I've had an interesting few weeks.........
I've been happy, sad, angry, frustrated, furious and ultimately I've learned a whole lot more than I expected. This is going to be a long entry.....
Go to the bathroom, get something to eat or drink. Hopefully, if I write as well as some of you seem to think.................. you won't be able to "put it down".
lol
As I write, Miss P (our cockatiel Penelope) is screaming like a hamstrung harpy because a week ago today I put her "human" (my husband) on a plane so he could go back out on the road. He had been on the road (installing astroturf football fields) for over 10 yrs of our marriage when he got a "promotion" last July (for less money, cause that's what it means to go from hourly to salary) which enabled him to work out of a home office and only travel a couple times a month. As you may recall, I came pretty unglued when Molly died (and still am although EVERYBODY seems to think I should be over it by now) and although I fed and watered P; I couldn't help wishing she had been the one to pass. Pretty crappy huh? In any case, she became "his" girl about that time and has followed him around the house like a little dog ever since (albeit a screaming, flapping, occasionally hissing, slightly psychotic little dog- and those of you who have EVER owned a cockatiel know exactly what I mean!).
A week ago this coming Friday my husband's position with his company was eliminated. They needed to make some cutbacks in "operations" so they could get an influx of investment capital whereupon the hubby went back into "projects" and back out on the road...... Understand that the "road" means a minimum of 8 mo. out of the year spent living out of a hotel (usually 10 mo.) in another state while working 10 hour days seven days a week. The hours change as the season gets busier so by summer and fall they're working as much as 14hr days. You should remember that, when we moved into my husband's "dream house" (long story, another time) he was ONLY home for the signing (not the searching or the packing), went right back out on the road again and didn't come home until the night before the move. We moved furniture etc Thurs, Fri, Sat, Sun and then at 6am Mon (the first Monday of Nov. 2002 to be exact) I put him on a plane again and he didn't come home until 3 days before Xmas when we were hosting both families, over the course of 3 days to EVERYBODY'S first Xmas in the "new house"..........
We went from 1000 sq. feet to over 1900. A small courtyard patio to a HUGE corner lot with 40 rosebushes and a myriad of other plant-life that included fruit trees, various shrubbery, a row of over 20 boxwood bushes and I maintained it by myself for ........ well, until last July. This was REALLY hard on the marriage. In more ways than it's even worth going into here because it's a very long and different kind of journey for a different entry and a different day.
But we've been fighting for the last 2 and a half years and were just starting to make some progress on healing the relationship and now he's going back out on the road........ This will be interesting; to say the least. Difficult.... well, that's an understatement. So, while it will definitely make a difference financially in that we'll be able to get out of debt a lot sooner then we anticipated, there are also a whole host of emotional consequences that are far less straightforward and they are complicated by the fact that while he may be an emotional guy.......... he is also emotionally oblivious on a number of different levels. It's a good thing I'm feeling stronger and more grounded than I have in a very long time........... And time will tell us whether or not it's a good thing that I'm less inclined to own the responsibility for all our problems, less inclined to overlook certain attitudes and behaviors than I once was and less inclined to be the sole employee of the "a relationship takes work" corporation! Hmmmmm...
There may be hope for me yet..................
Another biggie on my personal growth scale.........
