Ingrid Undone

Calm

2006-03-05T12:31:00.000-08:00

It will be okay.

Even if we divorce, it will be okay.

When there are kids, ending a marriage doesn't mean ending the family.

We've never stumbled on our commitment to prioritize the kids; divorce won't change that.

If our old friends drop me, I'll make new ones.

If my in-laws shun me, I'll survive.

I can support the kids and myself. I can give into an ex-husband happily if I can have my own life. I can remarry if I want.

Even if we divorce, it will be okay.

Well, keep the divorce lawyer's number handy, just in case.

2006-03-04T10:44:00.000-08:00

What a horrible week.

We had our second session with the marriage counselor. I have some serious give-up-on the marriage, call-out-the-divorce-posse issues with the conclusions the MC has drawn.

To wit: PFX is just a super guy with no issues, except, just maybe, a little bitty communication problem. Meanwhile, That Ingrid puts the screws on her poor husband by requiring him to prove his love by acknowledging her feelings. Evil twat! (Okay, I admit, the counselor didn't call me a evil twat. Too bad for him, it's a giveaway considering the implications of his conclusion.)

MC: So, Ingrid, by your own admission, he's nice to you, he makes an effort, why should he have to keep proving his love this way over and over?

Me: You can't KEEP doing something you've never fucking DONE before.

Maybe the MC was articulating my (rather inarticulate) husband’s position. Maybe it’s some kind of new! improved! with more irony than ever! therapy device. But the bottom line is, I resent the hell out of the implication that needing something your husband won’t dish out = needy/demanding/unreasonable.

I mean, really. Really! I’m asking the man to acknowledge that I’m not morally bankrupt for having an occasional feeling. I want him to admit that it’s not unreasonable for one partner in a marriage to take into account the other partner’s feelings, much as we take the weather forecast into account when dressing for the day. I’m not asking for anything requiring heroic effort or oxygen masks or moral compromise or hours in a shopping mall.

Really, can you imagine a MC saying something to a husband like “Why does she have to keep on fucking you over and over again to prove her love? By your own admission, she fixes your meals, cleans your house, and had sex with you once in 1994? Why isn’t that enough?”

Or to a wife, “Look! He put a down payment on the house and paid the bills for a whole year! He doesn’t beat you, he doesn’t molest the kids. So he’s not paying the bills now, so what? Why is that so important to you? Don’t you think that puts pressure on him?”

So, that was bad, and it got worse on the way home. Husband jumped all over me for something else that had come up in the session: I "drop" things.

It's true, my plea is totally guilty: I say something, finish, and don't ask for a response.

When the MC brought it up, I explained. For years, I would bring something up and PFX would change the subject. If I asked if he heard, understood, had a response, we inevitably ended up in a fight about me being too demanding, yelling at him, blah blah boring blah. So years ago, I gave up. I have no control over his responses. I say what I need to say. Full stop. If he wants to comment, inquire, pursue, whatever, it's there, I'm there, there's nothing stopping him. Otherwise, I move on.

Sadly, PFX didn't catch the amazing nuance involved in cause and effect. What he DID get is 1) Ingrid's demands are unfair, the MC even thinks so, and 2) Ingrid gave up on being demanding, and therefore gave up on the marriage. OK! I’m not stupid, I got it! It's my fault I'm too demanding! And it's my fault I stopped being demanding! I wanted to beat his head with sharp rock, but we were in the car. and then when he got home, he used his newly-acquired mad conciliation skillz, which don't involve admission of wrongdoing but help in de-escalation and we moved on. Sort of.

I woke up the next morning just flattened. If even marriage counseling reinforced his idea that I'm the crazy one destroying the marriage and he's nearly faultless, we have no hope. I can't live in PFX’s bizarro universe, and I think I've chosen a marriage counselor that lives in the same place.

The D word has been uttered.

