Musing · Amusingly

Today I turn 26. Technically I was born at 7:30PM so I never really feel like it's official until after then, maybe that is weird. I haven't posted in a while and a lot and a little seem to have happened.
Brian started work again, so we have started the scheduling game. He gets his schedule one week ahead, on a good week and then this week he got called in on a day he was scheduled off. I'm a schedule kind of girl and I don't like when I can't count on the schedule being accurate. But we are working on it.
My sister moved to her new apartment, which is very cute, has a better floor plan and really interesting linoleum in the kithchen/bathroom. I should take pictures, it's rather intense. Esp. since the rest of the apartment is a traditional creamy box. Mom and Dad had to be away that weekend and Brian, no surprise, had to work so Amanda and I pretty much did the move ourselves with some help from her boyfriend and a few other friends that stopped by. Overall it was 3 hours one night and 3 hours the next day. Pretty good move in my book. It felt good to be in charge and capable of doing it ourselves.
Not that I have checked but there must be some sort of relationship planet or star or something in retrograde because suddenly many of my friends are out of love and I don't know how to be the most helpful to any of them. The Best Man Dan has come to stay with us for a bit to put some distance between him and the painful parts of Philly. I am not sure what is happening with Jac and Jody, but it wasn't pretty. I stand by Jac as a true friend and I'll be here if he needs me and maybe someday we can all help him out so he doesn't get trapped again. Amanda and her boyfriend are ok, but he better not hit McDonald's again without asking the rest of us first!
My job has ramped up. Some new people are coming in, some old people are leaving and there is a bit of jostling around within. My boss is trying to change a lot of things that are my responsibility, to pass them off on someone else to free me up to do more. She is delegating me new things that play to my strengths, and still trying to fill in the gaps in my training. And this is all fine and good except that it's not all that terribly exciting to me. There are pieces of the job that I enjoy and that really thrill and excite me, but overall, things seem to fall flat and there are a lot of bad things that worry me - stereotyping in the uppper ranks, inconsistent planning and follow through, crazy people in charge. The money and the benefits are so tempting, but so is Philadelphia. Brian and I might have fewer scheduling issues if we didn't work in opposite directions. Or is it just the real world bearing down on me? I've never had a job for more than a year and here it is almost two years! And I feel I have made a definite impact. But there is something missing. I don't know if I want more power (say in charge of a costume shop) or less (jsut sewing for other people doing what I am told, at least for a bit).
Plus, there are a lot of other pressures - my life is changing, and so is Brian's and we are starting to wonder, at what point do we have to stop and start planning for the children we want? At what point does the money my current job is offering become more important than my job satisfaction? When do we stop talking about moving somewhere else because we happen to live in a great school district? And when do we take a good hard look at our current living situation and ask, is this really working and will it work with 2 more people in here? And maybe the real problem is that my boss is the same age as my parents which means she is of the same generation where money is more important than job satisfaction and I am getting all this pressure from that generation. What are other generations doing? See, I think job satisfaction is so very important - it takes up so much of your time and how can you be a good person/parent if the thing that takes up all your time is something you are doing just so someone else can have the things that they want. In couple's therapy, that sort of relationship would never fly, why is it different for a parent/child relationship. I should NEVER EVER resent my children, esp. for something that is not their fault. Please those of another generation, what are your thoughts on this quandry?