A field guide to growing up without growing apart
This month we decided to talk about what, well, everyone is talking about. The US presidential election! All the princesses weigh in on what this election means to them and how they are managing to stay sane in an insane world. Well hi there, […]
High school friends, college friends, work friends, family–have you ever wished two people from separate spheres of your life would meet? Just because both of them like you doesn’t necessarily mean they would like each other, but it’s kind of fun to think about, right? […]
It’s time for the holidays! What’s on your Christmas list this year? For us, not much, really. Just, you know, fulfilling careers, new cars, family approval, and more than 24 hours in the day. Hopefully we Naughty Princesses have been nice enough to receive a bit of what we’ve wished for.
Christmas! Eek! It’s the most wonderful time of the year, but this year I’ll be spending it abroad for the first time ever. First Christmas since birth not seeing my parents on Christmas morning to open gifts. First Christmas without a Starbucks red cup. Sigh. You get the picture.
But though it’s sad to be missing out on the festivities at home, I’m also really excited about hosting my first Christmas ever. My in-laws land here in the Sandbox in less than a week now, and we’ll be spending the next three weeks with them. Thus, I think my biggest Christmas wish this year is that this time would all go well and we’d manage to balance travel and new experiences with quality time and festive holiday traditions.
On actual Christmas we’ll all be camping in the desert in Jordan, which definitely WON’T be like Christmas jammies and stockings and all that. But I’m hoping it will be a memorable Christmas in a different way. After all, wasn’t the first Christmas spent by a young couple out in the desert, just a few hundred kilometers from where we’ll be?
My in-laws are bringing gifts, but honestly, there’s nothing I really need. The true gift is the fact that they are coming at all. That my sometimes hard-to-please mother-in-law is putting herself on a grueling, expensive flight to come to MY home for the holidays. It truly means a lot. But in 2.5 years of marriage, I’ve never hosted my husband’s parents, and they’ve never had the chance to see us in our “natural habitat.” That’s what makes this so exciting. I just hope I live up to their expectations (and my own) and can somehow create a Christmas to remember for all of us.
–Cinderslut
What’s on my Christmas list? So many things. I can think of a lot of things that I would love to have but that I can’t afford.
We need a new car. One that has airbags and 2 working headlights. We don’t have a TV right now. Our laptop is old and needs to be replaced. Our apartment is a crappy basement across from a giant noisy construction zone. But when I say all of those things I just feel like I’m complaining and sounding selfish. I feel guilty because, shouldn’t I just be able to count my blessings?
And then there are the more intangible things that I wish for as well. A new job. One that doesn’t make me crazy and maybe actually pays me a decent wage. More self-esteem and encouragement for my husband. Most of all I would love to get back the feeling and belief that I can do anything I want in life. I feel less and less like I have that choice every day. All the reports and studies I see are saying that companies won’t pay young people a wage that keeps up with inflation, and that we are being flooded with cheap jobs, but not decent ones. Oh for the idealistic views of my college days.
Now I feel like I’m being a huge Christmas downer. I actually love Christmas and I will still enjoy it regardless of my circumstances.
–Snow Whore
Christmas! Snow and lights and reunions and food! It’s hard not to adore this time of year, and now that I’m not living with my parents I’m really looking forward to spending as much time with them as I can over the holidays. I knew I’d miss living with them, but it’s definitely been just as hard as I expected. They’ve been my best friends for the last 2+ years, it is strange to suddenly have to treat them like parents again instead of roommates. But this is good for me, I know, and I know the real thing I’m stressed about is finding the right job.
Finding a career is at the very tip top of my Christmas list this year, and while I could also use ski pants, a nice winter hat, and brown boots, the only thing that I feel like I need a magic wish to get is a good job. I’m still so lost on what direction to go with my life and lately it feels like I’ve been looking to others to find out that career for me, hoping someone would just plop the answer in my lap. But when I think about it, I know that looking outside myself for approval or guidance is just getting me further from whatever it is I must know I want.
Today I’m supposed to apply to work with my friend (and housemate) as a billing specialist, a job that I’d learn a lot at but I’m not sure is really the direction I want to be going. I find myself dragging my feet as I fill out the application and I honestly don’t know if I should push myself and make it happen or if I should take a step back because I’m heading in the wrong direction. At Thanksgiving my uncle told me that I had to create my own job because applying for existing jobs is a thing of the past. My family friend thinks I should go back to school and get a masters in engineering and my parents are just as confused as I am, sending me mixed signals that I know I need to ignore but somehow always hit me right when I’m vulnerable.
All I want for Christmas is some clarity, and I think the only one who can give me this gift is me.
–Sleeping Booty
Honestly, I haven’t had the chance to think of Christmas much at all yet. This fall has been a challenging one for me. Between teaching a college class for the first time, having friends in crisis, and getting knocked out by sickness twice I have been barely able to keep abreast of deadlines, let alone do any work on my PhD dissertation. Christmas has been the last thing on my mind. However, I taught my last class for the term on Wednesday and then finished grading their last assignment on Friday, which means—finally—my schedule is looking a bit freer. Finally I can start thinking about Christmas… and, oh yeah, my PhD dissertation that really needs to move a bit over the vacation. So, yes, I would put that on my Christmas list: getting some research done. Honestly, this is not as glum as it may seem, as during this hectic term I have been kind of missing my doing my own research.
I do, however, really need to get started doing some Christmas shopping. This year (for the first time ever) I am not going home for Christmas. I am going back home in the spring for a conference anyway, so I decided it just didn’t make sense to go back for Christmas this year. Honestly, I am okay with this. I will miss being home for sure, but the idea of spending my first Christmas in Europe is also a bit exciting. The real problem is that if I am not going home for Christmas, I will need to ship my presents. As in, if I want them to arrive by Christmas I need to send them soon—next week at the latest. And what presents do I have? One present so far in total. Someone needs to get shopping.
