it's barely been a week but SO. MUCH. HAS. HAPPENED.

.....I honestly don't even know where to start.
First of all, we found an apartment....wonderful, fabulous place: in-unit washer/dryer, dishwasher, garbage disposal, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, balcony, pet friendly..... fucking perfect. Only drawback: wall to wall carpeting. But we can deal. It's an AMAZING price and lo and behold.... The owner (it's a condo) works at Andrew's new job!!!! WHAAAAA???? LoL!!

OK so we signed and got the key on Friday. Also on Friday, I got no less than FOUR phone calls about people wanting to come see the house. Holy. Crap.
We RACED out of my parents' house back to the mountains to clean like crackheads. We were awake until 4:30 in the morning scrubbing and organizing and depersonalizing. We had to leave the house at 9:00am to let the viewings happen.
So we drove around aimlessly for over 2 hours waiting to be told we could come back to the house.... Then my real estate agent called me...someone did a drive-by and wanted to see the layout of the acreage, could she come up the driveway?
Sure. Have a blast.
10 mins later....they want to see the house. Okay....sure. Go see the house.
One hour later, our agent meets us at our place to get keys from us for the lockbox - the people who just saw the house LOVED it. She thinks they're going to put an offer in. Oh Erica, please don't tell us that, we will not be able to prevent ourselves from becoming overly excited....

An hour later.....they put in an offer.

WHAT. THE. FUCK. What happened to years and years of waiting and having to sit on this house????

Not that we weren't thrilled, mind you... it just didn't seem POSSIBLE!!!

There is, of course, a catch - these people are waiting on a divorce settlement for their down payment. We all know how risky and drawn out that can be....so they offered us full price for the house and waived all inspections in order to prove they were serious and to entice us to accept their offer.
.....well..... it worked. Besides, none of the other viewings produced interested parties (the buyers don't know that), and the sooner we get rid of this house, the better.

Apparently these people bid on a house in the Fall, but lost it in a bidding war. The only other house they wanted to see that day had been sold the day before, so much to our good fortune, they were feeeeeeeeeling the desperation. Hawtness.

Since all this happened, the person who was being waited on to sign documents in the divorce settlement has actually signed all the required paperwork - now he just needs to come up with the money, and it's smooth sailing....well....sort of....as long as the buyers' lender appraises the house and agrees to finance it. The people who built the house grafted together a cement block foundation with a pre-fab upper structure, and banks are leery of these sorts of things. The buyers are going through the bank that already owns the mortgage on the house, so our hopes are up that they will finance it. The buyers have already been pre-approved for the loan, it's just the HOUSE that needs to pass muster at this point. Our agent just told us yesterday that the loan officer is going to try to get the bank to waive the appraisal altogether since they already own the mortgage and it was just done less than 3 years ago.

Hope, pray, send vibes, wish, and make sacrifices to whatever gods you like that we get the appraisal waived and that this all goes through.

I cannot tell you how unbelievably fantastic it would be not to have to worry about that house anymore.

For now, we wait. And pack. And pack some more. Pesach is happening so damn soon. We are having two, possibly more, people stay with us at our condo over the holiday and we have no furniture here yet!!! I WANT MY STUFF!!!! It's obviously not the end of the world if it's not all here by then...but by george it would be ideal. I met with movers on Tuesday, but they don't have availability before the 18th. I'm meeting with another company on Wednesday who DOES have availbility, so we'll see how the numbers pan out and decide then. Hope hope hope.

So much hoping. AND so much doing. I'm so busy I have no idea where to put myself. It's a damn miracle I managed to find time to get to yoga today and yesterday. Once things calm down I'll go more often. I am in a near constant state of exhaustion. This weekend is going to be INSANE.

started yoga teacher training this weekend. looking at apartments this week. last week at BBW.
lots going on. tired. happy. tired. hopeful. tired. excited. tired.



tired.

Tonight, at my Father's birthday party, my Husband said to my Parents:

"Al Jazeera really isn't that bad. It's certainly better than Fox News."

To MY parents.
I very nearly choked on my brussels sprout.... If I hadn't started screaming and laughing and making jokes about it, I think my Mother's eyeballs may have exploded out of her head, and my Father's skull would have split in two.

Oh Andrew. My greatest love. You are trying to kill me. And you very well may get my parents to do it for you.


In other news, it looks like there will be major changes to our lives coming up..... but things have to be signed and filed....so until they are set in stone, I can't say anything about them. I WILL let on, however, that we are both very, VERY excited. ::squeals and jumps up and down and claps hands girlishly.....inside her own head::

no concrete news. not much closer to knowing. still can't plan. still can't organize. everything's up in the air. hate it. can't sleep. hate it.

