Comfy Cozy Content

J zipped out of the house this morning at 6:30, for an early meeting at work, then a flight with his boss to go visit another division out of state.  Nothing exciting, just to look at new equipment our warehouse is getting this year, to watch how it works, etc.  J wasn't thrilled, he is incredibly busy this week, and to keep him out of the office for two days means he will probably have to work from home all weekend to get caught up.  He may be an upper level manager, but he still has reports and deadlines and projects.  He's been grumpy all week because of this trip, and he'll be back very late tomorrow night.  It's cold here this morning, down in the teens, the kind of cold that penetrates the windows and even though the heat is running, I'm still wearing a sweater inside.  All four of the cats are huddled around the fireplace, waiting for the sun to come up- and through the windows- so they can stretch out on the floor and get warm.  We only had enough creamer in the house this morning for one cup of coffee, and I let J have it.  I braved the cold temps and headed out to the store not long after he left, because me without java is like me without oxygen.  I won't survive for long.  And me having coffee without creamer is like, well, just gross.

I had the conversation again this past weekend with J, about me not working.  He is still standing firm about me staying at home.  I think he likes me being at home more than I do, and as long as he feels that way I'm okay with it.  He said if I get to the point where I'm just utterly miserable at home, then we'll talk. He's still concerned about me socializing, which is very low on my list of priorities.  Frankly, even most people out there in the world communicate primarily by emails and texts these days.  So I don't believe that staying at home is quite as isolating as it used to be.  I know he would go nuts, but he doesn't have many solo hobbies, and he doesn't even like to read.  I do still go see my physical therapist, although not quite as often, and she and I have become friends over the years.  I talk to my girlfriend back home on the phone, although those are very one-sided conversations.  Her crying and whining and me sighing heavily while I listen.  I don't enjoy talking to her at all, but I do it out of loyalty and love.  And I do still have my group support meetings every Friday morning, where I spend an hour with the same folks each week.  But J feels as though that's not enough.  He has been strongly encouraging me to go start the yoga classes at the studio I've been eyeing, and to start classes at one of the craft stores (our little town has a Michael's, Jo-Ann's, and Hobby Lobby!) in the evenings or weekends.  I'm up for all of that, I just haven't gotten to that place yet where I'm ready to commit.  I know, that sounds silly, it's not like I don't have the time.  Right now, I just don't have the energy.  I'm still working on it- the more my depression eases, the more I'm excited to go back to doing yoga or to learn a new craft.

Both of our health issues are getting better, and J believes it is 100% because of my being at home.  He said he's afraid that if I go back to work, all of our progress will start to backslide.  J is at the lowest weight he's ever been at since I've known him, and although he's still going out to lunch with the guys at work, every morning I get up and fix him a healthy breakfast, and every night when he gets home I have a healthy dinner waiting on him.  That never happened when I was working out of the house.  With the cold weather, J has been craving soup for dinner almost every night and I've been trying out new recipes.  We both know that the tendency to gain weight is high in the winter, with yummy casseroles and hefty roasts the norm, so we've made a conscious decision to eat lighter instead.  Roasted veggies, soups, and yes even salads.  We still go out to eat on the weekends, but not every weeknight like we were doing when I was trudging out of the office at 7pm.  I'm still working on my own battles, but the number on the scale is steadily going down.  I know it also gives him peace of mind that I can increasingly do more of the household chores that always fell on his shoulders in the past.  The other day he told me how much he enjoyed having the bed made every day now.  Before, I ran out of the house so fast in the mornings that at night when we were exhausted, we fell into a mess of tangled sheets and blanket.  It's amazing how something so simple, could please him so much.  And I'm thankful they are things I can continue to give him, give us.

We did talk about downsizing our vacations and trips this year, and J said he plans to stay out of the casinos.  All of that was okay, back when we had my paycheck as our disposable income to play with.  We haven't been to any auctions or estate sales lately, simply because we got bored with them, we used to go two and three times a month and spend way too much.  The last few weekends, J has been extremely content to stay at home and work in the garage and basement.  Even though we still have a lot of winter left, he's cleaning up the garage now.  He has decided to take a stab at learning some woodworking skills on his own, and on a recent trip to see his folks, his dad loaded up the back of our truck with cedar from trees he cut down.  J has a garage filled with tools that he never uses, so for 2014 his promise to himself was to start staying at home on the weekends, and be happy about it.  I don't think we need to be on a lake or a boat or in a casino in order for him to relax and detoxify his soul.  In the past, after a long week of stress at work, J always wanted to escape and we almost always went out of town every weekend.  He vowed to himself to slow down and start enjoying his home, his yard, his real life.  I hope he does, life is too short, and we both have to learn to love the one we are living right now.  If I can help him with it, that makes me extremely happy.

