recovering

truth be told i've been downright down. i cried myself to sleep last night, well, before i got up to email my sister to unload. and clint was worried about me. he came home early from work yesterday and today. i say none of this to get attention but because there are some things i need to get off my chest, world.

where do i start? well, it all comes down to decision-making. we all make our own decisions. but sometimes i think my decision-making value system is best. for me at least. imagine that. yet it can also be hard to live with.

if i were a completely free agent, and money were no worry, i may choose to live in california, in the san francisco bay area to be exact. the best friends that i have made are there: amy, zulaika, cindy, april, and then of course so many wonderful friends of mine frequently converge there: monique, nancy, shakeh... first i have to say i am grateful i am still in touch with these people. if it weren't for amy's efforts, who knows. but they did all come to my wedding. and i would go to their weddings and their parents' funerals, and their funerals while we're at it. but we're not there at all. though i do have a friend who i've learned has leukemia at my age. that was scary. what it comes down to is that, at least with the wonderful cadre of friends i have, in many ways it would seem best to live in the bay.

but, i married a midwesterner. and i did that on purpose a) because i love him and he really loves me and b) because i wanted to have a family and live near my family. so how is this all turning out for me, you might ask? well, we own a house, which we could never do in the bay area. we are both in lines of work that we believe in, though i am underemployed. we feel like we could have a kid. few people in my group of friends are at that point. i read an interesting article today about game theory and about how it shakes down when it comes to mating. The article, in everyday economics, is called: "The Eligible-Bachelor Paradox."

The article is difficult for me to summarize, so I'll quote a bit:

Where have all the most appealing men gone? Married young, most of them—and sometimes to women whose most salient characteristic was not their beauty, or passion, or intellect, but their decisiveness.

So, basically, no one likes to stay in the game long and the people who marry first are those that are decisive... It's saying that a lot of the attractive men are taken by aggressive, or at least decisive women.

anyways, as this shakes down for me personally, i feel like i won out. while my man is not rich, he's attractive, loving, etc. okay, how does that fit into california? well, basically i have been counter-betting to what a lot of popular (young) modern wisdom would tell me. modern wisdom would have told me to stick out law school. i could have been a bankruptcy attorney banking on all the people filing bankruptcy right now. sounds mercenary, but i know good people who have done the same, and it is a service that is needed. and i'm related to several people who do it, actually, and they're good people.

but, the problem is that i'm a girl, and i didn't want to come home at 6pm when i have kids. i just want the whole family thing. this is essentially my dilemma: i felt robbed of the whole "family" thing in my upbringing (though i'm not such a poor soul), and so i wanted that more than fun with friends in california. but fun with friends in california would have been nice. i just was afraid that basically, i'd make my life there when i needed to make it here. i wanted to be here for the birthday parties. i wanted to be here for my dad growing old.

i guess people make decisions based on their feelings. i felt like i had no patience for trying to wait for a man who loved me... i'd already dated and loved one, and while it didn't seem like we would get back together way back when, something told me to go home.

i guess all we can do is listen to ourselves. where my dilemma comes in, however, is when it comes to colleges.

i think choosing a college is a really big decision. basically, i think the college industry can really be a racket. they got something like $88,000 out of me for undergrad (though they did pay for 1/4 of it). and they're getting $160,000 - $200,000 for my nephew and niece's education. they go to tulane and yale respectively. the thing about this that i think is a racket is that well, basically, i think you can get just as good of an education going to unl, our state university. i say this because i've now been going to college and teaching in them for 12 years.

but i had a good experience at my undergrad. i made life-long friends. at first, i didn't know if this would happen. but, it did. maybe it doesn't to the same extent for everyone. maybe it doesn't have to. but, i think one question parents and kids don't ask themselves is: where do i want my kid/me to end up?

