Thursday, September 29, 2005

All wedding'ed out

Maybe it’s just because I’m at that age, but there seems to be an unusual amount of wedding invitations coming in the mail this year. Until a few years ago, it had been years since I had been to a wedding. Then my uncle got married, then older high school and college friends started having weddings, then (scary) people my own age began tying the knot.

Since February, Nate and I have averaged a wedding a month. It was impossible to make it to all with both of us having crazy work schedules, so we’re still four cards behind in our gift giving. If you are one of those four, I hope to have them in the mail shortly along with the thank you notes for baby gifts.

Our busiest month was not June, as tradition would predict, but September. This year, we had four invitations on three different Saturdays. We were lucky with the first; it was practically in our backyard in the Edgar-Stratford area. The rest were a bit more of a challenge.

Wedding #2 was in the Twin Cities, which is always a hassle to drive in when you’re used to driving for miles without seeing anyone on the country roads. To compound the problem, we were either following or leading a group of cars every time we went somewhere. Luckily we were only kind of lost once, but found our way back to the hotel after winding through the asphalt maze of exits and overpasses.

This past weekend, one of my family member’s joined the society of wedded bliss. Since Nate and I both were invited to stand up in the wedding, we missed wedding #4 which was held up near Rice Lake. Though it would have been nice to make it to both, Milwaukee is quite a hike from Rice Lake.

Cedarberg was our destination for the weekend. Once again, we found ourselves following tail lights from place to place. This time my brother was the one leading. Since we got a late start from the hotel to the rehearsal, he felt the need to drive like it was a stolen Grand Marquis. What he didn’t realize is by trying to make up time, he made the rest of us even later by zipping through a yellow light with four cars trying to follow him. Luckily, the three of us left behind navigated our way there, but not without irritating an impatient priest by being 15 minutes late.

The following morning was a flurry of packing, getting hair done, slapping on some make-up, and taking way too many pictures with every possible combination of the bride and groom with members of the wedding party, family and friends.
At the end of the day, my new sister-in-law asked if I learned anything about planning a wedding. I didn’t have to think to much about it. After all the shopping before the trip, traveling, clothes fitting, hair pulling, mother-daughter arguing, money spent and thinking you had everything together just to realize you’d forgotten something very important, I’ve had enough weddings for a while.

“Yes,” I said. “We’re going to Vegas.”

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Back to work... (9/21 column)

With Jacob off to daycare, I’m back to being a full-time reporter. But I’m still a full-time mom as well. It was tough dropping my little guy off to be in the care of strangers nine hours of the day. He’s the littlest one there by a few months, and he just seems so tiny next to the older babies who are already crawling and sampling finger foods. At the same time, it’s nice to be able to type again without a sleeping baby restricting my movements.

Sometimes I think it would be wonderful to be a stay-at-home mom. Then I wouldn’t miss a moment of his development. But with today’s rising cost of living, couple with the fact that I’m marrying a dairy farmer, that’s just not possible. Fifty years ago, there probably wouldn’t have been much question. When my grandma got married, she gave up school teaching to be a farm wife and mother to three. That’s just how it was. Even 26 years ago, when my parents were married, my mom stayed home to raise us. Except for a few part-time jobs from time to time, my mom really didn’t have a full-time job off the farm until last year.

My generation is quite different from my grandmother’s. I don’t know any women my age who are strictly housewives. Even the few who do stay home work from home for extra income. I recently heard a statistic that being a full-time mom and housewife is the equivalent of two full-time jobs. After doing it for the past few weeks, I can assure you that is true. Between my two boys (the 25-year old one and the 7-week old one), I had enough laundry and cleaning to keep a maid or two busy. That didn’t include errands, shopping, meals, etc. Not to mention keeping a fussy baby occupied.

If money wasn’t an issue, I would gladly stay home. But there are too many reasons to keep working, enough to justify sending my little boy to daycare. First, the farm economy is too wishy-washing to provide a comfortable living. Though we might be able to make it on one income now, if milk plummets again, I would be searching the classifieds for whatever I could find. Plus, as a young couple, we have a lot of goals that need money. Unless we win the lottery, the down payment on a house isn’t going to just magically appear in our account. Second is the cost of health care. I haven’t done any checking to see what private insurance would cost, but I know what my portion of group insurance costs. We couldn’t afford the whole premium every month. That’s why so many farm families have to rely on BadgerCare.

And finally, I enjoy coming here everyday. I know Nate would give me a job on the farm feeding calves and milking cows, but I wouldn’t enjoy it as much. I love being on the farm, but it’s also nice to have a manure-free work environment. So I hope Jacob enjoys his new caretakers and playmates. I’ll miss being away from him, but it will make my evenings and weekends that much more precious.

Thursday, September 22, 2005

First post...this is a test...

I needed an easier way to keep people updated, so here it is. I'll post my columns from the newspaper here each week, and update periodically as needed (or when I'm bored at work). I'll experiment with this thing the next few weeks and see if it's possible to put photos up here. Cindy inspired me to do this...she sent me a nice card in the mail, and I realized I've been bad about keeping touch with people lately. There's just not enough hours in the day. Trust me, if/when you have kids, you'll understand.

For this weekend, it's off to Karl and Ann's wedding, so I'll probably write my column about that next week. Should be fun. I'm leaving about noon today. Gotta get my dress fitted since I wasn't quite myself the last few months (I should get those pictures up here too). I'm looking forward to a weekend away (again), but not looking forward to coming to work Monday morning.