Take two aspirin and don't call the divorce lawyer in the morning

2006-02-21T19:26:00.000-08:00

We saw a marriage counselor today.

I'm not sure what to think.

I had planned to commit to four sessions, two weeks apart. I had planned to continue the conversation outside the therapy sessions. I had planned to have this over with, one way or another, before June.

I don't think it's going to work that way.

I had planned to quickly apprise the counselor of the family situation, and we did. I had planned to lay out my complaint and have it addressed. That's where I was, just perhaps, a bit unrealistic.

You can't really do that in therapy. You can't say: Here we are and this is what you must know. 1. His mother was a severely incapacitated alcoholic. 2. His father is a sociopath. 3. He is completely disconnected from me, from my emotional life. 4. The first three facts are related. 5. Unless we can change #3 by June, I shall engage a divorce lawyer sooner or later.

Instead, I shut up. The counselor asked questions. I let the husband do as much of the talking as possible.

The counselor was sharp. When H described the trip he'd planned for us, the C said: "And you planned all this in order to improve things between you."

"No, no," replied my husband. He went on to explain that he did it because it would be fun, he thought we should celebrate our anniversary, it was the right thing to do.

"Which isn't the same as trying to make her happy or make things better," the C said.

Really, I didn't say anything I haven't said a million times: I appreciate him, he is a good person, but the lack of connection is one step from a deal-breaker (and inching forward).

And he didn't say anything I haven't heard or don't know already: he's okay with my being unhappy, he's not concerned or hurt that I'm disappointed, it's all going to be fine in the end.

Does it help? I don't know; there is something gratifying about someone else hearing this and quietly acknowledging that he's a little......off. So should we keep going? I don't know.

I only know this is absolutely the only thing I can think of.

New Year's Resolutions

2005-12-30T15:18:00.000-08:00

I had the suckiest night last night ever.

I went to C's boy scout leader's home to make arrows of light. I love C's leader, she's sweet, and down-to-earth, and friendly and kind and works her tail off for the boys. But she also made me realize how far I've strayed from what I hoped to become as a mother, as a person. Instead of making a warm and wonderful home for the boys, I'm running off to work, where I can feel like a normal person instead of a failure. Instead of making friends and community connections and giving back and all that shit, I'm paralyzed with fear and resentment, clinging to old college friends and work friends and SPED friends. It's all I can do. But it doesn't work that well for my family. I'm sorry, I just don't know how to be different.

I worked at home today, and the malaise lingered. The house is disgusting, even clean. We're poor. The rest of the world is rich. I don't have the strength of character to make it work.

The sun goes down, and things get better, I don't know why. Here are my resolutions to get me through tomorrow's malaise:

Go to the Post Office with the Bean and Sahalie stuff
Take EVERYTHING you ever thought you'd sell on Ebay to Goodwill. You will make very little money on it. You will earn more money if you are not bummed out by all the shit. Hello, grant-writing can't be done in a blue funk.
Take your overdue books back to the library and get books on Spain and April.
Plan your vacation.
Get to the gym so you don't look like a cow in Spain or Rome in April.

Here's to me.

Forecast today: decreasing suckage on the marriage front

2005-12-28T19:44:00.000-08:00

In the few months I haven't posted, the marriage has gone the predictable route of the rocky relationship: better by turns, worse again, much worse, to better again. We've made plans for next year, talked about counseling, taken vacations, had a few cold, bitter weeks, made up, and had one nuclear fight over buying jeep which actually was...

Are you sitting down? Have a drink in hand? Taken your heart medicine?

...resolved.

I don't like how, but really, it's something.

In brief (is it possible?): he wanted a new jeep with a soft top and a hard top. Such a purchase necessitates him storing one as he uses the other and we just do not have room. It's a simple do-the-math kind of thing, really. Square footage of garage space < than square footage of garage junk (tools, projects, paint cans, meat smokers, old deck furniture). This is already a problem in my head, and will become a tangible problem in our bank account when we attempt to sell the house and find it's not so easy to get top dollar when the garage could have been one of the sets for Train-Spotting.