I spent Sunday with a friend of almost 25 yrs and ironically enough, I think a relationship that I thought had been lost, might in fact be on the mend instead. Yes Lari....... she's my Jude. Who'da thunk it?! In many ways we've really grown up together. But it also seemed we'd grown apart while we were doing it and until Sunday I didn't really believe that those differences would ever let us regain the closeness we once shared. And I think I need to own the responsibility for that as well. Not so much the circumstances as the decision which followed them. My decision, that the relationship didn't mean to her what it did to me and that we clearly didn't understand each other nearly as well as we had thought........ This too is a long story for another time. But suffice to say that one of the greatest advantages of age is the ability to let things be what they are while observing to see what, if anything, will come of them......... Otherwise known as; don't throw out the baby with the bath-water........... when there just might be a way to "recycle"! *sardonic grin, slight chuckle*
I had a lovely melt down of the kind you can only have with a girlfriend (let's face it, guys don't have meltdowns! *smile*) who's known you your whole adult life AND IT FELT WONDERFUL! Because I'm 47 instead of 27, my meltdown was expedient (about 30 min or so) and we went right back into normal girl-talk immediately thereafter. The revelation was that I didn't need our "lives" and experiences to be the way they had been for the whole of our friendship. It was enough that I knew she loved me THEN, in that place and time, and that her love was built on a relationship that had seen each of us through life-altering experiences no one else had been through with us. We've been together longer than we will ever be married to our husbands and longer than we will ever hold any one job. I think that says something pretty profound and I think I'm also pretty grateful for it. Perhaps in a way I have never truly been before. Maybe the final lesson of a real friendship with any woman is that when there's nothing left to prove or compete over (because we do that as women no matter what ANYBODY says) then all that is left is acceptance and love. Which is a huge gift as we all know. Because in the end, isn't it our relationships with each other that enable us to continue and be successful in our relationships with men?
So, the other thing I learned is that I can make unpopular choices when I feel the need to and be ok with them. I recently went on a HUGE rant about lizziewhoeverthehellsheis and as a result of those circumstances I "unjoined" ALL the communities I belonged to. I also removed all the friends I made after the situation with lizziewhoeversheis began and I just "ignored" the request for a new friendship with someone who commented on my most recent journal because I was uneasy about what I saw on her page. Judgmental? Yeah. Unreasonable and an over-reaction? Maybe. But it was my choice to make and I made it and in truth I don't see any reason to apologize. This place isn't a popularity contest. It's about growth and healing..... or at least it's supposed to be. I can neither grow nor heal until I learn to make choices that enrich my own life without worrying that I might have hurt someone else's feelings or done something that somebody else won't understand. I CAN'T be friends with everybody. I don't have the time it takes to make that commitment and I don't feel like saying "yes" because saying "no" might be unpopular. I really try to be here for the people on my list in more than just a passing kind of way. I'm not interested in having pages and pages of "friends" whose journals I can't read and whose lives I won't be involved in beyond the occasional "HUG". I've NEVER been the person who sent out Xmas cards with a "how we're doing" letter and picture inside for everyone we've ever known. That may be rude but it's who and how I am. I write handwritten letters to my friends because I consider it both more personal and a more appropriate demonstration of etiquette and how I feel about them. I make choices every day about the things that I have time for and it's about time those choices include people...... Or at the very least it's about time that I acknowledge those choices ALREADY include people. It's not to say that I won't ever go back on the boards or won't go give hugs and encouragement when and where I feel the need. It's more that I don't choose to obligate myself to those things for everyone on the site. If nothing else, lizzie..... has at least demonstrated the folly of thinking about this place in any kind of intimate fashion that might preclude being just as self-aware of what's going on around me in here as I do out in my "3-D" life............. And you know, this realization has been pretty liberating....
Because I can't help myself or anyone else, until I learn to say NO and be ok with the consequences.
P is quiet now and I have A LOT of things to accomplish today so I'm gonna go.....
There are pet stories to write in the future and I gotta say...
the new little guy is a study in both the funny (only a mother could love this child) and the insightful (because we learn the most about ourselves from the places we least expect to) and updates about the "kids" should be entertaining for us all!
In the meanwhile, I hope to remain: engaging, insightful, funny, infuriating a little bit controversial and occasionally profound......... not all at the same time of course.......
I'M ONLY ONE PERSON!!!!!!!!!!!!
**big smile, some chuckling, she wanders off to shower and get her ass in gear!**
I've been happy, sad, angry, frustrated, furious and ultimately I've learned a whole lot more than I expected. This is going to be a long entry.....
Go to the bathroom, get something to eat or drink. Hopefully, if I write as well as some of you seem to think.................. you won't be able to "put it down".
lol
As I write, Miss P (our cockatiel Penelope) is screaming like a hamstrung harpy because a week ago today I put her "human" (my husband) on a plane so he could go back out on the road. He had been on the road (installing astroturf football fields) for over 10 yrs of our marriage when he got a "promotion" last July (for less money, cause that's what it means to go from hourly to salary) which enabled him to work out of a home office and only travel a couple times a month. As you may recall, I came pretty unglued when Molly died (and still am although EVERYBODY seems to think I should be over it by now) and although I fed and watered P; I couldn't help wishing she had been the one to pass. Pretty crappy huh? In any case, she became "his" girl about that time and has followed him around the house like a little dog ever since (albeit a screaming, flapping, occasionally hissing, slightly psychotic little dog- and those of you who have EVER owned a cockatiel know exactly what I mean!).
