Things My Husband Says

I have a lot of pain some times. Pain in my body, pain that creeps up from my past and catches me by surprise. Sometimes I know why I hurt, but much of the time I feel hijacked. I don’t want to be dysfunctional, I don’t want to feel broken. I don’t want to think about feeding myself and want to cry, or to feel crushed by the weight of my social engagements. They are supposed to be pleasures, but they hurt, and then I hurt because I am failing.
I am working on the tried-and-true tactic of faking a passably good mood until this blows over, but that hurts too.

I don’t want to be bad at everything, and my smart brain knows that I am not, but that’s the thing, isn’t it? All that sad, all that hurt, they’re not functions of my smart brain, and solving them is not entirely within my smart brain’s power. And that doesn’t help either. feeling powerless against myself may be the worst part.

Holy crap, my other thing is BLOWING UP! I know that was the goal, and I’m super happy, so don’t misunderstand me when I say, “AAAAAAAHHHH!”

Oh hey, it’s Daylight Savings time again! I’ve lived in the PNW for twelve years now, and I still find this whole business confusing. Having come to terms with the way that the lack of winter light affects me, I’m totally in favor of squeezing out whatever tiny drops are to be had, I just can’t ever quite get into a routine with it. I get the whole “spring forward/fall back” part, so my clocks get changed in the right direction, but it’s really a crapshoot whether I’ll guess right about whether we’re on Daylight or Standard time at any given point. Today I know that it’s Daylight, which I guess makes sense, Daylight in the summer. But why are we saving daylight in the summer? Shouldn’t we save it in the winter?

I feel like this is a particularly bad weekend for me to lose an hour of. In just about six hours I need to have Sexy Husband out of the house and on his way to the airport for a very big day tomorrow. I also need to go to the store so I can bring something to potluck brunch. In an hour. And I need to make sure my secret project is as close to ready as I can get it, before the aforementioned SH-on-the-road thing starts. So, naturally, I’m typing this. In my defense, I’m dressed, and drinking my coffee, which is a mandatory part of my morning. I regret nothing!

Also, yes, it’s pouring rain and 48 degrees outside. I know it’s not summer. You know what I mean.

Hey there, blog. Long time no see. It turns out that living with my husband diminishes the need I feel to write a blog whose primary purpose had been communicating with/entertaining him. Sorry.

Aaanyway… I do have some stuff that I think I should start writing about, as part of my general life process. Let’s have a list, shall we?

• Bicycling. Despite the fact that Sexy Husband is the primary driving force behind me getting on a bike and owning down on that shit, I’m starting to feel a little bad for interrupting his video game playing with a thousand constant tiny biking victories. (That may be a little sarcasm.) I am pretty proud of myself, and I think I should share it here, so the real people in my life don’t start getting burnt out on hearing about it.
• Meditation. I’ve been going to a Shambhala meditation approximately weekly, and really enjoying it. I think I need to be more diligent about meditating at home, and expanding the usefulness of that practice in my life. I still feel uncertain about how that should progress, and I think some navel-gazing writing about it may help.
• Making Things. My New Year’s resolution was to make more things. I have had some mixed success with this overall, I think. I don’t want this to become a knitting blog, because I am a super lazy and sporadic knitter these days, but I should be better about telling you (me) about what I’m knitting, and keeping track of the many things I am fermenting and baking.
• Life stuff. This is a broad category. When I sat down today, it was largely due to a couple of interactions we’ve had with friends this week. I wanted to write about the nature of friendship as an adult, and do a little musing on relationships and whatnot. I’m not going to do that right this moment, but I want to do more of that. Life at 30 has a lot more interesting developments in that realm than I would have imagined.
• Taking pictures of things. This is not actually something I should write about, it’s just something I should be doing. We’ll see.

Things I won’t be blogging about here, at least much: Pie. Pie has its own blog now, which I am currently actively procrastinating, in part because I can’t find the card reader thingy, so I can’t move the pictures I did take from the camera to the computer.

It looks like I’m heading into an extraordinarily busy time in my life, but I’m trying to embrace the idea that busy people are more effective at getting stuff done. The reality is that I’m going to have to get a lot better about using my calendar, which is a thing I HATE. Meh. Oh well. Onward, forward soldiers, as we say in this house!

I don’t really talk about it much, but I grew up in a really small town. Small like 800 people. Smaller than most people can imagine. It was too small for me to be me. It’s hard to find yourself when everyone you know has known you since birth, you know? I don’t remember ever feeling like I fit there, and knew from a really young age that I needed to get away. So, when I went to college, I really went. I moved 1500 miles away, to the place that I knew I belonged, even before I had been there: the Pacific Northwest. Hello, trees and seasons; goodbye, lonesome high desert. And I never looked back (OK, kinda). For a while, my parents still lived there, and I would visit when my school closed the dorms, but it had already changed, and so had I. Eventually, the rest of my family left, and I was left with no obligation to ever return, which was perfect for me.