In this corner: me.
Armor: an unattractive persistance (and perverse pleasure) in driving home unpleasant realities
Position: Choose. Presuming you want a new house and a sane wife, you cannot have both 1) a jeep this year and 2) the shit in the garage. Possible choices: 1) Get rid of the shit, the tools, the projects, the paint cans, the crap you collected from he friend you helped move, and then get jeep. 2) Buy a $1600 pre-built storage shed for all shit and buy jeep now. Or 3) Wait until we sell and move to a bigger house and then buy the jeep.

In that corner: him.
Armor: the demeanor of a 14 year old whose parents have taken away his stereo: sullen pissiness, impervious to reason
His position: he wants it, he deserves it, he's thought about it, fuck the mad bitch he married. He'll figure out the garage thing. None of anyone's business when or how.

Result: stalemate.

Round and round and round we went. I stayed calm, if rather nasty. He stayed pissy and sullen. Hours went by. He explained to me that every minute we talked, it robbed him of the pleasure of buying the thing. I explained to him that he couldn't just go buy the thing without any sort of plan. Round and round. The sighs got deeper. Nothing was resolved. Then he looked at his watch.

It wasn't the first time, probably, but it was the most blatent. After hours of calm, I went nuclear.

"Get. OUT." I screamed. "GET OUT. Or I will." I half-ran to the car, grabbing at any odds and ends of mine, since presumably the volvo would be replaced by a jeep in the next hour. Back in the house, I threw the keys in his general direction. I started up the stairs. I ran back and screamed something hopelessly incoherant about how that was the nastiest thing he could do, to display such contempt for me even as I was trying to come to some agreement with him about something so important to both of us. I ran back up the stairs, into my office and sat down at the computer to look for anything interesting to read so I could calm down.

And only then - after hours of trying to be calm and reasonable - only after I completely blew, did my husband come upstairs ready to have an adult conversation.

Which we did.

Voicemail

2005-04-08T15:21:00.000-07:00

It makes my skin crawl.

Now that I'm working, my friends and kids use the cell phone, so that's where all the important calls go. I keep my cell on; I tend to answer it, since the only people who have that number are people I want to talk to. I know who called. I know who left a message. No need for a stiff drink before I call the message center.

When I get home, never before 6, the last thing I'm going to do is check the home voicemail. So it piles up all week and I tackle it, well, eventually.

I'm usually multi-tasking when I finally call in - emptying the dishwasher, surfing the net, picking up dog poop in the yard. This is not because I'm terribly efficient working mother (ha!) but because the anxiety between "you have FOUR new messages" messages and the actual message is just. too. much. Even when I'm diligently checking out other blogs while I wait for the message, I've got a slice of brain madly doing the terror dance until I hear enough to know that the message is not an ominously abbreviated "Please call as soon as possible" from one of my parents, is not a call from my kids' school reporting that someone beat up my kid, is not a call from a credit agency telling me I'm liable for a gazillian dollar debt of unknown origin, they don't have the records, but if I don't pay up, they'll trash my credit rating.

For the record, it's never been one of the above.

It has, however, been the school nurse telling me my kid needs more shots and the school needs proof. It has been a repairman pointing out I wasn't home at the appointed time. (huh? My husband made the appointment, not me.) It has been the town librarian, reminding me in a tone of voice that would freeze the sun, that my books are overdue. Cringe.

Honestly, these calls make me feel bad enough. They sometimes feel like a punch in the stomach. They remind me how much I suck at the minutiae of life, that I'm not really that great at multi-tasking. The truth is, bi-tasking is more my style. I know where my kids and my job are. What more do you want?

I totally understand why people dispense with their land lines in favor of cell phones. Believe me, I've considered it. But if I did, I'd have to start giving my cell out to the library, the cable company, and all kind of other people I'd rather not talk to. Plan B: suck it up and keep getting my messages every few weeks or so.