A week ago this coming Friday my husband's position with his company was eliminated. They needed to make some cutbacks in "operations" so they could get an influx of investment capital whereupon the hubby went back into "projects" and back out on the road...... Understand that the "road" means a minimum of 8 mo. out of the year spent living out of a hotel (usually 10 mo.) in another state while working 10 hour days seven days a week. The hours change as the season gets busier so by summer and fall they're working as much as 14hr days. You should remember that, when we moved into my husband's "dream house" (long story, another time) he was ONLY home for the signing (not the searching or the packing), went right back out on the road again and didn't come home until the night before the move. We moved furniture etc Thurs, Fri, Sat, Sun and then at 6am Mon (the first Monday of Nov. 2002 to be exact) I put him on a plane again and he didn't come home until 3 days before Xmas when we were hosting both families, over the course of 3 days to EVERYBODY'S first Xmas in the "new house"..........
We went from 1000 sq. feet to over 1900. A small courtyard patio to a HUGE corner lot with 40 rosebushes and a myriad of other plant-life that included fruit trees, various shrubbery, a row of over 20 boxwood bushes and I maintained it by myself for ........ well, until last July. This was REALLY hard on the marriage. In more ways than it's even worth going into here because it's a very long and different kind of journey for a different entry and a different day.
But we've been fighting for the last 2 and a half years and were just starting to make some progress on healing the relationship and now he's going back out on the road........ This will be interesting; to say the least. Difficult.... well, that's an understatement. So, while it will definitely make a difference financially in that we'll be able to get out of debt a lot sooner then we anticipated, there are also a whole host of emotional consequences that are far less straightforward and they are complicated by the fact that while he may be an emotional guy.......... he is also emotionally oblivious on a number of different levels. It's a good thing I'm feeling stronger and more grounded than I have in a very long time........... And time will tell us whether or not it's a good thing that I'm less inclined to own the responsibility for all our problems, less inclined to overlook certain attitudes and behaviors than I once was and less inclined to be the sole employee of the "a relationship takes work" corporation! Hmmmmm...
There may be hope for me yet..................
Another biggie on my personal growth scale.........
I spent Sunday with a friend of almost 25 yrs and ironically enough, I think a relationship that I thought had been lost, might in fact be on the mend instead. Yes Lari....... she's my Jude. Who'da thunk it?! In many ways we've really grown up together. But it also seemed we'd grown apart while we were doing it and until Sunday I didn't really believe that those differences would ever let us regain the closeness we once shared. And I think I need to own the responsibility for that as well. Not so much the circumstances as the decision which followed them. My decision, that the relationship didn't mean to her what it did to me and that we clearly didn't understand each other nearly as well as we had thought........ This too is a long story for another time. But suffice to say that one of the greatest advantages of age is the ability to let things be what they are while observing to see what, if anything, will come of them......... Otherwise known as; don't throw out the baby with the bath-water........... when there just might be a way to "recycle"! *sardonic grin, slight chuckle*
I had a lovely melt down of the kind you can only have with a girlfriend (let's face it, guys don't have meltdowns! *smile*) who's known you your whole adult life AND IT FELT WONDERFUL! Because I'm 47 instead of 27, my meltdown was expedient (about 30 min or so) and we went right back into normal girl-talk immediately thereafter. The revelation was that I didn't need our "lives" and experiences to be the way they had been for the whole of our friendship. It was enough that I knew she loved me THEN, in that place and time, and that her love was built on a relationship that had seen each of us through life-altering experiences no one else had been through with us. We've been together longer than we will ever be married to our husbands and longer than we will ever hold any one job. I think that says something pretty profound and I think I'm also pretty grateful for it. Perhaps in a way I have never truly been before. Maybe the final lesson of a real friendship with any woman is that when there's nothing left to prove or compete over (because we do that as women no matter what ANYBODY says) then all that is left is acceptance and love. Which is a huge gift as we all know. Because in the end, isn't it our relationships with each other that enable us to continue and be successful in our relationships with men?
