Housewives and Partners, Mothers and Parents

Posted by Tigritza

If the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, the way to this woman's heart seems to be through her partner.

And the "Partners Club" at Penn's business school (which I sometimes call the "Housewives Club" - just to tease Tasha, of course) figured that out this month with an interesting marketing strategy:

A handwritten postcard, just for Tasha! With no mention of even my name! Just to welcome her to Penn, even though we haven't even said Yes to them yet. It made her so happy and got her so excited!...which in turn made me really happy with Penn. They said they were excited to meet her and would love to have her, and the whole script was 100% gender-neutral. Admittedly, it's probably a semi-prepared script that's written specifically so that it can be used for Boys and Girls both, but still, it managed to reinforce in my mind that Penn's the place to be. Every day, I feel better and better about choosing Penn, and safer and happier about choosing Penn for us.

There's a "Welcome Weekend" coming up, and my business school's LGBT group is taking Tasha and me out to show us the gay scene, introduce us around and welcome us. "Sure, what's the big deal?", you may ask. "They want D-i-v-e-r-s-i-t-y, and you're it."

But if anything, the MBA application process has only highlighted for me how different Penn seems to be from other top-notch East-Coast universities.

Just for example - when I applied to Penn's program, I came across this page in the application:

But four other top-ten schools had a version of this page:

(If you didn't notice the difference between the two, please, never stop reading this blog!)

From my "newly engaged and gay" perspective, the difference is startling. I can't believe I didn't notice things like this five years ago - now they all but burn a hole through my head. How can universities - Graduate schools, even - actively recruit LGBT couples, but force a "father" and "mother" response on their business school application? When Tasha and I have kids, what are our kids going to fill out in a form like this? Which boxes will our names go in? Will one of us be forced into the "father" box? Or is one of us supposed to be excluded from the form?

When I told someone about this a few months ago, she replied: "But your children won't have two mothers. They'll have one REAL mother, and one REAL father. Right? I mean one of you won't really be the mother." Hurtful? Yep. Disheartening? You bet. And that's what all these other top-notch universities are saying to the 'Diversity' candidates they're trying to recruit.

Really? It's 2011. Thanks, Penn, for recognizing us - I can't wait to start my MBA with you. I guess a little respect - and recognition - sure goes a long way.

Oh, internet! How you consume me!

Posted by Tasha

It's a snow day! And I have a list of things to do (nothing new) and I got in bed with my work computer and my play computer and without intending to... I clicked on some targeted ad (from Facebook of all places!) and started looking at wedding dresses.

In the hours of my 'research', I realized that having a wedding that strays even slightly from the norm, is really hard to organize IF you can't picture it.

The first task really is to picture the wedding. Unfortunately, that's where I'm having lots of trouble. A Hindu-Jewish-Russian-Indian Lesbian wedding isn't something I can muster up an image for with the snap of my fingers. So I set out to search the abyss of the internet to get some ideas... But I could look for days, and weeks, and months, and still not really come to anything solid. Still, slowly with some pictures (many pasted below), picking bits and pieces of the internet, and most importantly talking to Tigritza, images come to mind.

Try to follow my wild stream of consciousness -

<-- Possible wedding dress style?

I found this on www.ideeli.com by Nicole Miller: the "Strapless Flowy Gown." (Could she get any more vague?) ...I think this would look really nice next to Tigritza's sari because of the one-shoulder strap and the knots in the middle. But it doesn't look regal enough - it's too long and simple; kinda like a fancy nightgown. And I'm thinking about adding some red or gold to my white dress...

...I like the idea of using some of Tigritza's sari material as a ribbon on my dress (image from http://bridestea.com/?p=1170)

I have been looking at blogs and random sites non-stop today. I find this couple really cute! There are tons of blogs about interracial or multi-cultural couples and I think those are really the most beautiful. I get so excited about the different traditions we can take from Judaism and Hinduism. Blending the two in a ceremony symbolizes the joining of our families, cultures, and backgrounds. Neither of us are religious but the traditions matter.

