I know it seems like a silly little thing, but I am absolutely thrilled that my husband has made some new friends! Last weekend, I was unhappy that he left the house after freeing up my car to go prep for Sunday’s Magic tourney in Boston, and less happy when he called to say that he wouldn’t be home until 1am. However, when he got home and explained that he’d met some guys and went to one guy’s house and hung out there, I was thrilled!

This week, he’s stayed in contact with them through Magic websites and is hanging out most of tomorrow at his friend’s house to test Magic decks and watch the US vs. Canada gold medal hockey game. I’ll miss him, but I’m so, so happy that he found intelligent people with similar interest that he can spend time with and that he is feeling less isolated.

When it comes right down to it, Peter is more than my husband, he’s my best friend and I want him to be happy and content. I knew I could not do that on my own, but I can give him the freedom to spend time with friends.

Equality in a marriage can be difficult to achieve. When children are part of the equation, it’s much easier to set aside the generally selfish desire for procrastination and good-enough for the greater good. However, when children are not part of the equation, both parties avoid confrontation like an overdue-but-still-acceptable-within-the-next-week term paper, and one party has fibromyalgia, it can be much more difficult.

For years, my husband and I have found ways to avoid sucking it up and doing chores that we didn’t feel a pressing need for, like dusting or cleaning the toilet. It can also be very difficult to accept the onus of responsibility for certain chores, since it tends to become Your Job if you do it more than once.

In January 2007, I had my first major, super-duper flare of  fibromyalgia and Peter took up the slack (or, rather, all the chores) while I wore myself out commuting for an hour or two each day and teaching & planning for 10 more hours. Three years later, I go on leave, unable to work due to my fibromyalgia and migraines, but slowly strengthening and rebuilding my body and, as a part of that, taking my life and home back. Our living room is liveable and mostly clutter-free. I have sorted through all the mail from the past 9 months in the kitchen. We cleaned our bedroom, I have cleaned bathrooms, I am organizing “my” room, and I have done many, many, many loads of laundry. In addition, whenever possible, I do all the grocery shopping and errands. So, basically, I do 3 gym visits and 2 home workouts each week and do an errand or chore each day.

Unfortunately, the snow storm has done a great deal to mess up my life. I know, I know, that sounds very dramatic, but I have done yoga nearly every weekday with a DVD (”Healing Yoga for Aches and Pains”), had migraines nearly every day, and gained 4 lbs. To make this worse, although Peter was snowed-in with me most of last week, he spent two hours unburying his car on Tuesday, helped me with cleaning the bedroom Thursday, went to the supermarket with me for one and a half trips (Tuesday and Friday), and went off to play Magic with his friends on Friday evening and all day Sunday (he worked Saturday). He left the dishwasher unloaded many, many times (as though testing me to see if I will take care of it). I was forbidden from trying to unbury my car and Peter did not touch it after his car was free. His newest reason (as of yesterday) was that he wants to use his own shovel, not borrow one (so I searched online, discovered Lowes, Sears, Home Depot, and Target were all out, and ordered one on Amazon to get here by Friday). Monday, I borrowed Peter’s car, did 25 minutes (2.5 miles) on the recumbent elliptical cardio machine at the gym, got the now-crunchy oil and 3 cracking belts changed on Peter’s car, stopped off at Target and picked up some essentials (unfortunately, they refilled the wrong Rx), filled the tank up with gas, came home to unpack and eat lunch, then injured my neck and started a slow leak on Peter’s car trying to get out of his spot (the last burst of snow, he just backed over, but I didn’t enter the spot straight, so…), went to the doctor, worked myself up to talking to Peter about him giving me freedom to use my car or allow me to find and pay someone to dig me out, and then picked up Peter.

By the time Peter came out and got behind the wheel, he had little air in his passenger-side rear tire. After much drama, we were towed and it was patched, it was obvious I didn’t drive on it while it was flat (else it would have been ruined), but I went from feeling empowered to having to apologize over and over for doing nothing but try to work with what I was given (and saving his car from near-engine-failure due to having less than 50% of its required oil and that which was there was not liquid, but when I told him that during the day, he didn’t see why I was hassling him). I refused to drive his car since then and mine is still behind a 4 ft-high, 2-ft-deep wall of snow. This means I didn’t do the Aqua Aerobics I was so looking forward to since the last time I did it, 2 weeks ago, and I didn’t get to visit a church for Ash Wednesday and get a dirty forehead. I am in desperate need for Rx from Target and we need groceries and I should go to my semi-personal training…

