Balance

Yes, I'm up early on a Saturday morning, really early.  J is already gone, he was meeting a buddy to go off and be a guy for the day.  And I have an early morning eye doctor appointment anyway.  Plus our old mattress just really sucks and once I'm "awake", my back is so sore it makes it almost unbearable to continue to lay there. I gave it awhile, then finally got on up.  I am normally up early on the weekends, and I let J sleep in for a bit.  I like to have a quiet moment with my coffee and read the paper before all the housework and errands begin.  We work so much during the week, we have to cram everything else in on the weekends- fun and chores.  This weekend will be about fun and unwinding after a stressful week for J.  I am staying home and catching up on stuff- laundry, my flower and herb garden, reading, and hopefully making some new pottery.

J and I try to have a good balance between time together and time as individuals. It's important for us both.  I'm not a nagging wife, and I'm not a distrustful wife.  I was happy to go out to dinner last night with him, and then let him go off for the day with his best buddy.  He needs time to go enjoy activities that I don't necessarily love, and I need time to do things where I don't need another person attached to my hip.  For J it's manly stuff like playing poker, sports, the firing range, golf.  For me, it's reading or painting, or strolling the aisles at the craft store to see what's new.  We have a lot of pastimes that we do both love and share, and some weekends we spend every minute together.  But this is one of those weekends where we both need to step away from the real world for just a day or two, and do our own thing.  It works for us, and I'm grateful that I have a husband who shares this philosophy.

But while we have great balance as a couple, I myself have horrible balance for my overall life.  And J had a frank discussion with me about that last night at dinner. Well, more like me listening to fatherly advice, which is weird because J is younger than me.  He is concerned about my health, both physical and emotional, but mostly physical.  And it's not even all the weight I've gained, because as a heavy man he knows it's easy to gain and hard to lose.  I told him, I don't know how to work full time and then do anything else.  I work about 50 hours a week, sometimes more, and I have a 40-minute one-way commute.  (J works even longer hours!)  I leave the house at 6:30am or earlier, and sometimes I don't get back home until 7:00pm or later.  There isn't much time in between.  By the time I make dinner, pack lunch for the next day, lay out my clothes and such for the next morning, it's bedtime!  Rarely during the week do I have (make) time to take care of all the "me" things.  And at work, I have a tendency to get very stressed out and keep myself going with lots of caffeine, sugar, and carbs.  (Read: coffee, soda, junk food)

I am not complaining about having a job, I make what I feel is good money.  I don't know what jobs pay in other parts of the country, but I am happy with my salary and because I'm hourly, the extra work means extra dollars.  I am glad that I can contribute to our family in that way.  But in the meantime, while I'm bringing home that paycheck, I am steadily gaining weight, losing energy, finding more aches and pains, and seem to get more depressed.  I am definitely not the girl that J met and fell in love with, and he hasn't change ONE bit!  And there are things going on at work right now that, for the next 2-3 months, will mean a lot more extra hours for me.  Yet J is in the process of perhaps changing our lives again, hopefully for the better, and I will post about that maybe tomorrow- it's been on my mind a lot but I haven't found the right words yet to discuss it.

MISS GEE