are dismaying me about my current path, though.  I’m pursuing a joint major in anthropology and sociology, with a minor in psychology.  Most of the required classes are introductions, overviews, or methodology, and I have no room in my schedule to take more than a couple of the deep-dive classes that truly interest me.  Cynical me sees the course list and thinks, “Wow. This is designed to give wide, shallow knowledge and a degree for the sake of a degree.”  Since I’m wavering on what I want to pursue in grad school, I’m happy to do that this year, but I really wish I could dig into meatier topics in my final couple of semesters.

There’s more downside to that than personal preference.  I’m hoping to have a choice of grad schools and some scholarship money (perhaps through a TA/RA job), but my transcript full of requisite 100 and 200 level classes isn’t going to be very impressive.   Several of the highest level items will be German classes I took 20 years ago.  There’s a tiny matter of vanity, too: because my program and schedule don’t allow me more than a couple of high level classes, I can’t possibly graduate with departmental honors.  Crush’s answer to that was, “Stay an extra year and get them.”  I’m not sure if he was kidding or not.  An extra year would give me a lot more options, but I don’t want to spend that money if I don’t have to.

My lineup for Fall includes two anthropology overview classes (with almost identical titles, though they’re both required), a class in psychological research methods, and a Western art history class I need to fulfill a core distribution.   Not exactly an inspiring set.

The way I handle my health issues is very different from how Crush handles his, which was the subject of a long discussion last night.  Much of that stems from our childhoods and our very different mothers.  (Side note: Crush’s mother met mine for the first time last week.  Days later, she asked her son, “Don’t you ever want to tell her to just fuck off and die?”  She saw right through my mom’s facade, for which I was grateful.)

Crush was born with some physical problems that required multiple surgeries over the years.  He was also an active and risk-taking kid, with broken bones and hospital stays.  As he puts it, when he was injured, his mom would ask, “Is it bad enough to get it looked at?”  He’d consider and answer, and life would go on.  His mom tended to downplay his injuries and surgeries.

On the other hand, my mom relished the attention of having a sick child (mild Munchausen-by-proxy, perhaps).  I was subjected to all sorts of tests for minor conditions and underwent unnecessary surgery.  One ongoing condition was misdiagnosed because the doctor chose to believe her more dramatic explanation rather than my simple one.  I had ridiculous numbers of xrays, GI tests, scans with injected dye, neurological tests, and more.  I’m clumsy and accident-prone, so some of those were only slightly excessive, but any ankle twist usually meant a medical clinic trip.

Crush found it hard to believe that I had completely forgotten breaking a couple bones in my foot, but I had.  I had a vague idea that I had probably broken my toe, but until a recent visit with the podiatrist who will be operating on me later this month, I couldn’t recall the details.  They came flooding back as I drove home: falling down the stairs in the remote house I owned from 2000-2003, crawling to my car, driving myself to the hospital, working from home for a couple weeks because I was unable to drive the 55 miles each way to the office, being on crutches for weeks.  That left me with permanent injury that has changed my comfort in shoes and driving ever since, and I simply forgot.

My explanation for that is that there are simply too many little things to remember, and my experience as a kid was that a mountain would be made out of any medical molehill, so it was better to ignore minor injuries or illnesses.  Once my mother stopped getting emotional stroking for having a sick child, she began to be dismissive or mocking about any sign of weakness on my part — another reason for me to hide and forget.   And, frankly, as much as I think of myself as healthy, I’ve had a bunch of surgeries, live in pain every day, and have some troubling chronic conditions: there’s a lot to keep track of.

One of the nearly-forgotten conditions I’m dealing with lately is vasovagal syncope.  In plain English, I faint in response to certain stimuli.  My heart rate plummets, the veins in my legs dilate and blood pools low in my body, depriving my brain of oxygen.  I feel confused and nauseated, then sweaty, and then I start to see yellow spots and get tunnel vision, my ears begin to ring, I panic and lose the ability to speak coherently, and then I lose consciousness.   People who faint at the sight of blood?  They have this. In my case, it used to be triggered by needles (giving blood or getting vaccinations), but now it’s triggered mainly by standing in hot, crowded places for extended periods of time.  I had an attack at a rock concert recently, despite the fact that my legs were constantly in motion as I moved to the music.   I also have this reaction when taking stimulant laxatives — during the cleanse day before my hysterectomy, I passed out repeatedly and couldn’t get off the floor.  I felt like I was going to die, which is apparently a common description by people with this condition.

