Barnmaven

Relationship math

 

I love to read relationship books.  Whenever I read something that reminds me of my relationship with SG I marvel at how intuitive, how clever, how well researched the author must be.  When I read something that doesn't fit us at all, naturally either the author is a charlatan or we are the exception to the rule.  My husband is more than a standard deviation from the mean, if you know what I mean. 

Anyhow, this current book I'm reading is all about how Attachment Theory is really what comes into play in our love relationships, that our primary relationship with our partner follows many of the same patterns as child/parent attachment.  Similar to the way a healthy parental attachment fosters a sense of security and the ability to be happily independent in a child, a healthy attachment in an adult relationship makes each partner feel safer about indpendence - both theirs and their partner's.  According to this theory, then, a clingy, jealous or insecure partner isn't just being a jerk:  they're dealing with abandonment issues. 

Makes sense.  It helps me see my distaste for SG's road job in a different light; a person whose standard motto regarding relationships goes something like, "Everyone leaves.  Period." isn't likely to feel too secure about having their partner off living the single life for a couple of months at a time. 

Time and love do much to cure the places we are broken, and SG and I have seen a lot of that happening over the course of our relationship.  I'd love to say that I'm completely without insecurity, but I would be lying.  I am, however, much more secure in this relationship than I can recall being in a very long time.  

Which is good, because we're pretty sure he's going to end up going back on the road.

Its not that his in-town full-time job is a horrible job, or anything.  But its not what he's used to.  Its not what he likes or wants to do.  He likes the road.  He likes his solitude.  It doesn't mean he likes being away from me or that he doesn't want to be with me.  But its work and pay that agree with him, and if being alone for several weeks at a time are the price, its one he's happy to pay.  Not everyone has the luxury of choosing what they do for a living.  Hell, at best we choose between several imperfect options and pick the one that's simply the least worst. 

We've had some very long and occasionally very intense discussions about this of late.  We've spent time exploring our feelings about our relationship, about ourselves, about what we want out of our lives and where we want to be ten or twenty years down the road.  We've talked about what's hard about him being gone for me -- being lonely very much the primary issue, followed by being overwhelmed -- and about what's hard for him about about the current situation. 

Compromises in relationships don't mean each party gets what they want and then they hold hands and skip down the primrose path while rose blossoms fall from the sky and birds sing love songs.  Oh, no.  Compromise means sometimes I have to give up more than I think I want to and other times the short stick gets drawn by my husband.  Compromise means maybe my husband goes on the road, but at the same time we get someone to come help with the housework and the yard so that I at least get a break to do things that I want to while he's gone.  Compromise means maybe he doesn't take the six month job that would bring a much bigger payout, but takes fall and spring work and spends the winter at home.   And lets be honest, the days he's here and I get to go gallivanting off on my horse while he stays home and wrangles my offspring there is absolutely no doubt about who is getting the short stick.

So little in life is absolutely perfect.  I would say, if pressed, that SG is the perfect man for me.  I think he would probably say I'm the perfect woman for him.  I know there are times both of us will tell you how the other is driving us insane or irritating the crap out of us, but even then there are billion reasons its worth it to get to the other side of the trying days.

Remind me I wrote this come fall, will you?

Equus

If wishes were fishes

I love the way memory is so intricately connected to the senses.  A smell, a taste, a song can take me back along the timeline of my life, often to a place or person or event I've not thought about in years.  There are times when the reverse is true as well -- a memory will evoke a sensory response.  I look at a picture of me cradling my infant daughter and I can smell milk and lavender-scented baby wash.    I can flip through an album of old remodeling pictures and remember the feeling of being caked with soot and fine black dirt from taking four layers of roofing material off our old house.

I have tons of photo albums full of images I really should put in digital format to preserve them.  For every picture that was developed and put into an album, there are about five more that didn't make it into the highlight reel of my life.  Those photos and all of the duplicates that didn't get given to friends, relatives or grandparents, they are all in a plastic bin in the extra bedroom.  The last time I really went through them is when my ex and I divided our belongings and I needed to go through and give him an equal sampling of our joint history as captured on film.  The problem with going through that box is that what started off as a planned one-hour project quickly turned into a four-hour journey into the recesses of memory.  I need to go through that box and get its contents put into a more durable format, and right now I don't dare.

