Before my present gig as a reporter, I was on a run of well-paying but emotionally abusive jobs.

First there was the third-shift job providing technical support to stupid people.  After countless berating calls from screaming, whining narcissistic people, my rosy optimism soon disintegrated into that of a bitter old hag.

Desperate to flee the confines of help desk hell, I took the first viable position that came my way in marketing for a small manufacturing company.  I think I was the only employee below the age of 40 and certainly the only non-Republican.

The company itself wasn’t bad – free healthcare, great benefits –but working with my boss was about as satisfying as, say, receiving a colonoscopy, I imagine.  Insipid, patronizing and incredibly micro-managing, Pete put the anal-compulsive and mean boss in the movie Office Space to shame.

Each morning I worked for Company X, the alarm clock would sound with a deafening sense of dread as another eight-hour workday loomed.  Because my boss was so incredibly controlling, often I would be left with little to do.  And for someone with adult ADD, boredom is a death sentence.

A few days ago, our department had a staff meeting.  After the meeting, my editor pulled out an envelope and congratulated me for my 1,000 story submitted the week before.  In the card, he wrote a nice comment along the lines that he wished he could clone me and enclosed a $30 gift card to the PF Chang restaurant.

I may not make as much money as I did before, but some benefits are priceless.

Last Thanksgiving, Brandon and I tried to refrain from gagging on pumpkin pie as his now cousin-by-marriage Renee flashed professionally-bound photo books of her marriage in Hawaii.

Eyes wide, his other 20 year-old cousin Carrie asked the blushing bride if her wedding was something she’d dreamed of since girlhood to which Renee giggled and gushed that it was indeed, her very dream to have a fairy book wedding.

Maybe I’m just abnormal, but I don’t think I ever once wondered or dreamed about my marriage nuptials before the age of, well, 27.  In fact, I had just about resigned myself to the fact that I would become the crazy old lady surrounded by 20 cats until I met Brandon.

I’m still nowhere near becoming a Bridezilla but yes, I have thought about our wedding which will as far from a fairy tale wedding as Hillary is from becoming president.

For starters, I refuse to get married in some church, godless heathen that I am.  I always wanted to get married at Ault Park but it’s very pricey.  And then, I aim to either have a Buddhist monk officiate the ceremony, and if one isn’t available, a lesbian feminist minister of some religious persuasion like Wicca.

The reception will be both vegetarian and booze-free, which I hope lessens the number of RSVPs we receive.  And, in lieu of gifts, I’d like donations to be made to Freedom to Marry, which advocates for gay rights.

Of course, we should probably set a date first.

Just as unconventional as my wedding will be, is my ring.  Maybe not so unconventional considering diamonds only recently became a wedding ring tradition.  But with its blood history, I didn’t want to wear exploitation on my finger.  So instead my ring is made out of moissanite

Besides being slightly cheaper than diamonds, moissanites retain every bit the brilliance and luster of a diamond.  A naturally occurring mineral, silicone carbide, moissanite was discovered in 1893 by Henri Moissan in an ancient meteor.  Since there are no supplies of this mineral on earth, scientists create synthetic moissanite in a lab.

Below is a picture of my ring.  It’s 14K white gold with a ½ carat center Charles & Colvard moissanite jewel.

It’s official.  The boy and I are one step closer to making our cohabitation legal-like by churchy standards.

Brandon asked me to marry him last night — on “Valentine’s Day” — and after a brief consideration of my future as Mrs. George Clooney, I accepted.

So, everyone seems to have just two questions: How did he ask, and have we set a date yet.  To answer the second, no.  If it were up to me, we’d elope on some tropical island somewhere.  But as my mother is already busily planning an engagement party, I know she’d surely write me out of her will should we go this route.

As for the first, I must admit, the proposal didn’t come as a complete surprise.  After all, I went from making subtle innuendo to outright commentary on my lack of finger adornment months ago.  And after Brandon’s 6-year-old nephew referred to me as “just Brandon’s girlfriend” at Christmas, I sent the boy links to rings I wanted, along with my finger size.