Daylight fucking savings time

2005-04-04T16:33:00.000-07:00

This morning? Owwww.

Woke up at six, although my body screamed FIVE , to hear C moaning piteously in the next room.

He fell asleep reading last night, hadn't done his paragraph, and it was already six (five, dammit), too late to get ready for school by seven AND finish the schoolwork. Meanwhile, he was sick. His head felting like it was MELLLTING. He was dizzy. He wanted to stay home.

Don't think I wasn't tempted. Me, C, the cleaning lady and a nice peaceful day.

But instead, we muscled through the dressing and breakfast thing, and then I helped him outline the paragraph. At some point I realized we were cutting it close and the animals hadn't been fed, so I asked D to pitch in. And he started on the harangue, and wouldn't stop. Would. Not. Stop. I snapped that he was rude and had lost Play Station, and here we went into the fifth dimension of the frantic harangue. He didn't know he'd been rude! He was sorry! He didn't mean a word of it! I can't punish him if he didn't know it was rude! He wouldn't stop talking until I removed his punishment!

Just shoot me now, I've given birth to a male version of myself.

TheTonight Show: Single Parenthood

2005-04-03T16:36:00.000-07:00

My husband is travelling. Woo hoo, pop a cork! Blast the music, get out the limbo sticks and fizzy umbrella drinks, the boys and I are going to par-tay!

Or maybe we'll have dinner in the living room, in our jammies, while we watch SNL recorded from last night. Oh, wait - we just did. Now the younger is asleep with his book, the older is reading, and I'm blogging a little without an acrid plume of disapproval wafting up the stairs. Ahhhhh, sweet.

This blog has become a story of why I want to divorce, and why I'm probably not divorcing. I guess this entry belongs in the first category.

I like my husband in a social situation, he's funny, he's pleasant, he's an all-around good guy. Really. It's not an act. He genuinely means well. It's just that, well...

Here's the thing: I need my home to be a haven, a place I can recharge my batteries and reconnect with my family. I want to be able to talk on the phone, fool around on my computer, stare at the walls without passing judgement on whether or not these are appropriate activities.

When he's home, there's a price to be paid for certain passtimes. Reading and housework and some tv are okay; but if I want to chat with my mom, spend time or the internet, or run an unapproved errand, I pay for it with his disapproval. Here's the galling part: I'm not much of a phone person and I love to read. But when I cut short a conversation or pick up a book, suddenly it becomes about keeping him happy, not about doing what I need or want to do.

Deep down, I hold the conviction that certain things are a matter of choice or taste, and no one has the right to pass judgement on someone else. I hate that his office is a complete pit, while he's totally anal about keeping the cars clean. It annoys me that he watches cop shows every night and insists on having a tv in the dining room. I don't get how he can go weeks without seeing his friends. But - here's the difference - I don't hold that these things are inherently wrong or should inspire shame or be changed. I don't think I'm morally superior because my office is cleaner, I watch less tv, I maintain friendships.

It goes back to the old Peace Corps thing "not better, not worse, just different."

So I'm the Peace Corps and he's some kind of totalitarian junior high bully: my way or you suck.

Like I said, he's a nice guy. This is one of his few real character flaws, but after nearly fifteen years of marriage, I've decided it's a doozy. If my car is messy, he's disgusted. If I talk with my mom or sister for too long, he's annoyed. If I'm on the computer too long, I suck. If I'm upstairs too long, I suck, because he assumes I'm on the computer. Neither of us are great at organization. He's paid a bill late, well, a few times. Okay. I've come running home for my phone or scrambled around for my keys more than once, and it's a moral failing.

The most difficult part: he doesn't speak his thoughts but wears them on his face, in his tone of voice. The boys and I know exactly what he thinks; at the same time, he is unwilling to defend opinions he hasn't articulated, perhaps understandably. No discussion is possible, so we just go on doing what we need to do, and he goes on disapproving, quietly but with an occasional nasty crack, and I hate living this way.

