Learning LIfe’s Lessons

Whew~ what a day!  I took the day off work to go to a Dr’s appointment, and they actually forgot to put me down for the appointment!  What a total waste…I forget sometimes what it’s like being in the patient’s shoes.  Makes me glad I’m pretty nice to my patients- you never know what they had to do to get in to see you!! 

Had a hair appointment at 8am; it went really well!  I mean, if you ignore the fact that they called me a “picky blonde,” whatever that means.  This other customer was a nervous wreck about her daughter’s wedding happening in 2 weeks, and she was so anxious about her hair, she made the poor hairstylist redo a single strand at least 20 times before her hair was “perfect.”  She had lots of nervous energy, as if she’d downed 3 espressos before her appointment.  Meanwhile, she took an extra hour with our hairstylist (we used the same one).  She was supposed to get her hair styled while my highlights processed, but the lady stretched her style out to 2 hours!!!  I sat with a wet head for an hour!!  I could’ve complained, I suppose, but I saw what my poor hairstylist had to put up with already, and decided to just play cool.  It is so tough to work in any type of customer service field, whether it’s food service, retail, or salon.  It’s all about the customer, even if they aren’t right.  I worked in food service in high school long enough to have a thorough respect for the people that serve others- it’s not easy. 

The hubby has a surprise call this evening, which I hate.  It means I don’t get to see him from 4:30 this morning (when he left for work) until 5 tomorrow night when I get home from work, and we weren’t even able to plan for it!!  I took him some dinner tonight, roasted Latin Chicken with Roasted veggies and Cuban Rice, one of his faves.  He was grumpy, par for the course these days.  He hates his job right now.  They have him scheduled with this uber mean attending for 3 solid months!!  I know it can get to be really emotionally damaging working with a person who nitpicks apart everything about you (I’ve done it a number of times), but it’s also really tough being the person who maintains this positive attitude all the time.  I know he needs as much positive reinforcement as he can get from me, but it’s starting to wear on me, all the grumpy days (which are every day), all the nights I make a nice dinner to ease the sting of his day, only to have a really really stupid fight about something that totally doesn’t matter.  It’s a bit of a rough patch, right now, for us on a lot of different levels.  I know that he’s in a lot of stress and pain at work, though, and the petty fights we’re having aren’t really a reflection of our relationship so much as his frustration with work.  I’m just saying it isn’t easy.  Not that I thought it would be super easy, but we’ve weathered an awful lot of hard times in medical school, too, and I guess I hoped we would have happy times straight ahead.  Lol.

I guess we’ve had a good dose of reality checks since we’ve been married, actually.  Money was painfully tight until he got a job, but now that he’s got a job, we don’t see each other that often.  The time we do spend together is amazingly blissful, though, and I am so lucky to have such a sweet man.  Bills and loan repayments have been stacking higher and higher, and FINALLY, one year later, we’ve got it all straightened out.  It’s astonishing that I actually lived more comfortably on student loans than we did living off of my job alone.  Woof!!! 

Here’s the lesson I want to put out there to all of the engaged couples, namely, my younger brother: it’s not all about the wedding.  The wedding is blissful and wonderful, but after every wedding comes a marriage.   It is no walk in the park when reality sets in with the unromantic part of the marriage: the bills, the long days at work, having a frustrating job, money problems, etc.  And he and I were actually pretty well prepared to handle all of these issues…they still are tough!!!  I think a lot of young brides, these days especially, are used to getting pretty much exactly what they want during the wedding planning stage, and then, when it’s all over, and they aren’t the center of attention anymore, problems creep in. 

Thank the Lord I wasn’t raised like that.  I still remember my Momma telling me when I was real little, like, maybe 7 or so, to dust.  I, sassy as ever, replied, “Why don’t we just pay someone else to do it?”  She looked me straight in the eye and said, “Honey, I hope you can get a real nice job that pays you really well so that you can someday hire a maid.  Until then, you dust.”  I have never forgotten those words, and, by golly, I worked really hard so that maybe someday, I will be able to have some help around the house (lol, that’s not the only reason I worked hard!).  But not yet.  Who knows, maybe I won’t need the help later on…?  We’ll just have to see, I suppose.

Anyway, we’ll just keep plugging along, and things will get better.  They always do, eventually.  Maybe we can even start planning a vacation together, I hope!