And then there was Sunday.

5:15 a.m.: Riley's up. He wakes me up. He wakes Maddie up. I try to sleep a bit more, but he and Maddie proceed to argue about anything and everything until I give up, give in, get up, and lecture them both about being respectful of people who are sleeping.
6:15 a.m.: I take a shower.
6:30 a.m.: I lecture M&R more.
7 a.m.: Breakfast. More lecturing. I can't stand to listen to myself even as the words come out of my mouth, yet I seem unable to stop myself. The kids excuse themselves and I actually fall asleep with my head on the table.
8:15 a.m.: Riley does something so minor that I can't even recall what it was, but it's enough to cause me to have a Total Parenting Meltdown that includes yelling. I close myself in my room for a bit.
8:30 a.m.: We do some chores, get ready to go to church. I apologize for my behavior and we agree to restart our day. I warn the kids that I'm exhausted and having a hard time today. I think they've already noticed that.
9 a.m.: We head for church. Riley runs around in the sanctuary, nearly knocking over a few elderly members of the congregation. Then it turns out the kids have chosen seats that had been reserved by someone else, so we had to shuffle around a bit to make things work. Not a big deal except on a day when everything felt like a Big Deal to me.
9:30 a.m.: Church turns out to be just what I needed. The sermon is awesome, about Ralph Waldo Emerson and our place in the world and what we learn from loss and about being true to ourselves. I feel more in control of a decision to be positive about things, more open to yes instead of no, etc. etc. etc.
11:15 a.m.: We head out for a few glorious hours of fun. We see Phantom Meanace in 3D, we eat frozen yogurt, we play at a park. This part of the day is truly great.
5 p.m.: I decide to stop for sushi on the way home. Uh-oh: restaurant's closed. We go to Mexican across the street instead where Riley knocks over a display of soda cans at the register ("Riley, please don't touch those. Riley, please keep your hands off the soda cans. Riley, I've asked you twice now to please not touch those cans." [as I study the menu: CRASH! Sigh.]), Maddie spills a huge glass of water and nearly topples our entire table, and both children complain bitterly about the food. I feel myself getting progressively more annoyed.
5:45 p.m.: We get in the car. I've lectured them the whole way from the restaurant to the car about good restaurant behavior (again, cringing the whole time but yet NOT STOPPING.) Once we're in the car, I yell again for good measure.
5:50 p.m.: I have closed myself in my room to blog and calm down.

I suppose if you average the goodness of yesterday with the mix of good and not-so-good from today, we're still ahead, but the bad of today has just been so very bad that I'm having a hard time not letting it drag me down.

Deep breath. Time to go hug and apologize. Time to read some Harry Potter 4. Time to think back on church this morning and the good things I heard there. I don't like to think the lecturing and the yelling are my true self. Time to go be true.

This, my friends, is a Saturday.

4 a.m.: Still somewhat-sick (since Thursday) Maddie gets in bed with me. She's sick enough to want some comfort, but not so sick that I'm overly worried about her or that she can't sleep. We're both glad for the excuse to snuggle.
5:45 a.m.: Riley joins us. Maddie continues to sleep. I doze.
6:15 a.m.: I kick Riley out because he's clearly not going back to sleep and he's keeping me up. He ambles off and I hear him start in on the LEGOs.
6:50 a.m.: Maddie's up. We all get up. We poke around.
7:15 a.m.: We're downstairs. Coffee's brewing. Maddie and I make cranberry/orange/pecan scones.
8:15 a.m.: Breakfast! Scones, eggs, fruit.
8:45 a.m.: Let Reading Day begin! We are on a mission to finish Harry Potter, book 3.
10-ish: Bathtime for the kids.
11-ish: More reading.
12-ish: Lunch.
1-ish: Bike trip to the park.
3-ish: Home from the park. Cookies and milk. More Harry Potter. Book 3: complete.
5-ish: Movie time: My Neighbor Totoro. So cute.
6:30 p.m.: Dinner. Totally random. Dumplings and fruit for Maddie, PB&J and fruit for Riley.
7:30 p.m.: First chapter of HP4.
8 p.m.: Sleeping twins.

And the last step will be . . .
10 p.m.: Sleeping mama.

We rarely have days like this, that are totally unstructured and involve no one but the three of us. I remember times not too long ago when such unstructured time overwhelmed and intimidated me. Now these are all of our favorite days.

Contentment

I've been in Mexico since last Friday afternoon. I'm headed home today. I went on the same trip last year. I'm lucky enough to have a friend who owns a townhouse on Baja, and she is generous enough to invite a small group of us to come down and stay here for a kid-free rest/recharge/getaway. We had so much fun last year that we decided to make it an annual thing, and lo, here we are again.

Last year, I really felt like I *needed* this trip. I was in the midst of finalizing the purchase of my house (we went in April last year) and work was stressful (that hasn't changed). I'd never had a true vacation from parenting; I'd had nights here and there and longer stretches away from the kids, but always when I needed to be attending to my real life. Being down here in Mexico is a true escape. The weather is perfect, and there is nothing to do but read, eat, sleep, walk along the beach, chat, sit by the pool . . . in short, there is nothing to do but be on vacation, and it is glorious.

I realize how privileged I am go get this experience. Many people don't have the resources I do to be able to afford the plane ticket down, the kinds of job where they can get away (or a job at all), a way to make arrangements for their kids to be taken care of in their absence, a free place to stay even if everything else fell into place. I am very lucky.

I think about this a lot. I think about how grateful I am for what I have in my life, and I think about how much of it is luck and how much of it is what I've made. Much has been handed to me along to the way, to be sure. I grew up solidly middle class and had access to educational opportunities that not everyone gets. You can't choose the family you're born into, and I got a good one. I grew up somewhere safe, in a place where children were valued and encouraged and where there was time and space for me to be supported in the things I wanted to do and learn, even if those were things that didn't really resonate with my parents. As an adult, I had help paying for my first house, and I've had help making downpayments on cars and such. I've had emotional support from family and friends.

There's been bad luck, too. My parents divorced when I was five. We moved quite a bit when I was little. My dad is a recovering alcoholic who went through treatment when I was in college. My spouse died.

All of these things are things I can't control, and are things that have fundamentally shaped my life. So much of the framework seems like a crapshoot to me: your family of origin, the big events that you can see coming, plan for, or avoid. But what of the choices I have made? The hard work I have done? The papers I wrote in college, the years I spent in the Peace Corps, the jobs I applied for, the hours I spent practicing the oboe, the friendships I have nurtured, the children I have whose creation I actively pursued, the house I looked for and bought?

