a dog of a day...

summer is almost over. it bums me out. i will miss the warm days. miss the flip flops. miss the bikini. i will soon move my running inside to the treadmill. i can only stand so much windburn. then it is $200 at the estee lauder counter at dilliards to find the right products to unfry my face. i can't afford that these days. spend too much money on milk as it is...

as i ran this morning i was thinking about a conversation i had with my funny husband. he is not always a laugh a minute. in fact days go by without a joke. some days self absorption takes over the humor. we do get into some thought provoking discussions about life. our individual history and what we have learned from it. i no longer wonder so much why people do what they do. now i worry only about what goes on in my own house.

we were talking about our marriage. and our previous marriages. what is different about this one. i will only speak for myself since it is my blog and not jeff's.

so this morning i was reflecting on this labor day. how hard it is to be a wife. to be a parent. to be a step parent. it is all work. and it is all fucking hard. i am quite used to the ride. getting on and staying on. making decisions and staying with them.

some people choose an ideal. and try to marry it or live with or have their career be it. sooner or later i think they realize that the living up to that ideal is not fun. they realize that they are not living in the present. you can't successfully live an ideal. because sure as shit reality gets in the way. it may be yours or it may be someone elses, but it is real. and it needs to be dealt with.

my first husband chose to live an ideal with me. we did all the perfunctory things. got married. bought a house. invested. got 2 dogs. had 2 kids. then a certain reality set in. and things changed. he probably never really was happy being with me. but i was happy with our life. i was living it. when it was painfully obvious that he was not in the same reality i was, it was over for me. and it was awful for me. but i got thru it. i don't think it was every hard for him. he missed living with his kids of course, but i do not think he ever missed me. because he never was in it to begin with...

my marriage to jeff on the other hand, is different. i feel a wide range of emotions on a daily basis. i firmly realize that i can't control shit. except me. which is a handful and was discussed previously. that is the reality. we live. day to day. paycheck to paycheck. no one said anything about being reckless though. we are just here now. if one of us gets a little ahead of themselves, the other slows them down. and then we are back to hand in hand. i have good boundaries with his career. i let the funnyman be funny. i give the artist the space that he needs. when he is entirely too self absorbed, i let him know.

i am not sure how it all happened but it works. and sometimes the funnyman points it out to me. we battle on a daily basis about parenting issues. and money. and everything else. but it means we care.

so that is what labor day means to me. we are the working class. it is all work. the marriage. the parenting. the daily grind. as mundane as it can be.

among other things, i get a little funny on the side...

we all deserve a happy labor day...