I would love to tell you I live life with no regrets, but the hubris of saying so would only invite the Universe to go right ahead and unleash the Kraken. 

There are people I've lost touch with that I wish I hadn't.  There are people I've hurt that I wished I hadn't.  There are people I've loved that I wished I hadn't.   Choices I've made that were so monumentally stupid that I'm shocked it was me that made them. 

As many regrets as I may have, marrying my ex and having our children is not one of them.  Sure, there were times during our separation and divorce that I wondered if it had really been worth it, but that was mere misery beating its breast.  My children are the greatest treasure of my life, and I would not trade one moment with them for any amount of money, comfort, or success.  I don't make that statement lightly; In the past months I've had career opportunities dangled in front of me that were definite steps up the ladder in terms of title and income.  Two questions I asked myself: 

1.  Is there anything so wrong with my life right now that I would consider making a dramatic change?

2.  Would this career advancement make me less available to my children?

The answers were and are crystal clear.

My babies are not babies anymore, but they aren't teenagers either.  The years remaining where they will really need me the way they do now are few.    I see no gain in wasting what small time I have left of their childhood.   Its not selfless; I worry less what they would think of me if I treated my career as being more important than their needs.  I worry more what I would think of myself if that were true.

When it comes to my children, the only possible regret I have is that I have only two.  Before I met SG I didn't give it much of a thought.  In the last year or so, however, its been an oft-discussed topic.  I've examined every ramification and rejected all of them up until the realization that one reaches a point in life where it is no longer optimal to be pregnant or raising an infant.  I don't want to be depositing my youngest into Kindergarten when I'm 52. 

Its just water under the bridge now, but that doesn't mean my soul is yet fully convinced I should be done having babies.  If anything I wish that I'd started earlier.  I was already considered to be in "advanced maternal age" when I had my daughter.  Three months shy of my 40th birthday I delivered my son.   By the time it would have been about right to consider another baby, we were in the throes of a cross-country move which was soon followed by a string of diagnoses and eventually the end of a marriage.  

I'm left to imagine who a child of this marriage might be.  Every time the kids say they wished they had a little brother or sister I feel a sharp pang of loss for the alternate life's journey where I wasn't on the wrong half of my forties or had gotten my shit together a lot sooner.  An alternate timeline where I met SG more than a decade sooner, or wasn't so old now or where we hadn't chosen permanent options regarding fertility.

The days for babies are over for me.  All that's left to me now are pictures, videos and the occasional pang of regret.  The reality I live in is truly sufficient; I am fulfilled by my relationships with my family.   There is nothing that I need that I do not have in abundance.  Sometimes, though, its not the things you need that trip you up; its the things you think you want.

 

Yes I would

 

A very smelly dog who hasn't had a bath yet is lying almost entirely on my pillow as my husband sleeps, oblivious.  The stitches from her surgery haven't come out yet, so we haven't been able to give her a much-needed bath. 

Exasperated, I kiss the dog on the head and shake my husband awake.  "You want to move the dog?" I ask.  "If you're going to let her stink up the bed, let it be on your side." 

For a moment I think "He's lucky I love him."  It only takes a moment or two for me to remember that I'm pretty lucky he loves me.

Sometimes its something powerful that causes you to consider the depth of your feelings for someone; other times its the mundane.  Considering how often we annoy the shit out of each other, its amazing we remember at all.  But remember we do.

The other day I'm sitting in the living room quietly minding my own business and he feels the need to come in, change the channel to some band I've never heard of doing a live concert and then turn the volume waaayyyyyy up. 

