Situation Normal

It's amazing how quickly we've fallen back into the old routine around here. You know the one I mean.

The one where the male goes out to hunt and gather and the woman stays behind to keep the home fires burning.

Now I don't want to sound sexist, but these roles feel awfully comfortable. Of course, considering that we wore them for about 33 years, it's not surprising that the resumption of this routine has all the comfort of those old leather Keds I wear to weed the garden.  A little battered and worse for wear, maybe, but fully functional all the same.

Back in 2009, that horrible, awful, no-good, very bad year when my husband joined the burgeoning ranks of the unemployed, our lives did a complete flip-flop. About that time, I had an opportunity (more like a mandate, really) to work full time ay my office. This came with a wage increase too, so I would have been a fool not to accept. Thing was, I'd never worked full time outside the home before. You noticed I qualified that with "outside the home" because if anyone doesn't think that raising children and running a household from top to bottom isn't working full time, than I dare them to spend 24 hours with a couple of toddlers, a dog, and a 30 year old house on a half-acre lot.

Truthfully, I'd been out of the child rearing business for a while, but I'd tacked a couple of part time jobs onto the homemaking thing which all kept me pretty busy.  But I still had two days off most weeks, in addition to my weekends, so I didn't feel too overloaded.

But working 9-5 was nothing like that.  Just adding on those two extra hours during the work day was bad enough, then adding on two more full days - call me a weakling, but within a couple of weeks I was ready to sign myself into the nearest sanitarium. All I wanted at the end of the day was to be able to come home, settle into my favorite easy chair, turn on the wall mounted fireplace, and hunker down with a good book and a glass of wine.

That's when it dawned on me - there was another person in this equation who wasn't really doing anything. That's right - my now jobless husband, although depressed and listless,  was available for active duty.  Before long, he was enlisted to do my bidding.  Grocery shopping, playing chauffeur for my mom, housecleaning, dog tending, bill paying - he was doing the gamut of things I simply had no time or energy to do.  And he did an admirable job of it too.

It was weird, and not a little unnerving for me to go out into the cold winter mornings while he was still curled in the chair, sipping coffee and reading the internet, the ventless fireplace blazing away. Of course, I had waved him off to work like that every day for most all of our married life. I suddenly felt terribly guilty - how inconsiderate of me to flaunt my freedom in his face like that all those years.  Because let me tell you, it made me green with envy to see him sitting happily at home while I went off to shuffle papers.

I have to confess, I could not hold up under that pressure. About six months into that arrangement, when it became apparent that Jim would be getting enough contract work to at least keep us out of the homeless shelter, I went back to part time. We had the best of both worlds, really, with equally flexible schedules.

But then came the offer for him to return to work, and with it a sense of great relief on his part. He had been campaigning for his job back ever since he lost it, although the company has not had enough faith in the economic recovery to start rehiring until now. He wanted to go back to work all along, I think, and although part of me hated to see him give up the freedom and flexibility he had as a self-employed contractor, he needed the validation that has come from being rehired.

I think we also needed to return to our familiar roles within the family. Although we both were able to function in each other's element, it wasn't a good fit on a permanent basis. Something continually felt awry, and it was tiring emotionally and physically.

So the situation around here is back to normal. I'm the one getting up and making the coffee again, getting breakfast for him as he prepares to head out to one of the interminable meetings he's been attending all over town. I'm back to waiting dinner every night, not knowing for sure when he'll be home.  And I'm back to having the house all to myself again, not having to plan my practice schedule or my housecleaning activities around the Expert Engineer who was at work in the home office dining room.

And he's back to feeling useful, and important, and part of the "pack" of guys who go out to work every day, hunting and gathering for the family back home.  It's feels like this is the way it was meant to be, at least in our neck of the woods.

We're Sorry: This Program Has Been Unexpectedly Interrupted

I'm really mad at the television.

