S#@! Happens - My Sarah Grace Moment that Led to my First Meltdown of Married Life

A picture is worth a thousand words, right?

Well, here is one of them that lives up to that saying:

Yes. That happened.

And, believe it or not, my melt-down did not happen in that moment.

"Ironing"

First off, I never iron; ironing for me is pulling the clothes immediately out of the dryer and hanging them on a hanger so they don't wrinkle. I never even bought a full-sized ironing board but still have the 2-foot long, 5-inch high, bright-pink dorm-sized one that I got as a freshman in college.... and it has seriously been used less than 10 times since then.

Admittedly, I am inexperienced with ironing ;)

Having said that, now that I have a husband and he often has to wear khakis to work, my version of "ironing" wasn't doing the trick. He was attempting to iron his pants and left the iron face down on the khakis and after I fussed that doing that would scorch the fabric, he suggested I iron them. Boy did I eat my own words.

Burning

I still have no idea how but in the midst of ironing and talking, I set the iron FACE DOWN on the floor. Just 5-10 seconds but enough time to do damage. And serious damage.

Sarah Grace struck again.

It burned the carpet leaving a dark indent AND we have short-haired carpet so I couldn't trim off the burn. Not that I was being rational and thinking of that in the panic that followed my discovery of the burn; here I am trying to scrape off the scorched portion with a knife. I was so focused that I didn't even notice when poor Scott was documenting his crazy wife:

To make matters worse, of course I wasn't ironing in a dimly lit corner. Nope, that would be too convenient to cover the burn mark. We set up ironing in the middle of the floor and in our teeny tiny apartment, the burn is visible not only in the living room but also from the bedroom, front door, kitchen AND breakfast nook.

I had a mini-freak out but no meltdown. That came the next day.

Crying

I didn't want to have to pay the $500 security deposit when we move out of the apartment... so I was determined to fix my mistake. I researched oodles of options and watched a few youtube videos and then set out on a mission to right my wrong.

I especially felt the need to correct the burn mark mistake since the day after I burned the carpet, my car was due in for its repair from my previous Sarah-Grace moment and the deductible was also $500. I couldn't handle being the cause of $1,000 worth of mistakes.

Sadly, there didn't seem to be much I could do to fix the burn mark. My only hope, according to the far reaches of google, seemed to be sandpaper and a scrub-brush.

Fast-forward to the end of the day: I had purchased the necessary materials and been scrubbing and rubbing at the iron burn for a good 30 minutes when Scott got home.

What was his reaction when he walked in to find his wife scrunched down on my knees, red in the face, raw-fingered, with my hair up and my nose down to the floor, sandpapering the carpet...?

Laughter.

Looking back, obviously I can see how that was a natural reaction. However, in that moment, it was not the reaction I was hoping for. And that is when my meltdown happened.

The Lesson

Why the iron burn incident was my breaking point, I don't know. 

Context: 

The backstory is that Scott and I have been great but our first bit of marriage has been filled with a lot of transition and stress. We did all the normal post-wedding stuff  like registry returns and purchases, changing over our insurance and bills, writing literally over 100 thank you cards and getting adjusted to living with one another. 

But we also moved him half-way across the country and tried to organize our very small apartment which was already a squeeze when just I lived in it. Plus, we both started and quit bad jobs AND found and started new jobs this summer. Both those new jobs have had crazy hours and lots of stress. We did a family trip to see my family and then another one to see his family - both family vacations within the same month. And, I've been prepping for the next year of grad school. 

In the midst of all of that, I had kept it together and just plugged along grateful to be married and moving forward with our life together. However, inside me was a pressure cooker of stress - trying to be the perfect wife, daughter, daughter-in-law, employee, student, friend, etc. 

The Real Problem: 

Despite all those serious stresses, what broke me was an iron burn to my carpet!?! More specifically, my husband laughing at my earnest efforts to sandpaper the iron-burn away. 

I was trying to fix my mistake, to remove the obvious blemish on my attempt at perfection. 

But the truth is that sometimes s#@! just happens. 