In the end, it doesn't matter. I like to think that I've taken the opportunities that have come to me in my life and I've made the most of them, most of the time. When John got his diagnosis and during the years of his illness and death, my mindset shifted and I had an extremely difficult time feeling grateful for what I had and finding the good in my life. I felt victimized for a few years, and while I recognized the support I was receiving and the goodness that was there (the twins, my friends and family, my job, etc.) there was an undercurrent of thanklessness that I look back on with distaste and embarrassment.

It's been almost five years since John died. I don't think there's anything magical about that date or that amount of time passing or that I'm supposed to feel one way or another now that five years have gone by. But the decidedly nonlinear trajectory of grief has had an upward trend for me and I like where I am at this moment, both this specific moment and this general point in my life. The sun is shining, I went running this morning and drank a cappuccino on the beach, I'm rested and have that delightful feeling of being ready to reconnect with reality after a nice break. Maddie and Riley are healthy and thriving, our home is just right for us, we have the best au pair in the world, I have an amazing and fantastic boyfriend (I hate that word, ack), and a stable job.

I'm just gloating, really. I should stop. I'll stop. It's nice to be happy.

Ah, the romance.

Hot (and unsurprising) news just in time for Valentine's Day: Maddie and Riley seem to have no understanding of what a romantic relationship is.

I have not consulted The Literature to see what five year olds typically understand about the different kinds of love people have for each other, but Maddie and Riley are particularly and charmingly clueless about romantic love. They know I love them, and they could probably articulate some of the ways I express that: through direct speech (we are a big "I love you"-saying family), through physical contact (we are also big huggers, kissers, and general snugglers), through actions (although this might be too abstract for them to articulate even if they feel it, this notion of taking care of one another). M&R also see how I act much the same with other people I love: members of our extended family, close friends. But Maddie and Riley have never seen the day-to-day interaction of a partnered couple, which for many children is their first resource for understanding a romantic partnership.

This leads to some funny conversations. We've had plenty of talks about who you can and can't marry and why you'd want to or not want to marry any given person. To be sure, this comes up for all children, not just single-parent kids. Maddie and Riley have both expressed a desire to marry me, to marry their grandparents, to marry each other, to marry their friends, to marry their teacher. They've also expressed the feeling that it would be great for me to marry my dad (who is, admittedly, awesome). I've asked Maddie and Riley about why they want to marry certain people; they don't have a very clear answer on that, but it certainly relates to how much they care about the person in question. I've asked them what they think it means to be married to someone, and that's a mystery to them, but their explanations come back to an understanding that many—nay, most—of their classmates and friends have two parents at home, and that those people are, by and large (when the law allows and when then choose that option) married and that it's a thing for parents and grown-ups. For them, the notion of marriage seems to be grounded in a decision to want to spend a lot of time with someone, rendering age, sex, and bloodline insignificant. For now, I've told them that getting married is for grown-ups who love each other so much that they want to be a part of each others' families; that explanation seems to satisfy them and also helps them in some way to understand why they can't marry people who are already a part of their family of origin (no need to get into the genetics just yet, methinks).

Where Maddie and Riley's charming ignorance about romance intersects with our family life is clear: what does it mean for the twins that I am dating someone whose presence in my life—our lives—is slowly become more significant? When, why, and how do I explain that to them?

We are blessed to have many, many friends. We have people over to our house a lot, and we spend a lot of time visiting others. Maddie and Riley have had the good fortune to meet and love many people already in their first five years of life, and they've dealt many times already with the effects of moving, transitioning from one caregiver to another, death. Perhaps because of all this, perhaps because of their general nature, both Maddie and Riley are fairly quick to form friendships and are quite open to meeting new people and welcoming them to their lives. They also at this age seem quite adept at understanding that some friends come, and some friends go. They express that they miss people we don't see as much as we once did (hi, Boston friends!) but they have at every turn seemed less broken up about such transitions than I would have expected. There's a resilience to their dealings with the comings and goings of people in their lives that surprises me.

All of this leaves me at a loss when it comes to how to represent T to the kids. To them, he's a friend like any other friend, and I've just been rolling with that. They have said a number of things that clearly indicate to me that they have no clue that my relationship with him is quantitatively different than any other close friendship that I have, and I'm not sure what I'd say to them to explain the difference that would have any meaning to them whatsoever. The potential for that relationship to have significance in M&R's lives that transcends that of our other friends' is great, but for the moment, their rudimentary—if accurate—understanding of the situation is perfectly adequate. I don't want to make a big deal out of something that for M&R is not a big deal at all, but I don't want them wondering what's going on or feeling confused.

As I write this, I'm thinking, "Who am I kidding?!" Anyone who has met Maddie and Riley would laugh to think that those two wouldn't just ask me what was going on if they were curious about something. I can't quite put my finger on why I'm feeling somewhat of a need for M&R to have a deeper understanding of the situation. I think part of it is seeing their nascent attachment to T develop and knowing that there is a potential for the twins so experience loss there—and knowing that the same potential exists for me. Part of it is logistical: T and I are talking about taking a vacation with all the kids—how will that feel to M&R? We've vacationed with friends before, so maybe it's not a big deal, but T's kids are older and have a more nuanced understanding of our relationship. Will M&R sense that or pick up on that? What will that mean to them? What would they think if I told them T was going to spend the night at our house?

I tend to give information about Big Emotional/Adult Concepts to Maddie and Riley on a need-to-know basis. I answer their questions truthfully and completely, but when it comes to these types of constructs, I try to keep things as simple as possible. They aren't pushing me on this, and it's my instinct not to push them. But I want to be ready when and if they ask.

In their charming innocence of societal constructs around love, M&R are thrilled by the idea of Valentine's Day. They are looking forward to exchanging cards with their classmates tomorrow, and have somehow figured out that Valentine's Day and chocolate go together. They each picked out a box of cards at the store yesterday (Star Wars themed for Riley, puppies and kittens for Maddie) and painstakingly write "to my friend" and "from Maddie/Riley" on each of them. So sweet. I'm planning to make them heart-shaped toast with strawberry jam for breakfast, and I have a card for each of them. T and I aren't doing anything tomorrow, but are going out for a nice dinner on Wednesday. You don't have to know me very well at all to know that I'm not much of a celebrant of Big Days. But I confess that it's nice to be in a relationship that gives me a reason to enjoy the parts of this Hallmark holiday that appeal to me, like the excuse to go out for a nice meal and spend time with someone I care about. Not that I need a reason to do that, but if one presents itself, seems a shame not to take it.

Life. No fast lane.

I've been wanting to write lately, but feeling blocked by the usual: too much to catch up on, not sure where to start, only egocentric and nongeneralizable things to say. That feeling of wanting to write, though, is quantitatively different than the feeling I've had for most of my two months of silence. Most of that time, through the holidays and into the new year, I felt a pretty deep desire to partially hibernate from the digital world. I've been less active on Facebook, again silent (after a brief period of activity) on Twitter, making an effort to leave the computer untouched in the evenings at home. I'm as aware of and conflicted about my online presence and the ramifications of "screen time" as any thinking adult in Our Moderne Times, and I think my hiatus of sorts is a manifestation of the leery side of my digital identity.