Another time-consuming endeavor: I started looking at bridesmaids dresses. Ideally I want the bridesmaids to wear something out of the ordinary that has origins from both cultures. This sari/dress mix is pretty damn cool - I actually like the first of the two dresses better but I like the blended style in the latter. Colors are a-whole-nother conversation. Shorter dresses for bridesmaids would probably be more fitting too.

Anyway, I spent toooo much time looking at some other styles of bridesmaid dresses: Seriously Tasha have you lost your mind? Yes I have. The first 5 dresses on the page are ugly at first but what attracted me to them was the style - it's really an Indo-Western blend! Still maybe they are better fit for a traveling circus...

In all the wedding guides or lists of things to do first, second, and third, the absolute first is securing a venue. Of course we have been putting this off but today I started looking (and quickly quit because it's harder than I thought). I'm picturing an almost gothic cathedral (minus the religious affiliation) - Philly actually has some very old and beautiful buildings, like our University's libraries and museums. I'm essentially imagining a castle with a beautiful lawn and a balcony in the middle of a city - don't I have a great imagination?

Then I looked at wedding toppers, you know the ones that go on top of a cake: this sari topper is the closest thing I found to half of something I'd use -- and I don't like it at all! But I found some sites that would do personalized wedding toppers for about a million dollars... Don't think we really care about wedding cake toppers too much but it popped up somewhere in my google search and I went with it.

The moral of the story regarding today's search: I couldn't even find something Indian-American (forget about Indian-Russian) and triple-ly forget about adding the gay thing in there! Wedding planning for even a slightly 'different' wedding is actually pretty damn hard - although I found some cool alternative sites: http://offbeatbride.com/ which gave me some ideas I never had like - crazy cake vs typical cake (I know, there are enough atypical things about our wedding - why add to the chaos right?)

Anyway, it's been a long day of procrastinating and thinking about the wedding... at the end I just want a really beautiful big party! (Don't we all...)

Family

Posted by Tasha

Yesterday I met up with my cousin, Vlad, who I haven't seen in years and it was awesome! We had a couple drinks and caught up - there was a lot of catching up to do! I told him how I met Tigritza almost 4 years ago and how we're going to get married in a bit over 1 year. We talked about how awesome college was and how 'real-life' isn't nearly as fun. I can't remember when I saw him last - maybe 5 years? Anyway it was great.

I told him how our grandmother (Babushka A - my Mom's side) doesn't know that I'm gay (needless to say, she doesn't know that I'm engaged to my 'friend' Tigritza- who, by the way, she suggested would be a perfect match for my brother) Well at least we know she likes Tigritza... would make a good bride for my brother, so we can only assume - a good bride for me. My Babushka is very feisty. She is in constant arguments with her two children (my Mom and Vlad's Dad) because of her short temper and her tendencies of exaggerating her poor health. Understandably both my Mom and my Uncle tend to get very annoyed with her 'scenes' that she plays very well. So I tend to be really nice to her since she needs some tenderness (and I don't need to talk to her very often so I can be nice!) And as I found out, Vlad feels similarly. We talked a bit about whether or not I should tell Babushka that I'm marrying Tigritza especially since it feels like she deserves to be at her first grandchild's wedding. And I'm her only grand-daughter... My biggest concern is upsetting her and I honestly cannot gauge what kind of reaction I would get from her. I almost feel like she wouldn't get it. I'm afraid she won't be able to see that I'm really in love and that I want to spend the rest of my life with this person. She doesn't seem like a person who understands love or marrying for love - she almost comes across as a person who would marry for convenience or to please the public's opinion. She's tried to set me up with many boys and she never fails to bring up the fact that I'm almost 24 ("which is old for a single woman - I don't want to be an old maid, now do I?") ...

