Sometimes the hardest part about making a life with someone is syncing your schedules.
Steve and I have been living together for three years and even now, it’s difficult to work around each others wants and needs.
These past few weeks have been quiet. There have been a few changes in my life that have given me more time but less pay. Thus, I find myself with some half days during the week and less money in my pocket at the end of two weeks.
I’ve spent those days cleaning and running errands and doing stuff that would normally take up my weekends. Stuff that would normally keep me from spending time with Steve or the dog or family or from doing nothing. Just normal house stuff – laundry, cleaning, errands, phone calls, bills. In all honesty, I’m loving it because by last Friday night, my house was spotless, my to-do list was virtually non-existent, and I could sit on the couch and surf the Internet all night guilt free.
The problem was I was exhausted. My sleep schedule has been thrown off with my foot injury and allergy meds and thunderstorms that keep me awake until god awful hours of the morning (plus a dog who is terrified of thunder and insists on crawling in bed and snuggling with us everytime he hears a sound) so by Friday evening, all I wanted to do was plop on the couch, eat a good dinner, watch some TV and surf the Net. And I would have been perfectly content to do that all weekend. Mostly because I was trying to save money and also because the sheer effort of getting dressed and making myself looked human was utterly unappealing at the time.
Steve, on the other hand, wanted to go out. Somewhere, anywhere. He wanted to get dinner, then maybe hit up Best Buy then Wal-Mart to get some stuff. And while I wanted to spend time with him, it would require makeup and brushing my hair and PANTS! And I just don’t want to wear pants on most occasions (just you wait for my new header graphic – it speaks perfectly of me!).
But I put on my pants and brushed my hair and we went out to dinner. No makeup since we were just going to get some cheesesteaks and I didn’t really care what I looked like at that point. Then I think he compromised because afterwards he drove home instead of heading to Best Buy or WalMart.
There are times when Steve says the he wants to stay in and have a relaxing weekend and I jump for joy. Because that means I can sleep late and hang around the house and just be lazy. And generally he means it, until about 3pm on Saturday when he is so utterly bored that he turns into a five year old and whines because he’s so bored and he can’t find anything to do and let’s do something. Which leads to me feeling either guilty because I feel like I need to suggest we do something and we need to spend time together or feeling resentful and angry because we have all of this expensive shit and he can’t entertain himself.
It’s just striking that balance that’s hard. I think we did well with it this past weekend. We went out for cheese steaks on Friday night then met some friends for dinner on Saturday evening. And while that may not have been enough for him, it was enough for me. It was fairly reasonable as far as money went and we both got a chance to get out of the house and not drive each other insane. But we were able to relax enough to feel like we had not drove ourselves crazy overdoing things.
We have enough stuff coming up this summer that we really need to be able to enjoy the downtime.
In the meantime, we are making plans and trying to strike a balance there. We’ve got some trips in the works, some trips that are specifically for us to enjoy and some that allow us to visit with people who we haven’t seen in awhile. We’ve got some movies to look forward to and some dinners and small events with friends. We’ve got an enjoyable summer ahead of us.
And now we just have to work out an amicable schedule between the two of us. Because I want to sleep until 10am darn it! And somebody in this house like to wake up at 7am, even on Saturdays!
11:59pm. That means it’s still March 27h and I still made my post for the day! (Ok, it is kind of an obsession now and I will feel like I’ve failed if I don’t finish but that’s only because I’ve gotten so far) (And 11:59 is totally when I started so it still counts!)
Today has been long and fun and fulfilling. Unfortunately, it started out kind of difficult because I woke up at 6:30am with cramps. Like side effects from the IUD, so bad I had to get up and walk around. And I was cursing someone because nothing had happened all week and all of a sudden, the day I was supposed to have fun, this starts? Really?!
But by the time I woke back up around 8:30am they were gone, so I was a happy person. I got up and puttered around a bit, picked that place up, opened the blinds, got ready to go and still had about an hour to kill. So I watched some TV and surfed the ‘Net before I had to leave for the airport.
