I feel sorry for my husband

It's thesis time.  Or rather, "I've had this project since March, it's due on July 1st, but in between getting married, job searching, and getting married, I've let the thesis go by the wayside and so in the next few days I have 7 more pages to write (I'm on page 8), sorting out sources, oh and running it by my advisor for the paper that I haven't spoken with since she redirected my thoughts on my Philly trip and I haven't followed up since then"-time.

(Maybe a bit of PG-13 content below this line.)

And the topic doesn't really lend itself to being cheerful or me wanting to spend prolonged amounts of time with it.  My thesis goes something like this:  Pornography and subsequent masturbation has been causing increases in erectile dysfunction and decreasing sperm quality, and therefore is perpetuating the need for couples to seek out fertility treatment in the form of IVF.  Eradicate pornography=eradicate a large, secret problem that is fueling the "need" for IVF.

Thing is, no one wants to talk about the issue, or they think anti-porn advocates are making it too simplistic by saying "Death to porn!" because ED is a multi-faceted issue.  Despite the fact that ED for men under 40 is at a record high.  So I'm meeting the nay-sayer on their territory in this paper, and examining all the factors that go into porn addiction/masturbation (depression, internet addiction, etc) that all, by themselves, could be causes for ED...put them together in viewing pornography and subsequent masturbation, and it's bad news bears.  Again, though, no one wants to talk about it, so finding legitimate, peer-reviewed articles has been awful.  Or the titles of said articles are deceiving; one entitled something the effect of Masturbation Leads to Guilt ended up being about how the psychologist helped the man wipe out the shame of the issue (rather than encouraging him just to GIVE UP PORN) and rehabilitated him.  Yeah, there's a good idea--ignore the real issue and just make him feel good about himself!

So this week is much more...lazy on my end.  Dressing up less.  Having fewer home-cooked meals waiting for Matt when he gets home from work.  Neglecting some chores.  Playing more episodes of Merlin in the background.  Shamefully Shamelessly letting my healthy eating habits disintegrate. Two 24-oz of coffee yesterday decided to kick in at 2:30...am.  This morning.  Wide awake.  I can't say that I like this at all.  That first taste of feeling like I'm failing at this whole wife thing.  I know we'll each go through rough patches where one of us will be giving more and the other needing/taking more.  I just don't like being on the needing/taking more end of things.  It's not a very nice place to be.  I want to be super-wife, writing her super awesome thesis while having pork chops ready, clothes washed, volunteer work completed, and time at night for snuggles and catching up on our days.  Right now, not so much.  The time between now and July 1st is going to be very...awful.  Luckily that next weekend I should have recovery time.  But for now...July 1st is sneaking up and I'm running out of hours in my days.

Life as we know it

This time tomorrow I will probably be through with a very important interview.  I'm interviewing at the Center for Practical Bioethics here in KC.  It may be a volunteer position...or it may be a paid position of being a personal secretary of sorts for a neurologist who splits his time between Duke University and the Center, so I'd be keeping his schedule and arranging his meetings here.  Um, yeah.  That would be cool.  Especially considering it *actually* has to do with my master's degree. Prayers please!

Things are finally settling into a nice groove here.  Still trying to straighten up here and there, but this weekend we tackled the office (that is, the room where I was throwing everything I didn't want to organize yet from the other rooms I was cleaning), and we got myself a desk so I could organize my items, so all in all everything feels much better around here.  Now about those wedding thank yous and homework (I DID catch up on homework this weekend, there's just a different 15-20 page thesis I've been avoiding)....

Also, I will say I'm hooked on an already-finished show that I'm just now catching up on.  The Adventures of Merlin was a BBC show on for five seasons starting back in 2008ish, and I had some friends through FOCUS that LOVED it (and Matt watched it already too and I never realized it.  Man.  So behind the times.).  I'm in the first few episodes of season 2.  It's good, wholesome, has plenty of adventure and fairy-tale...probably not quite for kiddos, but I could see it as a good show for pre-teens, as most of the cast at the time were late teens, early twenties.  It's just so much better than American shows...evil is destroyed, good is rejoiced over, romances are subtle, or if they are blatant then they're very gallant and chivalrous...  That makes my only 3 shows I watch all BBC (Sherlock, Downton Abbey, and Merlin).  There are the occasional episodes of House I'll watch, but that's more Matt's show at the moment. 

Good/Funny things about marriage:  Matt thinks my reflection in the mirror looks funny.  Since he's not used to seeing it, he thinks it looks different and swears there's a certain tilt to my mouth that isn't there otherwise...at which point he jokes that I'm stroking.  What a goofball. 

Difficult things about marriage:  We have different ideas of how Saturdays go.  His family apparently starts the day early, gets stuff done...my idea of a Saturday is that it's the weekend, so I'll get to doing things, but in a slower manner.  We started our first normal Saturday earlier than I'm used to and later than he really wanted to, but we got lots of errands accomplished, including the office space.  Just one of those things where we'll need to learn to compromise.

New things learned in marriage:  Matt's made friends with several of the men in his Knights council, and the Grand Knight and his wife graciously took us out to eat on Sunday.  It was one of those realization moments of being "adult"--our peers are now our parish family, and in their 40s on up.  What?  When did that happen?  Crazy.  I liked it, it was really nice, just a different experience for me.

Dawwwwww: Pro-Life Feature X

A little happy baby video for you today:  A Father Gets Into His Fussy Baby's Crib to Calm Her Down

I'm back!

Back and married and better than ever!  Consider this the newly-wed edition of my blogposts :-).  Yes, it has been a whirlwind.  No, the wedding day really didn't go as quickly as other people talk about theirs going.  Yes, being married is fun.  No, we didn't go on a honeymoon (yet) due to conflicts in schedule.

Mostly I've been working on organizing and cleaning the apartment...I kind of wrecked it with all my stuff + wedding gifts when I moved in, and I really really really do like cleanliness or at least neat clutter, so I've been trying hard the past couple of weeks to keep at the piles and keep cleaning until my tidy-loving little heart is satisfied.  At the moment I'm taking a break from my project of deep cleaning the kitchen, dining room, and living room area in anticipation for a couple of guests this evening for wedding leftovers!

I've been fitting in job searching and homework where I can, and will be focusing on that more next week since the apartment is finally looking in order.  I had an interview for a hospital position, but the hours weren't what I thought they were going into the interview and are super wacky, so despite having a really positive interview experience I'm gonna keep on looking and hopefully get back in the swing of things with my on-commission job that I started at the beginning of last summer.  Prayers for a parish position or a not-super-wacky-hours hospital position or something else to come along my way would be greatly appreciated.  And school, well, I do need to refocus on that and get to workin' on a couple of big paper projects.

All in all, here's a bit about married life so far:

The best things about being married: someone to open difficult packaging for me; laughing with each other about silly daily occurrences; opportunities for serving and sacrifice

Difficult things about married life: meal planning with two different food tastes; finding time between work, homework, and organizing/cleaning to just sit and appreciate that we're actually married; budgeting for two people instead of just myself

Things I've learned: don't...no, really don't do it!...go shopping on an empty stomach; apartments make different noises than houses; there just is not enough space in an apartment, and creativity is not my strong suit...I foresee some Pinterest ideas being used in the near future to figure out how to utilize space

Well, gotta keep going with the cleaning!