.....in other news, managed to re-lose the weight i gained during our stressed out 2 weeks of stupidity. so now i'm back to seven pounds down total loss. - this of course makes me deliriously happy....and yet.... today i went to a friend's baby shower and saw some pictures that were taken of me and.....god. how did i get this way? ugh. i look like a sick, bloated, balloon version of myself. seven pounds down....33 more to go. ::sigh::

...still no word. still waiting in order to be told to wait again.

passing the time by bleaching a chunk of hair behind my left ear and then dying it pink.

note to self: when bleaching hair, apply vaseline to back of ear and neck below hairline BEFORE applying bleach, and WIPE. UP. IMMEDIATELY. owie.

it's official. i'm paid up. starting March 18th, i will be training to be a Hatha Yoga teacher. 10months of courses, papers and practice lay ahead.

i am so excited i could cry.

seriously losing my mind with the waiting already. today we managed to distract ourselves by getting back into p90x...which was badly needed and excellent as usual. difficult workout b/c it required coordination, but i'll get it one day - definitely broke out a crazy sweat, and that counts.

2morrow we do the stretch dvd and then it starts all over.

we were told that drew would have a phone meeting at 11am tomorrow.... if we don't get a solid offer i am literally going to DIE.

OK so I know this dude from a web forum to which I used to belong. For literally YEARS I have tip-toed around insulting him b/c he is FANATICALLY Christian and we disagree wholeheartedly on preeeeeeeeetty much everything. It was working just fine for a while b/c we could trade quips and lightehearted jabs at one another and still remain amicable. But his fucking christianity is really starting to burn my ass. It's crept into every little thing he ever says.

I've already blocked his newsfeed from my LJ b/c I seriously cannot take his bullshit bigoted posts anymore.

The absolute last straw was a few weeks ago when he posted about his daughter's bout of appendicitis. They were all in the hospital together and he was documenting the whole experience on his facebook so friends and family could know what was going on with his daughter. He posted photos he took with his cellphone of the doctors working on her, of the CT scan machine, of all the sophisticated equipment they were using to work on her..... and underneath it all he posts "GOD IS AWESOME!!" "GOD IS GREAT!" "LOOK AT THE WONDERS GOD HAS PROVIDED FOR US!!!"

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I totally lost my shit.

NO, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE, THOSE DOCTORS ARE GREAT. THAT EQUIPMENT IS GREAT. THE TECHNICIANS ARE GREAT THE NURSES AND THE SURGEONS AND THE SCIENTISTS WHO DEVELOPED ALL THE SHIT THAT IS SAVING YOUR DAUGHTER'S STUPID FUCKING LIFE ARE FUCKING AWESOME AND GREAT AND AMAZING AND YOUR GOD IS JUST A FUCKING FAIRY AT THE BOTTOM OF A GARDEN IRRELEVANT HATEFUL FUCKTARD.

But still, I said nothing. His facebook, his posts, not my place to argue. So I blocked his newsfeed. I don't have to listen to his bullshit anymore.

....or so I thought.

B/c today I posted about Chik-fil-a's stupid religiouS anti-gay agenda on my facebook and he got on the war path.

This is MY facebook. If you don't like what I post, you are more than welcome to block my feed or defriend me altogether. MY facebook. MINE, and belongs to ME. YOU can't tell me what I can and cannot post or why. You are welcome to be offended, you are even welcome to disagree or argue. But you can't tell me what I can and cannot post. If I am not for myself, who will be for me?

So I got into this massive flame war with him. I don't understand why I become so incredibly emotionally involved in these things. I was literally SHAKING. It's so silly. Embarrassing, really, to get so worked up over so small a thing.
I need to learn how to argue without becoming emotional about it. My parents do the same thing - they become overly emotionally involved in their topics of interest, so disagreements become screaming matches and personal affronts. This is the reason I don't talk about politics, why I refuse to even LEARN about it at ALL - because my family has made it so uncomfortable a subject to discuss that I can't even bear to acknowledge that it exists.

Now I realize that's kinda silly....that's throwing the baby out with the bathwater, that's what that is. I am learning that perhaps it's ok to educate myself about politics, so that I can discuss it with people other than my parents, and so that I can learn to talk about it without becoming over stimulated and outrageously invested.

Definitely something to work on. Small steps.....
But I was pretty proud of how I handled myself today in my little flame-war. I managed to get in a statement very dear to my heart...that he probably missed entirely.... but it still made me feel better to have said it to him. It was more for me than anything else... I know that talking to fundamentalists is literally as worthwhile as banging one's head against a wall, but it still felt good to say it. And it also means that I am officially no longer afraid to offend him. The unspoken truce is over. We aren't on the boards anymore, we are on MY facebook, and you can't order me around on my own damn turf. You bigoted corpse-loving purveyor of idiotic fairy tales.

....watching Alaska State Troopers with the Hubbs & am so overcome with outrage at the utterly unbelievable WASTE of human lives and resources that is the war on drugs. People DIE for this. THEY DIE. SO THAT A BUNCH OF HICKS IN 24HOURS OF DARKNESS ARE DENIED ALCOHOL.