But I don’t want to drive his car. The roads are bad enough without the pressure I feel under to keep his car pristine and, although I want groceries, a part of me feels resentful and frustrated by my limitations, the set-back, and the loss of freedom and feeling safe in my car. So maybe I’m projecting, but I also know that Peter didn’t care enough to make himself uncomfortable in order to give me freedom in a timely fashion. I understand not going out for Valentine’s Day, and not getting a card or flowers… I understand receiving just a good time together for our anniversary. Money’s tight, we’ve been spending plenty of time together… But… Well, sex isn’t the only way you can show affection, and I feel like he’s not trying. (As for that, I’ve been trying to send out signals, but -based on his responses during my impending and then very very short period- it appears that he is only interested if intercourse is possible.) So what was I hoping for? He could have done some of the unsanitary laundry (Stewie was using old laundry as a litterbox). He could have done a little to make my car easier to access, if not drive. He could have shoveled behind and around where he parks, so it’s less tricky. He could have given me a foot massage or given me time to mess with my RockBand avatar and practice before we started playing together. I had a card for him (a general I-Love-You, not specifically V-Day), but I never bothered to fill it out when I saw his attitude Saturday night and Sunday morning.

I know my being home puts additional pressure on Peter to stay employed. However, I continue to receive a paycheck, and I have a very specific set of plans for the future in order to make money and receive disability benefits if possible. Maybe he can help me do the laundry, or clean the area around the kitchen sink, or give me some cash (I have none right now) so I can either pay someone to dig out my car or get a taxi ride. Or maybe he can call the psych group and have them give him an appointment for individual counselling so he might start to be content.

I know that what I really want is to ***POOF*** get my body back to a reasonable weight (sub-140) and have the physical ability to work out the way I want to. I want to teach and then come home and do very little in order to make the house gorgeous and then sit back in my organized, gorgeous, comfy room. I want to be able to enjoy my husband and have him enjoy me. I want to be able to get pregnant and enjoy that pregnancy and then that baby and then, a year or two later, get pregnant again. I want a family and a life. But between migraines, fibro pain, and transport issues, I’m currently living the life of a shut-in (but without the perks of the occasional visitor). 

But right now, just asking for a balance of household responsibilities, and the occasional ”Thank you, I know X was a pain in the butt, so I really appreciate you taking the time and energy to do it,”  is what I need to do…

Since 2002, A Math Teacher was who I was, and any other applicable definition was secondary, if not imaginary. Since graduating college, the whole of my energies was focused on shaping minds, giving students tools for life, changing lives hopefully for the better. But in early December, my career was temporarily excised from my life, so that I could focus on “me” and get my Self in shape, so I could return better, stronger, faster… but I discovered that I had worked hard to ignore that Self. Who I was in Real Life had atrophied and I had to rebuild it. I had the technology. And I found the willpower. Unfortunately, I could not procure bionic parts. But I’m strengthening what I can, and I am reminding myself of all those subdefinitions:

I am:

• a full-fledged adult
• a daughter, sister, aunt, and not-too-in-law
• a wife who is learning to be a partner
• a cat-mommy of two Siamese, one of whom is “on the spectrum” (kitty version)
• a homeowner and neighbor
• a person who has to solve the puzzle
• a perfectionist who uses micro-planning and procrastination to disguise insecurity over not being perfect
• a person with very defined morals and personal rules
• a person who rarely judges others and finds them lacking
• a naive fool who, regardless of experience, is constantly surprised by others’ rule-breaking
• an American that, nevertheless, isn’t from around here (no matter where ”here” is), and never was
• a regular person (my dream since childhood) who has had the luxury of extraordinary experiences
• a psychiatric patient who took her life back and will accept the glitches that come my way as a result
• a person who lives with fibromyalgia and its ups, its downs, and its limitations
• a woman resculpting her curves to find her body once again (there was a reason I didn’t diet before my wedding: I wanted to look the way I looked 4 years later and 4 years earlier, which I did and I will again)
• a musician rediscovering her instruments and her love for music in all its forms (well, most of them)
• a collector of stories and a story-teller
• a student who will never learn enough
• a math/science geek
• a traveller
• a people-watcher
• a total klutz
• a silly, giggly, goof-ball
• a princess
• an actor in life’s play
• an altruist
• a person who lives for the sake of others when she cannot live for herself
• a person who does for others before she does for herself
• an advocate for people with disabilities
• a person that almost has never felt anger
• an educator (honestly, I randomly start teaching people about thread count in Bed, Bath, and Beyond when at loose ends like this)

I’m sure there are other things people can add to this. But these are the few things I have thought of, mostly in the order they occurred to me, as I sat here over the course of an hour. I miss teaching, and I will either return to the classroom part-time or, more likely, tutor as close to full-time as I reasonably can. But it feels good to be rediscovering who I am and who I can be when I’m not crippled by pain caused by constant overexertion.

