“It is true that I was born in Iowa, but I can't speak for my twin sister.” -Abigail Van Buren
I’ve never met anybody that looks exactly like me—although when I was a kid, I did have an uncanny resemblance to Tina Majorino. And I’ve never met anybody that acts just like me—I mean, who could be as wonderful as me :) But this weekend, I met someone who is living the same story I am.
In a nutshell,
- Our names start with the same letter, and both have four letters.
- Our husbands are both engineers, and both work for the same company, at the same plant, with the same boss. [That would explain how we met. We were driving to the husbands’ coworker’s wedding.]
- We’re both impatiently waiting for our husbands to get promoted and transferred—as they were promised when they accepted the job offer.
- Both of our husbands are commuting about an hour one way, everyday, because there’s no reason to relocate permanently or even semi-permanently if he gets transferred in two months.
- So we’re both stuck paying rent, when we would really rather settle down and buy a house.
- We've both put our careers on hold, waiting for this impending relocation.
- We’re both interested in pursuing a different career path than we’re currently in, or that we went to college for.
- We both want to be teachers.
- We both want to teach a population that most people think we’re crazy for requesting.
- We both want to teach middle school history, and even more specifically than that, Georgia history, or whatever state we happen to be transferred to.
That was the progression of our conversation as we drove to the wedding. It was getting spooky as the conversation continued. But needless to say, there was plenty to talk about, plenty to gripe about, and plenty of information to be learned about various paths to teacher certification.
The wives.
The husbands, including the newest husband--the groom
“I fell asleep reading a dull book and dreamed I kept on reading, so I awoke from sheer boredom.”
-Heinrich Heine
It’s only Thursday, and it’s not even two o’ clock yet. You’ve got to be kidding me.
After an office-wide “come to Jesus” meeting on Monday morning, everyone has been diligently working, trying to bring in some cash, in a period where cash isn’t exactly falling from the sky. I’ve been racking my brain this week trying to think of things to occupy my time, and I’ve been pretty successful up to this point.
I’ve gotten a head start on a couple of stalled projects; I’ve written a couple of press releases for newly-launched products; I’ve assisted in redesigning our company website, and I’ve started organizing some product specification documents until I reached the point where I’m waiting for information from the client.
Everything on my last-resort to-do list has been checked off.
And yet, it’s only Thursday afternoon. What do I do now? And, what will I do tomorrow? Next week?
“There are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents ... and only one for birthday presents, you know.”
-Lewis Carroll
So this is the result of husband and wife having birthdays in the same week, car dealerships feeling that they need to share in your celebration, and a crazy grandmother who thinks that “you’re so special that you deserve two birthday cards.”
We went pretty low-key for Rob’s birthday as well. But while he had weekend duty, I spent Saturday morning baking a key lime pie. I squeezed the limes, crushed the graham crackers, and attempted the meringue two-and-a-half times before success. Rob was thrilled, and in fact, asked if we could have pie for dinner last night. Don’t tell—but we did! He has now decided that I should try a new pie every weekend—and as long as I continue to substitute Splenda for sugar, even our waistlines may agree.
(I promise the meringue looked better than that before I put it in the refrigerator!!)
Now we have a freezer full of Bok Choy Beef, Chicken Crepes, Siesta Chicken Stew, Chicken Skewers, and more!! Yum!