A parallel, if equally esoteric and equally unoriginal, analysis is that happiness has rendered me mute. Blogging has historically been for me a way to work things out, a means to find a way to handle the negative, see a problem from a different perspective, reason my way out of a challenge. In the space I'm in now, blogging to share that I'm here, I'm happy, I'm doing stuff, feels self-indulgent and dull. I understand how to frame a post about a problem. It's not clear to me how to frame a post that's an update or an observation. I'm not the person who can in that Seinfeldian way make nothing into something.

I've written this post before, though, and I keep coming back to write it again because I do miss the frequent practice of writing. I'd like to try to find the point of interest in the mundane, or at least find a way to make it seem as though the broader point of interest is there because life is not actually mundane for me, it just seems to me that my life has become mundane as observed by others.

I offer for now, the cop-out, a bulleted list of the past couple of months of happenings, things that have been all manner of things to me—interesting, exciting, scary, fun, productive, creative, sad, happy. All those things that make a life:

• Best Christmas to date with Maddie and Riley, including instructions to Santa to have the reindeer enter through the back door.
• A cat! We have a cat! His name is Hubble, he's six years old, he's black with yellow eyes, and he adores Maddie.
• Trees! We have trees! We had a pear tree and an apple tree planted in our front yard. Someday, we'll even have pears and apples.
• Work. I have the same job. It has ups and downs. Lately, it has more downs than ups. I can't really say more.
• My birthday! I turned 40. I had a huge, crazy party that was ridiculously fun. So far, 40 is freakin' awesome. I think my use of the phrase "freakin' awesome" is an indicator of my advancing age.
• The beach. I went to the beach for a couple of kid-free nights. Fires, reading, hiking, eating, games, pajamas, amazing.
• Las Vegas. I went to Las Vegas for a few kid-free nights. Cirque du Soleil, Red Rock Canyon, Hoover Dam, jogging on the strip, zip-lining, hot-tubbing, amazing.
• Joshua Bell. I saw him in concert again. He's the real deal. Perfect seats, unreal performance.
• Running. I've been running up a storm. I've got my sights on a half marathon at the end of May, and maybe even one as soon as mid-April.
• Skiing. The kids are in ski lessons for the second year in a row. We're one weekend into four Saturdays of this. Riley is more enthusiastic than Maddie, but both had fun last weekend and seem ready for more tomorrow.
• Piano. Maddie and Riley are four weeks into their first round of piano lessons. No one seems overly wowed by playing the piano, but I'm glad they are getting the exposure.
• Harry Potter. M&R are officially obsessed with Harry Potter. We're halfway through book three. It's a real joy to read them books that I love and find they they love them, too.
• My Kindle. I got a Kindle for Christmas. Much to my surprise, I am completely devoted to it. I [heart] my Kindle.
• Mexico. I'm gearing up for a trip to Mexico, a repeat of the trip I took to Mexico around this time last year. CANNOT WAIT.
• Au pair. Having an au pair is the best thing I've ever done for our family. It's a huge gift to me, and a huge gift to Maddie and Riley. Anyone who is interested in getting an au pair, I'd be happy to tell you what it is about the experience that's so fantastically great. Life-changing, truly.
• Our house. I continue to love our house and feel fine about being a homeowner again. We are all capable of change.
  

That list does not include one item that seems worthy of more than a bullet point, although I do not know how to talk about it. I am still dating the same guy. It's totally great. He's totally great. Greatness! The only negative about our relationship is that we don't see each other nearly enough. We're working on that, but it's a long, slow process. We both have jobs, we both have kids, and we don't want to force things where it comes to the family blending process. But we're starting to test those waters and look for ways to spend family time—not just dating time—together. It's a very easy, affirming relationship we have. There are no hidden agendas or crazy emotional upheavals. We're two very busy adults with a lot of logistical complications and the willingness to talk about stuff and figure it out as best we can. We just wish we had the chance to do that more.

I realize that my description of our relationship sounds rather passionless, and that's what I mean about not knowing how to talk about it. The easiest way to explain it is that he makes me feel the way I felt when I was with John. Maybe that seems creepy or weird, which is why I hesitate to describe it that way, but it's true. I said to him (Must come up with nickname! Will go with T for now.) the other day that I could remember so clearly how I felt when John and I moved in together. I felt like I'd won the lottery; I was so excited to go home every day and find John! There! In our apartment! EVERY DAY!!! That thrill never wore off. I get the same thrill now, just not daily. More like twice a week in a good week. But I'll take the thrill when I can get it.

So that is the briefest of views into life right now. It's Friday night, I'm going to head home for a movie and quesadillas with the kids, then pack up an epic amount of stuff to take up the mountain for skiing tomorrow. May the rest of you be enjoying such unremarkable times.

One

Last weekend, I took Riley to the beach. Just Riley.

I think perhaps I had mentioned that I was planning to do this, to take just one child at a time on an overnight trip. This is the first time I've done this. I've long wanted—and still want—to regularly spend one-on-one time with each of the twins, and as they have gotten older, I've started to grab hours here and there during playdates and such. But this was the longest stretch of Mama-Riley time I've ever had, and the longest stretch of hours the two of them have ever spent apart.

It all went swimmingly. Maddie stayed with my mom and stepdad, and by all reports, she was fine and thrived on the attention she got. The same is true of Riley. Both M&R had been a little nervous about the idea, and both felt like the one who was with me was getting the better end of the deal. Riley was more nervous than his sister about it all, and she generously offered for him to be the first one to go to the beach when we initially discussed the idea. I think, in the end, she now sees that she hardly drew the short straw (although she's very excited about her overnight with me this coming Saturday).

A few things about the trip surprised me:

1. Riley was so quiet! He is normally a really loud, talkative kid, but on this trip he was fairly reserved and quiet. Maybe he actually has a deep appreciation of silence but never gets a chance to experience it since he's always competing with a sibling for a turn to talk and have my attention? Dunno. It sure caught me off guard, though.

2. I am a much more relaxed parent when I'm only caring for one child.

3. That said, the things that Riley does that annoy me are still annoying even when there's not another child around.

In other, unrelated, news, I'm still going on dates with the same guy and it's still slowly and steadily great. I still love my house. My job is still chipping away at me, but I'm not completely and totally overwhelmed as I was for a couple of months there. I'm getting an iPhone 4S! Woo! Now that's news.

What's really news, actually, is that I've become a person for whom it is in fact big news to be getting an iPhone 4S. Big news is no longer that my spouse is going on hospice or that I haven't slept in weeks because my babies wake up every 45 minutes. Big news is no longer a cross-country move or a job change months after my spouse died or a six-figure loss on selling a condo.

