The Whole Thing

My horoscope today was amusingly appropriate "You've a tendency to agonize about the next step. If you get stuck, mention it to others. They'll give you ideas you won't agree with, and you'll realize the direction you want to go." That's me, I flip coins over decisions to give me a better idea of what I don't want to do. Not that I'm agonizing over anything just now. The only thing I'm working on is that damned short story that I've been ignoring all week long. I've been trying to treat it like a research paper with a due date, but my head is too smart for me.
It's been a mixed week. I made a list of things to do and I've been actually getting them done, an oddly organized thing for me to do, but I've slacked on my dietary restrictiveness and backslidden as a result. I have been continuing to work out but not with the level of regimentation I need to. I cannot let myself get accustomed to this and it needs to change sooner than later.
In other news, I miss Jake. I haven't seen him since Sunday and our schedules haven't matched up well. The one evening I could have gone jogging with him I was wiped out and had lawn mowing on my agenda so I decided to forgo. We had an odd conversation last night about other people's relationships. He has the usual collection of zany married friends who are varying stages of miserable a good deal of the time and we were speculating about why and what sorts of expectations go into maintaining a warped relationship. So it's easy enough to pick apart someone else if you know them well at all and see what sorts of underpinnings there might be to sponsor their behaviors, but it's harder to look at yourself. I asked him speculatively what he thought his quirks might be but either he doesn't see them, or is invested in not acknowledging them. Not a productive line of inquiry in any case. He's far too intelligent to be neurotic, but I do see him as excessively emotionally guarded, something I can't exactly call him out on as I could accuse myself of the same thing. I think I am bad for him, I love him, but I'm not healthy for him. He's not healthy for himself necessarily, he's just less likely to change if I'm helping to enable the status quo. Selfish of me, I want him but don't want to rely on him. He doesn't want to be relied on. Just more reminders of why he got along so well with J. Unbelievable that that still hurts like it does. It was my very closest and worst encounter with rejection. What a flimsy soul I am. Then, maybe not. I am not sure that more experience with rejection would have helped it feel any less awful.
T continues to be a bit stressed over work issues. He keeps taunting me with the prospect of travel plans which never materialize because he's so busy. This is my favorite time of year and I'd give a lot to be free to spend more of it with Jake, curled in his bed, around his incredibly warm body. It would make me happy to be free to pursue this with him openly but I would have had to have married another kind of man entirely in order to do so. No sense dreaming, or at least if I'm going to dream, I should do something productive with it.....like write!

5 weeks

So it's been a full month since I had surgery. I have an appointment today with the doctor and I'm sincerely hoping to get more than 2.5 seconds of his time. You know, in the absence of microchip augmented memory, I might want to consider making more lists considering I do think of questions to ask my designated medical professional but he always seems in such a rush that my innate desire to avoid causing inconvenience effectively squelches them all. Thank god for Google, though I could wish more actual people would write about the experience. If I had a bit more fortitude I'd undertake the task myself. I wish I had, chalk that one up to another trivial regret. In any case, I'm over this navel infection. I'm pretty sure it's still so vulnerable because the remaining stitches have stubbornly refused to dissolve leaving me an easy target. Is it so much to as to have a somewhat normal looking belly button? I can live with the scar but this is insult to injury.
In other news T is increasingly grouchy about his impending sales trip out west. He screwed up his schedule such that he probably won't be visiting my mother like he'd initially intended. He's so terribly organized on his own turf that it amazes me when I see him in travel mode. He has no idea what he is doing from day to day. I suspect it has something to do with his fanatical dislike of business travel. He's already threatened to scrap the whole trip, a threat that makes me instantly cranky because fond as I am of the man I'm really looking forward to being left to my own devices for a blissful week. Even if Jake weren't in the cards, self indulgence is the watchword when he's away. Obviously it would be wildly inappropriate to share these feelings with T though I'm certain I've hinted at it broadly, hopefully in a non insulting way. I wonder if my emotional reserves are so very low, abnormally so, such that I enjoy having only myself to worry about more than I ought to. Where did I get it from? Environment? Genetics? Both? Probably both.
Speaking of, I still haven't gotten a job though I've continued applying. The fiasco with the staffing agencies was discouraging. I don't understand why they can't make allowances for those who are employed part time and want to give notice. Surely not all their clients need immediate fill ins for the positions available and one would think that it bodes well if the person comes to you already demonstrably employable. Grrr.....I shall keep applying. I shared my frustrations with T and he has been reassuring with the lack of urgency, but I feel guilty. Not guilty enough to attempt to start writing with a mind to making money off it apparently, but but guilty enough to feel faintly virtuous for feeling guilty over something that I patently ought to feel a little bad about. Did that make sense?
And Jake isn't talking to me today, not sure why. It could be a deliberate, well, it's probably somewhat deliberate, more to the point he could be upset with me, or it could just be a passive aggressive neglect. I'm sure I'll find out later one way or another. I have noticed that his absence has made me cranky, moody, more easily upset than usual, all the normal stuff I've come to expect. The prospect of having a conventional relationship with Jake is speculatively a little frightening for me. I am so emotionally entangled with him and he's more volatile than I am comfortable with. I would need him to be happier with me than I think he would be as I am verifiably a difficult person to deal with on many levels. I just don't know but that's what's running through my brain just at present.

1/3 life crisis

My husband and I took his mother out for her birthday last night. I'm not especially fond of my mother in law. She's a nice and relatively harmless soul, but she's an extremely fundamentalist Christian, and fan of conspiracy theories in all forms. To call her credulous would be an understatement. Example: She thinks the entire population of China is in on a vast conspiracy to kill the Americans and she cites the lead in children's toys as an example of this deliberate and insidious plot. Apparently the toddlers were a good initial target demographic for their extermination plans. No word yet on why their trying to kill off one of their most profitable customers when they could simply wait a few years and buy the country from under us.
Back when she was still with her husband, and when I was at least more nominally Christian than I am today, I found her somewhat more tolerable, but lately, listening to her prattle on is something like having someone shove angry hedgehogs down my ear canals. It's like the woman has no reflection, she can't see herself. She has an odd gift for sarcasm, and the number of snide remarks she's made concerning her estranged husband since his departure have been countless, but if you suggest to her that she's made any at all, she is a picture of affronted innocence. But I have to stop now, I could rail on forever on this less than interesting subject.
She has decided I don't love her son properly and accused me of such last night. Talk about affronted. It's always particularly annoying when people are right for the wrong reasons. She has no idea what she's talking about, but she could be correct anyway. M is not one to inspire passion in those around him. He's a very nice man, stable, caring, thoughtful, mature, all good things to have in a spouse, but my feelings toward him are mostly tepid anymore.
I thought, when I met him so long ago, after having gotten out of a violently abusive relationship, that he would really be a perfect match. Temperamentally we're very similar, and have enough overlap of interests to maintain a friendship indefinitely. I was pretty sure it was a relationship I could contentedly live inside until I dropped dead. Unfortunately, I and my priorities keep altering, often without my permission.
So, I'm coming to a bit of a crossroads, and I'm still working out what to do. More details later.