All of my natural grandparents have passed away. Both my paternal grandmother, whom hereafter I shall refer to as Grandma, and my maternal grandmother, whom hereafter I shall refer to as Babi (the Czech translation), lived long enough to have a significant impact on my life, my values, and my views of how upbringing can shape a child’s growth and future choices.  I love both of these grandmothers a great deal. Because of the memory loss from my ECT, the loss of Grandma at the age of 96 in late Spring of 2008 is practically as fresh as the loss of Babi this past December.

Just as an aside, I am extremely lucky to have been so warmly adopted by my husband’s very active, talented, and loving maternal grandmother and her husband nearly 8 years ago (when Peter and I adopted two kittens together) as well as welcomed into the very large extended family of my husband, although I feel myself keeping my distance from the matriarch, who was beginning to show the first stages of Alzheimer’s when I first met her, and I just had too much experience slowly losing Babi to the same disease. I do feel very close to the family I married into, for which I am extremely lucky and grateful.

But the focus of this is on the two grandmothers who have so recently passed. The loss of these two strong women hits me at odd times. The oddest is when I joke about whom my cats inherited various traits from. When I thought about it, it became very clear that many of their most ingrained traits correlated to those of my grandmothers… so much so, that I decided to dedicate a post to it.

Leela and Grandma

Leela and Grandma are very alike. They take pride in their appearance and the image they show to the world. They also both have positioned themselves as Queen of their respective people. Be it a circle of friends or a family, they are the sun around which the others orbit. Both Grandma and Leela are extremely talkative, with large vocabularies, and have the astounding ability to complain or kibbutz while showing happiness or appreciation. They are both loving, but it is often a slightly more distant love. In Grandma because she lived so far away and was infirm for such a large part of my life and I was born so much later than her other grandchildren, and in Leela because I am, after all, just a servant.

Stewie and Babi

Both Stewie and Babi have issues with anxiety. Babi was always very concerned about social mis-steps and being destroyed socially by any minor mistake. This came out in many, many ways and touched me by my forming a long, long list of rules(which is constantly being updated and amended) for appropriate behavior (actions, reactions, and inaction) in various social situations. Stewie has anxiety over everything, often acting like a spy in enemy territory (I like to call it “playing Secret Agent Man”). When he’s in anxiety mode, he will jump at a moved shadow, will use a mirrored door to see around corners, has a special way of walking up and down our stairs so he doesn’t make it creak (which made me worry about his joints for a short while), will not allow himself to be touched, and will sit only in specific places. (Other times, he will lie in front of a window on his back with his belly exposed, purring as I walk by. He’s an enigma.) In addition, due to both stress and, possibly, allergies, Stewie has licked his belly and inner thighs completely bare. (Which I will come back to in the third major similarity.) In addition, both Stewie and Babi give of their whole selves when they do express their love which is occasionally overwhelming, but always deeply appreciated and reciprocated. Lastly, both speak with an accent.

Stewie’s Thighs and Both Grandmothers

Like most cats, Stewie often presents his butt to me at eye-level for no apparent reason. Also like most cats, he has extra skin at his thighs which allows for greater range of motion. Unlike most cats, however, this extra skin is not furry. Instead, looking at his behind, I see pale, pinkish wrinkly flesh starting at the knees and meeting at the middle (although he left that part untouched). It seems slightly inappropriate and reminds me way too much of all the times I saw my grandmothers naked and could not look away from what might one day happen to my body. (For this reason, I am looking into ways to clothe that part of his body. Chaps? A doggie shirt on backward, with cut-outs so he can use the litterbox? I will find a way!)

I hope this was at least mildly entertaining.

I’m turning the dumping ground that is “my” room into a sitting room that will house my romance novels, education library, and electronics. Anything I don’t recognize or remember purchasing, I will look at as an exciting find rather than a distressing sign of ECT-induced damage (I can’t consider myself a victim of the ECT – it was a life-saving decision and I am getting some memories back and am not losing new memories… but that’s a whole other discussion). So what do I need to do sort through my past and reclaim My Room?

STAGE 1: Sorta Majora
I will go through everything that is all over the floor and my desk and put them in distinct areas.

