Temporal Conundrums

It's the end of the year, and like most everyone else, it's a time to reflect on life.  It's been 2 1/2 years since I stopped working outside the home.  It's been 7 months since J started working on the road full time.  All in all, things feel as though they are getting better.  And that worries me.

When I was working at the office, I used to think of my life in terms of hours.  Watching the clock, waiting for lunch break, waiting for time to go home, at home waiting for time to go to bed, in the middle of the night eyeballing the alarm clock waiting for it to go off.  The minute by minute stress was unbearable.  Once I started my "retirement" at home, I started thinking of my life in terms of days. J and I would get up then he would head to work at 7am and he would get home around 8pm- so I had "all day" to accomplish whatever it was on my daily to-do list. Mornings and early afternoons were bliss, but the stress started after lunch when I would rush around to finish housework or get dinner started before J got home.  Suddenly each day the later hours felt as though they weren't really "my" time- they belonged to the house, the husband, the pets, the chores.

Now that J leaves on Sunday or Monday, flies away to his latest assignment, and comes home on Friday- my thought process has expanded to think of my life in the form of weeks.  I have all week to work on a project, I have all week to shop and exercise and paint, blog or read or watch TV or bake, walk in the neighborhood or plant flowers or have lunch downtown.  I have all week to do laundry and vacuum and clean toilets and mop and dust.  I can get up at 6am then go to bed at 9pm, or I can sleep in until 8am and stay up until midnight.  If I cover the kitchen table with clay and glazes, it can sit there for days, and I don't have to worry about it or get it cleaned up.  If I spend an entire day slumped on the couch with my nose stuck in a book, well, so what?  I don't ever take naps, but that's not because I think it's wrong, it's just because my body doesn't ever want one. I have days when I never so much as turn on a TV or radio for the whole day.  I have days when I flip on the TV with my morning coffee and it never goes off again until I go to bed.  I no longer keep my eye on the clock at 3pm, 4pm, 5pm.  No one is coming home, no one needs dinner, no one is going to be there to see what I did with myself all day long.

And it's okay.  All of that is okay.

And I confess, I feel better now.  Still feeling guilty that I never "do" enough, but feeling better that, you know what?  I don't really have to do more, do different, do whatever.  I am getting over that pressure that society puts on women who stay at home.

I was worried when J took the promotion and started traveling full time.  We actually both worried about how our lives, together and individually, would change.  J was deeply concerned that I would fall into my old spiral of depression, and I would allow it to get the best of me.  In my 49 years on this earth, I've only lived alone for a little over two years of it.  That was the period when my ex-husband and I separated, and before J and I married.  Before I lived with my ex, I was at home with my parents.  So I didn't know how my new life would be.  Would I be scared, lonely, depressed, sad, bored? Surprisingly, none of the above.

True, I don't really live alone.  I have a husband.  He's home on the weekends, and he's here to take care of the lawn and the house and the cars.  He's here to whisk me away on a Friday night date, or a weekend in the mountains.  He's here to pay the bills and plan vacations and celebrate holidays.  He texts all day long, he calls for quick chats at least three times a day, if not more.  He is constantly sending me photos of his current location.  And in an emergency, he's only a plane ride away.  So in that respect, I am not truly alone.

But four nights a week, I do go to bed alone, eat dinner alone.  Four mornings a week I wake up alone, I make coffee by the cup and not the pot.  I know J is going through the same thing during his work week and hotel living.  And it's been okay, for both of us.  He is busy with his job, and for the most part he's working the same long hours as before, just in another city.  He has little time on the road to do anything but work and eat and sleep, which is what he was doing here anyhow.

If I had a different type of marriage and husband, perhaps I would worry.  I am not the overly bored, under sexed housewife of the soap operas or reality shows.  I'm not complaining about my husband never being home, never spending time with  me.  I'm not going to go roaming around out there "looking" for companionship.  And I do have complete and total confidence I am married to a man who would not do that, either.  So I don't sit around feeling jealous or worried or freaking out or having terrible thoughts.  And I know he's not sitting around feeling resentful or ignored or suspicious.  We're not trying to check up on each other or control each other's movements.  If he wants to go out to dinner with some of the guys from work, I am happy for him, not sitting at home wondering if he's flirting with a waitress or whatever.

On the other hand, it concerns me that we are both SO okay with being apart all week long.  I don't know if I should look at it as a good thing, that we both really are very secure in our marriage and our relationship, that the time apart is not going to cause any issues.  Or should I be worried that I like my time alone TOO much?  Does that mean I'm not cut out to be a wife?  I know, we've been married a decade now, but instead of sitting around pining for my husband and boohooing every time he leaves, I confidently pack his suitcase and kiss him goodbye and go about my life.  I enjoy the following days at home and about town, doing my own thing, working in my craft room, reading on the deck.  I look forward to J's calls and texts and emails.  Then I am happy when he returns home every Friday so we can have a fabulous weekend as a couple.