Fortunately, I have a husband with a great sense of humor and perspective. When my meltdown started, he immediately quit laughing and helped me realize that it was just carpet and by the end of our conversation, he had me laughing. 

Of course, my meltdown was about more than an iron burn. It was about how I was trying to do the impossible: hold myself, my life and my home together perfectly, even when s#@! happens... whether that is an iron burn, job changes, school demands, etc. 

What I Learned: 

As I mentioned, that mark is in the very middle of our tiny apartment. I can see it from just about anywhere in our home. Sadly, it hasn't faded much and doesn't look like it will :(

We might be out $500 when we leave here but I've learned a lesson that is priceless and I'm reminded of it every time I see that freakin' iron-burn: I'm not going to be perfect and I never will be. Shit happens and we can either accept it, laugh and learn from it OR be bitter and beat ourselves up. I beat myself up and took it out on the carpet with the knife and sandpaper for a few days but now I have learned to sigh and chuckle when I see the mark. 

Most of all I have learned that I have a great husband who doesn't get upset at things like iron burns or at me when I pull a Sarah Grace moment AND that he should be the one to do his own ironing from now on ;) 

Perks of Having a Penis: You get to keep your name

Upon returning to school after Christmas break, I discovered several of my friends had become engaged. It got me thinking "Will I take my husband's name?"

As a child, I always planned to - cause I never knew anything different.

In high school, of course I did (!) - because that is what you did: doodle your name with the last name of every crush you had. In high school, I not only doodled the name but planned the wedding to my high school sweetheart.

Oh yea, I failed to mention, he became engaged over break as well; weird. Now, I can rest assured I will never take his last name.

But will I take the name of the guy I do end up marrying?

Why does anyone take a husband's last name?

I recently read an article by Lynn Harris called "Mrs. Feminist." According to Harris, 90% of women take their husband's name, though this was lower in the 1980s after the second wave of the feminist movement.

So why do women take a husband's name? Not because they are conservative, Patriarchal-obeying, oblivious idiots. I can assure you.

Some reasons listed in the article included: their husband's last name simply sounded better than theirs, they wanted to, it would be easier for the kids, it was the norm, it promoted more of a family feeling.

Similarly, women who chose to keept their names were not all doing it as a political act. Some simply liked theirs better or feared an identity crisis or were known publicly by their maiden name.

Just for clarification, if you think about it, your maiden name is really a man's name anyways. If by not taking your husband's name you think it will spare you the title of a man's possession or it will prevent the loss of your personal feminine identity, I hate to break it to you but your maiden name technically represents you as belonging to your father.

BUT, this was not always the case.

Up until the middle ages when women began to lose their rights to own property, gentry had trumped gender as Harris points out. A.K.A. if your mom had more money or fame or property than your dad, the maternal line would be the family name and it was given to the children. But, soon the paternal line began to dominate regardless, once the courts created the idea of "coverture" (a male and female become one entity in the eyes of the law - that entity is male and he has all rights of the property, children, and wife).

The first women believed to have bucked that system was Lucy Stone in 1879 when she tried to keep her own name. According to Harris, when she went before the courts claiming that there was no law requiring her to take her husband's name, they drafted one.

Harris also points out that until the 1970s, US laws required women to take their husband's name in order to vote or get a driver's license!?!

But, not all women - myself included - view taking your husband's name as a bad thing. It is not necessarily losing your identity and becoming a "Mr. Him" as Lynn calls it, but instead it can be positive:

"for some women now, it's an assumption, rather than a loss, of power -- shared power. 'Instead of feeling like I 'belong' to my husband now that I have his last name, I feel like we are on equal footing,' says Amy Owings, 34, a executive assistant in Overland Park, Kan. 'We are both Owings, so now I claim him as much as he claims me.'"

But, basically, I believe it boils down to a choice. Harris shares this in her article:

"And the Lucy Stone League, an organization dedicated to fostering equality in United States naming practices, has a point when it says: 'Until naming practices are equal, women will not be considered equal to men in the U.S.'"

Is this true?

Would your future husband ever consider taking your name?

Are you considering not taking his?

Will you after reading this?