MISS GEE

My Little Black Book

I am a list maker.  I have been all of my life.  I write lists almost obsessively.  I write everything and anything.  Every morning I sit at the breakfast table and make out my to-do list for the day, and hope that this is the day I'll get the items all crossed off (unlikely, I'm a bit too ambitious when that first cup of coffee hits me).  I even get excited to start a new grocery list each week.  Seriously.  But I'm notorious for not finishing whatever I do start writing, like journals.  Or blogs.  Or the great American novel.  :(  So I decided I would not take on that ancient tradition of starting a new diary on January 1st.  Nor did I make my proclamation of resolutions.

Maybe it's my age, but I don't really do the New Year's resolution thing anymore.  I have goals in mind for myself, but they're a little more specific than "lose weight" or "save money".  And normally they are goals I've been working on for awhile and just need to continue chasing down.  This week I was cleaning up some things in the basement and J asked if I could find a small notebook he could use, and when I brought one up for him I flipped open into the middle of it and found a list of personal goals I had written in 2000!  It was three pages long!  Yes, really.  Normally I would be uptight about sharing something like that, but I decided that if 2014 was going to be the year I loosened up and let go and opened myself up to all life has to throw at me- this would be a good test.  So instead of hiding it in embarrassment I gave it to J, and he proceeded to read out the entire list.  We laughed about a lot of the items, because they are still things I'm struggling with now.  Some of them, I couldn't remember writing down because they were issues I overcame a long time ago.  Even J said about some of the worst ones, hey you don't do this.  I said, this list is from before we met, I was a very different person back then.

At the office I used to have lists posted everywhere.  Sticky notes on my computer, handwritten lists on my whiteboard, electronic reminders that popped up on my email first thing every morning.  Even with my morning to-do list here at home, it hasn't been enough for me, because they get crumpled up and thrown out every evening.  The next day I'm fumbling around saying, uhm, what did I do yesterday?  So instead of a new journal this year, I went to the office supply store and bought one of those appointment books, a big one that has one entire page per day and broken down into every quarter hour.  And I've been writing everything down.  Everything.  Even if it's just taking out the garbage or unloading the dishwasher.  Even if it's recycling old magazines or gathering up clothes for the next Goodwill run. Everything.  At the end of the day, I can look back and say, wow, I am accomplishing things.  It seems like a stupid little undertaking, but filling out every small detail from my day into that appointment book, has made a world of difference to me so far.  And I'm being honest in it.  If I sat reading for an hour or soaked in a hot bath for awhile, I write that down too.

My depression seemed to deepen at the end of 2013 because I had a lot of days- and weeks- where I felt like I was drifting, just simply existing.  At the end of the day I couldn't put my finger on where my hours had gone.  I know healing from my surgery seemed to compound it, because I had days where I did not do a single damn thing with my wrist in the cast.  Even now I have to be careful.  Last week I picked up a grocery sack and felt a sharp pop, and the surgery site swelled up and I was in miserable pain for several days.  I won't be completely, 100%, perfectly healed for a long time to come.  But I can still function.  And I've been trying my best to make the most out of my days.

I continue to get up with J every morning at 6am.  We go to bed about 10pm, sometimes a bit later.  I can't seem to convince anyone that I don't take naps, at all.  I think perhaps twice I've slept during the day, when I was sick.  That's it.  Only my mom believes me when I say I don't nap or sleep in.  I told her it's very important to me to not only stay on the same schedule as J, so I'll go to bed when he does.  But also to continue to stay on a normal schedule so that when/if I do go back to work, it won't be such a shock to my body.  Most days I don't leave the house, but now that I'm writing down the minutiae of my day, I can see that even as a homebody, I too have relevant tasks and projects and chores.  If I settled into my easy chair in the corner of our bedroom with a cat in my lap and read for 12 straight hours a day, no one is here to tell on me.  But that's not what I want out of life.

The appointment book has made me realize that I do have worth, that I do add value to this little family unit of ours, and that I'm not just wasting my time by staying at home.  I can make a to-do list every day and stick to it.  I can create goals and work on them.  I can make a difference.  I'm going to go as far as saying writing in the book has even boosted my self-esteem just a little bit.  It feels good every night to look at the page and see it's complete.  My day was complete. It gives me hope that maybe my life will be complete.  Thanks DayMinder 2014!