Maybe it's just because I'm a pessimist at heart, that I think because I am okay with our new arrangement, something must be wrong with me- instead of just saying I'm an adult with a healthy marriage and we're both mature and stable and happy and content.  I remind myself of one of my friends who works days, and whose husband has worked third shift their entire 25 year marriage.  They literally never see each other, until the weekends.  I have friends with airline pilot or long haul driver husbands who are never home.  I have friends with husbands who work on offshore oil rigs who are gone for one or two weeks at a time.  I have friends with husbands in the military who are stationed overseas.  It's just life.  Am I a shitty person, a terrible partner, a crappy wife, for being OKAY with my husband now being gone all the time??  It's not forever, he will retire eventually I know.  When he leaves on Monday, he will be home in a few days.

J is enjoying the new position as well, and he's finally starting to like the travel and the perks and his actual job of helping out the company's many locations with their issues.  The more he enjoys the work, the more I enjoy him having this job.  He's been able to make new friends, he's been able to go do fun things with other guys.  Dinners out with other people who can talk shop with him.  He's gone to baseball and hockey games, museums, even a zoo.  Hell, sometimes he even goes shopping to kill time in the evenings, and loves to surprise me with little trinkets when he comes home.  As long as he is content with this new job, I am thrilled with it too.

Being alone and being lonely are two different critters.  I am certainly not lonely.  And yes, of course I miss my husband when he is gone, but I am not a wretched lump while he is not here.  I don't have to have someone in my face 24/7 to enjoy my life.  I am actually very pleased with how things have turned out since J started traveling.  I feel more creative, I feel more centered, I feel more productive.  I feel independent, but with a safety net.  J feels less stress, he feels more appreciated by the company, and he feels more empowered in this new job.  I think it's been a win-win for us both.  Being more satisfied in our individual endeavors makes us a much more happier couple when we come together.

So I'm hoping for much more of the same for 2016, I like the current trend of life getting better for us both.  And more than that, I'm hoping to stop feeling guilty for NOT being miserable and sad while my husband is not here!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

MISS GEE!!!

Driving While In Neutral

Once this week is done, it will all be downhill.  And I mean that in a good way.

This week I am decorating the house for Christmas, alone.  J brought the tree up, and we slogged all the heavy containers up from the basement, and now I'm going through decorations and ornaments and lights and Christmas-themed coffee mugs and dishes.  Trying to decide what to put out or box back up.  Trying to decide what to put in a yard sale pile, and yes, even what to throw away because it's so old and beat up it's virtually useless.  My front entry looks like a thrift store exploded, as I unpack and unwrap it all.  I know this is the time of year that puts even the hardiest of souls through undue stress.  You can both love and hate the holidays simultaneously.

Thanksgiving is over, and that's a big one for me, because it's lots of miles on the road (800), lots of time (7 days) with both sides of our family, and time away from the comforts of home.  I don't hate Thanksgiving, I just dread it because it's always completely out of my control.  My family rents a mountain cabin, his family gathers at their childhood home.  We just show up at doorsteps with bags in hand.  I always feel a bit like an autumn leaf falling from the tree, gyrating to the whims of the wind.  I always feel out of place, even though it's family.  We get together to eat a meal that takes fifteen minutes, then I'm sitting around in a stupor and thinking, if only I was back at our house. Thanksgiving is fun, but with the typical strained episodes and uncomfortable conversations that happen in all families. Admittedly I'm always glad when Thanksgiving is over, so I can shed the unwieldy mantle of being a daughter/sister/aunt and come back to roost in my own castle.  And be my old miserable, cranky self.

Having said that, the last few years, Christmas has been more of a chore than a joy.  Maybe because I try to do too much, and do it all by myself.  Too big of a tree, too many strands of lights in the shrubs outside.  J and I do not exchange gifts anymore, and I've told my parents to stop bringing us unwanted gadgets and gizmos, just for the sake of giving gifts.  In fact all the adults in the family have agreed to stop exchanging gifts, and the younger nieces and nephews simply get gift cards from us.  I don't bake.  We don't have parties, and we don't go to them, even the ones we get invited to year after year.  Ignoring most of the names in my big address book, I send out only a select few Christmas cards to those people I honestly care about.  But I do enjoy Christmas, don't get me wrong- I am a sucker for blinking lights and shiny ornaments and parades and hearing carols from a choir and watching Rudolph pull Santa's sleigh across my TV screen every December.  I just prefer my holiday moments to remain the same as the rest of the shorter daylight hours of winter days- quiet, calm, private, uneventful.  And quite frankly, with the time change, my days wind down earlier and earlier.

