Hard Day's Night.

With the initial intention of portraying a rather stale satire, I'll tell about how both Brian and I began working this week.  So far, neither have taken on a very laborious form (at least in comparison to the past or what is likely for the future) and my stint will likely end early next week.  While Brian has officially begun his long ascent into a high-powered, time-engulfing, arduously rewarding and wildly successful banking career, I returned to my redundant, actionless seasonal job at the jewelry store.  I can't provide too much insight about Brian's week or his new line of work, but I feel like I accurately make the prediction that he will grow up way faster than he planned, age quite quickly in his tastes that now may be sated through a steady income and will have a generally new outlook on life.  He maintains there will be a clear delineation between work and play, being in and out of the office, but with his true passion for the industry, it is likely to often times be one in the same.  

On the other side of the spectrum and what seems to be the other side of the developed world, I have picked up a week's worth of hours at the jewelry store where my mother also works.  It's not the most difficult job, unless faced with a demand for some serious jewelry knowledge or general confidence in discussing the topic.  I will say, it has made my general distaste for a career in sales a full-fledged disgust.  Nothing against the industry or sales people, but one of my life objectives is to sell people the idea that people need more art and culturally pleasing activities in their lives.  It really doesn't excite me to think about working to sell people things they really just don't even need.  And on a really disheartening note, at the jewelry store where I've been working, I often feel as though people are being sold things they definitely can't and shouldn't try to afford.  

However, the benefit that jewelry is something people [women] will always want and will strive to have, so if they're coming in at all, there's a potential they are there to buy. But being as how no one really has any extra money to spend, the price of gold is rising, diamonds have no resale value and are an ever-increasingly unrenewable resource with every new mine[ing], the store remains quite barren. The jewelry industry may or may not be 

screwed.   But people will continue to get married and the women will continue to demand more luxurious, bigger, sparklier, and more expensive jewels than they should require from the man they are about to bind their lives and all their bills, accounts and expenses with.  So, maybe a long engagement is in order, just to make sure those LeRoy's Jewelers bills have been paid.  As one customer said yesterday, I knew it would some part of my paycheck, but I didn't anticipate it would be the whole thing.  To which I replied with a 6-times-more-than-he-spent, $9,000-dollar-smile, "you know the general rule for purchasing engagement rings is 2-3 months salary." And yes, I was trying to be snarky.  And no, he didn't like it.  And no, I didn't care, because it might seem like a hell of an "investment," but particularly from a women's point of view, the man has got to do something to show that her personal satisfaction is worth more than money you can earn back through the course of the hopefully long and successful marriage.  It's just a thought.  After all, does he really want some other man to take a look at that tiny little pebble on her finger and think, and maybe act on the fact that he would have given her more of what she deserves?  I don't think so.  The ring is, after all, for the man's benefit, too.  Especially if they feel like they've found something worth holding onto and investing money, time, energy, and their life in, on and for.

At which point, I'll end this post.  It isn't really supposed to mean anything or allude to anything, just in case my audience has any stomach-churning concerns.  It's just a a showcase on my different point of views regarding the industry in which I worked for 1.5 years and experienced nearly all my life through my mother's career.  There are many ways to debate the issues at stake.  On one hand, I'd really rather have a badass 3-week honeymoon full of the best of the best of food, travel, accommodations and entertainment for those big bucks he could have spent on the ring.  On the other hand, I'd really rather have a giant rock that reminds me both of how good I have it every second of the day and how money can't buy you love, but in some ways, it can buy insurance for it.  

***Oh by the way, my pictures are completely unrelated.  Sorry.  I just liked them.

Credit to Brian for taking the 2nd picture shown while we were sitting at a stoplight in Racine, WI.  Great, great shot.

Re-re-re-remix!

I sit here, supposedly babysitting, listening to Vampire Weekend (whom I feel like I've been talking about or learning about all day) and I think about what's yet to come. I'll say the CD makes me happy with its simple, undecipherable songs, steel drums, various string instruments, and the pleasant feeling it gives of being well-off and beach-bound. While this CD reminds me of St. George Island, spring break and its weary servitude as the beach CD of choice, it's drizzling outside and endlessly grey here in Louisville.

As far as what's yet to come, there's a ton - both in the continuation of being alive and in documenting what has passed in our lives. We decided to change the title of the blog (okay I decided on the new title alone, but it had to happen) and we both decided to start a new one. While I believe it's rather critical to take the time and write out what happens, even if just for practice, we seem to need two vehicles to get all our life's experiences and thoughts across (and it seems to be very difficult to motivate my darling to write about all this stuff. Though, as his Jewish girlfriend, it's like my job to nag him and my duty to do, say, and encourage things that are worth writing about... or at least using my girlfriend powers as some sort of leverage).

