CALLING ALL GENTLEMEN AND LADIES

My cousin was yesterday despairing in her blog about our generation’s lack of gentlemen. She didn’t mean men, but gentlemen. Those who didn’t text to ask you out but left a calling cards at your home with the butler. Those who had to call you by your last name because calling you by your first was taking a liberty. Those who would get up, no matter how many times it needed to be done, every time a lady entered or exited room. Those who opened doors, and got up to offer the seat. Those who dueled for their lady’s honor if her name had been besmirched.

Sigh, those were the days. The thing is she is right. True gentlemen are an extinct species. Nobody bothers to teach their children basic manners, let alone gentlemanly or ladylike ones.

Each time I lose myself in Austen, or simply in a good old Historical Romance (with which I am obsessed at the moment) I feel somewhat cheated that I didn’t get to enjoy being wooed and courted. At the same time I am thankful that I didn’t have to worry about my opinions being considered null simply because I am a woman. I wish not that I was back in Austen’s time when I would have no rights of my own, over myself, my property or even my own children, but I wish instead that gentlemen like then were still alive today.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I like men. I love guys. I like guys more than I like women but men today aren’t what they used to be. Now they wouldn’t go chasing for a fallen star for your hand in marriage, they wouldn’t write letters declaring their intentions and hold your hand with feverish passion and kiss your fingers and make one swoon.

After the movie Sex in the City came out, some brilliant publishing house made the decision to print the book Carrie was reading, “Love Letter’s of Great Men” and of course all were written in a time when men were still gentlemen and even Napoleon was amazingly romantic.

That being said, the state of affairs with us women isn’t any better! Whatever happened to demureness, to modesty? What happened to self-respect? Whatever happened with being a lady and demanding others to treat us like one? Maybe is the fear of appearing high maintenance or the fear of not fitting in with the majority.
I don’t know what it is but I fear that one person’s comment in my cousin's blog was accurate, we demanded to be treated like equals and we got it. We cannot, apparently, expect for men to treat us with deference because we are no longer the “fairer sex”. We wanted to be treated as men, to be treated as their intellectual equals and now we can’t ask (or so I’ve been told) to be treated like a flower. The gentlemanly behavior of yesteryears departed from the idea that women were gentle, delicate, fragile creatures to be protected, sheltered and not to be trusted to make their own decision, since they had neither the mental or emotional capacity, nor the experience to know better.

I guess we can’t have it all. Men behaved like gentlemen before because we needed to be protected and taken care of and now that we don’t the behavior has been deemed unnecessary.
I still hope that we could all act like before. Wish those old fashioned rules of conduct were still applied today so I don’t wonder why my cousin is crying out “Oh Mr. Darcy, Mr. Darcy where art thou Mr. Darcy”

Check her blog out at http://mylifeinasaffronworld.blogspot.com/ and let's conmiserate together.

HERE WE GO!

Well everybody here’s a new year before us, what to do with the time that has been given? I am determined to stay true to my resolutions and so far this four days have been meatless, none of God’s creatures have died to feed me (aside from the salmon on my rainbow rolls) but I did spend them in bed reading instead of being more active. Tomorrow after work I should be meeting BT for some very, very, very needed exercise and we will start a regime, regiment? (I am never sure of those two words) and we should be working out three to four times a week.

Continuing with my resolutions I realized this morning that we are at the moment incredibly behind with all the paperwork that should have already been filed in order to get my status as Dear Husband’s wife in order. Dear Husband had to see a loquero (shrink) for our petition and I am hoping that before the end of the month we are finally in our way to having all our stuff together.

It’s incredible the amount of shit the Federal Governments asks for when an immigrant marries a citizen, according to a friend of mine who married her fiancé who is a citizen during the interview the agent was horrible to her and told my friend’s husband he was there to defend his rights as a citizen of the U.S. and that if she was just after his papers he would do him the favor of deporting her. Nothing sends a shiver of fear up and down my back like the D-Word…and of course roaches. I am truly hoping that when our interview time comes I will get someone who is nicer because I don’t think I’ll be able to stay quiet while someone trashes me as if I wasn’t there. We have so far collected, pictures, wedding cards, wedding presents, wedding pictures, proof of travels we have taken together, bank statements, emails, phone records, lease or deeds to both our names, certified letters from families, friends and co-worker attesting to the true nature of our marriage and so on and on.

So here we are seven months after meeting with our lawyer and $5,000 poorer still just in the beginning stages of our process. I was hoping to be able to travel out of the country by 2010 to celebrate our Honey Moon in Ireland but it seems we are going to have to honey moon in the U.S. so our plan so far is to fly to Seattle and drive down the PCH and stop everywhere our little hearts want.