No, no, no. Big news is getting a smartphone, going out with someone kind and smart and thoughtful, planning our au pair's birthday party, making the decision to let Maddie and Riley watch Star Wars. There is a deep contentment in big news being the stuff of everyday life. I was out to lunch with a colleague yesterday, and in the course of our conversation, it dawned on me that I've never stayed in one place or done much of anything longer than a couple of years for my entire adult life. Sure, I lived in Boston for 10 years, but in 5 different apartments. I did have one job for seven years. Eight? Something like that. But that's the longest I've stuck with anything: a job, a home, a partner. John and I were together almost exactly four years from our first date to his death, my longest relationship by quite a bit, but in sheer time a blip on the radar. Even Maddie and Riley have only been a part of my life for five years (six if you count the pregnancy).

I've been an emotional late bloomer my whole life. I'll be 40 in January. It's just now, after a whole hell of a lot of change and lightning-quick living, that I feel thrilled by the idea of being here, where I am, for the long haul. I know that change will come, and I don't wish to stagnate. But I wish to be rooted and grounded, and I wish to know the contentment that can come from being still.

Upswing

After my latest series of posts in which Everyone Was Out of Sorts, I'm pleased to report that we're all on the upswing.

Maddie is settling into school. It's clearly still tiring for her, both physically and mentally, but she seems more like herself, more settled. She gives positive reports about her days and hasn't asked to bring her lovey to school. She did completely lose her mind on Friday night, falling apart about something tiny and absurd, and she is still seeking control over any and everything in her sphere. But I can see the shift happening, and I'm glad for her (and, selfishly, for me).

My work is evening out. As many kind commenters picked up on and offered suggestions for, the issues at work run deeper than just things being busy right now. Much of the deeper issues are not appropriate blog fodder, but I'm working on them now that I have time to think about something beyond staunching the flow so that no one bleeds out. I think my job is fundamentally good for me, but it's the most difficult job I've ever had and I can find it hard to put the effort into it that it needs. Also, I've learned from this job that management does not come naturally to me, nor does leadership. I'm a slow learner about a lot of things, and those areas seem to be no exception. The growing pains are difficult, and I'm far from hitting my stride, but I want to give it more time. I love many things about my job, and I'm an optimist, an optimist who finally has a few minutes to catch her breath during the work day.

I don't know at what point you say that you're dating someone, but over the past couple of months I have gone out on a number of dates with someone and we plan to keep going out on dates, so maybe we're dating? I don't know. We are certainly enjoying getting to know each other. Past experience would indicate that blogging about dates is often a death knell, so I hesitate to say much, but I'll say this: he is a smart, thoughtful, interesting, and kind person. Being around him makes me feel good about myself and about my life, and it makes me happy. So I'm enjoying that, although we both have busy, complicated lives and so we don't see each other all that much. But when we can, it's nice, and unhurried, and just positive.

In other positive (if totally random) news: Spotify is genius; I've been running more often, faster, and with more enjoyment; I continue to love, love, love my house; I'm not ready for the transition to fall and winter; I'm hoping the recent, more regular blogging settles back into a trend. I don't know that I'll ever have as much need or desire to write as I did during my more intense periods of grief, but I miss the regular practice of writing. May it be so.

And now: gratuitous kid pics! M&R got haircuts over the weekend. Here they are, in all of their five-year-old glory. Riley looks kind of surly, but the notoriously hard-to-photograph Maddie is looking quite sweet and lovely, if I do say so myself.

She's not alone.

Maddie's not the only one with adjustment issues these days. I'm having issues myself.

I hesitate to blog about work because, well, duh, it's dumb to blog about work. Some of my coworkers occasionally read my blog, what I write is intended for public consumption, and I'm not anonymous, so caution is warranted. But I can say this much about work without it being too much: for the past month or so, work has been totally kicking my ASS. I've made a ton of dumb errors (and been called out on them by people as high up as the president of the college. Niiiiice.) I manage seven people, morale in the office is low, and I have not done a good job of helping to bring morale up. I haven't felt good at what I do in quite a while. I wake up at night and think about work, then when I'm actually at work, I'm distracted and distractable. It's just been hard.

I'm not a person who ties a whole lot up into my professional identity. That is to say, I don't feel like I define my success and worth through my job. That said, I spend 40 hours a week at work and it's wearing to feel like I'm spending that much of my time doing things poorly. Especially when I go home and deal with the fallout of adjustment to kindergarten and such.

Boo hoo blah blah. Instead of whining about it, I should be working on fixing it, right? Alas, my recent work-related mishaps are for the most part not a result of slacking off but rather a result of well, I'm not sure what. I'll think I've done a good job on something only to have mistakes pointed out to me by all kinds of people. I'll think I'm on top of something and then find out that I've overlooked something major.

Where is my brain, then? How can I get my head back in work? How can I do a better job of being empathetic to those I manage to help them to feel better about their work? How can I do all that and have empathy left for my children?

As Maddie and Riley get older (and their lives get more complex) and as my career grows longer in the tooth (and thus also more complex), I feel the squeeze of work/life balance more and more. Some might find that invigorating; I find it stressful, exhausting, and untenable. I think my recent mistakes at work are the result of simply not having the capacity to do all that I'm supposed to do. When forced to choose—work or family?—family wins, and work, which has needed a lot of attention of late, has not gotten all it needs.

There's no easy answer here. I'm doing the best that I can, just feeling frustrated and as though my best is falling short of the mark. We just wrapped up a big event at work, and this week is thus far all about figuring out just how many things got lost in the shuffle of event prep. With any luck, things will even out here on the work front in a couple of weeks, and on the school front, too. I've learned a lot about patience, at least as applies to situations, but patience with myself is a different matter entirely and getting practice in that area is just not very much fun.

Trouble, with a Capital T

. . . and that rhymes with P and that stands for PIANO!

We bought a piano today. I've always wanted a piano. I don't play, but I know how much a piano background would have helped me when I was starting oboe at the ripe old age of 14. The musical fundamentals that come from studying piano are good for any further musical endeavors, and the musical experimentation that one can do with easy access to a piano are also a huge plus. No reeds to soak! No strings to tune (well, not every time you play, at least)! You can just sit down and make music, voilà.

Knowing nothing about pianos, I was daunted by the idea of finding one to buy, then further daunted by the idea of having it moved. I was psychologically daunted by the shopping—I might as well have had sucker stamped on my forehead—and financially daunted by the possible price of the purchase and the moving. It's not like this was weighing on my mind given that at age five, Maddie and Riley are just now about ready for the possibility of lessons, but owning a piano was certainly one of those things that could have just ended up not happening due to my not wanting to figure it all out.