Kinda.

Even though it was the locus of all my childhood unhappiness, I still have this lingering fascination with the place. I’ve replaced my desire to leave with a need to hear the gossip, which inevitably bring back the same feelings of alienation that I felt while I was living there. Why do I do that to myself?

For years, I had no contact with anyone from that part of my life. That was before Facebook. Now, one by one, the people I grew up with are coming back into my life, and my efforts to keep that part of my past at bay are crumbling. It’s been really weird to watch the way they come back, actually. The first person to friend me was someone who never a friend when we were young. The first time I saw her name again I didn’t recognize it. Why would she want to be friends with me? I debated ignoring her, returning some of that childhood unkindness back to her, but ultimately let her be my Facebook friend. The past is the past, after all. And she was always a good source of gossip (about me, back then). That was almost a year ago, and since then, most of the people from my clique (though we were anything but a clique) have found me. I get a peek into their lives, their kids, the ways that we’ve grown apart, and the ways that we haven’t. I enjoy it, actually, though it doesn’t make me want to go back.

Then I read an article this month, about the drug war and the Minute Men, and felt inexplicable ire over the way outsiders have always looked at that town. I’m sure it hasn’t always been that way, but it was definitely true in my childhood and teen years. The landscape is beautiful, the economy always looks like it could use a boost, and something about it seems to call out to people looking to escape, or to ‘save’ a place. But it’s not the place that they imagine it to be. It’s not some kind of Shangri-La, a perfect oasis hidden away in the mountains. It’s a small town, just like every other small town. It has some nice qualities, and some shitty ones. Seeing that treatment of it in a national publication left my heart a little broken.

So, after waking up with some ennui this morning, I decided to Google Map it, for reasons that I can’t fully explain. Maybe it helps me keep my perspective, seeing how far it is from anything, and how small. Except that it turns out the Street View car had been there since the last time I looked at it. Despite my insistence, for 8 years now, that I’m never going back there, I went back there, at least a little. I stood outside my childhood home, and marveled at how the ivy has overtaken the north side. I saw the helicopter pad where they airlifted my friend’s brother after he shot himself on a dare. I wondered who was standing out in front of the place where I worked in high school. I looked for the haunted house we lived in, and was sad to find it replaced. Sad is a good adjective for the whole experience, actually. I never wanted to go back, and today I realized that I really can’t. I never expected that to make me feel sad.

For the sake of this post, we’re going to pretend that, like Sexy Husband, I have been having a vacation. Despite the fact that I’ve been going to work, I have had very few obligations this week, so we’ll just go ahead and call it a mini-vacation. Whatever.

In the run-up to this trip, I realized that I have never slept alone in this apartment (or this city, for that matter). Since I moved here in February, I have left town, but SH has not. I’ve gone to bed alone (on occasion, even that’s rare), but never woken up that way. I declared to him that I was going to sleep in the middle of the bed while he was gone, but he pointed out that I do that already (guilty). Curses! So, I decided to sleep on my own schedule, which I also pretty much already do anyway. I tried sleeping on the futon with the dog, but I remembered why I hate sleeping with her (talk about a bed-hog!), and the living room was too bright and warm. Total failure. So, failing the discovery of some scandalous sleep-rebellion in the next two nights, it looks like the only way my sleep is going to be different is that I miss him.

What I have been doing that surprised me is watching TV. Having the TV on all the time makes me antsy. It makes me feel pressured, like I can’t get any quiet. But last night, after talking to him, while getting ready to take a bath, I put on a movie and let it play in the background. All those times when people have said they turn it on for company, I kind of scoffed, but yesterday I got it. As I lay in the bath and listened to Aeon Flux in the other room, I could imagine that he was there, just out of my sight. It wasn’t the same as having him here, but it soothed the ache a little.

And finally, I remembered why I had a cat when I was living alone. The Little Lady is needy! Yesterday I went to get my Food Handler’s Permit in the morning. I was gone less than 2 hours, and I gave her a kneecap to occupy herself. When I got home, it was stripped, and she had taken it on the couch. Gross, first of all, and secondly, seriously? Two hours? I don’t think she realized he was gone, the first day, and the second day I was home all morning. But yesterday seemed to be the day that made the difference. When I left in the morning she was mad, and when I came back, she was squirrelly, like she was going to get in trouble. Of course, she did eat her gross kneecap on the couch, so she wasn’t entirely wrong, but there was no reason for her to slink around the house for the rest of the day. Poor thing. And doubly so because I am tired of being a single dog-parent. Always with the wanting to go outside and refusing to poop! (I know, it’s not that bad, I’m just whining a little. What do you want? It’s my blog.)