1. Sewing and Knitting Materials – on top of the table, which against the wall and directly in front of the entrance
2. Clothing - back corner facing the door, behind the table, on top of an unexplored box that I believe holds some clothing.
3. Job-Acquisition Materials - in the top-most clear drawer(s), which is in front of the window, between the chair and the bookcase, diagonal from the door
4. Student work – in the bottom most clear drawer(s)
5. Random papers - in the cardboard perpendicular-sorting boxes on top of the drawers
6. Toys, Teaching Manipulatives, and Electronics - into a clear bin outside the room

STAGE 2: Sortae Minora
Once the mess is generally sorted into groups, I can start to find places for items.  The table can be removed from the room and put into the hallway (folded) or look like a desk in the guest room until we can move it downstairs so it can be a major part of the rec room in the basement.

1. Sewing and Knitting Materials all go into the bins that are in the basement, if there’s room, or into new bins (which are on sale at the supermarket or all over Target).
2. Clothing must be sorted into smaller groups and put away. If it fits and can be worn now, I need to find a place for it in the drawers or my closet. If it is for a special occasion, I can hang it in the closet in Peter’s room. If it is a size or two off, I will put it in storage with similar clothing. If it is unlikely I will ever wear it (like the tissue-paper-thin Old Navy tees), I will put it in a box which will go in the basement and will donate it to Goodwill along with other items that I don’t think I will wear again. 
3. Job-Acquisition Materials can be filed into the file-storage box I got at the supermarket today. Resumes of various ages, recommendations, college/university transcripts, copies of certifications, and even copies of old applications… all of it will go in that file box.
4. Student work will go in a second file box. I will have to be picky and I will have to be willing to throw things out.
5. Random papers will need to be sorted through. If they are craft-related, they’ll go with that stuff. If they instruct me in electronics, they will go in a file folder and be stored with electronics. If they are job-related, I will put them in a file-folder or a file-storage-bin. If they are records of purchases that are tax-related, I will put them downstairs with the tax prep stuff.
6. Toys, Manipulatives, and Electronics will be sorted. Electronics and small toys will go into the colorful set of drawers I have sitting in the kitchen and, if necessary, some cute colorful bins from Target. The clear drawers (which had held the various papers I’d just removed) will go downstairs into the rec room. Manipulatives that are in bins can be stacked downstairs by the drawers or go into the clear drawers. Our family games will also go downstairs into the rec room or living room (depending on Peter’s preferences), along with the games that we keep in Peter’s room.

STAGE 3: Preliminary Work-Space Set-Up

1. Education-related books will be rearranged to display ALL my math and education-reference books as well as any books that I’d make copies from. I will need another bookcase or some special bins in order to store it all. Curriculum, textbooks, and worksheets will have to go downstairs to the rec room along with most of the manipulatives.
2. Desk drawers and organization products will be completely reorganized, my set of little colored drawers will come up to help with organizing CDs, etc. so that the desk top is clear. I will bring my large laptop up and keep it there.

Stage 4: Comfort and Decor Set-up
Part of reclaiming the room is making it a haven to retreat to. This will be the funnest stage and will take the longest.

1. The armchair and ottoman will be clear of everything, except maybe a comfy throw or extra pillow, and ready to be sat in.
2. Novel bookcases will move from the guest room into my room, along the wall that once held the clothing-box and table, and I may add more high shelving so I can display all my snow globes and coaches. This will help make the guest room project easier.
3. Artwork will be displayed. Possibly the watercolor of Venice my parents gave me (they got it on their honeymoon, which I had stowed-away on as a fetus), if Peter doesn’t like it. Otherwise, my funny-bunny poster and/or a set of round mirrors of varying sizes that is currently selling for under $20 at Target.
4. Purses may be displayed vertically along one wall on special hooks, if I can find room and manage it, at least for my favorites. 

Steps 5+: Items From Elsewhere
I have stuff from my previous jobs that are in the kitchen and my car. I also will move the printer/fax/scanner down to the basement and bring the other electronics (which are currently in the living room) upstairs.

It sounds exhausting, but it’s doable with time and help with the heavy lifting. The first step will be hard, but if I don’t try to do any of Step 2 during that step, I’ll get through it in a day. The second step will take a while, but it is essential to making the room and my stuff useable and managable for the long run. I’m determined not to rush to Step 4 until I at least get through Steps 1 and 2, and I can think about it a little, but Steps 5+ will be so much easier if I do steps 2 and 3 thoroughly without jumping ahead.

UPDATE 2/3/10 @ 7:40pm: It looks like I’m going to have to leave Step 1 as it remains after the little sorting I did today and move to Step 2. If I get Part 1 (the craft supplies) and Part 2 (clothing) done tomorrow, I can clear off the table, move the clothing tub partially blocking the doorway, and remove the table from the room, so I have more room to work.