Actually, I guess I'm more angry at the cable service, or maybe it's the TiVo ~ whatever the root of the problem, it's caused us to miss some of our favorite programs.

I'm not a huge TV fan, and for about 22 hours of the day I wouldn't care whether I even owned one or not.  But it's become a part of our nighttime ritual to wind-down by settling into the big leather recliner sofa with our favorite snacks (wine and pita chips for me, lemonade and peanuts for J.) and watch some TV together.   We TiVo the things we like, so we usually have a line up of things to choose from, although since Dancing With the Stars, American Idol, Parenthood, and Modern Familyhave all ended for the season, the pickings are a little slimmer.

That's another reason I'm so annoyed with this situation - there's very little to watch right now, so I can't afford to lose any of it. And for some reason, our TiVo sometimes just stops working in the middle of recording a show.  There's no rhyme or reason to it, and it can happen at any point during the programming.  It's become a crap shoot whether we'll "get" the entire episode of anything we record.  The worst thing was the finale of Dancing With the Stars - we had recorded the episode, and were watching it semi-live (about 30 minutes behind the live version). But the TiVo zonked out exactly at the point where Tom Bergeron said "And the Season 11 Champion of Dancing With the Stars is....."

Freeze frame - then nothing.

Man, was I hopping mad.

Since then, we've lost parts of episodes of Parenthood, Men of A Certain Age, and Modern Family.  It's even worse than if it didn't record at all, because you're 15 or 20 minutes into the show when suddenly the picture freezes and the TiVo blip off. Losing the network shows isn't so bad, because thanks to the internet and some great VGA cables we can see them via computer on the big screen TV.  But when Jim completely missed two of his favorite car races last weekend -that was apparently the last straw. The friendly service man from our Optimized Cable Company will be here on Wednesday.

I feel like a crotchety old lady when I complain about stuff like this.  But our evening TV time is one of those small pleasures that become very important in a relationship.  Way back when we were first married, we'd settle out there in the same TV room and watch the Mary Tyler Moore show - and I'm talking first run episodes here, so you know how long our evening TV ritual has been in existence.  It gives us a chance to relax, laugh (or sometimes cry, depending on what we're watching), and take our minds off our own problems for a while before going to sleep.  You'd be surprised, but some very interesting and even intimate conversations have arisen as a result of television shows.

So I'm hoping there's a quick fix to this problem and we can get our reliable TiV0 system back in order before the new seasons of Rescue Me, The Closer, and Mad Men begin.

How about you? Do you and your partner have long standing rituals that help you relax and unwind at the end of the day?

My Friendly ACO Hardware Store

I've been sprucing up the outdoors a bit lately, adding in some new plants, putting new layers of mulch around the shrubs, getting hanging pots up.  First of course there was beaucoup weeding to be done - we've had so much rain this year, the weeds have been soaking it up like drunkards and growing like the proverbial you know what. I've fallen in love with my neighborhood ACO hardware store, because they have absolutely everything I need, even though it's crammed into a fairly tiny space. I've found everything from greeting cards to pet food to planters and pool covers in this little gem of a store. It's also a nice change from the huge warehouse stores like Home Depot or Costco.  Even stores like Walmart make me a little nervous - they're just too big.  I kind of enjoy pottering around in a small, cluttered store. At ACO, there are even friendly sales people wandering around who seem only to happy to help.

I'll be going back tomorrow, because I've finally found the garden bench I want. I just need to take my husky helper with me to get it. They also have a bird bath that matches, and I'm thinking about getting the pair of them.

Why not, right? Summer is just too short..might as well make the most of it in as many ways as possible.

The Pressure's Rising

You know, I expected to feel a lot less pressure than I'm feeling right about now. I knew this week and next week would be kind of busy.  Actually, I knew most of June would be kind of busy.  But there's been a few unexpected surprises (a couple of "special projects" from my old workplace, which I've agreed to do, and then the realization that I've promised book reviews on two books next week, neither of which I've read yet) which have combined to send me into a tiny bit of a tither.