He'll be travelling more in the next few months - probably less than a day a week, but lord, what a relief.

Cha cha cha!

2005-03-30T18:31:00.000-08:00

Remember when you were dating? More important, remember the post-mortems with your girlfriends after every date? Remember the endless status reports and analyses about relationships, when everyone weighed in with an opinion? I loved that. And when I got married, it stopped.

Maybe it didn't for everyone. But where I live, among the women I hang with, we moan, we joke, we roll our eyes, but we don't talk about real marital problems until we're ready to meet with the divorce lawyer. I don't think I can change that. You can blame my idiotic sense of privacy, my loyalty to the guy I'd nonetheless like to divorce, or - just maybe - the fact that no one else I know is sharing either, and I'm not going to be first, nuh uh, not me.

But the inability to compare notes leaves me.....wondering. It's hard to place our problems in perspective - was he being a complete asshole when he said that or am I acting like an oversensitive nutjob? Are Our Issues the enormous deal-breakers that I often think they are, or tiny irritations in the larger scheme of things? Should I thank my lucky stars he didn't cheat on me with a thousand crack whores, or worse, his ex-girlfriend, when I was pregnant or should I take my ball and go home until he agrees to counseling?

I'd like to say dramatically enter: the Net!, but to be frank, there isn't that much online, except for divorce lawyers. There are message boards with decent divorce threads. There are a few blogs written by people who are divorcing, but so far the blogging divorcees are either 1) boring, bitter, and not much help or 2) so interesting that everyone in real life reads her blog, and so s/he doesn't dare publish the real dirt.

Shame.

Tangled

2005-03-29T20:22:00.000-08:00

There's a quote I heard long ago that made perfect sense once I had my first child: "A mother is only as happy as her unhappiest child."

Whose happiness is necessary for your own?

Today as I rode home on the train, I thought about the people - beyond my kids, of course - whose happiness I can't separate from mine. One is my sister, an amazing person, with her own business and fan club, and, well, mojo. She walks into a room preceded by her own rockin' theme song. She is also pushing thirty and not married.

Now, from the perspective of someone who married young and blind (that's me, folks), this is just dandy. At 30, a lot of us are just beginning to get the adult thing down. A few years of the real world under our belts, the most egregious career/lifestyle/love object mistakes out of the way. It's a good place from which to start considering settling down; before 30, marriage is more likely to be one of the egregious mistakes.

But Sis and I also come from a place where there's a teeeeensy little worry about being on the shelf. Past, say, 26 or so. I mean, it's no accident I was married at 26.

She's not exactly worried, but her attitude towards dating has shifted a bit. She's always been, well, good at dating. She goes on Dates with a capital D, to movies, to concerts, to dinner, to plays, and worries not whether the date guy will call, because she already has another one booked for the next night. She never mindfucks it. I admire that more than the line of guys at her door.

But now her enjoyment of it has slid away from breezy and into anxious. Her last boyfriend was a charismatic wife-shopper and she threw caution to the wind. It ended badly, painfully. And it was painful for me to watch.

I love all of my friends, and when things go badly for them, I feel terrible. I want to be there for them, and usually I am. I've taken a weekend to help a divorcing friend move, planned a funeral, babysat kids last minute, made dinners, spent hours on the phone, glad to do whatever might help. But honestly? I don't literally stay awake at night worrying about most of them. But my sister - her pain at what was, let's face it, a routine breakup kept me from sleeping. It gave me a sense of unrest and worry as I went about my day, even when I wasn't thinking about it.

Tonight I had a long talk with a close friend. It's not a situation about which I can blog; but I came to a fuller realization of the sadness involved. And I think I'll be awake at night and carrying that worry during the day because of it.

