I think I’m having a quarterlife crisis. Or at least a quarterlife funk. Let me be completely honest here by saying I’ve always thought quarterlife crises were ridiculous, the twentysomething’s version of emo, our lip piercings and heavy eyeliner. So, I suppose it’s appropriate that now I’m finding myself smack dab in the middle of one.

I don’t know if it’s being unemployed (let’s just get right out and say it—the job’s probably not coming back), if it’s emotional upheaval from thinking about Congo so much, if it’s my age or hormones or blood sugar or what. But there are days when I feel that my life doesn’t fit me anymore. Jesse and I are fine. We love our cats. I love how much I’m getting to write, and when the weekends arrive I no longer sigh in relief. I like weekends. But I also like weekdays again.

So, what could I possibly have to complain about? Nothing, really. Then why is it that some days I don’t want a garden, don’t want a house, can’t drag my butt into the kitchen to cook? Is it staying too long in one place? There are still many things about Wilmington that I love—the beach, the long summer, the chilly fall, the barbeque and sweet tea and collard greens. But we’ve been here four years now. Before this, we were in Orlando for about that long, and when we left it was certainly time.

At the end of last year, I was thrilled with everything domestic, was wanting a baby, was happy with the feeling of having roots. Now, all those things feel somewhat suffocating. We’re refinancing our house. Which is a good thing. But there are times when I just think, how is it that I am refinancing a house? How is it that my life is over? When did I get so old?

I read this article (I Can Do Anything, So How Do I Choose?) over the weekend and while I related to much of what the author had to say, about the disillusionment that comes with one’s mid-twenties and such, I kind of hated where the article ended up, with a carefree move to Chicago, and with lines like, “There is a kind of perverted contentedness in certainty born of a lack of alternatives.” There is no such thing. Not for me, anyway. The lack of alternatives—a thirty-year mortgage in a depressed housing market, Jesse’s stable job in the midst of a recession—breeds in me restlessness. Sorry to disappoint. (Yes, I know how ridiculous I’m sounding right now, how ungrateful, and I’m sorry for that, I truly am. But I’m being melodramatic, which, I believe, is one of the primary symptoms of a quarterlife crisis. Ask a doctor, and that’s what she’ll tell you, I’m sure of it.)

When we moved to Wilmington, I was giddy with possibility, with the impression that I could do anything, be anyone, go anywhere. We were never going to stay. And then Jesse got a good job that he genuinely enjoys, and we bought a house, and we got involved at church and got a group of friends we had fun with, and I graduated, and we planted a garden, and here I am. Everything seems perfect.

I know all the right answers, the being content in any circumstance. But is it possible to be content and restless at the same time? Because while I do feel anxious for a change, I don’t hate life. I may be a little depressed at times, but I’m not actually unhappy. I just feel my options have never been more limited.

I can try to find another job, with the likely outcome being either A. I don’t find a job, or B. I find another job I kind of hate. Or, I can stay at home and keep writing, and watch our savings account dwindle. I want to redecorate at least three rooms of our house, but I can’t afford to buy nonessentials like paint, picture frames, a futon. I want to take a vacation with Jesse—not anything extravagant, just some time away from home, just the two of us. But, that costs money too.

And wouldn’t those things just be postponing the inevitable return of these restless feelings? Is that why we buy new-to-us cars or get new curtains or move to a new city or rearrange the furniture or get a dog—to keep those feelings at bay for just a little longer? I guess I bought into the lie: find the right job, move to the right place, and then coast. Take vacations and plant gardens and have babies. And no more feeling like the world is much smaller than it should be. Maybe this is what it means to be “grown up.” But, as I said to Sabrina recently, adulthood lasts (if things go well) a really, really long time.

It’s not all gloomy. Let’s end this up. We went to Raleigh on Monday with Brandon and Kara, and Kara and I talked girl talk as we browsed Anthropologie, Sephora. And last night, Brandon installed a pot rack my parents gave us, and now I get to at least rearrange a couple cabinets. And I went to the library and got some promising books. So, there are all those things.

And I think what this crisis, or funk, or whatever, has made me realize is that it’s far too soon to give up. It’s far too soon to stop believing someday we will spend a summer in Paris, that we will drive across country. That we’ll be spontaneous again, that we’ll pack up and move somewhere we’ve never been, and finding a nearby Target will just be the most exciting thing. Life doesn’t end at thirty, or twenty-six. So, let’s start acting like it.

Here is the week. Monday: Congo. Tuesday: Congo. Wednesday: Congo. Thursday: We’ll see, but let’s guess Congo.

I’ve been talking to people, writing, thinking, cleaning the mirrors. For some reason, grocery shopping has become the chore I forget most often. And then I go to the kitchen to get something to eat, and that’s when I realize I really haven’t been to the grocery store lately. We have a bowl full of oranges and a half gallon of milk and a bag of jelly beans I’ve promised myself I won’t touch for the rest of the week. I believe there are sweet potatoes I bought the other day, and five ears of corn. All these random bits and pieces, no real cohesion, no real meals.

