Just a shoutout to all of you for the exceedingly kind, supportive comments and private messages in response to my last post announcing craptacular news. I expect that upcoming posts will be a lot like my life, expressing wildly vacillating emotions as well as a desire to escape into frivolity. But hey, at least I won't have to struggle for update material, right?

When I was pregnant, I really hated that phase in the beginning where I’d start to get fat, but didn’t really look *pregnant* yet. I remember wishing I could wear a sign that said, “I’m pregnant! I have a reason to look like this! I’m not getting fat, I swear!”

At least in that case the truth is simple, and it “absolved” me. Of the horrible crime of looking chunkier than I normally might.

I’m having to admit to people now that my husband left me and our children. As in, he’s living elsewhere and I’m taking care of a toddler and baby by myself. As in, he wants to end our marriage. As in, if I had to fill out some long form that asked me my marital status, I’d have to check the “Separated” box if they offered one.

And I really wish I had a sign to wear that says, “I’m a good wife, I swear! Or at least, I really have tried, I really have! And he’s not as awful as this makes him seem, he’s not! He’s a brilliant, wonderful, deeply troubled person! I’ve called him the foulest things recently, but YOU shut up about him!”

The truth is not so simple, and it doesn’t absolve me or anyone.

The truth is that he wants to be separated and I don’t. Any “truth” beyond this gets very murky.

Come to think of it, even that one thing isn’t exactly black and white. I want to be separated inasmuch as I don’t really think it’s a positive thing for him to be around me and the girls in his current condition. The night he left, he was unkind to all of us, and if he hadn’t voluntarily moved out I would’ve probably suggested it.

Our relationship has been bad for several years, but neither of us has done much to deal with our issues. I’ve suggested a therapeutic approach a few times, but that’s a non-starter with him. Which has left us doing nothing, continuing a sort of dysthymic coexistence that is occasionally interrupted by some good sex (or so I thought), happy moments with our children, and, more rarely, frightening battles in which all the monsters lurking beneath the dark waters surface at once in a show of power.

My assessment of our situation—and keep in mind what I said about the truth being murky—is that his thinking is disordered now to the point that he either can’t or doesn’t want to make decisions with anything other than his own overwhelming needs in mind. There are a hundred unassailable rational and moral arguments against the way he is choosing, but none of them carry any weight with him. Again, this is MY perception, my best guess at making sense of what has happened here.

I am a pretty resilient person. I attribute this mostly to losing my brother to a tragic accident when I was 15; although my grief process was not exactly exemplary, 22 years later I can say that I learned how to hurt and keep going. I value rational thought; I value persistence in the face of adversity; I value defeating crippling emotions; I value the ability to find stability in the midst of chaos, which actually requires an ability to embrace the chaos.

So, I’m going to be all right. I can’t control Dan, and I wouldn’t want to if I could. No matter what happens to my marriage, my life is going to be good. God has always taken care of me and my girls, and he always will.

But lately, I feel like I’m dying pretty much all the time, so I will take any prayers, kind words, or other measures of support you want to offer.

If you haven't already read about the feline Grim Reaper, do it--it's not scary, I swear! Actually kinda heartwarming.

When I read this, I couldn't help but think of my fat kitty Harold's final days. There were a few occasions during his illness where I just cried and cried with him on my lap, including the day I knew we were taking him to be euthanized. I'll never forget the way he got up from my lap, climbed up toward my face, and started meowing insistently. It made me laugh...I don't know that I've ever experienced anything so bittersweet as his efforts to comfort me. And I know that's what it was; I'd lived with this kitty fourteen years, and he'd never before seemed to care much when I cried about things unrelated to his dying.

I've long thought animals sense things in the spiritual realm that humans don't. I don't understand why, but I've not yet seen anything that contradicts the suspicion, and I've seen many things that confirm it.

All right, I don't know about you, but I need some comic relief about now.

What up? I've been a little preoccupied lately.


Nevertheless, I am managing to serve you, humble readers, with a major update on the continuing shenanigans in the state capitol. This has now gotten so absurd that even the reporters covering it aren't bothering to hide their snark. To wit:

Tuesday looked like most days around the Illinois Capitol lately.

The House and Senate met briefly and did nothing. Lawmakers griped about being in Springfield with nothing to do. The budget impasse was not resolved.

But lawmakers hit a significant milestone Tuesday, setting a record for futility by being in session longer than any year since the state adopted a new constitution in 1970.

And I can only guess that Finke closed the article with the following so as to punctuate the absurdity with a big, fat, offered-without-comment exclamation point:

Jones’ top deputy, Sen. Debbie Halvorson, D-Crete, said she believes everyone is scaling back their demands, a first step toward reaching a compromise. She also said the overtime is not necessarily a bad thing.

“I think this is a message we are sending that we care about the people we represent,” Halvorson said. “People are standing ground on their special issues and things they care about because the people sent them here to stand up for them.”

Wow.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

Herewith I present, in order of importance, the coolest things ever to happen on this date:

1.












2. Technically, this didn't turn out to be all that cool. But I still put it at #2 because it was cool that it ever existed, and even cooler because it was named after MY BIRTHDAY.

3.

I think a lot about whether I'm doing the right thing in working full time, rather than quitting my job so I can stay home with the girls. Even more so this week, since their daycare is closed and I'm on "vacation" from work so I can stay with them.

Although I mostly work for the money, I also work for myself. I like what I do...I like contributing to a team that produces products that help people. I like talking to grownups about things other than children.

I also work because I like the environment my girls are in at daycare...I know they have more fun than they do with me, and I like the fact that they are learning from an early age how to interact with their peers. Julia is a shy child, and given that her father and I were both shy children, I expect Maddie to be the same way. I found new social situations paralyzing for many years. I really do think that being in daycare from an early age will help my girls be more open to interaction that they might otherwise find threatening.

Still, there's this nagging sense that in working full time, I'm not selfless enough. I don't know whether that comes from listening to too many self-righteous stay-at-home moms who think their choice is the only appropriate one for a mother, or from the steady stream of mommyguilt that is somehow activated the first time you hold your child in your arms. On my worst days, I fear that it's an expression of an instinct I should be listening to but am too selfish or afraid to.

So where I'm at now is where I've always been: I'm not absolutely sure I'm doing the right thing now, and I probably wouldn't be if I did quit and stay home with the girls, either.

Articles like this one reinforce my inertia, either fortunately or unfortunately, in that it delineates dispassionately the various arguments for and against full-time work. This is the most interesting part to me:

And that was even more striking when viewed along with the survey's primary finding — that fully 60 percent of working mothers now say part-time work is their ideal rather than full-time, compared to 48 percent a decade ago.

That ideal is not tenable in today's work environment. I wonder: will we move in that direction? Would it ultimately benefit businesses to be able to offer parents jobs at reduced hours with full benefits? I know that I thought 30-hour weeks were much easier to live with than 40-hour weeks. For me, psychologically there was just something more palatable about being with my children three days a week (vs. four when I wasn't) than being with them two days a week (vs. five when I'm not).

I guess it's like anything in life--you just try to make the best decision you can, and be open to changing it if it turns out you were wrong. It's just that the stakes are so high.

Woohooooooooooo, 30 days of updates!! I made it! Now who knows--I might actually keep posting crap regularly, even if it's lame. Then at least y'all will know I'm alive and can still form sentences.

This week will be tough, though, because I'm on "vacation"--by which I mean, staying at home with the girls all week because their daycare is on "vacation." So far, I dub it the most.annoying.vacation.ever.