To broaden the scope of this problem, let me expand on the circumstances. My grandparents on my Dad's side know I'm with Tigritza and they are not pleased... I can see they nag my father about raising 'such a daughter - a lesbian ...' And I can see how they look at me - not sure if it's pity or disgust but to say the least, it makes me not want that kind of glance on my wedding day. Out of respect for my Dad I feel it is right to invite them to my wedding. I don't want to ever see that look on Babushka A's face. It would make me nervously laugh and say "JUST JOKING!" and pretend I never told her. My solution to this problem has been to just ignore it (not very effective, I know). Interestingly, my conversation with Vlad made me want to tell Babushka A - he said "I'd want her at my wedding and it's not fair that just because you're gay, you have to think about it." True, but I hate that she is very easily made upset and disappointed and like a child she can say "Fine, I won't be your friend," on the other hand, like a child I can bribe her with candy and other, more metaphorical, sweets - possibly coercing her into loving me and accepting my relationship. Still I know she'll say to my Mom "How can you let her...?" Just as she does when my Mom "lets me" travel or drive or come home late, etc. Although I'm old enough to be an old maid, I'm not old enough to make decisions.

And again, to make this more complicated (I did after all title this post "Family") there are so many extended family members who I would most likely invite to a straight wedding even though I don't know them very well just because my parents call them on their birthdays or on New Year's day to 'maintain' relationships. Marrying a woman makes this a bit more complicated.

What really makes me reconsider shutting out family for fear of disapproval is my children's future. Tigritza and I want our kids to have extended family. In part this is why meeting with Vlad made me so happy - I want his kids to play with mine. And if I don't give my extended family the chance of being a part of my life, I only have myself to blame when I feel 'left out'.

And ultimately, I'm not trying to hide my relationship from anyone, I just don't want people to feel sorry for my parents. After all - regardless of how liberal New York is, this is my Russian-Jewish family we're talking about and there's lots of Jewish guilt to be distributed.

I don't have a solution to all my concerns but it will definitely come up many times in our planning and in our lives. We will accept family that is happy for us - happy that we found love and happy that we are really happy. Regardless of who is on board with us, we know we have our immediate family - our parents and our siblings (who love us unconditionally, and it makes us so happy)- and soon enough we'll have our own family with little feet running around. I can't wait.

Do The Math

Posted by Tigritza

A few days after I got my acceptance call from Penn, I saw this:

COST SUMMARY

The educational budget for first-year students in the academic year 2010-2011 is $84,000, broken down as follows:

Educational Budget
Academic Year 2010-2011
Tuition and Fees (Includes $1,715 Pre-Term fee)	$54,009
Health Insurance	$2,808
Room and Board	$21,516
Books and Supplies	$2,000
Miscellaneous	$3,667
Total	$84,000

(Source: http://www.wharton.upenn.edu/mba/admissions/cost-summary.cfm)

Oh, crap.

...*beep* .....*beep* .....*beep* .....*beep*

.....*beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep*

I don't know what I'd been expecting. The short answer is, I hadn't really been expecting. As terrible as this sounds, money had never really been an issue for me. Not in the sense that we had tons of money, but in the sense that I can't remember a time when my family was actively in debt and contributing each paycheck towards reducing loan principal.

Growing up, my family taught me to respect money and spend it wisely. I remember having to plead with my mom for an Archie comic at the supermarket checkout counter (I'd say I was successful 1 in 3 times - not because we couldn't afford it, but because she didn't want to spoil me into thinking that $2 was no big deal). I remember my father telling me that as soon as each of his kids was born, he opened up a new savings account for their college education, putting a significant portion of his monthly paycheck towards these college funds. (That's 18 years of conscientious saving. Per kid!) I remember telling my parents about a Friends episode where Monica's dad tells her "Didn't we teach you to put 10% of your paycheck in a savings account?" My parents' response was: "Only 10%??" I had friends and neighbors who didn't save anywhere as much as my parents, and sometimes hit financial difficulties, but still managed to go on bi-annual expensive international vacations or purchase $1000 purses for birthdays and anniversaries. I didn't get it. And to me, it was simple: If You Save Right, You'll Never Have Money Problems.

I got out of college debt-free (blowing my parents' 18-year college fund on 4 years at an Ivy League school) and started saving. Trouble is, living in Manhattan meant that 10-15% of my paycheck was pretty much all the saving I could do. And if I made any major purchases, that savings was gone. (A $2000 flight home to Dubai, for example, wiped out 2-3 months of 'savings'.) Still, I've slowly built up a decent buffer in my bank account. I've done the research - which banks pay the most interest, which credit cards have the best rewards programs.