Presto, we will now have two blogs! With just a couple little taps on the keyboard, I changed a preposition and now we have Brian and Nicole Take in America, dealing with random thoughts, observations, themes and whatever to keep us both interested and sharp at writing or putting down a stream of consciousness inside an endless, scroll-down white space. Also, we will repurpose Brian and Nicole Take on America as a travel blog. Since we'll spend a lot of time long-distance and neither Cleveland or Louisville are places you'd want to travel to all the time like NYC or Paris, we'll be meeting in random U.S. cities. What better to do with all those experiences in undiscovered [by us] U.S. cities than keep a little travel blog, highlighting positive and negative experiences at sights, restaurants, and hotels, etc. and assessing their value? It will be loads of fun and we'll remember it and all the opinions we had through photos and words and maybe, just maybe, they'll serve as a recommendation for others looking to travel during their weekends and blow their hard-earned money on youthful fun, just to keep a relationship thriving. Got too self-specific there, didn't I? Hopefully, I answered the question of why this all is necessary.

About the switch: We already started living in themes trying to keep up interesting topics to write about... trying to keep something going on and trying to use these random thoughts/themes as a way to get out whatever mental gunk might be clogging up every day clarity. And I believe that whatever you really are wanting to say will come out, no matter what silly phrase, which can come up in conversation, happens to end up as the theme of the week.

Which brings me to, "The Crib is Gone." It started by me discussing the furniture change in my room. When my nephew was born exactly one year before I met Brian on October 26, 2006 a crib was promptly installed into my room along an adjacent wall. In theory, we'd never be roommates because I left to study in Paris the following January and then would spend part of the summer in St. Louis and then back to school in Oxford, OH, where after a few months I'd crash my car and being a senior in college I'd lack a means and desire to visit home as frequently as before. Ethan never really got to know me or his alternate living space in my room because he refused to sleep there. So, the crib sat harboring clothes I didn't feel like putting away or ineffectual toys that were, in desperation, supposed to serve as a calming device to soothe my baby nephew to sleep.

Finally, I moved back home, unemployed after school, and the crib, though cute, was useless and just took up space that I've been eyeing for my desk that I'm hoping will make me perform my duties of looking for a job in my room and not the kitchen and thus, keep my room clean and me out of the pantry.

The story is... I'm speaking with Brian one night, ready to fall asleep and I say, "the crib is gone," and then... "that'll be the theme for the week." I know this happened several weeks ago, before I visited Brian in Illinois/Wisconsin and I should have plenty of other stuff to write about, but that's all for the other blog. Because... well, it seems I have some mental gunk to get out.

It's July and I still don't have a car. I've dwindled in my friend count in Louisville, too. Everyone is away working, interning or being a real person. I seem to have graduated, but I don't seem to get the same luxuries of everyone else that got upon finishing school, like having my own apt, dog, job and life. Maybe the problem was that reality hadn't yet settled in that perfect jobs don't just appear at your convenience or the excess of coddling by my family has stifled my need for independent development, but the crib is gone. I'm certainly an adult, but without any foreseeable adult plans. I can only hope I'll find a job soon or get that offer or move away or at least, get an internship in advertising, but nothing is certain except that I know that this, what I'm doing now, isn't for me.

I've been cast into a strange limbo where I don't quite have anything to do, but I have all these endless time-consuming tasks like looking for a job, photoshopping this photo montage, making this art project, cooking dinner, writing this, cleaning that, running this errand, babysitting Ethan, keeping certain regimens and so on. I feel like a stay-at-home mom, but my kids have a nanny and I don't really take much part in their lives. It's horrible. I just want to be doing all the things I didn't have time or take the time to do in college, plus I should be working on a portfolio, but I can't, I'm occupied without being busy. Every day passes and then it's July and I don't know what's next except, well nothing. So, the luxury of college and a schedule and at least some notion of responsibility or at least pretending like you have plans or work to do is gone. I'm not the baby anymore. I'm a free woman with tons of dreams and hopes and things I want to do and see and care about, but with this crazy phantom child full of endless work and responsibilities looming in the other room. So, while the crutch of college is gone, while the crib is gone, the baby that needs nurturing isn't. As goes my life, I need to do some serious nurturing because don't you know that it's insane and don't you know that I want to get out of Louisville and all my old bad habits sometime soon (I would have said tonight, but that would've been too too obvious and well, a little lame).

Mystic seaport is that that way.
Don't you know that your life could be lost?*

*I love when violins/violas/string instruments other than [bass]guitars are used in tracks
and I freaking LOVE steel drums.