Compared to the Philly airport, the Charleston airport is a BREEZE! I picked up the girlfriends in a matter of 10 minutes. Then we headed down to Sullivan’s Island to meet Steve for lunch and spent the afternoon driving around, getting the lay of the land. For dinner we went to Bocci’s, which was delicious, and then we caught the Doppelganger show at Theatre 99, which absolutely hysterical!
It was a very good day. I love having girlfriends in and just hanging out. I needed this time. It’s been too long without girl time, without relaxation and without a general break from work.
And there’s still three days ahead of me!
Friday Night, originally uploaded by kallure.
As soon as I got home from work tonight we headed out to our semi-local pizza joint (I say semi because its 20 minutes away). This is their large. Notice the size compared to Jeff’s hand. We split that among three people. Now we’re on our way to see I Love You, Man. So I’m blogging from my phone because I don’t think I’ll be home in time today. I just wanted to share the size of that pizza. AND its delicious!
Today was a MUCH better day than yesterday and not a bad way to end the week.
Woke up all bright-eyes and bushy-tailed at 6am this morning, thanks to the 12 or so hours I slept yesterday. Steve and I commuted in together so I good hour and a half or so to do some busy work in the morning. Pretty much worked through the whole morning up until lunch, when Steve and I took off down to Sullivan’s for what we are now calling Fish Camp Friday’s.
The temperature dropped and the skies were cloudy and gray all day so there a bit of a chill in the air, but no matter. Sometimes I just need a gray day.
This afternoon, I caught up on some more work and headed out early. We went to dinner at JI Pizza then wandered through Wal-Mart and picked up a few things. Now we are home, Steve is playing video games and I’m waiting to start work.
I still have not made any of my lists, folded any of the laundry or cleaned anything I wanted to clean. Will try to fit it all into one weekend but not really sure if that’s going to work.
I can’t believe we’re almost halfway through March again.
Happy Friday the 13th, part deux for 2009!
I didn’t set out to post every day this month, it’s just kind of happened like that so far. And it’s actually a bit easier to keep up with me because I’m not forcing myself to do it. If I don’t, so what, there’s another month.
But it’s nice to at least be writing again on a somewhat regular basis. Even if my life is a bit mundane and boring. How do people find stuff to write about everyday?
Because what I did today is basically what I told you I was going to do yesterday. I slept until about 10am or so, got up and took care of a few household duties, spent a leisurely amount of time getting ready, then went to see The Watchmen. After that, it was dinner at Sticky Fingers then dessert at Cold Stone Creamery, where I tried some of their rather delicious, but insanely rich, marshmallow ice cream, which pretty much had the taste and consistency of frozen fluff.
So overall, we did the same thing tonight that we did yesterday night with the exception of the movie. And the fact that between the popcorn, dinner and the ice cream, I feel like I ate my way through the afternoon and evening.
I haven’t been able to focus much lately because I’ve been a bit exhausted. Adapting to the new schedule is tiresome and the Daylight Savings Time rollover tonight probably isn’t going to help much. I am just all about being lazy these days and truthfully, would’ve like to stay in bed until noon today. Unfortunately, I was wide awake around 10am and had we not had plans, I would’ve been super-motivated to actually get shit done.
I love going out and having friends and a social life but some days, knowing that I have to stop what I’m doing to get ready to go out and then go out makes me so unmotivated to actually start a task or household chores, mainly because I don’t like leaving things unfinished.
So my house is a wreck, we are in desperate need of a major grocery run, I’ve got phone calls and appointments and plans that need to be made and all I want to do tomorrow is lay in bed with the windows open and the breeze blowing in, surfing the Net, watching crap TV and reading. What will probably happen is that I’ll be wide awake, will sit in the living room doing the same thing for the better part of the day until it’s time to get ready to go to trivia. I’ll have thought about everything that needed to be done but never actually started.
Last time I checked, thinking didn’t stock the cabinets.
One of these days I’ll work out some sort of balance where there’s no guilt about my messy house awaiting me while I’m out eating delicious food and having some laughs with friends.
I’ll just have to teach the maid to be as meticulous as I am.
For now, I’m just going to go cuddle up with my puppy dawg, who has been at home by himself for the past seven hours patiently waiting by the window for us and is now snuggled onto my chest and begging for attention. Babies may make my ovaries dance, but my Sammy just makes my heart melt!