It's interesting to note who keeps me awake and who doesn't. That's all.

My husband is in the doesn't bucket, sad to say. It's not that I don't care about him; I do, and I'd do anything for him that I'd do for my friends and more. But somehow, I'm detached. I suppose it's because I actually know less about his inner workings than I do those of most my friends; he certainly knows little about mine.

Is this normal in a marriage?

Quotable Boyos

2005-03-28T19:37:00.000-08:00

From D, during a conversation about a friend whose parents are divorced.

"It doesn't matter if your parents are still divorced. If there's no kids, then you don't have to see the other person again, but if there are kids, it doesn't matter. You're still a family."

Huh.

And from C:

"You know what's funny about Pixar movies? The woman are really skinny but have HUGE butts."

Today's List

2005-03-16T17:35:00.000-08:00

Pros and Cons to (temporary) Single Parenthood

No one else to fetch boys from aftercare, so must rush from city to burbs early.
No one else to make dinner, but no problem, ribs in the cooker since 7 a.m. (dusts hands)
Quiet morning; putting ribs in the cooker was feasible.
No one looking dismayed at the sight of ribs alone for dinner, and to hint that a good mother would set table and serve salad, veg, starch, drinks and dessert as well.
No one else to tidy up afterwards.
Easy tidying up, thanks to no salad, veg, starch, etc. etc.
No one else to haul youngest child back to aftercare to fetch forgotten homework.
No one else to help with homework.
Exhaustion after rushing home, fetching boys, serving dinner, tidying, fetching homework from aftercare, and helping with homework.
No one to raise eyebrows when I fall into my big deliciously empty bed at 9:oo with a good book.

I could live like this.

Please explain

2005-02-21T10:15:00.000-08:00

I'm not a self-destructive person. I avoid the habits I know could become my own personal oxycontin, like watching day-time tv, getting hooked on chocolate croissants, and making a habit of the evening bottle of wine.

I manage to exercise a couple of times a week, get my minimum of sleep most nights; I keep in reasonable touch with most of my friends. In short, I do the things I need to do to stay healthy and sane.

So why can't I remember to take my pills more that two or three days a week?

Harmless little thyroid pills. There's no reason not to take them. No terrible taste or stomach-turning side-effects. Two little nothing-pills that keep my heart from racing and my appetite from morphing from bird-like into incredible hulkish. Without them, I'm crabby and hungry and edgy and sleepless. With them, I'm only crabby, hungry, or edgy with good cause, and nevermind sleepless, that's what the sleeping pills are for.

I never forget the sleeping pills.

The magic word for the day: dope-slap.

File this under "good mother"

2005-02-06T06:51:00.000-08:00

So somehow it came out that Darling Nephew gets his temperature taken...well, to quote his father (my brother in law) "up his butt."

Brother in law mentions this casually, while walking into the kitchen. I am left in the dining room with the two boyos whose jaws have hit the dining room table and are staring at me in disbelief.

"You didn't know they did that, did you?" I said.

"You're kidding, right?" says Younger.

"Nope," I said. "It's hard to make sure a baby keeps the thermometer under his tongue, so most doctors tell you to take the baby's temperature that way. I never did that to you."

"There should be a law against that." say Older.

"That's what I thought when I was little," I said. "That's why I never did that to you."

"That one reason I'm glad I have you for my mother." says Younger.

How I pander.

Snow Day

2005-01-24T15:49:00.000-08:00

In the world of public school, there are many snow days. When it begins to snow and the superintendents worry the buses might slip and slide, well, it might be time for a snow day. When it gets really, really cold, too cold to snow, even, but there's already snow on the ground, it just might be time for a snow day. When the forecast is snow overnight, and none of the meteorologists will pinky-swear that it will stop in time to make sure all the roads are clear by the first bus run at approximately 4 a.m., it might be time for a snow day. When the calender says February and there haven't been many snow days so far and there's a great sale at Wayland golf, well, I'm sure you can guess: it might be time for a snow day.

