best girlfriend ever

I am the self-proclaimed Best. Girlfriend. Ever.

I mean that.

Here’s why: My guy can give me his lovin’ on the weekends and focus on his work during the week. I’m not some needy girl who needs constant attention. I gots plenty to keep me busy. I’ve told him as much.

For those of you who’ve been following, I work full-time and parent nearly full-time. So it’s no joke that it’s tough to find time to connect during the week. But I daresay some guys would see this as a bonus.

Not yet sure whether my guy appreciates where I’m coming from on this one. Give him time. He’ll come around to seeing things from my perspective.

Best. Girlfriend. Ever.

soft as nails

Here is a typical text exchange:

Him: You’re so picky.

Me: Did you seriously just call me picky?! …I’ll have you know that your woman is discerning, selective and has high standards.

Him: I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Me: So you like that I’m picky…

too much

I’m one of those women who do too much. I seem to recall a book by that title several years ago. I haven’t read it, but I have an inkling about what might be inside.

True, I bring much of it on myself. In addition to working full-time and parenting 85% of the time, I’m busy planning a dish for the holiday potluck at work this week, addressing somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 holiday cards, shopping and wrapping gifts, and trying to keep up with the usual chores. I’ve spent the weekend baking three different types of cookies, corralling the children to cut shapes from the dough and, later, to frost, ice, sprinkle, dip and otherwise decorate the cookies that will become gifts for their teachers. This afternoon, we put together little bags and trudged throughout the neighborhood, delivering sweets and cards to neighborhood friends.

I know full well that, as a single woman, I am not expected to send cards, bake cookies or bring a homemade dish for the potluck. I could skip out on a good share of the “extras” I assign myself, yet it would be hard to let go. I have an extended family who I see rarely. Sending a card and photos once a year seems the least I could do in an attempt to stay in touch.

Like so many people my age, I grew up with a stay-at-home mother. She kept a clean home, made healthy, well-balanced meals, decorated a fresh fir-tree each year and baked cookies and such. Those experiences I didn’t get at home, I acquired through community — cookie baking events, crafts and more. While I’ve chosen to parent differently in many ways, I recall many of my childhood events fondly and want to create similar traditions with my own children.

So, while I am beyond wiped out after a busy weekend, it’s balanced by a sense of motherly accomplishment and peace. No one is likely to compare me to Martha, either, but it’s nice to have a few shining domestic moments.

rising through the ranks

I must have done something right last weekend, because my guy said I improved my BCS standings with him. (BCS, for those of you who don’t watch college football — like myself — stands for Bowl Championship Series, which is the cockamamie way in which the NCAA determines a national champion team. Don’t ask.)

It all began with a small gesture: an early Christmas gift with which I presented him, thinking we could enjoy it together while relaxing around the house. It was one of those conversation-starter card sets for couples that you get at fancy gift stores for what you know is an outrageous profit based on the bit of acrylic and printed paper that goes in to these suckers. At any rate, it was well worth the quality time shared talking over questions and hypothetical scenarios because it allowed us to do his favorite thing — talk and share and listen.

We got to know each other a bit better — and I guess it scored me some points, too!

flinching

I started writing this post well over a month ago:

Every so often, I still catch myself in that contracted state of responding from a place of fear or lack, as though I’m in a full-on life flinch, constantly anticipating another of life’s right hooks. And then, moments later, when I realize what I’m doing, that the proverbial perceived threat was only imagined, I relax and wonder at this baffling behavior…

Often this realization hits me while doing the most mundane of all activities, such as grocery shopping. I’ll neglect to buy ingredients for some fabulous meal I’d love to make because my children wouldn’t appreciate it, or it’s too much work for just one, or for some other reason that ends up sounding much more like an excuse. Banal example though it may be, it’s symptomatic of the recent phase in my life spent focused so much on making others happy that I’d forgotten to take care of myself.

Sometimes this divorce-recovery stuff seems like a slow climb out of the bomb shelter. Imagine me stepping up and out cautiously, feeling a bit leery, eyes squinting against the brightness of daylight.

Today, I can happily report that I bought old favorites like Brussels sprouts and Swiss chard and more while grocery shopping. I intend to make the foods I like and, if my children won’t eat them, I’ll take the leftovers to work. I also enlisted some help and cleaned a bunch of junk out of the garage. For the first time in nearly a decade, I can actually park my car in it!

In other words, I’ve successfully taken another leap or two in relaxing into this new position of President and CEO of my own life.

meeting Mister Right

I don’t know whether I’ve met Mister Right or not yet, but I think there’s one way I’ll know for sure if I do…he’ll ring me up and say, “How about I come over this afternoon and help you around the house and, after that, we can clean up and get some dinner.”

I know it sounds so ridiculously silly, but hear me out: As a single, stressed-out, working mother, my mind is nearly constantly occupied with a running list of to-dos, feeling completely overwhelmed at the sheer impossibility of accomplishing them all, and trying not to break down in tears of frustration or failure. And when I’m dating, I’m thinking that I can either spend time with my beau on the weekend or accomplish long-overdue tasks around the house. It would be nice to do both, but I can’t help but feel I’m sacrificing or giving less effort and attention than I ought to on both fronts.

I can’t imagine any guy thinking this dreamy scenario sounds appealing. In fact, it’s been suggested to me that I need to “let go.” But household maintenance is a reality — “letting go” adds up in ways that, over time, can lead to decline in property value. And, while I’m not abnormally anal about my housekeeping (any longer), I believe that keeping a warm, comfortable and somewhat clean home is one of the important ways I take care of my family. (I do — now that I’ve got a reasonable salary — intend to hire some help in this regard, so that it takes less of my time and psychic energy.)