of course, this is hard to know. but the relevance of this question is, in fact, quite relevant. i'll just put it out there that my brother and his wife, who have spent all of their lives living in nebraska and have both of their parents here and basically all of their family here sent their daughter to yale because she got in, and they wanted her to have a great education. now my sister-in-law feels that she cannot imagine not living in the same community with her kids. well, my thought is, then don't send them so far away. i'm not saying these people aren't incredibly intelligent and well-meaning. i'm just saying this from the perspective of someone who went away to college and made all of my close relationships with people who settled mostly in chicago or california. granted, those are the people i was interested in. i was interested in those places, and now i have friends for life in those places. so in that respect, it paid off. but the thing about this "one-life" policy we have is that sometimes i wonder what might have been had i stayed in nebraska and made friends with the coolest people here (or the nicest, whatever my criteria) instead of branching out so that now i hardly have anyone to go to the pool with or raise my kids locally with.

of course, i can and will meet new people. and social groups from college don't all end up having kids at the same time anyway. and i guess we bond over our interests and locations whatever they may be at the moment. so, in the end, i guess i can sigh a sigh of relief.

and be glad i ended up in nebraska. i just like that my in-laws live 10 minutes from my dad who lives 20-30 minutes from my siblings. i like mostly that we live an hour away, though sometimes i wish we lived closer because my family can be rather spontaneous. but, my husband loves lincoln. he loves the size. mostly i do, too. you get to know people. you run into the same people. there's a university here. that's very nice.

as for those other places, here, friend, is the short list of places i want to visit: portland, seattle, san diego, and maybe santa fe. i'd like to spend some more time in colorado. puerto rico would be exotic. clint and i really want to go to portland. we've just heard it's really cool. we'd also like to go to canada, like montreal. so, i'm thinking we can do those things with our kids someday. also, we'd like to go to alaska. and i want to take my kids to the beach a lot. hence the friends in san francisco.

it will all be okay. i paint myself lonely, even though i have social friends tomorrow-sunday. i see my family a lot. mostly, life is good. i'm just underemployed and worried about the economy and hoping i'm fertile enough to get pregnant, making our plan complete. we'll see.

i hate stressing. i don't know why i do it so much. exercise helps. writing mostly helps unless i expect something big to come of it. then i end up getting disappointed. i want to ask more lincolnites how they ended up building their lives here. it's a nice place. i like that we get to have all of the weather. clint hates the really hot, and i hate the really cold, but both of us make do, and we get weather in between. and i love the seasons. sometimes, they're a pain, and i have to stay in a lot in the winter, but this year i bought snowpants, and to be honest with you i don't think i could live in a place where there wasn't winter with snow and summer with the pool. unless there was a great beach nearby.

as for the cafes and bars, well, i just feel like you can find good food and good booze everywhere. as for like the dancing/party atmospheres of some places, well, that's fun. i've still not been to new orleans, and i intend to visit my nephew there.

i guess there's nothing i can do or predict about my nephews and nieces. my siblings might follow them far away. in which case i hope they land in good cities where i'm welcome to visit them. or at least i can go to their weddings there. i would miss them, though. they would miss their kids. aren't we all going to miss our kids? maybe my kids will go to UNL, and i'll still live in lincoln. i would still encourage them to study abroad, to have cool experiences. but live in another city where they make all of their connections there? well, they could have their san francisco, like i have mine. i have my iowa. i have my chicago, my mexico, spain, and bolivia. those were good experiences. but if we live life for the unusual experiences, we're constantly spending money on the unusual, when there is so much grace to be found in the usual. i love that my husband's family ALWAYS has birthday parties and ALWAYS has holidays, and i'm even coming to love that they basically always have the same foods at those parties. people's favorites.

my family mixes it up and has international christmases, and we keep things interesting. but a combination of both is what i like. and what i'm looking. i continue to build my social base in lincoln. i'm going over to a friend in a cast's tomorrow, and we're eating cafe italia. i meet another friend for coffee tomorrow night. thursday i will have lunch/coffee with a friend and then go to an independent movie with my husband. friday, the 4th, we will go to clint's friends' farm (with lots of kids and animals!) and have fireworks. i'm excited to see where they live. i want to ride my bike out there on the bike path and then go swimming in their small town's pool (and then ride back!)

the next week i will celebrate my nephew's 21st birthday with him. then my family is spending some time at the farm.

these are all good things. i'm glad to be settled. i hope i can keep going to california to see my beloved friends. but for the most part, i think most of my family will stay here. you never know about friends. they get married, they have kids, they get busy. i wish i could teleport to have lunch and play dates with anyone anyday. will someone please work on that? then i can really have it all.