But now we're looking at 84 THOUSAND U.S. Dollars - for ONE year?!

Hello, Debt. Nice to finally meet you.

Tasha's just paying off the last of her undergrad debt, and together we're now welcoming:

84*2 = $168K of MBA debt + Rent expenses, and

~$20K in Living Expenses, and

~$120K+ of Masters in Nursing debt, and

~$25K in WEDDING expenses? (Trying not to think about the fact that this $25K was an estimate based on an 80-guest wedding, and our wedding may be closer to 150 guests...)

-----

= OVER $320K OF DEBT (don't worry, Honey, we'll be okay I promise!)

How many years will that take to pay off exactly? Let's not talk about it...

So, Tasha and I decided to start living like students. Cook as much as possible. Stop ordering in, period. Reject any unnecessary expenses. But turns out expenses aren't easy to reject. This month alone, we've had our fair share -

Paying off our credit card debt (read: paying for the all-out holiday gift shopping spree we had last month)

Paying for flights (England again for my middle school best friend's wedding! Ouch, American Airlines. Ouch.)

Paying for "free" vacations (our "free" March '11 vacation to the Bahamas isn't so "free" when you include necessary upgrade costs, taxes and flights)

Post-Holidays catching up with old friends (they always tend to be at nice restaurants)

....and none of these expenses would be a problem if we weren't facing our mountain of $320K+ upcoming expenses.

Come to think of it, the Wedding Debt will just be a fraction of that. *Whew*

And who knows - maybe If We Keep Saving Right, We'll Quickly Overcome All Potential Money Problems.

WHY is this still an issue?

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Excitement!

Posted by Tasha

So I made a list today (as I do on most weekends) and I snuck in there "go to Barnes and Noble and look at wedding magazines" ... As most things on the list, I have not done this task. I say I "snuck" it in because even in just this short time of being engaged, I am soooo damn excited about the wedding day - yes it's more than 16 months from now - and when I start talking about it with Tigritza, she slightly (well, slightly more than slightly) gets annoyed. I ask too many questions that she has no answers to. I know that she doesn't have the answers but I'm asking because I want to start this conversation of "what do you think this and that will look like" ...

Today on Facebook we saw a video of an Indian (Hindu) straight wedding and I was inspecting the sari and I asked - "Do you like that sari? You think you'll have something similar? You want the border that wide? More gold or more red?" And well, at some point I saw she was getting a little tired of saying "I don't know" ... I just want to start planning and thinking about what we need to start doing. I know I sound like bridezilla but I'm trying super hard not to be a bridezilla to my fiancee. We have a long engagement because we agreed that our wedding is going to be hard to plan and we need lots of time for all the arrangements. I just want to start! And I don't want to be pushy. I want Tigritza to be just half as excited about the planning as I am!

We made a tentative guest list when we were on vacation which makes me really happy that know we have a rough estimate and we can picture it a little better. I want to talk about our "colors" and I want to start looking for styles of dresses - I'm particularly worried about the bridesmaid dresses since we want a blend of a sari and a dress style (they're called magic dresses - imagine a mix of these two but fancier (Magic 1 and Magic 2) ... so needless to say, we'll need to do some searching.

I can go on and on about all the things I want to get started on and this is exactly what is so overwhelming to Tigritza - there's so much and if we just tackled one thing at a time... But everything is so interconnected. Ok. I know I am being dramatic but I will seriously try to make some improvements and calm all that excitement down. I think tomorrow I'll sit with some magazines (maybe alone would be best) and get some excitement out.

.... Getting some excitement sounds like a great idea but I'm not sure if looking at one of those typical checklists will really get the excitement out of just get me insanely hyper - straight shot into planning bridezilla mode.... SORRY TIGRITZA!!!

The View From The 70th Floor

Posted by Tigritza

I feel so high. Literally, several stories into the sky.