So yes—my Christmas list isn’t too long this year. All I want is to find time to relax, buy presents, work on my dissertation, hang out with friends, and possibly write a blog post or two. Oh, and a little snow would be nice too!
–The Little Merskank
As the weather cools and the air starts to crisp, the princesses are starting to think about the change of seasons. I often find Fall to be one the most contemplative times of the year for me. So this month, we talk about the seasons […]
If you are new here, every month we princesses all opine on a single question or issue. This month we are talking about teaching! Pretty much everyone knows a teacher– or, in the case of Cinderslut, is one– and we all have our own opinions […]
Hey, so we’re a little bit late this month with the condition of the month. The Little Merksank will take all the blame for that as she has been neglecting her duties. However, that special time of the month has finally come. Indeed, it is an extra special month because it is our blog-aversary. It’s been one whole year since the naughty princesses started blogging together. Can you believe it? We hardly can…
In honor of that occasion, we decided to all revisit an old blog post that we wrote a year ago and comment on how that year has changed us.
Where was I one year ago? Well, pretty much exactly where I am now. In some ways nothing has changed, in other ways a lot has changed.
A year ago, I was really really a newlywed. I had just come back from my honeymoon. I was posting about what it was like to live with a boy, and the awkward transition of combining two lives into one. Now I no longer feel awkward at all—in fact I’m pretty sure I would be miserable if I had to live alone again. However, that doesn’t mean our struggles are over. I do think my marriage has gotton stronger over the last year. There is a lot that we have overcome. However, there is still a lot more to struggle through together. I feel more connected to my husband than I did a year ago, because we have been learning a lot about each other this year. But there is still a lot to learn, and if I know anything about us, I know this—we always seem to learn the hard way. We’re too stubborn for our own good.
For this Condition of the Month I revisited a post from almost a year ago, in which I discussed my conflicted feelings about the crazy conservative politics of my current host country, namely their cultural mandate that women should cover themselves from head to toe in black shapeless gowns whenever they leave their homes. I’ve now been wearing my abaya for going on a year and a half now (at least whenever I leave the safe confines of our compound), so I have conformed to this culture as much as I am willing to. In my previous post I talked about how women who went so far as to cover their entire faces with a veil or cover their hands with black gloves weirded me out. Well, that is still true. Recently I’ve been doing some classroom observations in the local high school, and I’ve met several girls who wear a full abaya, headscarf, and veil to school every single day. This shocked me, because at the school I taught at last year things were decidedly more Western, and almost none of the girls even wore their abayas on school grounds.
So what’s my point? Well, comparing how I feel about some of these cultural norms now to what I wrote about last October, I’d say I’m getting less tolerant, not more. Often when I’m out and about I find myself feeling a burning twinge of annoyance at the way all females in this country have to conform, regardless of their own personal beliefs. I’ve heard stories of 11-year-old girls being berated in the mall for not being covered, and I’ve seen first-hand that covering doesn’t even always protect a woman from the unwanted stares and lewd attention of men. Most of all, I wish it didn’t have to be black! There’s undeniable symbolism there, if you ask me. It’s not okay for women to be modestly dressed in hot pink abayas, or tie dye, or lace, or beautifully patterned abayas. No, they have to be black, colorless, devoid of identity. This is a place that fears female empowerment, and that is something I just know I won’t be able to abide forever.
Well, in a lot of ways my life is still much the same as it was this time last year. I am still a graduate student, lacking a ‘real’ job, and living off of black beans. But I still love what I study and am excited about getting to do what I do everyday. Looking back over the past year, one of the biggest changes, at least so far as my blog posts are concerned is that I am no longer writing about a certain guy. Do you all remember Herman? He was the one who was sort of a jerk to Mareena in my fictionalized romance-novel style account of my love life. But for some reason I really had a hard time getting over him. I remember writing a post about being Stuck on Rewind, and how our relationship felt like this circular presence in my life: I wanted to escape from it but I didn’t know how to move on. And really, things were like that for about a year. It felt like a really long time, but now it’s about nine months after I wrote that post and I am glad to say, I hardly ever think of Herman. I haven’t seen him all summer (and Oxford summers are really long) but I am pleased to say that I am neither excited nor worried about seeing him again. Basically: I am no longer stuck on rewind, and it feels really good. Besides, he was a jerk anyway
What?! No post from the Booty? Well, I guess we can forgive this once because she is off having amazing adventures in the Grand Canyon. She better post all about it when she gets back though… otherwise we might kick her off the blog. Just kidding of course! We love you Booty and can’t wait to have your presence back among us!
UPDATE: Booty’s BACK! And if you think I’d miss out on answering this question you’re otta yo mind. This time last year I was unemployed, dealing with a loss of a grandparent and moving back in with my parents after years of living out of state. Now my life is the complete opposite since I’m gainfully employed at a company almost four times as long as I ever have been, watching my 99 year old grandpa’s health steadily improve and making plans to move out of my parent’s house in a few months. Instead of making the drive from Seattle to Utah like i did last year I’m hopping on a plan to get back to that emerald city for the first time since. It’s absurd how much can change in a year and while I really don’t feel all that different I also know I’ve learned so much about who I am and how I want to live my life. This time last year I had no plan, no idea what the next week or next moment of my life would bring and I HATED IT. Now I know some about what the next months of my life will be, but instead of dreading those unknowns, I’m excited for them. Anything can happen.
So, money. Necessary for so many things in life, but almost always a source of stress and consternation, no matter how much you have. Managing your money or lack thereof is a central part of being in your twenties, so this month the Princesses weighed […]