Still, after we just spent mass money on a new floor, I didn’t think the boy would go in further debt to buy a ring…

After returning home and having dinner, we were getting ready to go grocery shopping when Brandon came round and gave me a big bear hug.  This isn’t odd.  He gives lots of good, cuddly hugs.  But then he didn’t let go and I knew something was up.  He reached in his pocket and pulled out the ring and asked, “Will you marry me?”

Now, I am not your traditional I’ve-dreamed-of-my-wedding-since-girlhood kind girl but this I wanted to be traditional.  It may just very well be the only checkbox on the girly census which I can mark off.

“Boy, you better get down on your knees,” I said.

With Brandon on one knee, I accepted and we will now live happily ever after.

With our income tax windfall, Brandon and I decided to take up the carpet and linoleum in our open-design living room/kitchen and install wood laminate flooring instead.  I don’t know if it was the wood particles floating around or maybe the formaldehyde used in carpet and insulation, but something triggered an acute case of sinusitis that I haven’t been able to shake.

I should preface the following by saying that I and medicine do not have a very good history.  When I was 7 and hospitalized for strep throat/scarlet fever, doctors soon found out I was allergic to Keflex by the tell-tale rash that speckled my fever-wrought body.  A few years later, I was given Amoxicillin to only meet the same end.

When I had my wisdom teeth extracted, my dentist prescribed Erythromycin. I would have gladly had all my teeth extracted in lieu of this nefarious posion masquerading as a antibiotic.

So, perusing the cold aisle at Walgreens, I debated the children’s brand, which boasted a bubblegum-like flavor, but decided on a orange-colored bottle of Tylenol Cold Multi-Symptom promising to taste like a “instant CitrusBurst sensation.”

Still, opening the bottle at home, I sniffed it suspiciously.  It smelled like orange Tang.  I downed in one gulp.  It was the most disgusting definitively non-citrusy bile I’ve ever swallowed, with an aftertaste much on par to that of black licorice soaked in vinegar.

I suspect it to be the same sort of liquid they fill the Kool-Aid pitchers in hell with.

If they can make children’s medicine taste like bubblegum and cotton candy, why can’t they make adult medicine at least bearable?

Despite living in Kentucky for nearly a year and a half, I am still somewhat in a state of denial that I am now a resident of the Bluegrass State.  But the fact that I maintain my “official” address at my mother’s Ohio address isn’t so much the result of me being a loyal Buckeye as it is the in-state tuition at UC.

Brandon and I stopped by my mom’s house last week to pick up my mail and somehow, got roped into a conversation on Bush and the massive escalation he has in store for Iraq.  I call it a debate despite the fact that a debate usually entails two reasonably intelligent but opposing sides with articulable positions.

My mother still believes it was Iraqi’s who flew planes into the twin towers.

After arguing to no avail with my mother and feeling exasperated at her appalling and ignorant lack of historical knowledge, I was inspired to write on this very subject for my columns and review writing class.  The assignment was to write on something we considered to be “the elephant in the room.”

U.S. foreign policy yields bitter fruit

“…Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?”

Matthew 7:15-16

In his State of the (Dis)Union address, President Bush proposed slapping a band-aid on the gashing wound that is Iraq with a “plan” to quell insurgent attacks and sectarian violence in Iraq by leading an additional 21,500 lambs to the slaughter at an annual cost of $27 billion.

Aside from the fact that anyone who honestly believes we intend to pacify a restive nation of more than 27 million people with a mere 21,500 additional troops probably failed third-grade math, throwing more troops at the Iraq problem is like dropping a few sandbags on New Orleans’ levees and hoping for the best come the next Katrina.

After all, despite miles of fence-building, fortification of the border with heat/motion detectors, raids by the INS and Minutemen vigilantes who’ve replaced white sheets with the American flag, illegal immigration remains at an all-time-high.

If we are ever to declare a victory in Iraq and elsewhere in the world, we need to stop beating around the Bush, both literally and figuratively.

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