Exactly four days after Tasha proposed to me, my enormous proposal plan kicked into gear. (She beat me to it by four days!!) I was still going through with it - after all, I had to give her the ring somehow! - and my plan involved 13 hours of treasure-hunting, across two cities, with fifteen friends meeting her individually along the way! I gave her a brand new Kodak Playsport video camera to take along, and she faithfully documented *almost* the whole thing. It went off without a hitch - incredible. She finally met me at the very top of the Top of the Rock in New York, and as she took in the breathtaking view of our city at night, I played for her a song that I'd written in December 2007 - changing the ending to fit this moment.

That's where the high started - turning in circles, smiles so wide and fingers so cold, our eyes locked on each other's eyes as I played out our song note by note, 70 stories above our city! ...And then, of course, the ring. I had seen the ring a year ago (with her), a gorgeous design in cheap silver, being sold at a 70% discount in a Midtown family jeweler's store. I ran back to the store the next day and bought it for $300! A few months ago, I asked Little King to re-create the ring in white gold, with a stunning diamond to top it off. Perfectly symmetrical (just the way she likes it), and dreamily swooshy. She's crazy about it!

And after that night...the metaphorical express elevator took off! Things moved so quickly, so much was happening, and it felt like I was rushing higher and higher up into some kind of dream. First were the easy floors -

Telling everyone, again: 3rd floor. Watching her parents watch the video and "get" us: Leap-frog to 13th floor. Engagement presents - dinners, cakes, champagne, facebook, emails, phone calls, screams and hugs and kisses: 17th floor. Awkward "Why did I have to find out through facebook?" messages from distant friends...16th floor. Worrying that extended family may somehow find out through facebook: 15th floor.

But then on to the higher floors - (no turning back now!)

Appraisal of the rings (we weren't ripped off? whew!): 19th floor. Insurance of rings (i don't have to freak out about losing it? --on second thought, I'll still do that.): 21st floor. Last day of work in 2010: 23rd floor. Two very successful business school interviews: 27th floor. Jetting off to a family vacation in England with my parents, sister and brother-in-law: 30th floor. Finding out I got into my top MBA program, and that we'll both be grad students in Philly this fall (!!!): 35th floor. Starting to make a guest list: 38th floor. New Year's Eve at our home, with my unbelievably beautiful fiancee: 41st floor.

...after that, I kind of expected the highs to level off.

But the elevator kept screeching on up. And from my bird's-eye view, I could suddenly see much farther out. Being so ridiculously high brought on a strange feeling of vertigo.

Where the hell are we going to have this wedding?: 44th floor.

HOW the hell are we going to have this wedding? Bridesmaids or bridesdudes, who walks down the aisle first, chuppah or fire, sari or dress, Indian food or Russian food?: 54th floor.

For most of this stuff, the "easy" (if you can call it that) solution is to have both. Bridesmaids AND bridesdudes. Sari AND wedding dress. Indian food AND Russian food. But...chuppah and fire? Walking down the aisle together? Really?

And then there was more...Suddenly everything that happens in my life affects not just me, but Us. This sounds silly - my life has been affecting Our life for a long time. But now there was another filter tacked onto my 'perspective': newly engaged, upcoming wedding, soon to be Married. Oh, the implications...

Needing to hide my engagement soon for legal reasons: Teetering on the 59th floor. Applying for a Bahamas visa, and seeing the "Single Or Married?" question - a lot harder to answer next time if I'm married but not recognized! 62nd floor. Dreading telling my extended family, and their potentially shunning my parents due to my lifestyle: 64th floor. Realizing my meager savings cover 25% of one year's worth of business school living costs, and we now have two Masters' degrees and one wedding to pay for: 66th floor.

But most of all, seeing active federal laws that still codify discrimination .... *ping!* 70 floors up.

I feel so high. So happy, dizzy with joy when I look at my fiancee making breakfast on a Sunday morning. But so scared about the law, so scared of our vulnerability, so scared about how we'll create this wedding, so scared of tipping over the edge and falling down 70 stories...is this all too good to be true? One thing I know for sure - I'm in love, she's in love, and my days are blurry and my world is dreamy.

All I can say is, I'm so excited to find out what happens next.