She's the Queen, and still her mommy's favorite after all these years. Even when she bites.
MISS GEE
Sunday, September 30, 2012
Home Is...
When J and I met at work and started dating, we were both homeowners. Only we lived in two different states, 45 miles apart. It was challenging to spend time together. We had abbreviated weekends, and on a good week when our schedules fell into place, we could meet on neutral turf for a nice dinner after work. About a year into the relationship, J decided to sell his house of about 15 years, and moved into an apartment much closer to work- and me. Once we were married another year later, we started our new life together in my house. My very little cozy starter home, which I'd purchased with W. The ghosts haunted me, not to mention having J's living room furniture shoved into a tiny spare bedroom. He was perfectly content to stay there, I wanted out- out from under the bad memories and out from under two complete households' worth of furnishings crammed into 1300 square feet.
We bought our new house a few months after we got married, at the height of the market in 2006. We bought it the week it hit the internet listings, and we paid full asking price for it. It was older but remodeled, in a beautiful wooded neighborhood that everyone was trying to elbow their way into, and it oozed charm and character from every corner. It was my dream home, I knew I wanted it just from the pictures online. Luckily my old house sold quickly, and I made a great profit on it. And a small inheritance from one of J's relatives, that we immediately put on the mortgage, and we had great equity. We got to enjoy it all of two years. In 2008 when J was offered a promotion, I was not going to say no. Although I knew I had to leave behind my home, my friends, my job. He was the bread winner and my husband, and his career was important to us both. He's an executive making six figures, I was an hourly cubicle slave- we had to go where his career path led us.
At his level, the company takes care of it all. They picked the realtor to sell our old house. They chose our realtor who would sell us a new house, in a new city we had never even been to before. We had one weekend to swoop in and look at houses and decide. Talk about pressure! J had to move immediately, while I stayed behind to tie up loose ends- packing, my job, saying goodbye to friends. J lived in a furnished apartment- courtesy of the company and his relocation package- and after three months we purchased our current home and I was able to move to this new town, new state at the end of 2008. My depression worsened as soon as we crossed state lines and ended up here. We don't love our new house, although it was brand new and we got it for a great price. It's big with white walls, no trees in the yard, and two empty lots across the street- reminders that the builder went bankrupt with only 2/3 of the subdivision completed. We've made a few changes here and there, but the house is somewhat boring and after 3 1/2 years we still don't even know any of our neighbors' names. Work is a 40-minute commute. We live right outside of a large major city that offers anything we could want, we just don't have the time to go enjoy it very often.
Now J has another promotion possibility looming over him, one he will have to decide about in the next few weeks. It would mean going through all of this again- living apart for several months, giving up my job, moving to yet another state, settling into another house. We just don't know if we want to do it all over again. But we know the only way J will ever get another promotion is if we move- there's no opportunity for him to move up the company ladder where we are right now. We have no personal or emotional ties to where we live- this house, the town, acquaintances who have never really become friends. Yet the idea of starting from scratch one more time, at our age, I just am very unsure. One side of me is excited at the possibilities it might bring, the other side dreads the idea that things could get worse.
I leave the decision up to J, because his career is the cornerstone of everything that we have and we do. My job is just a paycheck, it means nothing to me and I actually hate it, and I already left all my true friends behind the first time we moved. I have been unhappy living here, but I am not sure that moving again will solve anything for me.
We bought our new house a few months after we got married, at the height of the market in 2006. We bought it the week it hit the internet listings, and we paid full asking price for it. It was older but remodeled, in a beautiful wooded neighborhood that everyone was trying to elbow their way into, and it oozed charm and character from every corner. It was my dream home, I knew I wanted it just from the pictures online. Luckily my old house sold quickly, and I made a great profit on it. And a small inheritance from one of J's relatives, that we immediately put on the mortgage, and we had great equity. We got to enjoy it all of two years. In 2008 when J was offered a promotion, I was not going to say no. Although I knew I had to leave behind my home, my friends, my job. He was the bread winner and my husband, and his career was important to us both. He's an executive making six figures, I was an hourly cubicle slave- we had to go where his career path led us.
At his level, the company takes care of it all. They picked the realtor to sell our old house. They chose our realtor who would sell us a new house, in a new city we had never even been to before. We had one weekend to swoop in and look at houses and decide. Talk about pressure! J had to move immediately, while I stayed behind to tie up loose ends- packing, my job, saying goodbye to friends. J lived in a furnished apartment- courtesy of the company and his relocation package- and after three months we purchased our current home and I was able to move to this new town, new state at the end of 2008. My depression worsened as soon as we crossed state lines and ended up here. We don't love our new house, although it was brand new and we got it for a great price. It's big with white walls, no trees in the yard, and two empty lots across the street- reminders that the builder went bankrupt with only 2/3 of the subdivision completed. We've made a few changes here and there, but the house is somewhat boring and after 3 1/2 years we still don't even know any of our neighbors' names. Work is a 40-minute commute. We live right outside of a large major city that offers anything we could want, we just don't have the time to go enjoy it very often.