But then, today, we went back to church for the first time since June. I've missed church, but we've had a busy summer with lots of weekend travel or other obligations, and we've managed to go almost two months without going. The church yard sale was yesterday, and there were a few boxes of yard sale remnants around the front door for people to peruse and purchase.

Just inside the front door, at the back of the foyer, was the piano that is now our piano. It was just sitting there, with a sign on it, that was marked $500 with a strikethrough down to $350. I took mental note, then sat down for the service. All I thought about the whole service was that piano, though, and after services I asked around to see who might be able to give me the scoop. Turns out that the church has owned and cared for it for 40 years, and that it was the main piano for the religious education program and building for most (all?) of that time. The RE program has a new piano, so now this one, a Pease upright, needs a new home.

The chair of the music committee has personally cared for the instrument for some twenty-odd years, and he's getting a few things fixed up before it comes into our possession. Even better, it looks as though the director of the choir will be able to transport it for me if I can find some strong friends to help get it into the house. Fabulous.

I have a large piece of furniture that I'll need to get rid of in order to accommodate the piano, but I'll post that on Freecycle tonight and hope for the best. I'm just so excited! We'll have a piano! I would like to take lessons, too. I think it could be fun (and I'm sure at times frustrating) for the kids and I to learn something together. Yay! What a day, what a surprise.

Speed

Life is all fast these days, all clichéd and fast. Summer, where have you gone? Kids, how are you already starting Kindergarten? Snick, how are you months away from turning 40?

I find myself without much to say, but wanting to come here and say nothing. The struggling continues, although it is letting up. A Facebook friend wisely commented that just when you can't take any more, you get your break, and that seems to be holding true. Work was complete pandemonium, then I got a bunch of stuff off my desk—not done, but on to the next cog in the wheel—and high-tailed it out for a five-day vacation with the kids and my mom and dad in Eastern Oregon. Gorgeousness. It smells so good out there, those pine trees with the sunshine and blue sky and lava rocks. I drank my coffee in the hot tub every morning after going running, took long walks with my mom in the evenings, let the kids eat sugary cereal and chips while watching movies, and read most of a book.

And yes, I was there with my mom and my dad. My stepdad was not there. Seems like it could be awkward, no?, to be there with my 35-years-divorced parents. But it was not; they have a real friendship, my mom and dad, for which I am grateful, and the kids and I delighted in their company.

We are back now, basking in the afterglow. Our re-entry to the real world after family camp was harsh and jarring, but this transition has been easier, thank goodness.

Work is still dicey. There's just so much to do. I'm glad I have a job, and there are many things I enjoy about my work, but I'm in a place right now where my shortcomings seem to be right on the surface for all to see and for me to witness. I try to take this as a learning opportunity, but it's hard to be Zen and positive and ready to grow all the damn time.

I had what would have been my seventh anniversary while we were on vacation. It was a nice day. It didn't feel any different than any other day, but I have had John on my mind a lot. On our way home from Eastern Oregon we stopped at state park for a picnic lunch. A group of about 20 Korean kids on some kind of organized tour were having their meal at the tables next to ours. One of them looked just like twelve-year-old John. The spitting image. It was kind of eerie, actually, and I kept staring at him, which I'm sure he found eerie in and of itself.

I went on a first date a few weeks ago, a very fun first date. My date asked me, "What are you looking for in a relationship?" and the question, which is perfectly reasonable, took me by surprise. Since then, I've been thinking about my marriage and what I miss about it—which we ended up discussing, as he's divorced—and also what I enjoy about being single. I didn't have a good answer for his question, whereas good is defined as well thought through. And after a few weeks of thinking about it, I still don't really know how to answer that. What I said was that if someone had asked me that right before I met John, I am certain that my answer would not have in any way reflected what I then got. Point being that you can think you know what you want, but all you can really be is open to the possibilities. Cop out? Maybe. But it's true for me, for now. Many days, I don't feel like I want to get married again. I'm overwhelmed by the idea of integrating another adult's life into my own, and into Maddie and Riley's. But I do miss some things: sharing a good passage from a book I'm reading, having someone who can give me perspective on things that I can't see anymore, being able to release some of the burden of making all the decisions all the time about everything to do with the house and the kids.

One thing I have learned a lot about in the past few years is being patient. (Mom and Erk: stop laughing.) Just as my wise Facebook friend said, you have to wait things out. When you think you can't go on, something will give. I have historically been a fixer, a people-pleaser. But I've learned that sometimes, even often, the best thing to do is just wait. Not that I always do that, but I have come to understand that it's a good choice. The right thing will either happen, or something will happen that will make the right way clear. Perhaps it's the same with relationships, or more generally with knowing what I want, what one wants, in a general sense.

I'm sure I'm overthinking it. I mean, it was a first date! I was just surprised by how little thought I'd given that question recently, and it's been interesting to try to sort it all out. The second date is this Thursday. I wonder what question I'll be stumped by this time?

Struggling

John's dad has said of John's birth, "He had a hard time to come out." It hardly seems like a memorable quote, those ordinary words, so slightly syntactically off. But something about the expression on his Dad's face, his eyes squeezed shut, his head shaking slightly no from side to side, his hands squeezed into fists at his sides, made the difficulty of John's 10-pound, large-headed entry into the world so real. John and I used to say that to each other when we were dealing with something difficult, "This is a hard time to get through," "I'm having a hard time to deal with this," and so on. I wish John were here today so that I could say it to him, so that he could help me with my hard time, because I am, indeed, having a hard time of it right now.

I make no excuses for my hard time. Plenty of other people out there are having harder times, or would at least like a change of pace in the difficulties they are experiencing. I have my health, I have Maddie and Riley, I have a gorgeous new house, and I have a great job. I have lots of friends, I don't struggle financially, and the sun is shining.

Things are just hard lately. Work is overwhelming. There are projects and people and changes, to the point that it is hard for me to focus when I'm there and it invades my brainspace when I'm not.

It affects my parenting. I don't feel like my best self. Maddie and Riley continue to not sleep enough; they have dark circles and crabby attitudes and whiny voices. Melatonin has been a mixed bag; it seems to help Maddie go to sleep, which is good, but it has no effect on how late they do (or don't) sleep. I'm tired, too. We're all tired, and we take our crabby attitudes out on each other with our whiny voices.

Riley is engaged in an experiment called Truth versus Lie. More accurately, it's called Lie All the Time about Totally Dumb Stuff. Some of it is funny, like when he talks as though he's an expert on some totally random subject, but all of it is disturbing on some level. It's crazy frustrating to me to say, "Riley, did you dry your hands on a towel?" get the reply, "Of course, Mama," then look up and see that his dripping-wet hands by his sides. To my knowledge, he hasn't lied to me about anything big, but I feel like I can't trust his answer on anything, and it's an awful feeling. I've tried to talk to him about it, but he's unable or unwilling to articulate why he is doing this, and I'm flummoxed as to what it's all about. Attention-seeking? Maddie does tend to dominate my time, by sheer force of will. Normal, five-year-old experimentation and button-pushing? Maybe. Something else entirely? Could be, or a combo. It's exacerbated by the fact that my reaction to it appears to be out of line with what is happening, insomuch as it makes me fly off the handle and completely lose my cool.

