My Horoscope

Group relations
Valid during several days:
During this time you tend to think about your goals and expectations in life. You will examine your ideals to find out exactly how well they have served you and to what extent you have attained them. You should also think about whether your goals are really your own or whether they are in part other people's goals that you have adopted for yourself. In the latter case, decide whether these goals are appropriate for you. At this time you need and will have more verbal and intellectual exchanges with friends and with other groups that you are associated with. Talking over your problems with friends will be especially helpful in reaching an objective viewpoint. But keep in mind that talking things over with friends cannot free you from prejudices and preconceptions that are held by the entire group.

I woke up this morning thinking "My husband is going to have a heart attack"
Not now, not lying next to me - but someday.
Because we eat late, we eat poorly, he sleeps terribly, his commute is awful, and our life is no fun.
Pretty heavy shit for 4am.

So I did what I always do.
I got up, went downstairs, and imposed order on our lives.
I took everything not related to food or food prep off the kitchen counters, washed dishes, then I baked.
I checked my online calendar - I stopped writing this post to send an email - I came back.
I canceled myself out of knitting tonight - why pay a sitter to knit when Ellie can just go to bed early and I'll be home when he gets here?

And I thought.
Then I looked up real estate closer to his office.
Because in as much as we may like our lives "up here" - at what cost? Commuting over 2 hours a day and locked into a pattern taht isn't rewarding. His getting up at 6, getting home at 6:30 does what for him? For me? To us? For who?

Lately I've been sad. Not depressed but struck dumb somehow by the familiar lament of why does everything seem so much work. Why are we having the same stresses, same conversations, same feelings and why aren't we moving past it.

Or more aptly said "What am I doing wrong?"

This morning it occurred to me that the mantra I've lived by - "the key to being happy is being happy with what you get" is teetering closely on codependent claptrap. If you have something that's not GOOD, reconciling yourself to it over and over, and failing to recognize that it just isn't working, well that's not really being happy with it. That's hiding from the fact that its not going to make you happy.

Oh sure would uprooting us be a good thing? Leaving friends, leaving the library, the schools, the community, the familiar. Is chucking it all so my husband can have better quality of days - maybe a gym in the morning, a less stressful commute on the way home - is that overall trading one issue for another? Possibly.

But we've given living this way, this life a chance and neither of us is enjoying it anymore. And it's insane to think that picking yourself up by the bootstraps each day, and "girding your loins" for a new day is changing things.

I keep thinking "maybe if I were more social, maybe if we did more social things, maybe if we weren't so insular, maybe if I was willing to fly" - I keep looking at what's not fun and I know with every fiber of my being that it's me. I'm not fun. I'm not adventurous. I'm a boring dull plough horse that knows how to work, work, work. I get "things done" but I'm scarcely fun - and I think "If only I were DIFFERENT" we'd be having a better time.

I try to reinvent me. Us. I go online, I look up festivals, carnivals, outings. I create scenarios that I think will engage us, that weill make us more outgoing creatures.

Then my husband is indifferent. So we fight each weekend that we never DO anything - yet he never wants to do anything and he bitches and begrudges going to things - then laments that we don't. I canceled us out of every weekend birthday party this summer because he felt they were "holding us back" from doing things - then we never did things.

I keep thinking that I just need to pinpoint the RIGHT thing. That if I create the right situations, the right intimacy in friendships, that if I strike the right chord - it will resonate and it will all make sense. I keep thinking "We have this foundation, we can't abandon it" but really, what's the point in staying up here connected to all these "friends" that we never hang out with, never have dinner with, never socialize with - friends that are friends in title but would they really miss us (see: water in bucket theory)- what's the point in staying here if all we do is stay here.