Most of the time I feel like I'm walking a tightrope.
Trying to get from point A to point B is just so unnecessarily precarious, and it's all about balance.
Work, home, relationships, church callings, chores, fitness, personal time, it all has to be precisely calibrated for my life to maintain it's trajectory. Most of the time I feel like I'm learning to ride a bike all over again, wobbling all over the place, not really going anywhere, and just hoping to high heaven that I don't crash and knock all my teeth out. That's an ongoing phobia of mine, by the way- losing all my teeth. Not sure why, it just is.
But back on topic.
In April Luis and I had a "sit-down." After 7 1/2 years of marriage we had some issues we both needed to iron out, and they all more or less had to do with imbalances in our lives. It was a productive conversation, and since then I have been working out a few kinks in my life plan.
I realized that for so long I've been focusing on "some day" that I often fail to deal with the unnecessarily obnoxious daily tasks that have to be crossed off my checklist in order to maintain balance.
Take chores, for example. The Mr. and I have an agreement- I earn half the money and he does half the housework. Good idea on paper, but in practice, it doesn't always work. We've squabbled for years about laundry. His mom washes clothes every day, folds them, and puts them away for her family. As such, he's never learned how to stay on top of laundry himself and he washes clothes sporadically, based on the quantity of underwear left in his drawer. I've been doing my own laundry since I was 12. I hate it. I prefer to let it pile up until I have nothing to wear at all, and then wash the whole damn pile and leave it in a crumpled heap in the middle of the room as I steadily pick at it until it's all back in the dirty clothes bin. Gross, some may say. I say it's efficient. I am totally taking out the middle man here by completely bypassing drawers. Okay. I know it's gross, but give me a break. I have a lot on my plate to deal with here.
Clearly hubs is not okay with my laundry system, so we made an agreement years ago that one of us would wash, and the other would fold and put away. It's a two part system that also includes dishes- the washer of the clothes also washes dishes. The folder of the clothes dries and puts dishes away. It works okay, except that Sr. Farias likes to wait until odd times of the day and night to wash laundry at his convenience, and then gets flustered that I don't drop everything to fold his epic pile of laundry immediately. He doesn't like the clothes laying in crumpled heaps. I don't like to be ordered about (I have control issues). I mean, why does *he* get to pick when it's a good time to do laundry and not me? What if I'm in the middle of an artistic masterpiece and have just been struck by inspiration? You can't interrupt a funky groove to go fold underwear!
As I said- we've squabbled about this for years. It's not the only thing we squabble about, but it's very symptomatic of our relationship. We come from very different backgrounds, have very different standards of living, and want very different things out of life. I want flowers and sparkles and romance and music and magic, and he wants everything folded neatly and put away in a drawer so he can get to it later. Incidentally we both bring something very valuable and desperately needed into each other's lives, I feel. But I digress.
Balance. It's about balance. We decided that we have to stop judging each other for not being each other's own particular brand of crazy, and just accept that we are who we are. We decided we need to start balancing out what we want and working as a team to get things done. We decided that we need to stop waiting for each other to change and secretly resenting each other for being insane, and rather start working our idiosyncrasies into our life plans. Sure, we could just keep on going along and pretending everything is fine, but neither of us wanted to keep doing that. We've been together nearly 10 years, that man of mine and I. And when you're 29, 10 years is a long, LONG time to wait for someone to do what you want them to do.
Balance. Balancing the big stuff and the little stuff. Balancing out what needs to be done
today and what needs to be done in an eternal perspective. Balancing out work and fun. Balancing out my needs and his. Balancing out ideals with reality.
Incidentally we decided he can do the laundry whenever he feels like it, and I will fold the laundry every Wednesday night at 9 p.m. Why Wednesday night at 9 p.m.? Because that's the best time for *me*. See? I told you I'm off my rocker.
It's about balance and we're getting closer. I feel like it's time to take the training wheels off.