Annoyed, I gather my things and change rooms, grumbling the whole way about how I live here too, you know, and not everyone wants to listen to music all the time.  Then again, its likely he feels the same way about my tendency to try on every outfit I own and leave all the stuff I decided against piled up in the middle of the bed for him to deal with after I leave for work, or to wake him up at 5:00 in the morning because I something large and furry went scurrying when I opened the garage door and I needed him to prove it was a kitten and not a rat.  And he even went along with me when I suggested that if it was actually a kitten we should probably start feeding it. 

This morning I'm putting on my makeup and he comes and leans against the bathroom doorjamb, watching.

"Why do you watch this?" I ask.  "How am I supposed to maintain any sense of mystery?  Not that there's a lot left to the imagination at this point..."

"A woman's personality is always a source of mystery" he says, laughing and kissing me.

I am lucky that my dear husband is a forgiving sort of fellow, he likewise that I am a woman inclined to seek the good.  We're both old enough to be at peace with our respective faults, which makes it far easier to accept them in others. When I finally reached a point in my life where my self-love was greater than my self-loathing, that's when I met the person who could love me as I am.  Perhaps the fact that I had come to accept and even at times celebrate my own strengths and acknowledge and forgive my own weaknesses made it easier for someone else to come along and love me too.

Even though life is busy and like most people I invest too much of my time and energy slogging through the daily grind of work, chores and bills, there are times on my long commute that I turn off the radio and pay attention.  Driving through the frozen desert and the stubbled, winter-barren crop circles, I reflect on the mystery of us and one more time am humbled by just how lucky I am, at this stage in my life, to know this kind of love.

 

I would marry this man again in a heartbeat.  Yes, I would.

Post Holiday Wind-down (a/k/a the "wine" down)

Christmas seemed quiet up until about 1 o'clock Christmas Day.  My kids were with their dad from their last day of school on Friday.  We spent the time wrapping gifts and enjoying sleeping in.  On Christmas Eve SG went to the airport in Spokane to pick his son Josh up at the airport. 

We've had Josh's dog Kylie for a few months now while he transitioned from Arizona to Florida for the first part of Navy flight school.  He's ready to take her home now, and Christmas was a great opportunity to come get his dog and spend some time with his dad and his extended family here in Washington. 

Christmas Day we slept in, had a lazy breakfast and pretty much hung out until the kids finally showed up about 1:00.  Then the fun really started. 

They tore through their presents by 1:15 and were busy playing with their toys before the minute hand hit the 30 minute mark.

Once we could tear them away from the video console, we joined SG's family for Christmas dinner.  The wine and the conversation were excellent.  SG carved the turkey, escaping with only one sliced finger.  Why do people insist on trusting my husband to handle sharp objects?  Don't they know any better?

The kids and their cousins made a snowman in the park.

It was a damn fine Christmas. 

By contrast, New Year's Eve was extemely quiet.

Josh flew home that day, taking Kylie with him.  Roscoe misses her.  We told the kids they could stay up until midnight.  That would have been great, except the adults couldn't make it that long.  They're still mad at me.

We're still enjoying the quiet around here.  Its the third of January and my tree and outside lights are still up.

Don't judge.  Happy New Year!

 

 

There is no "new" year

We make resolutions and rarely keep them.  We party like its 1999.  But really, is New Year's Eve that much different than any other midwinter night when we need to inject a little life into the dark of winter?

Its another day.  A Tuesday, this year.  And I am getting to the point in my life where I truly question the point of it.  Its almost as bad as birthdays;  47?  Its just like 37 but with more arthritis.   My reaction to NYE 2012?  "Where the FUCK did 2011 go?  Or 2010 for that matter?"  We get older and time picks up speed and one day we were thirty and woke up the next and we were fifty and trying to pay for college for the kids who were just five last week.

I don't get the point of New Year's resolutions.  Can't I just decide to do things at any old point in the year?  Does it make them less important if I didn't make them New Year's Eve?  The day I listened to "Landslide" while watching my baby girl in her high chair and decided I needed another baby, wasn't that a bigger day than NYE?  The day SG and I held hands in front of our parents and friends and told everyone we were a "THANG" - wasn't that a bigger day? 

