Issues

I don't write a whole lot about G here. That's mostly because, until the last several months, there wasn't too much to write about. Sure, we fought every now and then over stupid stuff, but there was never anything major. Things were normal, and as such, not worthy of comment. Then there's also the fact that I'm not entirely comfortable writing about anything that does come up between us because it's not just my business I'm sharing with the world -- it's his, too. I've always figured, since it's just my blog, I should only share my business here.

The thing is, though, that things have taken a turn for the worse over the past several months, and I really need a place to get everything out. And now I figure, well, there are very few people here reading anyway, so what's the harm?

G and I are heading to marriage counseling in a couple weeks. I made the appointment yesterday. I wish I could put my finger on what's gone wrong, but I just can't. Is it the kids? I don't know. They're 16 months old now, and the issues we're having now seem to have cropped up much more recently than that. We certainly can't blame them on sleep deprivation like we could've a year ago. It just seems like he and I are never, ever on the same page. Much of it has to do with the fact that I've been staying home with P & E, despite having very large student loans which are a long way from being paid off. He's been happy to have me home with them, and yet he hasn't been. He loves that they get to spend all their days with mommy instead of with a sitter, but at the same time, he's very resentful of losing several hundred dollars a month out of his paycheck to a student loan that isn't his own. Meanwhile, while I am an excellent mom (if I do say so myself) I'm not so much of a housekeeper. I spend all day, every day, playing with, reading to, changing, chasing, and feeding the babies. When he gets home, the house shows it. I try to keep up with it, I really do, but number one, I'm BUSY, and number two, I just don't have the same standards that he does regarding what constitutes a clean and orderly home. This adds to his resentment. He's working his ass off, paying my bills and his, and when he comes home, things are not as he envisions they should be. So then he spends any free time he has that he's not taking care of the babies cleaning up the house, and he has no free time whatsoever to do anything he enjoys. He rarely says anything to me, but then one day we'll have an argument over something completely unrelated, and that's when it will come out -- along with remarks about what I'm doing with HIS money. There are other things too, of course, but then this could turn into the longest blog entry of all time.

What it comes down to is, these days, we're fighting much more often than we're happy. I'm doing my best, and he's doing his best, but we're still coming up short. I didn't want to call a counselor. It makes me feel like a failure somehow. But I just didn't know what else to do. I don't want to raise P & E in an environment where mommy and daddy only communicate to snap and/or yell at each other. So I really, really hope the woman we see next month can help us. Right now, too often, I feel like I'm just about to lose it.

Updates

Let's see. While there have been no major events happening around my place, there have been a few odds and ends.

1) I haven't heard anything yet from fender bender lady. Maybe that's a good sign, but maybe it just means she's taken her car to the body shop and isn't going to bother calling me. She'll just send me the bill in the mail.

2) This weekend G and I took our first overnight trip out of town without P & E. We went to wine country with another couple and had a FABULOUS time. I'm wondering why no one introduced me to this beautiful beverage in college, because it seems that no matter how much of it I drink, I always wake up feeling fine the next morning. The same cannot be said for vodka, rum, or Bud Light, which were the staples of my undergraduate and law school years.

3) Next week I officially start babysitting for the two little girls I've mentioned here before. My trial run with all four kids (babies, really -- the oldest among them isn't even 3 yet) went well, so I'm not too worried about it. Really, the only worrisome thing about the whole situation is that I don't yet know how much I'll be getting paid. I'm starting in six days, so you'd think this is the sort of thing we'd have hammered out by now, but we haven't. I guess I'm just banking on not getting screwed based on the fact that they don't have a backup plan in place. If I bail because they're not paying enough, what are they going to do?

4) P & E are no longer walking. They are running -- everywhere, all the time. They're climbing, too. You would think, then, that I might actually be losing weight trying to keep up with them and keep them from hurting themselves. You would be wrong. Instead, to my horror, I've discovered that I have already gained 11 pounds since the height of my nursing days. Yes, that's right. 11 pounds in about 6 months. Yikes!

Oops

Got into a fender bender today. I am so pissed. Of course the car I hit was both 1) white (mine's black); and 2) brand new.

Just exactly what I needed. *sigh*

And then I realized I've become the most boring person alive

Had a friend in from Washington DC this weekend. We've known each other since college -- had a blast together for all three years we knew each other back then. She was one of my bridesmaids back in the day, too. Since then, though, our lives have taken very different paths. She moved from Smalltown Illinois to DC where she found a job she loves. She's been married and divorced and has no plans, at this time, to EVER marry again, let alone have any kids. She's grown to love the big city life, too, and will never consider coming back to live in a tiny dot on the map like this.

I, on the other hand, married my high school/college sweetheart and then left town for law school only to discover that I HATED the big city and didn't want to spend one minute longer there than was absolutely necessary. Moved back to Smalltown with G, worked for two years, then quit to become a babysitter and later a SAHM. And, of course, had two kids who are basically my only company all day, every day. Looking at these two paragraphs, it's obvious to me which is more exciting. Aside from the divorce part, hers is the life I kind of thought I'd lead back in college. But I'm happy. I'm almost ridiculously happy most of the time.

It's just that this kind of happiness, brought about by days at home with my darling babies, doesn't translate to much of anything interesting when I come in contact with anyone who doesn't also stay home with their kids. It occurred to me, this weekend, that I've become one of those women who drove me CRAZY when I didn't have kids myself. I really don't have much of a life, or much of anything to talk about, besides them. And that feels strange.

I know I only have a handful of readers here, but for those few of you who are out there -- any thoughts on this? What can I do, outside of getting a job and rejoining the "real world" to become interesting again?