Ashy so tired...

Well, I feel vindicated. I spent $185 on my winter coat, and it was on sale from $300. I thought it was a pretty good deal. Unfortunately, as I was walking to the subway stop one day very soon after I bought those shoes, some guy (who was pacing back and forth across the sidewalk talking on his cell phone and paying no attention to people who were actually using the sidewalk properly) stepped on the back of my heel and stretched out one of my shoes. Grrr... I kind of felt like an angry New Yorker at that point.

Grad school is hard. It's a lot of work. Sometimes I wonder, why did I try so hard to get here? Why didn't I pick a major that would allow me to get a real job right out of college and then make a decent salary and live in some nice suburb and get a dog and have a baby? And a fireplace, I've always loved fireplaces...

Oh, well. This is where I am for now and maybe once I actually get to feeling like I know what I'm doing, I'll remember why I thought I wanted to do it.

The one thing I never question is why I married Sam. I've never really had any doubts about him. I love being married. I remember reading in a magazine once a long time ago about the 10 things people never tell you about marriage, or something like that. Most of them weren't that surprising, but the one I actually remember was that once you get married, you feel a stronger common identity with your spouse - you feel more embarrassed when they do something embarrassing, more proud when they do something impressive, etc. I think this is actually true and one of the few things that really changed much when we got married. It might be this that leads to the other thing that changed, which is that we argue a bit more than we used to.

Of course, what everybody always tells you is true is that you have to work hard to communicate with your spouse. Sometimes they have different "love languages." A lot of this is psycho-babble, I know, but I think it is important to let people who love you know what you need, because most of the time, they want to give it to you and just don't know how. For instance, when I have a bad day, I go up to Sam, lift his arms up, and get in them. If he starts to pull away before I'm ready, I just say, "No. The hug is not over." Men can understand messages like this.

I'm not always so direct. The other day I noticed that the roses I had in my little bud vase were dying, so I said to Sam, "If you were thinking about surprising me with something today, I'm definitely NOT expecting a few stems of red carnations like the ones they sell at the stand down the street on the corner...that would be such a surprise." He didn't jump on this opportunity so at lunch I threw away the dead roses, filled my vase with clean water, and called attention to our lovely centerpiece. He agreed that it was nice, and I said, "yes, but don't you feel as if something might be missing?" Can you guess what my thoughtful husband surprised me with later that afternoon? I couldn't contain my amazement. It really was such a surprise.

In general, though, it's best to be very direct with men, so the other evening I told Sam he needed to use more pet names when addressing me. By "pet names," I mean terms of endearment, but Sam took me a little bit too literally, and now calls me "Spot."