I am determined to get this stuff done. “Determined” is what I am going to be all this year. Determined is going to be my fucking middle name.

I have been in this country seven years and have spent all these years doing one thing or another, interview after interview, trying to solve my issue with my paperwork, I have been covered by process and in the way I have gotten my SS# (which felt incredible) and my work permit (which allowed me to stop cleaning kitchens and toilets) but it hasn’t been a complete solutions, they all have been simply patching up the big problem is putting a band aid on a bullet hole.

I have in the 7 years in this country gotten my fingerprints taken at least five times (us Aliens have ever changing fingerprints apparently), gotten interviewed, accused, being looked over, asked to say “yes” instead of “yeah” in front of a judge, asked why I don’t have an accent when I speak in English, asked if I am a democrat or a republican, asked if I loved my country, asked why I am here, why do I want to stay and if I love this country.

I am ready to end this everlasting phase in my life where I am drifting around like a castaway neither here nor gone, just floating around in a sea of bureaucracy and paperwork. I will have you know United States of America that you could do a lot worse than having me added to the name of those many lucky immigrants that become part of this country. Damn it I am smart and hard working, haven’t broken any laws (haven’t even jay walked in my life!) I pay my taxes, I donate to charity, I don’t litter and more importantly I am healthy and speak the language. I would be a freaking awesome addition not a burden.

No matter, I am as I said before, nothing but determined. And you guys haven’t seen me when I am determined! It won’t be easy to get rid of me! I am staying here. This is my home now and I ain’t leaving without a fight.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

I just came home from an exhausting weekend with the family and I mean exhausting because having too much fun takes its toll. We (Dear Husband, sister, mom, uncle, and pets) drove up to Tampa to hang out with the family we have there. The same family who lovingly open their home to me when I was spoiled brat 8 years ago used to asking for everything and doing nothing on my own.

We spent two amazing days laughing our asses off playing board games, dancing, drinking, eating (of course) and remembering the old days, from when we were little to the horror stories of our first jobs in the U.S. The cultural shock and horrid jobs behind us gives us the opportunity to laugh at what before made us want to cry. There is something simply delicious about looking back and laughing hysterically at things, experiences, jobs, pains, falls, etc that drove us crazy and depressed us. The personal triumph of moving past it couldn’t taste any sweeter.

After playing games and utterly crushing our only male cousin playing we started getting ready for the party. I had forgotten how the simple fun of sharing a bathroom with so many other women feels. What a simple pleasure to sit down with little eye shadow pots, brushes, steaming curling irons, tweezers, pencils and chattering voices, felt like. I had forgotten the fun of simply being a girl with other girls who you love while men stand outside complaining about how long we take and make fun of us.

We made it to the party late of course and danced and laughed, ate and danced, laughed some more. We laugh a lot, I noticed. I don’t know why it struck me so strongly that exact moment but we do a lot of laughing and the thought of it made me happy. Happy that in spite of all the hard things we have gone though, heart ache, losing family, losing oneself in this vast and foreign land we still find pleasure and laugh, out loud, until our bellies ache and we are gasping for air.

Twelve o’clock finally came and the deafening sounds of music and other voices drowned our own, we hugged each other, taking turns, wishing each other a happy new year to come, happiness, health, love, laughter, security…There is something about that precise moment, that instant, that last a second, that short moment when the new year begins and the old year ends that is almost indescribable. There is something about the energy around, flowing like bubbly champagne; something about the screams, laughter, the happy almost euphoric feeling, there’s something about that exhilarating emotion that makes the most cynic one of us feel overwhelmed with happiness and the beauty of hope.

None of us know what the New Year will bring, but in that very moment we are all, as one, expecting, hoping, wanting and wishing each other the best for the year in front of us. All that positive energy, all the good juju cannot be all in vain.

As I sat there surrounded by the people I love and the people I share blood with, people that had seen me grow and people that love in spite of my many, many, many flaws I felt so incredibly lucky, lucky that the people I care about are mostly in good health, well, working, living, breathing, enjoying life. Lucky that I have a husband that loves me and mine, lucky that my family is just the shit and I wouldn’t change even one of the crazy characters in it.

I ate my twelve grapes, wishing wishes, for Dear Husband, for my brother, my mom, my sister, the rest of my family and myself. More than anything I wished for more years where we are just like this, spending it with family, eating until we burst, dancing, wishing each other another happy new year, another year where in that moment we are so incredibly happy and we are so overwhelmed we want to cry.

I wish you all my same brand of happiness, the same brand of luck. This is a new year, a blank slate that we all get one time each year, so start this new one with renewed hope, with new plans, with a positive mind, with a happy feeling. You never know what good is around the corner, when love may come your way, what blessing life might throw you. This is the year to be happy, so be it.