So, the other thing I learned is that I can make unpopular choices when I feel the need to and be ok with them. I recently went on a HUGE rant about lizziewhoeverthehellsheis and as a result of those circumstances I "unjoined" ALL the communities I belonged to. I also removed all the friends I made after the situation with lizziewhoeversheis began and I just "ignored" the request for a new friendship with someone who commented on my most recent journal because I was uneasy about what I saw on her page. Judgmental? Yeah. Unreasonable and an over-reaction? Maybe. But it was my choice to make and I made it and in truth I don't see any reason to apologize. This place isn't a popularity contest. It's about growth and healing..... or at least it's supposed to be. I can neither grow nor heal until I learn to make choices that enrich my own life without worrying that I might have hurt someone else's feelings or done something that somebody else won't understand. I CAN'T be friends with everybody. I don't have the time it takes to make that commitment and I don't feel like saying "yes" because saying "no" might be unpopular. I really try to be here for the people on my list in more than just a passing kind of way. I'm not interested in having pages and pages of "friends" whose journals I can't read and whose lives I won't be involved in beyond the occasional "HUG". I've NEVER been the person who sent out Xmas cards with a "how we're doing" letter and picture inside for everyone we've ever known. That may be rude but it's who and how I am. I write handwritten letters to my friends because I consider it both more personal and a more appropriate demonstration of etiquette and how I feel about them. I make choices every day about the things that I have time for and it's about time those choices include people...... Or at the very least it's about time that I acknowledge those choices ALREADY include people. It's not to say that I won't ever go back on the boards or won't go give hugs and encouragement when and where I feel the need. It's more that I don't choose to obligate myself to those things for everyone on the site. If nothing else, lizzie..... has at least demonstrated the folly of thinking about this place in any kind of intimate fashion that might preclude being just as self-aware of what's going on around me in here as I do out in my "3-D" life............. And you know, this realization has been pretty liberating....
Because I can't help myself or anyone else, until I learn to say NO and be ok with the consequences.
P is quiet now and I have A LOT of things to accomplish today so I'm gonna go.....
There are pet stories to write in the future and I gotta say...
the new little guy is a study in both the funny (only a mother could love this child) and the insightful (because we learn the most about ourselves from the places we least expect to) and updates about the "kids" should be entertaining for us all!
In the meanwhile, I hope to remain: engaging, insightful, funny, infuriating a little bit controversial and occasionally profound......... not all at the same time of course.......
I'M ONLY ONE PERSON!!!!!!!!!!!!
**big smile, some chuckling, she wanders off to shower and get her ass in gear!**
Replies
So maam... I understand you were having a problem getting your ass in gear... perhaps you could describe it so perhaps we can fix the problem... what kind of sounds does it make... is it kind of a rrrr rrrr rrr or more like a rrr sputter rrr sputter... Sorry Janine... I could not resist... *Smile*
Things sound better with you. I\'m not telling you to be \"over\" it... when we lose someone we love... the pain is going to be a part of us forever... so you\'re not going to get \"over\" it... or that\'s what I believe... as someone said... normal is going to change... normal now includes this ache that sometimes feels like its going to drown us... Anyhoo... me being one of those people who thinks your write exceedingly well... you proved my point... I personally like a lot of the ways we\'re learning and growing... Love You Elissa
You are a true \"One of a kind\" person and I am so thankful for you...every day!
I Love you Sis and wish you the best always!
XXXX & OOOO,
FL ;)
I consider this a place to not only share my story and relate to others,But to tell anyone when they have touched me .I saw your hugs through Lari\'s page and they made me laugh.Your journal, to say the least was incredibly articulate and engaging.I write you to tell you I see something in you that I want for myself.To be who I truly am with no apologys and to feel great doing it!!It was encouraging ,I\'m 33 and look forward to seeing how I grow by the time I\'m 47.Take Care!!