MISS GEE

Kicking Off A New Year

One promise I've made to myself, I won't spend two and three days composing giant convoluted posts anymore.  Even I get tired when I'm writing them, so no wonder no one is reading them.  I'd rather post more often, even if they are shorter missives.

Things started to look up for me after my last post.  My depression has lifted somewhat, though certainly not all the way.  But I feel more optimistic lately. Much more than I have in a long time.  It's amazing how just a few key moments in the span of just a few weeks, can change the path you've been headed down.  Maybe I've just had time lately to think on things.  Like the rest of the country I've been hibernating this week.  Yes, even in the Deep South we are not immune.  We hit single digit temperatures this week.  And my sales on Etsy for some reason just exploded, and it's given me a renewed sense of passion and dedication to my art and pottery.  People are discovering me and more than that, they like me!

In mid-December we visited our old town and old friends for a few days, and I realized that part of what's kept me down in the dumps here is an unfounded sense of nostalgia that things were better back there.  And although I miss seeing my best girlfriend on a daily basis, I came to the understanding that our old town is pretty much like our new town.  It doesn't offer anything that I can't get here, now.  True, I've held on to the memories of the days when J and I were dating, all the fun places we would go, our routines, our favorite restaurants (some of which we found were sadly now closed!).  But we have all that here, now.  J and I have been together for 10 years.  We've already spent 5 of those years here in our new town.  I came to the decision that whatever it was I've been longing for, in the past, is not worth it.  And I'm not sure it even exists anymore.  It's not worth making myself miserable over, anyhow.  It's not worth pining away for.  I have J here, now.  That's the most important part of all those memories and feelings.  I came back home feeling somewhat enlightened and told J, you know, after that visit I just don't "miss" our old life that much now.  I think that made him happy.

The holidays were all about family, and because I'm not currently working my parents were able to come and stay with us for an extended visit.  I shocked myself at how patient I was with my super-judgmental mother.  I shocked myself at how domestic I was, cooking all my husband's favorite dishes for my father. Normally when my parents come to visit, my mother takes over the house- and the cooking- and I just shut down.  This time I commanded control over my own kitchen, even on Christmas day.  My parents noticed, and it seemed as though they both had a new respect for me.  I'm 47.  I'm not sure why it took them this long to come to the conclusion that I'm competent and I'm a wife and I take care of my home and my husband.  It all came together and commingled into a pleasant visit.  Maybe it was partly my own change of attitude.  Instead of being miserable and wishing it was time for them to leave, I chose to enjoy the time we all spent with each other.  I stepped up, instead of just falling back.

J took me away for my birthday weekend after Christmas was over.  He does it every year, and each time he tries his best to surprise me but I always figure it out in advance.  I do my best to gush over the packet of tickets and hotel reservations and dining choices.  It's always the favorite weekend of the year for me, and it amazes me that my husband listens to me when I chatter away throughout the year, and it makes me appreciate him even more.  He keeps careful track of places I mention, events that are coming to town, and he always plans a magical weekend for me, for us.  It's the perfect way to close out the old year.  This year the rain dampened some of the plans but there were no regrets and no disappointments.  And again, I realized that whenever I'm with J, the details don't seem to matter as much.  We rang in the New Year with his family, and even though it was only just one day, I realized that being with them is about joy and warmth.  I didn't even think about anything else.  I felt as though I opened myself up to it more this visit than I have in the past.

Not everything that phased 2013 into 2014 was wonderful.  J's company was bought out by a competitor and we are unsure of what the near future holds for us and his job- we are just waiting and trying not to worry.  One dear friend back home is staring down a prison sentence, and I can only hope that her situation has a happy ending, and be supportive of her daily messages to me. Another friend here passed away just this week, from a very common illness but because she didn't take care of her every day health, she has died.  She was not much older than I am, and leaves behind a completely disabled, dependent husband.

Sometimes those sad moments make you look at yourself in the mirror and think, that could be me.  And it will be me unless I do something now to make certain I don't follow in those same footsteps.  Lately I've been reevaluating what truly makes me smile, and what makes me discontent.  And for each answer I have to ask, why?  I've been finding that when I choose to be happier and open and accepting, I have a lot more energy and a lot less of the aches and pains.  So I'm going to do my damnedest to embrace the positive, and to push back all the shadows.  I'm stepping into the light for 2014- and beyond!  I deserve it!

MISS GEE