Not that I'm complaining, mind you. My kids and their snow-day program provider aren't complaining, either. I'm just pointing out that it costs me a little over $112 everytime Wayland Golf has a sale in February and I don't usually spend that kind of money without scrutinizing the reasons behind it.

There are very few snow days in the world of work. Managers of the world are funny about that; a lot of them golf, but apparently don't belong to the same golf clubs as the school superintendents. Imagine.

Anyway, in all the years I've worked, I've been home for weather reasons exactly once: I was sent home shortly after noon in October of 1991 because of a hurricane warning.

Today, I'm home for weather reasons for the second time in my post-college life. That is momentous. I will try to make this particular storm appear worthy of this honor: Nor'easter! Blizzard! Entire new mountains ranges of snow! Blizzard! Snow! Lots of it!

All falling over the weekend, and all cleared away by this morning where I live, but never mind.

And here's the amazing part: the kids were in school. For them, it was not a snow day.

So what did I do?

I got an extra large coffee and found my favorite coffee shop had no heat $2.72
I delivered handwarmers for the nice people who make my coffee every morning: $4.00 more or less
I got a manicure/pedicure $46 (with tip)
I picked a few things up at CVS $10.21

Total: $62.83, or approximately $50 less than I would have spent if the tables had been turned.

Definitely a better deal.

Blowing this popsicle stand

2005-01-21T05:44:00.000-08:00

Today is the last weekday for the next 12+ months that I'm not fully employed. Anyone who knows me is breathing a sigh of relief - when I don't have work, I'm cranky and tense and snappish and in general, n0t the kind of person anyone wants to hang around.

The problem is, of course, that once I start working, I'll have no time to hang around.

On balance, any job in my field is a positive and this one has a lot going for it. But today I'm thinking about all the negatives. The tight schedule - right now, if the kids are a few minutes late for early morning music, well, they are a few minutes late, along with the rest of the orchestra or brass ensemble. Starting Monday, if they are a few minutes late, their father will have to drive them. Since I'm the Nice Parent in the morning and I like driving them to school, we all lose.

And the late nights. I'll need to be up by six at the latest, which I don't mind in and of itself, but that doesn't work with my favorite 10:30 to midnight shift on the sofa with a book or dvd. The early evening is packed with homework, dinner, and tidying up, and prep for the next day, and even when that's done, someone else is in front of the tv. At 10:30, my husband goes to bed and it's my turn, to read while I listen to music, to watch old episodes of Sports Night or a documentary or something I've tivoed . Starting Sunday (or if I'm smart, last night) that same 10:30 will find me in bed.

I was going to say "regular workouts," but to be strictly accurate I should say "the possibility of making it to the gym one of these days." Okay, I get there at least 2 or 3 times a month. Enough to prevent weight gain, if not enough to actually cause weight loss or build muscle mass. Enough to keep me generally apprised of what's going on in the life of my best friend, who works out on the treadmill beside me.

And coffee time - well, the possibility of having coffee with Jen, Joan, Sara, Betsy, Kate, and Anne or some combination thereof. Never mind that we haven't done since October or so. It's funny to note that of those women, only two of us work at all.

So there we are, my list of losses: late night dvds, an occasional workout or coffee with friends, a slightly flexible morning schedule. Damn good thing I'm going back to work, I think.

Here I am....

2005-01-11T13:20:00.000-08:00

undone, unshowered, and unsure I really need a blog.

I've wondered how other bloggers decide both what level of personal information to post and how public to make it. For me, there's an inverse relationship - the more personal the information, the less willing I am to have people in my life read it. Maybe in this blog, I'll find my level of comfort.

No one I know needs to know I'm here unless I tell them, so for now it's a journal to play with my thoughts on parenthood, marriage, work, depression, the blogosphere, and my latest snarky comments about New Stepford.

Hello, strangers!