The turn of the century, sure, that was a biggie.  I'd moved to New Jersey then, my ex and I were in our apartment, a year away from buying our first house and then immediately getting "in the family way" with Amazon Girl.  We must have listened to Prince tell us how he was partying like it was 1999 a thousand times the week prior.  I don't even remember now what we did... everyone was waiting for Y2K to make the world stop turning, and like every other apocalypse that hasn't materialized (Big shout-out to the Mayans!), it ends up being somewhat forgettable.   Except for my friends who moved to an island somewhere and built a house off the grid because, you know, pending apocalypse.  And when it didn't happen, he, who was certain this was IT, went a little cuckoo, and she said goodbye to a chapter in her life and went forth to kick some ass.

And let's talk about the folly of going out for NYE if you're neither (a) single or (b) childless.  Seriously, its just not feasible.  You either have to have the party at YOUR house and hope your kids get at least a few minutes of sleep while the adults get their freak on, or you have to pay a highly-in-demand babysitter three times what she normally gets to watch your kids, which leaves you about two drinks worth of cash in your pocket, then you get to fend off the drunken drivers all the way home and hope you don't, in your sober and self-protective state, do something stupid while driving by an officer which then necessitates you proving just how boring you are because you are the only sober person exiting a party or bar on NYE.

It really just better to stay home, order pizza, and try to stay awake long enough to bitch about the horrid lack of talent on TV and how dumb all those people are to stand in the freezing air in Time Square just to watch a well-lit orb do a shabby pole dance.

The important days, they don't need a calendar reference or a national holiday to matter.  They are the days when your son asks your friend for riding lessons - all by himself and of his own volition.  They are the days when you watch your incredibly proud husband stand on stage to put his son's officer's eupalets on his Navy uniform.  They are the days when you have the perfect ride on your horse, the perfect day at work, the best...nevermind....with your spouse or partner, the day you had an epiphany you didn't even see coming, the day your daughter needs her first bra and the many many nights you tuck your kids in bed and they hug you 'round the neck and sleepily declare their love.    The days you get to spend enjoying your parents and laughing with them over memories of the past and the follies of the present.  They are the days you feel the presence of God, the days you feel the smallness of the scale of your life against the wide width of the clamoring world, the days you drink in the sunlight and are grateful for one more moment of a life so sweet it hurts.

NYE.  Fun, to be sure.  A chance to kick up our heels and shake off the past, or to try to catch up on some much-needed sleep while rude neighbors shoot off lawn cannons.  A chance to kiss your date while fireworks burst in a dazzling array and a chance to pretend you can really change overnight into someone who eschews ice cream and goes to the gym five days a week. 

To me?  Its just another Tuesday. 

Every single day of the year is a chance to start over.  We need not limit ourselves to one day in January to try to become the better angels of our nature.

First

SG and I got married a year ago today.  Yay us!

I'm very distressed, though, because the gift that I made sure I picked out and mailed early enough to reach him has not yet found its way to his hotel.  Interestingly enough, the absentee ballot I also mailed to him on the same day got there two days ago, so I'm a bit perturbed. 

His gift to me arrived on time, of course, in the form a a beautiful dozen long-stemmed roses.  I'm not normally a flowers-and-jewelry form of female, but even cynical me has to admit red roses are really the most romantic bouquet a man could ever give a woman.  I love them.  I'd trade them in a heartbeat to have him home, but since that option is not available to me I'll just enjoy the roses and look forward to seeing him in a few weeks.

I've wondered a few times before and since if we rushed into things, getting married just a hair under a year after we first met.  I've always been a creature of impulse, but as I've aged I've learned to question myself.  Oh, I still do ALL THE STUPID THINGS but at least I question myself while I'm doing them. 

I'm not one of those who thinks that every venture in life can be carefully planned so as to avoid making any mistakes.  So we didn't date for ten years or have a five year engagement. At this stage of our lives, are we beyond that sort of thing?  Is it OK to just say the heart wants what it wants, you make my girl parts hum with joy and you love me and you love me kids and all of that put together adds up to more than enough?  So we hitched our wagons together and we learn as we go, we grow as we learn, and over time we come together more easily because we've built a future on a base of love, trust and very real passion.  The faults we didn't recognize in one another we are learning to accept and forgive. 