Now J has another promotion possibility looming over him, one he will have to decide about in the next few weeks. It would mean going through all of this again- living apart for several months, giving up my job, moving to yet another state, settling into another house. We just don't know if we want to do it all over again. But we know the only way J will ever get another promotion is if we move- there's no opportunity for him to move up the company ladder where we are right now. We have no personal or emotional ties to where we live- this house, the town, acquaintances who have never really become friends. Yet the idea of starting from scratch one more time, at our age, I just am very unsure. One side of me is excited at the possibilities it might bring, the other side dreads the idea that things could get worse.
I leave the decision up to J, because his career is the cornerstone of everything that we have and we do. My job is just a paycheck, it means nothing to me and I actually hate it, and I already left all my true friends behind the first time we moved. I have been unhappy living here, but I am not sure that moving again will solve anything for me.
MISS GEE
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Still Stumbling
One issue I
struggle with is commitment- which is evident on this new blog. My plan
was to post every day to work out my issues!
I have a tendency to start a project with a lot
of enthusiasm, then slowly lose any desire to
continue. It doesn’t matter what it is, I rarely ever finish anything
once I start it. During the planning stage, my head is so full of ideas
and excitement, I can hardly contain it all. I make copious notes, I
research something to death on the internet,
find books on the subject, buy whatever supplies I might need. Whether
painting a landscape or tracking calories on a weight loss plan, cleaning out my closet or organizing photos, subscribing to a new
magazine or writing a letter to a lifelong friend or enjoying a classic novel I should have read back in college- I start
these things but conk out shortly after I get out of the starting gate. I end up planning it more than I actually end up doing it.
I don’t know why. I have plenty of time to devote to a number of hobbies and crafts. And on good days when I’m not in a lot of pain, I have the energy to spend as well. I have a lot of desire to complete projects, but apparently not enough drive to sustain the effort. I will vow to whiten my teeth and buy a kit, only to find the strips are expired by the time I decide to ever get around to the process. I buy plants from the nursery, ready to get them into the ground the next day, but weeks later they are brown and dying, still in the containers I brought them home in. I pick up vitamins at the pharmacy and set them out on the kitchen counter, and after a few days of being opened, I place them up on the back of a shelf, where they remain forgotten.
I don’t know why. I have plenty of time to devote to a number of hobbies and crafts. And on good days when I’m not in a lot of pain, I have the energy to spend as well. I have a lot of desire to complete projects, but apparently not enough drive to sustain the effort. I will vow to whiten my teeth and buy a kit, only to find the strips are expired by the time I decide to ever get around to the process. I buy plants from the nursery, ready to get them into the ground the next day, but weeks later they are brown and dying, still in the containers I brought them home in. I pick up vitamins at the pharmacy and set them out on the kitchen counter, and after a few days of being opened, I place them up on the back of a shelf, where they remain forgotten.
I am a serious
daydreamer, and I think for me there is a huge disconnect between the
plans in my head, and the reality of my capabilities. In this economy,
no one is getting rich from selling pottery or paintings on
eBay. Home improvement projects are meaningless when the value of my house drops faster than I can pay off the Lowe's bill. Buying a new journal is pointless when I find I have nothing to really say every evening. I used to think I just procrastinated a lot or got bored easily, but now I see I let things just completely fall by the wayside. I have years worth of date books, where I chronicled my life for the first month or so, then nothing but eleven months of empty pages. It's like that every year, no matter how much I tell myself every December this next year I will make entries every single day!
I even blow off fun projects, easy projects, simple projects . Oh sure, everyone likes to get excited and start tiling the bathroom floor, only to look at it on day three and think crap I sure have a lot more work to do and this isn't as much fun as I thought it would be. Me? I start flipping through a cookbook and never get beyond the appetizer section before it's retired to a dusty shelf in the basement. That is sad.
And by the way, this is my SIXTH blog that I've started......
If I would follow
through with all my “ideas”, I would be the healthiest &
wealthiest, sexiest & tannest, most relaxed, organized, balanced
person alive with an immaculately clean house and a garden with
no weeds and a standing appointment at yoga class every Saturday morning. I would have read War & Peace twice, I’d have
artwork selling like hot cakes online, and I’d finally have my
bachelor’s degree and my novel published (the one I can't seem to finish writing). All of my digital photos
would be printed out and neatly arranged in albums. The junk drawers in my china cabinet would be empty. I'd be back to wearing the skinny jeans I had on when I met J almost ten years ago.
But most days, like today- if I finish this post and get it on my blog- that's a great accomplishment!
MISS GEE
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