Meanwhile, Maddie is very clingy and demanding with me. Despite the fact that, to my knowledge, I have never given her reason to doubt that I will return from anywhere I have been, she is obsessed with the idea that I might leave or not return. After she went to bed the other night, I took a bag of trash out to the can outside our back fence; when I got back inside (after an absence of under a minute, with the door left open) she was downstairs, panicked, looking for me. She'd heard me unlock the door and thought I was leaving her and Riley alone. She can't get enough of me; Riley, too, to a certain extent. After spending their whole lives in daycare and/or school, they both in the past month or so beg me to stay home every day.

I don't think it's any coincidence that all of this behavior coincides with our trip to family camp almost a month ago. We spent a week up on Orcas Island in the San Juans, doing nothing but spend time together. We slept in a sweet little cabin, ate meals in the dining hall, went to the beach every day, played games on the lawn, did crafts, stayed up late for campfire, and took naps every afternoon. We'd never in our lives had time like that together before. No work, no chores, no obligations. The night we got home from camp was miserable; I had a migraine, we were all super-tired, and on some level, we all knew that the next day was back to the endless logistical machine of life that seems to allow us little time to enjoy each others' company.

As a person, it can be hard for me to be in the moment; I'm always thinking about the chores that need to be done, what's coming next, what appointments need to be made, what food needs to be cooked, how I can prepare for what the next day will bring. Being a single parent exacerbates this tendency as I'm, for the most part, the only one who can take care of these things. Don't get me wrong: Zulma, family, and friends help out a lot. But the logistics of life fall to me, and Maddie and Riley get the short end of the stick. I'm constantly multitasking and trying to make chores fun. While this is not inherently bad, it does mean that I rarely feel like I give the twins my full attention, and often the attention I do allocate to them is not my best self.

This is not me beating myself up. This is simply an acknowledgment of our imperfect reality. And, to a certain extent, my wish that I could shift to an alternate, if equally imperfect, reality. I'm at a point where I wish I could be home more. As the kids start full-time school, I wish I could be the one who dropped them off and picked them up each day. I love the thought of taking them to their lessons and sports practices, of having more than 20 minutes to cook dinner together on the nights we don't have something else scheduled, of just getting more breathing room than the two hours at night and the two hours in the morning. I don't doubt that part of the reason they get up so early is that they want to spend more time with me. It saddens me that they crave that time even though I'm not much fun at that hour, despite my best efforts.

It's just a hard time to get through. We all seem to be unhappy with our current arrangement, but I haven't taken the space to see how I can try to fix it. My hairdresser said to me last night, after acknowledging similar struggles with her kids, that her mom has called this age the "I hate you, don't leave me" age. Yes, they can be sweet as pie, but they also seem to simultaneously not want you to go anywhere, but want to use you as their outlet for negativity. The literature would say that this is because they feel safe. Great. Age appropriate, perhaps. Combined with other forces, likely. It's just a hard time, a hard time.

Friday Night Nerd

I was a major nerd in college. Well, in high school, too. And I still am now. I guess I've always been a major nerd. But college sticks out as my prime-time nerd years, perhaps because that's when I found so many members of the nerd tribe. Also, my college-level nerdiness was combined with a serious amount of uptightness that made it all more acute; I never pulled an all-nighter, usually had my papers done early, I didn't have a drink until I turned 21, and for every Saturday night I went out with friends, I spent two Saturday nights doing homework. For real, people, for real.*

In addition to being nerdy and uptight, I was also not terribly self-aware. I had plenty of emotions, but few tools for expressing them. I certainly didn't have any conscious awareness of treating myself with kindness. And yet, despite that, I paid myself a weekly kindness throughout college: No Work Fridays.

Friday was the night I never did homework and never studied. I'm sure I made exceptions during finals week and such, but for the most part, I gave myself the luxury of not putting any pressure whatsoever on myself when Friday rolled around. I had no guilt about getting $5 out of the ATM (yes, the ATM gave out money in $5 increments back in ye olden days of my undergraduate years) and spending it all in one place, watching a G-rated movie (or an R-rated movie; I was 18 and all), going to bed early, or reading a book for pleasure. I loved Fridays, not necessarily for the actual activity I engaged in, but for the total letting go of responsibility and mental freedom that I gave myself by putting everything aside once a week.

I thought about No Work Fridays today when I was out to lunch with my mom. I announced to her that after the kids went to bed, I was going to do nothing. Just relax. Maybe watch some TV, maybe read, maybe take a bath. Maybe all three. But I wasn't going to do chores or putter around the house or anything that might be considered vaguely productive. Oh, no. I was going to take the night off.

How did that work out for me? I've had a great evening, but I haven't exactly taken the evening off. I finished touching up the living room paint job that friends helped me complete earlier in the week, put the furniture back where it belongs in that room, unpacked some boxes, cleaned up the painting supplies, cleaned up from dinner, set the timer on the coffee maker, talked myself out of doing a load of laundry, and broke down some boxes. Now, at 9:30 p.m., I 've made myself a drink, eaten some salad, and I'm about to get down to the real relaxing. We'll see how long I last before going to sleep.

I was very aware as I was futzing around that I wasn't relaxing as I had planned. I thought about those Friday nights in college, and I thought about how surprising it was that I somehow knew to be kind to myself and to take the pressure off on a regular basis. And I thought about how I'd like to start doing that again. I have a suspicion, though, that No Work Fridays look a lot different at 39 than they did at 18**. While I was working away tonight, part of me wanted to just put it aside, go upstairs, and gear up Netflix Instant. It wasn't guilt or a feeling of obligation that kept me from doing that, though. There was a bigger part of me that is so in love with my house that it doesn't feel like work, exactly, to do things like paint and make the living room feel settled. That kind of "work," which would certainly have sounded like real work to me when I was a student, is now more like indulging a hobby.

What I need and want now are No Stress Fridays. For the part of the evening that I spend with Maddie and Riley, we already have a good no-stress routine in place: Fridays are always pizza and movie night. No one has to make decisions about dinner (or cook it), and the movie allows for some coveted screen time to be combined with snuggle time. Once they are in bed, it's time to make Fridays into the day when I do what I want to do around the house, be that take care of some house-related task or soak in the tub for three hours. It's time to get back to taking the pressure off myself and to stop thinking about all the Shoulds. It's gotten so hard for me to do that, but it's important. The world will not stop spinning if I don't make the grocery list tonight. Nothing bad will happen—in fact, good things might happen!—if I allow myself to do what I want one night a week.