This year of course, J is working on the road.  Normally I would decorate all day long and at night, he would come home from the office to help or to motivate me to get off the couch and do just a little bit more.  I would be equally as vexed as I would be grateful- loving the help but annoyed at his prodding me on when I was tired and wanted to clock out for the evening.  But the sooner we get it finished, the sooner we can sit back and relax and enjoy it all, that's his philosophy.  So this week I am trying to do just that.  I've placed little snowmen here and there all over the house (I'm not a Santa person), I've found a few treasures that I don't want anymore but will list in my Etsy vintage shop, and I've been sitting on the floor plugging up every strand of lights to make sure they work before I haul them out to the bushes.  And boy, it's sad and strange how many lights that were bright and happy last Christmas, seem to die alone in the dark of the basement throughout the year, without anyone there to witness it.  (Maybe that's a metaphor for life, I don't know.)  So I just sigh and resign myself to buying more, instead of spending hours trying to figure out which cancerous bulb is causing the entire string to stay unlit.

The tree is always the biggest obstacle to getting the house all decorated.  But it's the most rewarding as well.  I don't care what anyone else says, I think my Christmas tree is the most beautiful tree ever.  I might flip through glossy magazine pages and admire professionally tinseled trees, or ooh and aah when we see the trees decorated along little town main streets.  But they are not as pretty as my tree, the ten foot tall behemoth J bought for me our first Christmas as a married couple.  When we travel, I always buy ornaments as keepsakes, and every year when I put up the tree I can remember exactly where and when each glass memory was purchased.  Putting up the tree is a pain in the ass, because it's so big and it takes so long.  But it's also my favorite part of the holidays, and hanging ornaments gives me a reason to pause and think good thoughts and be grateful for the years I've spent with my amazing husband.  But I don't decorate the rest of the house too fancy, I just have a lot of doodads that I wander around with from room to room, trying to find a place in which to display each one.

After this week is over, it should all be complete.  J will come home Friday night and the inside of the house will be done, and then together we will do the outside of the house.  My old back and worn out knees will make their best effort to get the boxes cleaned up and carried back downstairs before he returns home.  It sucks because it's warm here, in the 70's this week, and it's been zapping my strength.  Warm winters are an unfortunate side effect of living in the south.  Yes I said unfortunate, because I want the weather to match the season, and everyone knows that Christmas should be all snowflakes and mittens and hot chocolate. Me, I'm in shorts and sweating and running my AC right now.  Hopefully we will get a nice arctic blast soon.  Maybe it's just me, but I always feel safer engulfed in a gigantic sweater.

My family won't be here for another three weeks, so I will get through this week and after that, I can have a bit of a breather.  I made J cancel our mountain trip that was planned for this upcoming weekend.  We just got back from the mountains with Thanksgiving.  So he pushed the reservations off until January.  I feel as though I'm just coasting along, and that's okay.  I do not envy those folks with full social calendars for the month of December.  I am okay with sitting by the fire and reading a good book in the evenings, wearing cat-shaped slippers and enveloping the house with the scent of sugar cookie candles.  When I get sleepy, I will close the pages on my homemade bookmark- a long slip of paper covered with a photo collage of our smiling faces from vacations past, cleverly laminated with packing tape.  Many of my acquaintances will gnaw their fingernails to the nub as they pencil in one more office party on the calendar, add yet another gift to buy to a growing list, and try to hurriedly get just one more batch of cookies in the oven.  There is nothing wrong with all of that.  It's just that I don't have to do any of that, so I don't.  Instead I can take a leisurely hot soak in my tub at the end of my winter day.  There is no one to disappoint, no one to notice my absence, no one who needs my attention.

And I have even more reason to be happy this year.  Normally J works through every holiday, always letting his guys with families have the time off while he mans the fort.  Every year J would slog home late on Christmas Eve, have only Christmas Day off, then slog right back to the office again the next morning.  This year, with the travel job, he comes home on December 23rd and doesn't have to go back to work until January 4th!  That, in itself, is the best holiday present I could ask for.  Right now I don't have to use the fake smile.  I actually feel real happiness.  And that's a good thing, because the previous months were soul-crushingly harsh and I didn't think I would ever get through them or get over them.

I plan to blog again next week, about non-holiday related items in my life.  But right now, I still have a bare tree staring at me from the corner of the living room, and I must go tend to it.

MISS GEE