Alone together

Posted on April 23, 2011 by Mrs Odie

Today we attended a two year-old’s birthday party. It was awesome to see some friends I haven’t been able to hang out with since I went back to work. We keep up on Facebook, but IRL (in real life) is so much nicer. I mean, with these people it is. I love Facebook mostly because it means I never have to see people, but I still get to pretend I have “relationships.”

Which got me thinking about the introvert/extrovert thing. I’ve always considered myself the latter. I talk to people easily. I like being the center of attention in a crowd, as long as it’s not because I just jammed my foot in my mouth. Hell, I became a teacher, which puts me “on stage” from 8 a.m. to 12:21 p.m. every day, at which time I convene to the “round table” in the teachers’ cafeteria to grab the spotlight some more. There’s much more competition there, though. I think most teachers are spotlight grabbers. Why else would we choose to do what amounts to daily public speaking engagements? Oh, right, I almost forgot. It’s the huge salary for part-time work that attracts us. (Hey, Dr. Keith, go “ablow” yourself!)

Disclaimer: when you look at the hours I just quoted, you may think “That sounds pretty ‘part-time’ to me.” I actually DO work part-time, and get paid accordingly. But I almost never leave work before 4:00, because I hate to take work home. I never do the work. I take it home, but it basically just gets a ride in the car and then a quiet evening in my bag in front of the TV. I’ve taken my work on lots of vacations, too. My work has been to Hawaii, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Washington. It’s well-traveled work.

Even before I took this job, I felt at home in front of an audience. Jerry Seinfeld once joked that people fear public speaking more than death, so at a funeral, they’d rather be the guy in the coffin than the one giving the eulogy. Not true for me. And I’m the one who makes a few well-timed (in my opinion) wise cracks at faculty meetings and staff developments too.

Odie is the opposite. He is at ease in front of a classroom, but he despises social situations. Today, he was so grateful that I told him he should stay home from the party. He has a hard enough time making small talk with people he knows well, and he always leaves convinced that he made everyone feel uncomfortable and they all hate him. All of our post-party drives home consist of Odie deconstructing the evening, usually by beginning with “I don’t think X Person likes me.”

He would have smiled and made nice conversation and played with the kids, but inside, he would have been struggling. I don’t want my husband to struggle on a Saturday morning. I want him to relax from a long week at a difficult job. I teach English to immigrants, which is a real-life skill they can take directly from the classroom and use. And they STILL aren’t interested. Imagine how those teenagers feel about advanced math. Let me put it this way, how do YOU feel about advanced math? Exactly.

And if he ended up feeling like cleaning the kitchen because he was so grateful. Who am I to complain?

Odie is an introvert and I am an extrovert, but we’re both isolaters. It makes us fantastic homebodies. Although, I suspect that most people become homebodies when they have kids and they like their homes. Right now, I’m sitting in my chair that Odie has dubbed “The Throne” and he is on the couch next to me. We are both on our laptops in the dark, the soft bluish glows illuminating our faces. I glance every thirty seconds or so at the video baby monitor to see V tossing and turning but staying asleep (too much cake and ice cream today, probably). Together, but in our own little worlds, alone together.

Being with people today filled up my extrovert cup, left me satisfied and ready to be alone. V has a book called “One, Two, Three,” by Sandra Boynton, and the last line is “And one is wonderful after a crowd.” She’s a philosopher, that Boynton, because it really is true(and because piggies were born to be chubby and pink). And I think that in a solid, working relationship, you do feel comfortable being “alone together.”

Especially since I know that if I flashed him my boobies, there’d be all kinds of togetherness.

Posted in Marriage, Pure side-splitting comedy | 1 Comment

Flourish

Posted on April 17, 2011 by Mrs Odie

Last night, I couldn’t sleep. Much of it was my cough, dry and persistent with lots of pain. Odie bought some cough medicine, but he accidentally got the kind with alcohol in it, so I couldn’t take any. But I was also troubled by guilt. Even though Odie and I have nothing in our rental contract that specifies yard upkeep, we do let it get pretty out of control. One of the neighbors apparently mentioned it to the landlord, who emailed me a very diplomatic inquiry. I wish I could get out there with my yard tools and snip, clip, shovel and trim our yard into submission. But in the ninety degree heat, six and a half months pregnant, it seems like a bad call.

Our yard has two stages: dry, dead carnage and overgrown weeds. We live on a hillside, and the hillside truly needs a retaining wall built around it to keep the dirt and shrubbery off the road and sidewalk. Since it doesn’t have one, things can get a bit out of hand. It’s also quite a large parcel of land, so the job of keeping it looking nice requires a full-time gardener which we cannot afford.

So I sat in my chair watching “Law and Order: Los Angeles” late into the night and feeling bad about my yard. I’m proud to say that I resisted the urge to make and eat several grilled cheese sandwiches around midnight, and went to bed instead, where I lay restlessly for another hour.

I was thinking about Jack Nicholson, because I read on a gossip site earlier in the day that his daughter turned 21. Cynically, I thought about how her dad dates women about her age (or more likely “hires” women about her age). In a few years, his daughter’s friends will be too old for him.

Which led me to thoughts of Nicholson in “The Witches of Eastwick” and my “bloom” project/mission. (https://mrsodie2.wordpress.com/2010/04/09/the-bloom-project/) In the middle of a sleepless night, it occurred to me that when Nicholson as Daryl VanHorne tells Cher about his perfect woman, he was playing the Devil. This is LUCIFER describing the ideal woman. A woman ripe for the plucking by the temptations of Satan himself. And I had to chuckle.

Vanity. Narcissism. Sloth. Envy. Several of the seven deadly sins, all of which I am guilty. Although, not gluttony. See above where I did NOT make and eat grilled cheese sandwiches.

I rethought my Bloom Project. I don’t want to bloom. Blooming is temporary. A flower blooms for but a moment, then fades away and dies. I want to do more than bloom. I want to flourish. I want to burgeon, thrive, succeed, develop. I want to ARRIVE.

And, yes, I did look up “flourish” in a thesaurus.

As the daughter in my womb ripens, I put myself on hold in some ways. I have to avoid the retin-A products I would normally apply to combat the signs of aging. I cannot diet to lose weight. I must exercise carefully and moderately. On the inside, though, my thoughts of flourishing continue. This is my last year in my thirties. The last year of my twenties seems only months ago. Most women raise their children in their thirties and find themselves facing forty with an empty nest. I am a decade behind in this regard. I will turn forty with a three year-old and an infant. And a bikini body? Only time will tell.

Okay, not a “bikini” body. I have never been a bikini girl. I am too pale. It’s a commitment to sunscreen that I’m unwilling to make. A stylish one-piece suit and sarong body, with a wide-brimmed hat. That I can do.

This summer, I look forward to afternoons at our friends’ pool, watching the older kids do fearless, noisy cannonballs into the water while Odie supervises our two year-old in the shallow end. I will be doughy and postpartum pudgy in the shade, snuggling my sweaty infant and gossiping. Sipping chilled white wine in between breastfeeding sessions. Flourishing on the inside.

For now.

Posted in Flourish: The Housewife Project | 13 Comments