And on that note, Netflix Instant awaits.

*In graduate school, we did a learning style/personality type test that revealed that I am successful at most things I do due to dogged determination. I just work as hard as I have to in order to succeed. I am not always, or even often, the smartest, fastest, most capable, etc., but I am almost always the most determined. My college study habits are testament to this.

**I was out clothes shopping today and noted that even though my weight is pretty much what it was in college, my ass sure looks a lot different at this age, too.

Bursting

I am bursting with blog content. Bursting! But I have a problem.

I've been sucked into a horrible vortex powered by the forces of a too much work, stressful work, and Netflix instant streaming. So, you see, I work all day, feel behind all the time, get home, get the kids to bed, and collapse in a Netflix-watching heap, thus leaving the blog neglected.

I'm not sure how I managed to remain out of Netflix instant's clutches for so long. I can watch it on my TV via my Wii! On my iMac! On my iPad! On my iTouch! Anywhere! Anytime! It's crazy. I think it will be at least a little better when I get all caught up with Friday Night Lights as many of the next things in my queue are only available on DVD. Maybe then I will blog. Only 14 more available episodes to go.

I really do have a lot of things on my mind, though. So many I can't keep track. Many of them are parenting-related as somehow Maddie and Riley got all growed up and out of nowhwere they are doing things like being totally sassy and refusing to go to sleep and lying and pushing limits and my buttons and WHOA. Of course, they are also doing lots of more positive things like riding bikes without training wheels and scrambling eggs all by themselves and putting together crazy complicated LEGO projects.

We've been in our new house for almost two months, we've been to family camp, the kids have turned five. Five! Five. I've felt myself pulling away from many of my online activities (Netflix excepted), sometimes because I've been forced (no Internet access at family camp), sometimes because I've made a choice. But there's a lot to say. So very much to say.

Bowling Birthday

Riley had his birthday party today. It was at the local bowling alley. Unlimited bowling plus pizza and drinks and balloons made for a very, very fun event.

It was so much fun for me to see Riley with his friends. He invited five boys: four from his class plus a cousin, and then Maddie was there as the "bonus kid." Oh, and Riley invited our former neighbor, his football/general sporting buddy we'll call Indy. No one cried, no one got hurt, the kids took turns without being told to, there was no cutthroat competition, no overly rowdy behavior, and there was lots of camaraderie, support, hugging, and good sportsmanship. It really could not have gone better.

I've heard that these are the magical years, these early grade school times from five-ish to eight-ish. I've also heard lots of things that turned out not to be true about sleeping and tantrums and improvements in attitude or other behaviors that turned out not to be true. But this mythical idea of magical years, golden years, I'm starting to buy it. We have so much fun together now, me and Maddie and Riley. The kids are, for the most part, rational beings. Funny, smart rational beings, to boot. They are personable and curious and unendingly friendly. They are generous and kind and just plain happy. Sure, I'm biased. But they're pretty darn awesome.

I remember reading parenting books and advice columns and such in which people would express concern about how long it took them to feel really bonded with their kids. There's an expectation that if you parent someone that the bond is near instantaneous, the connection undeniable. I was always relieved, if a bit ashamed, to find that I wasn't alone in not feeling that immediately after Maddie and Riley were born. Oh, sure, I loved them immediately. But it's different now, and much, much deeper. I don't know how to explain it, exactly, and I'm way to exhausted to even be trying right now.

So I'll go to bed. Tomorrow will be Maddie's party. This is the first year they are having separate celebrations, and hers is unlimited rides on a fantastic local carousel + sack lunches + face painting. Riley is her "bonus kid," of course.

Everything feels different this year. I like it.

My Eyes Are Dim

I've needed vision correction since I was ten years old. I started with glasses, then got soft contacts, then switched to gas permeable contacts and have worn those for twenty years. Twenty years! I am no longer in the bloom of youth [hint: foreshadowing!]

I've never had great luck with eye doctors. I seem to have a knack for finding the strange ones. I've had one that was downright creepy and many that were just socially inept. I found a good one in Boston, but only got one visit in with her and then she went on maternity leave. Then I moved to Oregon. So much for that.

Right before we moved to our new house, I dropped my right lens down the drain. This happens every few years and is the event that forces me to get my eyes checked and freshen up my contacts. When I dug out my old prescription, I was shocked to find that it had been four years since I last had new lenses, so it was time. I called my HMO and made an appointment, which I finally had today.

My new doctor seems fine. He was professional and straightforward and he can make reasonable chit-chat. He is not creepy. He has a French last name. And it's not his fault that the rational, scientific reply to my query about LASIK surgery was, "You're a great candidate, in terms of your eyes. But at your age, it might not be worth it. Depends on your goals. In five years, maybe sooner, maybe a couple of years later, you're going to need reading glasses, so LASIK won't keep you glasses-free for long. And so if you want to be totally glasses-free, you probably shouldn't bother. Not at your age."

Here's to being almost 40! Most days, I honestly don't care, but I'll confess that this particular conversation threw me for a loop. I'll try not to hold it against poor Dr. Frenchyname.

Shiny and New

We have a new house.



(Sorry, no pic with the kids, but more to come.)

It's not the brand-new, LEED-certified home I blogged about months ago. Instead, it's a new old house, with bones from 1910 but delicious, recently added modern amenities. It has four bedrooms and three bathrooms (SO POSH) and a freestanding garage and a castle playground in the backyard (why did I not mention that first?) and best of all, even though we've only been there a week, it feels like home.

I obviously didn't blog about the buying process, and I only minimally mentioned it on Facebook. (I never mentioned it on Twitter because I still can't figure out why I should want to be tweeting.) The short explanation for my silence is that I was overwhelmed by writing about it. I could not figure out how to start, so I never did. And now it's done.

It's not that there wasn't anything to blog about during the process of buying the house. I don't think any home purchase is without some drama. There was elevated radon and contaminated soil and shenanigans with mortgage lenders and city permits that had not been closed. Then my landlord went off the deep end and I had to have some heated negotiations with her around renters' rights. As I am awaiting the return of (some? all? none?) of my deposit, those negotiations may not be over yet. Dealing with my landlord was the most frustrating of any of this ordeal because I think she and I both felt hurt and hoodwinked, and each of us felt in the right. So icky. But mostly over.

So, yeah, the stress of the whole process played into my silence as well. But I also felt, for the first time in a long time, like keeping this one close to the vest. This was a huge thing for me, buying this house. It was an emotional sea change to want to own, a huge financial step, and a logistical mountain. I've never felt so much like a legitimate grown-up as I did when I signed those papers, got those keys, and walked in the front door for the first time. I did this myself, for my little nuclear family, and while I certainly talked about it quite a bit with my nearest and dearest, I wanted to make this decision and see it through on my own, for me and Maddie and Riley. As I write about it, it sounds selfish or fearful or something; I just don't know how to explain it. I was so fully present it getting it all to happen, and so focused on how it was going to change our life that I wasn't able to write about it and evidently I'm still struggling.

