date night…
At this very moment, I’m on a date… with Eliza. And Mike is on a date… with Griff.
This is part of our new monthly tradition of date night with the kids. I felt like I wasn’t getting enough alone time with the kids, so I added date night to our fall goals. The last Friday of every month, we will be engaged with the kids. Tonight, it’s girls’ night/man night. Next month, we’ll swap. And on it will go.
I figure that Griff’s getting older and is getting to the point where he’s going to want to talk with us less and less and the more opportunities we give him to talk to us, the better. And the closer we all get to one another, the better.
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happily happy … even ever after
Next week, Mike and I will celebrate our 16th anniversary. I am delighted to say that we will celebrate it happily. There were times during this last year when I wasn’t so sure.
Mike and I have always been easy. Things between us just flow. We have had difficult times… times when the world around us was difficult, when situations were difficult, when this or that wasn’t easy. But rarely have we had times when things between us weren’t easy. But this last year was pretty much one long exercise in not easy between us.
As I approached my 40th birthday, I had to do some looking at myself and my life, and I was unsettled for a time. In the midst of that, I had a man hit on me & I was flattered, I admit. And then for a period last year, Mike didn’t so much groove to me for reasons of his own. As I talked to my girlfriends about what I was going through, I was surprised (but reassured) to discover how many women in my age range were struggling with similar issues.
Choices we made 10, 15, 20 years ago that seemed reasonable at the time seemed to have snowballed into something unmanageable now. Sure, hon, I’ll take a job doing something I don’t love so you can pursue your passion but once you’re all established, I’ll switch to something more suited to me. You go get your degree & I’ll put you through school with the understanding that once you’re done, it’ll be my turn. Little sacrifices that made sense, that were supposed to be just the beginning in a tit for tat situation somehow turned into a lifetime of something else. Tit never turned into tat. Old habits turned into lifestyles. And too often, we looked up and wondered if we made the right choices.
But, blessedly, with some work, we ended the year as we began it… happily together. Last weekend, as I got a pedicure, the nail tech laughed after I told a story (because I will tell a story!) and said, “You’ve lived. I can tell in your laugh. You laugh so you don’t cry, to keep things together.” I thought that was the best compliment. Because we have lived, and we are laughing. And in some ways, I’m grateful for this last year, hard though it was, because it reaffirmed for me that this is exactly where I want to be. Even when it’s challenging, I want to be with Mike.
To be walking this path with him, to figure out this life as we go along… seems like a pretty good deal to me.
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weebles
After my delightful trip with LeeAnn, I landed to a spinning world. Literally, my own personal little world has been spinning for more than two weeks. I made an appointment to see a neurologist near Orlando who specializes in balance disorders, and he was just crazy helpful (especially compared to the neurologist I saw for my migraines). He did some testing a week or so ago and determined that my on-and-off vertigo for the last five years has been due to an untreated virus that’s been dormant (or not, depending upon the day) in my system all this time.
And he was kind enough to put me on medication that’s helped ease the dizziness (except when it hasn’t). But he put me on this horrid sleepy med, and I feel like I’m gliding through my summer in a fog. I’m on the meds for three months, and I’m so hoping they clear this up permanently, but I’m frustrated and a little skeptical at this point.
I hate always feeling off balance, skimming the walls next to me with my fingertips so that I’m always in contact with something hoping not to fall down (like I did in the parking lot at work last week). I hate having to need other people so much, though I know that’s something I need to work on..
I had gotten to a point in my life where I was feeling so strong, so … good, in general. And then, all of a sudden, I was hit with this, and while it seems like such a little thing, I am frustrated by how strongly it has affected me. I went from running and feeling empowered by how well I was doing with the Couch to 5k program to barely staying awake until Eliza goes to bed. When I told Mike I wanted to start again, he said I had to prove that I could walk the block without falling before I could start running again.
I want the meds to work, and I want them to work just right now. I’m not very good at waiting. And the meds make me tired on top of the fatigue from the dizziness. And it’s summer. And I want to come home and play. But I’m not quite there yet. Mike said to me the other day that I was a little wobbly, like a Weeble. Except, of course, that the Weebles never fell down.
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friends since forever…
Last weekend, in celebration of the fact that we would both turn 40 this year, my oldest and dearest friend and I took a trip together. We boarded flights in our separate states and landed separately (thanks to several screw-ups on the part of Delta) in the sweet land of Savannah. And we spent a really fabulous three days together.
The two of us met when we were barely older than Griff. She was in seventh grade (which he will enter next fall), and I was in eighth. We were in PE, and we were walking around an endless track. Our walking speeds matched, and we began to talk. We haven’t much stopped since. We’ve been together through psycho boyfriends (mine), heartbreaks, laughter, tears, family crazies, husbands, children, jobs, moves, loves and loss. And we’ve already planned where to go for our 50th birthdays.
We rode the trolley tour, and we walked the river walk, and we listened to the bands play outside the restaurant in the cool air. I freaked out my son when he read on Facebook that I was having dinner and drinks (it’s good for him to realize I’m a real person and not just a mom).
But mostly, we laughed. And I remembered how really amazing it is to be with someone who knows me. I am astounded at how effortless it was for us to be together. She and I haven’t seen each other since before we moved to Florida… four years or so. And we haven’t lived in the same town in 20 years… the same state in well, 15 or so (my math is bad). But the time we spent together flowed easily. I missed her as soon as we turned to head for our separate flights in Atlanta.
God has blessed me through the years with a steady stream of perfectly lovely friends to carry me through each phase of my life. Moreover, He has blessed me with a small handful of people who are traveling the length and breadth of this life with me. This particular friend is one of those.
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