Being a little older, besides giving me a nice antique feel, helps me understand that life and relationships have a degree of ebb and flow  SG and I, we accept that there are days we won't click or feel very close, and we have acquired the patience to get through those days with the sure knowledge that the tide will change and we will soon be back in sync.  We are in sync far more often than we are not. The not-syncing times can be unpleasant - we are smart, we are emotional, we both think we're right and we're both alpha types.  That makes for some pretty spectacular clashes, but the making up part is also pretty spectacular.

Happy First Anniversary, babe.  I'm looking forward to many more.

 

Its got Excedrin written all over it

I'm trying to post more regularly here.  I haven't been at all content with the frequency or the quality of my writing lately.  The answer to that is to exercise the writing muscles, not let them sit on the couch spooning up mouthfuls of Ben & Jerry's Coffee Heath Bar Crunch  (which, might I say, is perfect for mining Heath Bar pieces of after it has been warmed in the microwave for exactly twenty seconds). 

Today has been a doozy, though, and I was so very tempted to bypass writing anything in favor of a hot bath and hiding my head under the covers.  I was up in the middle of the night last night with abdominal cramping.  When I made it to work today I was hit over the head immediately with a major and extremely inconvenient problem opportunity and a few minor and somewhat less problematic issues.   The cherry on top of this shit-sandwich of delight was the pounding in my head and the frequent feeling of needing to throw up. 

I took something for the headache and it sort of went away and then came back, but the intermittent nausea has continued and by about 3 pm I waved the white flag and went home.  I don't know what's wrong with me, I suspect a combination of tension and maybe not eating as well as I should be, but who knows.  My tummy has felt quite acidic of late and I wonder if I'm not developing heartburn as a way of coping.   Work is just tough right now, its one foot in front of the other with the finish line barely visible.  This part of the year is the busiest we get and I'm down staff.  We are all pitching in to fill the gap, and we are getting it done, but we are paying the price.  Today's hitch in my giddyup is possibly my body's way of asking me to please slow down more and to fret less.

The good news, of course, is that the finish line is quite reachable and we will get there, by hook or by crook.  Then we can enjoy a few months of breathing space and start girding our loins for the next challenges heading our way.

SG hasn't heard yet if the job he's on will go longer, but right now they are operating behind schedule so its likely.  I have been very purposefully not tying my heart to a specific return time and just reminding myself that we are more than halfway through this one either way and I will get to see him in fewer days than I last got to hug him.  Our first wedding anniversary is this Friday.  Yeah, we don't get to celebrate it together and that sucks more than a little.  We will celebrate it though, and it will be good to be in each others' company and have fun.   And on the up side, he's not stranded somewhere in the Northeastern part of the country where everyone's more than a little froggy after "Post-Tropical Storm" (my ass) Sandy hurled a billion gallons of rain and seawater at them. 

Yes, I'll take not-here over flooded, power-less and stranded.

Ugh.  Me and my headache are going to go have a lie-down.

Cats are for soaking up tears

The nights when the kids are at their dads are simultaneously awesome and terrible.  The house is so quiet.  Too quiet.  I shuffle around in my slippers, turning off lights, locking doors, talking to the animals as if they could understand and respond.  Crazy cat lady.

Back when I was newly separated I had gotten in the bad habit of letting the dogs sleep on the bed.  Three big dogs, nicely filling up the empty side of the bed and making me feel somewhat less alone.  Except there's a problem with dogs and beds.  Pretty soon they think they have a right to be there, and if for any reason you don't want them up there, they sit on the floor and whine incessantly.  Or they growl at you when you want to move them.  Or they take up so much space there's not much room for you any more.   Not a problem - so long as you don't ever get remarried.  It turns out that teaching your dogs to stay off the bed takes just about as long as it takes to teach your kid to sleep in his own bed:  three nights, and the occasional slide into bad habits.