Nothing I have done since John's death, even including moving back to Oregon, feels so much like the start of a new life as buying this home does. Nothing made me feel so trapped as owning my condo in Boston, and it's shocking to me that buying this house has given me the opposite feeling. Well, no, not the opposite exactly; I don't feel free. But I do feel grounded. Settled. It's a choice rather than an ensnarement. It's happiness.

Spring

Seven years or so ago, no make that eight, it was spring 2003 and John and I had just started dating. We spent a sunny Sunday morning into afternoon into evening at the home of mutual friends, out on their deck, celebrating another friend's PhD, drinking mimosas and then mojitos and then wine, eating an endless array of snacks, enjoying the sun in short sleeves, unwilling to admit that we were actually a little chilly, simply happy and totally carefree.

I remember letting go that day of anything about which I felt even a shred of responsibility. I remember making a decision to just enjoy that day, which is now associated with with a pure definition of happiness for me. It was the kind of day you can't create if you try, a day that just happens and for which you give grateful thanks.

Today could be that day again. The weather is the same as is my willingness to let go of responsibility. But I'm at work, not on a friend's deck, and I have kids to go home to. Maybe we'll go get ice cream or read an extra story; such is the form of joyful abandon of responsibility these days. Oh, how times change, but the simplicity of such happiness stays the same.

Past

I'm in the past a lot these days. Some people I know through the Internet—I like to think of them as friends; I hope they feel the same way—have ill spouses who are approaching end of life, and reading about their experiences and thoughts takes me back with startling clarity to the last few months of John's.

I'm not going to look back on what I wrote then; I have a feeling that I was overly optimistic and measured in my tone. But I have been honest with these women who are staring down the barrel of the gun, albeit a gun pointed at someone other than themselves. And so I shall be honest here.

I remember the day—the very day!—that I understood that John's death was on the horizon. It turns out the horizon was further away than I thought; he died four months after this day I recall. But it was on that day, the day I knew John was done fighting (and I say that with no judgment about his decision) and the day he had truly accepted what was to come, that my emotions changed, too. It was on that day that I started to fervently wish that he would just die right then.

Yes, I thought that. It sounds awful, but I did. And I then went on to be at times full of rage that it took him four long months to go.

Of course I wanted him to live longer, but not when he was a shell: exhausted, ravaged by disease and medication and side effects, uncomfortable, restless, unhappy, disengaged from life. He was done, and I was done.

There's not a lot of room in the culture I grew up in to accept death, especially a death not your own. I used to get so mad at people who put pressure on John to fight harder, fight longer, not to "give up." And yet, what I said to John back then was, "I love you. I need you. Stay with us." Yes, part of me felt that way. But the bigger part of me said that because I felt I was supposed to.

I wish I had had the courage to say this instead: "I love you. It's OK. I'll be OK. We'll be OK. You can go now." Because by the time I did say that, I'm not sure John could even hear me.

Overshare

I still share too much, sometimes. I started learning about not sharing so much when I first started in Al-Anon, where wise women helped me learn how to say no. "All you have to say is no," they said. "You don't have to explain why, or sound guilty, or talk about how you wish you could say yes, or apologize. Just say 'No, that won't work for me.'" I'm still not very good at saying no, but the idea that I don't owe the whole world an explanation of every decision I make was liberating and instructive.*

When John died, I had much to learn about a specific kind of oversharing. I've written about that here before, about the need to explain where Maddie and Riley's dad is even when no one has asked, about elaborating on my single status when no such elaboration is needed. When I keep things to a Need to Know basis, I'm more comfortable as are most people to whom I'm talking. I don't mean close friends here, but just the people one encounters in everyday life: the checker at the grocery store, the librarian, the customer service agent on the phone.

It's that kind of oversharing about John that I still sometimes can't avoid. I want so much for everyone—even those people with whom I intersect in only the most incidental of ways—to know that I had a partnership once, with a person who was a devoted father, an individual full of ideals and character, good grace and humor, and love, so much love. I don't feel unworthy on my own, or less than, it's not that. It's just that it was such a pleasure for everyone he encountered to know John, and such a pleasure for me to have him in my life. I miss sharing that with everyone I know, and even with the those I don't.

I was on the phone yesterday with a mortgage broker. He was really nice, and we soon discovered that we are both parents of twins. We did the twin-parent bonding thing. Then he asked me bunch of really personal questions because that's what people do when they need to get all up in your credit. I mentioned that I had some money available in the form of a life insurance policy that I could liquidate. He asked me the cash value of my policy. Instead of simply telling him how much was left in the account that I got when John died, I said, "Oh, the policy isn't on me! It's on my husband. It was on my husband. Then he died!"

TOTALLY AWKWARD.

We quickly moved on to a discussion of the other places I stash my vast sums of spare cash, and the moment was gone, but yeesh.

As I reflect on this particular moment of oversharing, however, it's clear to me that this was not one of those times when I wanted, needed to tell a stranger that I had once had a partner. This was a moment of fear and vulnerability. I'm thinking of buying a house. This is scary business! It's a huge decision and a life change, one that I was not sure I ever wanted to make again. And while it feels right to be strongly considering the option and I have all my ducks in a row and I'm perfectly capable of doing this on my own, it's still scary.

On an emotional level, I miss John. On a practical level, I miss shared risk. I am lucky to have many good friends (including one who acts as my stand-in spouse when I need one; I'm looking at you, Erk) and a supportive family who are happy to discuss things with me, help me work through things, make pro and con lists with me, and gently tell me when I might need to consider another point of view. But at the end of the day, they are not there to enjoy the daily ups and downs that are the result of that decision making process. There's a simplicity and ease to always getting my way in life's big decisions, but all the responsibility can also feel like a burden.

This is not to minimize unpartnered life or glorify marriage. It's just to say that my marriage was good to me. My partner was good for me.

*The conundrum of then writing about that on a blog—home of more oversharing than any other form of communication—is not lost on me.

The Exact Instructions I Need

I absolutely love it when someone posts something in their blog that is the exact thing that I need to read that day, even if—especially if—I didn't even know that I needed it. My friend-via-blogging ComebackNikki did just that today on her blog 10Eleven.

I'd never heard of Thomas Bien until five minutes ago, but I sure do like his three instructions for happiness, and I thank ComebackNikki for sharing them:

1. Know that happiness is always available to you.
2. Accept imperfection.
3. Don't try so hard.

These seem like good rules to live by. I'm going to give it a try.