But no more than a tiny bit.  Because I know this spate of stuff is short lived, and that come July 1, I will have free time galore.

Yeah, right.  And I  know of some swampland in Florida I can sell you on the cheap.  Really. I do.

I had a meeting tonight with my friend Pat, the (now retired) teacher I worked with for many years when I was accompanying full time.  She's running a week long musical theater camp for middle schoolers next week (yes, I'm accompanying). In the fall, she's starting a theater group which will be based at the church where she's now musical director.

Last week, she celebrated her 70th birthday. But she continues to think about new things to do, new ways to provide great opportunities for kids and adults in her community, new ways to help her church grow its membership, new ways to have a fulfilling life. She's extra excited about the camp next week because her 13 year old granddaughter will coming in from out of town to attend the camp and stay with her grandma for the whole week.

I love working with Pat - as extroverted as she is, she's also an only child like me, and she gets the whole only child thing about needing time and space, and being in control of one's life. She works harder at getting herself "out there" than I've ever been able to do.  But she inspires me all the time.

So in many ways, it's Pat I'm channeling when I do things like sign up for online courses in writing creative nonfiction.  I'm in the midst of my first one of those right now...it was offered by a blogger friend whose writing and philosophy of life I admire, so it seemed like the perfect way to get my feet wet in terms of taking my writing practice to another level.

This was our first week of "class," and so there were reading and writing assignments to add into my already busy schedule.  But I'm excited about working with Andi, and also about meeting more people who are interested in expanding their writing horizons. It's already been fun and challenging and inspiring.

I've set up a separate page here at the Byline where I will post my "writing assignments" for that class, should you be interested in seeing what we're all about.

So, how about you? Is your summer starting out with high pressure, or are things more low key? And which do you prefer?

Working (or not)

Here I am, on my first it's-official-I'm-not-working-anymore Tuesday.  What am I doing? Working.

I'll qualify that by saying I'm working at home in my yoga pants and a soft tee shirt with the word "Paris" emblazoned on the front. I'll qualify that further by saying all the widows are open, and there's a deliciously cool breeze blowing the stacks of medical records around the room. And my two dogs are asleep at my feet, since they just had a very long walk/sniff around the neighborhood. It's nice.

I've been working about two hours now, and I'll probably be done in another 90 minutes. I took my lunch break outside on the back porch (ever notice how much better a turkey sandwich tastes when you eat outside?) and read a fascinating blog post by one of my favorite, most erudite book bloggers. In it she talks about fears  - of learning new skills, and of answering the big, important questions about ourselves and our lives. It's all too easy to accept our preconceived notions about ourselves, the ones we've been holding onto all of our lives. The kinds of notions that say, "Oh, I could never be a teacher, psychologist, doctor, nurse, missionary...I'm too introverted, too squeamish, too intellectual..."

It's much more difficult to look at our past experiences and see them- and consequently ourselves-in an altogether different light. Lately I've been thinking a lot about what might be next for me.  Because for the longest time I've been tied to a desk, shuffling papers, I've come to think of myself as a "behind the scenes" kind of person, always the "support staff" and never the one on the front line. Once upon a time, when I was in therapy years ago, I told my therapist I was thinking about going back to school to become a legal assistant. "Why?" she said. "Why aren't you thinking about becoming a lawyer?" Because I'm not smart enough, too shy, don't have the time...

In the past year or two at work, I've felt myself drowning under a sea of papers. Perhaps the urgent need I felt to crawl out from under that pile of paperwork was indicative of a need to stop hiding behind papers and do something more meaningful. I really AM too squeamish to be a doctor or a nurse...this I know for sure. But perhaps I can find another way to make a meaningful impact on people rather than just on piles of paper.

Food for thought on this lovely summer afternoon.

But for now, I'm back to the papers...