Cats are a different story.  Cats do not take up an excess amount of space.  Cats, unlike small dogs, do not burrow under the covers and do their best to put their nose in your private parts.  Cats, if you are not allergic, are wonderful heat sources.

Juliet has slept with me most nights the last couple of years.  If she's not sleeping with me she's in my daughter's bed, but most often she's with me.  She will leap up next to me, knead the covers a bit, then plop herself down with her back pressed up against my stomach.  I pet her a little, and she purrs quietly, making soft snuffly noises.   At some point in the night I will roll over, and she will use this opportunity to crawl under the covers and rearrange herself in the curl of my belly or behind my knees.  We have a predictable and comfortable arrangement, she and I. 

There are times of late that my bed seems huge and empty, there are times when the fact that I am lonely hits me like a freight train.  There are times when I realize that my closest and dearest sleeping companion is a cat.  Then I start to feel a little bit sorry for myself and the tears flow.  Once Fortunately Juliet doesn't mind getting a little bit soggy. 

Comfort, thy name is Cat.

 

 

All its cracked up to be

Someday when I write my autobiography - or someday when I'm dead and someone has the notion to make a television sitcom about my life - the title should be "Six of one," except I'd be borrowing the title from Rita Mae Brown and it wouldn't be a fictional funny drama about one woman's coming out story.  It would be the story of the woman whose life story seems to consistently be pointing how life is this continual mishmash of good stuff and hard stuff - ALL THE TIME with the good stuff and the hard stuff.

I suppose that's my blog theme.  I wish I'd figured that out a few years ago.  Here all this time I thought I was writing about horses and special needs.  See what the wine does?

I hit the grocery store yesterday after dropping the kids off with their dad (hint:  if you take your kids halloween costume shopping do not finish the trip by dropping them off with their other parent.  Kids with new halloween costumes want to go home and put them on, not leave them with you and go to their other parent's house).  Since my Mom has been picking up the kids after school , she does their homework and feeds them dinner, which makes my grocery list rather sparse.  Unless there's someone to cook for, I don't cook.  What's the point?  Its cereal for breakfast and dinner is eggs or soup.  So I'm at the grocery store and putting my things on the moving belt at the checkstand and I realize that everyone in line behind me probably thinks I'm a middle-aged single woman with no kids and a house full of cats. I was half tempted to throw a True Confessions in with everything just to say "La la la, I don't care what you think!" but actually no one even has True Confessions on the shelf anymore and I at least just managed to establish the fact that I'm getting a bit long in the tooth.

Its a big silence to wrap my thoughts around, those first hours after the kids have gone.  With SG on the road everything is at the same time both more and less meaningful.  I put away the groceries, empty the dishwasher, wash the few dishes in the sink.  I have six more hours before I have to go to bed, and I can pick and choose how I want to spend the time.  I'm lonely and not lonely, all at the same time.  I do realize that with a house full of pushy cats and large, noisy dogs that I'm never really alone, but since I'm the only one who can actually talk, its a lot quieter.  Being alone with my thoughts is a really dicey proposition.  I'm one of those people who can go either way -- and sometimes its a matter of a few minutes between happy as a lark and sooooooo lonely and sad.

Is this just part of the human process, learning how to accept while still retaining the option to complain when we don't like what's happening?  There's a distinct line between "doormat" and "punch life in the face." 

Last night life gave me a 90 pound puppy who thinks she's a lap dog and a 22 year old horse who was on the verge of colicking, a chicken intent on sitting on eggs I do not wish her to hatch and a husband whose phone couldn't get a clear connection to give us a chance to connect for five damn minutes.  Life also gave me a nice bottle of wine, a friend on the other end of the phone to be a substitute shoulder, and a nice cold evening to make my dinner of soup ever so enjoyable.  So who am I to complain?

Six of one.  Half a dozen of the other.  It all balances out in the end.  Its all good.

Pick your cliche'.  Any one of 'em will do.