Just hearing a willingness to partner, to work side-by-side, would demonstrate that a man has listened to me, knows what causes me stress and wants to help ease that stress (because I can’t very well allow him to make such valiant efforts to ease the stress I might feel at my job).

But mostly, a simple demonstration of willingness to pitch in around the house is likely to say — loudly — that this is the sort of fella that might make a good husband.

committed, again

I finally decided to become a career gal again, and I worked my way into a decent job (that’s proving a little stressful already). It’s kinda gratifying that it has a pretty decent title and a salary that’s higher than what I earned a year ago. Nice, right? (No one changes companies for less than a 20% increase anyway, right? It’s just too big a pain in the butt. If you think I sound spoiled, try that sort of language on a recruiter — they get it.)

It took me awhile to decide to commit. At one point, after I’d been offered my current role, I actually confessed to my boss that I wasn’t sure I was ready to make adult decisions. I wasn’t sure I was ready for that sort of commitment. And then they sweetened the pot, so to speak.

But another key factor was this: While chatting with one of the executives with whom I interviewed, we discussed children. I let him know that, yes, I have two and am, in fact, a single mother. He said, “You can play the single mother card on me any time. I was raised by a single mother and I get it. There is nothing that I do that can’t wait one more day if you’re needed at home.”

I like the work. And I don’t have to travel. Not regularly, anyway. Which makes this a pretty sweet place to be right now.

boyfriend

Something subtle shifted inside me recently.

This subtle shift manifested in an external change that caught more than just me off guard. Evidently I’ve become comfortable enough in my young relationship to use a sort of shorthand. Among friends, I’ve begun referring to “the man I’ve been seeing” as simply “my boyfriend.”

A sharp girlfriend was quick to point out this slip over a glass of wine recently. I shrugged and admitted that I’m comfortable and enjoying it.

And then I had to think about it for awhile. Perhaps I hadn’t really wrapped my head around what two people in an exclusive relationship might call each other.

After I’d thought about it for awhile, I realized that this is what I’d wanted. All those first dates — meeting complete strangers through a computer screen — were about getting to where I am at this moment: I have a boyfriend. I am in a relationship. I don’t know where this is going, but I’m enjoying getting and giving attention, being romantic, holding hands, kissing. I am happy.

Perhaps it sounds strange that I’d agreed to be exclusive awhile back and hadn’t yet thought of “the man I’ve been seeing” as “my boyfriend.” Perhaps it’s because I don’t particularly like to be called a “girlfriend” (except by my girlfriends), or perhaps it’s just taken me awhile to wrap my head around the concept of a new, positive relationship that may have some potential, or perhaps I’ve just had a lagging mental indicator based on my absolute conviction to take things slowly. At any rate, my brain finally appears to be catching up.

I have a boyfriend. And there is a smile on my face.

(And there is a part of me that is terrified to hit “publish” on the off-chance that saying so just might jinx it…)

the thrill of first base

At the thoughtful recommendation of a reader, I’m beginning to read “The Thrill of the Chaste”…I forget who it’s by and, frankly, I’m feeling a little lazy just now (so you can look it up for yourselves).

While I’m far from in love with the book, there is something about the notion of going back to chastity, back to a simpler time…

I recall high school days of boys driving up, knocking on the door, politely — if not painfully — chatting up my parents, and dropping me off at the end of the night. Holding hands in a movie theatre or necking in the car were thrilling, and were far from taken for granted.

Sometimes I think it’s true that, these days, we get too caught up in the sex. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s absolutely wonderful and I enjoy sharing physical intimacy with someone special…but I can also see how difficult it might be to look beyond the sex to all the other qualities that impact a couple’s daily life together. Heck, I think it may have blinded me in the past.

I’ve always thought of sex as a barometer — an indicator of the health of a relationship. In the early stages, of course it’s hot and heavy. But a truer test of the long-term potential of a relationship is how it holds up when the flu is passed around a household, keeping parents up with children, juggling clean-up responsibilities between day jobs, until one spouse goes down and then, inevitably, the other and sex, for a good two-week interval or more, is less than a distant thought. How we treat each other during those ugly, smelly, sleep-deprived times might show us more about compatibility than our sexual chemistry.

More than that, daily life, when there are no reasons for our sympathies to be heightened, amidst the day-to-day irritants of leaving a toilet seat up or towel on the floor or using a particular tone or running late to school, work and extra-curricular activities, how do we love and support each other then? These are the real questions, the real juice of a relationship that may, at times, be obscured by great sexual chemistry.

So it’s tempting, at times, to look back and wonder whether it was easier to know what a relationship was truly made of, whether it truly had staying power, before getting physically involved. Yet sexually active or chaste, I think I’m old enough and wise enough to take my time, make better choices and let the answers reveal themselves to me.

drama-free me

The other day I just stopped and noticed that, while I’m dating someone I genuinely like and with whom I enjoy spending time, I don’t long or pine or yearn to be with him when I’m not. It’s nice. I feel healthy and whole all by myself…well, I mean, with my full life as it is, which includes my children.

Of course there are moments when something happens that I wish we were able to share… so we text and talk about it later. There’s no urgency, no drama, no neediness. If a day or two goes by and we haven’t spoken, it’s okay.

And that’s nice.