I first started having attacks when I was a teenager.  I passed out during a play rehearsal.  I nearly passed out while performing in a chorus concert.  I sometimes had to sit down in the middle of Sunday Mass, which enraged my mom enough to take me to a doctor.  And another.  And another.  They wouldn’t accept that I was just fainting and decided that the prodromal warning symptoms were really a pre-seizure aura.  I was put on medication for epilepsy (Dilantin), which I swear made my thinking fuzzy for the better part of two years until I stopped taking it at college.

It had been years since I’d had a vasovagal attack.  Again, this is apparently normal.  Attacks come in clusters, and you can have increased susceptibility for days or weeks or months.  I had a few groups of attacks in my teens and a few in my 20s (lesson learned then: I can’t be put into standing bondage positions), but I don’t think I had experienced any for a decade.  Perhaps that’s because my blood pressure was trending high during those times.  For whatever reason, I’m in a susceptible period now, and it sucks.

Last week, I lost it.  Too much stress with relatives, rushing around, relationship issues, transition from kid-to-adult issues, etc.  I was furious at Crush about a few things, to the extent where I could hardly look at him and didn’t want him to touch me.  I cried for hours.  It didn’t help that I wasn’t able to talk to Kevin for several days (when I was available, he wasn’t, and vice versa).

Now, it feels like a python of stress slowly uncoiling and releasing its grip on me.  Visiting relatives have left.   Things are better between Crush and I, even if there are still a lot of issues swirling around in my head.  I got to spend several hours in video chat with Kevin yesterday, and it meant a lot to see he was as relieved and delighted to see me as I was to see him.  “Let’s never be apart for that amount of time again,” he said.  Ok.

And, there is an ongoing issue with the Crushling driving me bats.  I try to hide most of that from him, because we’re trying to define our new relationships as three adults sharing this house, rather than two parents and a kid.  I wish he had the ambition and independent spirit that Crush and I had at his age, but he sleeps until afternoon and does very little without being pushed.  We’ve stopped pushing.  He now has the choice to do things according to our rules or to get out (or be thrown out).  Don’t get me wrong: he’s a charming, clever, genuinely nice guy.  He’s just irresponsible, self-centered, and unmotivated.  This is not an easy time.  Of course, it makes me so very thrilled that his mother gets to be the fun one, with whom he plays games, goes to movies, and eats junk food, while I’m the wicked stepmother.  *shrug*  He lives in my house, so that’s the way it goes, I suppose.

I’ve never been pregnant.  Blame it on polycystic ovarian syndrome, blame it on hormones, blame it on timing, blame it on internal injuries, blame it on luck.  I took birth control pills for about a year — off and on, when my cycle had gotten too wonky — and sometimes had partners who used condoms, but I’ll confess that there was a hell of a lot of unprotected sex in my past.  Never got knocked up.

Oh, there were was a time when I tried, too.  I was engaged, he wanted children, and it was damned sexy to think about that sort of lifelong bond every time he fucked me and then we cuddled, wondering what might be happening inside.  It turns out, nothing was.

So, I decided I didn’t want kids.

Then I changed my mind.

Then I changed it back.

And on and on.  Tick tock.

When Crush and I got involved, I was at a point where I wanted kids.  I had just spent a couple months doting over Dante’s baby and had been considering adoption if I couldn’t get pregnant myself.  Then, I married a guy who was so certain that he only wanted one child, he had had a vasectomy years before.  Oh.  Well.  We talked about it and he assured me that if I was absolutely positively sure that I wanted a child, he’d see about having the procedure reversed.  That seemed a bit extreme, so I threw myself into parenting my stepson, working, adjusting to marriage, getting a new household set up, etc.

Teen years can be challenging, so it was easy for me to agree that I didn’t want to go through that again.  I had twinges of envy when I saw baby pictures from friends, and the sight of babies was strongly magnetizing for me, as it often is for women in their 30s.  By the time I ooohed and ahhhed over my baby nephew last year, I was 40 and had lost my uterus to cancer, so I figured that was that.