I’ll borrow from Sabrina’s famous “snippets” style to finish this because right now my brain is kind of like our kitchen, all bits and pieces, moving this direction when I’m wanting another. I’ve cleared the schedule for the rest of the week to sit at the computer and write, write, write. That’s when Congo gets switched on, and the bits and pieces are at least focused on one thing, and I can forget the kitchen, forget about dinner, at least for a time.

So.

• I don’t know why everyone is acting like last night’s American Idol was so shocking. Jesse and I called it as soon as the final two were announced, and we’ve only watched maybe half the episodes this season. Think about it! Who votes on this show? Fourteen-year-old girls. Who are fourteen-year-old girls going to vote for? Who are the Danny Gokey people going to vote for? And besides, I think the judges kind of killed it for Adam because they kept going overboard with the love–that’s going to get all the Kris fans voting hardcore. Anyway. Sometimes it’s fun to devote a decent amount of brain energy to something that really, in the grand scheme of things, isn’t all that important.
• Even though we’ve had a good amount of rain lately, the garden does not seem to be growing at the rate I think it should. I’m not sure if I’m being impatient or if my plants are just not happy or what. The cantaloupe plants in the corner of the yard are growing like weeds. Which worries me, as the plants in the actual garden are not.
• I need some good books to read. Lately, I’ve stumbled onto a lot of books I technically should read, but they aren’t exactly page-turners. Any suggestions? What I really want is a book I can’t put down, a book I think about when I’m not reading, a book that feels so real that finishing it is a little jarring.

Marianne told me once that you always love the first place you travel to. We were in Japan when she said this, sneaking extra glances at a cute monk in a Tokyo temple. It was my first time overseas, and I assumed Japan would be “that place.” And it was, in a way, and I’d go back in a heartbeat, but it wasn’t the real first.

When I was sixteen, a friend and I went to San Francisco to stay with my aunt for a week. It was the first time I had been to the West Coast, the longest time I had been away from my parents, and the trip happened at that pivotal age, that age when I knew absolutely everything and wanted nothing more than to “express myself.” And there was San Francisco—all traffic and noise and brightly colored wigs in the Castro and crazy sunglasses and velveteen purses from the Haight and barking sea lions at Pier 39, and outside the city the biggest trees, the hodge podge that was Berkeley, the spicy-sweet smell of Eucalyptus trees. The way the sunlight glinted off the bay in Sausalito, the cold breeze and fresh seafood at Half Moon Bay.

I idolized Aunt Joannie (known as “Lisa,” her middle name, to everyone in California). I loved her biting humor, the way she ordered escargot like it was fried ravioli. With my aunt I tried for the first time brie (loved it), lamb (was indifferent, but would later love it), and crème brûlée (um, yes please). But for all her sophistication, my aunt flies in the face of any stereotype that might be pinned on her. She owns a taxidermied squirrel and a buffalo skull and has a tendency for rescuing too many cats. She’s an immigration lawyer, and though she lives in one of the most liberal parts of the country she always votes Republican. She holds dinner parties and cookouts for her friends and threatened one Thanksgiving to put a Cornish hen inside the turkey and then tell all the kids the turkey had been pregnant.

Jesse and I went to San Fran to stay with Joannie once, and we walked all over that city, up and down steep hills, from museums to Chinatown to North Beach for garlic ice cream at The Stinking Rose.

We almost moved to San Francisco the year after we were married. I was accepted to the MFA program at the University of San Francisco, a gorgeous Jesuit school near the Haight and Golden Gate Park. But it’s a private school and the tuition would have cost us tens of thousands of dollars for the program, which offered no financial aid. UNCW was offering a TA position with a stipend and a full tuition remission for the first year. So, that tipped the scales, and here we are in North Carolina with no student loans.

The last time I was in the city was in 2003, right before heading to Japan. It’s been nearly six full years since I walked those streets, saw the water, the bridges. Some days, I want to go so badly it’s all I can do to keep from just buying a ticket and packing my bags. I often check airfare prices, and when Lauren posted her San Francisco pictures on Facebook, I nearly cried I wanted to be there so badly. Marianne was right, but it wasn’t Japan I fell hard for. It was the loveliest city in the loveliest state, the freedom and expression, the feeling of taking my first bite of brie, that creamy indulgence, the thrill of being sixteen, of getting to decide who I might become in the place where I could be absolutely anyone.

Read the whole article here.

This is on CNN.com today, written by Eve Ensler. Excerpt:

“I was in Bosnia during the war in 1994 when it was discovered there were rape camps where white women were being raped. Within two years there was adequate intervention. Yet, in Congo, femicide has continued for 12 years. Why? Is it that coltan, the mineral that keeps our cell phones and computers in play, is more important than Congolese girls? [...] What is happening in Congo is the most brutal and rampant violence toward women in the world. If it continues to go unchecked, if there continues to be complete impunity, it sets a precedent, it expands the boundaries of what is permissible to do to women’s bodies in the name of exploitation and greed everywhere. It’s cheap warfare.”

