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I�ve always said there are two kinds of people in this world: those who are lucky enough to know from an early age what they want to do with their lives, and the rest of us, who learn through trial and error what we don�t want to do before we settle into something that feels okay.
I am one of the latter. In my working life, I have filed in many offices. I spent two years in high school as a dental assistant, mixing fillings and developing x-rays. I scooped ice cream. I tagged and sorted clothes in a dry cleaners. I triaged support calls and entered data for a computer company. I washed dishes. I counted pills at CVS. I took care of other people�s children. I worked on the legal end of real estate closings both personal and commercial, created corporations for rich people with too much time on their hands and helped the big polluting companies find loopholes around environmental laws in a paralegal stint that left me on the verge of ulcerous at 24. I greeted patients, made appointments, put cancer victims on treatment studies and finally fell into keeping other people�s calendars, tracking volume statistics and keeping detailed HR records in the job I have now. None of these things have inspired me to what I�d call career passion.
This weekend, I added one more job to the list of things-I-don�t-want-to-do-with-my-life.
I do not want to work in a carpet store.
Yesterday, the Boyfriend and I moved all the furniture from the various rooms in the Condo into the kitchen and bathroom. Every single item that was touching carpet or touching something else that was touching carpet is now on tile floor. The bed, the couch, the chairs, the end tables, the dresser and nightstand. Every Longaberger basket. The 250-lb television that I hate. The tool boxes. The stuff I haven�t unpacked yet. My CD rack and all 200 CD�s. Stuffed animals. Swords the Boyfriend smuggled back from Japan. Pictures. Candleholders. Pillows. Everything.
Once the floors were empty, we got to work ripping up the carpet. Slicing it with the box cutters was fun at first. It had the benefit of feeling extraordinarily forbidden. Even the first round of padding wasn�t bad. Then I realized the pad had been stapled into the concrete and the staples needed to be pulled out. All of them. It stopped being so much fun.
My arms and shoulders are incredibly sore. My hands still ache. I have puncture wounds in my left index finger and my left big toe from the tack boards around the edges of the rooms. I haven�t sweat that much in�well, I don�t know what the last thing was that made me sweat that much.
I never want to touch a piece of carpet again.
We�re down to 12 days until the wedding. I can�t think about it too hard. I might throw up. Not because I�m nervous about marrying the Boyfriend. I�m fine with that part. It�s the list of things we still need to do that makes me nauseous. Though it gets shorter every day. By next Thursday, it might be empty. Maybe.
Not that I don�t have help, because I have a boatload of people waving their arms and offering themselves up. But a lot of the stuff are things I have to do myself.
We�ll get there. It all works out. And if it�s not done, we didn�t need it that badly. Right?
I bought the Boyfriend�s wedding gift this weekend. It�s an antique pocket watch, sterling and brass, from the 1920�s. I absolutely adore it. Mom had to hide the package to keep me from giving it to him right then and there. I�m not good at the waiting part. Never have been.
I spoke to my sister-in-law on Saturday night. They fly in next Saturday. While Shelly and I were talking, Genie, my 10-year-old niece, was jumping up and down, yelling, �Hi Jennifer! Hi Jennifer! Hi Jennifer!� until Shelly passed on her message, telling me she was afraid Genie would �turn herself inside out!�
We�re in the homestretch.
The Boyfriend told me that Joe (Best Man #2) and his girlfriend Julie had a big fight last weekend. Julie asked Joe where their relationship was going, and said, �I just want to know if I�m wasting my time.� He told her that he wasn�t ready to get married.
I said that was a nowhere, and a yes. He disagreed, saying that it just meant Joe wasn�t ready to talk about it yet. I say there�s a difference between �I�m not ready to talk to you about getting married� and �I don�t want to marry you,� and that �I�m not ready to get married,� with no further explanation or clarification, leans a lot further to the latter. I went on to tell him that long before we started planning the wedding, long before I was ready to start, I knew I wanted to marry him, and if he�d asked me a question like that, I would have been able to say so.
I don�t know. I just think you either know or you don�t. And if you have no idea after two years, at least not one you�ll �fess up to, the answer is no.
Comments on that? Anyone? I�m curious if y�all agree.
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