I had some ambitious plans that I was going to undertake in his absence, but they’re mostly going nowhere. I was going to clean the closet, but I haven’t even started. I did start knitting a hat for him, which will be awesome. I also got some degree of control back from the kitchen, and did some yoga, so that was good. So, whatever. Let’s call it a success, shall we? I’m going to spend the balance of this vacation cleaning the house and shaving my legs, so he feels loved when he comes home. Because he is loved, and I look forward to having him home.

My horoscope today says, “How about letting a few of those sweet feelings slip out? Put your reserve aside and get a little mushy. If you’re coupled up, renew and reinvigorate the romance by reiterating why it is you’re involved.” That sounds like a great idea, right?

But here’s the thing: Sexy Husband is in Hawaii this week, and I’m feeling a little, um, uncharitable about it. The arrangements I made to get him to the airport fell through, and I ended up having to drive him. That part wasn’t so bad, except for the ass-early hour of day that it had to happen, and the headache I woke up with. On the way down there, it was clear that the freeway was the wrong way to come home, so, on his suggestion, I took 99. I don’t take 99, I don’t know it, it was kind of a clusterfuck, and I got lost. (I missed the turn to get on it at the airport, and the exit to get off in Downtown). And let’s not even talk about how imagining the Viaduct collapsing helped my Monday morning. Awesome.

I have a horrible headache, I want curl up on the sofa with the dog and go back to sleep. I want some soup.

Please don’t get me wrong – I believe my horoscope is right. I should take some time to tell Sexy Husband that I love him, and why. But you know what? He’s going to sit on a beach and drink tropical drinks. I think he’ll be fine without my help today.

“I don’t know if I’ve told you this, but I really love the layout of your blog” (his doing, btw)

“Yeah?”

“I like the way it has the bird at the top, then when you get to the bottom it’s Drinky Crow!”

“Yeah?” (I’m drinking, not the best conversation, sorry)

“Yeah! It starts out all cute, and then it gets dirty. Just like you.”

Him: “Soon we’ll be a two-income family again!”
Me: “And they’re both yours! I’m going to earn my keep with [redacted].”
HIm: “Write me your job description.”

Today I am finishing my job description, for a job that I am baffled to have, and also extraordinarily lucky.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am a Housewife.

Last week a friend asked me, “don’t housewives usually have kids? What do you have, a dog?”
Yes, we have a dog, and no children. But a housewife is not a stay-at-home mom, or whatever the appropriate description is for that challenging role. My mom dislikes the term ‘housewife,’ even when I was doing that job for her. She & my dad really enjoyed “Stay at Home Daughter,” but that’s really not a good way to describe my relationship to my husband. The most important thing about what I will do as a housewife is this: make his life easy. Because he makes my life.

One of the items going into my list is this blog. I will be writing. More, better, consistently. It’s probably going to be a lot of self-important navel-gazing about what it’s like to be an accidentalish housewife. I have some other things I think I want to write about, but I’m not sure whether they’ll be up here. As you can expect, it will be erratic. Probably also drunk.

For now, though, back to codifying my goals, then on to another accountability, shaving my legs, in pursuit of a third, which I won’t spell out here, but you can probably guess. It is Wednesday, after all… (wink, wink).

ps: don’t let me forget to tell you about the many ways I have bruised myself this week. Because I am awesome.

Dudes, I have a confession to make. I’m not a very comfortable writer.

I’m not sure how evident it is from reading this blog, but I’m a worrier. I worry. I nitpick and analyze and internalize and freak out. This is actually true for many creative processes, but for some reason I have a particularly hard time when it comes to writing. That’s part of what I was really enjoying about this blog, back when I was actually, y’know, blogging. It gave me an outlet to let the process happen, with basically no likelihood that anyone but Sexy Husband would see it. Of course, I also stress about letting him see my process, but that’s just that.

So now I’m in the middle of revising this writing project, and it is killing me. I’ve written three pieces. One of them is on the money, I think. I’m going to revise it again tonight, after it marinates a while. The other two are fine. People publish worse-written things every day. They’re each going to get at least one more revision before they go where they’re headed. I’m so worried about them!

They’re audition pieces, and I can’t bring myself to feel that they’re my best face. But I also recognize that I have a skill for self-defeat, and that they really are not bad. One of them is weak, but it’s weak, not bad. And it’s not done. I want to succeed at the task they’re for, and I’m pretending to myself that I’m not going to be crushed when I fail.

Several weeks ago I read a great essay about writing. The author said that writing isn’t the important thing, making the keys click is. I’m trying to keep that in mind to keep my momentum going, but it’s hard. I’ve done all the clicking away, now I need to make it shine. Wish me luck.