Tick tock.

Talking with Kevin about kids has made the old ache return, the longing, the wish for one of those sticky, drooling, screaming things to call my own.   It’s not completely impossible.   I mean, I’m 40 — friends of mine had had their first child at this age or older.  I’m unable to get pregnant, but considering my genes, adoption is probably a better choice, anyway.  Crush and I have a big house with room for another child or two, especially since the Crushling is out of high school now.

But, Crush wants the freedom of childlessness that he barely got to experience as an adult, which I enjoyed until I was 35.  We’re enjoying adult vacations and having fewer limitations on how we spend our time, now that the Crushling is largely independent.  I think Crush is ready for a few years of peace, then an eventual future as a doting grandpa.  I could beg and wheedle for him to adopt with me, but I won’t.  He deserves a break.

If there was a way for me to raise a family with Kevin, and still have Crush, I would do it in a heartbeat.  Kevin wants a traditional family, though.  Wife, kids, dog, house, white picket fence.  Crush is supportive when it comes to my relationship with him, but he draws the line at letting me divorce him to have that.  (Seriously, those were his words a couple nights ago.)   So, there’s no way.  The best I can do is to try to convince Kevin to move here, help him find a great girl, and position myself as the helpful “aunt”.  This ache will subside with time and hormonal changes, and it isn’t like I don’t have enough to keep myself busy.

As for the subject line: Lincoln was the president who signed the law making plural marriage illegal in the US.  Prick.

Busy busy busy!  Some updates:

School

I’m officially a senior in college now, enrolled at a nearby university.  I’ll be able to register for classes in a couple weeks at my orientation meeting, but there’s trouble brewing.  Not only do I need another 34 credits in classes for my major, which I expected, but they’re also saying I need 41 more credits of “general education”.  Fucking hell.  That’s two full years plus some summer classes, assuming I get into the courses I need and there aren’t any schedule conflicts.  There will be some fights with my adviser, I’m sure.

Crush

Our fifth wedding anniversary is in a couple days.  Can you believe it?  We’ll celebrate with dinner and a movie this weekend: premium seats at a great theater and dinner at an award-winning restaurant that sounds simply wonderful.

Kevin

I had a terrific weekend at Kevin’s house.  It was relaxed and comfortable, sexy and romantic.   We have plans again in three weeks: spending a long weekend in a cute little cabin between our homes.

Body

Lucky me: I have to have surgery again in a few weeks.  About 8 years ago, I fell down a flight of stairs and broke a couple bones in my foot.  One of those bones didn’t heal correctly, leading to pain and osteoarthritis.  The bones in the joint need to be cut and reshaped, then drilled to promote the growth of cartilage again.  Such fun!  I’m glad I can get it done over the summer.  My years of wearing high heels are over, though — my foot will never be able to stay at that angle again.  There may be some weeping when I throw out my thigh-high boots with five inch stiletto heels.

Today marks six months since I had a hysterectomy to remove my cancer.  My scar is thick and dark pink, but I don’t mind it much.  I haven’t had bleeding or reason to believe that any malignancy remains, which I hope my oncologist confirms when I see him in June.  Yay.

What an absurdly busy month this is!

Painting and trimming a large room.  Sanding and repainting a porch floor.  Planting herbs, flowers, and tomatoes.  Planning and preparing a party.  Enrolling in a university and registering for classes. Volunteering with church.  Socializing with relatives visiting from out of state.

Plus, the Crushling is finishing high school, with a three-ring circus of exams, events, and obligations.  Crush and I are going to a concert next week and will celebrate our 5th wedding anniversary at the end of the month. I’m going to visit Kevin for a weekend.  We have landscaping contractors digging up our lawn and soon will have building contractors working on a small addition.

Argh!

June will be quieter, thank heavens.  I’ll need to work with the Crushling to get him enrolled in college, but the only other item on the calendar is spending a few more days with Kevin.  July? A play with Crush and otherwise beautifully empty days.  August?  Lollapalooza and a whole lot of nothing.  Another visit with Kevin in there somewhere, I’m sure, and then he plans to be here in mid-September.  I’ve got a writing project I’d like to work on this summer and I’m hoping those empty days will be productive.

But first, I need to get through this month.  Wish me luck.