Saturday, August 27, 2011

Sporadic

Its been so long since I posted, that I doubt friends are even checking anymore. I have been married 3 months now and still smile when I think of what a gorgeous day it was. The weather was perfect, we were surrounded by friends and family, everyone had such a good time, and I married my best friend. It is true that you will be glad its over, but I wouldn't have exchanged it for anything. I have such wonderful memories of that day. Yes, its one day and there will be more wonderful days, but I am so glad to have those memories. It was a beautiful gift to be able to share something so special with everyone.

Life moves ahead at a somewhat frantic pace. Both JE and I are working long hours, which has put a bit of a strain on us, and required us to think about how we structure our life. It certainly means a little planning and delegating. I am still only at 90% in my job (salary-wise, of course,) but my new role is proving to be one of those that could potentially take over and require 100% of my time (which would mean that I am at 160% time-wise.) I realized very recently that I enjoy the process of problem-solving and/or design and the implementation process; the figuring out of how something can improve, putting together a plan to do so and executing it. This was probably a very useful thing to realize for someone who has struggled to figure out what she wants to do with her life. It is something I have only ever applied to education, but it finally allows me to think about other areas that might be interesting. As JE replied when I revealed this to him, "Well, you are your father's daughter." Dad's an engineer. Yeah, well. I guess that makes sense. It was something I had always thought I had wanted to be, but after constant frustration in math and science, I gave up on that idea. Perhaps that is why I have taken to math and science in education so readily. Its a good place to be ultimately.

I have also been reading The Happiness Project and doing some of my own. Its made me think quite a lot. I decided to join a book club as a result of part of my project. It made me think of books I have read recently and of a trend I have long been curious about: the title with the apostrophe s. For example, The Tiger's Wife is one such title. They abound. And for whatever reason, I seem to have read a lot of them lately, so while this has really nothing to do with the rest of my post, I decided to share some of my apostrophe s favorites:

(1) The Magician's Assistant, by Ann Pachett
(2) The Tiger's Wife, but Tea Obreht
(3) The Heretic's Daughter, but Kathleen Kent
(4) The Hangman's Daughter, by Oliver Potzsch
(5) Ahab's Wife, by Sena Jeter Naslund

Despite the commonality of their titles, these books are pretty different and all wonderfully enjoyable. So, if you book club is considering a tribute to the apostrophe s book, any of those would be a lovely choice.