Last night, Jesse took me out for a belated “just-us” birthday celebration. We ate at a somewhat-pricey Italian restaurant and then saw a musical adaptation of Big.

We don’t eat at “fancy” restaurants often. We just can’t afford it. When we were in college we ate at fancier places than we do now–funny how having a mortgage changes your perception of affordability.

But there we were, in this restaurant with its fountain-out-front, its dining room all expensive tile and wood-plank tables and leather-backed booths. I was wearing the most expensive dress I own–a $40 black number I bought at Zara in the Mall at Millenia last Christmas. I wore pearl earrings and a single-pearl necklace I bought in China at the Pearl Market in Suzhou. I probably paid less than $10 for the necklace and earrings combined. And my shoes were little black strappy Payless heels I’ve owned since college.

And then they seated this older couple next to us and it took less than forty seconds for me to realize that this couple could probably purchase everything we own in one fell swoop without blinking. They talked about soft-shelled crabs, they waved to other diners they knew, they exuded confidence and importance. The woman directed everything, ordering for the two of them, telling the waiter exactly when to bring the entrees after the mussels (”Last time, they timed it all wrong,” she told the waiter, and he practically tripped over himself to agree with her and assure her the mistake would not be repeated).

Up to this point, I had thought the restaurant just had somewhat poor service, as our waiter seemed sleepy and unenthusiastic, just handing us pieces of paper with the specials listed instead of telling us anything about the dishes. But, as I watched the verbal back flips our dining-neighbors’ waiter was doing for them, I had the sneaking suspicion that our waiter’s performance was decided the instance we ordered water to drink rather than wine.

This is certainly not the first time this has happened to us. One Valentine’s Day a few years ago we went to an upscale restaurant downtown and watched as people seated after us were served much more quickly and nicely because they kept ordering glass after glass of wine, because their clothes had designer labels, because they sported flashy diamonds and expensive watches.

I’m always disappointed and somewhat surprised when this happens. Jesse and I try to tip well, and since the economy has been in its lovely little downward spiral, we try to tip more than we otherwise would. We’d never dream of telling a waiter exactly when to bring our entrees, and we’d never complain if our dinner came a few minutes before we finished our appetizer. But as soon as we say, “Water’s fine,” that’s it. We’ve been summed up, and there’s nothing we can do to change the bright flashing signs above our heads that say: CHEAP. NOT WORTH ANY EXTRA EFFORT.

But despite the service snub, we had a lovely time last night. We loved our meal and we enjoyed the musical, and I wouldn’t have changed a thing about the evening. In fact, if we were to somehow come into a lot of money, I doubt we’d score better service even then. I’d still wear my $40 dress. It’s comfortable and flattering. The only pearls I can imagine buying would be wholesale from a little Chinese lady in a stall in the Suzhou Pearl Market. I’d still order water because I like water.

In general, I don’t believe that something is intrinsically valuable because it’s expensive. So, if that means we’ll read our own specials, then so be it.

AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

Okay, yeah, that’s it.

Jesse and I used to eat a lot of KFC. I’m not exactly proud of this. But in our first year of marriage, I was working a high-stress full-time job, and Jesse was finishing up his last year of school, and then the car accident happened and three days a week we were driving across Orlando at rush hour to my chiropractor appointments. So, cooking dinner at home became a little tricky. About that time, KFC came out with their “Twister Wrap,” which is basically a tortilla wrapped around chicken, lettuce, tomato, and some kind of spicy mayo-like substance. We both liked it. It was cheap and convenient.

When we moved to North Carolina, we tried to replicate our Orlando KFC experiences at local KFCs, but to no avail. They’re just not that good up here. The food usually tastes a little old, a little stale, and Jesse was bummed they didn’t have mac and cheese as a side. So, we moved on to other dining options. And then we tried to revamp our way of eating–cooking at home a majority of the time, paying attention to what we were eating, and so on. Not that we’re perfect by any means, but at least we’ve improved.

But then KFC and Oprah embarked on what would become an absolute disaster. They offered free meals to promote their new grilled chicken. And then they ran out of chicken because they “didn’t anticipate” the “overwhelming response.” Um, KFC? It’s Oprah. And we’re in a recession. And you just offered people an entire meal for free. And you didn’t expect there would be millions of people finding out about this?

So we never got a chance to redeem our coupons (heck, we don’t even get the channel The Oprah Show comes on, and we heard about the promo in plenty of time to download ours), but now KFC is offering a “rain check” after initially saying they were abandoning the promotion because they’d go out of business or something. Although we were ready to write KFC off for good, we’ll probably cave and get the rain checks because, well…it’s a free meal. And even though it’s basically MSG-coated chicken pieces, it’s still free, and that’s hard to pass up right now.

The funniest parts of this?

1. That people think because it’s grilled, it’s healthy. Um, read the ingredients. It’s not.

2. That KFC is now claiming that so many people wanted to use their coupons because of how awesome their new grilled chicken is.

3. That the KFC CEO has an Australian accent (or whatever–all I know is I was hoping for a Southern drawl and it’s decidedly not a Southern drawl). That’s just plain messed up. Watch this.