We Pay BILLIONS of dollars for this shit. This is the single most RETARDED. YES. RETARDED. CONCEPT. EVER.

More trickle-down of lovely religion.

WHAT. THE. FUCKING. FUCK?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

I'm sitting here, on my couch, looking at this document, nicely framed and hanging in a prominent place in my diningroom. I'm marveling at the time, effort, thought and work that went in to its creation. My late Grandfather collected antique ketubot. He had a special interest in the ones from Persia. Such fascinating windows into an ancient time and culture. And the art was magnificent in its own blocky, geometric sort of way. I loved my Grandfather. He was truly the foundation of what is my family today. I wanted to include something of my heritage in my wedding contract - so I collaborated with my artist to add in some elements of those Persian ketubot I so often gazed at hanging on my Grandparents' diningroom walls.
Andrew has some Celtic family history, as far as we know, so I incorporated some Celtic knotwork into the ketubah. I have always loved knotwork and was only too thrilled to have an excuse to include it. Birds are included, and the "Ayalot" (gazelles) from Shir Ha-Shirim are featured as well. Pomegranates, ancient carved stone.... so many layers of meaning and sentiment went into this one piece of parchment.

But for what?

For months now I've been looking at it with a kind of dubious appreciation.... telling myself that it doesn't really matter what it says, it's a special keepsake, it's meaningful because I WANT it to be.

But that irks me.

This is my marriage contract. This is the document that binds me and my Husband together. This is a religious document with legal weight. This is a document that states how much my Husband paid for me, how much he needs to feed me, how much money he is to provide for me to use, how much food he is responsible to give me, how he is to satisfy me sexually.

This is not a document that has anything to do with my commitment to Andrew, with Andrew's commitment to me, or anything that has to do with our marriage whatsoever. This document is archaic and degrading.

People love to marvel at the Jewish marriage contract: "Look at how progressive it is! Women have a right to property! Women can have inheritances! Women are given sexual rights!"

...Yes, that's all very well and good.... but progressive for whom? This is not a progressive document by today's standards. By MY standards. I did not get married 2thousand years ago, I got married NOW. How is this shit relevant to ME and to MY marriage?

So the people my family claims ancestry with used this document. Big. Fucking. Woop. So put it in a museum, teach it in history class, don't make me enter into it in order to get married NOW.

I was so proud of this fucking thing. I loved it so much. As a little girl I looked at my parents' ketubah, beautifully framed, hanging in the diningroom, and fantasized that some day I would have one of my own. How brainwashed I was. That's about as stupid as how romantic we all thought it was when young grooms got down on one knee and sang "Eishet Chayil" to their brides at their weddings. Had any of us ever actually READ that damn thing?!?!? Of course we had! We'd even STUDIED it in school! So thoroughly brainwashed were we, to have studied the meanings of those words without actually looking at the composition as a whole, and what the implications were of what it was saying.

Just like my ketubah. There are photographs of me and my parents holding this thing up at my wedding after it had been read aloud under the chuppah. There we are, all smiles, beaming and proud. THIS was the culmination of all we had worked for. This. One silver coin a week, two meals a day, three meals of meat or fish on the sabbath and some rights to have sex.

I am mortified by this docmunent. I feel degraded and angry. My marriage to Andrew is the most important thing in the world to me. I put every fiber of my being toward nurturing it, cherishing it, protecting it. This ketubah, this archaic contract of sums and obligations is supposed to be the physical representation of our love? Of our home? Of what we stand for as partners in life?

I look at it now and I feel rage, and I feel sadness and a sense of loss. So romantic were the days in my Grandparents' home, so rose colored my visions of the future. Judaism is failed. Religion is a tool for tools. This document doesn't represent anything to me other than how foolish I was, how utterly brainwashed I'd been.

I want to take it down. I want to throw a rock at it. I want to hang it upside down and smash it with my fists. So stupid. So naiive. This is not my love. This is not my marriage. This is what I hate. Stop reminding me of where I came from, haven't I been through enough?

And yet.... it stays there. On the wall. Hanging. For all to see. So much went in to this document. So much. And none of it had to do with what was written on it. And nothing about my life and my marriage does now.

On the eve of my sixth wedding anniversary, I am staring at my ketubah, feeling an immense sense of loss. Old habits die hard they say, and they are right. Looking at something you once held in the highest regard and suddenly truly SEEING it for what it is.... can be extremely painful.

Right now I am angry. I will not touch the ketubah, though. I will leave it where it is. I don't want to do anything irrational... that damned thing was expensive, after all. For now it shall stay there -until such time as I have come to understand what should be done with it. Do I treat it as a sentimental thing and disregard the irrelevant parts? Do I burn it as a sacrifice to the chaos that lead me to my freedom from religion?

I don't know. So there it sits. Staring back at me. Nagging me. Like all good Jewish baggage.